Cachalot Read online

  The whirlpool of a small cyclone appeared beneath them, raced past and behind. Clouds of all shapes and sizes flew by, and once, only once, she thought she saw a bright flash that might have hidden an island. She hunted through her memory for the details of Cachalot's topography she had force-fed herself, finally decided the brightness had been a low cumulus cloud and not land.

  Commonwealth headquarters were located on Mou'-anui, one of several enormous lagoons enclosed by land sufficiently stable to permit the establishment of permanent, nonfloating installations. Cora was hunting the sea for it when a voice sounded from behind them. "Excuse me."

  The harness sign was off. She unbuckled, looked over the back of her reclined lounge. The speaker sat across the aisle, one row behind their seats, a stocky, coffee-colored gentleman about her own age. His hair and eyes were as black as her own. The hair hung to his shoulders, was combed straight back, and exhibited not even an echo of a curl or kink. He had a wide mouth, almost lost beneath a sharp, hooked nose like the beak of a predatory bird.

  "That's a neurophon, isn't it? I thought I felt something picking at me a little while ago." He smiled explosively, changing suddenly from nondescript to swarthily good-looking.

  "Yes, it is." Rachael spoke coolly, and Cora thought, Good for you, girl.

  "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 lustrous grin.

  "Is that so?" Rachael's tone was turning from cool to coy. "I can understand when you say you know talent 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 disarming 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 interestedly. "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 knew where I'm going to be staying on Cachalot."

  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 bump in the atmosphere, "on directional 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 trying to worry about physiological orientation, too. There's so damn 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 sensors. "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 passengers. 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 disappear 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 developments in instrumental electronics.

  It was all somewhat beyond Cora. A top-flight neurophon player had to be musician, physicist, and physiologist all in one. She still refused to give her daughter credit for attempting to master the extraordinarily difficult 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 assets.

  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 handsome pilot of our shuttle. Once we are down and settled 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 expert 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 property or fisheries. There had been, it seemed, many deaths. She had been sent off with only enough information to tease her. Someone was going to great efforts to keep whatever was happening on Cachalot from the general public.

  No matter. She would learn soon enough. The possibility of work on Cachalot had been sufficient to persuade her to accept the assignment. When offered choice of her own assistant, 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 assistant 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 number 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 passed over were common, but predictable. It wa
s 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 principal language of my ancestors who lived on the continent of South America."

  "I'm sorry," Rachael said. "I'm afraid I don't know Terran geography very well. I've lived there only for a few years, while I've been in school."

  "No matter. Merced means 'river' in the language of my other ancestors, who conquered my principal ones."

  " 'Shining river.' Very pretty."

  "What about yours? Does it mean anything?"

  "Damned if I know." A hand reached back, touched Cora. "Hey, Mother, what does 'Xamantina' mean?"

  "I don't know, Rachael." She looked again at the earnest little man behind them. "It's an Amerind name, also derived from South America. A different region, though, I think."

  Merced looked intrigued. "Perhaps our ancestors were neighbors, then."

  "Possibly." Cora spoke softly. "No doubt they fought and killed one another with great vigor." She turned away, looked back out the port.

  "Mother," Rachael whispered at her angrily, "you have a talent for displaying the most exquisite rudeness."

  "Calm down, dear. We'll be landing soon. You wouldn't want your toy scattered all over the cabin, would you?"

  Rachael huffily snuggled down into her seat, though Cora could still feel her daughter's eyes on the back of her neck as she stared out the port. She chuckled to herself, thankful that Merced had given her the chance to let him know how she felt without her having to intrude on the conversation.

  "Four minutes to touchdown," the speaker voice said. "Refasten harnessing, please."

  Cora did so mechanically. Mou'anui should be straight ahead of them. She should be able to see at least part of it immediately prior to touchdown. They would approach the oval lagoon from one end. It was sixty kilometers long in places, and surely they—yes, there!

  A brilliant flash stung her eyes through the port, from where direct sunlight impacted on the hexalate sands. She stared at the kaleidoscope of color until her eyes filled with tears.

  A dull thunk sounded as the long, solid pontoons were lowered. Seconds before contact, the light had become so strong Cora had to turn from the port. The brief impression she had had of Mou'anui would never leave her, however. It was as if they were touching down inside a diamond.

  Another, louder thump was heard as they touched water. The rear engines roared. Cora struggled to clear her vision, but occasional lances of reflected light shot through the port, blinding her. She was aware of a different motion, one that was at once familiar and yet strange.

  They were floating now, adrift on an alien sea.

  Chapter II

  We will be debarking shortly, ladies and gentlemen," the voice from the speaker said. "Welcome to Cachalot"

  Passengers were unslipping their flight harnesses, organizing luggage and tapecases and personal effects. Cora tried to single out those who might be natives, settled on the man and woman in the first two portside seats. They were not of Polynesian ancestry, but boasted skin tanned the color of light chocolate. They wore only fishnet tops over swim shorts.

  The shuttlecraft slowly taxied across the lagoon. Through the windows, which had automatically darkened in response to the reflected light, she could see down into the limpid transparency that was the surface. Gradually the darkness gave way to lighter, brighter colors as the water grew shallower.

  Now Cora could make out shapes moving through the water. So excited was she at these first signs of Cachalot life that she almost forgot to breathe. The forms darted in and around the peculiar branchlike growths formed by the hexalates.

  None of the crystalline growths possessed the gentle curves or smooth surfaces of the corals of Earth. Large or small, the formations universally displayed straight, angular architecture, a crystallographer's nightmare. The tiny creatures whose decomposed skeletons formed the sand that filled the lagoon's bottom and comprised its shores created their exoskeletons from silicon, whereas the corals of Earth utilized lime. The beaches of Cachalot were made of glass. Multicolored glass at that, for minute quantities of different minerals were enough to produce hexalates of every color of the spectrum. The tridee solidos Cora had seen of Cachalot's islands reminded her of vast heaps of gem-stones.

  She could see buildings now, built on the nearest outer island. Scattered here and there around the structures were long, low green plants. They were sea-langes, varieties of local plant life that had developed the ability to take oxygen from the air instead of from the water. Their roots were anchored deep within the body of the reef.

  More familiar vegetation had been used to landscape the complex. Cora recognized numerous varieties of off-world, salt-tolerant plant life, including several from Earth. Outstanding among the latter were the prosaic, arching shapes of coconut palms. Probably the plants and the soil they survived in were imported.

  Several small docks came into view. Men and women worked on or near them, engaged in unknown tasks. All were clad in the barest essentials. Wide-brimmed dark hats seemed popular among many. The instrument belts several wore contained more material than the rest of their clothing.

  Turning right, the shuttle slid toward several large, two-storied structures. Traveling in the opposite direction, a small skimmer roared past. Its crew waved cheerily at the shuttle's occupants.

  The once reverberant thunder of the shuttle's engines had been reduced to a chemical snore. They coughed once or twice more as the pilot altered the shuttle's heading slightly. Then it was sitting silently alongside a floating dock of brown polymer. The dock bobbed between thin posts of green glass.

  Cora wondered if the glass was composed of hexalate sands, decided that most likely it was. Any outpost world had to make the most of its own resources. Self-sufficiency was the goal of every colony. She expected to find a great many of Cachalot's everyday items constructed of glass. A small suprafoil was linked to the far side of the dock.

  The forward door between the pilot's compartment and the passengers' was opened. A gust of warm air filled the cabin, replacing the stale canned atmosphere with dampness and the strong, pungent aroma of the sea. Cora inhaled, her eyes closing in pleasure. Perfume, pure perfume.

  "Why is it," Rachael was grumbling, "that all the oceans of all the planets have to stink?"

  They had been through such arguments before. Cora did not comment on her daughter's insensitivity to one of the most wonderful smells in the universe.

  Abruptly, the doorway was filled by a large, bearish form. It squeezed into the cabin, ducking its head to clear the entryway, and surveyed the human contents.

  The massive man was clad only in a trylon pareu, patterned with blue nebulae and pink flowers, loosely draped around his waist down to his ankles. Chest and chin were hairless, though the huge round skull was thickly overgrown with black ringlets that might have been combed once in the past dozen years.

  While the man was only a few centimeters taller than Rachael, his physique was that of a giant. Or a granite massif. He was in his early forties, Cora guessed, but with the roundness of a child in his features. Most prominent among the latter was a considerable belly that curved out and away from beneath his chest but had no fat ripples. The structure was a smooth, slick curve of solid muscle that arced back to vanish beneath the almost hidden waistband of the pareu.

  The face was also rounded, giving Cora the eerie feeling she was looking not at a mature man but at a seven-year-old giant. Besides his size, all that marked him as a knowledgeable adult was the instrument-laden belt he wore around hips and waist, tucked more under the belly than across it. She studied the array, recognized the emergency underwater breathing unit that could give a diver twenty minutes of air, an underwater lumar, several instruments of uncertain purpose, and, on his left side, a small rectangle of metal with a constantly changing digital readout She had a similar rectangle in
her own gear. On command it could provide time, depth, direction and speed of current, water temperature, and numerous other factors of vital interest to anyone working underwater. It was expensive, not the sort of device that would be carried by, for example, a common fisherman. Possibly he was attached to the local science station? She would find out soon enough.

  The massive amount of flesh he revealed did not disturb her. Of necessity the citizens of the Commonwealth who lived on its oceans wore less than their landlocked counterparts. Partly this was related to convention, partly to reasons of comfort, and partly, she often suspected, to man's having risen from the sea and his secret wish to return to it. The closer man got to the sea, the greater the number of civilization's artifacts he seemed to shuck.

  Cora was dressed only in a simple one-piece bit of shipboard fluff that ended above her knees. Even so, now that she was on Cachalot, she felt unbearably overdressed. Once they were assigned quarters, she would change into a suit. She couldn't wait.

  It would be nicer still to be able to go about only in skin, but even a world as casual as Cachalot would likely be affected by universal conventions. Sadly, these included the wearing of at least minimal clothing. Not all the inhabitants, let alone visitors and temporary workers, would willingly trade false morality for sensibility and comfort. And there was always the awkward problem of the desires and proximity of men. Those she would be working with would be fellow scientists, but experience had shown that scientific detachment had a disarming way of dissolving in her presence. Not to mention in Rachael's.

  "Sam Mataroreva." The man was looking down at her. His voice was gentle as a cat's, as easy and open as he seemed to be. He was ambling down the aisle, squeezing his bulk lithely between the lounges. Despite his size, he was physically less intimidating to her than men half as large. Perhaps it was the baby-smooth, hairless visage. Perhaps simply the charming smile.