Startide Rising u-2

by David Brin

  Dennie shook her head. "I'm glad you didn't tell me you were going, after all. I would have died of worry"

  Toshio frowned. Now Dennie was beginning to sound like his mother again. Dennie still wasn't happy about having to leave while he stayed behind. Toshio hoped she wouldn't take this opportunity to bring up the subject again.

  She lay down and faced him, using her arm as a pillow. She thought for a moment, then whispered. "What did you find out?"

  Toshio closed his eyes. "You might as well know," he said. "I'll want you to tell Gillian in case I can't get through to her in the morning. I found out what Takkata-Jim is doing with those bombs he took from Charlie.

  "He's converting them to fuel for the longboat."

  Dennie blinked. "But… but what can we do about it?"

  "I don't know! I'm not even sure we have to do anything about it. After all, in a couple weeks his accumulators would be recharged enough to lift him off anyway. Maybe Gillian doesn't care.

  "On the other hand, it might be darned important. I still haven't figured it all out yet. I may have to do something pretty drastic."

  He had seen the partially dismantled bombs through the thick window of the security door to the longboat's specimen lab. Getting to them would be considerably more difficult than simply sneaking back aboard.

  "Whatever happens," he tried to reassure her, "I'm sure it will all be all right. You just make certain your notes are all packed properly in the morning. That data on the Kiqui is the second most important thing to come out of this crazy odyssey, and it's got to get back. Okay?"

  "Sure, Tosh."

  He let gravity pull him over onto his back. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly to feign sleep.

  "Toshio?"

  The young man sighed. "Yes, Denn…"

  "Um, it's about Sah'ot. He's only leaving to escort me. Otherwise I think you'd have a mutiny on your hands."

  "I know. He wants to stay and listen to those underground 'voices' of his." Toshio rubbed his eyes, wondering why Dennie was keeping him awake with all this. He already had listened to Sah'ot's importunities.

  "Don't shrug them off like that, Tosh. He says Creideiki listened to them, too, and that he had to cut the channel to break the captain out of a listening trance, the sounds were so fascinating."

  "The captain is a brain-damaged cripple." The words were bitter. "And Sah'ot is an egocentric, unstable…"

  "I used to think so too," Dennie interrupted. "He used to scare me until I learned he was really quite sweet and harmless. But even if we could suppose the two fen were having hallucinations, there's the stuff I've been finding out about the metal-mounds."

  "Mmmph," Toshio commented sleepily. "What is it? More about the metal-mounds being alive?"

  Dennie winced a little at his mild disparagement. "Yes, and the weird eco-niche of the drill-trees. Toshio, I did an analysis on my pocketcomp, and there's only one possible solution! The drill-tree shafts are part of the life cycle of one organism — an organism that lives part of its life cycle above the surface as a superficially simple coral colony, and later falls into the pit prepared for it…"

  "All that clever adaptation and energy expended to dig a grave for itself?" Toshio cut in.

  "No! Not a grave! A channel! The metal-mound is only the beginning of this creature's life cycle… the larval stage. Its destiny as an adult form lies below, below the shallow crust of the planet, where convective veins of magma can provide all the energy a metallo-organic life form might ever need!"

  Toshio tried earnestly to pay attention, but his thoughts kept drifting — to bombs, to traitors, to worry over Akki, his missing comrade, and to a man somewhere far to the north, who deserved to have someone waiting for him if — when he finally returned to his island launching point.

  "… only thing wrong is there's no way I see that such a life form could have evolved! There's no sign of intermediate forms, no mention of any possible precursors in the old Library records on Kithrup… and this is certainly unique enough a life form to merit mention!"

  "Mmm-hmmm."

  Dennie looked over at Toshio. His arm was over his eyes and he breathed slowly as if drifting off into slumber. But she saw a fine vein on his temple pulse rapidly, and his other fist clenched at even intervals.

  She lay there watching him in the dimness. She wanted to shake him and make him listen to her!

  Why am I pestering him like this. She suddenly asked herself. Sure, the stuff's important, but it's all intellectual, and Toshio's got our corner of the world on his shoulders. He's so young, yet he's carrying a fighting man's load now.

  How do I feel about that?

  A queasy stomach told her. I'm pestering him because I want attention.

  I want his attention she corrected. In my clumsy way I've been trying to give him opportunities to…

  Nervously, she faced her own foolishness.

  If I, the older one, can get my signals this crossed, I can hardly expect him to figure out the cues, she realized at last.

  Her hand reached out. It stopped just short of the glossy black hair that lay in long, wet strands over his temples. Trembling, she looked again at her feelings, and saw only fear of rejection holding her back.

  As if on a will of its own, her hand moved to touch the soft stubble on Toshio's cheek. The youth started and turned to look at her, wide-eyed.

  "Toshio," she swallowed. "I'm cold."

  78 ::: Tom Orley

  When there came a moment of relative calm, Tom made a mental note. Remind me next time, he told himself, not to go around kicking hornets' nests.

  He sucked on one end of the makeshift breathing tube. The other end protruded from the surface of a tiny opening in the weedscape. Fortunately, he didn't have to pull in quite so much air this time, to supplement what his mask provided. There was more dissolved oxygen in this area.

  Battle beams sizzled overhead again, and weak cries carried to him from the miniature war going on above. Twice, the water trembled from nearby explosions.

  At least this time I don't have to worry about being baked by the near misses, he consoled himself. All these stragglers have are hand weapons.

  Tom smiled at that irony. All they had were hand weapons.

  He had picked off two of the Tandu in that first ambush, before they could snap up their particle guns to fire back.

  More importantly, he managed to wing the shaggy Episiarch before diving head-first into a hole in the weeds.

  He had cut it close. One near-miss had left second degree burns on the sole of his bare left foot. In that last instant he glimpsed the Episiarch rearing in outrage, a nimbus of unreality coruscating like a fiery halo around its head. Tom thought he momentarily saw stars through that wavering brilliance.

  The Tandu flailed to stay upon their wildly bucking causeway. That probably was what spoiled their much vaunted aim, and accounted for his still being alive.

  As he had expected, the Tandu's vengeance hunt had led them westward. He popped up, from time to time, to keep their interest keen with brief enfilades of needles.

  Then, as he swam between openings in the weedscape, the battle seemed to take off without him. He heard sounds of combat and knew his pursuers had come into contact with another party of ET stragglers.

  Tom had left then, underwater, in search of other mischief to do.

  The battle noise drifted away from his present position. From his brief glimpse an hour ago, this particular skirmish seemed to involve a half-dozen Gubru and three battered, balloon-tired rover machines of some type. Tom hadn't been able to tell if they were robots or crewed, but they had seemed unable to adapt to the tricky surface, for all of their firepower.

  He listened for a minute, then coiled his tube and put it away in his waistband. He rose quietly to the surface of the tiny pool and risked lifting his eyes to the level of the interwoven loops of weed.

  In his mosquito raids, he had moved toward the eggshell wreck. Now he saw that it was only a few hundred
meters away. Two smoking ruins told of the fate of the wheeled machines. As he watched, first one, then the other slowly sank out of sight. Three slime-covered Gubru, apparently the last of their party, struggled over the morass toward the floating ship. Their feathers were plastered against their slender, hawk-beaked bodies. They looked desperately unhappy.

  Tom rose up and saw flashes of more fighting to the south.

  Three hours before, a small Soro scoutship had come diving in, strafing all in sight, until a delta-winged Tandu atmospheric fighter swooped out of the clouds to intercept it. They blasted away at each other, harassed by small arms fire from below, until they finally collided in a fiery explosion, falling to the sea in a tangled heap.

  About an hour later the story repeated itself. This time the participants were a lumbering Pthaca rescue-tender and a battered spearship of the Brothers of the Night. Their wreckage joined the smoky ruins which slowly subsided in every direction.

  No food, no place to hide, and the only race of fanatics I really want to see is the one not represented out here in this dribble-dribble charnel house.

  The message bomb pressed under his waistband. Again, he wished he knew whether or not to use it.

  Gillian has to be worried by now, he thought. Thank God, at least she's safe.

  And the battle's still going on. That means there's still time. We've still got a chance.

  Yes. And dolphins like to go for long walks along the beach.

  Ah, well. Let's see if there's some more trouble I can cause.

  79 ::: Galactics

  The Soro, Krat, cursed at the strategy schematic. Her clients took the precaution of backing away while she vented her anger by tearing great rips out of the vletoor cushion.

  Four ships lost! To only one by the Tandu! The recent battle had been a disaster!

  And meanwhile, the sideshow down at the planet's surface was bleeding away her small support craft in ones and twos!

  It seemed that tiny remnants of all of the defeated fleets, stragglers that had hidden out on moons or planetoids, must have decided the Earthlings were hiding near that volcano down in Kithrup's mid-northern latitudes. Why did they think that?

  Because surely nobody would be fighting over nothing at all, would they? The skirmish had a momentum all its own by now. Who would have thought that the defeated alliances would have hidden away so much firepower for one last desperate attempt at the prize?

  Krat's mating claw flexed in wrath. She couldn't afford to ignore the possibility that they were right. What if the distress call had, indeed, emanated from the Earthlings' ship? No doubt this was some sort of fiendish human distraction, but she could not risk the chance that the fugitives actually were there.

  "Have the Thennanin called yet?" she snapped.

  A Pil from the communications section bowed quickly and answered. "Not yet, Fleet-Mother, though they have pulled away from their Tandu allies. We expect to hear from Buoult soon:'

  Krat nodded curtly. "Let me know the very instant!" The Pil assented hurriedly and backed away.

  Krat went back to considering her options. Finally, it came down to deciding which damaged and nearly useless vessel she could spare from the coming battle for one more foray to the planet's surface.

  Briefly, she toyed with the idea of sending a Thennanin ship once the upcoming alliance against the now-pre-eminent Tandu was consummated. But then she decided that would be unwise. Best to keep the priggish, sanctimonious Thennanin up here where she could keep her eyes on them. She would choose one of her own small cripples to go.

  Krat contemplated a mental image of the Earthlings — dough-skinned, spindly, shaggy-maned humans, who were sneakiness embodied-and their weird, squawking, handless dolphin clients.

  When they are finally mine, she thought, I will make them regret the trouble they are causing me.

  80 ::: The Journal of Gillian Baskin

  We've arrived.

  For the last four hours I've been the matriarch of a madhouse. Thank heaven for Hannes and Tsh't and Lucky Kaa and all the beautiful, competent fen we've missed for so long. I hadn't realized until we arrived just how many of the best had been sent ahead to prepare our new home.

  There was an ecstatic reunion. Fen dashed about bumping each other and making a racket that I kept telling myself the Galactics couldn't really hear… The only real pall came when we thought about the absent members of our crew, the

  six missing fen, including Hikahi, Akki, and Keepiru. And Tom, of course.

  It wasn't until later that we discovered that Creideiki was missing, also.

  After a brief celebration, we got to work. Lucky Kaa took the helm, almost as sure and steady as Keepiru would have been, and piloted Streaker along a set of guide rails into the cavity in the Thennanin wreck. Giant clamps came down and girdled Streaker, almost making her part of the outer shell. It's a snug fit. Techs immediately started integrating the sensors and tuning the impedances of the stasis flanges. The thrusters are already aligned. Carefully disguised weapons ports have been opened, in case we have to fight.

  What an undertaking! I never would have thought it possible. I can't believe the Galactics will expect anything like this. Tom's imagination is astounding.

  If only we would hear his signal…

  I've asked Toshio to send Dennie and Sah'ot here by sled. If they take a direct route at top speed they should arrive in a little over a day. It'll take that long, at least, to finish setting up here.

  It really is vital we get Dennie's notes and plasma samples. If Hikahi reports in, I'll ask her to stop at the island for the Kiqui emissaries. Second only to our need to escape with our data is our duty to the little amphibians, to save them from indenture to some crazy race of Galactic patrons.

  Toshio chose to stay to keep an eye on Takkata-Jim and Metz, and to meet Tom, should he show up. I think he added that last part knowing it would make it impossible for me to refuse… Of course, I knew he'd make the offer. I was counting on it.

  It only makes me feel worse, using him to keep Takkata-Jim in check. Even if our ex-vice-captain disappoints me, and behaves himself, I don't know how Toshio's to get back here in time, especially if we have to take off in a hurry.

  I'm learning what they mean by the agony of command.

  I had to pretend shocked surprise when Toshio told me about the mini-bombs Charlie Dart stole out of the armory. Toshio offered to try to get them back from Takkata-Jim, but I've forbidden it. I told him we'd take our chances.

  I couldn't take him into my confidence. Toshio is a bright young man, but he has no poker face.

  I think I have things timed right. If only I were certain.

  The damned Niss is calling me again. This time I'll go see what it wants.

  Oh, Tom. Would you, if you were here, have misplaced an entire ship's captain? How can I forgive myself for letting Creideiki go out there alone?

  He seemed to be doing so well, though. What in Ifni's crap-shoot went wrong?

  81 ::: Charles Dart

  Early in the morning, he was at his console at the water's edge, happily conversing with his new robot. It was already down a kilometer, planting tiny detectors in the drill-tree shaft wall along the way.

  Charles Dart mumbled cheerfully. In a few hours he would have it down as deep as the old one, the next-to-worthless probe he had abandoned. Then, after a few more tests to verify his theories about local crustal formations, he could start finding out about bigger questions, like what Kithrup the planet was like.

  Nobody, but nobody, could stop him now!

  He remembered the years he had spent in California, in Chile, in Italy, studying earthquakes as they happened, working with some of the greatest minds in geophysical science. It had been exciting. Still, after a few years he had begun to realize that something was wrong.

  He had been admitted into all the right professional societies, his papers were greeted with both high praise and occasional vehement rejection — both reactions far preferred by any de
cent scientist over yawns. There was no lack of prestigious job offers. But there came a time when he suddenly wondered where the students were.

  Why didn't graduate students seek him out as an advisor? He saw his colleagues besieged by eager applicants for research assistantships, yet, in spite of his list of publications, his widely known and controversial theories, only

  the second-raters came to him, the students searching more for grant support than a mentor. None of the bright young mels and fems sought him out as an academic patron.

  Of course, there had been a couple of minor cases in which his temper had gotten the better of him, and one or two of his students had departed acrimoniously, but that couldn't account for the doldrums in the pedagogical side of his career, could it?

  Slowly, he came to think that it must be something else. Something… racial.

  Dart had always held himself aloof from the uplift obsession of many chimps-either the fastidious respectfulness of the majority toward humans, or the sulking resentfulness of a small but vocal minority. A couple of years ago he began paying attention however. Soon he had a theory. The students were avoiding him because he was a chimpanzee!

  It had stunned him. For three solid months he dropped everything to study the problem. He read the protocols governing humanity's patronhood over his race, and grew outraged over the ultimate authority Mankind held over his species-until, that is, he read about uplift practice in the galaxy at large. Then he learned that no other patron gave a four-hundred-year-old client race seats on its high councils, as Mankind did.

  Charles Dart was confused. But then he thought about that word "gave."

  He read about humanity's age-old racial struggles. Had it really been less than half a millennium since humans contrived gigantic, fatuous lies about each other simply because of pigment shades, and killed millions because they believed their own lies?