by Peter Wood
He gave a slight shake and Wirrin watched a vestige of muscle movement in the middle section. How long could those nerves keep firing?
When Barudin proclaimed that something was good tucker the trio had come to expect a taste treat, and pieces of snake grilled on a stick over the coals of the campfire turned out to be no exception. The only complication was separating all the little bones from the meat.
***
Each day they travelled through new terrain, listening to Barudin talk about trees, rocks and hills as if he knew them individually, recounting features and stories about them and always pointing out food sources. Across more of the mountain range the group trekked, down to camp for a night by the main river near a shallow lagoon with hundreds of waterbirds, then rock-hopping up a tributary on the southern side where a trickle of water came over a series of mini waterfalls to a camp under a rock shelter overlooking a number of small pools.
Akama knew this place from his own walkabout journey and told the boys how there’d been no water flowing in his time and the only place it might be found was a deep pool several hundred metres upstream. Gulara knew none of this area. Her home country was over 1000 kilometres to the east.
Each evening they set up camp, foraged for food, then, after eating, spent several hours listening to and recounting stories, acting out some events from the day to the ceremonial background of beating clapsticks and Barudin’s guttural chanting, and learning special business for their initiation.
***
On the afternoon of the second-last day they watched in awe as the sky, up till now unrelentingly clear, filled, in the distance, with great masses of cloud climbing high and higher with shining white crowns and darkening bases. Thom gasped with excitement when a streak of light joined earth and sky. The lightning he’d questioned Akama about on their previous visit was here. A few moments later while they were still watching expectantly, a rumble of sound made them stare at each other in wonder.
‘It’s a long way off, Thom, but it might get interesting if that main centre keeps heading this way.’
The sun disappeared behind the leading edge of cloud and Wirrin marvelled as the sharp colours of his surroundings dimmed. More bolts of lightning flashed, the volume of the thunder increased as the storm approached and suddenly the trio were transfixed by another new phenomenon: wind, real wind, wild and buffeting their bodies like a live thing, not the gentle caress of a sea breeze at Monkey Mia.
The sky darkened even more and just as Wirrin was turning to Calen to comment, everything lit up for an instant of startling brilliance with a crack of sound so loud he felt a moment of pure fear. Even Barudin looked shocked till he laughed and said. ‘That was a close one.’
***
On the very last day they travelled the greatest distance yet, over 30 kilometres, to the banks of the big river again, and almost 70 kilometres upstream from Gnardune Pool. After their meal Barudin conducted their completion ceremony. The trio performed a special little thankyou dance for Barudin which Wirrin had worked out, and the time of isolation was over.
Thom called his ship.
Calen, who’d been suffering his separation gamely, contacted Sonic.
Akama and Gulara contacted Attunga and Warrakan through the Comet, while Wirrin remotely activated his Comet InfoSystem to get an overview of what had been happening with the dolphin recruitment program. He had barely connected when his attention was distracted by an excited babble of dolphin speech from Calen and then a shout.
‘An orca chased him and he wasn’t fast enough to get away. Turaku saved him with the Comet.’
Everyone rushed over.
‘Is he all right?’
‘Earth adventures are even better than asteroid labyrinths. Orca is awesome.’
‘Why did you go near an orca?’
‘I wanted to talk to him but he was hungry.’
The trio shared a moment of surprise.
‘You can’t talk to orcas. They have a different language.’
‘I have started to learn.’
‘Where are you?’
‘With the little dolphins of South Island, New Zealand. How long before we see our brothers?’
‘Soon.’
Calen looked at Thom who in turn looked at Akama.
‘After we return Barudin to Monkey Mia.’
‘If you take me to meet Sonic you can fly direct.’
Akama laughed at Barudin’s blunt request.
‘Of course. He’ll love to hear you recount the antics of his pod brothers, especially the skink exterminator.’
‘We’ll be there in about half an hour, Sonic. My ship is about to arrive.’
That brought Wirrin up with a jolt. The journey from here to Gnardune Pool would take about three days on foot and Thom’s ship was traversing it in minutes. Yes, the traditional pace of their life was over.
***
Next day Akama returned to Monkey Mia where he was spending time on his own private agenda.
Calen stayed with Sonic.
Wirrin, Thom and Gulara went to Alice Springs, almost in the centre of Australia and, as named friends, spoke for several hours with a number of the AIs based there before being guided through part of the enormous north–south Australian population corridor.
Over 2000 kilometres in length, this extended habitat was one of the earliest models in the move to live self-sufficiently underground and restore the biodiversity of the planet’s surface. Started under North Australian leadership and the inspiration behind the launching of Attunga, it was now one of the most advanced communities on the planet. Much of this newly advanced development had come through the particularly close relationship with AIs, sharing the expertise gained from the more complicated processes involved in nurturing the self-sufficient societies of an anti-grav habitat.
According to Akama, the links between the North Australians and Attunga meant that this was far and away the premier planetary life centre in the solar system.
Thom’s ship was, in Sonic’s words, a gift from the gods. It would go anywhere, meet them anywhere, and allow the trio and Sonic to be together at the end of every busy day. The Comet stayed close to Sonic of course. That was its primary purpose. The second Comet stayed close to Akama, again, its primary purpose.
Wirrin, Thom and Gulara spent a day at the Great Barrier Reef visiting the big marine centre there, and being guided to explore other special features with skimmers and facemasks. After spending twenty minutes on skimmers to get to the second location, Thom amazed the guides by calling up his ship and saying they’d use that instead to save time and see more.
Calen elected to stay with Sonic.
Everyone was together for the visit to Antarctica. The dolphin pod, though limited to shorter sorties by the water temperature, was particularly eager to see the great icebergs and frozen cliffs, a completely new marine environment for them, and their eagerness just might have been magnified by Calen’s talk of giant schools of fish, kilometres long, feeding on the abundant krill.
***
‘Are you serious? It started out at 213, and when we landed we said we’d be impressed if we got a thousand, and now you say it could be six? We can’t take that many. The Comet modifications after the Freedom hijack mean our limit has gone down to 5000 or just over.’
Calen was reporting the results of a tally between Sonic and Turaku of what was going to happen when they started collecting the Earth dolphins who’d decided to follow Sonic to Attunga.
‘Yes we can, Thom. Sonic and Turaku already thought the number might be high by the time we went walkabout so the second Comet has been working flat out converting its storage space to dolphin transport pools. They’ve built just over three thousand places so there’ll be tons of room.’
‘What? They changed a Comet and I didn’t even know?’
‘Yes, you slacker! You’ve been having so much fun visiting mountaintops and exploring underwater ice caves at the South Pole that you’re neglecting our spacesh
ips.’
‘Ha! You can talk. Letting Sonic get eaten by a killer whale. That’s neglect!
‘They must have had the picofactory working at maximum to do that much. It’s a massive internal change.’
***
Halfway through the first of the two pick-up days the picofactory again went into overdrive as the real numbers once more went way in excess of expectations, and at the end the Comets were overcrowded with a total of 9153 passengers.
Calen, remembering the first trip, worried that Sonic would be stressed trying to keep them all happy for the long journey to Attunga. Sonic wasn’t, saying there was no panic and fear to overcome this time. It was tiring, with the added complication of several dockings so he could move between ships, but he was older now and much stronger, as well as having all his pod, including Calen, to share the support work.
Turaku, through Comet-Turaku, had set things in motion on Attunga for receiving the big influx and the rangers and marine scientists there were stunned and delighted at the prospect of such a huge boost to the dolphin program.
The two Comets left Earth and some thirty hours later the pristine reaches on Attunga were receiving their new occupants.
Chapter 33
‘What are they doing?’
Thom’s day had involved taking the Comet to K74 to see what was happening. The situation was very interesting with the ten newly completed Cadre ships and twenty more almost finished and he was explaining what he’d seen.
‘Collecting asteroids. Big ones. They’ve brought back five so far and two more are on the way. The ones that have arrived are parked close to the ship construction sites.’
‘How big?’ asked Calen.
‘They’re all about a cubic kilometre and it looks like they’re meant to be the source material for a whole new round of ship construction.’
‘More ships? Ridiculous!’
‘I know, and it’s crazier than you think because Quambi tells us that when the other twenty are finished the plans show that every construction site will keep working.’
‘A total of sixty Cadre ships? Thom, that’s scary.’
‘I know. It fits with the idea that they want to be big in the solar system though, and having Quambi-K is speeding things up for them.’
‘If they like everything big it’s a wonder they don’t go for a monster class of ship, like over a kilometre in length?’ said Calen.
‘If they knew enough about engines I’m sure they would, but they still have troubles with the ones they use now. Look how interested they were in the Freedom drives,’ said Wirrin.
‘Thom, did you find out anything else about them while you were there?’
‘Remember those weird cradle things we saw them constructing on the stealth exercise day? Well they’re a way to connect to other ships or asteroids and move them around quickly. They’re way faster than normal asteroid collectors. One of the five asteroids was from so far off it would have taken three weeks with a standard tug but because of its big engine the Cadre ship did it in less than a day.’
‘Sounds like we should put those things on a few of the Comets.’
‘No way, Wirrin. Ordinary asteroid collectors do the job perfectly. All you need is proper planning.’
‘Did you talk much to Quambi while you were close?’
‘Yes, she’s been doing all sorts of stuff. She was talking to the Freedom AIs about when they were cut off by that jamming we couldn’t get through and she’s been building extra sneaky communication channels to try and make sure it never happens to her. The big thing she’s done though is build her special picofactories into the other two backup areas so she can do anything from any one of them.’
‘That’s a good idea. That should have happened right from the start.’
Wirrin knew about this. ‘Not really. The probability of her being discovered is practically zero so there was no need for extra picofactories, and AIs work on probabilities a lot more than we do.’
‘So why have they changed their minds?’
‘I don’t know, but it was Quambi and the companion AIs who made the decision this time.’
‘Why did you go so close to K74 when Quambi sends us all that information anyway?’
‘Training, Wirrin. We had our special group of pilots and they need real experience.’
‘Does that mean it wasn’t you controlling the Comet?’
‘I did take over for the final approach because it’s a bit tricky with all the extra activity going on.’
‘These pilots must be getting like experts themselves with all the training you give them.’
‘Me? I hardly train them at all. Just special finishing off stuff.’
***
‘Every single pod has its own ranger? Where did they all come from?’ said Thom.
Wirrin was amazed at how everything seemed be running perfectly only five days after their return from Earth. The previous evening Calen and Sonic had related some of the logistics of the dolphin re-settlement program, outlining its magnitude, and extolling the brilliance of Turaku’s planning: 112 reaches occupied with an average of four or five pods each, and another nineteen allocated to the 785 independent males. These males were an unexpected outcome of the trip and a new factor in the running of the reaches.
According to Calen they should have realised that appealing to the idea of adventure and describing bountiful food sources would be an especially powerful attraction to independent, maturing young dolphins. Luckily, the number of Attunga reaches coming online had been compounding recently with the completion of large new sections of Attunga’s dolphin level, and despite the sudden influx there were still reaches to spare and many, many more close to completion.
Calen found Thom’s question amusing. ‘Thom, there are thousands and thousands of people who want to be dolphin rangers. Ever since Meeting Day when Sonic spoke to the habitats the number of people applying to work with dolphins has gone crazy. You’ve seen the trainee rangers at the dolphinarium.’
‘But they’re not proper rangers yet and I don’t remember seeing enough for all these reaches anyway.’
‘Of course you’ve seen them. They’ve been there since the first Earth dolphins arrived. All the rangers on Warrakan have three or four trainees assigned to help them at different times during the week and that’s been happening ever since the reaches opened. They might not be officially qualified but Turaku expects they’ll do an excellent job. And he’ll be watching and available if they need any help or advice anyway, the same as Yajala does for all the Warrakan rangers.’
Wirrin shared Thom’s impression but of course Calen was right. Every Warrakan reach you went to was buzzing with humans on their skimmers or active in other ways and when you added them up it would be hundreds of people.
‘The new rangers must be extra excited at all these dolphins arriving then.’
‘They are keen, Thom. They know this is the start of something special and they want to be in on it.’
‘You mean the enhancement program, or Attunga dolphins in general?’
‘Both. Attunga’s suddenly got nine thousand dolphins who will never be enhanced so they’ll be working with them for fifty or sixty years while the enhanced side of things starts to build. It will be slow at first then faster with each new generation.’
‘Dingoes! The doctor must be working like crazy. Have all these dolphins had their health checks yet?’ asked Thom.
‘The standard ones were started on the Comets and finished in the first couple of days. Now they’re onto the follow-ups and developing individual healthbots.’
‘Are many of them needing follow-ups?’
Follow-ups was Calen’s term for the treatment of any immediate health problem which the initial health check uncovered, like the liver weakness Peggy from Martin’s pod had suffered.
‘Many? Almost all of them, Thom. They’re nearly all wild dolphins who’ve never had any kind of checkup ever.’
‘That can’t be right?
They’ve nearly all got something wrong?’
‘Natural things mostly, like parasites and viruses and traces of toxic substances. Earth’s oceans aren’t a controlled environment like our reaches, and they’re still recovering from the pollution times.’
‘The oceans looked good at all the pick-up places we went to.’
‘They are, compared to what they used to be. These dolphins are tougher than ours and when their problems are cleared up they’ll be incredibly healthy and active.’
‘Tougher? No way. Our dolphins are bigger and stronger than all of them.’
‘Not that kind of tough, Thom. These dolphins have naturally fought all their life to survive through hunger and sickness and predation without any help from humans. Our dolphins don’t face anything like that.’
This was interesting and Wirrin thought it might be tied in with Sonic’s shark reach idea.
‘You think our dolphins have it too easy then?’
‘I don’t, but Sonic talks about it with Yajala sometimes.’
Calen suddenly swerved his skimmer in a new direction. Wirrin and Thom automatically followed and, looking ahead, saw a group of other skimmers in the distance.
‘Sonic might be with this pod. Come on, let’s see who can reach him first.’
***
‘Three and a half days? That’s a long trip.’
‘Pirramar is happy for you to go, Wirrin, and because you’ll miss some of his work he’ll arrange another challenge program for your spare time.’
Sonic was making that part up because Wirrin would have to miss out on a full day of the AI studies he was always talking about enthusiastically.
‘I’ll make up some challenges for you then, and we can do them together.’
Sonic made a happy sound that Wirrin was now included in their next adventure – his description for the trip he’d researched and planned, and was just now outlining. Calen would automatically be going, and so would Thom because the Comet would have to accompany Sonic.
Wirrin was the only one who needed special arrangements and if Pirramar had already said he was happy then Sonic had obviously already cleared the way.