Cachalot

by Alan Dean Foster

  Rorqual Station Towne, the last attacked, was the nearest to Mou'anui. Its proximity was both convenient and ominous, for that hinted to Mataroreva, Hwoshien, and the others responsible for keeping Cachalot's citizens quiet and secure a growing boldness on the part of whatever was behind the assault.

  As the town most recently destroyed, it was also the most likely to yield any clues to research. And if any trouble arose, skimmers from Mou'anui could reach the Caribe more rapidly than if it were to anchor at the town site of, say, Te iti Turtle, which lay a thousand kilometers farther out in the ocean.

  Thinking of destruction as she slipped into her bunk made Cora think of Silvio. And of her breakdown. Rachael had been five at the time of her father's death and her mother's collapse. She knew of both only vaguely. Someday Cora would have to explain both, explain what had truly happened.

  Mataroreva was at work on the bridge.

  "What are you doing?" Cora asked as she approached him.

  "Oh, good morning, Beautiful." He glanced up momentarily from the console and smiled hugely.

  "Just plain Cora will do."

  "Okay. Good morning, just plain Cora." He touched a contact switch. "I'm setting the stabilizers. Wouldn't be much fun if we spent a few hours diving and surfaced to find that the ship had drifted out of sight."

  "Stabil—we're here, then?" She looked around in surprise. The ocean looked no different from what they had crossed in days of traveling out from Mou'anui.

  "More or less. I'm picking a spot. Have a look over the side."

  She did so, moving to the upper railing to peer at the water. She almost blinded herself in the process.

  Several hexalate formations grew almost to the surface, and their reflected glare made her blink. The intensity was not as bad as that from the sands of a motu, however. By not looking directly at the uppermost growths and by squinting hard, she could gaze into the water without protective goggles. She could not see any end to the reef. The Caribe hovered above it, adrift in a sea of emerald and yellow. "This is where the town was located?"

  He nodded. "The position was fixed by the first vessels that returned here after the destruction—the survivors of the town, those who'd been out working." He pointed, and she noticed several widely spaced, floating blobs of red: polymer marked buoys, each containing its own directional transmitter.

  "What was the town doing here?"

  "This is a fairly good-sized, well-known fishing reef.

  The Rorqualians had it staked out for organic mining purposes. The survivors indicated that the town had taken its limit and was preparing to depart only a couple of days after it was hit. But they were primarily the fishermen. They weren't sure precisely what was being stocked in the town's holds."

  "And, just like the others, they didn't find any bodies?"

  He shook his head. "Not so much as a finger. You would think at least one or two would sink, or be trapped under falling debris and pinned to the bottom. But nothing."

  She stared at the water. "It's hard to believe anyone ever lived around here."

  "Oh, the town was here." He started for the ladder. "Get into your suit. I haven't explored the area myself, but records say there's still plenty of evidence around."

  He finished setting the stabilizers and the automatic warning network. The latter was engaged as a matter of procedure more than anything else, since the two patrolling orcas provided a far more efficient advance detection system than anything composed of circuitry and transceivers.

  Cora was first in, followed closely by Rachael, Mataroreva, and Merced. Pristine beauty she had anticipated. The reef did not disappoint her. Great hexalate heads like crystal trees rose from the sandy bottom, while diamond tunnels pierced labyrinths of frozen cloud.

  She did not expect the nudge from behind. It compounded her shock when she spun and encountered massive jaws lined with even white teeth. A dense whistling filled the air around her, and a moment passed before she remembered to switch on her suit-mask translator.

  "Sorrry iss this one to hawe starrtled you-she," Latehoht said. "It was not meanntttt."

  "That's…" Cora caught her breath, relaxed. "That's all right." She kicked easily, enjoying the familiar freedom that came with being underwater. Latehoht barely flicked her flukes as she spiraled over and around the tiny swimmer, keeping her right eye always on her smaller human companion. The gelsuit had already turned comfortably warm. Cora grew lazy within her transparent armor.

  "To thhis placce has comme a sadness," the killer whale moaned. "Inn the waterr lingers still the effluvia of deathhh."

  "Don't believe a word she says."

  Cora looked around, saw the graceful bulk of Mataroreva moving up to join them. "Latehoht revels in the rhythms of languid depression."

  "I doo notttt!" the orca whistled indignantly. "Thhe smmell iss herre. It does too linnger." She left Cora, twisted to charge Sam. At the last second he ducked below her rush. She swatted at him with her tail, but he anticipated the swing and clutched tight to one fluke. He hung on for several seconds until she flipped free, came up and around to bump him in the belly. Cora heard him grunt. Kicking around, he snatched at her dorsal fin.

  There followed several minutes of violent choreography as she half tried to buck him off, but he was not as easy to shake from her back as he had been from her tail.

  "Pllay theyy well together, well annd frreeee."

  "Yes, they do." Cora managed not to jump this time, although Wenkoseemansa's approach had been stealthy.

  "Hawe I enjoyed to thhink, in momments of quiet contemmplation, in timmes of idle speculation, thhat the humman Sammm would hawe made a passable cetacean."

  "Certainly," she admitted, unsure of how to interpret the orca's observation, "he's built more like you than like most of us."

  "Iss he? You mmust underrstandd, and carreful I amm not to sayy thhis with derrogatorry intent, thhat you hummans arre so smmall thhat to us any phhysical differrences of sizze orr shhape arre so superrficial as to makke us strrain to notice them."

  "Yet for all our smaller size, we have a greater variety of features."

  Wenkoseemansa considered. "Thhat only adds to ourr confusionnnn."

  She looked back through the clear water, trying hard to ignore the wondrous diversity of alien piscatorial life swarming about her in order to concentrate on the problem at hand.

  Where were Rachael and Merced? Had they sneaked off somewhere? "Rachael!"

  "Over here, Mother!"

  She turned a circle. "Where?"

  "I esppy thhemmmm." Wenkoseemansa swung his seemingly weightless mass around, presented a black and white wall to her gaze. It occurred to her that he was offering her a ride.

  "Theyy are a modest distance, byy your standards. I will convey you to yourr offspring."

  She hesitated only a second before locking her gloved palms over the front of the towering dorsal fin. Then the water was rushing past her so fast it put pressure on her suit. In an instant (or so it seemed) she had traveled several hundred meters through the clear water.

  Rachael was swimming alone beside a crystal castle. It looked like an interlocked series of colored, spi-raled shells that rose to within two meters of the surface. Several smaller constructs, miniature versions of the larger, grew from the reef base farther down.

  "Isn't it grand, Mother?"

  "Isn't what grand? Yes, it's beautiful, but—"

  "I'm sorry. How could you know? Listen!" Rachael held a small metal sampling tool. She used it to tap one side of the growth. A distinct, mellifluous tone ran through the water. "It must be partially hollow."

  Yellow and blue stripes ran around the shell spirals, a collection of unicorn horns. The shells were pale green to transparent. In the center of each shell pulsed crimson organs, sending colorless fluid throughout the individual organisms.

  "Okay, it's grand." Cora glanced around, relieved to find that Merced was nowhere in sight. She still couldn't keep herself from asking, "Where's Pucara?
"

  "Off somewhere, investigating on his own. Think he follows me everywhere?"

  "Doesn't he?" Cora quickly added, "I'm sorry, that's none of my business."

  "That's right, Mother," Rachael agreed with disarming cheerfulness. "It's none of your business." She swam up a meter or so and tapped the spiral central cone where it tapered considerably. Again Cora heard the ringing, only an octave higher this time. "I'll bet several people working in unison could play these."

  So that was it. For just a moment, Cora had believed her daughter's scientific interests had been stimulated by the cone creatures. "Must you always be thinking of music?"

  "I don't see any harm in combining my work with my music." Then, more seriously, "There's something else here you probably ought to have a look at." She arched her back, kicked downward. Cora followed.

  Strewn between the crystal pinnacle and its lesser companions were several huge fragments of metal. The battered pieces of coated stelamic still retained their sheen and even markings. The inscriptions showed that they had been components of some large structure; a warehouse, possibly. Several of them were a third the size of the Caribe.

  Cora drifted over one, studying the torn edges. "It doesn't look as if this has been severed—by an energy beam, for example."

  Rachael was inspecting another fragment nearby. "Here's one that's badly dented, but it's still intact."

  Cora joined her daughter, saw that she was right. Torn supports were still fastened to an unbreached container. The tank itself was bent almost in half, flattened in the center by some tremendous force.

  "A whale's tail could do that," Rachael murmured. She looked behind her. "What do you think, Wenkoseemansa?"

  The orca swam over, turned his head, and examined the ruined tank with his right eye. "Howw frragile arre the arrtificial constructions of hummankind. A whale's tail?" He sniffed, sending bubbles skyward. "Could doo thhis little thhing a whale's brreathhhh."

  "We've no evidence yet to support that hypothesis, Rachael. A weapon could do the same."

  "What kind of weapon?"

  "I don't know, dammit," her mother snapped. "I'm a marine biologist, not a munitions specialist. Pucara might know, and Sam surely will have some ideas. Wonder where they've got to?"

  "Sooon will thhey rejoin you." Wenkoseemansa let loose a sharply rising whistle that the translator could not refine into human terms, then vanished in a rush of displaced water.

  He wasn't gone long before he returned with Pucara Merced clinging to his dorsal fin. Latehoht and Sam rejoined the others seconds later.

  The four humans drifted, exchanging thoughts and theories while the two orcas waited interestedly near-by.

  "What about the possibility of a rogue whale?" Merced suggested. "A deranged one."

  "One whale?" Mataroreva was properly skeptical.

  "Well, what kind of weapons, then?"

  "Any number of possibilities there." The peace-forcer eyed the twisted tank, which they had tentatively identified as a type used to store liquid protein. "Let's not forget that the force of another, nearby explosion could have caused this. Also, there are compressed gas weapons which could directly do such damage. Or a storm wave could have caused it I'm afraid this isn't much in the way of evidence."

  "And no hint that energy weapons were used," Cora added. "That's obvious even to me."

  "Could someone," Merced continued, "be trying to make it look as if the whales are causing the destruction, to cover their own activities? By using those compressed gas weapons, for example?"

  "Could be," Mataroreva agreed. "It would add up with what the old catodon told us about the impossibility of any whales actually being responsible."

  "There's more over this way." Merced had drifted off to their right, down a glass canyon. "Smaller stuff. We might find something more specific."

  "I doubt it." Cora moved to join him. "The local experts have undoubtedly sifted everything already. Though you never know. What do you hope to find, Pucara?"

  He shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe someone had a personal tridee recorder going at the moment of attack, though, as you say, it's likely the initial search teams would already have checked for such items. But it would be good for us to make our own search of the reef."

  Mataroreva started to protest, intending to cite the size of the reef and the thoroughness of the previous inspectors, but decided not to. Cora and the other two were not as familiar with Cachalot growths and formations as were the residents. Therefore they might search where a local scientist would disdain to.

  "Anything that looks helpful, we take aboard for detailed analysis," Merced continued, looking at Mataroreva.

  "Sounds like a reasonable suggestion. I know that you're all experienced in underwater work, so I'll say this only one last time and never mention it again. Watch yourselves. As soon as we think we've identified every danger, some innocent-looking new creature appears with a unique form of protection. We've already catalogued twelve entirely new indigenous types of toxin. I don't want any of you discovering the thirteenth.

  "Everyone should report in to the Caribe's receiver" —he checked his chronometer—"at least on the hour. Give your approximate position in relation to the sun and the ship." He studied them each in turn, said finally, "That's all I have to say."

  "Everyone pick a compass point," Cora said, anxious to begin, "and let's start hunting."

  They learned nothing from the many fragments of town cleaned that day from the reef and sand. Subsequent days of searching added more material but no revelations.

  Among the material recovered were many personal effects: bits of clothing, water-sealed foodstuffs, shreds of expensive pylon netting, electronic instrumentation, and whole gelsuits. One morning Rachael excitedly directed them to a half-buried case that contained two dozen tridee tapes. They were perfectly preserved in a watertight inner container and of no value whatsoever. All were entertainment tapes.

  It was very frustrating to Cora. The frustration built as night ran into morning. It was pleasant enough work, swimming through the exquisite reef, idly examining the exotic and occasionally bizarre native life of Cachalot. Only an isolated tropical rainstorm arrived from time to time to break the routine.

  But they were finding nothing. The growing mountain of debris still held its secrets. They could not even tell whether the assault had been made by an aniata! or a human agency.

  Merced believed that this very lack of clear evidence pointed to the work of belligerent humans. The absence of clues suggested to him a careful, methodical attempt to destroy or eliminate any such evidence. He could not attribute this type of attempt to blind animal rage.

  Cora still kept an open mind. Barring the recovery of some deus ex machina such as the hypothesized tridee tape of the town's moment of destruction, she would settle for a hint that Merced was right or, conversely, that some local life was responsible. She rather hoped the little scientist was correct. The thought that some unknown and immensely powerful whatsis might be lurking out in the depths bothered her more than the prospect of piratical humans.

  While they found something every day, no plethora of debris lay strewn across the reef. For one thing, the town had been anchored off the edge of the reef instead of directly above it. Much of the town had sunk to depths beyond then- diving capabilities. They could have requisitioned a deep-diving submersible to search the three-thousand-meter level, where the sea floor evened off, but she and Merced agreed they were as likely to find something near the surface as in the abyss. More so, in fact, since in the depths most everything would have been distorted by pressure.

  But as the days passed in continued ignorance, she began to wonder if they ever would find anything. What made it worse was the certain knowledge that whatever had destroyed the four towns remained at large out there, cloaked in ocean and mystery, watching, waiting.

  Chapter IX

  Cora was sitting on the rear deck of the Caribe, trying to decide if a shred of fabric had been t
orn by a weapon or by teeth. It looked like part of a pareu.

  A ripple ran down her back. Her hair tingled. Looking around, she lifted her eyes to the roof of the main cabin. Rachael sat on the edge, her legs crossed. Her right hand manipulated the double set of strings of the neurophon while her left fingered the contact controls of the axonic projector.

  A warm feeling of well-being crept over Cora, the result of the perfect combination of lilting synthesized song and proper stimulation of her nerves by Rachael's playing. She felt as if she were being caressed by a pair of giant velvet gloves.

  Abruptly the melodic massage changed from soothing to plaintive, then sank into melancholic. Despite the warm air, she found herself shivering. The reaction was stimulated as much by the melody as by the accompanying neuronics.

  "Can't you play something happier?"

  Rachael leaned over to look down at her mother. "I play as the mood takes me. I know that's not very scientific." Her mouth twisted. "But it's aesthetic."

  "I don't want to argue about it, Rachael." Cora turned back to her study of the burnt bit of material.

  "Then why did you bring it up?" Rachael continued to play and Cora continued to shiver, saying nothing.

  Merced was sitting beneath Rachael, just tinder the overhang of the upper deck. He was laboriously examining a huge pile of water-damaged tape fragments. Cora wondered what he hoped to find in that massive, messy mound of communications numbers, personal histories, pay charts, and medical records. He confessed quite frankly that he wasn't sure, but at least the information was varied, and more relaxing than going cross-eyed picking through chunks of torn metal and plastic. She could sympathize. He was obviously frustrated, too.

  Mataroreva came up from below. Since he wasn't directly involved in the research, he should have been more bored than any of them, what with nothing to do beyond seeing to the maintenance of the Caribe. But be was relaxed, even appeared to be enjoying himself. While they studied, he dove and recovered additional artifacts, concentrating on the edge of the reef where he had forbidden them to travel. There were large pelagic predators out there, where reef gave way to open sea, and he preferred not to have his charges tempt them. And he only hunted there himself when accompanied by the two orcas.