Tom's shoulders flexed as he took a step. His arm snapped straight, and he released the sling. The bomb sailed high into the night, whirling like a top. The spinning sphere shone briefly, still climbing, sparkling until it disappeared from sight. He listened, but never heard it land.
Tom stood still for a while, breathing deeply.
Well, he thought at last. That built an appetite. I have two hours in which to eat, tend my wounds, and prepare a shelter. Any time I get after that, O Lord, will be accepted with humble gratitude.
He laid the ragged strip of cloth over his shoulder and turned to prepare himself a meal by starlight.
PART FIVE
Concussion
'In a world older and more complex than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear… they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time…'
46 ::: Sah'ot
It was evening, and the Kiqui were leaving for their hunting grounds. Sah'ot heard them squeaking excitedly as they gathered in a clearing west of the toppled drill-tree. The hunters passed not far from the pool on their way to a rock chimney on the southern slope of the island, chittering and puffing their lung sacks in pomp.
Sah'ot listened until the abos were gone. Then he sank a meter below the surface and blew depressed bubbles. Nothing was going right.
Dennie had changed, and he didn't like it. Instead of her usual delightful skittishness, she virtually ignored him. She had listened to two of his best limericks and answered seriously, completely missing the delicious double entendres.
In spite of the importance of her studies of the Kiqui, Takkata-Jim had ordered her also to analyze the drill-tree system for Charles Dart. Twice she had gone into the water to collect samples from below the metal-mound. She had ignored Sah'ot's nuzzling advances or, even more disturbing, petted him absently in return.
Sah'ot realized that, for all of his previous efforts to break her down, he hadn't really wanted her to change. At least, not this way.
He drifted unhappily until a tether attached to one of the sleds brought him up short. His new assignment kept him linked to this electrical obscenity, chafed and cramped in a tiny pool while his real work was out in the open sea with the pre-sentients!
When Gillian and Keepiru left, he had assumed their absence would free him to do pretty much what he wanted. Hah! No sooner had the pilot and the human physician left, than did Toshio — Toshio, of all persons — step in and assume command.
I should have been able to talk rings around him. How in the Five Galaxies did the boy manage to get the upper hand?
It was hard to remember how. But here he was, stuck monitoring a damned robot for a pompous, egocentric chimpanzee who cared only about rocks! The dumb little robot didn't even have a brain one could TALK to! You don't have conversations with microprocessors. You tell them what to do, then helplessly watch the disaster when they take you literally!
His harness gave of a chime. It was time to check on the probe. Sah'ot clucked a sarcastic response.
* Yes indoody,
Lord and master!
* Metal moron,
And disaster!
* Beep again,
I'll work faster!
Sah'ot brought his left eye even with the sled's screen. He sent a pulse-code to the robot, and a stream of data returned.
The 'bot had finally digested the most recent rock sample. He ordered the probe's small memory emptied into the sled's data banks. Toshio had run him through the drill until Sah'ot could control the 'bot almost unconsciously.
He made it anchor one end of a monofilament line to the rough rock, then lower itself another fifty meters.
The old explanation for the hole beneath the metal-mound had been discarded. The drill-tree couldn't have needed to dig a tunnel a kilometer deep in search of nutrients. It shouldn't have been able to pierce the crust that far. The mass of the drill root was clearly too great to have been rotated by the modest tree that once stood atop the mound.
The amount of material excavated wouldn't fit atop ten metal-mounds. It was found as sediment all around the high ridge on which the mound sat.
To Sah'ot these mysteries weren't enticing. They only proved once again that the universe was weird, and that maybe humans and dolphins and chimps ought to wait a while before challenging its deeper puzzles.
The robot finished its descent. Sah'ot made it reach out and seize the cavity wall with diamond-tipped claws, then retract its tether from above.
Down in stages it would go. For this little machine there would be no rising. Sah'ot felt that way himself, sometimes, especially since coming to Kithrup. He didn't really expect ever to leave this deadly world.
Fortunately, the probe's sampling routine was fairly automatic once triggered. Even Charles Dart should have little excuse to complain. Unless…
Sah'ot cursed. There it was again — the static that had plagued the probe since it had passed the half-kilometer mark. Toshio and Keepiru had worked on it, and couldn't find the problem.
The crackling was unlike any static Sah'ot had ever heard… not that he was an expert on static. It had a syncopation of sorts, not all that unpleasant to listen to, actually. Sah'ot had heard that some people liked to listen to white noise. Certainly nothing was more undemanding.
The clock on his harness ticked away. Sah'ot listened to the static, and thought about perversities, about love and loneliness.
