Startide Rising (37 page)

There was no time for finesse. He shimmied up the root to a point within reach of the hole in the weeds.

Tom pinched the tube below the other end, but bitter, oily water streamed from the tube as he straightened the coil. He averted his face, but swallowed a little anyway. It tasted foul.

The mask’s demon-lock would purge the fluid, if too much didn’t flood in.

Tom reached out and pushed the tube above the surface of the narrow pool, where the battle flashes sent shafts of light into the depths. He sucked hard at the hose, spitting out slime and a sharp metallic tang, desperately trying to clear it.

One of the searing blasts flashed, scalding his fingers below the waterline. He fought the instinct to shout or pull away from the pain. He felt consciousness begin to slip, and with it the will to hold his left hand into the searing heat.

He drew hard and at last was rewarded with a thin stream of dank air. Tom sucked frantically at the line. The hot, steamy air tasted of smoke, but it nourished. He exhaled into the mask, trusting it to hold the hard-won oxygen.

The aching in his lungs subsided and the agony of his hand took the fore. Just as he thought he couldn’t hold it out there any more, the burning heat from above subsided, fading to a dull flickering glow in the sky.

A few meters away was another gap in the weeds, where he might be able to prop the tube between two thick roots without exposing himself. Tom took a few more breaths, then pinched the tube shut. But before he could prepare any further, a sharp blue light suddenly filled the water, brighter than ever, casting stark, blinding shadows everywhere. There was a tremendous detonation, then the sea began tossing him about like a rag doll.

Something huge had struck the ocean and set it bucking. His anchor root came free of its mooring, and he fell into a maelstrom of flailing vines.

The swell tore the backpack from him. He grabbed after it and caught the end of one strap, but something struck him in the back of the head, knocking him dizzy. The pack was snatched away into the noise and flashing shadows.

Tom curled into a ball, his forearms holding the rim of his mask against the whipping vines.

His first thought, on coming around, was a vague surprise that he was still breathing.

He thought the battle-storm was still going on, until he realized that the shaking he felt was his own body. The roar in his ears, was only a roar in his ears.

His throbbing left arm was draped over a thick horizontal stump. Scummy green water came up to his chin, lapping against the finned facemask. His lungs ached and the air was stale.

He brought up his trembling right hand, and pulled the mask down to hang around his neck. The filters had kept out the ozone stench, but he inhaled deeply, gratefully.

At the last moment he must have chosen immolation over suffocation and struck out for the surface. Fortunately, the battle ended just before he arrived.

Tom resisted the temptation to rub his itching eyes; the slime on his hands would do them no good. Tears welled, at a biofeedback command, flushing most of the binding mucus away.

He looked up when he could see again.

To the north the volcano fumed on as ever. The cloud cover had parted somewhat, revealing numerous twisted banners of multi-colored smoke. All around Tom, small crawling things were climbing out from the singed weeds, resuming their normal business of eating or being eaten. There were no longer battleships in the sky, blazing away at each other with beams of nova heat.

For the first time, Tom was glad of the monotonous topography of the carpet of vines. He hardly had to rise in the water to see several columns of smoke pouring from slowly settling wrecks.

As he watched, one faraway metal derelict exploded. The sound arrived seconds later in a series of muted coughs and pops, punctuated unsynchronously by bright flashes. The dim shape sank lower. Tom averted his eyes from the final detonation. When he looked back he could detect nothing but clouds of steam and a faint hissing sound that fell away into silence.

Elsewhere lay other floating fragments. Tom turned a slow circle, somewhat in awe of the destruction. There was more than enough wreckage for a mid-sized skirmish.

He laughed at the irony, although it made his abused lungs hurt. The Galactics had all come to investigate a counterfeit mayday signal, and they had brought their death feuds along to what should have been a mission of mercy. Now they were dead while he still lived. This didn’t feel like the random capriciousness of Ifni. It was too like the mysterious, wry work of God himself.

Does this mean I’m all alone again? he wondered. That would be rich. So much fireworks, and one humble human the only survivor?

Not for long, perhaps. The battle had caused him to lose almost all of the supplies he had struggled so hard to recover. Tom frowned suddenly. The message bombs! He clutched at his waist, and the world seemed to drop away. Only one of the globes remained! The others must have popped out in the struggle below the clinging vines.

When his right hand stopped shaking, he carefully reached under his waistband and drew out the psi-bomb, his very last link with Streaker … with Gillian.

It was the verifier … the one that he was to set off if he thought the Trojan Seahorse should fly. Now he would have to decide whether to set off this one, or none at all. Yes or No were all he could say.

I only wish I knew whose ships those were that fired on the Tandu.

Tucking the bomb away, he resumed his slow turn. One wreck on the northwest horizon looked like a partially crushed eggshell. Smoke still rose from it, but the burning seemed to have stopped. There were no explosions, and it seemed not to be sinking any lower.

All right, Tom thought. That will do as a goal. It looks intact enough to have possibilities. It may have salvageable gear and food. Certainly it’s shelter, if it’s not too radioactive.

It seemed only five kilometers away, or so, though looks could be deceiving. A destination would give him something to do, at least. He needed more information. The wreck might tell him what he needed to know.

He pondered whether to try to go “by land,” trusting his weary legs to negotiate the weedscape, or to attempt the journey underwater, swimming from airhole to airhole, daring the unknown creatures off the deep.

He suddenly heard a warbling whine behind him, turned, and saw a small spacecraft, about a kilometer away, heading slowly northward, wavering bare meters above the ocean. Its shimmering shields flickered. Its drives heaved and faltered.

Tom pulled up his mask and prepared to dive, but the tiny ship wasn’t coming his way. It was passing to the west of him, sparks shooting from its stubby stasis flanges. Ugly black streaks stained its hull, and one patch had blistered and boiled away.

Tom caught his breath as it passed. He had never seen a model like this before. But he could think of several races whose style would be compatible with the design.

The scout dipped as its dying drives coughed. The high whine of the gravity generator began to fall.

The boat’s crew obviously knew it was done for. It banked to change course for the island. Tom held his breath, unable to help sympathizing with the desperate alien pilot. The boat sputtered along just above the weeds, then passed out of sight behind the mountain’s shoulder.

The faint “crump” of its landing carried over the whistling of the tradewinds.

Tom waited. After a few seconds the boat’s stasis field released with a loud concussion. Glowing debris flew out over the sea. The fragments quenched in water or burned slowly into the weeds.

He doubted anyone could have gotten away in time.

Tom changed goals. His long-range destination was still the eggshell ship floating a few miles away. But first he wanted to sift through the wreckage of that scout boat. Maybe there would be evidence there to make his decision easier. Maybe there would be food.

He tried to crawl up onto the weeds, but found it too difficult. He was still shaking.

All right, then. We’ll go under the sea. It’s probably all moot anyway.

I might as well enjoy the scenery.

T
he son of a blood-gorged lamprey just wouldn’t let go! Akki was exhausted. The metallic tang of the water mixed with the taste of bile from his fore-stomach as he swam hard to the southeast. He wanted desperately to rest, but he knew he couldn’t afford to let his pursuer cut away at his lead.

Now and then he caught sight of K’tha-Jon, about two kilometers behind him and closing the gap. The giant, darkly countershaded dolphin seemed tireless. His breath condensed in high vertical spouts, like small rockets of fog, as he plowed ahead through the water.

Akki’s breath was ragged, and he felt weak with hunger. He cursed in Anglic and found it unsatisfying. Playing over a resonating, obscene phrase in Primal Dolphin helped a little.

He should have been able to outdistance K’tha-Jon, at least over a short stretch. But something in the water was affecting the hydrodynamic properties of his skin. Some substance was causing an allergic reaction. His normally smooth and pliant hide was scratchy and bumpy. He felt like he was plowing through syrup instead of water. Akki wondered why no one else had reported this. Did it only affect dolphins from Calafia?

It was one more unfairness in a series that stretched back to the moment he had left the ship.

Escaping K’tha-Jon hadn’t been as easy as he expected. Heading southeast, he should have been able to veer right or left to reach help, either Hikahi and the crew at the Thennanin wreck, or at Toshio’s island. But every time he tried to change course, K’tha-Jon moved to cut the corner. Akki couldn’t afford to lose any more of his lead.

A wave of focused sonar swept over him from behind. He wanted to curl up into a ball every time it happened. It wasn’t natural for a dolphin to flee another for so long. In the deep past a youngster who angered an older male—by trying to copulate with a female in the old bull’s harem, for instance might get thumped or raked. But only rarely was a grudge held. Akki had to stifle an urge to stop and try to reason with K’tha-Jon.

What good would that do? The giant was obviously mad.

His speed advantage was lost to this mysterious skin itch. Diving to get around K’tha-Jon was also out of the question. The Stenos bredanensis were pelagic dolphins. K’tha-Jon could probably outdive anyone in the Streaker’s crew.

When next he glanced back, K’tha-Jon had closed to within about a kilometer. Akki warbled a sigh and redoubled his efforts.

A line of green-topped mounds lay near the horizon, perhaps four or five kilometers away. He had to hold on long enough to reach them!

M
oki drove the sled at top speed to the south, blasting its sonar ahead like a bugle.

“…calling Haoke, calling Moki. This is Heurkah-Pete. Come in. Verify p-please!”

Moki tossed his head in irritation. The ship was trying to reach him again. Moki clicked the sled’s transmitter on and tried to talk clearly.

“Yesss! What-t-t you want-t!”

There was a pause, then, “Moki, let me talk to Haoke.”

Moki barely concealed a laugh. “Haoke … dead! K-k-killed by intruder! I’m ch-chasing now. T-t-tell Takkata-Jim I’ll get-t ‘em!”

Moki’s Anglic was almost indecipherable, yet he didn’t dare use Trinary. He might slip into Primal in public, and he wasn’t ready for that yet.

There was a long silence on the sonar-speak line. Moki hoped that now they’d leave him alone.

When he and Haoke had found the Baskin woman’s empty sled, drifting slowly westward at low power, something had finally snapped within him. He had then entered a confused but exalted state, a blur of action, like a violent dream.

Perhaps they were ambushed, or perhaps he merely imagined it. But when it was over Haoke was dead and he, Moki, had no regrets.

After that his sonar had picked up an object heading south. Another sled. Without another thought he had given chase.

The sonar-speak crackled. “Heurkah again, Moki. You’re getting out of saser range, and we still can’t use radiosss. You are now given two ordersss. First—relay a sonar-speak message to K’tha-Jon, ordering him back-k! His mission is cancelled!

“Number two—after that, turn around yoursself! That’sss a direct order!”

The lights and dots meant little to Moki anymore. What mattered were the patterns of sound that the sled’s sensors sent him. The expanded hearing sense gave him a god-like feeling, as if he were one of the Great Dreamers himself. He imagined himself a huge catodon, a sperm whale, lord of the deep hunting prey that fled at any hint of his approach.

Not far to the south was the muffled sound of a sled, the one he had been chasing for some time. He could tell that he was catching up to it.

Much farther away, and to the left, were two tiny rhythmic signals, sounds of rapid cetacean swimming. That had to be K’tha-Jon and the upstart Calafian.

Moki would dearly love to steal K’tha-Jon’s prey from him, but that could wait. The first-enemy was dead ahead.

“Moki, did you copy me? Answer! You have your ordersss! You must…”

Moki clapped his jaws in disgust. He shut off the sonarspeak in the middle of Heurkah-pete’s complaint. It was getting hard to understand the stuck-up little petty officer anyway. He had never been much of a Stenos, always studying Keneenk with the Tursiops, and trying to “better himself.”

Moki decided he would look the fellow up after he had finished taking care of his enemies outside the ship.

K
eepiru knew he was being followed. He had expected that someone might be sent after him to keep him from reaching Hikahi.

But his pursuer was some sort of idiot. He could tell from the distant whine of the engines that the fin’s sled was being driven well beyond its rated speed. What did the fellow hope to accomplish? Keepiru had a long enough head start to make it within sonar-speak range of the Thennanin wreck before his pursuer caught up. He only had to push his sled’s throttle slightly into the red.