In other words, the tytlal were true sooners, another wave of illegal settlers, but guarded by added layers of camouflage. So disguised, they might even escape whatever ruin lay in store for the relatives of Alvin, Huck, Urronn, and Pincer.
But that can’t be the whole story. Caution isn’t a paramount trait in Tymbrimi, or their clients. They wouldn’t go to so much trouble just to hide. Not unless it was part of something bigger.
Alvin had trouble gathering Mudfoot, who ignored the boy’s umble calls while wandering across the conference table, poking a whiskered nose into debris from the meeting. Finally, the tytlal stood up on his hind legs to peer at the frozen projection last sent by Kaa’s probe, the image of a privacy wasp. Mudfoot purred with curiosity.
“Niss,” Gillian said in a low voice.
With an audible pop, the pattern of whirling, shifting lines came into being nearby.
“Yes, Dr. Baskin? Have you changed your mind about hearing my tentative conjectures about Uriel’s intricate device of spinning disks?”
“Later,” she said, and gestured at Mudfoot. Gillian now realized the tytlal was peering past the blurry display of the privacy wasp, at something in the scene beyond.
“I’d like you to do some enhancements. Find out what that little devil is looking at.”
She did not add that she had detected something on her own. Something only a psi-sensitive would notice. For the second time, a faint presence could be felt — vague and ephemeral — floating ever so briefly above Mudfoot’s agitated cranial spines. She could not be sure, but whatever it was had a distinctly familiar flavor.
Call it Essence of Tymbrimi.
Kaa
THERE WAS NO MORE TO ACCOMPLISH IN THE CAVE. The probe appeared to be dead.
Even if it came back to life, any conversation with the natives would be handled from Streaker’s end. Meanwhile, it was past time to return to the habitat. Kaa had a team he had not seen in days.
A human couple might have paused before exiting the little grotto, looking around to imprint the site of their first lovemaking. But not dolphins. Neo-fins experienced nostalgia, just like their human patrons, but they could store sonar place images in ways humans had to mimic with recording devices. Streaking outside, joining Peepoe under bright sunshine, Kaa knew the two of them could revisit the cave anytime they chose, simply by bringing their arched foreheads together — re-creating its unique echoes in that ancient gulf of memory some called the Whale Dream.
It felt good to dash across the wide sea again, with Peepoe’s lithe body sharing every kick and leap in perfect unison. Motion equaled joy after any long confinement to machinery and closed spaces.
On the outward trip, their swim had been exquisite, but tempered by a taut, sexual tension. Now there were no secrets, no conflicting desires. Most of the return journey was spent in silent bliss — like a simple mated pair from presapient days, free of the gifts and burdens of uplift.
Finally, with the habitat drawing near, Kaa felt his mind slip reluctantly back into Anglic-using rhythms. Compelled to speak, he used the informal click-squeal dialect fins preferred while swimming.
“Well, here it comes,” he sonar-cast during the underwater phase of their next splash-and-surge cycle. “Back to home and family … such as they are.”
“Family?” she replied skeptically. “Brookida, perhaps. As for Mopol and Zhaki, wouldn’t you rather be related to a penguin?”
Is my opinion of them so obvious? After breaching for air, Kaa tried making light of things with a joke.
“Oh, I give those two some credit. With luck, they won’t have set the ocean on fire while we’re gone.”
Peepoe laughed, then added, “Do you think they’ll be jealous?”
Good question. Dolphins could not conceal interpersonal matters like humans, with their complex games of emotional deceit. By sonar-scanning each other’s viscera, one seldom had to guess who slept with whom.
Envy wouldn’t be a problem if I established clear authority from the start, both as an officer and as senior- ranking male.
Unfortunately, chain of command was a recent, human-imposed concept. Underneath, bull dolphins still felt ancient drives to jostle over status and breeding rights.
In fact, Peepoe’s choice might reinforce Kaa’s position atop the little local hierarchy. Though I shouldn’t need help. Not if I were a real leader.
“Jealous.” He pondered, thrusting harder with his flukes, till his beak pushed their shared shock wave, drawing her along in his wake. “Those two are highly sexed, so maybe they will be. But at least this way Zhaki and Mopol should stop bothering you with hopeless propositions.”
The young males had made relentless crude suggestions toward Peepoe from the first day she arrived, even brushing lewdly against her until Kaa had to rebuke them. While it was true that dolphins had a far different scale of tolerance for such behavior than humans — and Peepoe was capable of taking care of herself — in this case the pair were so persistent that Kaa had to dish out tail whacks to make them back off.
“Hopeless?” Peepoe asked in a teasing tone. “Now you’re making assumptions. How do you know I’m monogamous? Maybe a little harem would suit me fine.”
Kaa spread his jaws and aimed a nip at her nearest pectoral fin … slow enough for her to slip aside, laughing, before his teeth snapped.
“Good,” she commented. “Pacific Tursiops go in for that kinky stuff. But I prefer a nice and conservative Atlantean.
You’re from Miami-Under, no? Born into an old-fashioned line marriage, I bet.”
Kaa grunted. Even the sonar-based dialect of Anglic wasn’t easy while speeding at full throttle.
“One of the Heinlein family variants,” he conceded. “The style works better for dolphins than humans. Why? You looking for a line to marry into?”
“Mnn. I’d rather start a new one. Always hankered to be the founding matriarch of a nice little lineage — if the masters of uplift allow it.”
That was the eternal Big If. No neo-dolphin could legally breed without permission from the Terragens Uplift Board. Despite the unusual freedoms humans had given their clients — voting rights and the trappings of citizenship — Earthclan was still bound by ancient Galactic law.
Improve your clients, went the basic code of uplift.… Or lose them.
“You gotta be kidding,” he answered. “If any of us Streaker fins ever do make it home somehow from this crazed voyage, we’ll never face another sapiency exam from the masters. We may be sterilized on the spot, for all the trouble we caused. Or else we’re heroes, and it’ll be sperm-and-seed donations for the rest of our lives, fostering almost the whole next neo-fin generation.
“Either way, it won’t be cozy family life for any of us. Not ever.”
He hadn’t expected it to come out that way, with an edge of ironic bitterness. But Peepoe must have seen he was telling the truth. She continued keeping pace alongside, but her silence told Kaa how much it stung.
Great. Everything felt so fine … this wonderful water, the fish we snatched for breakfast, our lovemaking. Would it have hurt to let her stay in denial for a while, dreaming of happy endings? Holding on to the fantasy that we might yet go home, and lead normal lives?
“Kaa!” Brookida’s cry made the tiny habitat reverberate. “I’m glad you’re back. Did your mission go well? Wait till you hear what I discovered by correlating passive seismic echo scans from here to Streaker’s sssite. I fed the raw data into one of Charles Dart’s old programs to get tomography images of the subcrustal zone!”
All that, on a single breath. It was what humans would call a “mouthful.”
“That’s great, Brookida. But to answer your question, our mission didn’t go as well as we hoped. In fact, we have orders to pack everything up and break camp. Gillian and Tsh’t plan to move the ship.”
Brookida shook his mottled gray head. “Won’t that risk giving away Streaker’s position?”
“The site’s already compromised. Dr. Baskin suspects the Jophur may be p-preoccupied, but that can’t last.”
It had been Kaa’s mission to find out what the sooners knew about such things. Perhaps Uriel the Smith had some idea what the Jophur were up to. No one had blamed Kaa for the failure — not out loud. But he knew the ship’s council was disappointed.
