laugh. Takkata-Jim continued to bark rapidly at the bridge crew, but everyone else turned to look at her in surprise.
Gillian laughed. She slapped the water, pounded on the nearest autodoc, grabbed Wattaceti around the dolphin’s quivering flank. Even Takkata-Jim stopped then, captivated by her apparently psychotic fit of joy. He stared, oblivious to frantic twitters from the bridge.
“Tom!” She cried out loud. “I told you you couldn’t die! Dammit, I love you, you son of a … Oh, if I had gone I would have been home by now!”
The fins stared at her, eyes opening still wider as they began to realize what she was talking about.
She laughed, tears running down her face.
“Tom,” she said softly. “I told you you couldn’t die!” And blindly she hugged close whatever was nearest to her.
Sounds came to Creideiki as he drifted in weighlessness.
It was like listening to Beethoven, or like trying actually to understand a humpback whale.
Somebody had left the audio link on in case he made any more sounds. No one had considered that the circuit went both ways. Words penetrated the gravity tank from the outer room.
They were tantalizing, like those ghosts of meaning in a great symphony—hinting that the composer had caught a glimpse of something notes could only vaguely convey and words could never approach.
Takkata-Jim spluttered and mumbled. The threatening tone was clear. So was the cautious clarity of Gillian Baskin’s voice. If only he could understand the words! But Anglic was lost to him.
Creideiki knew his ship was in peril, and there was nothing he could do to help. The old gods weren’t through with him, and would not let him move. They had much more to show him before he was ready to serve their purposes.
He had become resigned to periodic episodes of terror—like diving to do battle with a great octopus, then rising for a rest before going back down to the chaos once again. When they came to pull him DOWN he would once more be caught in the maelstrom of idea-glyphs, of throbbing dreams which hammered away at his engineer’s mind with insistent impressions of otherness.
The assault never would have been possible without the destruction of his speech centers. Creideiki grieved over the loss of words. He listened to the talk-sounds from the outer world, concentrating as hard as he could on the eerie, musical familiarity.
It wasn’t all gone, he decided after a while. He could recognize a few words, here and there. Simple ones, mostly the names of objects or people, or simple actions associated with them.
That much his distant ancestors could do.
But he couldn’t remember the words more than three or four deep, so it was impossible to follow a conversation. He might laboriously decipher a sentence, only to forget it completely when he worked on the next one. It was agonizingly difficult, and at last he made himself cease the vain effort.
That’s not the way, he concluded.
Instead, he should try for the gestalt, he told himself. Use the tricks the old gods had been using on him. Encompass. Absorb … like trying to feel what Beethoven felt by submerging into the mystery of the Violin Concerto.
Murmuring sounds of angry sophonts squawked from the speaker. The noises bounced around the chamber and scattered like bitter droplets. After the terrible beauty of DOWN, he felt repelled. He forced himself to listen, to seek a way—some humble way to help Streaker and his crew.
Need swelled within him as he concentrated. He sought a center, a focus in the chaotic sounds.
* Rancor
Turbid
In the rip-tide
* Ignoring
Sharks!
Internecine struggle …
* Inviting
Sharks!
Foolish opportunism …
Against his will, he felt himself begin to click aloud. He tried to stop, knowing where it would lead, but the clicks emerged involuntarily from his brow, soon joined by a series of low moans.
The sounds of the argument in sick bay drifted away as his own soft singing wove a thicker and thicker web around him. The humming, crackling echoes caused the walls to fade as a new reality took shape all around. A dark presence slowly grew next to him.
Without words, he told it to go away.
: No : We Are Back : You Have More To Learn :
For all I know, you’re a delirium of mine! None of you ever make a sound of your own! You always speak in reflections from my own sonar!
: Have Your Echoes Ever Been So Complex? :
Who knows what my unconscious could do? In my memory are more strange sounds than any other living cetacean has heard!