Startide Rising u-2

by David Brin

  : Yes :

  Creideiki thought not in Anglic or Trinary, but in the new language he had been learning.

  : There is ancient anger within this world : I have heard its song :

  The dream-god's great brow sparkled starlight. Its small jaw opened. Teeth shone.

  : And What Do You Plan To Do? :

  Creideiki sensed that It already knew the answer.

  : My Duty : He replied in Its own speech.

  : What Else Can I Ever Do? :

  From the depths of the Whale Dream, It sighed approval.

  Creideiki turned up the gain on his hydrophones. There were faraway excited echoes from up ahead — joyous sounds of greeting.

  Creideiki looked at his sled's sonar display. At the far edge of its range was a small cluster of dots coming inward. They joined the specks that were Streaker's scouts. The first group had to be Tsh't's party from the Seahorse.

  Making sure no one was nearby to take note, he turned his sled aside into a small side canyon. He slipped behind the shadows of a rock outcrop and turned off his engine. He waited then, watching Streaker pass below his aerie, until she vanished, along with the last of her flankers, around a curve in the long canyon.

  "Good-bye…" He concentrated on the Anglic words, one at a time. "Good-bye… and… good luck…"

  When it was safe, he turned on his sled and rose out of the little niche. He swung about and headed northward, toward the place they had left twenty hours before.

  : You Can Come Along If You Like : he told the god — part figment of his mind, part something else. The ghostly figure answered in un-words made up from Creideiki's own sonar sounds.

  : I Accompany You : I Would Not Miss This For The Song of the World :

  PART SEVEN

  The Food Chain

  "Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea."

  "Why, as men do aland — the great ones eat up the little ones."

  — WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, King Richard the Second

  73 ::: Akki

  It was a scream that curdled his marrow. Only a monster could make a sound like that. He fled it almost as hard as he fled the creature that voiced it.

  By noontime Akki realized it was nearly over.

  His exhaustion showed in a laboring heart and heavy breathing, but also in a painful sloughing of the outer layers of his skin. His allergic reaction to the water seemed to be aggravated by fatigue. It had grown worse as he frantically dodged in and out amongst tiny islets. His once-smooth, dynamically supple hide was now a rough mass of sores. His mind felt little more agile than his body.

  Several times he had escaped traps that should have left him meat. Once he had fled a sonar reflection almost into K'tha-Jon's jaws. The giant had grinned and flourished his laser rifle as Akki turned away frantically. It hadn't been by speed or cleverness that Akki escaped. He realized that his enemy was just toying with him.

  He had hoped to flee northward, toward Toshio's island, but now he was all turned around, and north was lost to him. Perhaps if he could wait until sunset…

  No. I won't last that long. It's time to end it.

  The chilling hunt-scream pealed out again. The ululation seemed to coagulate the water around him.

  A large part of Akki's fatigue had come from the involuntary terror that cry sent through him. What devil was it, that chased him?

  A little while ago he thought he had distantly heard another cry. It sounded like a Tursiops search call. But he was probably imagining things. Whatever was going on back at Streaker, they couldn't have spared anyone to look for him. Even if they had, how could anyone ever find him in this wide ocean?

  He had done Streaker one service, in distracting the monster K'tha-Jon, in leading him away from where he could do worse harm.

  I hope Gillian and Hikahi got back and straightened things out, he thought. I'm sure they did.

  He took quiet breaths in the shadow of a rock cleft. K'tha-Jon knew where he was, of course. It was only a matter of time until he grew bored with the chase and came to collect his prey.

  I'm fading, Akki thought. I've got to finish this while there's a chance to win something from it — even if it's just the honor of choosing my own time to die.

  He checked the charge on his harness cells. There was only enough for two good shots from his cutter torch. Those would have to be from very short range, and no doubt K'tha-Jon's rifle was almost fully charged.

  With his harness-hands Akki plugged his breather back over his blowmouth. Ten minutes of oxygen remained. More than enough.

  The high scream echoed again, chilling, taunting.

  All right, monster. He clenched his jaw to keep from shivering again. Hold your horses. I'm coming.

  74 ::: Keepiru

  Keepiru raced to the northeast, toward the battle sounds he had heard during the night. He swam hard and fast at the surface, arching and thrusting to drive through the water. He cursed at the drag of his harness, but to drop it was unthinkable.

  Once again he cursed the damnable luck. Both his and Moki's sleds were used up, worthless, and had to be left behind.

  As he entered the maze of tiny islands, he heard the hunt-scream clearly for the first time.

  Until now he could tell himself he was imagining things that distance or some strange refraction in the water had tricked him into hearing what could not be.

  The screeching cry pealed out, reflecting from the metal-mounds. Keepiru whirled, and it momentarily seemed a pack of hunters was all around him.

  Then came another sound, a brave and very faint skirr of distant Trinary. Keepiru swung his jaw about, chose a direction, and swam for all he was worth.

  His muscles flexed powerfully as he streaked through the maze. When a rasping buzz told him his breather was near empty, he cursed as he popped the thing loose, and continued his dash along the surface, puffing and blowing with each driving arch.

  He came to a narrow meeting of channels and swung about in confusion.

  Which way! He swiveled about until the hunt cry echoed once more. Then there was a terrible crashing sound. He heard a squeal of outrage and pain, and the soft whine of a harness in operation. Another faint Trinary challenge was answered by a shivering scream and another crash.

  Keepiru sprinted. It couldn't be far! He dashed, sparing none of his reserves, just as there came a final call of exhausted defiance.

  * For the honor

  Of Calafia… *

  The voice disappeared under a scream of savage triumph. Then there was silence.

  It took him another five minutes, frantically casting about the narrow passages, to find the battleground. The taste of the water, when Keepiru sped into the quiet strait, told him he was too late.

  He caught up short and stopped just short of entering a small vale between three metal-mounds. Coppery strands of dangle-weed floated overhead.

  Pink froth spread from the center of the tiny valley, with streamers of red in the direction of the prevailing currents. At the center, enmeshed in a tangle of wrecked harness parts, the body of a young amicus neo-fin, already partly dismembered, drifted belly up, teased and tugged at by the red jaws of a giant dolphin.

  A giant dolphin? How, in all the time since they had left Earth, had he not noticed this before? He desperately reattached a fresh breather from his harness, and took gasping breaths while he watched and listened to the killer.

  Look at the deep countershading, he told himself. Look at the short jaw, the great teeth, the short, sharp dorsal fin.

  Listen to him!

  K'tha-Jon grunted contentedly as he ripped a piece from Akki's side. The giant didn't even appear to notice the long burn along his left flank, or the bruise slowly spreading from the point where Akki's last desperate ramming had come home.

  Keepiru knew the monster was aware of him. K'tha-Jon lazily swallowed, then rose to the surface for air. When he descended he looked right at Keepiru.

  "Well, Pilot?" he murmured happily.

  Keepi
ru used Anglic, though the breather muffled the words.

  "I've just dealt with one monster, K'tha-Jon, but your devolution fouls our entire race."

  K'tha-Jon's derision was a series of high snorts.

  "You think I have reverted, like that pathetic Stenosss Moki, don't you, Pilot?"

  Keepiru could only shake his head, unable to bring himself to say what he thought the bosun had become.

  "Can a devolved dolphin speak Anglic as well as I?" K'tha-Jon sneered. ".Or use logic thisss way? Would a reverted Tursiops, or even a pure Stenosss, have pursued an air breathing prey with such determination… and satisssfaction?

  "True, the crisis of the last few weeks allowed something deep within me to burssst free. But can you truly listen to me and then call me a devolved dolphin?"

  Keepiru looked at the pink froth around the giant's stubby, powerful jaws. Akki's corpse drifted away slowly with the tide.

  "I know what you are, K'tha-Jon." Keepiru switched to Trinary.

  * Cold water boils

  When you scream

  * Red jawed hunger

  Fills your dream.

  * Harpoons slew

  The whales,

  * The nets of Iki

  Caught us,

  * Yet you, alone

  We feared at night

  * You alone -

  … Orca.

  K'tha-Jon's jaw gaped in satisfaction, as if he were accepting an accolade. He rose for air and returned a few meters closer to Keepiru, grinning.

  "I guessssed the truth some time ago. I am one of the prized experiments of our beloved human-patron Ignacio Metz. That-t fool did one great thing, for all of his ssstupidity. Some of the others he snuck into berths on Streaker did revert or go mad. But I am a successs…"

  "You are a calamity!" Keepiru spluttered, prevented by the breather from using other words more to the point.

  K'tha-Jon drifted a few meters closer, causing Keepiru to back away involuntarily. The giant stopped again; a satisfied clicking emanated from his brow.

  "Am I, Pilot? Can you, a simple fish-eater, understand your betters? Are you worthy to judge one whose forebears were at the top-p of the ocean food-chain? And dealt as judges of the sssea with all your kind?"

  Keepiru was hardly listening, uncomfortably aware of the vanishing distance between himself and the monster.

  "You arrogate t-too much. You have only a few gene splices from…"

  "I am ORCA!" K'tha-Jon screamed. The cry echoed like a high paean of bugles. "The superficial body is nothing! It is the brain and blood that matter. Listen to me, and dare deny what I am!"

  K'tha-Jon's jaw-clap was like a gunshot. The hunt cry pealed forth and Keepiru, under its direct focus, felt a deep instinct well up, a desire to tuck himself inward, to hide or die.

  Keepiru resisted. He forced himself to assume an assertive body stance and bite out words of defiance.

  "You are devolved, K'tha-Jon! Worse, you are a mutant thing, with no heritage at all. Metz's grafts went bad. Do you think-k a true Orca would do what you've done? They do hunt fallow dolphins on Earth, but never when sssated! The true killer whale does not kill out of spite!"

  Keepiru defecated and flicked it in the giant's direction with his flukes.

  "You are a failed experiment, K'tha-Jon! You say you're still logical, but now you have no home. And when my report gets back to Earth your gene-plasm will be poured into the sewers! Your line will end the way monsters end."

  K'tha-Jon's eyes gleamed. He swept Keepiru with sonar, as if to memorize every curve of an intended prey.

  "What gave you the idea you were ever going to reportt-t?" he hissed.

  Keepiru grinned open-mouthed. "Why, the simple fact that you are a crippled, insane monster whose blunt snout couldn't stave in cardboard, whose maleness satisfies only pool-gratings, bringing forth nothing but stale water… "

  The giant screamed again, this time in rage. As K'tha-Jon charged Keepiru whirled and darted into a side channel, fleeing just ahead of the powerful jaws.

  Tearing through a thick hedge of dangle-weed, Keepiru congratulated himself. By taunting K'tha-Jon into a personal vendetta he had made the creature forget entirely about his harness… and the laser rifle. K'tha-Jon obviously intended to kill Keepiru the way he had finished off Akki.

  Keepiru fled a bare body length ahead of the mutant.

  So far so good, he thought as the sparkling metal hillsides rushed past.

  But it proved hard to shake his pursuer. And the menacing jaws made Keepiru wonder if his strategy had been so wise, after all. The chase went on and on, while the afternoon waned. As the sun set they were at it, still.

  In the darkness, it became purely a battle of wits and of sound.

  The nocturnal denizens of the archipelago fled in dismay as two swift foreign monsters streaked in and out of the inter-island channels, swerving and darting in streaming clouds of bubbles. As they swept by, they sprayed the depths and shallows with complex and confusing patterns of sound — compounded images and vivid illusions of echoes. Local fishes, even the giants, fled the area, leaving it to the battling aliens.

  It was an eerie game of image and shadow, of deception and sudden ambush.

  Keepiru slid out of a narrow, silted channel and listened. It had been an hour since he last heard the hunt-scream, but that didn't mean K'tha-Jon was being silent. Keepiru built a mental map of the surrounding area from the reflections that came to him, and knew that some of those images were subtly crafted constructs. The giant was nearby, using his immensely talented sonic organs to place an overlay of untruth over the echoes of this place.

  Keepiru wished he could see. But the midnight clouds cast everything into darkness. Only faintly phosphorescent plants illuminated the seascape.

  He rose to the surface for breath, and looked at the faint, silvery underlining of the clouds. In a dismal, gloomy drizzle, the vegetation on the hulking metal-mounds swished and swayed.

  Keepiru took seven breaths then descended again. Down below was where the battle would be settled.

  Phantoms swam through the open channels. A false echo seemed to present an opening directly to the north, the direction Keepiru had been trying to lead the chase, but on careful examination he concluded it was an illusion.

  Another such fake passage earlier had fooled him until, at the last moment, he had swerved away, too late to keep from slamming into the vine-covered verge of a metal-mound. Battered, he had fought free of the tangle just in time to escape a ramming. K'tha-Jon's giant muzzle missed him by inches. As he fled, Keepiru was struck by a grazing bolt from the laser rifle. It had seared a hot burn into his left side. It hurt like bloody hell.

  Only his greater maneuverability had enabled him to escape that time, to find a refuge to ride out waves of pain.

  He could probably elude the pseudo-Orca in time. But time was not on his side. K'tha-Jon had dedicated himself to a ritual hunt and spared no thought for anything beyond it.

  He did not plan to return to civilization. All he had to do was prevent Keepiru from reporting back, and trust Ignacio Metz to protect his birthright back on Earth.

  Keepiru, though, had responsibilities. And Streaker wouldn't wait for him if she got a chance to flee.

  Still, he thought. Am I really trying all that hard to get away?

  He frowned and shook his head. Two hours ago he had been almost sure he had lost K'tha-Jon. Instead of making good his escape, he had turned around, under some rationalization he couldn't even remember now, until he picked up the giant's sound-scent again. His enemy felt him, too. In moments the hunt-scream pealed forth, and the mutant was after him again.

  Why did I do that?

  An idea glimmered for a moment… the truth… But Keepiru thrust it aside. K'tha-Jon was coming. He barely noticed the thrill of adrenalin that overcame the pain of his bruises and burns.

  The illusions vanished like an unraveling bank of fog, dissolving into constituent clicks and whispers. In a swirl of power
ful fluke strokes, the giant entered the channel below Keepiru. The white countershading of the sport's belly showed against the gloom as K'tha-Jon rose for air, then swam past Keepiru's niche, casting pulse-beams of search sonar in front of him.

  Keepiru waited until the monster had passed, then rose to the surface himself. He blew softly five times, then sank without moving a fin.

  The monster was ten meters away. Keepiru made no sound as K'tha-Jon ascended and blew again. But as the Stenos descended, Keepiru aimed a tight burst of clicks to carom off two metal-mounds across the channel.

  The semi-Orca swerved quickly and dashed to Keepiru's left, passing almost beneath him, chasing the illusion.

  Like a diving missile, Keepiru dropped, nose first, toward his enemy.

  The hunter's senses were incredible, for all of Keepiru's unnatural quiet. K'tha-Jon heard something behind him and swiveled like a dervish to come upright in the water, half facing Keepiru.

  The angle was suddenly wrong for a ramming or raking.

  The laser rifle swung toward him, and the giant jaws. To abort and flee would invite a sure laser blast!

  Keepiru had a sudden flash of memory. He remembered his tactics instructor at the academy, lecturing about the benefits of surprise.

  "…It's the one unique weapon in our arsenal, as sentient Earthlings, that others cannot duplicate… :'

  Keepiru accelerated, and pulled up in front of K'tha-Jon, coming belly to belly with the astonished creature. He grinned.

  * Who can deny

  An attentive suitor -

  * Let's dance! *

  Keepiru's harness whined, and the three waldo-arms snapped out to grab K'tha-Jon's and lock them into place.

  The stunned ex-bosun screamed in rage and snapped his jaws at Keepiru, but he couldn't bend far enough. He tried to lash out with his massive flukes, but Keepiru's tail flexed back and forth with his adversary's in perfect rhythm.