by David Brin
97 ::: The Skiff
Dennie stumbled over the words she had so carefully prepared. She tried to rephrase her arguments, but Hikahi stopped her.
"Dr. Sudman. You needn't persissst! Our next stop is the island anyway. We'll pick up Toshio if he hasn't left already. And perhaps we'll deal with Takkata-Jim, as well. We'll be on our way as soon as Creideiki finishes."
Dennie exhaled all of her remaining tension. It was out of her hands, then. The professionals would take care of things. She might as well relax.
"How long. . ?"
Hikahi tossed her head. "Creideiki doesn't expect to do any better this time than lassst. It shouldn't take long. Why don't you and Sah'ot go and rest in the meantime?"
Dennie nodded and turned to find some space to stretch out in the tiny hold.
Sah'ot swam alongside.
"Say, Dennie, as long as we're going to try to relax, want to trade backrubs?"
Dennie laughed. "Sure, Sah'ot. Just don't get carried away, okay?"
Creideiki tried to reason with them one more time.
: We Are Desperate : As You Once Were : We Offer Hope To Little Unfinished Ones On This Very World : Hope To Grow Unbent :
: Our Enemies Will Harm You, As Well, In Time :
: Help Us :
The static pulsed and throbbed in response. It carried a partly psychic feeling of closedness, of pressure and molten heat. It was a claustrophilic song, in praise of rough hard stone and flowing metal.
+ CEASE -
— PEACE +
+ RELEASE!! -
— ISOLATION +
Silence fell suddenly with a squeal of tortured machinery. The old robot which had so long hung two kilometers down the narrow drill-tree shaft had been destroyed.
Creideiki clicked a familiar phrase in Trinary.
* It is, that is — *
He was tempted to enter the Dream again. But there was, on this level of reality, no time for such things.
This level of reality was where duty lay, for the moment. Later, perhaps. Later he would visit Nukapai again. Perhaps she would show him the untellable things that she heard through the vague avenues of prescience.
He headed back to the airlock of the tiny spaceship. Hikahi, seeing him approach, started warming up the engines.
98 ::: Tom Orley
"… a small group of dolphins spotted a few hundred paktaars north of this location! They were moving north quite rapidly. They may have come this way to see what all the fighting was about. Hurry! Now is the time to strike!"
Tom clicked off the receiver. His head hurt from the concentration it took to speak Galactic Ten rapidly. Not that he expected the Brothers of the Night to believe his was the voice of one of their missing scouts. That didn't matter to his plan. All he wanted to do was stir up their interest before the final jab.
He switched frequency and pursed his lips in preparation to speaking Galactic Twelve.
Actually, this was fun! It distracted him from his exhaustion and hunger and satisfied his aesthetic sense, even if it did mean everyone and his client would be down here shortly, all looking for him.
" . . Paha warriors! Paha-ab-Kleppko -ab-puber ab-Soro ab-Hul! Inform the Soro fleet-mistress we have news!"
Tom chuckled as he thought of a pun that could only be phrased in Galactic Twelve and which, nevertheless, he was sure the Soro would never get.
99 ::: Gillian
Something was making the fleets shift all of a sudden. Small squadrons raveled off the battered fleets and joined tiny groups from Kithrup's moons, all heading toward the planet. As they merged, the groups swirled about and tiny explosions took the place of individual lights.
What in the world was going on? Whatever it was, Gillian felt a glimmer of opportunity.
"Dr. Bassskin! Gillian!" Tsh't's voice came over the commspeaker. "We're getting radio traffic from the planet's surface again. It'sss from a single transmitter, but it keeps putting out stuff in different Galactic languages! Yet I ssswear they all sound like one voice!"
She leaned forward and touched a switch. "I'm on my way up, Tsh't. Please call half of the off-duty shift to stations. We'll let the others rest a while longer." She switched off the unit.
Oh, Tom, she thought as she hurried out the door. Why this? Couldn't you have come up with anything more elegant? Anything less desperate?
Of course he couldn't, she chided herself as she ran down the hallway. Come on, Jill. The least you can do is not be a nag.
In moments she was on the bridge, listening for herself.
100 ::: Toshio
Cornered, Toshio couldn't even climb a tree. They were too close, and would be on him the instant they heard him move.
He could hear them as they spiraled closer, tightening the noose. Toshio clutched his needler and decided he had better attack first, before they were close enough to support each other. It would be a small handgun against armored machines and high-powered lasers, and he was no marksman like Tom Orley. In fact, he had never fired at a sentient being before. But it beat waiting here.
He crouched and began to crawl to his right, toward the shoreline. He tried not to snap any twigs, but a minute after leaving his hiding place he flushed some small animal, which fled noisily through the bushes.
Immediately he heard the noise of approaching mechanicals. Toshio slithered quickly under a thick bush, only to emerge facing the broad footpad of a spider.
# Gotcha! Gotcha! #
There was a squeal of triumph. He looked up to meet the mad eye of Sreekah-pol. The fin leered as he commanded the spider to lift its leg.
Toshio rolled aside as the foot crashed down where his head had been. He reversed direction, avoiding a kick. The mechanical reared back, bringing both front legs into play. Toshio saw no place to turn. He fired his small pistol against the armored belly of the machine, and tiny needles ricocheted harmlessly into the forest.
The triumphant whistle was pure Primal.
# Gotcha! #
Then the island began to shake.
The ground heaved up and down. Toshio was jounced right and left and his head hit the loam rhythmically. The spider teetered, then crashed backward into the forest.
The shaking accelerated. Toshio somehow rolled over onto his stomach. he fought the oscillations to rise to his knees.
There was a crunching sound as two spider-riders stumbled into the clearing. One crashed past Toshio in panic. The other, though, saw him and squawked in wrath.
Toshio tried to hold out his needler, but the island's trembling began to turn into a list. It became a race between him and the mad dolphin to see who could aim and fire first.
Then both of them were staggered by a scream that echoed within their heads.
+ BAD! -
— BAD ONES! +
+ LEAVE -
— US +
+ ALONE! -
It was a roar of rejection that made Toshio moan and grab at his temples. The needler slipped out of his grasp and fell to the rapidly tilting ground.
The dolphin whistled shrilly as its spider collapsed in convulsions. It wailed in a foxhole lamentation.
# Sorry! Sorry!
# Patron forgive!
# Forgive! #
Toshio stumbled forward. "Forgiven," he managed to say as he hurried past. He couldn't deal with the fin's schizoid conversion. "Come this way if you can!" he called back, as he tried to make it to the shore. The noise in his head was like an earthquake. Somehow Toshio managed to stay on his feet and stumble through the forest.
When he reached the edge of the mound the sea was a froth below. Toshio looked right and left and saw no place that looked any better.
At that moment, a scream of engines pealed forth. He looked back to see a tornado of broken vegetation fly up from a spot only a hundred meters away. The gun-metal gray longboat rose above the rapidly tilting forest. It was surrounded by a glowing nimbus of ionization. Toshio's hackles rose as the island was swept by the throbbing antigravity f
ield. The boat turned slowly and seemed to hesitate. Then, with a thunderclap, it speared into the eastern sky.
Toshio crouched as the boom whipped at him, tugging at his clothes.
There was no time to delay. Either Charles Dart had got away or he hadn't. Toshio pulled his mask up over his face, held it with one hand, and leapt.
"Ifni's boss…" he prayed. And he fell into the stormy waters.
101 ::: Galactics
Above the planet small flotillas of battered warships paused suddenly in their multi-sided butchery.
They had left hiding places on Kithrup's tiny moons, gambling all on the chance that the strange radio broadcasts from the planet's northern hemisphere were, indeed, of human origin. On their way down to Kithrup, the tiny alliances sniped at each other with their waning strength, until a sudden wave of psychic noise hit the entire motley ensemble. It rose from the planet with a power none could have expected, overwhelming psi-shields and striking the crews temporarily motionless.
The ships continued to plunge toward the planet, but their living crews blinked limply, unable to fire their weapons or guide their vessels.
If it had been a weapon, the psychic shout would have cleansed half of the ships of their crews. As it was, the mental scream of anger and rejection reverberated within their brains, driving a few of the least flexible completely mad.
For long moments the cruisers drifted out of formation, uncontrolled, downward into the upper fringes of the atmosphere.
Finally, the psi-scream began to fade. The grating anger growled and diminished, leaving burning after-images as the numb crews slowly came to their senses.
The Xatinni and their clients, having drifted away from the others, looked about and discovered that they had lost their appetite for further fighting. They decided to accept the pointed invitation to depart. Their four ragged ships left Kthsemenee's system as quickly as their laboring engines could manage.
The J'8lek were slow coming around. After succumbing to the numbing mind-scream, they drifted in amongst the ships of the Brothers of the Night. The Brothers awakened sooner, and used the J'8lek for target practice.
Sophisticated autopilots brought two Jophur warships to land on the slope of a steaming mountain, far to the south of their original destination. Automatic weapons kept watch for enemies while the Jophur struggled with their confusion. Finally, as the stunning psychic noise subsided, the crews began to revive and retake control of their grounded ships.
The Jophur were almost ready to lift off again, and head north to rejoin the fray, when the entire top of their mountain blew away in a column of superheated steam.
102 ::: Streaker
Gillian stared, slack jawed, until the grating "sounds" finally began to fade. She swallowed. Her ears popped, and she shook her head to clear away the numb feeling. Then she saw that the dolphins were staring at her.
"That was awful!" she stated. "Is everybody all right?"
Tsh't looked relieved. "We're all fine, Gillian. We detected an extremely powerful psi-explosion a few moments ago. It easily pierced our shields, and seems to have dazed you for a few minutes. But except for some momentary discomfort, we hardly felt it!"
Gillian rubbed her temples. "It must be my esper sensitivity that made me susceptible. Let's just hope the Eatees don't follow that attack up with another even closer…" She stopped. Tsh't was shaking her head.
"Gillian, I don't think it was the Eatees. Or if it was, they weren't aiming for us. Instruments indicate that that burst came from very close nearby, and was almost perfectly tuned not to be received by cetaceans! Your brain is similar to ours, so you only felt it a little. Suessi reports hardly feeling a thing.
"But I imagine some of the Galactics had a rough t-time weathering that psi-storm!"
Gillian shook her head a second time. "I don't understand."
"That makes two of usss. But I don't suppose we have to understand. All I can tell you is thisss — at almost the same rime that psi-burst went off, there was an intense ground tremor not two hundred klicks from here. The crustal waves are only now starting to arrive."
Gillian swam over to Tsh't's station in the glassy sphere of Streaker's bridge. The dolphin lieutenant pointed with her jaw toward a globe model of the planet.
Not far from Streakers position on the globe, a small cluster of flashing red symbols was displayed.
"That's Toshio's island!" Gillian said. "Then Charlie did have a spare bomb after all!"
"Beg p-pardon?" Tsh't looked confused. "But I thought Takkata-Jim had confiscated…"
"Ship rising!" A detection officer announced. "Anti-g and stasis — from the same site as the crust tremors, one hundred and fifty klicks from here. Tracking… tracking… Ship is now heading off at Mach two, due east!"
Gillian looked at Tsh't. They shared the same thought.
Takkata-Jim.
Gillian saw the question in the dolphin officer's eye. "We may face a decision shortly. Have his blip followed to see where he's headed. And we'd better start awakening the rest of the off duty crew"
"Aye, sir. Those that managed to remain asleep through the last few minutes." Tsh't turned and relayed the command. A few minutes later the battle computer began to chatter.
"What now?" Gillian asked.
Bright yellow pinpoints began to glow up and down a long jagged streak on the globe of Kithrup, starting from the site of Toshio's island.
"Detonations of some sort," Tsh't commented. "The computer's interpreting them as bombings, but we've detected no missiles! And why this scattered pattern? The detonations are only occurring along thisss narrow stripe of longitude!"
"More psi disturbances!" an operator announced. "Strong! And from numerous sources, all on the planet!"
Gillian frowned. "Those detonations aren't bombings. I remember seeing that pattern before. That's the boundary of this planetary crustal plate. Those disturbances may be volcanoes.
"I'd say it's the locals' way of showing they're unhappy"
"?" Tsh't queried confusedly.
Gillian's expression was thoughtful, as if she was looking at something very far away. "I think I'm starting to understand what's been going on. We can thank Creideiki for the fact that the psi-disturbances don't affect dolphins, for instance."
The dolphins stared at her. Gillian smiled and patted Tsh't's flank.
"Not to worry, fem-fin. It's a long story, but I'll explain if we have time. I expect the biggest effect all this will have on us is crustquakes. We should be getting some shortly. Will we be able to ride them out down here?"
The dolphin lieutenant frowned. The way humans could change mental tracks midstride was beyond her comprehension.
"Yesss, I think so, Gillian. That is, so long as that-t remains stable." She gestured through a port, toward the seacliff that loomed over their hybrid ship.
Gillian looked up at the hulking mass of rock, visible through cracks in the Thennanin armor. "I'd forgotten about that. We'd better keep an eye on it."
She turned back to the holo display, watching the spreading pattern of disturbances.
Come on, Hikahi! she urged silently. Pick up Toshio and the others and get back here! I have to make a decision soon, and you might get back too late!
The minutes passed. Several times the water seemed to tremble as a low rumble passed through the seafloor.
Gillian watched the blue globe of Kithrup. A string of flickering yellow pinponts spread gradually northward, like an angry wound in the planet's side. Finally, the yellow dots merged with a small group of tiny islands in the northeast quadrant.
That's where Tom is, she remembered.
Suddenly the comm operator thrashed at his station. "Commander! I'm gett-ting a transmission! And it'sss in Anglic!"
103 ::: Tom Orley
He held the microphone awkwardly. It had been designed for alien hands. Tom ran his tongue over his cracked lips. He didn't have time to go over his speech once more: Company would be arriving any moment now.<
br />
He pressed the transmit lever.
"Creideiki!" He spoke carefully. "Listen carefully! Record and replay for Gillian! She'll interpret!"
He knew every ship in near-space was listening to this transmitter by now. Probably a large number of them were already on their way here. If he composed his new lies properly, he could make sure even more of them came.
"My direct wire to the ship is broken," he said. "And a hundred kilometers is a long way to have to carry a message, so I'll risk this new coder, hoping it's not been broken in all the fighting here."
That last was a tissue of fantasies for Galactic consumption. Now for the real message. Hidden in context, he had to tell Streaker what he knew.
"Jill? Our egg hatched, hon. And a zoo spilled out. A zoo of fierce critters!
"But I came across only one bedraggled sample of the brand we're shopping for. I've heard clues it's still for sale, on higher shelves, but those have been just clues. You and H and C are going to have to decide on that basis.
"Remember when old Jake Demwa took us along with him on that mission to the central Library on Tanith? Remember what he said about hunches? Tell Creideiki about it. It's his decision, but my gut feeling is, follow Jake's advice!"
He felt a thickening in his throat. He should cut this off: No sense in letting the Eatees zero in too closely.
"Jill." He coughed. "Hon I'm out of the game now. Get Herbie and the rest of the data to the Council. And those abos, too. I've got to believe all this has been worth it."
He closed his eyes and gripped the mike. "When you see old Jake, hoist a glass with him for me, will you?"
He wanted to say more, but realized that he was already getting a little too unambiguous. He couldn't afford to let the Galactics' language computers figure out what he was talking about.