enough.
The high scream echoed again, chilling, taunting.
All right, monster. He clenched his jaw to keep from shivering again. Hold your horses. I’m coming.
74
Keepiru
Keepiru raced to the northeast, toward the battle sounds he had heard during the night. He swam hard and fast at the surface, arching and thrusting to drive through the water. He cursed at the drag of his harness, but to drop it was unthinkable.
Once again he cursed the damnable luck. Both his and Moki’s sleds were used up, worthless, and had to be left behind.
As he entered the maze of tiny islands, he heard the hunt-scream clearly for the first time.
Until now he could tell himself he was imagining things—that distance or some strange refraction in the water had tricked him into hearing what could not be.
The screeching cry pealed out, reflecting from the metal-mounds. Keepiru whirled, and it momentarily seemed a pack of hunters was all around him.
Then came another sound, a brave and very faint skirr of distant Trinary. Keepiru swung his jaw about, chose a direction, and swam for all he was worth.
His muscles flexed powerfully as he streaked through the maze. When a rasping buzz told him his breather was near empty, he cursed as he popped the thing loose, and continued his dash along the surface, puffing and blowing with each driving arch.
He came to a narrow meeting of channels and swung about in confusion.
Which way! He swiveled about until the hunt cry echoed once more. Then there was a terrible crashing sound. He heard a squeal of outrage and pain, and the soft whine of a harness in operation. Another faint Trinary challenge was answered by a shivering scream and another crash.
Keepiru sprinted. It couldn’t be far! He dashed, sparing none of his reserves, just as there came a final call of exhausted defiance.
* For the honor
Of Calafia … *
The voice disappeared under a scream of savage triumph. Then there was silence.
It took him another five minutes, frantically casting about the narrow passages, to find the battleground. The taste of the water, when Keepiru sped into the quiet strait, told him he was too late.
He caught up short of entering a small vale between three metal-mounds. Coppery strands of dangle-weed floated overhead. Pink froth spread from the center of the tiny valley, with streamers of red in the direction of the prevailing currents. At the center, enmeshed in a tangle of wrecked harness parts, the body of a young amicus neo-fin, already partly dismembered, drifted belly up, teased and tugged at by the red jaws of a giant dolphin.
A giant dolphin? How, in all the time since they had left Earth, had he not noticed this before? Keepiru desperately reattached a fresh breather from his harness, and took gasping breaths while he watched and listened to the killer.
Look at the deep countershading, he told himself. Look at the short jaw, the great teeth, the short, sharp dorsal fin.
Listen to him!
K’tha-Jon grunted contentedly as he ripped a piece from Akki’s side. The giant didn’t even appear to notice a long burn along his left flank, or the bruise slowly spreading from the point where Akki’s last desperate ramming had come home. Keepiru knew the monster was aware of him. K’tha-Jon lazily swallowed, then rose to the surface for air. When he descended he looked right at Keepiru.
“Well, Pilot?” he murmured happily.
Keepiru used Anglic, though the breather muffled the words.
“I’ve just dealt with one monster, K’tha-Jon, but your devolution fouls our entire race.”
K’tha-Jon’s derision was a series of high snorts.
“You think I have reverted, like that pathetic Stenosss Moki, don’t you, Pilot?”
Keepiru could only shake his head, unable to bring himself to say what he thought the bosun had become.
“Can a devolved dolphin speak Anglic as well as I?” K’tha-Jon sneered. “Or use logic thisss way? Would a reverted Tursiops, or even a pure Stenosss, have pursued an air-breathing prey with such determination … and satisssfaction?
“True, the crisis of the last few weeks allowed something deep within me to burssst free. But can you truly listen to me and then call me a devolved dolphin?”
Keepiru looked at the pink froth around the giant’s stubby, powerful jaws. Akki’s corpse drifted away slowly with the tide.
“I know what you are, K’tha-Jon.” Keepiru switched to Trinary.
* Cold water boils
When you scream
* Red-jawed hunger
Fills your dream.
* Harpoons slew
The whales,
* The nets of Iki
Caught us,
* Yet you, alone
We feared at night
* You alone—
… Orca.
K’tha-Jon’s jaw gaped in satisfaction, as if he were accepting an accolade. He rose for