by David Brin
Now Brookida and Dart were arguing some technical point… and all Creideiki could think of was the taste of the water near Hikahi. He badly wanted to ask her if the flavor meant what he thought it meant. Was it a perfume she had put on, or was it natural pheromone?
With some difficulty, he forced himself back to the subject at hand.
Charlie's and Brookida's discovery, under normal circumstances, would be exciting.
But this has no bearing on escape for my ship and crew, nor getting our data back to the Terragens Council. Even the mission I sent Keepiru and Toshio on, to help appraise the native pre-sentients, is more urgent than hunting arcane clues in ancient alien rocks.
"Excuse me, Captain. I'm sorry I'm late. I've been listening quietly for a while, though."
Creideiki turned to see Dr. Ignacio Metz drift up alongside. The gangling, gray-haired psychologist treaded water slowly, casually compensating for a small negative buoyancy. A slight pot belly distended the neat fit of his slick brown drysuit.
Brookida and Dart argued on, now about rates of heating by radioactives, gravity, and meteoritic impact. Hikahi, apparently, found it all fascinating.
"You're welcome even late, Dr. Metz. I'm glad you could make it."
Creideiki was amazed he hadn't heard the man approach. Metz normally made a racket you could hear halfway across the bay. He sometimes radiated a two kilohertz hum from his right ear. It was barely detectable now, but at times it was quite annoying. How could the man have worked with fins for so long and never had the problem corrected?
Now I'm beginning to sound like Charlie Dart! He chided himself. Don't be peevish, Creideiki!
He whistled a stanza which echoed only within his own skull.
* Those who live
All vibrate,
* All,
* And aid the world's
Singing *
"Captain, I actually came out here for another reason, but Dart's and Brookida's discovery may bear on what I have to say. Can we talk in private?"
Creideiki became expressionless. He had to get some rest and exercise soon. Overwork was wearing him down, and Streaker could ill-afford that.
But this human had to be treated carefully. Metz could not command him, aboard Streaker or anywhere, but he had power, power of a particularly potent kind. Creideiki knew that his own right of reproduction was guaranteed, no matter how this mission ended. Still Metz's evaluation would carry weight. Every dolphin aboard behaved as "sentiently" as he could around him. Even the captain.
Perhaps that's why I've put off a confrontation, Creideiki thought. Soon though, he would force Dr. Metz to answer some questions regarding certain members of Streaker's crew.
"Very well, Doctor," he answered. "Allow me a moment. I think I'm finished here."
Hikahi swam close at a nod from Creideiki. She grinned and flicked her pectorals at Metz.
"Hikahi, please finish up here for me. Don't let them go more than another ten minutes before summing up their proposalsss. I'll meet you in an hour in recreation pool 3-A to hear your recommendations."
She answered as he had addressed her, in rapid, highly inflected Underwater Anglic. "Aye aye, Captain. Will there be anything else?"
Damn! Creideiki knew Hikahi's sonar showed her everything about his sexual agitation. It was easy to tell with a male. He would have to do an explicit sonic scan of her innards to gain the same information about her, and that would not be polite.
Things must have been so much simpler in the old times!
Well, he would find out her frame of mind in an hour. One of the privileges of captaincy was to order a recreation pool cleared. There had better not be an emergency between now and then!
"No, nothing else for now, Hikahi. Carry on."
She saluted snappily with an arm of her harness.
Brookida and Charlie were still arguing as Creideiki turned back to Metz. "Will it be private enough if we take the long way to the bridge, Doctor? I'd like to check with Takkata-Jim before going on to other duties."
"That'll be fine, Captain. What I have to say won't take long."
Creideiki kept his face impassive. Was Metz smiling at something in particular? Was the man amused at something he had seen or heard?
"I am ssstill confused by the pattern of volcanoes up and down the three-thousand-kilometer zone where these two plates meet," Brookida said. He spoke slowly, partly for Charlie's benefit and partly because it was hard to argue in oxywater. There never seemed to be enough air.
"If you look at the sssurvey charts we made from orbit, you see that vulcanism is dispersed sparsely elsewhere on the planet. But here the volcanoes are very frequent, and all about the same small size."
Charlie shrugged. "I don't see how that relates at all, old man. I think it's just a great big coincidence."
"But isn't this also the only area where the metal-mounds are found?" Hikahi suggested suddenly. "I'm no expert, but a spacer learns to be suspicious of twin coincidences."
Charlie opened and closed his mouth, as if he were about to speak, then thought better of it. At last he said, "That's very good. Yes! Brookida, you think these coral critters may need some nutrient that only this one type of volcano provides?"
"Possssibly. Our exobiology expert is Dennie Sudman. She's now at one of the islands, investigating the aboriginals."
"She must get samples for us!" Charlie rubbed his hands together. "Do you think it'd be too much to ask her to take a side trip to a volcano? Not too far away, of course, after what Creideiki just said. Just a little, teeny one."
Hikahi let out a short whistling laugh. The fellow had chutzpah! Still, his enthusiasm was infectious, a wonderful distraction from worry. If only she could afford to hide away from the dangerous universe in abstractions, like Charlie Dart did.
"And a temperature probe!" Charlie cried. "Surely Dennie'd do that much for me, after all I've done for her!"
Creideiki cruised in a wide spiral around the swimming human, stretching his muscles as he arched and twisted.
By neural command he flexed his harness's major manipulators, like a human stretching his arms. "Very well, Doctor. What can I do for you?"
Metz swam a slow kick-stroke. He regarded Creideiki amiably. "Captain, I believe it's time to re-think our strategy a bit. Matters have changed since we came to Kithrup. We need a new approach."
"Could you be specific?"
"Certainly. As you recall, we fled from the transfer point at Morgran because we didn't wish to be crushed in a seven-way ambush. You were quick to realize that even if we surrendered to one party, this would only result in all sides ganging up on our captors, inevitably leading to our destruction. I was slow to understand your logic at the time. Now I applaud it. Of course, your tactical maneuvers were brilliant."
"Thank you, Dr. Metz. Of course, you leave out another reason for our flight. We are under orders from the Terragens Council to bring our data directly to them, without leaks along the way. Our capture would certainly be a 'leak,' wouldn't you say?"
"Certainly!" Metz agreed. "And so the situation remained when we fled to Kithrup, a move which I now consider inspired. To my way of thinking, it was just bad luck this hiding place didn't work as planned."
Creideiki refrained from pointing out that they were still concealed on this hiding place. Surrounded, but not yet in anyone's net. "Go on," he suggested.
"Well, so long as there was the possibility we could avoid capture altogether, your strategy of flight was good. However things have changed. The chance of escape is now next to nil. Kithrup remains useful as a refuge from the chaos of battle, but it can't hide us for long once there is a final victor overhead."
"You're suggesting we can't hope to avoid eventual capture?"
"Exactly. I think we should consider our priorities, and plan for unpleasant contingencies."
"What priorities do you consider important?" Creideiki already knew the answer to expect.
"Why, the survival of this ship and crew
, of course! And the data for evaluating the performance of both! After all, what was our main purpose out here. Hmm?" Metz stopped swimming and treaded water, regarding Creideiki like a teacher quizzing a pupil.
Creideiki could list a half-dozen tasks that had been set for Streaker, from Library veracity checks, to establishing contact with potential allies, to Thomas Orley's military intelligence work.
Those tasks were important. But the primary purpose of this mission was to evaluate the performance of a dolphin-crewed and dolphin-commanded spacecraft. Streaker and her complement were the experiment.
But everything had changed since they had found the derelict fleet! He couldn't operate under the priorities he had been given at the beginning of the cruise. How could he explain that to a man like Metz?
Judgment, Creideiki mused, thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason… Sometimes he thought that the Bard must have been half dolphin, himself.
"I understand your point, Dr. Metz. But I don't see how it calls for a change in strategy. We still face destruction should we poke our beaks above the Kithrup's sea."
"Only if we do so before there's a winner overhead! Certainly, we shouldn't expose ourselves until the crossfire is over. However, we are in a position to negotiate, once there is a victor! And if we negotiate cleverly we may win success for this mission!"
Creideiki resumed his slow spiral, forcing the geneticist to swim again toward the bridge lock.
"Can you suggest what we might have to offer in negotiation, Dr. Metz?"
Metz smiled. "For one thing, we have the information Brookida and Charles Dart have literally dug up. The Institutes reward those who report ecological crimes. Most of the factions fighting over us are traditionalist conservatives of one stripe or another and would appreciate our discovery"
Creideiki refrained from expressing in razzberries his contempt for the man's naivete. "Go on, Doctor," he said levelly. "What-t else have we to offer?"
"Well, Captain, there's also the honor of our mission. Even if our captors decided to hold onto Streaker for a while, they'd certainly be sympathetic to our purpose. Teaching clients to use spaceships is one of the basic tasks of uplift. Surely they'd let us send a few men and fen home with our behavior-evaluation data, so progress toward future dolphin-crewed ships can continue. For them to do otherwise would be like a stranger interfering in the development of a child because of an argument with its parent!"
And how many human children were tortured and killed because of the sins of their parents, back in your own Dark Ages? Creideiki wanted to ask who would be the emissary to carry the uplift data back to Earth, while Streaker was held captive.
"Dr. Metz, I think you underestimate the fanaticism of those involved. But is there more?"
"Of course. I saved the most important for last." Metz touched Creideiki's flank for emphasis. "We must consider, Captain, giving the Galactics what they want."
Creideiki had expected it. "You think we should give them the location of the derelict fleet."
"Yes, and whatever souvenirs or data we picked up there."
Creideiki wore his poker face. How much does he know about Gillian's "Herbie," he wondered. Great Dreamer! But that cadaver's caused problems!
"You'll recall, Captain, the one brief message we got from Earth ordered us to go into hiding and keep our data secret, if possible! They also said we should use our own best judgment!
"Will our silence really delay the rediscovery of that Sargasso of lost ships for long, now that it's known to exist? No doubt half the patron-lines in the Five Galaxies have swarms of scouts out now, trying to duplicate our discovery. They already know to look in a poorly linked, dim globular cluster. It's only a matter of time until they stumble across the right gravitational tide pool, in the right cluster."
Creideiki thought that debatable. Galactics didn't often think like the Earthborn, and wouldn't conduct a search in the same way. Witness how long the fleet had lain undiscovered. Still, Metz was probably right in the long run.
"In that case, Doctor, why don't we simply broadcast the location to the Library? It'll be public knowledge, and no longer our affair. Surely this important discovery should be investigated by a licensed team from the Institutesss?" Creideiki was sarcastic, but he realized, as Metz smiled patronizingly, that the human took him seriously.
"You are being naive, Captain. The fanatics overhead care little about loose Galactic codes when they believe the millennium is at hand! If everyone knows where the derelict fleet is, the battleground will simply move out there! Those ancient ships will be destroyed in a crossfire, no matter how powerful that weird protective field that surrounds them. And the Galactics will still strive to capture us, in case we lied!"
They had arrived at the bridge lock. Creideiki paused there. "So it would be better if only one of the contesting groups got the data, and proceeded to investigate the fleet alone?"
"Yes! After all, what is that bunch of floating hulks to us? Just a dangerous place where we lost a scoutboat and a dozen fine crewfen. We're not ancestor-worshipers like those ET fanatics fighting over us, and we don't give a damn except intellectually whether the derelict fleet is a remnant from the days of Progenitors, or even the returning Progenitors themselves! It sure isn't worth dying over. If we've learned one thing in the last two hundred years, it's that a little clan of newcomers like us Earthfolk has got to duck out of the way when big boys like the Soro and Gubru get something up their snoots!"
Dr. Metz's silvery hair waved as he bobbed his head for emphasis. A fizzing halo of effervescence collected amongst the strands.
Creideiki didn't want to go back to respecting Ignacio Metz, but when the man became passionate enough to drop his stuffy facade, he became almost likable.
Unfortunately, Metz was fundamentally wrong.
Creideiki's harness clock chimed. Creideiki realized with a start how late it had become.
"You make an interesting argument, Doctor Metz. I don't have time to go into it any further, right now. But nothing will be decided until a full staff review by the ship's council. Does that sound fair?"
"Yes, I think so, although…"
"And, speaking of the battle over Kithrup, I must go now and see what Takkata-Jim has to say." He hadn't intended to spend so much time with Metz. He did not plan to miss his long-delayed exercise period.
Metz seemed unwilling to let go. "Ah. Your mention of Takkata-Jim reminds me of something else I wanted to bring up, Captain. I'm concerned about feelings of social isolation expressed by some of the crewfen who happen to come from various experimental sub-breeds. They complain of ostracism, and seem to be under discipline a disproportionate amount of the time."
"You're referring to some of the Stenos, I assume."
Metz looked uncomfortable. "A colloquial term that seems to have caught on, although all neo-fen are taxonomically Tursiops amicus…"
"I have my jaws on the situation, Dr. Metz," Creideiki no longer cared if he interrupted the mel. "Subtle group dynamics are involved, and I am applying what I believe are effective techniques to maintain crew solidarity."
Only about a dozen of the Stenos showed disaffection. Creideiki suspected an infection of stress atavism, a decay of sapiency under fear and pressure. The supposed expert, Dr. Metz, seemed to think the majority of Streaker's crew was practicing racial discrimination.
"Are you implying that Takkata-Jim is also having problems?" Creideiki asked.
"Certainly not! He's a most impressive officer. Mention of his name reminded me because…" Metz paused.
Because he's a Stenos, Creideiki finished for him silently. Shall I tell Metz that I'm considering moving Hikahi into the vice-captaincy? For all of Takkata-Jim's skill, his moody isolation is becoming a drag on crew morale. I cannot have that in my pod-second.
Creideiki sorely missed Lieutenant Yachapa-Jean, who had died back at the Shallow Cluster.
"Dr. Metz, since you bring up the subject, I have noticed discrep
ancies between the pre-launch psycho-biological profiles of certain members of the crew and their subsequent performance, even before we discovered the derelict fleet. I'm not a cetapsychologist, per se, but in certain cases I am convinced that the fen did not belong on this ship in the first place. Have you a comment?"
Metz's face was blank. "I'm not sure I know what you're talking about, Captain."
Creideiki's harness whirred as one arm snaked out to scratch an itch above his right eye. "I have little to go on, but soon I think I'll want to invoke command privilege and look over your notes. Strictly informally, of course. Please prepare them for…"
A chime interrupted Creideiki. It came from the comm link on his harness. "Yess, speak!" he commanded. He listened for a few moments to a buzzing voice on his neural tap.
"Hold everything," he replied. "I'll be right up. Creideiki out."
He focused a burst of sonar at the sensitive plate by the door lock. The hatch hummed open.
"That was the bridge," he told Metz. "A scout has returned with a report from Tsh't and Thomas Orley. I'm needed, but we will discuss these matters again, sssoon, Doctor."
With two powerful fluke strokes Creideiki was through the lock doors and on his way to the bridge.
Ignacio Metz watched the captain go.
Creideiki suspects, he thought. He suspects my special studies. I'll have to do something. But what?
These conditions of siege-pressure were providing fantastic data, especially on the dolphins Metz had inveigled into Streaker's complement. But now things were starting to come apart. Some of his subjects were showing stress symptoms he had never expected.
Now, in addition to worry about ET fanatics, he had to handle Creideiki's suspicions. It wouldn't be easy to put him off track. Metz appreciated genius when he saw it, especially in an uplifted dolphin.
If only he were one of mine, he thought of Creideiki. If only I could take credit for that one.
