"Sure. It would have mattered no matter who had been in the water, right?" Not wanting an answer, she slipped past him before he could offer one she wouldn't like.

Dawn was waiting to confront her. She stared the older woman squarely in the eye, said, "That was the bravest thing I ever saw anyone do."

Cora hesitated, then smiled. "I didn't think of it as particularly brave. Sam was right. It was a stupid thing to do. I was lucky." Then it hit her, in detail, ex- actly what she had done. "In fact, I didn't think of it at all. I just did it."

Behind them both, Merced was nodding under- standingly.

Cora was standing in the bow, watching the spouts and backs leading the ship. Mataroreva had rejoined her and they watched together.

"What do you think will happen when the catodons confront a baleen or two the way we confronted the blue, and demand an explanation?"

"I've no idea," he said slowly. "I don't think they'll risk the cetacean peace. But as you've already seen, they can be considerably more forceful than most of their relatives. And where the orcas couldn't do any- thing with that bull, a couple of catodons could."

"You think the baleens might fight rather than talk?"

"No way of telling. Normal relationships are being upset on this world." He nodded toward the distant, curving backs of the herd. "It's awkward, though.

234 CACHALOT.

They might risk a breach of the peace to sate their curiosity, but they won't do it to save a thousand hu- man lives. It would be easy to learn to hate them for that."

"That wouldn't bother them, either," she reminded him. "They don't care at all how we look at them."

"Self-centered egotists," he muttered.

"Not necessarily. Maybe they're right."

"How so?"

"Maybe we're just not very interesting."

They went quiet, each absorbed in personal thoughts. A pair of familiar shapes raced the ship to port. Wenkoseemansa and Latehoht had rejoined them.

The rest of the orca pack, they explained, had turned back for Mou'anui. They had come to rescue human from human. That task accomplished, they saw noth- ing to be gained by remaining with the suprafoil. And they found the company of their supercilious cousins wearying.

Somehow the sonarizer operator managed to keep a scan ahead of the cl.u.s.ter of blips that identified the leading pod.

"There's something out there," he reported over the communicators.

"Baleen?" Mataroreva asked quickly.

"Big enough to be. And there's more than one showing. I read five or six."

"Species?"

"Too far for resolution."

The catodons had sensed them, too. The herd turned with precision and the foil angled to remain with them.

As the distance closed, the sonarizer operator con- tinued to report. "I make out seven now. Not hump- backs. Not rights. Fins or blues. Ten ... no, close to twenty now. Fins, I think."

By now the lead catodons should be in verbal con-

235.

tact with the baleen pod, Cora knew. "Fins could out- swim them," she murmured.

"If they haven't by now, that means some of the pod are on the other side of them, and probably div- ing to get beneath them," Mataroreva replied specu- latively.

The fins did not try to swim away, though they were the fastest of all the whales. But they did not stop to answer questions, either. What they did was so shocking that both humans and catodons were equally stunned.

A sound echoed through the long-range pickup and over everyone's communicator. A sound that Cora rec- ognized as a whale in pain. Mataroreva was pointing wordlessly over the bow as others ran to join and gape alongside them.

Ahead, the water was churning as if disturbed by the explosion of a series of heavy charges. Huge forms breached clear of the sea and vast flukes battered the innocent waters. The helmsman slowed the foil with- out waiting for formal orders. Commotion and chaos made froth of the ocean around the ship, jolting it and inhabitants unmercifully. If they had been traveling among the pod instead of behind it, they would al- ready have been swamped.

From the speaker emanated sounds diversified in their anguish and all too familiar.

"What's going on?" Dawn wanted to know, arriving out of breath.

"I don't believe it!" Mataroreva told her above the cetacean screams and the noise of great bodies in col- lision. "I don't believe it!"

The fins were attacking the catodons.

If the humans on the foil were stunned, the pod of catodons was more so. Surprise and shock rapidly gave way to instincts equally basic, and they began to de- fend themselves.

Charging at great speed, a pair of fins would at-

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CACHALOT.

237.

tempt to catch an unwary catodon between them. But they were badly outnumbered, and in any case, at a real disadvantage in having nothing to bite with. Nor were they constructed for b.u.t.ting, the only form of at- tack they could use against another whale. The more intelligent catodons soon overpowered their cousins.

All at once the fins ceased their a.s.sault.

The sonarizer was of little help now. Crowding the bow, the onlookers stared anxiously at the quiet sur- face as the craft moved slowly into the area of combat. It was left to the orcas to relay the critical information back to the ship.

"Noww hawe thhey stopped theirr obscene activi- ties. Now hawe thhey ceased to do battllle," Latehoht told them.

"What are they doing now?" Cora asked.

"Lie thhey in the waterr devoid of mowement or response." She went quiet for a moment, then, "Wenkoseemansa says the catodons do quesstion thhemm. Says he thhat the Great Cousins appearr dazzed and lifeless, unawarre of whhat thhey hawe just done. Unawarre to the point whherre thhey can- not feeel even outrrage at thheirr actions." Her voice was full of disbelief. "Woefful thhing is thhis. Sadness fills the waterrs. Not since thhis worrld was given overr to us has cetacean fought cetacean."

"I'd like to question them myself," Cora murmured.

"Out of the question." Mataroreva moved closer, perhaps to rea.s.sure her during a nervous moment, per- haps to be ready in the event of an unexpected leap at the railing. "Remember Vai'oire. Keep in mind that this bunch has just acted completely crazy and could do so again, and we're much closer now. We'll remain right where we are and let Lumpjaw and his brethren ask the first questions."