Infinity's Shore (28 page)

They may even penalize our murderers … for all the good it will do us.

“Actually,” said Brookida, turning from his workbench in the far corner of the cramped shelter. “I would not put the hoon in the same category as our other persecutors. They aren't religious radicals, or power-hungry conquerors. Sourpuss bureaucrats—that's a better description. Officious sticklers for rules, which is why so many enter service with Galactic Institutes. At NuDawn they were only enforcing the law. When human settlers resisted—”

“They thought they were being invaded!” Zhaki objected.

“Yessss.” Brookida nodded. “But Earth's colony hadn't heard about contact, and they lacked equipment to hear Galactic inquiries. When hoonish officials came to give a ritual last warning, they met something not in their manuals … armed trespassersss. Barbarians with no Galactic language. Mistakes followed. Military units swarmed in from Joph—”

“This has nothing to do with our present problem.” Kaa interrupted Brookida's history lecture. “Zhaki, you must stop cutting the local hoons' fishing netsss! It draws attention to us.”

“
Angry
attention,” Brookida added. “They grow wary against your dep-p-predations, Zhaki. Last time, they cast many spears.”

The young dolphin snorted.

Kaa flinched. Moments ago, Zhaki was eager to avenge humans who had died on a lost colony, back when dolphins could barely speak. Now the irate youth lumped all bipeds together, dredging up a grudge from days before men and women became caretakers of Earth. There was no arguing with a mind that worked that way.

Still, it was Kaa's job to enforce discipline.

It wasn't great haiku—not poetical Trinary like Captain Creideiki used to dazzle his crew with, crafting devoted loyalty from waves of gorgeous sound. But the warning rocked Zhaki. Kaa followed up, projecting a beam of intense sonar from his brow, piercing Zhaki's body, betraying fear churnings within.

When in doubt
, he thought,
fall back on the ancestors' ways.

“You are dismisssssed,” he finished. “Go rest. Tomorrow's another long day.”

Zhaki swerved obediently, retreating to the curtained alcove he shared with Mopol.

Alas, despite this brief success, Kaa also knew it would not last.

Tsh't told us this was an important mission. But I bet she assigned us all here because we're the ones
Streaker
could most easily do without.

That night he dreamed of piloting.

Neo-dolphins had a flair for it—a precocious talent for the newest sapient species in all Five Galaxies. Just three hundred years after human geneticists began modifying natural bottlenose dolphins, starship
Streaker
was dispatched in a noble experiment to prove the skill of dolphin crews. The Terragens Council thought it might help solidify Earth's shaky position to become known as a source of crackerjack pilots.

“Lucky” Kaa had naturally been pleased to be chosen for the mission, though it brought home one glaring fact.

I was good … but not the best.

In half slumber, Kaa relived the terrifying ambush at Morgran, a narrow escape that still rocked him, even after all this time.

Socketed in his station on the bridge, helpless to do anything
but go along for the ride, as
Chief Pilot Keepiru
sent the old Snark-class survey ship through maneuvers a Tandu fighter ship would envy, neatly evading lurk mines and snare fields, then diving back into the Morgran maelstrom, without benefit of guidance computation.

The memory lost no vividness after two long years.

Transit threads swarmed around them, a dizzying blur of dimensional singularities. By a whim of cerebral evolution, trained dolphin pilots excelled at picturing the shimmering space-time clefts with sonar imagery. But Kaa had never rushed through such a tangle! A tornado of knotted strands. Any shining cord, caught at the wrong angle, might hurl the ship back into normal space with the consistency of quark stew
 …

 … 
Yet somehow, the ship sped nimbly from one thread to the next, Keepiru escaped the pursuers, dodged past the normal trade routes, and finally brought
Streaker
to a refuge Captain Creideiki chose.

Kithrup,
where resources for repairs could be found as pure isotopic metal, growing like coral in a poison sea
 …

 … 
Kithrup, homeworld of two unknown races, one sinking in an ancient wallow of despair, and the other hopeful, new
 …

 … 
Kithrup, where no one should have been able to follow
 …

 … 
But they did. Galactics, feuding and battling insanely overhead
 …

 … 
And soon Keepiru was gone, along with Toshio, Hikahi, and Mr. Orley
 …

 … 
and Kaa learned that some wishes were better not coming true.

He learned that he did not really want to be chief pilot, after all.

In the years since, he has gained experience. The escapes he piloted—from Oakka and the Fractal System—were performed well, if not as brilliantly.

Not quite good enough to preserve Kaa's nickname.

I never heard anyone else say they could do better.

All in all, it was not a restful sleep.

Zhaki and Mopol were at it again, before dawn, rubbing and squealing beyond a slim curtain they nearly shredded with their slashing tails. They should have gone outside to frolic, but Kaa dared not order it.

“It is typical postadolescent behavior,” Brookida told him, by the food dispenser. “Young males grow agitated. Among natural dolphins, unisex play ceases to be sufficient as youths turn their thoughts to winning the companionship of females. Young allies often test their status by jointly challenging older males.”

Of course Kaa knew all that. But he could not agree with the “typical” part.
I never acted that way. Oh sure, I was an obnoxious, arrogant young fin. But I never acted intentionally gross, or like some reverted animal.

“Maybe Tsh't should have assigned females to our team.” He pondered aloud.

“Wouldn't help,” answered the elderly metallurgist. “If those two schtorks weren't getting any aboard ship, they wouldn't do any better here. Our fern-fins have high standards.”

Kaa sputtered out a lump of half-chewed mullet as he laughed, grateful for Brookida's lapse into coarse humor—though it grazed by a touchy subject among
Streaker
's crew, the
petition to breed
that some had been circulating and signing.

Kaa changed the subject. “How goes your analysis of the matter the hoons dumped overboard?”

Brookida nodded toward his workbench, where several ribboned casks lay cracked open. Bits of bone and crystal glittered amid piles of ashen dust.

“So far, the contents confirm what the hoonish boy wrote in his journal.”

“Amazing. I was sure it must be a fake, planted by our enemies.” Transcripts of the handwritten diary, passed on by
Streaker
's command, seemed too incredible to believe.

“Apparently the story is true. Six races do live together on this world. As part of ecology-oriented rituals, they send their unrecyclable wastes—called
dross
—to sea for burial
in special disposal zones. This includes parts of their processed bodies.”

“And you found—”

“Human remainsss.” Brookida nodded. “As well as chimps, hoons, urs … the whole crowd this young ‘Alvin' wrote about.”

Kaa was still dazed by it all.

“And there are … J-Jophur.” He could hardly speak the word aloud.

Brookida frowned. “A matter of definition, it seems. I've exchanged message queries with Gillian and the Niss Machine. They suggest these so-called traeki might have the other races fooled as part of an elaborate, long-range plot.”

“How could that be?”

“I am not sure. It would not require that every traeki be in on the scheme. Just a few, with secret master rings, and the hidden equipment to dominate their fellow beings. I cannot quite fathom it. But Gillian has questioned the captured Library unit. And that seems a possssible scenario.”

Kaa had no answer for that. Such matters seemed so complex, so far beyond his grasp, his only response was to shiver from the tip of his rostrum all the way down to his trembling tail.

They spent another day spying on the local sooners. The hoonish seaport, Wuphon, seemed to match the descriptions in Alvin's journal … though more crude and shabby in the eyes of beings who had seen the sky towers of Tanith and bright cities on Earth's moon. The hoons appeared to pour more lavish attention on their boats than their homes. The graceful sailing ships bore delicate carving work, down to proud figureheads shaped like garish deities.

When a vessel swept past Kaa, he overheard the deep, rumbling sounds of
singing
, as the sailors boomed evident joy across the whitecaps.

It's hard to believe these are the same folk Brookida described as passionless prigs. Maybe there are two races that
look alike, and have similar-sounding names.
Kaa made a mental note to send an inquiry in tonight's report.

Hoons weren't alone on deck. He peered at smaller creatures, scrambling nimbly over the rigging, but when he tried using a portable camera, the image swept by too fast to catch much more than a blur.

Streaker
also wanted better images of the
volcano
, which apparently was a center of industrial activity among the sooner races. Gillian and Tsh't were considering sending another independent robot ashore, though earlier drones had been lost. Kaa got spectral readings of the mountain's steaming emissions, and discovered the trace of a slender tramway, camouflaged against the rocky slopes.

He checked frequently on Zhaki and Mopol, who seemed to be behaving for a change, sticking close to their assigned task of eavesdropping on the red qheuen colony.

But later, when all three of them were on their way back to base, Mopol lagged sluggishly behind.

“It must-t have been some-thing I ate,” the blue dolphin murmured, as unpleasant gurglings erupted within his abdomen.

Oh great
, Kaa thought.
I warned him a hundred times not to sample local critters before Brookida had a chance to test them!

Mopol swore it was nothing. But as the water surrounding their shelter dimmed with the setting sun, he started moaning again. Brookida used their tiny med scanner, but was at a loss to tell what had gone wrong.

Tsh't

N
OMINALLY, SHE COMMANDED EARTH'S MOST FAMOUS spaceship—a beauty almost new by Galactic standards, just nine hundred years old when the Terragens Council purchased it from a Puntictin used-vessel dealer, then altered and renamed it
Streaker
to show off the skills of neo-dolphin voyagers.