Startide Rising (25 page)

The concept of endless parallel universes was one known by dolphins since long before humans learned fire. It was integral to the Whale Dream. The great cetaceans moaned complacently of a world that was endlessly mutable. In becoming tool users, amicus dolphins lost this grand indifference. Now they understood the whales’ philosophy little better than did men.

A tame version of the probability distorter was one of the dozen ways the Galactics knew to cheat the speed of light, but cautious species avoided it. Ships disappeared using probability drives.

Creideiki imagined coming out of FTL to find a convention of “Streakers”—all from different universes, all captained by slightly altered versions of himself. The whales might be able to be philosophically complacent about a situation like that. He wasn’t so sure of himself.

Besides, the whales, for all their philosophical genius, were imbeciles on levels dealing with spaceships and machines. They wouldn’t recognize a fleet of ships any better than a dog knew its reflection in the water.

Less than two months ago, Creideiki had faced a derelict fleet of ships the size of moons, as old as middle-aged stars. He had lost a dozen good fen there, and had been fleeing fleets of ships ever since.

There were times when he wished he could be animal blind to some things, as were the whales. Or as philosophical.

Creideiki swam up to a ridge overlooking the ship. Bright heliarc lamps cast long shadows in the clear euphotic water. The crews below were finished installing the booty Suessi had found at the Thennanin wreck. There remained only clearing the landing legs for movement.

Hikahi had left just hours ago, with a picked crew and the ship’s skiff: Creideiki wished he could have spared more to go help Suessi, but Streaker was already well below minimum complement.

He still saw no alternative to Thomas Orley’s plan. Metz and Takkata-Jim had been unable to come up with anything short of outright surrender to the winner of the battle overhead, and that was one thing Creideiki could never permit. Not while there was any chance at all.

Passive sensors showed the fight in space peaking in fury. Within days it might climax, and the last opportunity for an escape in confusion and disguise would be upon them.

I hope Tom arrived safely, and his experiment is successful.

The water echoed with the low grumbling of engines being tested. Creideiki had calculated the acceptable noise levels himself. There were so many forms of leakage—neutrinos from the power plant, gravitonics from the stasis screen, psi from everyone aboard. Sound was the least of his worries.

As he swam, Creideiki heard something above him. He turned his attention surfaceward.

A solitary neo-fin drifted near the detector buoys, working on them with harness manipulators. Creideiki moved closer.

* Is there a problem—

Here to bother

* Duty’s patterns? *

He recognized the giant Stenos, K’tha-Jon. The bosun started. His eyes widened, and momentarily Creideiki could see the whites around the flat, boat-like pupils.

K’tha-Jon recovered quickly. His mouth opened in a grin.

* Noise buzz bothered—

Neutrino listener

* She could not hear—

The battle raging

* Now she tells me—

Static has fled

* I’ll to my duty,—

Now be leaving

This was serious business. It was vital that Streaker’s bridge know what was going on in the sky and be able to hear news of Thomas Orley’s mission.

Takkata-Jim should have detailed someone else to do the job. The buoys were the responsibility of the bridge crew. Still, with Hikahi and Tsh’t gone, and most of the elite bridge crew with them, perhaps K’tha-Jon was the only petty officer who could be spared.

* Good as jumping—

Big wave rider

* Now hurry back—

To those who await you *

K’tha-Jon nodded. His harness arms folded back. Without another word, he blew a small cloud of bubbles and dove toward the bright opening of Streaker’s lock.

Creideiki watched the giant go.

Superficially, at least, K’tha-Jon appeared to have reacted more resiliently than many of the other fen to Streaker’s predicament. Indeed, he had seemed even to relish the fighting retreat from Morgran, and manned his gun battery with fierce enthusiasm. He was an efficient non-com.

Then why do my hackles rise whenever I’m near him? Is he another of Metz’s sports?

I must insist Dr. Metz stop stalling, and show me his records! If necessary, I’ll override the man’s door-locks—protocols be damned!

K’tha-Jon had become Lieutenant Takkata-Jim’s constant companion. Together with Metz, the three were the chief opponents to Tom Orley’s plan. There was still bad bile over it. Takkata-Jim had become more taciturn than ever.

The vice-captain was becoming a real problem. Creideiki felt compassion for the lieutenant. It was not his fault this test cruise had become a crucible. But pity would not prevent Creideiki from promoting Hikahi over his head as soon as the crew was reunited.

Takkata-Jim was likely aware of what was coming, and of the report the captain had to write on each of his officers for the Uplift Center. Takkata-Jim’s right to have special, bonus offspring might be in jeopardy.

Creideiki could imagine how the vice-captain felt. There were times when even he felt oppressed by the towering invasiveness of uplift, when he almost wanted to squawk in Primal, “Who gave you the right?” And the sweet hypnosis of the Whale Dream would call to him to return to the embrace of the Old Gods.

The moment always passed, and he recalled that there was nothing in the universe he wanted more than to command a starship, to collect tapes of the songs of space, and to explore the currents between the stars.

A school of native fish swam past. They looked a little like mullet, kitsch mullet, in garish, metal-flake scales.

He felt a sudden urge to give chase, to call his hardworking crew out to join him in—a hunt!

He envisioned his stolid engineers and techs dropping their harnesses to join in the squealing pack, nimbly driving the poor creatures, catching them in midair as panic drove them leaping above the surface.

Even if a few fen got carried away and swallowed some metal, it would be worth it for morale.

* All the rains of Spring,

And then, one secret evening,

Riding waves, the Moon … *

It was a Haiku of regret.

There was no time for hunt-games, not while they themselves were quarry.

His harness chime announced that he had only thirty minutes’ air left. He shook himself. If his meditation had gone any deeper Nukapai might have come. The chimerical goddess would have teased him. Her gentle voice would have reminded him of Hikahi’s absence.

The observation buoys bobbed nearby, tethered by slender strands to the seabed below. He swam closer to the smooth red and white ovoid K’tha-Jon had worked on, and noticed that the access plate had been left ajar.

Creideiki’s head bobbed as he cast narrowly focused sound. The odd geometry of the buoy and guy wires was mildly disturbing.

His sonar-speak receiver buzzed. An amplified voice came to him over the neural patchline.

“Captain, thisss is Takkata-Jim. We’ve just finished testing the impellers and the stasis generators. They’re working up to your new specs. Also, Suessi called to say that the … the Trojan Seahorse is coming along. Hikahi has arrived there and sends greetingsss.”

“Good.” Creideiki sent the words directly along the neural link. “Has there been anything from Orley?”

“No, sir. And it’s getting late. Are you sure you want to go with this plan of his? What if he can’t get a psi-bomb message back to us?”

“We have already discussed the contingencies.”

“And we’re still going to move the ship? I do think that we ought to talk it over one more time.”

Creideiki felt a wave of irritation. “We’ll not discussss policy over an open channel, Pod-second. And it’s already decided. I’ll be back shortly. Meanwhile, search for loose ends to bite off: We must be ready when Tom calls!”

“Aye, sir.“ Takkata-Jim didn’t sound at all apologetic as he switched off.

Creideiki had lost count of the number of times he had been questioned about this plan. If they lacked faith because he was “only” a dolphin, they should have noted that the original idea was Thomas Orley’s! Besides, he, Creideiki, was captain. He was the one saddled with saving their lives and honor.

When he had served aboard the survey vessel James Cook, he had never witnessed its human master, Captain Alvarez, questioned this way.

He slashed his tail through the water until his temper cooled. He counted until the calming patterns of Keneenk settled over him.

Let it go, he decided. The majority of the crew did not question, and the rest obeyed their instructions. For an experimental crew, under immense pressure, that would have to do.

“Where there is mind, there is always solution,” Keneenk taught. All problems contained the elements of their answer.

He commanded his manipulator arms to reach out and grab the access panel to the buoy.

If the buoy was in good order, he would find a way to praise Takkata-Jim. There would be a key to reach the lieutenant, to pull him back into the ship’s community and break his vicious cycle of isolation. “Where there is mind…”

It would only take a few minutes to find out if it was in working order. Creideiki plugged an extension from his neural socket into the buoy’s computer. He commanded the machine to report its status.

A brilliant arc of electric discharge flashed in front of him. Creideiki screamed as the shock blew out the motors of his harness and seared the skin around his neural tap.

A penetrator bolt! Creideiki realized in stunned rigidity.

How …?

He felt it all in slow motion. The current fought with the protective diodes of his nerve amplifier. The main circuit breaker threw, but the insulation almost immediately buckled under backlash.

Paralyzed, Creideiki seemed to hear a voice in the pulsing, battling fields, a voice taunting him.

# Where there is mind—is mind,

is—also deception

# Deception—is, there is #

In a body-arching squeal of agony, Creideiki screamed one undisciplined cry in Primal, the first of his adult life. Then he rolled belly-up, to drift in a blackness deeper than night.

“
Oh my father was the keeper of the Eddystone light
,

He slept with a mermaid one fine night
.

From this union there came three:

A porpoise, a porgy and me
.

“
Oh, for the life on the rolling sea
.”

L
ike most species derived from wholly carnivorous forebears, the Tandu were difficult clients. They had cannibalistic tendencies, and attacks on individuals of their patron race, the Nght6, weren’t unheard of early in their uplift.

“The Tandu have remarkably low empathy for other sapient life forms. They are members of a pseudo-religious alignment whose tenets propose the eventual extermination of species judged ‘unworthy.’ While they observe the codes of the Galactic Institutes, the Tandu make no secret of their desire for a less crowded universe, or their eagerness for the day when all laws are swept aside by a ‘higher power.’

“According to followers of their ‘Inheritor’ alignment, this will happen when the Progenitors return to the Five Galaxies. The Tandu assume that they will be chosen, come that day, to hunt down the unworthy.

“While waiting for this millennium, the Tandu keep in practice by indulging in countless minor skirmishes and battles of honor. They join in any war of enforcement declared by the Galactic Institutes, whatever the cause, and are often cited for use of excess force. ‘Accidental extinction’ of at least three spacefaring species has been attributed to them.

“Although the race has little empathy for their patron level peers, the Tandu are masters of the art of uplift. In their pre-sentient form, on their fallow home world, they had already tamed several local species for use as hunting animals: the equivalent of tracking dogs on Earth. Since release from indenture, the Tandu have acquired and adapted two of the most powerful psychic adepts of the recent crop of clients. The Tandu are under long-term investigation for excessive genetic manipulation in making the two.

(See references: EPISIARCH-cl-82f49; ACCEPTOR-cl-82J 50) totally dependent instruments of their love of the hunt…”

Nice people, these Tandu, Gillian thought.

She put the flat reading plate down beside the tree where she sat. She had allotted herself an hour for reading this morning. It was almost over. She had covered another two hundred thousand words or so.

This entry on the Tandu had come over the cable from Streaker last night. Apparently the Niss machine was already accomplishing things with the mini-Library Tom had retrieved from the Thennanin wreck. This report read too clearly, and came to the point too directly to have come straight from the English translation software of Streaker’s own pathetic little micro-branch.

Of course, Gillian already knew some things about the Tandu. All Terragens agents were taught about these secretive, brutal enemies of Mankind.

This report only reinforced her feeling that there was something terribly wrong with a universe that had such monsters in it. Gillian had once spent a summer reading ancient space-romances from pre-Contact days. How open and friendly those old-time fictional universes had seemed! Even the rare “pessimistic” ones hadn’t come close to the closed, confined, dangerous reality.

Thinking about the Tandu put her in a melodramatic mind to carry around a dirk, and to exercise a woman’s ancient last prerogative should those murderous creatures ever capture her.

The thick, organic smell of humus overwhelmed the metallic tang that permeated everywhere near the water. The aroma was fresh after last night’s storm. Green fronds waved slowly under gentle buffeting from Kithrup’s incessant tradewinds.