Startide Rising (28 page)

She rose so only her blowmouth broke the surface.

“I apologize,” she buzzed. “I know Takkata-Jim would not assume permanent captaincy without a vote by the ship’s council.”

“Of course he wouldn’t! This is not a military vessel. The duties of the executive officer aboard a survey ship are mostly administrative, and his succession to command must be ratified by a ship’s council as soon as one can be conveniently arranged. Takkata-Jim is fully aware of the rules involved, is that right, Lieutenant?”

“Yessss.”

“But until then we must accept Takkata-Jim’s authority or have chaos! And in the meantime, Streaker must have a chain of command. That will be ambiguous until you certify that Captain Creideiki can no longer function.”

Makanee closed her eyes, breathing heavily. “Creideiki will probably not regain consciousness without further surgery. Even then it’sss chancy.

“The shock traveled along his neural connector socket into the brain. Most of the damaged areas are in the New Zones of the cortex … where basic Tursiopsss gray matter has been heavily uplift-modified. There are lesions in regions controlling both vision and speech-ch. The corpus callosum is seared…”

Makanee’s eyes re-opened, but she did not appear to be looking at them.

Metz nodded. “Thank you, Doctor,” he said. “You’ve told us what we need to know. I’m sorry we took so much of your time. I’m sure you’re doing your best.”

When she did not answer, the human slipped his oxymask over his face and slid into the water. He motioned to Takkata-Jim and turned to leave.

The male dolphin clicked at Makanee for a moment longer, but when she did not move he flipped about and followed Metz toward the exit.

A shudder passed through her as the two entered the lock. She lifted her head to call after them.

“Don’t forget-t when you call a ship’s council that I’m a member! And Hikahi and Gillian and T-Tom Orley!” The lock was hissing shut behind them as she called. She couldn’t tell if they had heard.

Makanee settled back into the water with a sigh. And Tom Orley, she thought. Don’t forget him, you sneaky bastards! He’ll not let you get away with this!

Makanee shook her head, knowing she was thinking irrationally. Her suspicions weren’t based on facts. And even if they were true, Thomas Orley couldn’t stretch his hand across two thousand kilometers to save the day. There were rumors that he was already dead.

Metz and Takkata-Jim had her all confused. She had a gut feeling that they had told her a complex assortment of truths, half-truths, and outright lies, and she had no way of knowing which was which.

They think they can fool me, just because I’m female, and old, and two uplift generations cruder than any other fin aboard but Brookida. But I can guess why they’re giving special favors to the one chimpanzee member on the ship’s council. Here and now, they have a majority to back up any decision they make. No wonder they’re not anxious to have Hikahi or Gillian back!

Maybe I should have lied to them … told them Creideiki would awaken any minute.

But then, who can tell how desperate they are? Or what they’d resort to? Was the accident with the buoy really an accident? They could be lying to cover up ignorance—or to cover up a conspiracy. Could I protect Creideiki, with only two female aides to help me?

Makanee let out a low moan. This sort of thing wasn’t her department! She sometimes wished that being a dolphin physician, like in the old days, simply meant you lifted the one you were trying to save up on your brow, and held his head above the water until he recovered, or your strength failed you, or your own heart broke.

She turned back toward Intensive Care. The chamber was darkened except for a light that shone upon a large gray neo-dolphin, suspended in a shielded gravity tank. Makanee checked the life-maintenance readings and saw that they were stable.

Creideiki blinked unseeingly, and once a brief shudder passed down the length of his body.

Makanee sighed and turned away. She swam over to a nearby comm unit and considered.

Metz and Takkata-Jim can’t be back on the bridge yet, she thought. She clicked a sonar code that activated the unit. Almost instantly the face of a young, blue-finned dolphin appeared before her.

“Communications. C-can I help you?”

“Akki? Yes, child, it’s Dr. Makanee. Have you made any plans for lunch? You know, I do think I still have some of that candied octopus left. You’re free? How sssweet. I’ll see you soon, then. Oh, and let’s keep our date our little secret. Okay? That’sss a good lad.”

She departed Intensive Care, a scheme beginning to form in her mind.

I
n the quiet grayness of the gravity tank, a faint moaning cry.

* Desperate, he swims

Tossed by gray storm winds, howling:

Drowning! Drowning! *

A
foul-tempered mountain growled in the middle of a scum-crusted sea.

It had stopped raining a while ago. The volcano grumbled and coughed fire at low overhanging clouds, casting orange on their undersides. Thin, twisting trails of ash blew into the sky. Where the hot cinders finally fell, it was not to a quenching by clean sea water. They landed in a muddy layer atop a carpet of dingy vines which seemed to go on forever.

Thomas Orley coughed in the dank, sooty air. He crawled up a small rise of slippery, jumbled weeds. The dead weight of his crude sledge dragged a tether wrapped around his left hand. With his right he clutched a thick tendril near the top of the weed-mound.

His legs kept sliding out from under him as he crawled. Even when he managed to wedge them into gaps in the slimy mass, his feet frequently sank into the mire between the vines. When he awkwardly pulled them out, the quagmire would let go reluctantly, giving off an awful sucking sound.

Sometimes “things” came out with his feet, squirming along his legs and dropping off to slither back into the noisome brine.

The tightly wrapped thong cut into his left hand as he pulled the sledge, a meager remnant of his solar plane and supplies. It was a miracle that he had been able to salvage even that much from the crash.

The volcano sent ochre flickers across the weedscape. Rainbow specks of metallic dust coated the vegetation in all directions. It was late afternoon, almost a full Kithrup day since he had banked his glider toward the island, searching for a safe place to land.

Tom raised his head to look blearily over the plain of weeds. All of his well-laid plans had been brought down by this plain of tough, ropy sea plants.

He had hoped to find shelter on an island upwind of the volcano, or, barring that, to land at sea and turn the glider into a broad and seaworthy raft from which to perform his experiment.

I should have considered this possibility. The crash, those dazed, frantic minutes diving after gear and piling together a crude sledge while the storm lashed at him, and then hours crawling among the fetid vines toward a solitary hump of vegetation—it all might have been avoided.

He tried to pull forward, but a tremor in his right arm threatened to turn into a full-scale cramp. It had been badly wrenched during the crash, when the plane’s wing pontoons had come off and the fuselage went tumbling across the morass, splashing at last into an isolated pool of open water.

A gash across the left side of his face had almost sent him into shock during those first critical moments. It reached from his jaw almost to the neural socket above his left ear. The plastic cover that normally protected the delicate nerve interface had spun out into the night, hopelessly lost.

Infection was the least of his worries, now.

The tremor in his arm grew worse. Tom tried to ride it out, lying face down on the pungent, rubbery weeds. Gritty mud scraped his right cheek and forehead each time he coughed.

Somewhere he had to find the energy. He hadn’t time for the subtleties of self-hypnosis, to coax his body back into working. By main force of will, he commanded the abused muscles to behave for one final effort. He could do little about what the universe threw at him, but dammit, after thirty hours of struggle, within meters of his goal, he would not accept a rebellion by his body!

Another coughing fit ripped at his raw throat. His body shook, and the hacking weakened his grip on the dry root. Just when he thought his lungs could take no more, the fit finally passed. Tom lay there in the mud, drained, eyes closed.

* Count the joys of movement?—

First among advantages:

Absence of Boredom—*

He hadn’t the breath to whistle the Trinary Haiku, but it blew through his mind, and he spared the energy for a brief smile through cracked, mud-crusted lips.

Somewhere, he found the reserves for one more effort. He clenched his teeth and pulled himself over the last stretch. The right arm almost buckled, but it held as his head rose over the top of the small hill.

Tom blinked cinders from his eyes and looked out at what lay beyond. More weeds. As far as the eye could see, more weeds.

A thick loop of neustonicne stuck out at the summit of the modest hillock. Tom heaved the sledge high enough to wrap the slack line around the root.

Sensation flowed into his numbed left hand, leaving him open-mouthed in silent agony. He slumped back against the hillock, breathing rapidly and shallowly.

The cramps returned in force, and his body folded under them. He wanted to tear at the thousand teeth that bit at his arms and legs, but his hands were immobile claws. He lay curled around them.

Somehow, the logical part of Tom’s mind remained disconnected from the agony. It still plotted and schemed and tried to set time limits. He’d come out here for a reason, after all.

There had to be a reason for going through all this … If only he could remember why he was here in the stench and hurt and dust and grit …

The calming pattern he sought wouldn’t form. He felt himself start to fade.

Suddenly, through pain-squinted eyes, he thought he saw Gillian’s face before him.

Fronds of airy vegetation waved behind her. Her gray eyes looked his way, as if searching for something just out of range. They seemed to scan past him twice as he trembled, unable to move. Then, at last, they met his, and she smiled!

Pain-drenched static threatened to drown out the dream-words.

I send **** for good ****

though you *** skeptical, love.

*** though the whole **** might listen.

He strained to focus on the message—more likely a hallucination. He didn’t care which it was. It was an anchor. He clung to it as cramps made humming bowstrings of his tendons.

Her smile conveyed commiseration.

What a mess *** are! The *** I love is ****** and careless! Shall I **** it better?

Meta-Orley disapproved. If this was really a message from Gillian, she was taking a terrible chance. “I love you, too,” he subvocalized. “But will you shut the hell up before the Eatees hear you?”

The psicast—or hallucination—wavered as a fit of coughing struck him. He hacked until his lungs felt like dry husks. Finally, he sank back with a sigh.

At last, Meta-Tom surrendered pride.

Yes!

He cast into the murk before his eyes, calling after her dissolving image.

Yes, love. Please come back and make better …

Gillian’s face seemed to diffract in all directions, like a bundle of moonbeams, joining the shimmering volcanic dust in the sky. Whether a true message, or an illusion borne of delirium, it faded like a portrait done in smoke.

Still, he thought he heard a lingering trace of Gillian’s inner voice …

*** *** is, that is, that is …

and healing comes, in dreaming …

He listened, unaware of time, and slowly, the tremors subsided. His fetal curl gradually unfolded.

The volcano rumbled and lit the sky. The “ground” beneath Tom undulated gently and rocked him into a shallow slumber.

N
o, Dr. Dart. The enstatite inclusions are one part I’m not sure of. The static from the robot was really strong when I took that reading. If you’d like, I can double-check it right now.

Toshio’s eyelids were heavy with ennui. He had lost track of time spent pushing buttons and reading data at Charles Dart’s behest. The chimp planetologist would not be satisfied! No matter how well and quickly Toshio responded, it was never quite enough.

“No, no, we haven’t got time,” Charlie answered gruffly from the holoscreen at the edge of the drill-tree pool. “See if you can work it out on your own after I sign off, okay?

“It would make a nice project for you to pursue on the side you know, Toshio. Some of these rocks are totally unique! If you did a thorough study of the mineralogy of this shaft, I’d be happy to help you write it up. Imagine the feather in your cap! A major publication couldn’t hurt your career, you know.”

Toshio could well imagine. He was, indeed, learning a lot working for Dr. Dart. One thing he had learned, which would serve him well if he ever did go on to graduate school, was to be very careful in choosing his research advisor.

The question was moot, anyway, with aliens overhead getting ready to capture them. For the thousandth time, Toshio shied away from thinking about the battle in space. It only made him depressed.

“Thanks, Dr. Dart, but…”

“No problem!” Charlie barked in gruff condescension. “We’ll discuss the details of your project later though, if you don’t mind. Right now, let’s have an update on where the drone is.”

Toshio shook his head, amazed by the fellow’s tenacious single-mindedness. He was afraid that if it got any worse he would lose his temper with the chimp, senior research associate or no.

“Um…” Toshio checked his gauges. “The ‘bot’s descended to a little over a kilometer, Dr. Dart. The shaft is narrower and smoother as we get down to more recent digging, so I’m anchoring the robot to the wall at each site.”