by David Brin
He wanted to scream, but air was very dear.
A piercing whistle brought him around in a painful, disorienting instant. He sat up suddenly and felt the sled bounce unhappily with the motion. While his eyes made a blurred jumble of the horizon, a stiff breeze blew against his face. The tang of Kithrup greeted his nostrils.
"About time, Ladder-runner. You gave us quite a scare."
Toshio wavered, then saw Hikahi floating nearby, inspecting him with one eye.
"Are you okay, little Sharp-Eyes?"
"Um… yes. I think so."
"Then you had better get to work on your hose. We had to nip it to give you air."
Toshio felt the knife-edged cut. He noticed that both hands were neatly bandaged.
"Was anyone else hurt?" he asked as he felt through his thigh pocket for his repair kit.
"A few minor burns. We enjoyed the fight, after learning you were all right-t. Thank you for telling us about Ssassia. We'd never have looked there had you not been caught and then told us what you found.
"They are cutting her loose now"
Toshio knew he should be grateful to Hikahi for putting the misadventure in that light. By rights he should be getting a tongue-lashing for rashly leaving formation, and almost losing his life.
But Toshio felt too lost to allow himself even gratitude to the dolphin lieutenant. "I suppose they haven't found Phip-pit?"
"Of him there's been no sign."
The slow rotation of Kithrup had taken the sun past what would look like four o'clock, Earth time. Low clouds were gathering on the eastern horizon. There was a choppiness to the water that had been absent before.
"There may be a small squall later," Hikahi said. "It may be unwise to use Earth instincts on another world, but I think we have nothing to fear…"
Toshio looked up. There was something to the south… He squinted.
There it was again, a flash, and then another. Two tiny bursts of light followed in quick succession, almost invisible against the sea glare.
"How long has that been going on?" he gestured toward the southern sky.
"What do you mean, Toshio?"
"That flashing. Is it lightning?"
The fin's eyes widened and her mouth curled slightly. Hikahi's flukes churned and she rose up in the water to turn first one eye, then the other, toward the south.
"I detect nothing, Sharp-Eyes. Tell me what you see."
"Multicolored flashes. Bursts of light. Lots of…" Toshio stopped wrapping his air hose. He stared for a moment, trying to remember.
"Hikahi," he said slowly. "I think Akkia called me during the fight with the weed. Did you get anything over your set?"
"No I didn't, Toshio. But remember, we fins aren't yet so good at abstract thought while fighting. T-try to recall what he said, please."
Toshio touched his forehead. The encounter with the weed wasn't something he wanted to think about, right now. It all blended in with his nightmare, a jumbling of colors and noises and confusion.
"I think… I think he said something about wanting us to keep radio silence and come home… something about a space battle going on?"
Hikahi let out a whistling moan and flipped out of the water in a backward dive. She was back immediately, tail churning.
* Close-up
Lock-up
* Go the other way — than up!
Sloppy Trinary There were nuances in Primal Dolphin which Toshio, of couse, couldn't understand. But they sent a thrill down his spine. Hikahi was the last fin he would ever have expected to slip into Primal. As he finished wrapping his air hose, he realized with chagrin what his failure to tell Hikahi earlier might have cost them all.
He slapped his faceplate shut and flopped over to press the buoyancy valve on the sled, checking simultaneously the telltales on his helmet rim. He ran through the pre-dive checklist with a rapidity only a fourth-generation Calafian colonist could have achieved.
The bow of the sled was sinking quickly as the sea erupted to his right. Seven dolphins breached in a spume of water and exhaled breath.
"S-s-sassia's tied to your stern, Toshio. Can you shake your leg?" Keepiru urged. "Now is no time to dawdle making up t-t-tunes!"
Toshio grimaced. How could Keepiru have fought so hard earlier to save the life of someone he ridiculed so?
He remembered the way Keepiru had torn into the weed, the desperate look in his eye, and the glow it had taken when he saw it. Yet now he was cruel and taunting as ever.
A sharp blast of light flashed in the east, searing the sky all around them. The fins squealed almost as one, and immediately dove — all except Keepiru, who stayed beside Toshio-as the eastern cloudline spat fire into the afternoon sky.
The sled finally sank, but in the last instant Toshio and Keepiru saw a hurtling battle of giants.
A huge, arrowhead-shaped space vessel plummeted down on them, pitted and fiery. Wind-swept trailers of purple smoke boiled out of great gashes in its sides, to be flung back into the needle-narrow shock front of its supersonic flight. The shock wave warped even the shimmer of the great ship's defensive shields, shells of gravity and plasma that sparkled with unhealthful overload.
Two grapnel-shaped destroyers dogged it no more than four ship lengths behind. Beams of accelerated anti-matter flashed from each of the trefoils, hitting their mark twice in terrible explosions.
Toshio was five meters below the surface when the sonic boom hit. It slammed the sled over, and kept it tumbling amid a roar that sounded like a house caving in. The water was a churning maelstrom of bubbles and bodies.
As he struggled with the sled, Toshio thanked Infinity he hadn't been at the surface to hear the battle passing by. At Morgran they had seen ships die. But never this close.
The noise finally settled down to a long, loud growling. Toshio got the sled righted at last.
Ssassia's sad corpse still lay tied to the rear end of the sled. The other fins, too scared or prudent to go above, began taking turns at the small airdomes that lined the bottom rim of the sled. It was Toshio's job to keep the sled still. It wasn't easy in the churning water, but he did it without a thought.
They were near the sloping western edge of a huge, grayish metal-mound. Sea-plants grew at intervals along its side. They looked nothing like the strangle weed, but that was no guarantee.
More and more, Toshio was coming to dislike being here. He wished he was home, where the dangers were simple, and easily handled — kelp Wingers and island turtles and the like — and where there were no ETs.
"Are you all right?" Hikahi asked as she came by. The dolphin lieutenant radiated calm.
"I'm fine," he grumped. "It's a good thing I didn't wait any longer to tell you about Akki's message, though. You have every reason to be mad at me."
"Don't be silly. Now we head back. Brookida is fatigued, so I've lashed him under an airdome. You will forge ahead with the scouts. We'll follow. Now t-take off!"
"Aye, sir." Toshio took his bearings and pushed the throttle. The thrusters hummed as the sled accelerated. Several of the stronger swimmers maintained pace alongside, as the mound slowly receded on the right.
It had taken them five minutes or so to get started. They were barely under way before the tsunami hit.
It was not a huge wave, merely the first of a series of ripples spreading from a point where a pebble had plunked into the sea. The pebble happened to be a space ship half a kilometer long. It had plunked, at supersonic speed, a mere fifty kilometers away.
The wave jerked the sled upward and sideways, almost shaking the boy off. A cloud of sea debris, torn-up plants, and dead and living fish whirled about him like clods in a cyclone. The roar was deafening.
Toshio clutched the controls desperately. Somehow, against incredible momentum, he managed slowly to drive the prow of the sled up and away from the wave front. Just in time, he thrust out of the curling, downward circulation and sent the tiny craft flying along the direction the current wanted to go. Eastward.
<
br /> An ash-gray form speared past him on his left. In a flash he recognized Keepiru, struggling to keep control in the churning waters. The fin squeaked something indecipherable in Trinary, then was gone.
Some instinct guided Toshio, or perhaps it was the sonar screen, now a mess of jumbled snow, but still bearing the faint, fading traces of the terrain map it had shown only moments before. Toshio forced the sled to bear to the left as hard as possible.
The emergency-power roar of the engines changed to a scream as he suddenly slewed hard to port in desperation. The huge, dark bulk of a metal-mound loomed ahead! Already he could feel undertow as the wave began to form breakers to his right, curling as the cycloid rode up the sloping shore of the island.
Toshio wanted to cry out, but the struggle took all of his breath. He clenched his teeth and counted as the terrible seconds passed.
The sled drove past the cliff-like northern shore amid a cloud of bubbles. Though he was still underwater, he could look downward a dozen meters to his right, and see the lower beach plants of the island. He was riding in the center of a tall mound of water.
Then he was past! The sea opened up and one of the deep oceanic rills lay beneath him, dark and seemingly bottomless. Toshio slammed the bow planes forward and vented his tanks. The sled plummeted faster than he had ever dived before.
His stern pulled forward precariously. Toshio passed clouds of falling debris. The darkness and cold came up at him, and he sought the chill as a refuge.
The valley sloped below him as he brought the sled to a quiet depth. He could sense the tsunami rolling by above him. The sea plants all around waved in an obviously unaccustomed manner. A slow rain of falling rubbish drifted down on all sides, but at least the water wasn't trying to beat him to death anymore. Toshio flattened out his dive and headed toward the valley center, away from everything. Then he let himself sag in an agony of bruised muscles and adrenalin reaction.
He blessed the tiny, man-designed symbiotes that were right now scavenging his blood of excess nitrogen, preventing narcosis raptures at this depth.
Toshio cranked the engines down to one-quarter, and they sighed, sounding almost relieved. The lamps on the sled's display were mostly green, surprisingly, after the treatment the sled had received.
One of the telltales caught his eye — it indicated an airdome in operation. Suddenly Toshio noticed a faint, singing sound; it was a whistling of patience and reverence.
* The Ocean is as is as is -
the endless sigh of dreaming -
* Of other seas that are that are -
and others in them, dreaming — *
Toshio reached out and snapped on the hydrophones.
"Brookida! Are you okay! Is your air all right?"
There was a sigh, tremulous and tired.
"Fleet-t-t Fingers, hello. Thank you for saving my life. You flew as truly as any Tursiops."
"That ship we saw must have crashed! If that's what it was you can bet there will be aftershocks! Maybe we'd better stay down here a while. I'll turn on the sonar so others can find us and come for air while the waves pass." He flicked a switch, and immediately a low series of clicks emanated into the surrounding water. Brookida groaned.
"They will not come, Toshio. Can't you hear them? They won't answer your call."
Toshio frowned. "They have to! Hikahi will know about the aftershocks. They're probably looking for us right now! Maybe I'd better head back…" He moved to turn the sled and blow ballast. Brookida had started him worrying.
"Don't go, Toshio! It will do no good for you to die as well! Wait until the waves pass-s-s! You must live to tell Creideiki!"
"What are you talking about?"
"Listen, Sharp-Eyes. Listen!"
Toshio shook his head, then swore and pulled back on the throttle until the engine died. He turned up the gain on the hydrophones.
"Do you hear?" Brookida asked.
Toshio cocked his head and listened. The sea was a mess of intonation. The roar of the departing wave dopplered down as he lay there. Schools of fish made panicky noises. All around came the reports of rockslides and surf pounding on the islands.
Then he heard it. The shrill repetitive squeals of Primal Dolphin. No modern dolphin spoke it when fully in command of his faculties.
That, in itself, was bad news.
One of the cries was clear. He could easily make out the basic distress call. It was the earliest Dolphin signal human scientists had understood.
But the other noise… at least three voices were involved in that one. It was a strange sound, very poignant and very wrong!
"It isss rescue fever," Brookida groaned. "Hikahi is beached and injured. She might have stopped this, but she is delirious and now adds to the problem!"
"Hikahi…"
"Like Creideiki, she is an adept of Keneenk… the study of logical discipline. She would have been able to force the others to ignore the cries of those washed ashore, to make them dive to safety for a t-time."
"Don't they realize there will be aftershocks?"
"Shockss hardly matter, Sharp-Eyes!" Brookida cried. "They may beach themselves without assist! You are Calafian. How can you not know this about usss? I thrash here to go and die answering that call!"
Toshio groaned. Of course he knew about rescue fever, in which panic and fear washed aside the veneer of civilization, leaving a cetacean with only one thought — to save his comrades, whatever the personal risk. Every few years the tragedy struck even the highly advanced fins of Calafia. Akki had told him, once, that sometimes the sea itself seemed to be calling for help. Some humans claimed to have felt it, too — particularly those who took dolphin RNA in the rites of the Dreamer Cult.
Once upon a time the Tursiops, or bottlenose dolphin, had been about the least likely cetacean to beach himself. But genetic engineering had upset the balance somewhere. As the genes of other species were spliced onto the basic Tursiops model, a few things had been thrown out of kilter. For three generations human geneticists had been working on the problem. But for now the fins swam along a knife edge, where irrationality was a perpetual danger.
Toshio bit his lip. "They have their harnesses," he said uncertainly.
"One can hope. But is it likely they'll use them properly when they are even now speaking P-primal?"
Toshio struck the sled with his balled fist. Already his hand was growing numb from the chill. "I'm going up," he announced.
"No! You must not! You must guard your safet-ty!"
Toshio ground his teeth. Always mothering me. Mothering or teasing. The fns treat me like a child, and I'm sick of it!
He set the throttle to one-quarter and pulled up on the bow planes. "I'm going to unlash you, Brookida. Can you swim okay?"
"Yesss. But-t…"
Toshio looked at his sonar. A fuzzy line was forming in the west.
"Can you swim!" he demanded.
"Yesss. I can swim well enough. But don't cut me loose near the rescue fever! Don't you risk the aftershocksss!"
"I see one coming now. They'll be several minutes apart and weakening with time. I'll fix it so we rise just after this one passes. Then you've got to get going back to the ship! Tell them what's happened and get help."
"That's what you should do, Toshio."
"Never mind that! Will you do as I ask? Or do I have to leave you lashed up!"
There was an almost unnoticeable pause, but Brookida's voice changed. "I shall do exactly as you say Toshio. I'll bring help."
Toshio checked his trim, then he slipped over the side, holding onto the rim stanchions with one hand. Brookida looked at him through the transparent shell of the airdome. The tough bubble membrane surrounded the dolphin's head. Toshio tore loose the lashings holding Brookida in place. "You're going to have to take a breather with you, you know."
Brookida sighed as Toshio pulled a lever by the airdome. A small hose descended, one end covering Brookida's blowhole. Like a snake, ten feet of hose wrapped around Brookida's tor
so. Breathers were uncomfortable, and hindered speech. But by wearing one Brookida would not have to come up for air. The breather would help the old metallurgist ignore the cries in the water — a constant, uncomfortable reminder of his membership in a technological culture.
Toshio left Brookida tied in place by a single lashing. He pulled himself back onto the upper surface just as the first aftershock rolled overhead.
The sled bucked, but he was prepared this time. They were deep, and the wave passed with surprising quickness.
"Okay, here goes." He pushed the throttle forward to max and blew ballast.
Soon the metal island appeared on his left. The screams of his comrades became distinctly louder over the sonar set. The distress call was now pre-eminent over the rescue fever response.
Toshio steered past the mound to the north. He wanted to give Brookida a big head start.
Just then, however, a sleek gray figure shot past Toshio, just overhead. He recognized it at once, and where it was headed.
He cut the last lashing. "Get moving, Brookida! If you come back anywhere near this island again I'll rip off your harness and bite your tail in half!"
He didn't bother looking back as Brookida dropped away and the sled turned sharply. He kicked in emergency power to try to catch up with Keepiru. The fastest swimmer in the Streak's crew was heading directly for the western beach. His cries were pure Primal Dolphin.
"Damn you, Keepiru. Stop!"
The sled sped quickly, just under the water's surface. The afternoon had aged, and there was a reddish tinge to the clouds, but Toshio could clearly see Keepiru leaping from wavelet to wavelet up ahead. He appeared indifferent to Toshio's calls as he neared the island where his comrades lay beached and delirious.
Toshio felt helpless. Another aftershock was due in three minutes. If it didn't beach the dolphin, Keepiru's own efforts probably would. Keepiru came from Atlast, a new and rather rustic colony world. It was doubtful he had learned the tools of mental discipline studied by Creideiki and Hikahi.
"Stop! If we time it right we can work as a team! We can avoid the aftershocks! Will you let me catch up?" he screamed. But it was no use. The fin had too much of a head start. The futile chase frustrated Toshio. How could he have lived and worked with dolphins all his life and known them so poorly? To think the Terragens Council had chosen him for this tour because of his experience with fins! Hah!