Titan 5 - Over a Torrent Sea (14 page)

“Oh, Melora, don’t be mean,” Aili said.

“Why not? It’s fun—you should try it.”

Ra-Havreii rested his head on his knees and tried to distract himself with engineering. “Gyroscopic stabilization,” he said.

Silence. “Uh-oh, I think I broke him,” Melora said.

He ignored her. “I just figured out why the young floater colonies spin. It stabilizes them against turbulence. They resist being flipped over.”

“Sorry, not quite,” Melora said. “In their young, fully submerged phase, they can thrive just as well either way up. But you’re on the right track.”

He looked at her. “Please—enlighten me.” He strove to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, for he was genuinely curious.

“The polyps have organs similar to statocysts—a type of balance organ found in many simple invertebrates. Those are sacs with a small amount of inert mass inside, surrounded by sensory hairs. When they move—”

“Its inertia presses it against the hairs on one side, letting the animal sense its direction of motion. Yes, yes.”

She glared at him. “Well, the polyps have something
similar, but based on rotation. Instead of an inert mass, it’s a fluid that presses against the side hairs from the centrifugal effect. It gives them a sense of direction and orientation.”

“Then why, pray tell, do they stop spinning when they mature? Have you figured that out yet?”

“Sure. But you’re the engineer, you tell me. Or are you too sick to think straight?”

Aili was looking back and forth between them. “Would you two like to be alone?”

But Ra-Havreii had taken the gauntlet, not wanting Melora to think he couldn’t out-cogitate her on his worst day. “Well, obviously,” he said, masking his embarrassment that he hadn’t seen it right away, “it’s the square-cube law. Only the surface shells contain live polyps, which propel the colony with their tendrils. The surface area, and therefore the number of polyps there are to spin it, rises as the square of its length. But the volume, and therefore the mass they need to propel, goes up as the cube of the length. So it becomes exponentially harder to spin as it grows.”

Melora clapped slowly, sarcastically. “Very good, Doctor. So why does that lead to them rising to the surface once they mature—killing half the colony in the process?”

“Well…” He cleared his throat. “Naturally, they, umm…they need…something that they can only obtain
on
the surface. Nutrients to sustain their larger biomass?”

“The juveniles can float to the surface anytime they want, by extracting more oxygen into their flotation bladders. They just don’t have to stay there, since they can expel it again. Why would they choose to throw away the lives of half the colony by staying on the surface permanently?”

“Especially,” Aili put in, “when there’s a risk that a swell could flip them over and kill the other half? Remember, they’re more symmetrical when they’re young.” The mature ones kept growing deeper once they surfaced, naturally becoming asymmetrical since new ones were growing only on the underside. Over time, that lowered their center of mass and gave them greater stability. But Ra-Havreii realized, once Aili pointed it out, that the younger, more symmetrical polyps would be risking the entire colony when they first began their surface existence. What could be worth sacrificing half and risking all for?

“Maybe,” he ventured, “by surfacing and allowing photosynthetic plants to grow on them, they gain access to a new source of nourishment?”

Melora tilted her head approvingly. “Good guess, but you’re overlooking something. The polyps on top still die. The insectoids and animals that inhabit these islets do enough moving around between above and below that the live polyps underneath can collect additional nutrients from their bodies and waste, but the polyps aren’t adapted to survive out of the water. Besides, it takes years, maybe decades for a surface ecosystem to develop enough to provide sufficient nourishment. So what does that leave?”

She was grinning at his inability to solve the riddle, and he racked his brain, desperate to take the wind from her sails. But he just couldn’t see it. Maybe he was just too unwilling to get into the mindset that sacrifice could be acceptable. Yes, there were causes worth fighting for, but the ideal was to win the fight and come out alive. When lives were lost—like the engineers aboard
Luna
when his prototype engine failed catastrophically, like his predeces
sor Nidani Ledrah when his design had failed to protect her and
Titan
’s crew sufficiently from a Reman attack, like so many billions in the Federation when their technology had proven unequal to the Borg—it was a failure, a mistake, a result of inadequate tools or resources. Believing in no-win scenarios was an excuse to avoid admitting inadequacy. And only by admitting your own inadequacy—at least to yourself, no matter how much you denied it to others—could you strive harder to make sure such failures did not happen again.

But of course he was getting off the subject. A colony of floater polyps had no such profound concerns. But the one concern they did have was survival. The goal of life was to stay alive at all costs. If half had to die, there must have been some desperate need, something that would have killed them all otherwise.

“If they get too heavy to swim,” he reasoned, “they would just float in place, or drift randomly. They…they would deplete the resources in their immediate area and be unable to travel elsewhere.”

“Very good,” Melora said, with less snideness this time. “But how does surfacing help them compensate for that?”

Somehow it had to bring them new food sources, but Melora had ruled out all his hypotheses along those lines. He sighed. “Why don’t you just put me out of my misery and tell me already, woman?”

But it was Aili who responded. “Currents,” she said, sounding like it was the most obvious thing in the galaxy. “Once they can’t swim on their own, they need to rely on currents to take them to new nutrient sources—and the surface currents are stronger because of the wind.”

Ra-Havreii supposed he shouldn’t be embarrassed that someone who’d grown up on a pelagic planet would have more knowledge of the subject than he did. But he was nonetheless. It was so obvious. Except…it was
nature
. How could anyone expect him to know that? If anything, he told himself, he’d been quite brilliant to figure out as much as he had.

But try telling Melora that. The female was impossible to please lately. “Nice to see someone here’s paying attention,” she said with gross and deliberate unfairness. “We think they grow together into clusters so they can support more of an ecosystem, including taller trees, which let them catch more wind. As well as supplying more nutrients. Still, even with all that,” she went on to Aili, essentially ignoring him now that she’d successfully proven him ignorant of one minor bit of trivia, “they still have trouble finding enough food once they get too big. So eventually the new-formed polyps grow into bubbles, or maybe buds is a better word. The buds break off and form new floaters, and eventually all that’s left of the parent colony is a dead, hollow husk. Which, of course, has got its own little island ecosystem growing on top of it. And the whole cycle begins again.”

“That’s lovely,” Aili said. “What an amazing planet. Thanks for convincing us to come here, Melora.”

“My pleasure.”

Another swell sent the island racing skyward, leaving Xin’s stomach behind. He clung to the mossy growth on the ground beneath him until the ocean dropped him back down again. “Yes, thank you,” he grumbled, clambering to his feet—
No, don’t bother helping me, oh, that’s right, you aren’t
—and rubbing his sore back. “A veritable Endless
Sky you’ve brought us to. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to camp to lie down.” At least the camp had its own gravity plating and inertial damping field. There he could ride out the swells and feel as steady as he did aboard
Titan
—so long as he didn’t open his eyes.

He had an agreeable nap, until he was awakened by Melora joining him in bed. They might not have been very fond of each other right now, but fortunately the lovely Elaysian understood that that was no reason to deny themselves the pleasures of the flesh. Indeed, their mutual annoyance with one another added a stimulating intensity to their physical passion. He rather hoped she wouldn’t stop being angry at him anytime soon. At least it would make things interesting until she finally left him.

Because it was inevitable that she would leave him, wasn’t it? They would have their fun and move on, just as always. Perhaps with somewhat more duration and intensity than most of his affairs, and to be cherished for that, but that was all.

But he found himself unexpectedly troubled by the prospect of its ending. So he stopped thinking of it and concentrated on the here and now, delivering a finely calibrated taunt on the subject of her pleasuring technique in order to goad the highly competitive Elaysian into proving him wrong….

Three hours later, the away team’s hydrophones in the deep sound channel picked up the contact signal agreed upon between Aili Lavena and the squales, coming from a location currently about thirty kilometers northeast of the main base. Aili wished the squales weren’t so wary of approach
ing technology; she couldn’t swim that distance in a reasonable time, so she would have to don the hydration suit and ride in the scouter gig again.

The captain seemed distracted when he arrived in the shuttle half an hour later. “Is everything all right, sir?” Melora asked him as he headed toward the waiting gig and its Selkie pilot. This time it would be only Aili and the captain, since Ra-Havreii was currently working with Y’lira Modan on a linguistic analysis of the sounds made by the squales’ various helper species (on the theory that decoding a simpler form of the language might provide the foundation for a squale translation matrix) and Huilan had some kind of counseling emergency up on the ship. (Counselor Haaj wasn’t qualified as a diplomatic officer; with his confrontational manner, that would be a good way to start a few wars.)

Riker filled them in on the asteroid detection. “It turns out to be on a collision course with Droplet after all, about seven hours away. I’ve ordered Commander Vale to intercept and deflect it onto a safe trajectory.”

“Damn,” Melora said. “Should we be preparing for an evacuation?”

“It’s not that grave a risk. More an inconvenience. It’ll take a fair amount of power, cutting it this close, but nothing the ship and crew can’t handle.”

“Sir,” Ra-Havreii asked, “doesn’t the Prime Directive say we shouldn’t interfere in natural disasters?”

“Consider it a precaution to protect our own away teams. Besides, we’re in a delicate enough Prime Directive situation already without an asteroid impact complicating things.”

Aili could tell that Riker wasn’t happy to have been called away from the bridge—or to be away from his wife and child—at a time like this. As they boarded the gig, she said, “Captain, I really want to thank you for agreeing to help with this. I know it must be rough to be away from your family right now.”

He smiled. “It’s quite all right, Aili. Counselor Troi and I both understand the demands of duty.” Settling in, he started the gig’s induction motor, which gave off only a quiet hum to signal its activation as the craft sped forward. Aili appreciated that; she’d read horror stories of how the crude propulsion systems of industrial-era Earth and other worlds had polluted their oceans with constant, deafening noise, making life unbearable for their denizens.

“Besides,” Riker went on, “I’ll get to see plenty of my little girl once she’s born. After all, Deanna’s the diplomatic officer—aside from these last few months, she spends more time off the ship than I do.”

She smiled at him through her faceplate. “You seem excited about becoming a father.”

He chuckled. “Excited is one way of putting it. To be honest, I—” He broke off. Though Will Riker was a gregarious captain, there always remained a dividing line between a captain and his crew. “Let’s just say it’ll be a new experience for me.”

“Seems to me you’ve always been quick to embrace new experiences.” After a second, she felt her crests flush hot inside the hydration suit’s fins—that had come out with more innuendo than she’d intended. “Uh, sir.”

If he caught the implied double entendre, the captain
gave no sign of it. “But you—how many children did you have again, Ensign?”

Her crests flushed deeper. “Uh, eight, sir. Three sons, five daughters.”

“That many,” he said, sounding impressed, though it was an average tally by Selkie standards. “After all that, you’ve got to have some real insights. Any pointers for the new guy on what to expect? What to watch out for?”

“I, um…” Aili wrung her webbed hands together, hating where this was going. Why did he have to remind her of this? Of course, it wasn’t his fault; he couldn’t know what a sensitive area this was for her, since she had pledged never to tell him. Twenty-two years ago, when she had seduced him in the private, sea-connected swimming pool of the Federation embassy, she had played the nervous innocent, not letting on that he was just one of many. Not letting on that she was a libertine by her people’s standards, an irresponsible mother. The uninhibited sex lives of Selkies were the stuff of legend to young, libidinous starfarers; many of them didn’t understand that it was only the final-phase, post-amphibious Selkies who had that freedom, that it was different for Selkies in their amphibious phase. That phase, their species’ window of fertility, was only about two decades long, and Selkies were expected to raise large families. The amphibious phase was thus a time for selfless discipline and dedication to the young, with the free sensuality of their elders put on hold for the duration. Many amphibious Selkies longed for a respite from the discipline, a taste of the sexual liberty their elders enjoyed. Offworlders, who generally didn’t know better, were a favorite release valve, a chance to flout tradition and pro
priety without consequences. For some reason, the alien colonists who lived in Pacifica’s resort towns, research bases, and the like—those who interacted enough with the Selkies to understand their culture—did not go out of their way to explain matters to offworld visitors; perhaps they felt it was the Selkies’ place, or perhaps they were simply objective enough to see the occasional dalliance as a necessary release valve. Or maybe they just appreciated the heavy tourism that the Selkies’ interstellar reputation brought to Pacifica.