Startide Rising (18 page)

Dolphins knew how close the cetaceans themselves had come to extinction at the hands of human beings, but they never mentioned it outside Earth. For well or ill, their fate was now linked to Mankind’s.

Earth was humanity’s until the race moved on or died out. Man’s ten colony worlds were licensed for smaller periods, based on complex eco-management plans. The shortest lease was a mere six thousand years. At the end of that time, the colonists of Atlast had to depart, leaving the planet fallow once again.

“Four hundred million years,” Creideiki mulled. “That seems an unusually long time with no re-survey of this world.”

“I agree!” Charlie Dart shouted, now fully recovered from his fit.

“And what if I told you there’s signs Kithrup was occupied by a machine civilization as recently as thirty thousand years ago? Without any entry in the Library at all?”

Hikahi rolled over closer. “You think-k these crustal anomalies of yours may be the garbage of an interloper civilization, Dr. Dart?”

“Yes!” he cried. “Exactly! Good guess!

“You all know many eco-sensitive races will only build major facilities along a planet’s plate boundaries. That way, when the planet is later declared fallow, all traces of habitation will be sucked down into the mantle and disappear. Some think that’s why there are no signs of previous occupancy on Earth.”

Hikahi nodded. “And if some species settled here illegally …?”

“They’d build at a plate boundary! The Library surveys planets at multi-epoch intervals. The evidence of the incursion would be sucked underground by then!” The chimp looked eagerly from the holo display.

Creideiki had trouble taking it all very seriously. Charlie made it sound like a whodunit! Only in this case the culprits were civilizations, the clues whole cities, and the rug under which the evidence was being swept was a planet’s crust! It was the perfect crime! After all, the cop on the corner only swings by every few million years, and is late, at that.

Creideiki realized every metaphor he had just used was a human one. Well, that was to be expected. There were times, such as spacewarp-piloting, when cetacean analogies were more useful. But when thinking about the crazy politics of the Galactics, it helped to have watched a lot of old human movie thrillers, and read volumes of crazy human history.

Now Brookida and Dart were arguing some technical point … and all Creideiki could think of was the taste of the water near Hikahi. He badly wanted to ask her if the flavor meant what he thought it meant. Was it a perfume she had put on, or was it natural pheromone?

With some difficulty, he forced himself back to the subject at hand.

Charlie’s and Brookida’s discovery, under normal circumstances, would be exciting.

But this has no bearing on escape for my ship and crew, nor getting our data back to the Terragens Council. Even the mission I sent Keepiru and Toshio on, to help appraise the native pre-sentients, is more urgent than hunting arcane clues in ancient alien rocks.

“Excuse me, Captain. I’m sorry I’m late. I’ve been listening quietly for a while, though.”

Creideiki turned to see Dr. Ignacio Metz drift up alongside. The gangling, gray-haired psychologist treaded water slowly, casually compensating for a small negative buoyancy. A slight pot belly distended the neat fit of his slick brown drysuit.

Brookida and Dart argued on, now about rates of heating by radioactives, gravity, and meteoritic impact. Hikahi, apparently, found it all fascinating.

“You’re welcome even late, Dr. Metz. I’m glad you could make it.”

Creideiki was amazed he hadn’t heard the man approach. Metz normally made a racket you could hear halfway across the bay. He sometimes radiated a two kilohertz hum from his right ear. It was barely detectable now, but at times it was quite annoying. How could the man have worked with fins for so long and never had the problem corrected?

Now I’m beginning to sound like Charlie Dart! He chided himself. Don’t be peevish, Creideiki!

He whistled a stanza which echoed only within his own skull.

* Those who live

All vibrate,

* All,

* And aid the world’s

Singing *

“Captain, I actually came out here for another reason, but Dart’s and Brookida’s discovery may bear on what I have to say. Can we talk in private?”

Creideiki became expressionless. He had to get some rest and exercise soon. Overwork was wearing him down, and Streaker could ill-afford that.

But this human had to be treated carefully. Metz could not command him, aboard Streaker or anywhere, but he had power, power of a particularly potent kind. Creideiki knew that his own right of reproduction was guaranteed, no matter how this mission ended. Still Metz’s evaluation would carry weight. Every dolphin aboard behaved as “sentiently” as he could around him. Even the captain.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve put off a confrontation, Creideiki thought. Soon though, he would force Dr. Metz to answer some questions regarding certain members of Streaker’s crew.

“Very well, Doctor,” he answered. “Allow me a moment. I think I’m finished here.”

Hikahi swam close at a nod from Creideiki. She grinned and flicked her pectorals at Metz.

“Hikahi, please finish up here for me. Don’t let them go more than another ten minutes before summing up their proposalsss. I’ll meet you in an hour in recreation pool 3-A to hear your recommendations.”

She answered as he had addressed her, in rapid, highly inflected Underwater Anglic. “Aye aye, Captain. Will there be anything else?”

Damn! Creideiki knew Hikahi’s sonar showed her everything about his sexual agitation. It was easy to tell with a male. He would have to do an explicit sonic scan of her innards to gain the same information about her, and that would not be polite.

Things must have been so much simpler in the old times!

Well, he would find out her frame of mind in an hour. One of the privileges of captaincy was to order a recreation pool cleared. There had better not be an emergency between now and then!

“No, nothing else for now, Hikahi. Carry on.”

She saluted snappily with an arm of her harness.

Brookida and Charlie were still arguing as Creideiki turned back to Metz. “Will it be private enough if we take the long way to the bridge, Doctor? I’d like to check with Takkata-Jim before going on to other duties.”

“That’ll be fine, Captain. What I have to say won’t take long.”

Creideiki kept his face impassive. Was Metz smiling at something in particular? Was the man amused at something he had seen or heard?

“I am ssstill confused by the pattern of volcanoes up and down the three-thousand-kilometer zone where these two plates meet,” Brookida said. He spoke slowly, partly for Charlie’s benefit and partly because it was hard to argue in oxywater. There never seemed to be enough air.

“If you look at the sssurvey charts we made from orbit, you see that vulcanism is dispersed sparsely elsewhere on the planet. But here the volcanoes are very frequent, and all about the same small size.”

Charlie shrugged. “I don’t see how that relates at all, old man. I think it’s just a great big coincidence.”

“But isn’t this also the only area where the metal-mounds are found?” Hikahi suggested suddenly. “I’m no expert, but a spacer learns to be suspicious of twin coincidences.”

Charlie opened and closed his mouth, as if he were about to speak, then thought better of it. At last he said, “That’s very good. Yes! Brookida, you think these coral critters may need some nutrient that only this one type of volcano provides?”

“Possssibly. Our exobiology expert is Dennie Sudman. She’s now at one of the islands, investigating the aboriginals.”

“She must get samples for us!” Charlie rubbed his hands together. “Do you think it’d be too much to ask her to take a side trip to a volcano? Not too far away, of course, after what Creideiki just said. Just a little, teeny one.”

Hikahi let out a short whistling laugh. The fellow had chutzpah! Still, his enthusiasm was infectious, a wonderful distraction from worry. If only she could afford to hide away from the dangerous universe in abstractions, like Charlie Dart did.

“And a temperature probe!” Charlie cried. “Surely Dennie’d do that much for me, after all I’ve done for her!”

Creideiki cruised in a wide spiral around the swimming human, stretching his muscles as he arched and twisted.

By neural command he flexed his harness’s major manipulators, like a human stretching his arms. “Very well, Doctor. What can I do for you?”

Metz swam a slow kick-stroke. He regarded Creideiki amiably. “Captain, I believe it’s time to re-think our strategy a bit. Matters have changed since we came to Kithrup. We need a new approach.”

“Could you be specific?”

“Certainly. As you recall, we fled from the transfer point at Morgran because we didn’t wish to be crushed in a seven-way ambush. You were quick to realize that even if we surrendered to one party, this would only result in all sides ganging up on our captors, inevitably leading to our destruction. I was slow to understand your logic at the time. Now I applaud it. Of course, your tactical maneuvers were brilliant.”

“Thank you, Dr. Metz. Of course, you leave out another reason for our flight. We are under orders from the Terragens Council to bring our data directly to them, without leaks along the way. Our capture would certainly be a ‘leak,’ wouldn’t you say?”

“Certainly!” Metz agreed. “And so the situation remained when we fled to Kithrup, a move which I now consider inspired. To my way of thinking, it was just bad luck this hiding place didn’t work as planned.”

Creideiki refrained from pointing out that they were still concealed on this hiding place. Surrounded, but not yet in anyone’s net. “Go on,” he suggested.

“Well, so long as there was the possibility we could avoid capture altogether, your strategy of flight was good. However things have changed. The chance of escape is now next to nil. Kithrup remains useful as a refuge from the chaos of battle, but it can’t hide us for long once there is a final victor overhead.”

“You’re suggesting we can’t hope to avoid eventual capture?”

“Exactly. I think we should consider our priorities, and plan for unpleasant contingencies.”

“What priorities do you consider important?” Creideiki already knew the answer to expect.

“Why, the survival of this ship and crew, of course! And the data for evaluating the performance of both! After all, what was our main purpose out here. Hmm?” Metz stopped swimming and treaded water, regarding Creideiki like a teacher quizzing a pupil.

Creideiki could list a half-dozen tasks that had been set for Streaker, from Library veracity checks, to establishing contact with potential allies, to Thomas Orley’s military intelligence work.

Those tasks were important. But the primary purpose of this mission was to evaluate the performance of a dolphin-crewed and dolphin-commanded spacecraft. Streaker and her complement were the experiment.

But everything had changed since they had found the derelict fleet! He couldn’t operate under the priorities he had been given at the beginning of the cruise. How could he explain that to a man like Metz?

Judgment, Creideiki mused, thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason … Sometimes he thought that the Bard must have been half dolphin, himself.

“I understand your point, Dr. Metz. But I don’t see how it calls for a change in strategy. We still face destruction should we poke our beaks above the Kithrup’s sea.”

“Only if we do so before there’s a winner overhead! Certainly, we shouldn’t expose ourselves until the crossfire is over. However, we are in a position to negotiate, once there is a victor! And if we negotiate cleverly we may win success for this mission!”

Creideiki resumed his slow spiral, forcing the geneticist to swim again toward the bridge lock.

“Can you suggest what we might have to offer in negotiation, Dr. Metz?”

Metz smiled. “For one thing, we have the information Brookida and Charles Dart have literally dug up. The Institutes reward those who report ecological crimes. Most of the factions fighting over us are traditionalist conservatives of one stripe or another and would appreciate our discovery”

Creideiki refrained from expressing in razzberries his contempt for the man’s naïveté. “Go on, Doctor,” he said levelly. “What-t else have we to offer?”

“Well, Captain, there’s also the honor of our mission. Even if our captors decided to hold onto Streaker for a while, they’d certainly be sympathetic to our purpose. Teaching clients to use spaceships is one of the basic tasks of uplift. Surely they’d let us send a few men and fen home with our behavior-evaluation data, so progress toward future dolphin-crewed ships can continue. For them to do otherwise would be like a stranger interfering in the development of a child because of an argument with its parent!”

And how many human children were tortured and killed because of the sins of their parents, back in your own Dark Ages? Creideiki wanted to ask who would be the emissary to carry the uplift data back to Earth, while Streaker was held captive.

“Dr. Metz, I think you underestimate the fanaticism of those involved. But is there more?”

“Of course. I saved the most important for last.” Metz touched Creideiki’s flank for emphasis. “We must consider, Captain, giving the Galactics what they want.”

Creideiki had expected it. “You think we should give them the location of the derelict fleet.”

“Yes, and whatever souvenirs or data we picked up there.”

Creideiki wore his poker face. How much does he know about Gillian’s “Herbie,” he wondered. Great Dreamer! But that cadaver’s caused problems!

“You’ll recall, Captain, the one brief message we got from Earth ordered us to go into hiding and keep our data secret, if possible! They also said we should use our own best judgment!

“Will our silence really delay the rediscovery of that Sargasso of lost ships for long, now that it’s known to exist? No doubt half the patron-lines in the Five Galaxies have swarms of scouts out now, trying to duplicate our discovery. They already know to look in a poorly linked, dim globular cluster. It’s only a matter of time until they stumble across the right gravitational tide pool, in the right cluster.”