Uplift - Startide Rising Part 51

"The signal party's returned from the viewport, Gillian," Tsh't said. "The Thennanin have gone off chasing our shadows, but they'll be back. What-t do we do now?"

Gillian felt tremors of adrenalin reaction. She had not planned beyond this point. There was only one thing she wanted desperately to do now. Only one destination in the universe she wanted to go.

"Kithrup," she whispered.

Gillian shook herself. "Kithrup?" She looked at Tsh't, knowing what the answer would be, but wis.h.i.+ng it weren't so.

Tsh't shook her sleek head. "There'sss a flotilla orbiting Kithrup now, Gillian. No fighting. There must've been a winner in the big battle.

"Another squadron's heading this way fa.s.sst. A big one. We don't want em to get close enough to see through our disguise."

Gillian nodded. Her voice didn't want to function, but she made the words come.

"North," she said.

"Take us out along Galactic north, Tsh't ... to the transfer point. Full speed. When we get close enough, we'll dump the Seahorse, and get the Ifni-d.a.m.ned h.e.l.l out of here with ... with the ashes we've won."

The dolphins returned to their posts. The rumble of the engines gathered strength.

Gillian swam to one dark corner of the crystal dome, to a place where there was a c.h.i.n.k in the Thennanin armor, where she could look at the stars directly.

Streaker picked up speed.

123 ::: Galactics The Tandu-Soro detachment was gaining on the strung out fugitives.

"Mistress, a crippled Thennanin is approaching the transfer point on an escape trajectory."

Krat squirmed on her cus.h.i.+on and snarled. "So? Casualties have left the battle area before. All sides try to evacuate their wounded. Why do you bother me when we are even now closing in!"

The little Pila detector officer scuttled back into its cubbyhole. Krat bent to watch her forward screens.

A small squadron of Thennanin struggled to keep ahead. Further on, at the edge of detection, sparks of desultory battle showed that the leaders were still bickering, even as they closed on the quarry.

What if they're mistaken, Krat wondered. We chase the Thennanin, who chase the remnants, who chase what? Those fools might even be chasing each other!

It didn't matter. Half the Tandu-Soro fleet orbited Kithrup, so the Earthlings were trapped, one way or another.

We'll deal with the Tandu in good time, she thought, and meet the ancient ones alone.

"Mistress!" the Pila shouted shrilly. "There is a transmission from the transfer point!"

"Bother me one more time with inconsequentials ..." she rumbled, flexing her mating claw threateningly. But the client interrupted her! The Pil dared to interrupt!

"Mistress. It is the Earth s.h.i.+p! They taunt us! They defy us! They ..."

"Show me!" Krat hissed. "It must be a trick! Show me at once!"

The Pil ducked back into its section. On Krat's main screen appeared the holo image of a man, and several dolphins. From the man's shape, Krat could tell it was a female, probably their leader.

" . .stupid creatures unworthy of the name 'sophonts.' Foolish, pre-sentient upspring of errant masters. We slip away from all your armed might, laughing at your clumsiness! We slip away as we always will, you pathetic creatures. And now that we have a real head start, you'll never catch us! What better proof that the Progenitors favor not you, but us! What better proof ..."

The taunt went on. Krat listened, enraged, yet at the same time savoring the artistry of it. These men are better than I'd thought. Their insults are wordy and overblown, but they have talent. They deserve honorable, slow deaths.

"Mistress! The Tandu with us are changing course! Their other s.h.i.+ps are leaving Kithrup for the transfer point!"

Krat hissed in despair. "After them! After them at once! We followed them through s.p.a.ce this far. The chase only goes on!"

The crew bent to their tasks resignedly. The Earth s.h.i.+p was in a good position to escape. Even at best this would be a long chase.

Krat realized that she would never make it home in time for mating. She would die out here.

On her screen, the man continued to taunt them.

"Librarian!" she called. "I do not understand some of the man's words. Find out what that phrase-Nyaahh nyaaah -- means in their beastly wolfling tongue!"

124 ::: Tom Orley Cross-legged on a woven mat of reeds, shaded by a floating wreck, he listened as a muttering volcano slowly sputtered into silence. Contemplating starvation, he listened to the soft, wet sounds of the endless weedscape, and found in them a homely beauty. The squishy, random rhythms blended into a backdrop for his meditation.

On the mat in front of him, like a focus mandala, lay the message bomb he had never set off. The container glistened in the sunlight of north Kithrup's first fine day in weeks. Highlights shone in dimpled places where the metal had been battered, as he had been. The dented surface gleamed still.

Where are you now?

The subsurface sea-waves made his platform undulate gently. He floated in a trance through levels of awareness, like an old man poking idly through his attic, like an old-time hobo looking with mild curiosity through the slats of a moving boxcar.

Where are you now, my love?

He recalled a j.a.panese haiku from the eighteenth century, by the great poet Yosa Buson.

As the spring rains fall, Soaking in them, on the roof, Is a child's rag ball.

Watching blank images in the dents on the psi-globe, he listened to the creaking of the flat jungle-its skittering little animal sounds-the wind riffling through the wet, flat leaves.

Where is that part of me that has departed?

He listened to the slow pulse of a world ocean, watched patterns in the metal, and after a while, in the reflections in the dents and creases, an image came to him.

A blunt, bulky, wedge shape approached a place that was a not-place, a s.h.i.+ning blackness in s.p.a.ce. As he watched, the bulky thing cracked open. The thick carapace slowly split apart, like a hatching egg. The shards fell away, and there remained a slender nubbed cylinder, looking a bit like a caterpillar. Around it glowed a nimbus, a thickening sh.e.l.l of probability that hardened even as he watched.

No illusion, he decided. It cannot be an illusion.

He opened himself to the image, accepting it. And from the caterpillar a thought winged to him.

Blossoms on the pear and a woman in the moonlight reads a letter there ... .

His slowly healing lips hurt as he smiled. It was another haiku by Buson. Her message was as unambiguous as could be, under the circ.u.mstances. She had somehow picked up his trance-poem, and responded in kind.

"Jill ..." he cast as hard as he could.

The caterpillar shape, sheathed in a coc.o.o.n of stasis, approached the great hole in s.p.a.ce. It dropped forward toward the not-place, grew transparent as it fell, then vanished.

For a long time Tom sat very still, watching the highlights on the metal globe slowly s.h.i.+ft as the morning pa.s.sed.

Finally, he decided it wouldn't do him or the universe any harm if he started doing something about survival.

125 ::: The Skiff "Between you two crazy males, have you come any closer to figuring out what he'sss talking about?"

Keepiru and Sah'ot just stared back at Hikahi. They turned back to their discussion without answering her, huddling with Creideiki, trying to interpret the captain's convoluted instructions.

Hikahi rolled her eyes and turned to Tos.h.i.+o. "You'd think they'd include me in these seances of theirs. After all, Creideiki and I are mates!"

Tos.h.i.+o shrugged. "Creideiki needs Sah'ot's language skill and Keepiru's ability as a pilot. But you saw their faces. They're halfway into the Whale Dream right now. We can't afford to have you that way while you're in command."

"Hmmmph." Hikahi spumed, only slightly mollified. "I suppose you've finished the inventory, Tos.h.i.+o?"

"Yes, sir." He nodded. "I have a written list ready. We're well enough stocked in consumables to last to the first transfer point, and at least one beyond that. Of course, we're in the middle of nowhere, so we'll need at least five transfer jumps to get anywhere near civilization. Our charts are pitifully inadequate, our drives will probably fail over the long haul, and few s.h.i.+ps our size have even taken transfer points successfully. Aside from all that, and the cramped living quarters, I think we're all right."

Hikahi sighed. "We can't lose anything by trying. At lea.s.st the Galactics are gone."

"Yeah," he agreed. "It was a nice stroke, Gillian taunting the Eatees from the transfer point. It let us know they got away, and got the Eatees off our backs."

"Don't say 'Eatees,' Tos.h.i.+o. It'ss not polite. You may offend some nice Kanten or Linten one day if you get into the habit."

Tos.h.i.+o swallowed and ducked his head. No matter where or when, no lieutenant had ever been known to slacken off on a middie. "Yes, sir," he said.

Hikahi grinned and flicked a small splash of water on the youth with her lower jaw.

Duty, duty Brave shark-biter What reward Could taste better?

Tos.h.i.+o blushed and nodded.

The skiff started to move again. Keepiru was back in the pilot's saddle. Creideiki and Sah'ot chattered excitedly in a semi-Primal rhythm which still sent s.h.i.+vers down Hikahi's spine. And Sah'ot had said that Creideiki was toning it down on purpose!

She was still getting used to the idea that Creideiki's injury might have been a door opening, rather than a closing.

The skiff lifted from the sea and began to speed eastward, following Creideiki's hunch.

"What about pa.s.senger morale?" Hikahi asked Tos.h.i.+o.

"Well, I guess it's all right. That pair of Kiqui are happy so long as they're with Dennie. And Dennie's happy ... well, she's happy enough for now."

Hikahi was amused. Why should the youth be embarra.s.sed about Dennie's other preoccupation? She was glad the two young humans had each other, as she had Creideiki.

In spite of his new, eerie side, Creideiki was the same dolphin. The newness was something he used, something he seemed only to have begun exploring. He could hardly speak, but he conveyed his great intellect-and his caring -- in other ways.

"What about Charlie?" she asked Tos.h.i.+o.

Tos.h.i.+o sighed. "He's still embarra.s.sed."

They had found the chimp a day after the great earthquakes, clinging to a floating tree-trunk, sopping wet. He had been unable to speak for ten hours, and had kept climbing the walls in the skiff's tiny hold until he finally calmed down.

Charlie finally admitted that he had scrambled to the top of a tall tree just before the island blew. It had saved his life, but the stereotype mortified him.

Tos.h.i.+o and Hikahi crowded in behind Keepiru's station and watched as the ocean rolled swiftly beneath the skiff. For minutes at a time the sea turned a brilliant green as they pa.s.sed over great swatches of vine. The little boat sped toward the sun.

They had been searching for almost a week, ever since Streaker had departed.

First found had been Tos.h.i.+o, swimming purposefully westward, never giving up. Then Dennie had led them to another island where there was a tribe of Kiqui. While she negotiated another treaty, they searched for and found Charles Dart.

Takkata-Jim's Stenos were all missing or dead.

After that had come one last, and apparently forlorn, search. They had been at this last phase for several days now.

Hikahi was about to give up. They couldn't go on wasting time and consumables like this. Not with the journey they had ahead of them.

Not that they really had much of a chance. No one had ever heard of a voyage like they planned. A cross-Galactic journey in the skiff would make Captain Bligh's epic crossing of the Pacific in the Bounty's longboat seem like an afternoon jaunt.

She kept her appraisal to herself, though. Creideiki and Keepiru probably understood what lay ahead of them. Tos.h.i.+o seemed to have guessed part of it already. There was no reason to inform the others until they had to cut the rations for the fourth time.

She sighed.

Of what else Are heroes made Than men and women Who, like us, Try -- *

Keepiru's fluting call of triumph was like a shrill trumpet. He squawled and tossed on his platform. The skiff rolled left and right in a wiggle-waggle, then went into a screaming climb.

"What the f -- !!" Tos.h.i.+o stopped himself, "Holy jumping turtle-fish, Keepiru! What is it?"

Hikahi used a harness arm to grab a wall stanchion, and looked out a port. She sighed for a third time, long and deep.

The smoke from his fire momentarily hid the boat from sight. The first he knew of it was the sonic boom that rolled over him, nearly knocking over his drying racks.

The human standing on the woven reed mat almost dove for cover, but a hunch made him stop and look up instead.

His eyes were sun-squinted. Crow's-feet that had not been there a few weeks before lay at the corners. His beard was black with thin gray flecks. It had grown out and nearly stopped itching. It almost covered a ragged scar that ran down one cheek.

Shading his eyes, he recognized the wild maneuvers before he did the outlines of the tiny s.h.i.+p. It streaked high into the sky and looped about, coming back to screech past him again.

He reached out to steady the drying racks against the thunder. No sense in letting the meat go to waste. It had taken a lot of work to harvest it, strip it, and prepare it. They might need it for the voyage ahead.