Cachalot Read online

  Like two racing spacecraft in a blue-green void, the orcas drew alongside the bobbing suprafoil. Cora studied the black and white coloring through the clear water. The sandy bottom was still only some fourteen meters below them, and the orcas hung within that medium, floating as if suspended in air.

  Whistles and squeaks came from Sam, and she hurriedly adjusted her own headset. His voice was distorted by the electronic diaphragm, but the words were now understandable.

  "These are our lookouts and helpfriends," he was saying. "I've known them both for a long time. The big male is Wenkoseemansa. In orca that translates roughly as Double-White-Death-Scar-Over-Right-Eye. You can see it when he rolls to port. Got it when a calf in a fight with a sunmori fish. His mate is Late-hoht—She-Who-Rises-Above-The-World."

  "What is the origin of?—" Merced started to ask. Before Mataroreva could reply, the question was answered by action.

  Cora stumbled backward in spite of herself, in spite of all her supposed scientific preparedness, and fell to the deck. Rachael gave a scream and ran into Merced, nearly knocking him over. Only Mataroreva wasn't affected. He ducked, bent over as much from expectation as from laughter.

  All seven meters and nine tons of Latehoht had exploded in a geyser of salt spray. Cora lay on her back, staring in horror and fascination as the enormous body flew completely over the low bow of the Caribe, to land with a tremendous splash on the starboard side.

  She fought the wildly rocking deck as she scrambled back to her feet, dripping water and shouting angrily at Mataroreva. "Why the hell didn't you warn us?" He was laughing too hard to reply. She had to admit she was more embarrassed than frightened. "Why didn't you!—"

  "Awwwoman—awwwoman!" She was so startled by the unexpected, mellifluous voice that suddenly sounded in her ears that she forgot her embarrassment and Sam completely. In a daze she turned and walked to the starboard railing. She had studied many tapes of cetacean talk, both in the natural state and translated into terranglo. But it was one thing to hear such an alien yet warm voice on tape, quite another to experience it in reality.

  A massive blunt head protruded above the water. Two tiny, almost imperceptible eyes of vitreous black were staring up at her as the head moved slowly from side to side. The mouth was open, showing startlingly white, sharp teeth. The sounds uttered from within reached Cora not as squirps and squeals but as rich, clean terranglo.

  "You drop in fear. You worrry and wince with your body and soullll. She-Who-Rises-Above-The-World intimidates and does not pleasse you in herr greeting-time." Then, more quietly, "I do not knoww if I like this one-she, Sammm."

  "I'm sorry," Cora said automatically. "Really I am." She ignored the whistles and yelps that blasted from her headset speaker, concentrated on forming the words with her lips. "I was startled, that's all. Probably," she continued more confidently, "I could do some things which would startle you."

  "She of surprise, she of mystery haunts my dayyy. Unknowwwn neww quality. Can it be that a female human has such capability, Samm?"

  "I don't know," he said. "But in the case of this one, it is possible-thing." He grinned at Cora, then spoke again to the distraught orca. "You should not be upset, little one."

  A second, more massive head emerged from the water next to Latehoht's, rose to the railing, and turned one eye on Cora. She did not pull back. White teeth were centimeters from her face.

  "She did not mean to upset or displease," Wenkoseemansa rumbled. He sank back toward the water, no longer treading on his tail. "But onlyy to greeeet."

  "I wasn't upset," Cora replied a bit defensively. She leaned over the railing. "It was a glorious jump, Latehoht. I've swum many of the oceans of the universe and encountered much in them that amazes and delights me, but none that truly displeases."

  "Know we fast ones nothingg of the otherrr oceans, though Samm tells us sometimes of them." Wenkoseemansa did a neat little pirouette on his tail. "Know we much of the universe that isss this ocean. We will protect you frommm it. We sufferr you to live upon and within it. We will watch over you for our friend Sammm, for such is whatt we wish to do."

  "Whatt we wish to do," Latehoht echoed.

  Another fountain of water spurted as Wenkoseemansa rolled onto his side and slapped the surface with his flukes. "Timmme to swim, time to go. Time to kill a little more the parasite impatience, the gerrrm of boredom, beneath a fairr upper sky. Where go we to, friend Sam?"

  "To where I told you seven days ago," Mataroreva replied. "To the place of my people last dying, to the town on the waters that is no more. Toward the non-scarred side of the sun."

  'To the placcce of deathhh," Latehoht said somberly. "To the where of sudden screamming and the realms of the vanished men, to theme we go." The great head ducked out of sight as she and her mate turned to the northwest.

  "Wait!" Cora yelled, the high-pitched screech from her headset speaker almost deafening her. The two whales paused. "Do you know what caused the death place? Do you have any idea what might be responsible for the vanished men?"

  "Would that we knew," Wenkoseemansa bemoaned. "Would that we had the rhyme or reason of it, so that youu would not hawe to be herre. Would thatt it had not happened."

  "Swim with uss, Samm!" Latehoht cried in an entirely different voice.

  "Yes, swwim with us!" her mate added.

  "I can't," he told them, looking over the railing. "I have to guide the boat."

  "Poorr humans," Wenkoseemansa observed sadly. "Poorr people of the airr. A thin environment makes for narroww people. Narroww people make forr narroww thoughts. And narroww thoughts make for too much worryy to the nonscarred side of the sunn." He ducked his massive head and started westward.

  "Nonscarred side of the sunn." Latehoht performed one final prodigious leap, again drenching the unprepared passengers on the foil, then joined her mate, vanishing to the west. In a moment even the two towering dorsal fins had disappeared and nothing could be seen breaking the gentle blue swells ahead.

  "You'll lose them, Sam!" Cora called to him.

  He shook his head. "We're headed in the same direction, for the same destination. They'll always know where we are."

  "They'll stay within range?" she asked uncertainly.

  "Of our sonar as well as theirs, yes." He started back up toward the bridge as the Caribe began to accelerate.

  Cora knew that, of all the cetaceans, the orcas were the ones who found the company of mankind congenial and that they thought more like humans than did any of their relatives. But she suspected from what she had just observed that these two had a more than merely tolerant relationship with Sam. They were more than assistants and advisers; they were friends.

  Spray stung her cheek and eyes. In the absence of hexalate sands they had no need of the protective goggles. The glare off the water was no worse than on the seas of other worlds.

  She leaned over the railing and looked sternward. Distant flashes of light, green and pink and yellow, were fading behind their rear horizon. They were the last signals of Mou'anui's sands and the subsidiary motus that surrounded the great atoll.

  Then there was just ocean. Ocean, air, and sun. They were surrounded by Cachalot. She decided she was hungry.

  There was no rocking motion to the Caribe, only the steady, soft vibration which transferred itself from the foils to the hull. From the hull to the mattress of her bed the vibration dimmed still more. It was too much sleep that finally awakened her, groggy and cotton-mouthed.

  The small port was covered, shutting out any exterior light. A glance at the chronometer indicated she had been asleep for nearly twelve hours. She hadn't thought she was particularly tired, but in this case it seemed her body had disagreed with her brain.

  She put her face back together; then, feeling no less than fifty percent human,, she made her way up to the deck.

  They were cruising at a slightly slower speed now. So as not, she suspected, to exhaust even the muscular orcas. Rachael was sunbathing on the rear deck. Merced was nowh
ere to be seen this new morning, and Sam was on the deck above the central cabin, behind the bridge.

  The master control lay nearby. To her surprise Sam was reading a book. A real book, not a tape or disc.

  "la ora na—morning," he greeted her. "It's not often I have the pleasure of meeting someone who lives in reverse."

  "I'm still half asleep, Sam," she told him with only a touch of irritation. "Don't play games. What are you talking about?"

  "Only that you get younger and more beautiful each day."

  "That's nice." She turned, scanned the endless ocean, the view no different from the day before, that she knew would be no different tomorrow. "When I regress all the way back to an egg, I'm yours."

  "Fried, poached, scrambled, diced, or in an omelet?"

  "Hard-boiled," she responded, not missing a beat. She eyed the empty bridge. "Master remote or no, shouldn't you be up there checking other instruments?"

  "For instance? You worry too much, Cora." He eased back into the lounge. The material cooled his back, kept him from perspiring too much. "The Commonwealth's been overtechnologized for centuries. If anything goes wrong, the ship will stop. If nothing stops, there's no reason for me to hover over the instruments. You're still thinking in terms of the oceans of more developed worlds.

  "There isn't an island or reef within kilometers. This section of sea, this close to Mou'anui, has been fairly well mapped. The chance of our encountering another ship, let alone running into one, is about one in several million. A true passenger passages and lets his ship take care of itself. That's what it's designed to do. In the unlikely event we do encounter something, it will warn us in plenty of time. You don't think any vessel as smart as this one is going to bash itself up simply because it has a few dumb humans aboard, do you?"

  "Okay—let up on me, will you?"

  Several high whistles and squeaks joined the conversation. She looked to starboard. Sam put down his book, frowned intently. "That's Latehoht. She's talking to you."

  "How do you know, and why to me?"

  "I know a little orca. As to the second"—he smiled at her—"ask her yourself. You'll need your headset. And hurry." He glanced upward. "Soon it will be hot noon and they'll slide beneath the ship. They like to travel in the shade of the hull."

  She started to leave. "It's down in my cabin. I'll go get it."

  "Never mind. Use mine." He pointed.

  She located the translator unit, donned it, and adjusted the controls. Then she was leaning over the side and shouting, "Good morning."

  "Haill and good hunttingg, grreetings to thhe sssun!" the joyful response came. For an instant the magnificently streamlined black and white body disappeared, only to break the surface seconds later. "A ggood dayy to beee aliwe, to swwim and to eatt and to thhinkkkk."

  "Haill and monrning," a slightly deeper echo sounded. Wenkoseemansa greeted her nearby. Cora noted that when traveling, one had to adopt a pause-and-wait style of conversation to match the whales arcing in and out of the water. But the male did not reappear.

  "What's wrong with Wenkoseemansa?" Cora asked Sam, moving the headset pickup aside so the unit would not translate her question into orca. "Doesn't he like me?"

  "What makes you think Latehoht likes you?" he teased. "Don't mind Wenkoseemansa. He's the strong, silent type."

  "Awwwoman, off anothher wworrrld!" a new cry sounded. Cora turned her attention back to the waters. From her position high on the overdeck she could see the entire powerful body. It cut through the water like a ship through vacuum, sometimes playing only centimeters from the sharp, flexible metal of the fore starboard foil.

  "Lissten to a tale, lissten to a tale!"

  Wenkoseemansa reappeared but did not speak. He cut under his more loquacious mate, raced just ahead of the dangerous foil, and let it kiss his tail flukes.

  "I could listen to you all day," Cora replied honestly.

  "Nottt sso longg," Latehoht corrected her quickly.

  Cora heard a noise, raised her earphones, and heard in terranglo, "The translator has a difficult time with metaphors," Sam was telling her. "Try to be as literal as possible, even if Latehoht is not. And pay attention, or you'll miss something good." He turned onto his side, his huge stomach shifting to cover completely the instrument belt encircling his waist.

  "Latehoht's a fine storyteller. Orcas love to tell stories. They all think they're poets. Sometimes I think they stay around men just to have someone new to listen to them. So be a good audience."

  With pauses while she was beneath the surface,

  Latehoht proceeded to tell the story of Poleetat, an ancestral orca and one of the first to reach Cachalot. It seemed that Poleetat, in exploring his new home, encountered a megalichthyian, one of the largest creatures inhabiting Cachalot's ocean. The megalichthyian was four times Poleetat's mass. Its teeth were sharp and small and many, and it boasted an enormous single tusk protruding from its lower jaw like a sword.

  Unlike some of the younger orcas, Poleetat did not try to bite the megalichthyian. Instead, it remained out of range of that murderous, sharp-edged tusk and harried its wielder, teased and tired and tempted it. All the while the furious megalichthyian, which had already killed or severely wounded several less circumspect orcas, slashed and thrust at its tormentor.

  Eventually, all the other orcas either had been wounded or had fled in confusion, not knowing how to deal with this alien enemy. And this was no ordinary megalichthyian, Latehoht explained, but an enchanted one. It would not tire or give up the fight.

  Yet Poleetat, though his strength waned, refused to flee or pause to eat lest this dangerous monster harm others of the pod. So they dueled a dance of death, the enchanted megalichthyian twisting and stabbing, having only to make a single strike with its great tusk to kill, while Poleetat spiraled and spun around the great spotted brown bulk, snapping at its fins and tail and trying to get in a bite at one of the monster's several eyes.

  They danced their way all around the world, changed direction, and fought from pole to pole, fighting even beneath the ice packs. Still the megalichthyian did not tire. But Poleetat, though the strongest of the orcas, was nearing the end of his strength and saw that something radically new in the way of fighting would be needed to end this war.

  So he faked exhaustion, letting the spear of his opponent pass close, so close to his belly that blood was drawn. Then he turned to swim limply away. Smelling death and triumph, the megalichthyian rushed in pursuit, growing nearer and nearer, ready to run Poleetat through from fluke to nose.

  With his apparent last bit of strength Poleetat gave a final burst of speed and soared out of the water as if to escape. Contemptuously the megalichthyian followed.

  Ah, but Poleetat had judged well his distance. He shot through the air and passed over the thick ice, to land an incredible distance away—and drop cleanly through the far hole he had perceived.

  But the megalichthyian could no more fit through that comparatively tiny hole than the waltzing sea worms of the lagoon floors could slip through the breathing duct of a clam. It landed hard on the ice pack, which cracked slightly but did not give.

  It lay flopping there, helpless beneath the pressure of its own great weight. Poleetat swam back up to the open sea, stuck his head out of the water to inspect his beached enemy. The convulsions faded and the monster soon died, for it could not breathe air, as could orcas and men.

  With his remaining strength the dying Poleetat summoned orcas from wherever they had scattered to, and told them they could swim safely with their calves now, for this particularly dangerous enemy had been vanquished. Then he died, and there was much mourning in the sea that day. The orcas managed to grasp the tail of the megalichthyian where it lay on the edge of the ice. They pulled it back into the sea and feasted on it for days, and made this song-story so that Poleetat would not remain dead, but would be ever reborn in the tales parents tell to their calves on the long hunts for food.

  "That's a wonderful story," Cora fin
ally told her. "There's an incredibly ancient human tale similar to it, involving a man named Hercules and a wrestler named

  Antaeus, who lost his strength when he was held away from his mother, the Earth, the solid ground."

  "You'll have to tell me the tale sometimme," Latehoht said.

  "Yes!" Wenkoseemansa might not talk, but he apparently listened well. "Sometimme you will have to tell uss the story and we will listen, will listenn." He sounded interested now.

  "Don't you have any stories remembered from times before you came to Cachalot?" Cora asked. "Times and stories from Earth, from Terra?"

  "Tales from the past," Latehoht murmured. "Tales from the time of mourning."

  "We do nott go back to the pasts," Wenkoseemansa said sternly. "To the times of troubles, to the timmes of terror." He sounded upset. "We go noww to the place of recent passing of menn." In tandem they shot forward past the bow.

  "Wait! I didn't mean…"

  She took off the headset, explained to Sam what had happened. "I've offended them, haven't I? Are they sorry because they have no such stories?"

  "Oh, they remember." He spoke very quietly. "Many of them hold the stories sent down through the generations raised on this world. They have no mechanical memories, but those huge brains of theirs can retain much more than we can. It just bothers them to have to do the remembering.

  "Earth is remembered as a paradise, you see. Until the rise of 'intelligence' among men. Then paradise was transformed into purgatory."

  "I know the history of ancient whaling." She found the word hard to pronounce. "I would have thought all that had been—"

  "Forgotten by now?" he finished for her. "I just told you, they don't forget. There are scattered citizens of the Commonwealth who trace their ethnic ancestry back to a people knows as the Jews. They have a particular abhorrence, I understand, for a period of Terran history known as the midtwentieth, old calendar. A thing called the Holocaust in the old records. The cetaceans know of it. Their own holocaust overlapped that same period, though it lasted far longer. For centuries. They regard the gift of Cachalot as mankind's attempt at an apologia for that time."