'Mistress!' the Pila shouted shrilly. 'There is a transmission from the transfer point!'
'Bother me one more time with inconsequentials…' she rumbled, flexing her mating claw threateningly. But the client interrupted her! The Pil dared to interrupt!
'Mistress. It is the Earth ship! They taunt us! They defy us! They…'
'Show me!' Krat hissed. 'It must be a trick! Show me at once!'
The Pil ducked back into its section. On Krat's main screen appeared the holo image of a man, and several dolphins. From the man's shape, Krat could tell it was a female, probably their leader.
'…stupid creatures unworthy of the name 'sophonts.' Foolish, pre-sentient upspring of errant masters. We slip away from all your armed might, laughing at your clumsiness! We slip away as we always will, you pathetic creatures. And now that we have a real head start, you'll never catch us! What better proof that the Progenitors favor not you, but us! What better proof…'
The taunt went on. Krat listened, enraged, yet at the same time savoring the artistry of it. These men are better than I'd thought. Their insults are wordy and overblown, but they have talent. They deserve honorable, slow deaths.
'Mistress! The Tandu with us are changing course! Their other ships are leaving Kithrup for the transfer point!'
Krat hissed in despair. 'After them! After them at once! We followed them through space this far. The chase only goes on!'
The crew bent to their tasks resignedly. The Earth ship was in a good position to escape. Even at best this would be a long chase.
Krat realized that she would never make it home in time for mating. She would die out here.
On her screen, the man continued to taunt them.
'Librarian!' she called. 'I do not understand some of the man's words. Find out what that phrase — Nyaahh nyaaah — means in their beastly wolfling tongue!'
124 ::: Tom Orley
Cross-legged on a woven mat of reeds, shaded by a floating wreck, he listened as a muttering volcano slowly sputtered into silence. Contemplating starvation, he listened to the soft, wet sounds of the endless weedscape, and found in them a homely beauty. The squishy, random rhythms blended into a backdrop for his meditation.
On the mat in front of him, like a focus mandala, lay the message bomb he had never set off. The container glistened in the sunlight of north Kithrup's first fine day in weeks. Highlights shone in dimpled places where the metal had been battered, as he had been. The dented surface gleamed still.
Where are you now?
The subsurface sea-waves made his platform undulate gently. He floated in a trance through levels of awareness, like an old man poking idly through his attic, like an old-time hobo looking with mild curiosity through the slats of a moving boxcar.
Where are you now, my love?
He recalled a Japanese haiku from the eighteenth century, by the great poet Yosa Buson.
As the spring rains fall,
Soaking in them, on the roof,
Is a child's rag ball.
Watching blank images in the dents on the psi-globe, he listened to the creaking of the flat jungle — its skittering little animal sounds — the wind riffling through the wet, flat leaves.
Where is that part of me that has departed?
He listened to the slow pulse of a world ocean, watched patterns in the metal, and after a while, in the reflections in the dents and creases, an image came to him.
A blunt, bulky, wedge shape approached a place that was a not-place, a shining blackness in space. As he watched, the bulky thing cracked open. The thick carapace slowly split apart, like a hatching egg. The shards fell away, and there remained a slender nubbed cylinder, looking a bit like a caterpillar. Around it glowed a nimbus, a thickening shell of probability that hardened even as he watched.
No illusion, he decided. It cannot be an illusion.
He opened himself to the image, accepting it. And from the caterpillar a thought winged to him.
Blossoms on the pear
and a woman in the moonlight
reads a letter there…
His slowly healing lips hurt as he smiled. It was another haiku by Buson. Her message was as unambiguous as could be, under the circumstances. She had somehow picked up his trance-poem, and responded in kind.
'Jill…' he cast as hard as he could.
The caterpillar shape, sheathed in a cocoon of stasis, approached the great hole in space. It dropped forward toward the not-place, grew transparent as it fell, then vanished.
For a long time Tom sat very still, watching the highlights on the metal globe slowly shift as the morning passed.
Finally, he decided it wouldn't do him or the universe any harm if he started doing something about survival.
125 ::: The Skiff
'Between you two crazy males, have you come any closer to figuring out what he'sss talking about?'
Keepiru and Sah'ot just stared back at Hikahi. They turned back to their discussion without answering her, huddling with Creideiki, trying to interpret the captain's convoluted instructions.
Hikahi rolled her eyes and turned to Toshio. 'You'd think they'd include me in these seances of theirs. After all, Creideiki and I are mates!'
Toshio shrugged. 'Creideiki needs Sah'ot's language skill and Keepiru's ability as a pilot. But you saw their faces. They're halfway into the Whale Dream right now. We can't afford to have you that way while you're in command.'
'Hmmmph.' Hikahi spumed, only slightly mollified. 'I suppose you've finished the inventory, Toshio?'
'Yes, sir.' He nodded. 'I have a written list ready. We're well enough stocked in consumables to last to the first transfer point, and at least one beyond that. Of course, we're in the middle of nowhere, so we'll need at least five transfer jumps to get anywhere near civilization. Our charts are pitifully inadequate, our drives will probably fail over the long haul, and few ships our size have even taken transfer points successfully. Aside from all that, and the cramped living quarters, I think we're all right.'
Hikahi sighed. 'We can't lose anything by trying. At leasst the Galactics are gone.'
'Yeah,' he agreed. 'It was a nice stroke, Gillian taunting the Eatees from the transfer point. It let us know they got away, and got the Eatees off our backs.'
'Don't say 'Eatees,' Toshio. It'ss not polite. You may offend some nice Kanten or Linten one day if you get into the habit.'
Toshio swallowed and ducked his head. No matter where or when, no lieutenant had ever been known to slacken off on a middie. 'Yes, sir,' he said.
Hikahi grinned and flicked a small splash of water on the youth with her lower jaw.
* Duty, duty
Brave shark-biter
* What reward
Could taste better?
Toshio blushed and nodded.
The skiff started to move again. Keepiru was back in the pilot's saddle. Creideiki and Sah'ot chattered excitedly in a semi-Primal rhythm which still sent shivers down Hikahi's spine. And Sah'ot had said that Creideiki was toning it down on purpose!
She was still getting used to the idea that Creideiki's injury might have been a door opening, rather than a closing.
The skiff lifted from the sea and began to speed eastward, following Creideiki's hunch.
'What about passenger morale?' Hikahi asked Toshio.
'Well, I guess it's all right. That pair of Kiqui are happy so long as they're with Dennie. And Dennie's happy… well, she's happy enough for now.'
Hikahi was amused. Why should the youth be embarrassed about Dennie's other preoccupation? She was glad the two young humans had each other, as she had Creideiki.
In spite of his new, eerie side, Creideiki was the same dolphin. The newness was something he used, something he seemed only to have begun exploring. He
