Uplift - Startide Rising Part 38

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 Tos.h.i.+o'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 fis.h.!.+ 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 s.p.a.ce, Nor a s.p.a.cer'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 a.s.sumed 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 s.p.a.cer 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, thras.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed. 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 s.h.i.+p 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 ma.s.s 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.

PART EIGHT.

The "Trojan Seahorse"

Ebony half-moons that soar From pools where the half light begins To set when, on what far sh.o.r.e, Dolphins? Dolphins?

HAMISH MACLAREN.

76 ::: Galactics.

Beie Chohooan cursed the parsimony of her superiors.

If the Synthian High Command had sent a mothers.h.i.+p to observe the battle of the fanatics, she might have been able to approach the war zone in a flitter-a vessel too small to be detected. As it was, she had been compelled to use a stars.h.i.+p large enough to travel through transfer points and hypers.p.a.ce, too small to defend itself adequately, and too large to sneak past the combatants.

She almost fired upon the tiny globe that nosed around the asteroid that sheltered her s.h.i.+p. Just in time she recognized the little wazoon-piloted probe. She pressed a stud to open a docking port, but the wazoon hung back, sending a frantic series of tight laser pulses.

Your position discovered, it flashed. Enemy missiles closing ...

Beie uttered her vilest d.a.m.nations. Every time she almost got close enough to 'cast a message through the jamming to the Earthlings, she had to flee from some random, paranoid tentacle of battle.

Come in quickly and dock! She tapped out a command to the wazoon. Too many of the loyal little clients had died for her already.

Negative. Flee, Beie. Wazoo-two will distract ...

Beie snarled at the disobedience. The three wazoon who remained on the shelf to her left cringed and blinked their large eyes at her.

The scout globe sped off into the night.

Beie closed the port and fired up her engines. Carefully, she weaved her way through the lanes between chunks of primordial stone, away from the area of danger.

Too late, she thought as she glanced at the threat board. The missiles were closing too fast.

A sudden glare from behind told of the fate of the little wazoon. Beie's whiskered upper lip curled as she contemplated a suitable way to get even with the fanatics, if she ever got a chance.

Then the missiles arrived, and she was suddenly too busy even for nasty, pleasant thoughts.

She blasted two missiles to vapor with her particle gun. Two others fired back; their beams were barely refracted by her s.h.i.+elds.

Ah, Earthlings, she contemplated. You'll not even know I was ever here. For all you know, you have been forsaken by all the universe.

But don't let that stop you, wolflings. Fight on! Snarl at your pursuers! And when all your weapons fail, bite them!

Beie destroyed four more missiles before one managed to explode close by, sending her broken s.h.i.+p spinning, burning, into the dusty Galactic dark.

77 ::: Tos.h.i.+o The night blew wet with scattered bl.u.s.tery sheets of rain. The glossy broadleaf plants waved uncertainly under contrary gusts from a wind that seemed unable to decide on a direction. The dripping foliage glistened when two of Kithrup's nearby tiny moons shone briefly through the clouds.

At the far southern end of the island, a crude thatch covering allowed rain to seep through in slow trickles. It dripped onto the finely pitted hull of a small s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. The water formed small meniscus pools atop the gently curving metal surface, then ran off in little rivulets. The tappity-tap of the heavy raindrops. .h.i.tting the thatch was joined by a steady patter as streams of runoff poured onto the smashed mud and vegetation beneath the cylindrical flying machine.