Startide Rising

73 ::: Akki

It was a scream that curdled his marrow. Only a monster could make a sound like that. He fled it almost as hard as he fled the creature that voiced it.

By noontime Akki realized it was nearly over.

His exhaustion showed in a laboring heart and heavy breathing, but also in a painful sloughing of the outer layers of his skin. His allergic reaction to the water seemed to be aggravated by fatigue. It had grown worse as he frantically dodged in and out amongst tiny islets. His once-smooth, dynamically supple hide was now a rough mass of sores. His mind felt little more agile than his body.

Several times he had escaped traps that should have left him meat. Once he had fled a sonar reflection almost into K'tha-Jon's jaws. The giant had grinned and flourished his laser rifle as Akki turned away frantically. It hadn't been by speed or cleverness that Akki escaped. He realized that his enemy was just toying with him.

He had hoped to flee northward, toward Toshio's island, but now he was all turned around, and north was lost to him. Perhaps if he could wait until sunset…

No. I won't last that long. It's time to end it.

The chilling hunt-scream pealed out again. The ululation seemed to coagulate the water around him.

A large part of Akki's fatigue had come from the involuntary terror that cry sent through him. What devil was it, that chased him?

A little while ago he thought he had distantly heard another cry. It sounded like a Tursiops search call. But he was probably imagining things. Whatever was going on back at Streaker, they couldn't have spared anyone to look for him. Even if they had, how could anyone ever find him in this wide ocean?

He had done Streaker one service, in distracting the monster K'tha-Jon, in leading him away from where he could do worse harm.

I hope Gillian and Hikahi got back and straightened things out, he thought. I'm sure they did.

He took quiet breaths in the shadow of a rock cleft. K'tha-Jon knew where he was, of course. It was only a matter of time until he grew bored with the chase and came to collect his prey.

I'm fading, Akki thought. I've got to finish this while there's a chance to win something from it — even if it's just the honor of choosing my own time to die.

He checked the charge on his harness cells. There was only enough for two good shots from his cutter torch. Those would have to be from very short range, and no doubt K'tha-Jon's rifle was almost fully charged.

With his harness-hands Akki plugged his breather back over his blowmouth. Ten minutes of oxygen remained. More than enough.

The high scream echoed again, chilling, taunting.

All right, monster. He clenched his jaw to keep from shivering again. Hold your horses. I'm coming.

74 ::: Keepiru

Keepiru raced to the northeast, toward the battle sounds he had heard during the night. He swam hard and fast at the surface, arching and thrusting to drive through the water. He cursed at the drag of his harness, but to drop it was unthinkable.

Once again he cursed the damnable luck. Both his and Moki's sleds were used up, worthless, and had to be left behind.

As he entered the maze of tiny islands, he heard the hunt-scream clearly for the first time.

Until now he could tell himself he was imagining things that distance or some strange refraction in the water had tricked him into hearing what could not be.

The screeching cry pealed out, reflecting from the metal-mounds. Keepiru whirled, and it momentarily seemed a pack of hunters was all around him.

Then came another sound, a brave and very faint skirr of distant Trinary. Keepiru swung his jaw about, chose a direction, and swam for all he was worth.

His muscles flexed powerfully as he streaked through the maze. When a rasping buzz told him his breather was near empty, he cursed as he popped the thing loose, and continued his dash along the surface, puffing and blowing with each driving arch.

He came to a narrow meeting of channels and swung about in confusion.

Which way! He swiveled about until the hunt cry echoed once more. Then there was a terrible crashing sound. He heard a squeal of outrage and pain, and the soft whine of a harness in operation. Another faint Trinary challenge was answered by a shivering scream and another crash.

Keepiru sprinted. It couldn't be far! He dashed, sparing none of his reserves, just as there came a final call of exhausted defiance.

* For the honor

Of Calafia… *

The voice disappeared under a scream of savage triumph. Then there was silence.

It took him another five minutes, frantically casting about the narrow passages, to find the battleground. The taste of the water, when Keepiru sped into the quiet strait, told him he was too late.

He caught up short and stopped just short of entering a small vale between three metal-mounds. Coppery strands of dangle-weed floated overhead.

Pink froth spread from the center of the tiny valley, with streamers of red in the direction of the prevailing currents. At the center, enmeshed in a tangle of wrecked harness parts, the body of a young amicus neo-fin, already partly dismembered, drifted belly up, teased and tugged at by the red jaws of a giant dolphin.

A giant dolphin? How, in all the time since they had left Earth, had he not noticed this before? He desperately reattached a fresh breather from his harness, and took gasping breaths while he watched and listened to the killer.

Look at the deep countershading, he told himself. Look at the short jaw, the great teeth, the short, sharp dorsal fin.

Listen to him!

K'tha-Jon grunted contentedly as he ripped a piece from Akki's side. The giant didn't even appear to notice the long burn along his left flank, or the bruise slowly spreading from the point where Akki's last desperate ramming had come home.

Keepiru knew the monster was aware of him. K'tha-Jon lazily swallowed, then rose to the surface for air. When he descended he looked right at Keepiru.

"Well, Pilot?" he murmured happily.

Keepiru used Anglic, though the breather muffled the words.

"I've just dealt with one monster, K'tha-Jon, but your devolution fouls our entire race."

K'tha-Jon's derision was a series of high snorts.

"You think I have reverted, like that pathetic Stenosss Moki, don't you, Pilot?"

Keepiru could only shake his head, unable to bring himself to say what he thought the bosun had become.

"Can a devolved dolphin speak Anglic as well as I?" K'tha-Jon sneered. ".Or use logic thisss way? Would a reverted Tursiops, or even a pure Stenosss, have pursued an air breathing prey with such determination… and satisssfaction?

"True, the crisis of the last few weeks allowed something deep within me to burssst free. But can you truly listen to me and then call me a devolved dolphin?"

Keepiru looked at the pink froth around the giant's stubby, powerful jaws. Akki's corpse drifted away slowly with the tide.

"I know what you are, K'tha-Jon." Keepiru switched to Trinary.

* Cold water boils

When you scream

* Red jawed hunger

Fills your dream.

* Harpoons slew

The whales,

* The nets of Iki

Caught us,

* Yet you, alone

We feared at night

* You alone -

… Orca.

K'tha-Jon's jaw gaped in satisfaction, as if he were accepting an accolade. He rose for air and returned a few meters closer to Keepiru, grinning.

"I guessssed the truth some time ago. I am one of the prized experiments of our beloved human-patron Ignacio Metz. That-t fool did one great thing, for all of his ssstupidity. Some of the others he snuck into berths on Streaker did revert or go mad. But I am a successs…"

"You are a calamity!" Keepiru spluttered, prevented by the breather from using other words more to the point.

K'tha-Jon drifted a few meters closer, causing Keepiru to back away involuntarily. The giant stopped again; a satisfied clicking emanated from his brow.

"Am I, Pilot? Can you, a simple fish-eater, understand your betters? Are you worthy to judge one whose forebears were at the top-p of the ocean food-chain? And dealt as judges of the sssea with all your kind?"

Keepiru was hardly listening, uncomfortably aware of the vanishing distance between himself and the monster.

"You arrogate t-too much. You have only a few gene splices from…"

"I am ORCA!" K'tha-Jon screamed. The cry echoed like a high paean of bugles. "The superficial body is nothing! It is the brain and blood that matter. Listen to me, and dare deny what I am!"

K'tha-Jon's jaw-clap was like a gunshot. The hunt cry pealed forth and Keepiru, under its direct focus, felt a deep instinct well up, a desire to tuck himself inward, to hide or die.

Keepiru resisted. He forced himself to assume an assertive body stance and bite out words of defiance.

"You are devolved, K'tha-Jon! Worse, you are a mutant thing, with no heritage at all. Metz's grafts went bad. Do you think-k a true Orca would do what you've done? They do hunt fallow dolphins on Earth, but never when sssated! The true killer whale does not kill out of spite!"

Keepiru defecated and flicked it in the giant's direction with his flukes.

"You are a failed experiment, K'tha-Jon! You say you're still logical, but now you have no home. And when my report gets back to Earth your gene-plasm will be poured into the sewers! Your line will end the way monsters end."

K'tha-Jon's eyes gleamed. He swept Keepiru with sonar, as if to memorize every curve of an intended prey.

"What gave you the idea you were ever going to reportt-t?" he hissed.

Keepiru grinned open-mouthed. "Why, the simple fact that you are a crippled, insane monster whose blunt snout couldn't stave in cardboard, whose maleness satisfies only pool-gratings, bringing forth nothing but stale water… "

The giant screamed again, this time in rage. As K'tha-Jon charged Keepiru whirled and darted into a side channel, fleeing just ahead of the powerful jaws.

Tearing through a thick hedge of dangle-weed, Keepiru congratulated himself. By taunting K'tha-Jon into a personal vendetta he had made the creature forget entirely about his harness… and the laser rifle. K'tha-Jon obviously intended to kill Keepiru the way he had finished off Akki.

Keepiru fled a bare body length ahead of the mutant.

So far so good, he thought as the sparkling metal hillsides rushed past.

But it proved hard to shake his pursuer. And the menacing jaws made Keepiru wonder if his strategy had been so wise, after all. The chase went on and on, while the afternoon waned. As the sun set they were at it, still.

In the darkness, it became purely a battle of wits and of sound.

The nocturnal denizens of the archipelago fled in dismay as two swift foreign monsters streaked in and out of the inter-island channels, swerving and darting in streaming clouds of bubbles. As they swept by, they sprayed the depths and shallows with complex and confusing patterns of sound — compounded images and vivid illusions of echoes. Local fishes, even the giants, fled the area, leaving it to the battling aliens.

It was an eerie game of image and shadow, of deception and sudden ambush.

Keepiru slid out of a narrow, silted channel and listened. It had been an hour since he last heard the hunt-scream, but that didn't mean K'tha-Jon was being silent. Keepiru built a mental map of the surrounding area from the reflections that came to him, and knew that some of those images were subtly crafted constructs. The giant was nearby, using his immensely talented sonic organs to place an overlay of untruth over the echoes of this place.

Keepiru wished he could see. But the midnight clouds cast everything into darkness. Only faintly phosphorescent plants illuminated the seascape.

He rose to the surface for breath, and looked at the faint, silvery underlining of the clouds. In a dismal, gloomy drizzle, the vegetation on the hulking metal-mounds swished and swayed.

Keepiru took seven breaths then descended again. Down below was where the battle would be settled.

Phantoms swam through the open channels. A false echo seemed to present an opening directly to the north, the direction Keepiru had been trying to lead the chase, but on careful examination he concluded it was an illusion.

Another such fake passage earlier had fooled him until, at the last moment, he had swerved away, too late to keep from slamming into the vine-covered verge of a metal-mound. Battered, he had fought free of the tangle just in time to escape a ramming. K'tha-Jon's giant muzzle missed him by inches. As he fled, Keepiru was struck by a grazing bolt from the laser rifle. It had seared a hot burn into his left side. It hurt like bloody hell.

Only his greater maneuverability had enabled him to escape that time, to find a refuge to ride out waves of pain.

He could probably elude the pseudo-Orca in time. But time was not on his side. K'tha-Jon had dedicated himself to a ritual hunt and spared no thought for anything beyond it.

He did not plan to return to civilization. All he had to do was prevent Keepiru from reporting back, and trust Ignacio Metz to protect his birthright back on Earth.

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… *

75 ::: Hikahi

Since 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.