“I’ll see the human prisoners now,” she told the guard.
Karkaett transmitted a signal to open the door. Following rules, he accompanied her inside, weapons trained on the captives.
Both men lay on cots with medical packs strapped to their arms. Already they seemed much improved over their condition in the swamp, where, coughing and desperate for breath, they had clutched a reed bank, struggling to keep their heads above water. The younger one looked even more grubby and half-starved than Rety — a slightly built young man with wiry muscles, black hair, and a puckered scar above one eye. Jass, Rety had identified him — a sooner cousin, and far from her favorite person.
The other man was much larger. His uniform could still be recognized beneath the caked filth. Steely gray eyes drilled Tsh’t the moment she entered.
“How did you follow us to Jijo?”
That was what Gillian would surely ask the Danik voyager. It was the question Tsh’t feared most.
Calm down, she urged herself. The Rothen only know that someone sent a message from the Fractal System. They can’t know who.
Anyway, would they confide in their Danik servants? This poor fellow is probably just as bewildered as we are.
Yet Kunn’s steady gaze seemed to hold the same rock-solid faith she once saw in the Missionary … the disciple who long ago brought a shining message-of-truth to the small dolphin community of Bimini-Under, back when Tsh’t was still a child gliding in her mother’s slipstream wake.
“Humans are beloved patrons of the neo-dolphin race, it’s true,” the proselytizer explained, during one secret meeting, in a cave where scuba-diving tourists never ventured. “Yet, just a few centuries ago, primitive men in boats hunted cetaceans to the verge of extinction. They may act better today, but who can deny their new maturity is fragile, untested? Without meaning disloyalty, many neo-fins feel discomfort, wondering if there might not be something or somebody greater and wiser than humankind. Someone the entire clan can turn to, in dangerous times.”
“You mean God?” one of the attending dolphins asked. And the Missionary responded with a nod.
“In essence, yes. All the ancient legends about divine beings who intervene in Earth’s affairs … all the great teachers and prophets … can be shown to have their basis in one simple truth.
“Terra is not just an isolated forlorn world — home to bizarre wolflings and their crude clients. Rather, it is part of a wonderful experiment. Something I have come from afar to tell you about.
“We have been watched over for a very long time. Lovingly guarded throughout our long time of dreaming. But soon, quite soon, it will be time to waken.”
Kaa
MOPOL’S FEVER SHOWED NO SIGN OF RETURNING. In fact, he seemed quite high in spirits when he left the next morning, swimming east with Zhaki, resuming their reconnaissance of Wuphon Port.
“You see? All he needed was a stern talking-to,” Peepoe explained with evident pride. “Mopol just had to be reminded of his duty.”
Kaa sensed the implied rebuke in her words, but chose to ignore it.
“You have a persuasive bedside manner,” he replied. “No doubt they teach it in medical school.”
In fact, he was quite sure that Mopol’s recovery had little to do with Peepoe’s lecture. The half-stenos male had agreed too readily with everything the young nurse said, tossing his mottled gray head and chittering “Yessss!” repeatedly.
He and Zhaki are up to something, Kaa thought, as he watched the two swim off toward the coastal hoon settlement.
“I need to be heading back to the ship soon,” Peepoe said, causing Kaa to dip his narrow jaw.
“But I thought you’d stay a few days. You agreed to come see the volcano.”
Her expression seemed wary. “I don’t know.… When I left, there was talk of shifting Streaker to another hiding place. Searchers were getting too damned c-close.”
Not that moving the ship a few kilometers would make much difference, if Galactic fleets already had her pinned. Even hiding under a great pile of discarded starcraft would not help, once pursuers had the site narrowed down close enough to use chemical sniffers. Earthling DNA would lure them, like male moths to a female’s pheromones.
Kaa shrugged by twisting his flukes.
“Brookida will be disappointed. He was so looking forward to showing off his collection of dross from all six sooner races.”
Peepoe stared at Kaa, scanning him with penetrating sound till she found the wryness within.
Her blowhole sputtered laughter.
“Oh, all right. Let’s see this mountain of yours. Anyway, I’ve been aching for a swim.”
As usual, the water felt terrific. A little saltier than Earth sea, but with a fine mineral flavor and a gentle ionic oiliness that helped it glide over your skin. The air’s rich oxygen level made it seem as if you could keep going well past the horizon.
It was a far friendlier ocean than on Kithrup or Oakka, where the oceans tasted poisonously foul. Friendlier, that is, unless you counted the groaning sounds that occasionally drifted from the Midden, as if a tribe of mad whales lived down there, singing ballads without rhyme or reason.
According to Alvin’s Journal, their chief source on Jijo, some natives believed that ancient beings lived beyond the continental shelf, fierce and dangerous. Such hints prompted Gillian Baskin to order the spying continued.
So long as Streaker doesn’t need a pilot, I might as well play secret agent. Anyway, it’s a job Peepoe might respect.
Beyond all that, Kaa relearned how fine it was to cruise in tandem with another strong swimmer, jetting along on powerful fluke strokes, building momentum each time you plunged, then soaring through each upper arc, like flying. The true peak of exhilaration could never be achieved alone. Two or more dolphins must move in unison, each surf-riding the other’s wake. When done right, surface tension nearly vanished and the planet merged seamlessly, from core to rock, from sea to sky.
And then … to bitter-clear vacuum?
A modern poet might make that extrapolation, but it never occurred to natural cetaceans — not even species whose eyesight could make out stars — not until humans stopped hunting and started teaching.
They changed us. Showed us the universe beyond sun, moon, and tides. They even turned some of us into pilots. Wormhole divers. I guess that makes up for their ancestors’ crimes.
Still, some things never change. Like the semierotic stroke of whitecaps against flesh, or the spume of hot breath meeting air. The raw, earthy pleasure of this outing offered much that he felt lacking aboard Streaker.
It also made a terrific opening to courtship.
Assuming she thinks the same way I do.
Assuming I can start winning her esteem.
They were approaching shore. He could tell by the echoes of rock-churned surf up ahead. A mist-shrouded mountain could be glimpsed from the top of each forward leap. Soon they would reach the hidden cave where his spy equipment lay. Then Kaa must go back to dealing with Peepoe in awkward, inadequate words.
I wish this could just go on without end, he thought.
A brief touch of sonar, and he knew Peepoe felt the same. She, too, yearned for this moment of primitive release to last.
Kaa’s sonic sense picked out a school of pseudo-tunny, darting through nearby shoals, tempting after a pallid breakfast of synthi flesh. The tunny weren’t quite in their path — it would mean a detour. Still, Kaa squirted a burst of Trinary.
Singularities!
Kaa felt proud of the haiku — impulsive, yet punning as it mixed both space-and planet-bound images. Of course, free foraging was still not officially sanctioned. He awaited Peepoe’s rejection.
