Startide Rising (30 page)

Akki brought his head up quickly. Was that a sound? It hadn’t come from the comm line, but from the dark waters around him.

“Akki,” Gillian began. “I’m going to ask you questions phrased to take three-level answers. Please spare artistry for brevity in answering.”

Gladly, if I can, Akki thought. He had often wondered why it was so hard to hold direct conversations in Trinary without beating around the bush in poetic allusion. It was his native tongue as much as Anglic was, and still he was frustrated by its resistance to shortcuts.

“Akki, does Creideiki ignore the Fish-of-Dreaming, does he chase them, or does he feed them?”

Gillian was asking if Creideiki was still functioning as a tool user, was he lost to injury, drifting in an unconscious dream-hunt or, worse, was he dead. Somehow, Gillian had immediately gone right to the heart of the matter. Akki was able to answer with blessed brevity.

* Chasing squid—

In deepest water *

There was that sound again! A rapid clicking, coming from not far away. Curse the necessity to keep his neural socket linked to the static of this line! The sounds were close enough to leave little doubt. Someone was hunting for him out here.

“All right, Akki. Next question. Does Hikahi calm all with her Keneenk rhythms, does she echo herd obedience, or does she sing an absent silence?”

Dolphin sonar is a highly directional thing. He felt the edge of a lobe of a sonic beam pass just above him, without hitting him broadside. Akki got down as close to the ocean floor as he could, and made an effort to direct his own nervous clickings into the soft sand. He wanted to reach out with one of his harness arms and grab a rock or something for stability, but was afraid the tiny whirring of the motors would be heard.

* Absent silence—

Fades the memory—

* Of Hikahi

* Absent silence—

From Tsh’t

* And Suessi *

He wished he, too, were absent this place and back in his quiet stateroom aboard Streaker.

“Okay, is their silence that of netted capture? Is it of orca fearful waiting? Or is it the silence of fishes feeding?”

Akki was about to answer when, like one whose eyes were suddenly struck by a bright light, he was awash in a loud beam of pulsed sound, highly directional and from his left and above. There was no question a dolphin up there was instantly aware of him.

* Takkata-Jim—

Bites the cables

* My own job—

Is mine no longer

* His fen relay—

His lying songs *

Akki was so agitated that some of that actually came out as sound rather than impulses sent to the monofilament. There was no use trying any longer for secrecy. He made ready to jettison the line and turned his melon toward the intruder. He fired off a sonar pulse strong enough, he hoped, to momentarily stun him.

The echoes of his burst returned giving him a vivid image. There was a thrashing sound as a very large dolphin swung aside, out of his beam.

K’tha-Jon! Akki recognized the echo at once.

“Akki? What was that? Are you in fighting patterns? Break off if you have to. I’m coming home fast as I…”

Duty absolved, Akki popped the neural link free and rolled to one side.

He acted none too soon. A blue-green laser bolt sizzled through the spot where he had been seconds before.

So, that’s the way of it, he thought as he dove into the canyon next to the ocean ridge. The hammerhead is out to get me, and no politeness about it.

He did a quick roll to his right and speared downward toward the shadows.

Dolphins were known for a reluctance to kill anything that breathed air, but they were not a limited race. Even before uplift, humans had witnessed cases of fin murdering fin. In enabling cetaceans to be starfarers, men also made them more efficient when they chose to kill.

A line-bright laser beam hissed a bare meter ahead of him. Akki clenched his jaw and dove through the streak of scalding bubbles in its wake. Another narrow, searing bolt sizzled between his pectoral fins. He whirled and dove for the long sonic shadow of a jagged outcrop of rock.

K’tha-Jon’s laser rifle could kill at long range, while the welder/torch on Akki’s harness was, like all sidearm-tools, of use only up close. Obviously, his only chances were in flight or in trickery.

It was very dark down here. All of the red colors were gone. Only blue and green could pass through from the day to illuminate a shadow-filled landscape. Akki took advantage of the rugged terrain and slipped between the sharp walls of a narrow rock cleft. There he stopped to wait and listen.

The echoes he picked up through passive listening only told him that K’tha-Jon was out there, somewhere, searching. Akki hoped his own rapid breathing wasn’t as loud as it sounded to him.

He sent a neural query to his harness. The microcomputer in its frame told him he had less than half an hour’s air left in his breather. That certainly put a limit on how long he could wait.

Akki’s jaws ground together. He wanted K’tha-Jon’s long pectorals between his teeth, much as he knew he was no match for the big Stenos in size or strength.

Akki had no way of knowing whether K’tha-Jon was out here on his own or following orders from Takkata-Jim. But if there were some cabal of Stenos at work, he wouldn’t put it past them to kill the helpless Creideiki if that were the way to secure their plan. Unthinkable as it was, they could even get it into their heads to harm Gillian, if she weren’t careful how she made her return to the ship. The mere thought of any fin participating in such crimes made Akki feel sick.

I’ve got to get back and help Makanee defend Creideiki until Gillian arrives! That takes priority over everything else.

He slipped out of the cleft and swam a series of floorhugging zigs and zags toward a small canyon to the southeast, in a direction away from Streaker, and away from both Toshio’s island and the Thennanin wreck. It was the direction most likely to be unwatched by K’tha-Jon.

He could hear the giant casting about for him. The powerful beams of sound were missing for now. There was a good chance he would get a head start before he was detected.

Still, it wasn’t quite as tasty as the satisfaction he would have felt in surprising K’tha-Jon with a snout-ramming in his genitals!

Gillian turned from the comm set to see anxiety on Toshio’s face. It made him seem very young. Gone was the role of a rough, tough, worldly mel. Toshio was an adolescent midshipman who had just found out his captain was crippled. And now his best friend might well be fighting for his life. He looked at her, hoping for reassurance that everything would be all right.

Gillian took the youth’s hand and pulled him into a hug. She held him, against his protests, until, at last, the tension went out of his shoulders and he buried his face in her shoulder, holding her tightly.

When he finally pulled away Toshio didn’t look at her, but turned away and wiped at one eye with the heel of his hand.

“I’m going to want to take Keepiru with me,” Gillian said to him. “Do you think you and Sah’ot and Dennie can spare him?”

Toshio nodded. His voice was thick, but he soon had it under control. “Yes, sir. Sah’ot may be a bit of a problem when I start giving him some of Keepiru’s duties. But I’ve been watching the way you handle him. I think I can manage.”

“That’s good. See if you can keep him off Dennie’s back, too. You’re going to be military commander now. I’m sure you’ll manage fine.”

Gillian turned to her small poolside campsite to gather her gear. Toshio went to the waters edge and switched on the hydrophone amplifier that would signal the two dolphins that they were wanted. Sah’ot and Keepiru had left an hour ago, to await the evening foray of the aborigines.

“I’ll go back with you if you want, Gillian.”

She shook her head as she gathered her notes and tools together. “No, Toshio. Dennie’s work with the Kiqui is damned important. You’re the one who’s got to keep her from burning down the forest with a spent match while she’s preoccupied. Besides, I need you to maintain a pretense that I haven’t left. Do you think you can do that for me?” Gillian zipped shut her watertight satchel and started slipping out of her shirt and shorts. Toshio turned away, at first, and started to blush.

Then he noticed that Gillian didn’t seem to care that he look. I might never see her again, he thought. I wonder if she knows what she’s doing for me?

“Yes, sir,” he said. Toshio’s mouth felt very dry. “I’ll act just as harassed and impatient as ever with Dr. Dart. And if Takkata-Jim asks for you … I’ll tell him you’re off somewhere, er, sulking.”

Gillian was holding her drysuit in front of her, preparing to step into it. She looked up at him, surprised by the wryness of his remark. Then she laughed.

In two long-legged strides she was over to him, seizing him into another hug. Without a thought Toshio put his arms around the smooth skin of her waist.

“You’re a good man, Tosh,” she said as she kissed him on the cheek. “And, you know, you’ve grown quite a bit taller than me? You lie to Takkata-Jim for me and I promise we’ll make a proper mutineer of you in no time at all.”

Toshio nodded and closed his eyes. “Yes, ma’am,” he said as he held her tight.

H
is skin itched. It had always itched, since that dim time when he rode alongside his mother in her slipstream—when he had first learned about touch from nursing and the gentle nuzzles she gave him to remind him to rise for air.

Soon he had learned that there were other kinds of touching. There were walls and plants and the sides of all the buildings of the settlement at Catalina-under; there was the stroking, butting, and yes! biting play of his peers; there was the soft, oh, so deliciously varied touch of the mels and fems—the humans—who swam about like pinnipeds, like sea lions, laughing and playing catch with him underwater and above.

There was the feel of water. All the different kinds of feel there were to water.

The splash and crash of falling into it! The smooth laminar flow of it as you speared along faster than anyone ever could have gone before! The gentle lapping of it, just below your blowmouth as you rested, whispering a lullaby to yourself.

O, how he itched!

Long ago he had learned to rub against things, and he discovered what that could do to him. Ever since then, he had masturbated whenever he felt like it, just like any other healthy fin would …

Creideiki wanted to scratch himself. He wanted to masturbate.

Only there was no wall nearby to rub against. He seemed unable to move, or even to open his eyes to see what surrounded him.

He was floating in midair, his weight held up by nothing … by a familiar magic … “anti-gravity.” The word—like his memories of floating this way many times before—for some reason felt alien, almost meaningless.

He wondered at his lassitude. Why not open his eyes and see? Why not click out a soundbeam and hear the shape and texture of this place?

At intervals he felt a spray of moistness that kept his skin wet. It seemed to come from all directions.

He considered, and came to the conclusion that something must be very wrong with him. He must be sick.

An involuntary sigh made him realize he was still capable of some sound. He searched for the right mechanisms, experimented, then managed to repeat the sound.

They must be working to fix me, he thought. I must have been hurt. Though I don’t feel any pain, I feel a vacancy. Something has been taken from me. A ball? A tool? A skill? Anyway, the people are probably trying to put it back.

I trust people, he thought happily. And the apex of his mouth curled into a slight smile.

* !!!! *

The apex of his mouth did what?

Oh. Yes. Smiling. That new thing.

New thing? I’ve done it all my life!

Why?

It’s expressive! It adds subtlety to my features! It …

It is redundant.

Creideiki let out a weak, warbling cry of confusion.

* In the brightness

Of the sunshine—

* There are answers

In schools, like fishes *

He remembered a little, now. He had been dreaming. Something terrible had happened, and he had been plunged into a nightmare of bewilderment. Shapes had darted toward and away from him, and he had felt ancient songs take new, eerie forms.

He realized he must still be dreaming, with both hemispheres at the same time. That explained why he couldn’t move. He tried to coax himself awake with a song.

* Levels there are—

Known only to sperm whales

* Physeter, who hunts

In chasms of dreaming

* To battle the squid

Whose beaks are sea-mounts

* And whose great arms

Encompass oceans …

It was not a calming rhyme. It had overtones of darkness that made him want to fly away in horror. Creideiki tried to halt it, fearing what the chant might call up. But he could not stop crafting the sound-glyphs.

* Go down to levels—

In the darkness

* Where your “cycloid”

Never reaches

* Where all music

Finally settles

* And it gathers

Stacked in layers

* Howling songs of

Ancient storms,

* And hurricanes

That never died …

A presence grew alongside Creideiki. A great, broad figure could be felt nearby, forming out of the fabric of his song. Creideiki sensed its slow sonar pulses, filling the small chamber he lay within … a small chamber that couldn’t possibly hold the behemoth taking shape beside him.

Nukapai?

* Sounds of earthquakes—

Stored for epochs

* Sounds of molten

Primeval rocks …

The sound creature solidified with each passing verse. There was a muscular power in the presence forming beside him. The thing’s slow, huge fluke strokes threatened to send him tumbling head over tail. When it blew, Its spume sounded like a storm breaking on a rocky shore.