"Yes, sir. I'll get on it right away." Toshio wasn't even sure what Dart had just asked him to do, but he covered his a.s.s.

"And don't worry, sir. The robot will be monitored day and night. Keepiru and Sah'ot have orders from Takkata-Jim to stay plugged into it at turns when I'm unavailable. They'll call me or wake me if there's any change in its condition."

Wouldn't that satisfy the chimp? The fen hadn't taken well at all to that order from Streakers exec, but they would obey, even if it slowed Sah'ot's work with the Kiqui.

Miracle of miracles, Charlie seemed to agree. "Yeah, that's nice of them," he muttered. "Be sure to thank 'em for me.

"And say! Maybe, while Keepiru's plugged in, can he trace that intermittent static we keep getting from the robot? I don't like it, and it's getting worse."

"Yes, sir. I'll ask him."

The chimpanzee rubbed his right eye with the back of a furry hand, and yawned.

"Listen, Toshio," he said. "I'm sorry, but I really need a break. Would you mind if we put off finishing this until just a little bit later? I'll ring you back after supper and answer all your questions then, hmmm? OK bye, then, for now!" Charlie reached forward and the holo image disappeared.

Toshio stared at the empty s.p.a.ce for a moment, slightly stunned. Mind? Would I mind? Why, no, sir, I don't believe I'd mind at all! I'll just wait here patiently, until either you call back or the sky falls down on my head!

He snorted. Would I mind.

Toshio stood up, his joints crackling from sitting cross-legged too long.

I thought I was too young for that. Ah, well. A midshipman is supposed to experience everything.

He looked toward the forest. Dennie was hard at work with the Kiqui. Should I bother Gillian, I wonder? She's probably worried about Tom, and who could blame her? We were supposed to have heard from him early yesterday.

But maybe she wants company.

Lately he had started having fantasies about Gillian. It was only natural, of course. She was a beautiful older woman -- at least thirty-and by most standards quite a bit more alluring than Dennie Sudman.

Not that Dennie wasn't attractive in her own way, but Toshio didn't want to think about Dennie much any more. Her implicit rejection, by effectively overlooking him when the two of them were alone and so much alike, was painful.

Not that Dennie had said or done anything offensive, but she had become moody lately. Toshio suspected she sensed his attraction to her, and was overreacting by turning cold to him. He told himself that was an immature response on her part. But that didn't keep it from hurting. . , Fantasizing about Gillian was another matter. He'd had shameful but very compelling daydreams about being there when she needed a man helping her overcome her loss ...

She probably knew how he felt, but didn't let it change her behavior toward him at all. It was a comforting forgiveness, and it made her a safe object of semi-secret adoration.

It could simply be that I'm very confused, of course, Toshio thought. I'm trying to be a.n.a.lytical in an area where I have almost no experience, and my own feelings keep getting in the way.

I wish I wasn't just an awkward kid, and were more like Mr. Orley, instead.

An uneven electronic tone behind him interrupted his fantasy-the comm coming back to life.

"Oh, no!" Toshio groaned. "Not already!"

The unit spat static as the tuner sought to bring in an erratic carrier wave. Toshio had a wild desire to run over and kick the thing into the bottomless murk of the drill-tree shaft.

Suddenly, a crackling, noise-shrouded whistle broke out.

If (crackle) midshipmen Stuck together Who could stop us?

And of midshipmen Who can fly Like Calafians?

"Akki!" Toshio hurried over to kneel in front of the comm.

Right again, Diving partner- Remember how we'd Once hunt lobster?

"Do I? Ifni! I wish we were home doing that now! What's happening? Are you having equipment trouble on the bridge? I'm getting no visual, and there's a lot of static. I thought you were taken off comm duty. And why the Trinary?"

Necessity Is someone's (crackle) mother- I send this via Close nerve socket- Anxious, I seek soft High Patron- Urgently To pa.s.s (crackle) warning- Toshio's lips pursed as he repeated the message to himself silently. " ... soft High Patron." There were few humans given t.i.tles like that by fins. Only one candidate was here on the island right now.

"You want to talk to Gillian?"

Urgently To pa.s.s on warning- Toshio blinked, then he said, "I'll get her right away, Akki! You hold on!"

He turned and ran into the forest, calling Gillian's name at the top of his lungs.

43 ::: Akki The monofilament cable was almost invisible against the rubble and ooze of the sea floor. Even in the light from Akki's harness lamp, it barely reflected a spiderweb's glimmer here and there amidst the rock and sediments atop this jagged ridgeline.

The cable had been designed to be hard to detect; it was the only certain way Streaker could communicate with her two outlying work parties without giving away her location. Akki had been forced to search for over an hour, using the best instruments at his disposal and knowing where to look, before finding the line to the island. By the time he had clipped his neural tap into the line, more than half of the oxygen in his breather was gone.

A lot of time had been spent just getting away from the ship. And Akki wasn't even sure his departure had gone unnoticed. The taciturn electrician's mate in charge of the equipment locker shouldn't have questioned orders when Akki asked for breathing gear. Another fin, an off-duty engine room rating, had followed him from a distance after he had left the equipment locker, and Akki had to dodge through the outlock to shake the Stenos off his tail.

In less than two days a subtle change had come over the crew of Streaker. A new alignment of power had been set up. Crew members who had formerly been of little influence now pushed their way to the front of the food lines and adopted dominant body postures, while others went about their duties with eyes downcast and flukes drooping.

Rank and official position had little to do with it. Such things had always been informal aboard Streaker anyway. Dolphins were more apt to pay attention to subtle shifts in dominance than to formal authority.

Now even racism seemed to be a factor. A disproportionate number of the new figures of authority were of the Stenos sub-breed.

It amounted to an informal coup. Officially, Takkata-Jim was acting on behalf of the unconscious Creideiki until a ship's council could be convened. But Streaker's water had the taste of a herd with a new dominant male. Those close to the old bull were on the out, and the cronies of the new swam in the vanguard.

Akki found it all quite illogical and a bit disgusting. It brought home to him that even the highly selected fen of Streaker's crew could submit to ancient patterns of behavior under stress. He now saw what the Galactics meant when they said that three hundred years of uplift was too short a time for a race to be ready for starships.

It was a rude realization. It made Akki feel more like a client than he ever had in the mixed, egalitarian colony of Calafia.

The discovery did help in one way, though. It gave him a primitive satisfaction in his act of mutiny. Legalistically, he was committing a serious crime, abandoning the ship to make contact with Gillian Baskin against specific orders from the acting captain.

But now Akki felt he knew the truth; he was a member of a crew of imitation s.p.a.cemen. There was no way, short of Creideiki miraculously recovering, that they were going to get out of this mess without intervention by their patrons.

He discounted the value of Ignacio Metz-or Emerson D'Anite or even Toshio, for that matter. He agreed with Makanee that their only hope lay in Dr. Baskin or Mr. Orley coming home.

By now he had come to accept that Orley was lost. The rest of the crew believed this, and it was one more reason morale had gone to h.e.l.l since Creideiki's accident.

The comm line quietly sent a carrier tone directly to his stato-acoustic nerve, as Akki waited impatiently for Toshio to return with Gillian. The line was not being used for anything else, now that Charles Dart had signed off, but every second that pa.s.sed increased the chance that the present comm operator aboard the ship would detect the resonance of his tap. Akki had set it up so they couldn't pick up his conversation with Toshio, but even a dullard CommSec fin couldn't miss the side effects, in time.

Where are they? he wondered. Surely they know I only have so much air? And this metal-rich water makes my skin itch!

Akki breathed slowly for calm. A teaching rhyme of Keneenk ran through his mind.

"Past" is what once was- A remnant that's called memory ...

In it lie the "causes"- Of what now is."

"Future" is what will be- Envisioned, seldom seen ...

In it lie "results"- Of what now is.

"Present" is that narrowness- Pa.s.sing, always flickering ...

Proof of the "joke"- Of "what now is Past, future and present were among the hardest ideas to express explicitly in Trinary The rhyme was meant to teach causation as the human patrons, and most other sophonts, saw it, while keeping essential faith with the cetacean view of life.

It all seemed so simple to Akki. At times he wondered why some of these dolphins of Earth had so much trouble with such ideas. One thought, one imagined actions and their consequences, considered how the-different results would taste and feel, then one acted! If the future was unclear, one did the best one could, and hoped.

It was how humans had muddled through during the ages of their horrible, orphaned ignorance. Akki saw no reason why it should be so hard for his people, especially when they were being shown the way.

"Akki? Toshio here. Gillian's coming. She had to break away from something important, so I ran ahead. Are you all right?"

Akki sighed.

In the depths- With itching blowmouth I tread in wait- At duty's calling As the cycloid- Rolls in ...

"Hang on," Toshio called, interrupting the rhyme. Akki grimaced. Toshio never would develop a sense of style.

"Here's Gillian," Toshio finished. "Take care of yourself, Akki!"

The line crackled with static.

You, too- Diving/flying partner *

"Akki?"

It was the voice of Gillian Baskin, made tinny by the weak connection, but almost infinitely gratifying to hear.

"What is it, dear? Can you tell me what's going on on the ship? Why won't Creideiki talk to me?"

That wasn't what Akki had thought she would ask first. For some reason he had expected her main concern to be Tom Orley. Well, he wasn't about to bring the subject up if she didn't.

Makanee- Patient healer Sends me out- With danger warning Soundless, flukeless Lies Creideiki Streaker's fortunes Strangely waning And the taste- Of atavism Fouls the waters- There was silence at the other end. No doubt Gillian was formulating her next question in a way that would let him answer unambiguously in Trinary. It was a skill Toshio sometimes sadly lacked.

Akki brought his head up quickly. Was that a sound? It hadn't come from the comm line, but from the dark waters around him.

"Akki," Gillian began. "I'm going to ask you questions phrased to take three-level answers. Please spare artistry for brevity in answering."

Gladly, if I can, Akki thought. He had often wondered why it was so hard to hold direct conversations in Trinary without beating around the bush in poetic allusion. It was his native tongue as much as Anglic was, and still he was frustrated by its resistance to shortcuts.

"Akki, does Creideiki ignore the Fish-of-Dreaming, does he chase them, or does he feed them?"

Gillian was asking if Creideiki was still functioning as a tool user, was he lost to injury, drifting in an unconscious dream-hunt or, worse, was he dead. Somehow, Gillian had immediately gone right to the heart of the matter. Akki was able to answer with blessed brevity.

Chasing squid- In deepest water *

There was that sound again! A rapid clicking, coming from not far away. Curse the necessity to keep his neural socket linked to the static of this line! The sounds were close enough to leave little doubt. Someone was hunting for him out here.

"All right, Akki. Next question. Does Hikahi calm all with her Keneenk rhythms, does she echo herd obedience, or does she sing an absent silence?"

Dolphin sonar is a highly directional thing. He felt the edge of a lobe of a sonic beam pa.s.s just above him, without hitting him broadside. Akki got down as close to the ocean floor as he could, and made an effort to direct his own nervous clickings into the soft sand. He wanted to reach out with one of his harness arms and grab a rock or something for stability, but was afraid the tiny whirring of the motors would be heard.

Absent silence- Fades the memory- Of Hikahi Absent silence- From Tsh't And Suessi *

He wished he, too, were absent this place and back in his quiet stateroom aboard Streaker.

"Okay, is their silence that of netted capture? Is it of orca fearful waiting? Or is it the silence of fishes feeding?"

Akki was about to answer when, like one whose eyes were suddenly struck by a bright light, he was awash in a loud beam of pulsed sound, highly directional and from his left and above. There was no question a dolphin up there was instantly aware of him.

Takkata-Jim- Bites the cables My own job- Is mine no longer His fen relay- His lying songs *

Akki was so agitated that some of that actually came out as sound rather than impulses sent to the monofilament. There was no use trying any longer for secrecy. He made ready to jettison the line and turned his melon toward the intruder. He fired off a sonar pulse strong enough, he hoped, to momentarily stun him.

The echoes of his burst returned giving him a vivid image. There was a thrashing sound as a very large dolphin swung aside, out of his beam.

K'tha-Jon! Akki recognized the echo at once.

'Akki? What was that? Are you in fighting patterns? Break off if you have to. I'm coming home fast as I ..."

Duty absolved, Akki popped the neural link free and rolled to one side.

He acted none too soon. A blue-green laser bolt sizzled through the spot where he had been seconds before.

So, that's the way of it, he thought as he dove into the canyon next to the ocean ridge. The hammerhead is out to get me, and no politeness about it.

He did a quick roll to his right and speared downward toward the shadows.

Dolphins were known for a reluctance to kill anything that breathed air, but they were not a limited race. Even before uplift, humans had witnessed cases of fin murdering fin. In enabling cetaceans to be starfarers, men also made them more efficient when they chose to kill.

A line-bright laser beam hissed a bare meter ahead of him. Akki clenched his jaw and dove through the streak of scalding bubbles in its wake. Another narrow, searing bolt sizzled between his pectoral fins. He whirled and dove for the long sonic shadow of a jagged outcrop of rock.

K'tha-Jon's laser rifle could kill at long range, while the welder/torch on Akki's harness was, like all sidearm-tools, of use only up close. Obviously, his only chances were in flight or in trickery.

It was very dark down here. All of the red colors were gone. Only blue and green could pa.s.s through from the day to illuminate a shadow-filled landscape. Akki took advantage of the rugged terrain and slipped between the sharp walls of a narrow rock cleft. There he stopped to wait and listen.

The echoes he picked up through pa.s.sive listening only told him that K'tha-Jon was out there, somewhere, searching. Akki hoped his own rapid breathing wasn't as loud as it sounded to him.

He sent a neural query to his harness. The microcomputer in its frame told him he had less than half an hour's air left in his breather. That certainly put a limit on how long he could wait.

Akki's jaws ground together. He wanted K'tha-Jon's long pectorals between his teeth, much as he knew he was no match for the big Stenos in size or strength.