Cachalot

by Alan Dean Foster

  Everyone knew that had the catodons so chosen, several of them could have landed precisely on the ship itself. The vessel would have vanished beneath the sea, to rise in thousands of fragments minutes later. Instead, it was the pod that rose, like several hundred gigantic corks, to dot the surface with dozens of temporary islands. They did not remain, but cruised steadily on their unchanged course. The helmsman jockeyed constantly, trying to avoid ramming the whale immediately ahead without being overrun by the ones just behind.

  A new sound filled the air, dozens of explosive whooshes and pops as the pod flushed the built-up carbon dioxide from its lungs. An organic fog momentarily obliterated the sky above the patch of disturbed ocean, until the gentle breeze dissipated it forever.

  Hwoshien said into the com unit, without any change of tone, "Easy ahead, helmsman. You're doing fine. Don't screw up." He appeared completely unaffected by the titanic display of power and unity they had just been treated to.

  Vast, sliding bulks hemmed the ship in. The majority of them were larger than the foil.

  Mataroreva still looked worried. "What's the matter?' Cora asked.

  "I know what you're thinking, but it's not the catodons now. I don't see Latehoht or Wenkoseemansa or any of the orcas."

  "They said they wouldn't interfere. I expect Kinehahtoh and the rest of the pack accepted Hwoshien's offer to stay out of this."

  "I know, but still, Latehoht and her mate…" His voice trailed away. A surprise, she mused. For all his railing about the cetaceans' different method of thinking, he still half hoped his two friends might have chosen to stay with him instead of with their kind.

  Cora found her thoughts turning more to the minds of the catodons than to Sam's. What was their state of mind now? If she could see inside those massive brains, what peculiar, alien concepts would she share?

  As yet they might not know that she and Sam and those who had intruded on them before were once more among them. Hwoshien's ship was larger than the little research vessel that had originally carried them out from Mou'anui. How irritable would they be? More importantly, how intractable when it came time to ask what had to be asked?

  Mataroreva slipped down his translator unit. "Time to talk, before they make up their minds to do anything."

  Cora adjusted her own, as did Hwoshien and Dawn.

  Rachael and Merced rejoined them, already properly equipped for interspecies conversation.

  It was decided that Mataroreva would speak first, as before. He leaned over the portside of the bow, chose a subject, and shouted hopefully, "How goes your journey, youngling?" The translator could interpret that query several ways. It might refer to the journey for food, the whale's personal odyssey, or the catodonian journey through life. She guessed that he left it purposely indistinct, perhaps to provoke a questioning response.

  A very young whale, no more than four meters in length, responded by angling for the flank of the ship.

  "Human ones, I have never seen that—" A vast mass suddenly appeared beneath the juvenile, nudged it aside.

  "Will you talk, mother?" Mataroreva hurriedly inquired of the female who had interposed herself between ship and offspring. She and the infant slid away, and what she replied was not translated effectively.

  Mataroreva managed a tight grin, however. "Scolding the child, I would guess. Trying to keep him from the evil influence of human beings."

  Abruptly, a gigantic bulk emerged alongside the ship. A vast skull, larger than most of the creatures that had dwelled on the Earth or in its waters, reared above the surface. Cora immediately recognized the gnarls and whorls that slashed it, like markings on some ancient tree.

  "Greetings, old one," Mataroreva offered in recognition.

  "Human, I Know You," a vast, sighing voice said through Cora's headset. The eye set back and just above the wrinkled jaw flicked across the railing. "I Know Most Of Thee. We Did Talk To Little Purpose Not Long Ago." Lumpjaw paused, considering how to proceed.

  "We Did All Our Talking Then. Why Dost Thou

  Disturb Us Yet Again?" No one could mistake the urgent edge to that question, nor the implied threat behind it. Normal catadonian apathy was changing to anger.

  "Thou Tryest The Patience Of The Pod. We Will No More Talk With Thee. Go—Now!" he finished emphatically. "Or We Will Not Be Responsible. We Know The Laws And Will Make Use Of Them! Nor Depend On Thy Small Servants To Help Thee. They Are Well Away From This Place And Would Not Help Thee If They Could, For They Also Know The Laws."

  "What is there for them to help us from?" Mataroreva asked with an ease he did not feel. "If we are not friends, at least we are not enemies, for we have not harmed you."

  "Thou Interruptest Thought, Thou Breakest Concentration, As Thou Didst With That Youngling, Thou Lengthenest The Great Journey!" the furious old cetacean stormed.

  "We know and we're sorry," Mataroreva replied quickly. "We just want—"

  A massive pair of flukes slammed dangerously near the ship, dousing everyone on board. "No More Talking! No More Wasted Time! Life Is Short!" Cora found herself wondering at their perception of time, since a healthy catodon could live well over a hundred years, as this patriarch probably already had.

  "We Go This Side Of The Light-Giver. You Go The Opposite Way. Go Now!"

  "That's enough," Hwoshien grumbled outside his headset. "We'll have to find another pod to question, or look elsewhere altogether." He yelled dispiritedly up at the helm. "Slow turn to starboard and quarter speed ahead."

  "Yes, sir," the helmsman acknowledged; he needed no urging to comply.

  "Wait," Cora pleaded with the Commissioner. "We can't give up now. We need to ask only one or two questions."

  "I'll take a reasonable risk," he replied carefully, "such as entering this pod's area. I won't risk a warning such as we've just received." The engines whined behind them.

  She looked imploringly at Mataroreva, found no comfort there. "He's right, Cora." He turned away from her, spoke to his superior. "We might have a chance to locate an isolated…"

  Cora looked wildly around. Anxious crewmembers were rushing preparations to depart. Mataroreva continued to converse in low tones with Hwoshien. Rachael fingered her neurophon and chatted with Merced. Only Dawn appeared unoccupied, and she was staring interestedly at the herd, not at Cora.

  Frustration, loss, Silvio, Rachael, pride, and the eternal burning desire to slay ignorance that so often plagued her combined to push desire past reason in the mental race for attention that was screaming inside her head. Impulse overwhelmed rationality.

  There was a zero-buoyancy rescue disc tied to the railing. She unlatched it, put her other hand on the rail, and vaulted over the side of the ship. The last words she heard were a startled scream from her daughter and a Polynesian oath from Sam.

  Chapter XV

  Her arms threatened to tear from her shoulders as the float disc sank only a few centimeters before bobbing insistently to the surface. She hung on, struggled to adjust her headset translator as she sucked air and climbed onto the stabilizing disc. Though the water was reasonably comfortable even out here in mid-ocean, she still felt cold without her gelsuit.

  As she attempted to get into a lotus position on the disc, water cleared from her eyes and she discovered she was sitting not more than a few meters from a gray promontory. That towering cliff swung slightly toward her as it sensed her presence. Near the line where cliff-head met water, an eye the size of her head impaled her with an unwinking stare.

  She froze on the disc. Too late now to reconsider, too late to apply reason. But commitment did not breed action. She could only sit motionless and stare back.

  The cliff came close to her legs, the entire enormous mass balancing in the water with wonderful delicacy. Behind her, shouts of confusion and worry formed a meaningless babble on the ship. The sounds might as well not have been there, for all the attention she devoted to them. Only she and that curious eye existed.

  Rows of white teeth a fifth of a meter long
lay partly exposed in half-opened jaws. The slight movement of the whale in the water sent swells cascading over her legs and hips, but the disc's stabilizers held her level.

  It required no effort to concentrate wholly on the creature before her. She wished she could see what was going through that huge mind, what emotions if any lay behind that speculative eye. Another impulse, perhaps less rational than the one which had forced her to jump overboard, induced her to reach out a tentative hand. The old catodon did not pull away from her touch. The feel of the skin surprised her. It was smooth and slick, not nearly as rough as it appeared.

  "You Fell," a voice in her headset claimed, strangely noncommittal.

  "No. I jumped." She wondered if the translator would convey her nervousness along with her words.

  If it did, the whale gave no sign that it mattered, for all he came back to her with was, "Why?"

  "You may nor like us," she began, her mind functioning again. "You may not like me. But I am doing only what you or any member of your pod would do, defending the endangered and the calves."

  'There Are No Weak, No Injured, No Calves On Board Your Float," the whale said.

  "No, but there are calves on other floating towns as yet unharmed, healthy ones who stand to be injured, and all who are endangered. I have to help them now, before it's too late."

  "So Thou Riskest Thyself To Learn. Preventive Sacrifice." Cora trembled a little, wondering what the whale meant by the use of the word "sacrifice."

  "Noble. We Do Not Generally Think Of Humans As… Noble. Are These Questions Thou Wouldst Ask So Vital, Then, To Thee?"

  "Not to me. To the endangered, to those who stand to die."

  She waited tensely for the catodon to reply. He had quieted behind her, as everyone on the foil waited breathlessly for the drama to resolve itself.

  Eventually the old whale said, "What, Then, Be A Question In The Scheme of Things? I Waste time With Thee. Yet The Pod Will Progress, The Pod Still Thinks. Ask What Thou Wilt, Female."

  Cora tried to stop shaking. For a moment she marveled that the cetaceans would bother to distinguish sexual characteristics among humans. Then she hurried on.

  "First I have to tell you," she said, feeling like an ant addressing a man, "that we know for a fact that the baleen whales are destroying our towns. We don't know if any of the toothed are involved. If you doubt this, ask your small cousins who travel with us." Silence. "Did you know this?" she added.

  "We Did Not Know This," the whale replied. "Yea, Why Should We Believe Thee Or The Cousins Who Slave For Thee?"

  "They don't slave for us and you know that," she snapped back, affecting an invulnerability she did not possess. "They would never lie to you, and you know that. Certainly not on human account."

  "They Indeed Confirm What Thou Sayest. Normally The Doings Of The Baleen Are Of No More Interest To Us Than The Doings Of Mankind… But… This Is A Most Interesting And Disturbing Thing. Very Difficult It Is To Believe."

  "I myself witnessed one of their attacks. So did my close companions." She gestured back toward the now crowded railing of the suprafoil, where Mataroreva and every other member of the crew stood watching in mute fascination. "They acted in unison," she continued, "according to some prearranged, thought-out plan. Blues, fins, humpbacks, rights, probably seis and greenlands and all other plankton-eaters. We saw none of your people among them, as I said."

  "Naturally Not!" the old one roared confidently.

  "No Catodon Would Participate In Anything So Foolish, To No Philosophical End. And Thou Sayest The Baleens Acted Together? This Is Not Possible. Our Great Cousins Have Not The Intelligence."

  "Something has the intelligence," she insisted, "because it happened. Someone is directing them, instructing them in what to do. We found one who actually participated in at least one attack. It admitted this, yet could not explain why it did so. Whoever is controlling and directing the great whales in these attacks is doing so without their consent."

  "That Is Possible." The old whale sounded a touch tired. "But As I Said, The Doings Of The Baleens Are Of No Real Consequence. It Is Interesting, But That Is All." He slid deeper in the water, preparatory to submerging.

  "Wait! Think a moment, Lumpjaw. Anything that can control the baleens against their will might soon also manage to control your people."

  "That Is Not Possible." He spoke with maddening self-assurance.

  "Probably the baleens think the same thing." She slapped the water angrily, a pitiful gesture that nonetheless made her feel better. "You pride yourselves on your privacy, your chosen isolation and time to think and philosophize. You've elected for yourselves a special nomadic, noninstrumental existence and seek to develop your own kind of civilization. Don't you see that whatever's controlling the baleens is a threat to that, even if you're right and it can never control you? Mightn't it turn the baleens against you, as it has turned them against us?"

  "I Have Said That We Will Not Concern Ourselves With The Activities Of The Baleens, Nor Do We Fear Any Actions Of Our Large But Harmless Cousins."

  "Harmless?" She tried one last time. "How do you

  know what they might be capable of under outside control?"

  Silence for a long moment, and then a bellow that rang around inside her head.

  "PEOPLE!" She forcibly reduced the volume in her headset as the shout reverberated inside her skull like a ball-bearing La a steel globe. "Thou Nearby Have Heard." Answering replies came from at least three dozen cetaceans. Cora had considered the conversation private, but come to think of it, why shouldn't many others of the herd within range have listened in? Were not the catodons developing a cooperative society?

  "What Think Thou," he finished, "Of This Unprecedented Anomaly?"

  "Yes," she said loudly, "and what are you going to do about it?" She fervently hoped she was not overstepping her thinly stretched luck.

  A great deal of rapid intercetacean communication generated a verbal blur in her ears, too rich and rapid for the translator to handle.

  Finally the wrinkled brow turned to her once more. "We Shall Question The Baleens Ourselves About This Peculiar Matter."

  "I told you we already tried that," Cora reminded him. "With a big sulfur-bottom bull. He admitted the attack, admitted being directed, but didn't know how or couldn't say how it was accomplished. Thinking about it gave him a whale-sized headache."

  "All Thoughts Upset The Baleens. They Do Not Like To Think. They Only Like To Eat. Feeding Occupies Too Much Of Their Time. But We Will Question Them." He said it in such as way as to hint that Cora and her friends were guilty of either a wrong approach or collective stupidity. Well, that was fine with her. She had achieved as much as she had dared hope.

  But the catodon added something completely unexpected, unhoped for. "Thou And Thy Companions May Come Along If Thou Wish To, Though I Cannot Say When We Might Encounter Any Of The Great Cousins."

  "Thank you. We—" But the great head sank like a stone. Then Cora felt herself rising. She was preparing to jump clear when the ascent leveled off. She found herself moving toward the ship. Ahead, crewmembers ran in panic to left and right. The head beneath her dipped slightly. She slid a couple of meters to the deck, landed on her feet, and sat down awkwardly. The float disc clattered next to her.

  Mataroreva was the first one to reach her, lifted her to her feet. A smile told him she was all right. She shook free, moved to the rail in time to see the massive skull slip back into the water. A vast, fathomless eye rolled at her. The old leader issued a high, squealing sound the translator could do nothing with. Then he vanished beneath the waves.

  As if directed by a single source, the entire herd began moving northwestward. Their pace increased rapidly. Gigantic backs raced and rolled past the suprafoil, coming within centimeters of its hull. None actually made contact.

  Having also listened in on the conversation, Hwoshien had the presence of mind to order, "Slow ahead, helmsman. When they're completely past and a kilometer out, match spe
ed and maintain that distance!" The suprafoil's engines hummed. Soon it was racing in the wake of the herd like a silver water-strider.

  Mataroreva stood near Cora, towering over her. Yet he no longer seemed so big. "That was a very stupid thing to do," he said quietly.

  "Yes, I know." She ran the absorbent cloth across her legs, began drying her hair. "But we had no choice. We knew that the catodons were our best bet for finding out why the baleens were doing what they were. Our toothed friends didn't know, as it turns out, but maybe we're all going to find out together."

  "Stupid," he reiterated, but it was muted by the admiration in his voice and in his face.

  "Why? What would it have mattered to you if something had happened?"

  "It would have mattered, vahine."

  "Sure. It would have mattered no matter who had been in the water, right?" Not wanting an answer, she slipped past him before he could offer one she wouldn't like.

  Dawn was waiting to confront her. She stared the older woman squarely in the eye, said, "That was the bravest thing I ever saw anyone do."

  Cora hesitated, then smiled. "I didn't think of it as particularly brave. Sam was right. It was a stupid thing to do. I was lucky." Then it hit her, in detail, exactly what she had done. "In fact, I didn't think of it at all. I just did it."

  Behind them both, Merced was nodding understandingly.

  Cora was standing in the bow, watching the spouts and backs leading the ship. Mataroreva had rejoined her and they watched together.

  "What do you think will happen when the catodons confront a baleen or two the way we confronted the blue, and demand an explanation?"

  "I've no idea," he said slowly. "I don't think they'll risk the cetacean peace. But as you've already seen, they can be considerably more forceful than most of their relatives. And where the orcas couldn't do anything with that bull, a couple of catodons could."

  "You think the baleens might fight rather than talk?"

  "No way of telling. Normal relationships are being upset on this world." He nodded toward the distant, curving backs of the herd. "It's awkward, though.