Infinity's Shore (12 page)

Before Kaa could answer, the youth emitted the
need-air
signal and shot toward the surface, without even performing a wariness spiral to look out for danger. It violated security, but tight discipline seemed less essential as each Jijoan day passed. This sea was too mellow and friendly to encourage diligence.

Kaa let it pass, following Zhaki to the surface. They exhaled and drew in sweet air, faintly charged with distant hints of rain. Speaking Anglic with their gene-modified blowholes out of the water called for a different dialect, one that hissed and sputtered, but sounded more like human speech.

“All right-t,” Kaa said. “Now report.”

The other dolphin tossed his head. “The red crabs suspect nothing. They f-fixate on their crayfish pensss. Only rarely does one look up when we c-come near.”

“They aren't crabs. They're
qheuens.
And I gave strict orders. You weren't to go near enough to be seen!”

Hoons were considered more dangerous, so Kaa had kept that part of the spy mission for himself. Still, he counted on Zhaki and Mopol to be discreet while exploring the qheuen settlement at the reef fringe.
I guess I was wrong.

“Mopol wanted to try some of the reds' delicaciesss, so we p-pulled a diversion. I rounded up a school of those green-finned fishies—the ones that taste like Sargasso eel—and chased 'em right through the q-qheuen colony! And guess what? It turns out the crabs have
pop-up nets
they use for jussst that kind of luck! As soon as the school was inside their boundary, they whipped those things up-p and snatched the whole swarm!”

“You're lucky they didn't snag you, too. What was Mopol doing, all this time?”

“While the reds were busy, Mopol raided the crayfish pens.” Zhaki chortled with delight. “I saved you one, by the way. They're delisssh.”

Zhaki wore a miniharness fastened to his flank, bearing a single manipulator arm that folded back during swimming.
At a neural signal, the mechanical hand went to his seamed pouch and drew out a wriggling creature, proffering it to Kaa.

What should I do?
Kaa stared at the squirmy thing. Would accepting it only encourage Zhaki's lapse of discipline? Or would rejection make Kaa look stodgy and unreasonable?

“I'll wait and see if it makes you sick,” he told the youth. They weren't supposed to experiment on native fauna with their own bodies. Unlike Earth, most planetary ecosystems were mixtures of species from all across the Five Galaxies, introduced by tenant races whose occupancy might last ten million years. So far, many of the local fishoids turned out to be wholesome and tasty, but the very next prey beast might have its revenge by poisoning you.

“Where is Mopol now?”

“Back doing what we were told,” Zhaki said. “Watching how the red crabs interact with hoonsss. So far we've seen 'em pulling two sledge loads toward the port, filled with harvested ssseaweed. They came back with cargoes of wood. You know. ch-chopped tree trunks.”

Kaa nodded. “So they do trade, as we suspected. Hoons and qheuens, living together on a forbidden world. I wonder what it means?”

“Who knows? If they weren't mysterious, they wouldn't be eateesss. C-can I go back to Mopol now?”

Kaa had few illusions about what was going on between the two young spacers. It probably interfered in their work, but if he raised the issue, Zhaki would accuse him of being a prude, or worse, “jealous.”

If only I were a real leader
, Kaa thought.
The lieutenant should never have left me in charge.

“Yes, go back now,” he said. “But only to fetch Mopol and return to the shelter. It's getting late.”

Zhaki lifted his body high, perched on a thrashing tail.

With that, the young dolphin did a flip and dived back into the sea. Soon his dorsal fin was all Kaa saw, glinting as it sliced through choppy swell.

Kaa pondered the ambiguous insolence of Zhaki's last Trinary burst.

In human terms—by the cause-and-effect logic the patron race taught its dolphin clients—the ocean bulged and shifted in response to the gravitational pull of sun and moon. But there were more ancient ways of thinking, used by cetacean ancestors long before humans meddled in their genes. In those days, there had never been any question that tides were the most powerful of forces. In the old, primal religion,
tides
controlled the
moon
, not vice versa.

In other words, Zhaki's Trinary statement was sassy, verging on insubordination.

Tsh't made a mistake
, Kaa mused bitterly, as he swam toward the shelter.
We should never have been left here by ourselves.

Along the way, he experienced the chief threat to his mission. Not hoonish spears or qheuen claws, or even alien battlecruisers, but Jijo itself.

One could fall in love with this place.

The ocean's flavor called to him, as did the velvety texture of the water. It beckoned in the way fishlike creatures paid him respect by fleeing, but not too quick to catch, if he cared to.

Most seductive of all, at night throbbing
echoes
penetrated their outpost walls—distant rhythms, almost too low to hear. Eerie, yet reminiscent of the whale songs of home.

Unlike Oakka, the green-green world—or terrible Kithrup—this planet appeared to have a
reverent
sea. One where a dolphin might swim at peace.

And possibly forget.

Brookida was waiting when Kaa cycled through the tiny airlock, barely large enough for one dolphin at a time to pass into the shelter—an inflated bubble, half-filled with water and anchored to the ocean floor. Against one wall, a lab had been set up for the metallurgist geologist, an elderly
dolphin whose frailty had grown as
Streaker
fled ever farther from home.

Brookida's samples had been taken when the
Hikahi
followed a hoonish sailboat beyond the continental shelf, to a plunging abyssal trench, where the ship had proceeded to dump its cargo overboard! As casks, barrels, and chests fell into the murk, a few were snagged by the submarine's gaping maw, then left here for analysis as the
Hikahi
returned to base.

Brookida had already found what he called “anomalies,” but something else now had the aged scientist excited.

“We got a message while you were out. Tsh't picked up something amazing on her way to
Streaker!
”

Kaa nodded. “I was here when she reported, remember? They found an ancient cache, left by illegal settlers when—”

“That's nothing.” The old dolphin was more animated than Kaa had seen Brookida in a long time.

“Tsh't called again later to say they rescued a bunch of
kids
who were about to drown.”

Kaa blinked.

“Kids? You don't mean—”

“Not human or fin. But wait till you hear who they are … and how they came to be d-down there, under the sea.”

Alvin

A
FEW SCANT DURAS BEFORE IMPACT, PART OF THE wall of debris ahead of us began to move. A craggy slab, consisting of pitted starship hulls, magically slipped aside, offering the phuvnthu craft a long, narrow cavity.

Into it we plummeted, jagged walls looming near the glass, passing in a blur, cutting off the searchlight beam and leaving us in shadows. The motors picked up their frantic backward roar … then fell away to silence.

A series of metallic clangs jarred the hull. Moments later the door to our chamber opened. A clawed arm motioned us outside.

Several phuvnthus waited—insectoid-looking creatures with long, metal-cased torsos and huge, glassy-black eyes. Our mysterious saviors, benefactors, captors.

My friends tried to help me, but I begged them off.

“Come on, guys. It's hard enough managing these crutches without you all crowding around. Go on. I'll be right behind.”

At the intersection leading back to my old cell, I moved
to turn left but our six-legged guides motioned right instead. “I need my stuff,” I told the nearest phuvnthu-thing. But it gestured
no
with a wave of machinelike claws, barring my path.

Damn, I thought, recalling the notebook and backpack I had left behind. I figured I'd be coming back.

A twisty, confused journey took us through all sorts of hatches and down long corridors of metal plating. Ur-ronn commented that some of the weld joins looked “hasty.” I admired the way she held on to her professionalism when faced with awesome technology.

I can't say exactly when we left the sea dragon and entered the larger base/camp/city/hive, but there came a time when the big phuvnthus seemed more relaxed in their clanking movements. I even caught a snatch or two of that queer, ratcheting sound that I once took for speech. But there wasn't time for listening closely. Just moving forward meant battling waves of pain, taking one step at a time.

At last we spilled into a corridor that had a feel of permanence, with pale, off-white walls and soft lighting that seemed to pour from the whole ceiling. The peculiar passage curved gently
upward
in both directions, till it climbed out of sight a quarter of an arrowflight to either side. It seemed we were in a huge
circle
, though what use such a strange hallway might serve, I could not then imagine.

Even more surprising was the reception committee! At once we faced a pair of creatures who could not look more different from the phuvnthus—except for the quality of having six limbs. They stood upright on their hind pair, dressed in tunics of silvery cloth, spreading four scaly webbed hands in a gesture I hopefully took to mean welcome. They were small, rising just above my upper knees, or the level of Pincer's red chitin shell. A frothy crown of moist, curly fibers topped their bulb-eyed heads. Squeaking rapidly, they motioned for us to follow, while the big phuvnthus retreated with evident eagerness.

We four Wuphonites consulted with a shared glance … then a rocking, qheuen-style shrug. We turned to troop silently behind our new guides. I could sense Huphu
purring on my shoulder, staring at the little beings, and I vowed to drop my crutches and grab the noor, if she tried to jump one of our hosts. I doubted they were as helpless as they looked.

All the doorways lining the hall were closed. Next to each portal, something like a
paper strip
was pasted to the wall, always at the same height. One of Huck's eyestalks gestured toward the makeshift coverings, then winked at me in Morse semaphore.

SECRETS UNDERNEATH!

I grokked her meaning. So our hosts did not want us to read their door signs. That implied they used one of the alphabets known to the Six. I felt the same curiosity that emanated from Huck. At the same time, though, I readied myself to stop her, if she made a move to tear off one of the coverings. There
are
times for impulsiveness. This was not one of them.

A door hatch slid open with a soft hiss and our little guides motioned for us to enter.

Curtains
divided a large chamber into parallel cubicles. I also glimpsed a dizzying array of shiny machines, but did not note much about them, because of what then appeared, right in front of us.

We all stopped in our tracks, facing a quartet of familiar-looking entities—an urs, a hoon, a red qheuen, and a young g'Kek!

Images of ourselves
, I realized, though clearly not reflections in a mirror. For one thing, we could see right
through
the likenesses. And as we stared, each figure made beckoning motions toward a different curtained nook.

After the initial shock, I noticed the images weren't perfect portraits. The urrish version had a well groomed pelt, and my hoonish counterpart stood erect, without a back brace. Was the difference meaningful? The hoonish caricature smiled at me in the old-fashioned way, with a fluttering throat sac, but no added grimace of mouth and lips that Jijoan hoons had added since humans came.