up the gain on the hydrophones.
“Do you hear?” Brookida asked.
Toshio cocked his head and listened. The sea was a mess of intonation. The roar of the departing wave dopplered down as he lay there. Schools of fish made panicky noises. All around came the reports of rockslides and surf pounding on the islands.
Then he heard it. The shrill repetitive squeals of Primal Delphin. No modern dolphin spoke it when fully in command of his faculties.
That, in itself, was bad news.
One of the cries was clear. He could easily make out the basic distress call. It was the earliest Delphin signal human scientists had understood.
But the other noise … at least three voices were involved in that one. It was a strange sound, very poignant and very wrong!
“It isss rescue fever,” Brookida groaned. “Hikahi is beached and injured. She might have stopped this, but she is delirious and now adds to the problem!”
“Hikahi …”
“Like Creideiki, she is an adept of Keneenk … the study of logical discipline. She would have been able to force the others to ignore the cries of those washed ashore, to make them dive to safety for a t-time.”
“Don’t they realize there will be aftershocks?”
“Shockss hardly matter, Sharp-Eyes!” Brookida cried. “They may beach themselves without assist! You are Calafian. How can you not know this about usss? I thrash here to go and die answering that call!”
Toshio groaned. Of course he knew about rescue fever, in which panic and fear washed aside the veneer of civilization, leaving a cetacean with only one thought—to save his comrades, whatever the personal risk. Every few years the tragedy struck even the highly advanced fins of Calafia. Akki had told him, once, that sometimes the sea itself seemed to be calling for help. Some humans claimed to have felt it, too—particularly those who took dolphin RNA in the rites of the Dreamer Cult.
Once upon a time the Tursiops, or bottlenose dolphin, had been about the least likely cetacean to beach itself. But genetic engineering had upset the balance somewhere. As the genes of other species were spliced onto the basic Tursiops models, a few things had been thrown out of kilter. For three generations human geneticists had been working on the problem. But for now the fins swam along a knife edge, where irrationality was a perpetual danger.
Toshio bit his lip. “They have their harnesses,” he said uncertainly.
“One can hope. But is it likely they’ll use them properly when they are even now speaking P-primal?”
Toshio struck the sled with his balled fist. Already his hand was growing numb from the chill. “I’m going up,” he announced.
“No! You must not! You must guard your safet-ty!”
Toshio ground his teeth. Always mothering me. Mothering or teasing. The fins treat me like a child, and I’m sick of it!
He set the throttle to one-quarter and pulled up on the bow planes. “I’m going to unlash you, Brookida. Can you swim okay?”
“Yesss. But-t …”
Toshio looked at his sonar. A fuzzy line was forming in the west.
“Can you swim!” he demanded.
“Yesss. I can swim well enough. But don’t cut me loose near the rescue fever! Don’t you risk the aftershocksss!”
“I see one coming now. They’ll be several minutes apart and weakening with time. I’ll fix it so we rise just after this one passes. Then you’ve got to get going back to the ship! Tell them what’s happened and get help.”
“That’s what you should do, Toshio.”
“Never mind that! Will you do as I ask? Or must I leave you lashed up!”
There was an almost unnoticeable pause, but Brookida’s voice changed. “I shall do exactly as you say, Toshio. I’ll bring help.”
Toshio checked his trim, then his slipped over the side, holding onto the rim stanchions with one hand. Brookida looked at him through the transparent shell of the airdome. The tough bubble membrane surrounded the dolphin’s head. Toshio tore loose the lashings holding Brookida in place. “You’re going to have to take a breather, you know.”
Brookida sighed as Toshio pulled a lever by the airdome. A small hose descended, one end covering Brookida’s blowhole. Like a snake, ten feet of hose wrapped around Brookida’s torso. Breathers were uncomfortable, and hindered speech. But by wearing one Brookida would not have to come up for air. The breather would help the old metallurgist ignore the cries in the water—a constant, uncomfortable reminder of his membership in a technological culture.
Toshio left Brookida tied in place by a single lashing. He pulled himself back onto the upper surface just as the