"It's a Chalcopyritic finish. Twelve Plank model, isn't it? Made on Amropolus? With the Yhu Hive tuner?"

"That's right." Rachael brightened, turned in her seat. "Do you play?"

"No." The man sounded apologetic. "Wish I did.

I'm afraid my musical abilities are pretty nonexistent.

But I know enough to be able to appreciate a skilled performer when I hear one. However briefly." Again the l.u.s.trous grin.

"Is that so?" Rachael's tone was turning from cool to coy. "I can understand when you say you know tal- ent when you hear it, but it seems to me you're doing more looking than listening."

"I can't see talent, no," the man replied. He seemed uncomfortable, shy, yet unwilling to retreat into silence.

"But sensitivity and emotional flexibility, those I think I can see."

"Really?" Rachael responded, flattered and pleased.

"Are you trying to flatter me?"

"I am flattering you, aren't I?" he said with disarm- ing directness. It was honestly a question.

Rachael controlled herself a few seconds longer, then broke into a high, girlish giggle that contrasted strikingly with her normal husky speaking voice.

"All right, I suppose you are." She eyed him inter- estedly. "Next you're going to ask me to please come over to your place and play something for you."

"That would be nice, yes," the man replied openly.

Just in time he added, "But I'm afraid I can't. I don't even know where I'm going to be staying on Cacha- lot."

Rachael stared at him. "I think you mean it. About just wanting to listen to the music."

"That's what I said, wasn't it? If we do meet again, my name is Merced. Pucara Merced."

"Rachael Xamantina."

"Tell me," he said, shifting in his seat as they skipped a light b.u.mp in the atmosphere, "on direc- tional projections, can you change keys and limbs simultaneously?"

"Sometimes," She sounded enthusiastic. Cora stared resolutely out the port. "It's hard, though, when you're concentrating on the music and trying to produce the matching neurologic responses in your audience. It's so difficult just to execute those properly, without try- ing to worry about physiological orientation, too.

There's so d.a.m.n much to concentrate on."

"I know."

"Would you like me to play something for you now, maybe?" She swung the lyre-shaped instrument into playing position, her left hand caressing the strings, the right poised over the power controls and projector sen- sors. "In spite of what my mother says, I don't think the pilot would mind."

"It's not a question of the pilot's minding," he said.

thoughtfully. "I know you can keep the level down.

But it wouldn't be courteous to our fellow pa.s.sengers.

They might not all be music lovers. Besides," and he smiled slightly again, "you might accidentally put out the lights, or drop the temperature thirty degrees."

"All right. But when we get down, if you don't dis- appear on me too fast, I promise I'll play something for you. Tell me," she went on excitedly, leaning farther into the aisle, "do you know anything about the new cerebral excluder? That's the one that's supposed to allow you to add another forty watts' neuronic power."

"I've heard of it," he admitted pleasantly. "They say that it can ..."

They rambled on enthusiastically, the discussion shifting from matters musical to the latest develop- ments in instrumental electronics.

It was all somewhat beyond Cora. A top-flight neu- rophon player had to be musician, physicist, and phys-

14.

iologist all in one. She still refused to give her daughter credit for attempting to master the extraordinarily dif- ficult device. To her it represented a three-fold waste

of energy.

Of one thing she was certain. For all that he was a

head shorter than Rachael and apparently shy to boot, Merced was interested in more than just her daughter's aesthetic abilities. Not that that made him anything out of the ordinary. Any man not intrigued by Rachael did not deserve the gender. That was the nature of men, and it was intensified by her daughter's nonmental as- sets.

But there was nothing she could do about it. If she

tried to order Rachael not to speak to him, it would produce exactly the opposite result. And there was the possibility she was wrong about him. Certainly he did

not have the look of a collector of bedrooms.

Better, she told herself, to put the best light on the situation. Let Rachael remain interested in him instead of, say, being drawn to the more conventionally hand- some pilot of our shuttle. Once we are down and set- tled in our quarters, it will no longer matter anyway.

She stole another glance at Merced. He was listening quietly while Rachael expounded on the virtues of Amropolous-made neurophons as opposed to those manufactured on Willow-Wane. He had the look of a fisherman returning home, or perhaps a financial ex- pert shipped out by an investment firm to explore the earnings of one or two of its floating farms. His skin was properly dark, but his facial features and small bone structure did not jibe with those of the dominant Polynesian-descended settlers of the water world. He

was an off-worlder for sure.

Well, she would keep an eye on him. A lifetime of

experience made that automatic. Thoughts of unhappy past experiences led her to the dim possibility of future ones. She mused on the problem that had brought her to Cachalot. It involved more than the destruction of

15.

property or fisheries. There had been, it seemed, many deaths. She had been sent off with only enough infor- mation to tease her. Someone was going to great efforts to keep whatever was happening on Cachalot from the general public.

No matter. She would leam soon enough. The pos- sibility of work on Cachalot had been sufficient to per- suade her to accept the a.s.signment. When offered choice of her own a.s.sistant, Cora had been able to choose Rachael. Now, if she could only convince her daughter to junk that bizarre instrument, one of the two major problems Cora had come to solve would have a happy resolution.

There had been some trouble. Rachael was still technically a student, and a few howls had been heard when it was declared she had been appointed Cora's a.s.sistant. Hundreds would have taken the job. Very few scientists made it to Cachalot, despite its wealth of unusual marine life. That was part of the agreement that had been struck with the original settlers of the blue planet, who had been studied so long they were sick of it. They did not object to the presence of a very limited number of fishers and gatherers and even some light industry, but they put a strict quota on the num- ber of researchers resident on the planet at any one time. Hence the rarity of the opportunity granted to Cora and Rachael. It was a chance Cora would not waste, would not permit Rachael to waste.

"That's an interesting name." Rachael spoke as the shuttle skimmed low now over an endless expanse of gently rolling sea. Cachalot had no moon, therefore very little in the way of tides. Severe storms like the cyclone they had recently pa.s.sed over were common, but predictable. It was altogether a far more benign world than most.

"It's an amalgam of words from two ancient human languages," he was explaining to her. "Pucara means 'shining' in a tongue called Quechua, which was the

16.

CACHALOT.

princ.i.p.al language of my ancestors who lived on the continent of South America."