Superluminal (38 page)

Orca watched him go. “Well, he isn’t very subtle
yet, but he’s getting the idea.”

“Has anyone asked about me?” Radu said,
preoccupied. “Do you think they can find out where I am?”

“They’ll probably figure it out
eventually.” She took his hand. “Come on. I’ll show you
around.”

“I wish I hadn’t had to involve you,” Radu
said.

“No more apologies. They aren’t necessary. I
offered you our help. I’m glad you trust me enough to take it.” She
drew him along the dark path, down from the crest of the island toward its
shore. “Stop worrying for a while.”

She took him through a grove of evergreen trees. The ground
was soft beneath his feet, the rocky island soil cushioned by layers of fallen
needles. Radu had been so long among machines and concentrations of people, the
constant background noise of civilization, that the silence of Orca’s
home struck him with wonder. It was a presence, not an absence. He stopped, so
even his footsteps did not mar it. Orca stopped, too, and glanced back
curiously.

Nothing Radu could think of to say to her expressed what he
felt, so he remained silent. They continued on along the path.

Nestled against the slope, nearly concealed by trees, a low,
shingled building faced the water. Orca opened the carved wooden door and led
him inside, where she kicked off her shoes and set them on a shelf in the
entryway. Radu followed suit.

“This is the longhouse,” Orca said. “The
labs are down at the other end, sleeping rooms are this way.” She showed
him to a room that was illuminated by moonlight streaming through the window.
Tatami mats covered the floor, and a futon lay folded against one wall next to
a low wooden table holding a brass lamp. The room was spare and peaceful. Radu
felt immediately at home, as he had not, not anywhere, for years. He walked to
the window and looked out. The hillside fell away sharply to the water; trees
outlined without obscuring the wide channel between this island and the next. A
white flash caught his gaze. A killer whale arced upward, then vanished beneath
the water. Another followed, and a third. As Radu’s eyes became more
accustomed to the darkness he could see more than the bright patches on the
creatures’ sides. The bay and the channel beyond were full of whales and
divers, playing and swimming, surfacing and disappearing again with barely a
splash, barely a ripple.

In the channel, a creature bigger than anything Radu had
ever seen, or ever imagined, glided in a slow and graceful curve across the
surface of the water. He gasped.

The moonlight silvered Orca’s pale hair. Radu had not
even noticed her move beside him, but now he was acutely aware of her presence.

“What was that?” Radu whispered.

“A great whale,” Orca said. “A blue. They’re
open ocean beings, they never come into straits or bays. But a representative
came, for our transition meeting.”

Radu watched, fascinated. The enormous creature spouted,
then lay quiet on the surface of the water.

“There are only a few of them left,” Orca said.
“It’s only been thirty years since they stopped being hunted —”
She stopped, started again, and said with difficulty, “Since humans
stopped killing them. It will take them a long time to recover, if they ever
do.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Radu
said.

“Being near them, talking to them — it’s
like being at the center of the universe,” Orca said. “It’s
terrifying, but they can’t understand that. Fear is one of the few things
they can’t understand. The blues aren’t afraid of my cousins, even
though sometimes — not anymore, because of the truce, but in the past and
maybe in the future — killer whales killed blues.”

Radu looked down at her. She was intent on the scene below.

“You need to be down there, don’t you?”

She replied, finally, after a long silence.
“Yes,” she said. “I really do. I’m sorry. You must be
exhausted. Why don’t you sleep for a while? I’ll be able to spend
some time with you in the afternoon.”

“I don’t think I could sleep,” Radu said.
“I’d rather — would it be impolite of me to sit on the shore
and watch? I don’t want to intrude on your privacy… ”

She glanced up at him, her smile one of amusement and even
glee, the somberness of a moment ago vanished.

“It wouldn’t be rude at all. You’re our
guest, a member of my family, while you’re here. Radu — would you
like to come swimming with me?”

He felt as if she had offered him a new world, one he had
dreamed of but could never find.

“Yes!” he said, then ruefully, “But I
tried that before, remember, and it didn’t work out very well.”

“You just weren’t properly prepared,” she
said. “Come on.” She took him through the hall and down a long
flight of steps, wood first, then stone, that led into the living rock of the
island. At the bottom, a tunnel reached out to a wooden dock that crossed the
tiny, rocky beach. A small chamber had been cut near the mouth of the tunnel.
Inside it, Orca chose a garment from a hook on the wall. It was black, with a
white stripe up each side and down each arm.

“It’s a wet suit,” Orca said. “Once
in a while we get a visitor who’s a lander, and wants to swim. A field
suit would protect you, but you wouldn’t really be in the water. The wet
suit is better. Ever wear one before?”

“No.”

“It’ll keep you warm. You’ve probably
never worn a scuba tank —?”

He shook his head.

“Okay. I’ll teach you to use the tank some other
time. Tonight you can use a snorkel.”

She helped him out of his clothes and into the wet suit,
then led him to the end of the dock. He entered the dark water hesitantly.
After a quick shock of cold, the trapped water warmed against his skin and he
felt perfectly comfortable.

“You won’t want to go very deep anyway, or move
around too much, just yet,” Orca said. “But you can watch and
listen.”

They swam out into the bay.

Listening was extraordinary. He could see very little,
despite the clear water and the face mask that permitted him to open his eyes
beneath the surface. But the sounds — ! He was surrounded by them,
engulfed and inundated, penetrated: long, leisurely songs that formed a
background to it all, trains of clicks and whistles that started below his
hearing range, sailed up through it like a rocket, and passed far beyond, moans
and sighs and laughter. At times he felt he was at the focus of a wave of
sound, as if one of Orca’s cousins, or even one of the other, larger
whales, were looking him over, sounding him out. Radu hung in the water, just
beneath the surface, breathing through the snorkel and trying to make out the
forms and shapes around him. Orca waited long enough to be certain he was comfortable,
then swam to join the others. But now and again a diver passed Radu and touched
him reassuringly, or waved; a few times one of the killer whales glided beneath
him, and once one let its fluke curve up and stroke him from chest to toes. The
touch was unbelievably gentle. Nothing in his life before, not his first trip
into space, Twilight spinning slow and graceful above him, not Earthstation,
not even the moment of transition into seventh, had affected him like this. He
felt calm, and enchanted, and in the midst of a magic night.

For a long time nothing moved nearby, and the sounds
receded. Radu moved his hands till he floated upright with his head above the
surface. He barely needed to tread water, the wet suit was so buoyant. He
pushed the mask to his forehead. The group of whales — several kinds of
whales, now, besides the killers and the magnificent blue — had moved out
through the mouth of the bay, to the channel. Radu slid his mask back down and
set off after them.

The bottom dropped away sharply. Radu kept swimming. He was
not at all afraid or even apprehensive. Soon he was as close to the group as he
had been before, perhaps a little closer, and his good sense overcame his
desire actually to go among the whales. No matter Orca’s welcome, he was only
honorarily and temporarily a member of her family. He was a landbound guest,
wrapped in black rubber, while the beings nearby frolicked naked in the
freezing sea, and spoke to each other in song.

Very slowly — so slowly he felt not the slightest fear
— a shape rose up beneath him. It was so big it lost its form in distance
and darkness.

The blue whale rose till its great eye looked him right in
the face. From a distance the blue whale had been awe inspiring. This close,
its size was simpler: incomprehensible. Radu reached out, as slowly as the
whale had approached him, hesitantly, in case his touch might be unwanted. The
whale closed its eye, and opened it again, and did not move. Radu touched its
skin. It was soft and smooth and warm. Even when he took his hand away, he
could feel the warmth of the whale radiating through the water.

The great blue whale blinked at him again, embracing Radu in
sound.

I can’t understand you, Radu thought. I wish I could,
but I can’t. I can’t even speak to you in my own language, not
around this rubber mouthpiece and through all this water.

The blue whale blinked a third time; the caress of music
ceased. The whale moved very slowly forward, gliding past Radu, making no more
noise than a feather in air. It curved downward, diving. The pressure of the
water parting for it pushed Radu gently back. He lay motionless, entranced by
the whale’s sheer presence.

A lifetime later the creature’s flukes slid by beneath
him, and it vanished into depths of dark water.

Radu dove down after it and swam a few meters, fighting the
buoyancy of the wet suit.

“Wait—”

Air bubbled up around his face and he got a mouthful of cold
salt water. It served to bring him to his senses. He struck out for the
surface, broke through, and gasped and coughed for air.

Now he knew how Orca had felt, confronting the edge; he
understood why she had left the ship. He knew how Vasili and Laenea felt in
transit. He knew what it was like to meet an alien.

The divers and the whales cavorted and played far off in the
channel. Radu knew he could not join them. He turned and swam back into the
bay, toward the lights of the divers’ house.

He was halfway there when Orca broke the surface nearby and
swam beside him.

“She talked to you,” Orca said. Awe touched her
voice.

“I guess she did,” Radu said. He stopped
swimming and faced her. “But I couldn’t understand.”

“It doesn’t matter. You might not have
understood her even if you could understand true speech. But the blues hardly
ever speak to divers, Radu! They’ve never adopted any of us as their
family.”

Some faint ambition and unformed wish faded away just as
Radu became aware of its existence. He felt tired and lonely.

“Would it be rude for me to go ashore?” he
asked.

“No, of course not. Come on. I’ll swim with
you.”

Radu set out to cross the other half of the bay, swimming
slowly. Orca sidestroked alongside him, graceful even at a pace that to her
must have been like creeping, or floundering.

Radu climbed up the ladder and stood dripping on the dock.
Orca helped him out of the wet suit and showed him how to rinse it in fresh
water, to keep the salt from damaging it. Radu hardly noticed the chill of the
air on his bare skin; it was almost as if he had learned the divers’
ability to stay warm in freezing water. He and Orca walked down the dock and
into the cavern.

“Orca…”

“Hmm?”

“What did she say to me?”

“That’s awfully hard to explain, here on the
surface.”

“Please,” he said desperately. “Please
try.”

“She told you her name. Not just the sonic
description, her whole name. That’s part of what’s hard to explain.
Your sonic name is objective — anybody who’s met you knows what it
is, and anybody who hears it will recognize you immediately. The rest of
it… it’s a combination of your experiences and your feelings and
your beliefs. Then she asked you your name —”

“And I couldn’t answer…”

“She understood. I’m sure she did. She knew you
weren’t a diver. She wouldn’t be offended. They just aren’t,
not ever. Then she welcomed you to the transition, and said you and she would
speak together some other time.”

“Is that possible?”

“You’d have to learn middle speech, at least.
True speech would be better.”

“They must be difficult languages.”

“Well, I grew up speaking them, so I don’t know
how hard they are for adults. But I’ve been told they’re easy to
begin to learn. They’re very flexible, though, and I don’t think
anybody — any of the divers — knows true speech completely. Parts
of it you can make up as you go along, and anyone who speaks it will understand
what you’re saying.”

Radu raised one eyebrow, not exactly disbelieving Orca, but
finding the description difficult to comprehend.

“I don’t think anything exists that you
can’t describe in true speech,” Orca said.

“Not anything?”

Orca hung the wet suit up on its peg and tossed Radu his
clothes.

“I guess I’d have to see transit to prove that,
wouldn’t I?” Her voice was distant and thoughtful.

She accompanied him upstairs. He felt comfortable enough in
her presence now that he did not feel the need to dress himself immediately.

The simplicity of the divers’ house welcomed Radu in a
way that none of earth’s overdone luxury could match, in a way he had not
experienced since before his family died. In his room again, he looked down on
the channel where the whales and divers swam.

“What are they doing out there?” Radu said.

“Playing. Talking. Loving each other. Later on,
they’ll vote on whether to make the transition.”

“I shouldn’t keep you,” he said,
reluctantly. “Shouldn’t you be down there with them?”

“No. I’m not voting.”

“Why not?”