Infinity's Shore (82 page)

Diving under one hoonish coracle, Kaa impulsively spread his jaws and snatched the rower's oar in his teeth, yanking it like the tentacle of some demon octopus. The impact jarred his mouth and tender gums, but he added force with a hard thrust of his tail flukes.

The oarsman made a mistake by holding on—even a hoon could not match Kaa, strength to strength. A surprised bellow met a resounding splash as the mariner struck salt water far from the boat. Kaa released the oar and kicked away rapidly. That act would not endear him to the hoon. On the other hand, what was there left to lose? Kaa had quite given up on his mission—to make contact with the Commons of Six Races. All that remained was fighting for survival.

I should have listened to my heart.

I should have gone after Peepoe, instead.

The decision still bothered Kaa with nagging pangs of guilt. How could he obey Gillian Baskin's orders—no matter how urgent—instead of striking off across the dark sea, chasing after the thugs who had kidnapped his mate and love?

What did duty matter—or even his oath to Terra—compared with that?

After Gillian signed off, Kaa had listened as the sun set, picking out distant echoes of the fast-receding speed sled, still faintly audible to the northwest. Sound carried far in Jijo's ocean, without the myriad engine noises that made Earth's seas a cacophony. The sled was already so far
away—at least a hundred klicks by then—it would seem forlorn to follow.

But so what? So the odds were impossible? That never mattered to the heroes one found in storybooks and holosims! No audience ever cheered a champion who let mere impossibility stand in the way.

Maybe that was what swayed Kaa, in an agonized moment. The fact that it was such a cliché.
All
the movie heroes—whether human or dolphin—would routinely forsake comrades, country, and honor for the sake of love. Relentless propaganda from every romantic tale urged him to do it.

But even if I succeeded, against all odds, what would Peepoe say after I rescued her?

I know her. She'd call me a fool and a traitor, and never respect me again.

So it was that Kaa found himself entering Port Wuphon as ordered, long after nightfall, with all the wooden sailboats shrouded beneath camouflage webbing that blurred their outlines into cryptic hummocks. Still hating himself for his decision, he had approached the nearest wharf, where two watchmen lounged on what looked like walking staffs, beside a pair of yawning noor. By starlight, Kaa had reared up on his churning flukes to begin reciting his memorized speech of greeting … and barely escaped being skewered for his trouble. Whirling back into the bay, he dodged razor-tipped staves that missed by centimeters.

“
Wait-t-t!
” he had cried, emerging on the other side of the wharf. “
You're mak-ing a terrible mistake! I bring news from your own lossssst ch-ch-children! F-from Alvi
—”

He barely escaped a second time. The hoon guards weren't listening. Darkness barely saved Kaa as growing numbers of missiles hurled his way.

His big mistake was trying a third time to communicate. When that final effort failed, Kaa tried to depart … only to find belatedly that the door had shut. The harbor mouth was closed, trapping him in a tightening noose.

So much for my skill at diplomacy
, he pondered, while skirting silently across the bottom muck … only to swerve when his sonar brushed armored forms ahead, approaching with scalloped claws spread wide.

Add that to my other failures … as a spy, as an officer
 … Mopol and Zhaki would never have antagonized the locals so, with senseless pranks and mischief, if he had led them properly.

 … and as a lover.…

In fact, Kaa knew just one thing he was good at. And at this rate, he'd never get another chance to ply his trade.

A strange, thrashing sound came from just ahead, toward the bottom of the bay. He nearly swung around again, dodging it to seek some other place, dreading the time when bursting lungs would force him back to the surface.…

But there was something peculiar about the sound. A softness. A resigned,
melodious
sadness that seemed to fill the water. Curiosity overcame Kaa as he zigzagged, casting sonar clicks through the murk to perceive—

A hoon!

But what was one of them doing down here?

Kaa nosed forward, ignoring the growing staleness of his air supply, until he made out a tall biped amid clouds of churned-up mud. Diffracted echoes confirmed his unbelieving eyes. The creature was
undressing
, carefully removing articles of clothing, tying them together in a string.

Kaa guessed it was a female, from the fact that it was a bit smaller and had only a modest throat sac.

Is it the one I pulled overboard? But why doesn't she swim back to the boat? I assumed…

Kaa was struck by a wave of image-rupture alienation—a sensation all too familiar to Earthlings since contact—when some concept that had seemed familiar abruptly made no sense anymore.

Hoons can't swim!

The journal of Alvin Hph-wayuo never mentioned this. In fact, Alvin implied that his people passionately loved boats and the sea. Nor were they cavalier about their lives, but mourned the loss of loved ones even more deeply than a human or dolphin would. Kaa suddenly knew he'd been fooled by Alvin's writings, sounding so much like an Earth kid, never mentioning things that he simply assumed.

Aliens. Who can figure?

He stared as the hoon tied the string of clothes around
her left wrist and held the other end to her mouth, calmly exhaling her last air, inflating a balloonlike fold of cloth. It floated upward, no more than two meters, stopping far short of the surface.

She's not signaling for help
, he fathomed as the hoon sat down in the mud, humming a dirge.
She's making sure they can drag the bottom and retrieve her body.
Kaa had read Alvin's account of death rituals the locals took quite seriously.

By now his own lungs burned fiercely. Kaa deeply regretted that the breather unit on his harness had burned out after Zhaki shot him.

He heard the qheuens approaching from behind, clacking their claws, but Kaa sensed a hole in their line, confident he could streak past, just out of reach. He tried to turn … to seize the brief opportunity.

Oh, hell
, he sighed, and kicked the other way, aiming for the dying hoon.

It took some time to get her to the surface. When they broke through, her entire body shook with harsh, quivering gasps. Water jetted from nostril orifices at the same time as air poured in through her mouth, a neat trick that Kaa kind of envied.

He pushed her close enough to throw one arm over a drifting oar, then he whirled around to peer across the bay, ready to duck onrushing spears.

None came. In fact, there seemed a curious absence of boats nearby. Kaa dropped his head down to cast suspicious sonar beams through his arched brow—and confirmed that all the coracles had backed off some distance.

A moon had risen. One of the big ones. He could make out silhouettes now … hoons standing in their rowboats, all of them turned to face north … or maybe northwest. The males had their sacs distended, and a steady thrumming filled the air. They seemed oblivious to the sudden reappearance of one of their kind from a brush with drowning.

I'd have thought they'd be all over this area, dropping weighted ropes, trying to rescue her.
It was another example
of alien thinking, despite all the Terran books these hoons had read. Kaa was left with the task of shoving her with the tip of his rostrum, a creepy feeling coursing his spine as he pushed the bedraggled survivor toward one of the docks.

More villagers stood along the wharf, their torches flickering under gusts of stiffening wind. They seemed to be watching … or listening … to something.

A dolphin can both see and hear things happening above the water's surface, but not as well as those who live exclusively in that dry realm. With his senses still in an uproar, Kaa could discern little in the direction they faced. Just the hulking outline of a mountain.

The computerized insert in his right eye flexed and turned until Kaa finally made out a flickering star near the mountain's highest point. A star that
throbbed
, flashing on and off to a staccato rhythm. He could not make anything of it at first … though the cadence seemed reminiscent of Galactic Two.

“Ex-x-xcuse me …”he began, trying to take advantage of the inactivity. Whatever else was happening, this seemed a good chance to get a word in edgewise. “I'm a dolphin … cousin to humansss … I've been sssent with-th a message for Uriel the—”

The crowd suddenly erupted in a moan of emotion that made Kaa's sound-sensitive jaw throb. He made out snatches of individual speech.

“Rockets!” one onlooker sighed in Anglic. “The sages made rockets!”

Another spoke GalSeven in tones of wonder. “
One small enemy spaceship destroyed … and now the big one is targeted!
”

Kaa blinked, transfixed by the villagers' tension.

Rockets? Did I hear right? But—

Another cry escaped the crowd.

“They plummet!” someone cried. “They strike!”

Abruptly, the mountain-perched star paused its twinkling bulletin. All sound seemed to vanish with it. The hoons stood in dead silence. Even the oily water of the bay was hushed, lapping softly against the wharf.

The flashing resumed, and there came from the crowd a moan of shaken disappointment.

“
It survives, exists. The mother battleship continues
,” went the GalTwo mutter of a traeki, somewhere in the crowd.

“
Our best effort has failed.

“
And now comes punishment
.”

Lark

T
HE MOMENT LARK PRAYED FOR NEVER CAME. THE walls did not shatter, torn by native-made warheads or screaming splinters of greatboo. Instead, the sound of detonations remained distant, then diminished. The floorthrobbing vibration of Jophur defense guns changed tenor now that the element of surprise was gone, from frantic to complacent, as if the incoming missiles Were mere nuisances.

Then silence fell. It was over.

He let go of the Egg fragment, and released Ling, as well. Lark pulled his knees in, wrapped both an is around them, and rocked miserably. He had never felt sc disappointed to be alive.

“Woorsh, that was close!” Ling exhaled, clearly savoring survival. Not that Lark blamed her. She might still nurse hopes of escape, or of being swapped in some Galactic prisoner exchange. All this might become just another episode in her memoirs.
An episode, like me
, he thought.
The clever jungle boy she once met on Jijo.

His old friend Harullen might have seen a bright side to
this failure. Now the angered Jophur might extinguish all sapient life on the planet, not only their g'Kek blood enemies. Wouldn't that fit in with Lark's beliefs? His heresy?

The Six Races don't belong here, but neither do they deserve annihilation. I wanted us to do the right thing peacefully, honorably, and of our own accord. Without violence. All this burning of forests and valleys.

“Look!”

He glanced at Ling, who had stood up and was pointing at Ewasx. The ring stack still quaked, but one torus in the middle was undergoing full-scale convulsions. Throbbing indentations formed on opposite sides, distending its round shape.

Both men joined Ling, staring with unbelieving eyes as the dents deepened and spread into circular bulges, straining outward until a sheer membrane was all that restrained them. The Jophur's basal legs started pumping and flexing.

The humans jumped back when Ewasx abruptly skittered across the floor, first toward the armored door, then away again, zigging and zagging three times before finally sagging back down, like a heap of flaccid tubes.