Startide Rising (42 page)

Suddenly, it was below him! Moki chose not to fire right away. This was too easy! Let the smart-aleck hear death suddenly fall upon him from behind, too close to evade. Let him writhe in panic before Moki’s torpedo tore his body into pieces!

His sled growled, then dropped in pursuit. His victim could never turn in time! Moki crowed,

# A herd bull is! -is!

# A Great Bull … #

Moki interrupted his chant. Why wasn’t the smart-aleck fleeing?

He had been relying entirely upon sound. Only now did he turn his eye on his intended victim.

The other sled was empty! It drove along slowly, unpiloted. But then where …?

* Hunting ears

Can make a bull—

*But eyes

And brains

Make spacefen—*

The voice was above him! Moki cried out, trying to turn the sled and fire a torpedo at the same time. With a despairing wail the engines screamed and then died. His neural link went dead just as he came about into sight of a sleek, gray Tursiops dolphin, two meters above him, white teeth shining in the light from the surface.

* And fools

Make only

Corpses—*

Moki screamed as the cutting torch on the pilot’s harness exploded into laser-blue brilliance.

W
here did they all come from?

Tom Orley hid behind a low weed mound and looked about at the various alien parties on the horizon. He counted at least three groups, all converging from different directions on the floating eggshell-shaped wreck.

About a mile behind him, the volcano still rumbled. He had left the crashed Thennanin scoutship at dawn, leaving a pan of precious fresh water under the dying pilot’s mouth, within reach if he should ever awaken.

He had set out soon after sighting the party of Tandu, testing his newly woven “weed-shoes” on the uneven slimy surface. The splayed, snowshoe-like devices helped him walk cautiously across the slick carpet of vines.

At first he moved much faster than the others. But soon the Tandu developed a new technique. They stopped floundering in the mire, and came on at a brisk walk. Tom kept low and worried about what would happen if they caught sight of him.

And now there were other parties as well, one approaching from the southwest and one from the west. He couldn’t make them out clearly yet, just dots bobbing slowly and with difficulty on a low, serrated horizon. But where the hell had they all come from?

The Tandu were closest. There were at least eight or nine of them, approaching in a column. Each creature splayed its six spindly legs wide apart to spread its weight. In their arms they cradled long, glistening instruments that could only be weapons. They marched forward rapidly.

Tom wondered what their new tactic was. Then he noticed that the lead Tandu did not carry a weapon. Instead, it held the leash of a shaggy, shambling creature. The keeper leaned forward over its charge, as if coaxing it to keep at a given task.

Tom risked raising his head a couple of feet above the mound.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

The hairy creature was creating land—or at least solidity—in a narrow causeway in front of the party! Just before and on both sides of the trail, there was a faint shimmering where reality seemed to struggle against a noxious intrusion.

An Episiarch! Momentarily Tom forgot his predicament, grateful for this rare sight.

As he watched, the causeway failed in one spot. The luminous band around the edges of the trail snapped together with a loud bang. The Tandu warrior standing there flailed and thrashed as it fell into the weeds. By fighting it merely tore the carpet and opened the hole wider until, finally, it sank like a stone into the sea.

None of the other Tandu seemed to take notice. The two behind the gap leaped across to the temporarily solid “ground” beyond. The party, diminished by one, continued to advance.

Tom shook his head. He had to reach the wreck first! He couldn’t afford to let the Tandu pass him.

Yet if he did anything, even resumed his own march, they’d certainly spot him. He didn’t doubt their efficiency with those weapons they carried. No human warrior ever underestimated the Tandu for long.

Reluctantly, he knelt and untied the fastenings on his weed-shoes. Discarding them, he crawled carefully to the edge of an open pool.

He counted slowly, waiting until he could hear the column of Galactics approaching. He rehearsed his moves in his mind.

Taking several deep breaths, he pulled his diving mask over his face, making certain it was snug and the collecting fins were clear. Then he pulled his needler from its holster, holding it in two hands.

Tom set his feet on two firm roots and checked his balance. The pool was just in front of him.

He closed his eyes.

* Listen

For the swishing tail

Of the tiger shark—*

His empathy sense pinpointed the powerful psi emissions of the mad ET adept, now only some eighty meters away.

“Gillian …,” he sighed. Then, in one sudden fluid motion, he stood up and extended his weapon. His eyes opened and he fired.

A
gainst Toshio’s objections, they had used the last of the longboat’s energy to lift it to a landing site on top of the island. He had offered to blast a wider opening into the chamber below the metal-mound, but Takkata-Jim had turned his suggestion down cold.

That meant two hours of backbreaking work, heaping chopped foliage over the small ship to camouflage it. Toshio wasn’t sure even that would do any good if the Galactics finished their battle and turned their full attention to the planet’s surface.

Metz and Dart were supposed to help him. Toshio had set them to work cutting brush, but found that he had to tell them to do each and every thing. Dart was sullen and angry at being commanded by a middie he had ordered around only days before. He obviously wanted to get to the supplies he had excitedly dropped by the drill-tree pool before being drafted into the work crew. Metz had been willing enough, but was so anxious to be off talking to Dennie that he was distracted and worse than useless.

Toshio finally sent them both away and finished the job by himself.

At last the boat was covered. He slumped to the ground and rested against the bole of an oli-nut tree.

Damn Takkata-Jim! Toshio and Dennie were supposed to see the encampment secure, report their findings on the Kiqui to Metz, and then climb on their sleds and get out of here! Gillian expected them to set out in a few hours, and yet almost nothing was accomplished!

To top it all off, Streaker had only warned him an hour or so in advance that he could probably expect a stowaway. Gillian decided not to have Charlie arrested for violation of orders, even though it appeared he had stolen equipment from at least a dozen labs aboard the ship. Toshio was glad to be spared the added chore. There wasn’t much of anything hereabouts to use as a jail, anyway.

Foliage rustled to Toshio’s left. A series of mechanical whirrings accompanied the sound of crushing vegetation. Then four “spiders” pushed through the brush to enter his tiny clearing. A Stenos dolphin lay on the flotation pad of each armored mechanical, controlling the four high-jointed legs with neural-link commands. Toshio stood up as they approached.

Takkata-Jim passed by, eyeing him coolly, silently. The other three spiders followed him across the clearing and back into the forest. The Stenos piped to each other in gutter-Trinary.

Toshio stared after them. He discovered that he had been holding his breath.

“I don’t know about Takkata-Jim, but those fen with him are crazier than Atlast pier-nesters,” he said to himself, shaking his head. He had met few so-called Stenos on Calafia. Some had displayed quirks, positive and negative, like Sah’ot. But none had ever had the look that the former vice-captain’s followers had in their eyes.

The sound of the procession faded away. Toshio got up to his feet.

He wondered why Gillian had let Takkata-Jim go at all. Why not just throw him and his cohorts in the brig and have done with it?

Granted, it was a good idea to leave a party with the longboat, to try to sneak back to Earth if Streaker was lost trying to escape. Gillian probably couldn’t spare any of the reliable members of the crew. But …

He turned toward the village of the Kiqui, thinking as he walked.

Of course, the longboat was stopped. Theoretically, Takkata-Jim couldn’t contact the Galactics even if he wanted to. And Toshio couldn’t imagine a reason he’d want to.

But what if he had a reason? And what if he found a way?

Toshio almost bumped into a tree in his worried concentration. He looked up and corrected his path.

I’ll just have to make sure, he decided. Tonight I’ll have to find out if he can cause trouble.

Tonight.

The tribe’s adults squatted around a circle in a clearing in the center of the village. Ignacio Metz and Dennie Sudman sat to one side. The Nest-Mother squatted across from them, her bright green-and-red-striped puffer sacks fully inflated. The elders on either side of her billowed and chuffed like a chain of gaily painted balloons in the forest-filtered sunshine.

Toshio stopped at the edge of the village clearing. The sunshine filtered through the trees, revealing a conclave of races.

The Kiqui Nest-Mother chattered, waving her paws in a queer up-and-down pattern that Dennie had said connoted happy emphasis. If the oldest female had been angry, her gestures would have been crosswise. It was a blissfully simple expression pattern. The rest of the tribe repeated her sounds, sometimes anticipating her in a rising and falling chant of consensus.

Ignacio Metz nodded excitedly, cupping one hand over an earphone as he listened to the translation computer. When the chant died down he spoke a few words into a microphone. A long series of high-pitched repetitive squeaks came out of the machine’s speaker.

Dennie’s expression was one of relief. She had dreaded the uplift specialist’s first meeting with the Kiqui. But Metz had not, apparently, muffed her long and careful negotiations with the pre-sentients. The meeting seemed to be coming to a satisfactory conclusion.

Dennie caught sight of Toshio, and smiled brilliantly. Without ceremony she stood up and left the circle. She hurried over to where he waited at the edge of the village clearing.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“Wonderfully! It turns out he’s read every word I sent back! He understands their pack protocol, their physical manifestations of sex and age, and he thought my behavioral analysis was ‘exemplary’! Exemplary!”

Toshio smiled, sharing her pleasure.

“He’s talking about getting me an appointment as a fellow at the Uplift Center! Can you imagine that?” Dennie couldn’t help bouncing up and down excitedly.

“What about the treaty?”

“Oh they’re ready any time. If Hikahi makes it here in the skiff we’ll take a dozen Kiqui back to Streaker with us. Otherwise a few will go back to Earth with Metz in the longboat. It’s all settled.”

Toshio looked back at the happy villagers and tried not to show his misgivings.

Of course, it was for the good of the Kiqui as a species. They would fare far better under the patronage of Mankind than under almost any other starfaring race. And Earth geneticists had to have living beings to examine before any sort of adoption claim could be made.

Every attempt would be made to keep the first group of aboriginals healthy. Half of Dennie’s job had been to analyze their bodily requirements, including needed trace elements. But it was still unlikely any of the first group would survive. Even if they did, Toshio doubted the Kiqui had a notion of the strangeness they were about to embark upon.

They’re not sentients yet, he reminded himself. By Galactic law they’re still animals. And, unlike anyone else in the Five Galaxies, we’ll at least try to explain to their limited understanding, and ask permission.

But he remembered a stormy night, with driving rain and flashing lightning, when the little amphibians had huddled around him and an injured dolphin who was his friend, keeping them warm and warding off despair with their company.

He turned away from the sun-washed clearing.

“Then there’s nothing keeping you here any longer?” He asked Dennie.

She shook her head. “I’d rather stay a while longer, of course. Now that I’m finished with the Kiqui I can really work on the problem of the metal-mound. That’s why I was so grouchy a couple of days ago. Besides being so tired trying to do two major jobs, I was also frustrated. But now we’re a step closer to solving that problem. And did you know the core of the metal-mound is still alive? It’s…”

Toshio had to interrupt to stop the flow of words. “Dennie! Stop it for a minute, please. Answer my question. Are you ready to leave now?”

Dennie blinked. She changed tracks, frowning. “Is it Streaker? Has something gone wrong?”

“They began the move a few hours ago. I want you to gather all of your notes and samples and secure them to your sled. You and Sah’ot are leaving in the morning.”

She looked at him, his words slowly sinking in. “You mean you, me, and Sah’ot, don’t you?”

“No. I’m staying for another day. I have to.”

“But why?”

“Look, Dennie, I can’t talk about it now. Just do as I ask, please.”

As he turned to walk back toward the drill-tree pool she grabbed his arm. Holding on, she was forced to follow.

“But we were going to go together! If you have things to do here, I’ll wait for you!”

He walked along without answering. He couldn’t think of anything to say. It was bitter to win her respect and affection at last, only to lose her within hours.

If this is what being grown up means, they can have it, he thought. It sucks.

As they approached the pool, sounds of loud argument came from that direction. Toshio hurried. Dennie trotted alongside until they burst into the clearing.