Startide Rising (45 page)

Keepiru, though, had responsibilities. And Streaker wouldn’t wait for him if she got a chance to flee.

Still, he thought. Am I really trying all that hard to get away?

He frowned and shook his head. Two hours ago he had been almost sure he had lost K’tha-Jon. Instead of making good his escape, he had turned around, under some rationalization he couldn’t even remember now, until he picked up the giant’s sound-scent again. His enemy felt him, too. In moments the hunt-scream pealed forth, and the mutant was after him again.

Why did I do that?

An idea glimmered for a moment … the truth … But Keepiru thrust it aside. K’tha-Jon was coming. He barely noticed the thrill of adrenalin that overcame the pain of his bruises and burns.

The illusions vanished like an unraveling bank of fog, dissolving into constituent clicks and whispers. In a swirl of powerful fluke strokes, the giant entered the channel below Keepiru. The white countershading of the sport’s belly showed against the gloom as K’tha-Jon rose for air, then swam past Keepiru’s niche, casting pulse-beams of search sonar in front of him.

Keepiru waited until the monster had passed, then rose to the surface himself. He blew softly five times, then sank without moving a fin.

The monster was ten meters away. Keepiru made no sound as K’tha-Jon ascended and blew again. But as the Stenos descended, Keepiru aimed a tight burst of clicks to carom off two metal-mounds across the channel.

The semi-Orca swerved quickly and dashed to Keepiru’s left, passing almost beneath him, chasing the illusion.

Like a diving missile, Keepiru dropped, nose first, toward his enemy.

The hunter’s senses were incredible, for all of Keepiru’s unnatural quiet. K’tha-Jon heard something behind him and swiveled like a dervish to come upright in the water, half facing Keepiru.

The angle was suddenly wrong for a ramming or raking.

The laser rifle swung toward him, and the giant jaws. To abort and flee would invite a sure laser blast!

Keepiru had a sudden flash of memory. He remembered his tactics instructor at the academy, lecturing about the benefits of surprise.

“…It’s the one unique weapon in our arsenal, as sentient Earthlings, that others cannot duplicate … :

Keepiru accelerated, and pulled up in front of K’tha-Jon, coming belly to belly with the astonished creature. He grinned.

* Who can deny

An attentive suitor—

* Let’s dance! *

Keepiru’s harness whined, and the three waldo-arms snapped out to grab K’tha-Jon’s and lock them into place.

The stunned ex-bosun screamed in rage and snapped his jaws at Keepiru, but he couldn’t bend far enough. He tried to lash out with his massive flukes, but Keepiru’s tail flexed back and forth with his adversary’s in perfect rhythm.

Keepiru felt an erection begin, and encouraged it. In adolescent erotic play between young male dolphins the dominant one usually took the male role. He prodded K’tha-Jon, and elicited a howl of dismay.

The giant writhed and shook. He bucked and kicked, then sped off in a random direction, filling the waters with his ululation. Keepiru held on tightly, knowing what K’tha-Jon’s next tactic would be.

The semi-Orca sped slantwise toward a steep-sided metal-mound. Keepiru held still until K’tha-Jon was just about to slam into the wall, with him in between. Suddenly he arched, and swung his weight to one side in a savage jerk.

A giant he might be, but K’tha-Jon was no true Orca. Keepiru weighed enough to swing them about just before the collision. K’tha-Jon’s right flank hit the wall of rugged metal coral, and bloody streaks of blubber were left behind.

K’tha-Jon swam on, shaking his head dizzily and leaving behind a bloody cloud. For the moment the monster seemed to lose interest in anything except air as he rose to the surface and blew.

I’ll be needing air very shortly, Keepiru realized. But now’s the time to strike!

He tried to pull back to bring his short-range cutting torch into play.

It was caught! Locked into K’tha-Jon’s harness rack! Keepiru tugged but it wouldn’t come loose.

K’tha-Jon eyed him.

“Your’t-turn now, little-porp,” he grinned. “You ssset me off there. But now all I have to do is keep you under water. It will be interesssting to lisssten to you beg for air!”

Keepiru wanted to curse, but he needed to save his strength. He struggled to force K’tha-Jon over onto his back so he could reach the surface, a bare meter away, but the half-Orca was ready and stopped his every move.

Think, Keepiru told himself. I’ve got to think. If only I knew Keneenk better! If only …

His lungs burned. Almost, he gave vent to a Primal distress call.

He recalled the last time he had been tempted by Primal. He replayed Toshio’s voice, patron-chiding, then patron-soothing. He remembered his private vow to die before sinking to the animal level ever again.

Of course! I am an idiotic, overrated fish! Why didn’t I think!

First he sent a neural command jettisoning the torch. It was useless anyway. Then he set his harness arms in motion.

* Those who choose

Reversion’s patterns

* Need not space,

Nor a spacer’s tools *

With one claw he seized the neural link in the side of K’tha-Jon’s head. The monster’s eyes widened, but before he could do a thing, Keepiru wrenched the plug free, making sure to cause the maximum amount of pain and damage. While his enemy screamed, he ripped the cable out of its housing, rendering the harness permanently useless.

K’tha-Jon’s harness arms, which had been pulsing under his, went dead. The tiny whine of the laser rifle was silenced. K’tha-Jon howled and thrashed.

Keepiru gasped for breath as the mutant’s bucking brought them both briefly out of the water in a great leap. They crashed back underwater as he transferred his grip on K’tha-Jon’s harness. He held on with two waldo-arms. “Kootchie Koo,” he crooned as he brought the other into play, ready to tear into his enemy.

But in a writhing body twist, K’tha-Jon managed to fling him away. Keepiru sailed through the air, to land with a great splash on the other side of a narrow mudbank.

Puffing, they eyed each other across the tiny shoals. Then K’tha-Jon clapped his jaws and moved to find a way around the barrier. The chase was on again.

All subtlety went out of the fight with the coming of dawn. There were no more delicate sonic deceptions, no tasteful taunts. K’tha-Jon chased Keepiru with awesome single-mindedness. Exhaustion seemed to hold no meaning to the monster. Blood loss only seemed to feed his rage.

Keepiru dodged through the narrow channels, some as shallow as twelve inches, trying to run the wounded pseudo-Orca ragged before he himself collapsed. Keepiru no longer thought of getting away. This was a battle that could only end in victory or death.

But there seemed no limit to K’tha-Jon’s stamina.

The hunt-scream echoed through the shallows. The monster was casting about, a few channels over.

“Pilot-t-t! Why do you fight-t-t? You know I have the food chain on my sssside!”

Keepiru blinked. How could K’tha-Jon bring religion into this?

Prior to uplift, the concept of the food chain as a mystical hierarchy had been central to cetacean morality—to the temporal portion of the Whale Dream.

Keepiru broadcast omni directionally.

“K’tha-Jon, you’re insane. Jussst because Metz stuffed your zygote with a few mini-Orca genes, that doesn’t give you the right to eat anybody!”

In the old days humans used to wonder why dolphins and many whales remained friendly to man after experiencing wholesale slaughter at his hands. Humans began to understand, a little, when they first tried to house Orcas and dolphins next to each other at ocean parks, and discovered, to their amazement, that the dolphins would leap over barriers to be with the killer whales … so long as the Orcas weren’t hungry.

In Primal, a cetacean did not blame a member of another race for killing him, not when that other race was higher on the food-chain. For centuries cetaceans simply assumed that man was at the topmost rung, and begrudged only the most senseless of his killing sprees.

It was a code of honor which, when humans learned about it, made most of them more, not less ashamed of what had been done.

Keepiru slid out into the open channel to change his location, certain that K’tha-Jon had taken a fix from that last exchange.

There was something familiar about this area. Keepiru couldn’t pin it down, but there was something to the taste of the water. It had the flavor of stale dolphin death.

* Eating—eaten

Biting—bitten

* Repay the sea …

Come and feed me! *

Too close. K’tha-Jon’s voice was much too near, chanting religious blasphemies. Keepiru headed for a crevice to take cover, and stopped suddenly as the death-taste became suddenly overpowering.

He nosed in slowly, and halted when he saw the skeleton suspended in the weeds.

“Hist-t!” he sighed.

The dolphin spacer had been missing since that first day, when the wave had stranded Hikahi and he had behaved like such a fool. The body had been picked clean by scavengers. The cause of death was not apparent.

I know where I am … Keepiru thought. At that moment the hunt-scream pealed again. Close! Very close!

He whirled and darted back into the channel, saw a flash of movement, and dove out of the way even as a monstrous form plunged past him. He was knocked spinning by a whack from the giant’s flukes.

Keepiru arched and darted away, though his side hurt as if a rib was broken. He called out.

* After me—reverted scoundrel

* I know—now it’s time to feed you *

K’tha-Jon roared in answer, and charged after him.

A body length ahead, now two, now a half, Keepiru knew he only had moments. The gaping jaws were right behind him. It’s near here, he thought. It’s got to be!

Then he saw another crevice and knew.

K’tha-Jon roared when he saw that Keepiru was trapped against the island.

# Slow, slow

or fast, fast

# Time to feed me—feed me! #

“I’ll feed you,” Keepiru gasped as he dove into the narrow-walled canyon. On all sides a dangling-weed bobbed, as if tugged by the tide.

# Trapped! Trapped!

I have you … #

K’tha-Jon squawked in surprise. Keepiru shot to the surface of the crevice, struggling to reach the top before vines closed in around him. He surfaced and blew, inhaling heavily and clinging close to the wall.

Nearby the water churned and frothed. Keepiru watched and listened in awe, as K’tha-Jon struggled alone, without harness or any aid, tearing great ropes of the killer weed with his jaws, thrashing as strand after strand fell over his great body.

Keepiru was busy as well. He forced himself to remain calm and use his harness. The strong claws of his waldo-arms snapped the strands that grabbed at him. He recited his multiplication tables in order to stay in Anglic thought patterns, dealing with the vines one at a time.

The half-Orca’s struggle sent geysers of seawater and torn vegetation into the sky. The surface of the water soon became a beaten green-and-pink froth. The hunt-scream filled the cavern with defiance.

But the minutes passed. The ropes that attempted to seize Keepiru grew fewer and fewer. More and more descended to fall upon the struggling giant. The hunt-scream came again, weaker—still defiant, but desperate, now.

Keepiru watched and listened as the battle began to subside. A strange sadness filled him, as if he almost regretted the end.

* I told you—I would feed you *

He sang softly to the dying creature below.

* But I did not say who—

I would feed you to … *

S
ince nightfall she had hunted for the refugees, first slowly and cautiously, then with growing desperation. There came a point when she threw caution away and began broadcasting a sonar beacon for them to home in on.

Nothing! There were fen out there, but they ignored her totally!

Only after entering the maze did she get a good fix on the sound. Then she realized that one of the fen was desperately crazy, and that both were engaged in ritual combat, closing out all the universe until the battle was over.

Of all the things that could have happened, this stunned Hikahi most of all. Ritual combat? Here? What did this have to do with the silence from Streaker?

She had an uneasy feeling that this ritual battle was to the death.

She set the sonar on automatic and let the skiff guide itself. She napped, letting one hemisphere and then the other go into alpha state as the little ship slid through the narrow channels, always headed northeastward.

She snapped out of a snooze to the sound of a loud buzzer. The skiff was stopped. Her instruments showed traces of cetacean movement just beyond a sheer shelf of metallic rock, heading slowly westward.

Hikahi activated the hydrophones.

“Whoever you are,” her voice boomed through the water. “Come out at once!”

There was a faint query sound, a weary, confused whistle.

“This way, idiot-t! Follow my voice!”

Something moved out from a broad channel between islands. She snapped on the skiff’s spotlights. A gray dolphin blinked back in the sharp glare.

“Keepiru!” Hikahi gasped.

The pilot’s body was a mass of bruises, and one side bore a savage burn, but he smiled nevertheless.

* Ah, the gentle rains—

Dear lady, for you to come here

And rescue me … *

The smile faded like a quenched fire and his eyes rolled. Then, on pure instinct, his half-unconscious body rose to the surface, to drift until she came for him.

Ebony half-moons that soar

From pools where the half light begins