ancestors of the Six Races, for instance.
It should have worked.
ACROSS this narrow room, I stare at a small figure in a centered spotlight. My closest companion since Tom went away.
Herbie.
Our prize from the Shallow Cluster.
Bearer of hopes and evil luck.
Was there a curse on the vast fleet of translucent vessels we discovered at that strange dip in space? When Tom found a way through their shimmering fields and snatched Herb as a souvenir, did he bring back a jinx that will haunt us until we put the damned corpse back in its billion-year-old tomb?
I used to find the ancient mummy entrancing. Its hint of a humanoid smile seemed almost whimsical.
But I’ve grown to hate the thing, and all the space this discovery has sent us fleeing across.
I’d give it all to have Tom back. To make the last three years go away. To recover those innocent old days, when the Five Galaxies were merely very, very dangerous, and there was still such a thing as home.
Streakers
Kaa
B-BUT YOU SAID HOONS WERE OUR ENEMIESSS!”
Zhaki’s tone was defiant, though his body posture — head down and flukes raised — betrayed uncertainty. Kaa took advantage, stirring water with his pectoral fins, taking the firm upright stance of an officer in the Terragens Survey Service.
“Those were different noons,” he answered. “The NuDawn disaster happened a long time ago.”
Zhaki shook his bottle snout, flicking spray across the humid dome. “Eatees are eateesss. They’ll crush Earthlings any chance they get, just like the Soro and Tandu and all the other muckety Galactics-cs!”
Kaa winced at the blanket generalization, but after two years on the run, such attitudes were common among the ranks. Kaa also nursed the self-pitying image of Earth against the entire universe. But if that were true, the torment would have ended with annihilation long ago.
We have allies, a few friends … and the grudging sympathy of neutral clans, who hold meetings debating what to do about a plague of fanaticism sweeping the Five Galaxies. Eventually, the majority may reach a consensus and act to reestablish civilization.
They may even penalize our murderers … for all the good it will do us.
“Actually,” said Brookida, turning from his workbench in the far corner of the cramped shelter. “I would not put the hoon in the same category as our other persecutors. They aren’t religious radicals, or power-hungry conquerors. Sourpuss bureaucrats — that’s a better description. Officious sticklers for rules, which is why so many enter service with Galactic Institutes. At NuDawn they were only enforcing the law. When human settlers resisted —”
“They thought they were being invaded!” Zhaki objected.
“Yessss.” Brookida nodded. “But Earth’s colony hadn’t heard about contact, and they lacked equipment to hear Galactic inquiries. When hoonish officials came to give a ritual last warning, they met something not in their manuals … armed trespassersss. Barbarians with no Galactic language. Mistakes followed. Military units swarmed in from Joph—”
“This has nothing to do with our present problem.” Kaa interrupted Brookida’s history lecture. “Zhaki, you must stop cutting the local hoons’ fishing netsss! It draws attention to us.”
“Angry attention,” Brookida added. “They grow wary against your dep-p-predations, Zhaki. Last time, they cast many spears.”
The young dolphin snorted.
Kaa flinched. Moments ago, Zhaki was eager to avenge humans who had died on a lost colony, back when dolphins could barely speak. Now the irate youth lumped all bipeds together, dredging up a grudge from days before men and women became caretakers of Earth. There was no arguing with a mind that worked that way.
Still, it was Kaa’s job to enforce discipline.
It wasn’t great haiku — not poetical Trinary like Captain Creideiki used to dazzle his crew with, crafting devoted loyalty from waves of gorgeous sound. But the warning rocked Zhaki. Kaa followed up, projecting a beam of intense sonar from his brow, piercing Zhaki’s body, betraying fear churnings within.
When in doubt, he thought, fall back on the ancestors’ ways.
“You are dismisssssed,” he finished. “Go rest. Tomorrow’s another long day.”
Zhaki swerved obediently, retreating to the curtained alcove he shared with Mopol.
Alas, despite this brief success, Kaa also knew it would not last.
Tsh’t told us this was an important mission. But I bet she assigned us all here because we’re the ones Streaker could most easily do without.
That night he dreamed of piloting.
Neodolphins had a flair for it — a precocious talent for the newest sapient species in all Five Galaxies. Just three hundred years after human geneticists began modifying natural bottlenose dolphins, starship Streaker was dispatched in a noble experiment to prove the skill of dolphin crews. The Terragens Council thought it might help solidify Earth’s shaky position to become known as a source of crackerjack pilots.
“Lucky” Kaa had naturally been pleased to be chosen for the mission, though it brought home one glaring fact.
I was good … but not the best.
In half slumber, Kaa relived the terrifying ambush at Morgran, a narrow escape that still rocked him, even after all this time.
Socketed in his station on the bridge, helpless to do anything but go along for the ride, as Chief Pilot Keepiru sent the old Snark-class survey ship through maneuvers a Tandu fighter ship would envy, neatly evading lurk mines and snare fields, then diving back into the Morgran maelstrom, without benefit of guidance computation.
The memory lost no vividness after two long years.
Transit threads swarmed around them, a dizzying blur of dimensional singularities. By a whim of cerebral evolution, trained dolphin pilots excelled at picturing the shimmering space-time clefts with sonar imagery. But Kaa had never rushed through such a tangle! A tornado of knotted strands. Any shining cord, caught at the wrong angle, might hurl the ship back into normal space with the consistency of quark stew …
… Yet somehow, the ship sped nimbly from one thread to the next, Keepiru escaped the pursuers, dodged past the normal trade routes, and finally brought Streaker to a refuge Captain Creideiki chose.
Kithrup, where resources for repairs could be found as pure isotopic metal, growing like coral in a poison sea …
… Kithrup, homeworld of two unknown races, one sinking in an ancient wallow of despair, and the other hopeful, new …
… Kithrup, where no one should have been able to follow …
… But they did. Galactics, feuding and battling insanely overhead …
… And soon Keepiru was gone, along with Toshio, Hikahi, and Mr. Orley …
… and Kaa learned that some wishes were better not coming true.
He learned that he did not really want to be chief pilot, after all.
