Startide Rising (16 page)

He waited for the snickering to die down. “Consider, now. How are a human’s thoughts about these reflections from the surface of the water similar to our own?”

The students assumed expressions of concentration. This would be the next-to-last problem. With so much repair work to oversee, Creideiki had been tempted to cancel the sessions altogether. But so many in the crew wanted desperately to learn Keneenk.

At the beginning of the voyage almost all the fen had participated in the lectures, games, and athletic competitions that helped stave off spaceflight ennui. But since the frightening episode at the Shallow Cluster, when a dozen crewfen had been lost exploring the terrifying derelict fleet, some had begun to detach themselves from the community of the ship, to associate with their own little groups. Some even began exhibiting a strange atavism—increasing difficulty with Anglic and the sort of concentrated thought needed by a spacer.

Creideiki had been forced to juggle schedules to find replacements. He had given Takkata-Jim the task of finding jobs for the reverted ones. The task seemed to suit the vice-captain. With the aid of bosun K’tha-Jon he seemed to have found useful work for even the worst stricken.

Creideiki carefully listened to the swish of flukes, the uncomfortable gurgling of gill-lungs, the rhythm of heartbeats. Takkata-Jim and K’tha-Jon floated quietly, apparently attentive. But Creideiki sensed in each of them an underlying tension.

Creideiki shivered. There had come a suddenly vivid mental image of the vice-captain’s shrewd, sullen eye, and the bosun’s great, sharp teeth. He suppressed it, chiding himself for having an overactive imagination. There was no logical reason to fear either of those two!

“We are contemplating reflections from an interface between air and water.” He hurriedly resumed his lecture. “Both humans and dolphins envision a barrier when they consider such a surface. On the other side is a realm that is only faintly apparent until the barrier is crossed. Yet the modern human, with his tools, does not fear the water side, as he once did. The neo-fin, with his tools, can live and work in the air, and look down without discomfort.

“Consider how your own thoughts stretched out when I asked my original question. The idea of sound reflecting from below came to mind first. Our ancestors would have complacently stopped with that first generalization, but you did not stop there. You did not generalize without considering further alternatives. This is a common hallmark of planning creatures. For us it is a new thing.”

The timer on Creideiki’s harness chimed. It was growing late. Tired as he was, he still had a meeting to attend, and he wanted to stop at the bridge to find out if there had been any word from Orley.

“How does a cetacean, whose heritage, whose very brain is built on intuitive thinking, learn to analyze a complex problem, piece by piece? Sometimes the key to an answer is found in the way you formulate the question. I’ll leave you all today with an exercise for your idle moments.

“Try to state the problem of reflections from the surface of water in Trinary … in a way that demands not a single answer, or a three-level opposition, but a plain listing of the reflections that are possible.”

He saw several of the fen frown uncomfortably.

The captain smiled reassuringly. “I know it sounds difficult, and I will not ask you to recite today. But just to show you it can be done, accept the echo of this dream.”

* A layer divides

sky-star—Sea-star

* What comes to us

At a narrow angle?

* The huntsqueaking starcatching octopus

Reflects!

* The night-calling, star following tern

Reflects!

* The star-twinkle in my lover’s eye

Reflects!

* The sun, soundless, roaring showoff—

Reflects! *

Creideiki was adequately rewarded by the wide-eyed appreciation of his audience. As he turned to go, he noticed that even Takkata-Jim was shaking his head slowly, as if considering a thought that had never occurred to him before.

After the meeting broke up, K’tha-Jon persisted in his argument.

“You sssaw? You heard him, Takkata-Jim?”

“I saw and heard, Bosun. And, as usual, I was impressed. Creideiki is a geniusss. So what is it you wanted to point out to me?”

K’tha-Jon clapped his jaw, not the most polite gesture to make before a superior officer.

“He sayss nothing about the Galacticss! Nothing about the siege! Nothing at all about plans to get us away from here! Or, barring that, to fight-t!

“And meanwhile he ignores the growing split amongst the crew!”

Takkata-Jim let out a line of bubbles. “A split you have busily been encouraging, K’tha-Jon. No, don’t bother protesting your innocence. You’ve been subtle, and I know you’ve been doing it to build a power base for me. So I look away.

“But don’t be sure Creideiki will always be too busy to notice! When he does notice, K’tha-Jon, watch your tail! For I won’t have known a thing about your little tricks!”

K’tha-Jon blew quiet bubbles, not bothering to reply.

“As for Creideiki’s plans, we’ll see. We’ll see if he’s willing to listen to Dr. Metz and myself, or if he persisssts in this dream of carting his secrets back to Earth unopened.”

Takkata-Jim saw the giant Stenos was about to interrupt.

“Yesss, I know you think we should consider a third option, don’t you? You’d like to see us head out and take on all the Galactics single-handed, wouldn’t you, K’tha-Jon?”

The huge dolphin didn’t answer, but his eyes gleamed back at the vice-captain.

Are you my Boswell, my Seaton, my Igor or my Iago? Takkata-Jim thought silently at the giant mutant. You serve me now, but in the long run, am I using you, or are you using me?

B
attle screamed all around the flotilla of tiny Xappish warships.

“We have just lost the X’ktau and the X’klennu! That means almost a third of the Xappish armed might is gone!”

The elder Xappish lieutenant sighed. “So? Young one, tell me news, not things I already know.”

“Our Xatinni patrons spend their clients like reaction gas, and commit their own forces miserly. Notice how they hang back, ready to flee if the battle gets too furious! Yet we they send into danger!”

“That is ever their way,” the other agreed.

“But if the Xappish fleet is destroyed here, in this futile fray, who will protect our three tiny worlds, and enforce our rights?”

“Is that not what we have patrons for?” The older lieutenant knew he was being ironic. He adjusted the screens to resist a sudden psionic attack, without even changing his tone of voice.

His junior did not dignify the reply with a comment. He grumbled instead. “What did these Earthlings ever do to us, anyway? In what way do they threaten our patrons?”

A searing blast from a Tandu battle-cruiser just missed the left wing of the small Xappish scout. The junior lieutenant sent the ship into a wild evasive maneuver. The senior lieutenant replied to the question as if nothing at all had happened.

“I take it you don’t believe the story that the Progenitors have returned?”

The other only snorted, while adjusting his torpedo sights.

“Aptly put. I, too, think this is merely part of a program to destroy the Earthlings. The senior patron races see the Terrans as a threat. They are wolflings, and therefore dangerous. They preach revolutionary uplift practices … more dangerous still. They are allies of the Tymbrimi, an insult beyond forbearance. And they proselytize—an unforgivable offense.”

The scoutship shuddered as the torpedo leapt toward the Tandu destroyer. Their tiny craft accelerated mightily to get away.

“Well I think we should listen to the Earthlings,” the junior lieutenant shouted. “If all the client races in the galaxy rebelled at once…”

“It has already happened,” the elder interrupted. “Study the Library records. Six times in Galactic history. And twice successfully.”

“No! What happened?”

“What do you think happened? The clients went on to become patrons of newer species, and treated them just the same as ever!”

“I do not believe it! I cannot believe it!”

The elder lieutenant sighed. “Look it up.”

“I shall!”

But he never did. An undetected improbability mine lay across their path. The tiny scout departed the galaxy in a manner that was picturesque, if ultimately lethal.

D
ennie checked the charges one more time. It was dark and crowded in the close passage of the drill-tree root. Her helmet’s beam cast stark shadows through the thick maze of rootlets.

She called upward. “Are you almost finished, Toshio?”

He was planting his explosives in the upper section, near the surface of the metal-mound.

“Yeah, Dennie. If you’re done, go back down now. I’ll join you in a minute.”

She couldn’t even see his flippered feet above her. His voice was distorted in the narrow, water-filled thicket. It was a relief to be allowed to leave.

She picked her way downward carefully, fighting back waves of claustrophobia. This was no job Dennie would ever have chosen. But it had to be done, and the two dolphins were by nature unqualified.

Halfway down, she snagged herself on a strand of creeper. It didn’t let go when she tugged. Thrashing only entangled her further, and she vividly recalled Toshio’s story of the killer weed. Panic almost closed in, but she forced herself to stop kicking, to take a deep breath and study the snare.

It was just a dead vine wrapped around one leg. The strand parted easily under her knife. She continued her descent more cautiously and escaped at last into the grotto beneath the metal-mound.

Keepiru and Sah’ot waited below. Hose-like breathers covered their blowmouths and wrapped around their torsos. The headlights of the two sleds diffracted through thousands of tiny threads that seemed to fill the chamber in a drifting fog. A dim light filtered into the grotto from the cave mouth through which they had entered.

* Echoes sounding, in this rock-cage

Will not be those of happy fishing *

Dennie looked at Sah’ot, unsure she had understood the poet’s fancy Trinary.

“Oh! Yes. When Toshio sets the fuses, we’d better get outside. The explosion will reverberate in this chamber. I don’t suppose that would be healthful.”

Keepiru nodded in agreement. The expedition’s military commander had been mostly silent all the way here from the ship.

Dennie looked around the underwater cavity. The coral-like, microscopic scavengers had built their castle on the rich silicate rocks of an ocean hillock. The structure had grown slowly, but when the mound finally breached the ocean surface toplife became possible. Among the vegetation which had sprouted was the drill-tree.

That plant somehow pierced the mound’s metal core and penetrated to the organically useful layer beneath the island. Minerals were drawn up and deposited above. A cavity grew below, which would eventually accept the metal-mound into the crust again.

Something struck the ecologist in Dennie as odd about this arrangement. The tiny micro-branch Library aboard Streaker hadn’t mentioned the metal-mounds at all, which was curious.

It was hard to believe the drill-tree could evolve into its niche in a gradual way, as most species did. For the tree to succeed was an all-or-nothing proposition, requiring great power and perseverance. How did it get that way? Dennie wondered.

And what happened to the mounds after they fell into the cavities the drill-trees prepared for them? She had seen some pits which had swallowed their mounds. Their depths were cloudy and obscure, and apparently far deeper than she would have expected.

She shone her beam on the bottom of the mound. The reflections were really quite startling. Dennie had expected something ragged and irregular, not a field of bright concave pits on the shining metal underside.

She swam to one of the larger depressions, bringing up her camera. Charlie Dart would like to get pictures and samples from this trip. She knew better than to expect thanks. More likely each tantalizing photo or rock would send him into exasperated sighs over her failure to follow up obvious leads.

Deep within one of the pits something moved, a twisting and slow turning. Dennie re-oriented her beam and peered closer. It was a root of some sort. She watched several of the tiny drifting threads fly within reach of the hanging tendril, to be caught and drawn within. She grabbed at a few for her sample bag.

“Let’s go, Dennie!” She heard Toshio call. There was a thrumming sound as a sled moved just beneath her. “Come on! We’ve only got five minutes till they blow!”

“Okay, okay,” she said. “Give me a minute.” Professional curiosity momentarily overwhelmed other thoughts. Dennie could think of no reason why a living thing should burrow into the lightless underside of a mass of almost pure metal. She reached far into the pit and grabbed the twisting tendril root, then braced herself against the bulk of the mound and pulled hard.

At first the springy root was adamant, and seemed even to pull back. The possibility that she had trapped herself vividly occurred to Dennie.

The root tore free suddenly. Dennie glimpsed a shinyhard tip as she stuffed the specimen into a sample bag. She flipped and kicked away from metal surface.

Keepiru looked at her reproachfully as she grabbed the sled. He gunned the machine toward the cave entrance and out into the daylight, where Toshio and Sah’ot waited. Moments later a loud concussion sent booming echoes through the shallows.

They waited an hour, then re-entered the grotto.

The charges had shattered the drill-tree trunk where it pierced the bottom side of the metal-mound. The severed shaft canted at an angle below, continuing down into murky depths. Bits of debris still fell from the opening in the mound’s bottom. The chamber below the island was thick with swirling shreds of vegetation.