“Roger. Preparing for debarkation.”
Kaa’s team — Brookida and a half-dozen neo-fins who had come out earlier to unload Uriel’s supplies — moored the vessel when it reached the biggest dock. A small crowd of dignitaries waited on the pier, under heavy skies. Umbrellas sheltered the urrish delegates, who pressed together in a shivering mass, swaying their long necks back and forth. Humans and hoons made do with cloaks and hats, while the others simply ignored the rain.
Kaa was busy for a time, giving instructions as the helmsman fine-tuned her position, then cut engines. Amid a froth of bubbles, the Hikahi brought her bow even with the wharf. Clamshell doors opened, like a grinning mouth.
Backlit by the bright interior, a single human being strode forward. A tall female whose proud bearing seemed to say that she had little left to lose — little that life could take from her — except honor. For a long moment, Gillian Baskin looked on the surface of Jijo, inhaling fresh air for the first time in years.
Then she turned back toward the interior, beckoning with a smile and an extended arm.
Four silhouettes approached — one squat, one gangly, one wheeled, and the last clattering like a nervous colt. Kaa knew the tall one, although they had never met. Alvin, the young “humicking” writer, lover of Verne and Twain, whose journal had explained so much about the strange mixed culture of sooner races.
A moan of overjoyed release escaped those waiting, who flowed forward in a rush.
So — embraced by their loved ones, and pelted by rain — the adventurous crew of Wuphon’s Dream finally came home.
There were other reunions … and partings.
Kaa went aft to help Makanee debark her patients. Streaker’s chief physician seemed older than Kaa remembered, and very tired, as she supervised a growing throng of neo-dolphins, splashing and squealing beyond the Hikahi’s starboard flank. While some appeared listless, others dashed about with antic, explosive energy. Two nurses helped Makanee keep the group herded together at the south end of the harbor, using occasional low- voltage discharges from their harnesses to prevent their patients from dashing off. The devolved ones wore nothing but skin.
Kaa counted their number — forty-six — and felt a shiver of worry. Such a large fraction of Streaker’s crew! Gillian must be desperate indeed, to contemplate abandoning them here. Many were probably only experiencing fits of temporary stress atavism, and would be all right if they just had peace and quiet for a time.
Well, maybe they’ll get it, on Jijo, he thought. Assuming this planet sea turns out to be as friendly as it looks. And assuming the Galactics leave us alone.
In becoming Jijo’s latest illegal settler race, dolphins had an advantage over those who preceded them. Fins would not need buildings, or much in the way of tools. Only the finest Galactic detectors might sieve their DNA resonance out of the background organic stew of a life world, and just at close range.
There are advantages, he admitted. This way, some of our kind may survive, even if Earth and her colonies don’t. And if dolphins are caught here, so what? How could we Terragens get into any more trouble than we already are?
Kaa had read about local belief in Redemption. A species that found itself in trouble might get a second chance, returning to the threshold state, so that some new patron might adopt and guide them to a better destiny. Tursiops amicus was less than three hundred years old as a toolusing life-form. Confronted by a frolicking mob of his own kind — former members of an elite starship crew, now screeching like animals — Kaa knew it shouldn’t take fins long to achieve “redemption.”
He felt burning shame.
Kaa joined Brookida, unloading Makanee’s pallet of supplies. He did not want to face the nurses, who might reproach him for “losing” Peepoe. At least now there’s a chance to find her. With our own colony in place, I can serve Makanee as a scout, patrolling and exploring … in time I’ll catch up with Zhaki and Mopol. Then we’ll have a reckoning.
The aft hatch kept cycling after the last dolphin was through. Excited squeaks resonated across the bay as another set of emigres followed Makanee to an assembly point, on a rocky islet in the middle of the harbor. Eager six-limbed amphibian forms, with frilly gill fringes waving about their heads. Transplanted from their native Kithrup, the Kiqui would not qualify as sooners, exactly. They were already a ripe, presapient life-form — a real treasure, in fact. It would have been good to bring them home to Earth in triumph and lay a claim of adoption with the Galactic Uplift Institute. But now Gillian clearly thought it better to leave them here, where they had a chance.
According to plan, the dolphin-Kiqui colony would stay in Port Wuphon for a few days, while a traeki pharmacist analyzed the newcomers’ dietary needs. If necessary, new types of traeki stacks would be designed to create symbiotic supplements. Then both groups would head out to find homes amid islands offshore.
I’m coming, Peepoe, Kaa thought. Once we get everyone settled, nothing on Jijo or the Five Galaxies will keep me from you.
A happy musing. Yet another thought kept nagging at him.
Gillian isn’t just stripping the ship of nonessential personnel. She’s putting everyone ashore she can spare … for their own safety.
In other words, the human Terragens agent was planning something desperate … and very likely fatal.
Kaa had an uneasy feeling that he knew what it was.
Alvin
I GUESS REUNIONS CAN BE KIND OF AWKWARD, EVEN when they’re happy ones.
Don’t get me wrong! I can’t imagine a better moment than when the four of us — Huck, Ur-ronn, Pincer, and me — stepped out of the metal whale’s yawning mouth to see the hooded lanterns of our own hometown. My senses were drenched with familiarity. I heard the creaking dross ships and the lapping tide. I smelled the melon canopies and smoke from a nearby cookstove — someone making chubvash stew. My magnetic earbones tickled to the familiar presence of Mount Guenn, invisible in the dark, yet a powerful influence on the hoonish shape-and- location sense.
Then there came my father’s umble cry, booming from the shadows, and my mother and sister, rushing to my arms.
I confess, my first reaction was hesitant. I was glad to be home, to see and embrace them, but also embarrassed by the attention, and a little edgy about moving around without a cane for the first time in months. When there came a free moment, I bowed to my parents and handed them a package, wrapped in complex folds of the best paper I could find on the Streaker, containing my baby vertebrae. It was an important moment. I had gone away a disobedient child. Now I was returning, an adult, with work to do.
My friends’ homecomings were less emotional. Of course Huck’s hoonish adoptive parents were thrilled to have her back from the dead, but no one expected them to feel what my own folks did after giving up their only son for lost, months ago.
Pincer-Tip touched claws briefly with a matron from the qheuen hive, and that was it for him.
As for Ur-ronn, she and Uriel barely exchanged greetings. Aunt and niece had one priority — to get out of the rain. They fled the drizzle to a nearby warehouse, swiftly immersing themselves in some project. Urs don’t believe in wasting time.
Does it make me seem heartless to say that I could not give complete attention to my family? Even as they clasped me happily, I kept glancing to see what else was going on. It will be up to me — and maybe Huck — to tell later generations about this event. This fateful meeting on the docks.
For one thing, there were other reunions.
My new human friend, Dwer Koolhan, emerged from the Hikahi, a tall silhouette, as sturdy looking as a preteen hoon. When he appeared, a shout pealed from the crowd of onlookers, and a young woman rushed to him, her arms spread wide. Dwer seemed stunned to see her … then equally enthused, seizing her into a whirling hug. At first, I thought she might be some long-separated lover, but now I know it is his sister, with adventures of her own to recount.
The rain let up a bit. Uriel returned, wearing booties and a heavy black waterproof slicker that covered all but the tip of her snout. Behind came several hoons, driving a herd of ambling, four-footed creatures. Glavers. At least two dozen of the bulge-eyed brutes swarmed down the pier, their opal skins glistening. A few carried cloth-wrapped burdens in their grasping tails. They did not complain, but trotted toward the opening of the whale sub without
