There were also five other whales whom Nita didn’t know, exactly as Kit had pegged them. A beluga, dolphin-sized but whale-shaped, lazing near the surface and singing some longing phrase from the Gazer’s song; a pilot whale, long and slim and gray, silent for the moment and looking at Nita with interest; a right whale, with its huge, strange, bent-out-of-shape baleen mouth, listening to the beluga; a killer whale, the sharp blacks and whites of its hide a contrast to the grays and quiet mottlings of most of the others.
And — thank Heaven! — S’reee, swimming toward Nita from beside the killer. Nita had been shaken by the sight of the killer — killer whales being one of a humpback’s most persistent natural enemies — but just now her composure was so unraveled, there wasn’t much more damage that could be done to it. As S’reee came up to greet her, Nita managed to sing in something like a calm voice, and as if she were actually in charge, “Well, we’re late. Should we get started?”
“Good idea,” said S’reee, brushing skin briefly and reassuringly with Nita. “Introductions first, though.”
“Yes, please.”
S’reee led Nita off to the north, where several of the singers were working together. “We’ve been through the first part of the Song already this morning,” said S’reee, “the name-songs and so forth. I’ve heard you do yours, so there was no need for you to be here till late. We’re up to the division now, the ‘temptation’ part. These are the people singing the Undecided group—“
“Hi, Hotshot,” Nita sang as she and S’reee soared into the heart of the group. The dolphin chattered a greeting back and busied himself with his singing again, continuing his spirals near the surface, above the heads of the right whale and a whale whose song Nita hadn’t heard on the way in, a Sowerby’s beaked whale. She immediately suspected why she hadn’t heard it; the whale, undoubtedly there to celebrate the Forager’s part, was busy eating — ripping up the long kelp and redweed stirring around the shattered deck-plates of the wreck. It didn’t even look up as she and S’reee approached. The right whale was less preoccupied; it swam toward Nita and S’reee at a slow pace that might have been either courtesy or caution.
“HNii’t, this is Tlhlki,” said S’reee. Nita clicked his name back at him in greeting, swimming forward to brush skin politely with him. “He’s singing the Listener.”
Tlhlki rolled away from Nita and came about, looking at her curiously.
When he spoke, his song revealed both great surprise and some unease. “S’reee — this is a human!”
“Tlhlki,” Nita said, wry-voiced, with a look at S’reee, “are you going to be mad at me for things I haven’t done too?”
The right whale looked at her with that cockeyed upward stare that rights have — their eyes being placed high in their flat-topped heads. “Oh,” he said, sounding wry himself, “you’ve run afoul of Areinnye, have you. No fear, Silent Lord — HNii’t, was it? No fear.” Tlhlki’s song put her instantly at ease. It had an amiable and intelligent sound to it, the song of a mind that didn’t tend toward blind animosities. “If you’re going to do the Sea such a service as you’re doing, I could hardly do less than treat you with honor. For Sea’s sake don’t think Areinnye is typical…
“However,” Tlhlki added, gazing down at the calmly feeding beaked whale, “some of us practically have to have a bite taken out of us to get us to start honoring and stop eating.” He drifted down a fathom or so and bumped nose-first into the beaked whale. “Roots! Heads up, you bottom-grubber, here comes the Master-Shark!”
“Huh? Where? Where?” the shocked song came drifting up from the bottom. The kelp was thrashed about by frantic fluking, and through it rose the beaked whale, its mouth full of weed, streamers of which trailed back and whipped around in all directions as the whale tried to tell where the shark was coming from. “Where — what— Oh,” the beaked whale said after a moment, as the echoes from its initial excited squeaking came back and told it that the Master-Shark was nowhere in the area. “Ki,” it said slowly, “I’m going to get you for that.”
“Later. Meantime, here’s S’reee, and HNii’t with her,” said Tlhlki. “HNii’t’s singing the Silent Lord. HNii’t, this is Roots.”
“Oh,” said Roots, “well met. Pleasure to sing with you. Would you excuse me?” She flipped her tail, politely enough, before Nita could sing a note, and a second later was head-down in the kelp again, ripping it up faster than before, as if making up for lost time.
Nita glanced with mild amusement at S’reee as Hotshot spiraled down to join them. “She’s a great conversationalist,” Hotshot whistled, his song conspiratorially quiet. “Really. Ask her about food.”
“I kind of suspected,” Nita said. “Speaking of the Master-Shark, though, where is Ed this morning?”
S’reee waved one long fin in a shrug. “He has a late appearance, as you do, so it doesn’t really matter if he shows up late. Meanwhile, we have to meet the others. Ki, are you finished with Roots?”
“Shortly. We’re going through the last part of the second duet. I’ll catch up with you people later.” The right whale glided downward toward the weeds, and S’reee led Nita off to the west, where the Blue drifted in the water, and the beluga beside him, a tiny white shape against Aroooon’s hugeness. “Aroooon and I are two of the Untouched,” said S’reee. “The third, after the Singer and the Blue, is the Gazer. That’s Iniihwit.”
“HNii’t,” Aroooon’s great voice hailed them as Nita approached.
Nita bent her body into a bow of respect as she coasted through the water. “Sir,” she said.
That small, calm eye dwelt gravely on her. “Are you well, Silent Lord?” said the Blue.
“As well as I can be, sir,” Nita said. “Under the circumstances.”
“That’s well,” said Aroooon. “Iniihwit, here is the human I spoke of.”
The beluga swam away from Aroooon to touch skin with Nita. Iniihwit was male, much smaller than Nita as whales went, though big for a beluga.
But what struck her more than his smallness was the abstracted, contemplative sound of his song when he did speak. There were long silent days of calm behind it, days spent floating on the surface alone, watching the changes of sea and sky, saying little, seeing much. “HNii’t,” he said, “well met. And well met now, for there’s something you must hear. You too, Senior.”
“The weather?” S’reee said, sounding worried.
“Yes indeed. It looks as if that storm is not going to pass us by.”
Nita looked at S’reee in surprise. “What storm? It’s clear.”
“For now,” said Iniihwit. “Nevertheless, there’s weather coming, and there’s no telling what it will stir up in the depths.”
“Is there any chance we can beat it?” S’reee said, sounding very worried indeed.
“None,” the beluga said. “It will be here in half a light. We’ll have to take our chances with the storm, I fear.”
S’reee hung still in the water, thinking. “Well enough,” she said. “Come on, HNii’t; let’s speak to Areinnye and the others singing the Undecided. We’ll start the group rehearsal, then go straight into the Song. Time’s swimming.”
S’reee fluked hard and soared off, leaving Nita in shock for a moment. We won’t be going home tonight, she thought. No good-byes. No last explanations. I’ll never set foot on land again…
“Neets?” Kit’s voice said from behind her.
“Right,” she said.
She went after S’reee to see the three whales singing the Undecided. Areinnye greeted Nita with cool cordiality and went back to her practicing. “And here’s the Sounder,” S’reee was saying. “Fluke, this is HNii’t.”
Nita brushed skin with the Sounder, who was a pilot whale; small and bottled gray, built along the same general lines as a sperm, though barely a quarter the size. Fluke’s eyes were small, his vision poor, and he had an owlish, shortsighted look about him that reminded Nita of Dairine in her glasses. The likeness was made stronger by a shrill, ratchety voice and a tendency toward chuckles. “Fluke?” Nita said.
“I was one,” the Sounder said. “I’m a triplet. And a runt, as you can see. There was nothing to do to hold my own with my brother and sister except become a wizard in self-defense.”
Nita made a small amused noise, thinking that there might not be so much difference between the motivations and family lives of humans and whales. “And here’s Fang,” said S’reee.
Nita found herself looking at the brilliant white and deep black of the killer whale. Her feelings were decidedly mixed. The humpback-shape had its own ideas about the Killer, mostly prejudiced by the thought of blood in the water. But Nita’s human memories insisted that killers were affable creatures, friendly to humans; she remembered her Uncle Jerry, her mother’s older brother, telling about how he’d once ridden a killer whale at an aquatic park in Hawaii and had had a great time. This killer whale edged closer to Nita now, staring at her out of small black eyes — not opaque ones like Ed’s, but sharp, clever ones, with merriment in them. “Well?” the killer said, his voice
