Akki had no way of knowing whether K'tha-Jon was out here on his own or following orders from Takkata-Jim. But if there were some cabal of Stenos at work, he wouldn't put it past them to kill the helpless Creideiki if that were the way to secure their plan. Unthinkable as it was, they could even get it into their heads to harm Gillian, if she weren't careful how she made her return to the ship. The mere thought of any fin partic.i.p.ating in such crimes made Akki feel sick.

I've got to get back and help Makanee defend Creideiki until Gillian arrives! That takes priority over everything else.

He slipped out of the cleft and swam a series of floorhugging zigs and zags toward a small canyon to the southeast, in a direction away from Streaker, and away from both Toshio's island and the Thennanin wreck. It was the direction most likely to be unwatched by K'tha-Jon.

He could hear the giant casting about for him. The powerful beams of sound were missing for now. There was a good chance he would get a head start before he was detected.

Still, it wasn't quite as tasty as the satisfaction he would have felt in surprising K'tha-Jon with a snout-ramming in his genitals!

Gillian turned from the comm set to see anxiety on Toshio's face. It made him seem very young. Gone was the role of a rough, tough, worldly mel. Toshio was an adolescent midshipman who had just found out his captain was crippled. And now his best friend might well be fighting for his life. He looked at her, hoping for rea.s.surance that everything would be all right.

Gillian took the youth's hand and pulled him into a hug. She held him, against his protests, until, at last, the tension went out of his shoulders and he buried his face in her shoulder, holding her tightly.

When he finally pulled away Toshio didn't look at her, but turned away and wiped at one eye with the heel of his hand.

"I'm going to want to take Keepiru with me," Gillian said to him. "Do you think you and Sah'ot and Dennie can spare him?"

Toshio nodded. His voice was thick, but he soon had it under control. "Yes, sir. Sah'ot may be a bit of a problem when I start giving him some of Keepiru's duties. But I've been watching the way you handle him. I think I can manage."

"That's good. See if you can keep him off Dennie's back, too. You're going to be military commander now. I'm sure you'll manage fine."

Gillian turned to her small poolside campsite to gather her gear. Toshio went to the waters edge and switched on the hydrophone amplifier that would signal the two dolphins that they were wanted. Sah'ot and Keepiru had left an hour ago, to await the evening foray of the aborigines.

"I'll go back with you if you want, Gillian."

She shook her head as she gathered her notes and tools together. "No, Toshio. Dennie's work with the Kiqui is d.a.m.ned important. You're the one who's got to keep her from burning down the forest with a spent match while she's preoccupied. Besides, I need you to maintain a pretense that I haven t left. Do you think you can do that for me?" Gillian zipped shut her watertight satchel and started slipping out of her shirt and shorts. Toshio turned away, at first, and started to blush.

Then he noticed that Gillian didn't seem to care that he look. I might never see her again, he thought. I wonder if she knows what she's doing for me?

"Yes, sir," he said. Toshio's mouth felt very dry. "I'll act just as hara.s.sed and impatient as ever with Dr. Dart. And if Takkata-Jim asks for you ... Ill tell him you're off somewhere, er, sulking."

Gillian was holding her drysuit in front of her, preparing to step into it. She looked up at him, surprised by the wryness of his remark. Then she laughed.

In two long-legged strides she was over to him, seizing him into another hug. Without a thought Toshio put his arms around the smooth skin of her waist.

"You're a good man, Tosh," she said as she kissed him on the cheek. 'And, you know, you've grown quite a bit taller than me? You lie to Takkata-Jim for me and I promise we'll make a proper mutineer of you in no time at all."

Toshio nodded and closed his eyes. "Yes, ma'am," he said as he held her tight.

44 ::: Creideiki His skin itched. It had always itched, since that dim time when he rode alongside his mother in her slipstream -- when he had first learned about touch from nursing and the gentle nuzzles she gave him to remind him to rise for air.

Soon he had learned that there were other kinds of touching. There were walls and plants and the sides of all the buildings of the settlement at Catalina-under; there was the stroking, b.u.t.ting, and yes! biting play of his peers; there was the soft, oh, so deliciously varied touch of the mels and fems-the humans-who swam about like pinnipeds, like sea lions, laughing and playing catch with him underwater and above.

There was the feel of water. All the different kinds of feel there were to water.

The splash and crash of falling into it! The smooth laminar flow of it as you speared along faster than anyone ever could have gone before! The gentle lapping of it, just below your blowmouth as you rested, whispering a lullaby to yourself.

O, how he itched!

Long ago he had learned to rub against things, and he discovered what that could do to him. Ever since then, he had m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed whenever he felt like it, just like any other healthy fin would ...

Creideiki wanted to scratch himself. He wanted to m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e.

Only there was no wall nearby to rub against. He seemed unable to move, or even to open his eyes to see what surrounded him.

He was floating in midair, his weight held up by nothing ... by a familiar magic ... "anti-gravity." The word -- like his memories of floating this way many times before-for some reason felt alien, almost meaningless.

He wondered at his la.s.situde. Why not open his eyes and see? Why not click out a soundbeam and hear the shape and texture of this place?

At intervals he felt a spray of moistness that kept his skin wet. It seemed to come from all directions.

He considered, and came to the conclusion that something must be very wrong with him. He must be sick.

An involuntary sigh made him realize he was still capable of some sound. He searched for the right mechanisms, experimented, then managed to repeat the sound.

They must be working to fix me, he thought. I must have been hurt. Though I don't feel any pain, I feel a vacancy. Something has been taken from me. A ball? A tool? A skill? Anyway, the people are probably trying to put it back.

I trust people, he thought happily. And the apex of his mouth curled into a slight smile.

The apex of his mouth did what?

Oh. Yes. Smiling. That new thing.

New thing? I've done it all my life!

Why?

It's expressive! It adds subtlety to my features! It ...

It is redundant.

Creideiki let out a weak, warbling cry of confusion.

In the brightness Of the sunshine- There are answers In schools, like fishes *

He remembered a little, now. He had been dreaming. Something terrible had happened, and he had been plunged into a nightmare of bewilderment. Shapes had darted toward and away from him, and he had felt ancient songs take new, eerie forms.

He realized he must still be dreaming, with both hemispheres at the same time. That explained why he couldn't move. He tried to coax himself awake with a song.

Levels there are- Known only to sperm whales Physeter, who hunts In chasms of dreaming To battle the squid Whose beaks are sea-mounts And whose great arms Encompa.s.s oceans ... .

It was not a calming rhyme. It had overtones of darkness that made him want to fly away in horror. Creideiki tried to halt it, fearing what the chant might call up. But he could not stop crafting the sound-glyphs.

Go down to levels- In the darkness Where your "cycloid"

Never reaches Where all music Finally settles And it gathers Stacked in layers Howling songs of Ancient storms, And hurricanes That never died ... .

A presence grew alongside Creideiki. A great, broad figure could be felt nearby, forming out of the fabric of his song. Creideiki sensed its slow sonar pulses, filling the small chamber he lay within ... a small chamber that couldn't possibly hold the behemoth taking shape beside him.

Nukapai?

Sounds of earthquakes- Stored for epochs Sounds of molten Primeval rocks ... .

The sound creature solidified with each pa.s.sing verse. There was a muscular power in the presence forming beside him. The thing's slow, huge fluke strokes threatened to send him tumbling head over tail. When it blew, Its spume sounded like a storm breaking on a rocky sh.o.r.e.

Fear at last gave him the will to open his eyes. Moist mucus ran over his eyeb.a.l.l.s as he labored to separate the lids. They were recessed to their deepest, and it took moments to make them switch to air-focus.

At first all he saw was a hospital suspension tank, small and confined. He was alone.

But sound told him he was in the open sea, and a leviathan rode next to him! He could feel its great power!

He blinked, and suddenly his vision shifted. Sight adopted the frame of reference of sound. The room vanished, and he saw It!

The thing beside him could never have lived in any of the oceans he had known. Creideiki almost choked in dread.

It moved with the power of tsunamis, the irresistibility of the tides.

It was a thing of darkness and depths.

It was a G.o.d.

K-K-Kph-kree !!

It was a name Creideiki hadn't been aware he had known. It welled up from somewhere, like the dragons of a nightmare.

One dark eye regarded Creideiki with a look that seared him. He wanted to turn away-to hide or die.

Then it spoke to him.

It spurned Trinary, as he knew it would. It cast aside Primal, disdaining it a tongue for clever animals. It sang a song that brushed against him with physical force, enveloped him and filled him with a terrible understanding.

:You Swam Away From Us Creideiki : You Were Starting To Learn : Then Your Mind Swam Away: But We Have Not Finished : Yet : :We Have Waited Long For One Such As You : Now You Need Us As Much As We Need You : There Is No Going Back : :As You Are : You Would Be A Hulk : Dead Meat : Emptiness Without A Song : Never Again A Dreamer or A Fire User : :Useless Creideiki : Neither Captain : Nor Cetacean : Useless Meat : :There Is One Path For You : Through The Belly Of The Whale Dream : There You May Find A Way : A Hard Way : But A Way To Do Your Duty : There You May Find A Way To Save Your Life ... : Creideiki moaned. He thrashed feebly and called out for Nukapai. But then he remembered. She was one of them. She waited, down below, with his other tormentors, some of them old G.o.ds he had heard of in the sagas, and some he had never heard mentioned even by the humpback whales ....

K-K-Kph-kree had come to bring him back.

Though Anglic was lost to him, he conveyed a plea in a language he had not known he knew.

:I am damaged! : I am a hulk! I should be dead meat! : I have lost speech! I have lost words! : Let me die!

It answered with a sonorous rumble that seemed born beneath the earth. Beneath the ooze.

:Through The Whale Dream You Go : Where Your Cousins Have Never Been : Even When They Played Like Animals And Barely Knew Men : Deeper Than The Humpbacks Go : In Their Idle Meditation : Deeper Than Physeter : In His Devil Hunt : Deeper Than The Darkness Itself. ... : :There You May Decide To Die, If Truth Cannot Be Borne. ... : The walls of the small chamber faded away as his tormentor began to take on a new reality. It had the great brow and bright teeth of a sperm whale, but Its eyes shone like beacons, and Its flanks were streaked with sparkling silver. All around It shimmered an aura like ... like the glimmering fields around a starship ....

The room disappeared entirely. Suddenly, all around him was a great, open sea of weightlessness. The old G.o.d began to swim forward with powerful fluke strokes. Creideiki, wailing a soft fluting cry, was powerless to prevent being swept along in the behemoth's pulling slipstream. They accelerated, faster ...faster ... , In spite of the absence of direction, he knew, somehow, they were going DOWN.

"Did you hear that-t-t?"

Makanee's a.s.sistant looked up at the tank in which the captain lay suspended. A dim spotlight within the gravity tank shone on the suture scars of repeated surgery. Every few seconds, recessed nozzles cast a fine mist over the unconscious dolphin.

Makanee followed the medic's gaze.

"Perhapsss. I thought I heard something a little while ago, like a sigh. What did you hear?"

The a.s.sistant shook her head from side to side. "I'm not sure. I thought it sounded like he was talking to somebody -- only not in Anglic. It seemed like there was a s.n.a.t.c.h of Trinary, then ... then something else. It sounded weird!"

The a.s.sistant shivered. "Do you think maybe he's dreaming?"

Makanee looked up at Creideiki and sighed. "I don't know. I don't even know if, in his condition, dreaming is something to wish for him, or to pray devoutly he doesn't do."

45 ::: Tom Orley A chilly sea breeze swept over him out of the west. A bout of shivering shook him -- awake in the middle of the night. His eyes opened in the dark, staring into emptiness.

He couldn't remember where he was.

Give it a moment, he thought. It'll come.

He had been dreaming of the planet Garth, where the seas were small and the rivers many. There he had lived for a time among the human and chimp colonists, a mixed colony as rich and surprising as Calafia, where man and dolphin dwelt together.

Garth was a friendly world, though isolated far from other Earthling settlements.

In his dream, Garth was invaded. Giant warships hovered over her cities and spewed clouds of gas across her fertile valleys, sending colonists fleeing in panic. The sky had been filled with flashing lights.

He had trouble separating the trailing edges of the dream from reality. Tom stared at the crystal dome of Kithrup's night. His body was locked-legs pulled in, hands clutching opposite shoulders-as much from a rigor of exhaustion as from the cold. Slowly, he got the muscles to loosen. Tendons popped and joints groaned as he learned all over again how to move.

The volcano to the north had died down to only a feeble red glow. There were long, ragged openings in the clouds overhead. Tom watched the pinpoints of light in the sky.

He thought about stars. Astronomy was his mental focus.

Red means cool, he thought. That red one there might be a small, nearby ancient-or a distant giant already in its death throes. And that bright one over there could be a blue supergiant. Very rare. Was there one in this area of s.p.a.ce?

He ought to remember.

Tom blinked. The blue "star" was moving.

He watched it drift across the starfield, until it intercepted another bright pinpoint, this one a brilliant green. There was a flash as the two tiny lights met. When the blue spark moved on, the green was gone.

Now what were the chances I'd witness that? How likely was it that I'd be looking at just the right place at the right time? The battle must still be pretty hot and heavy up there. It isn't over yet.