Текст книги "Over a Torrent Sea "

Автор книги: Christopher Bennett

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“But spirits appearing in the flesh?” Krotine asked. “Having babies in their hospitals? Isn’t that a little more concrete than usual?”

“Animists see spirits within every aspect of nature,” Deanna told her. “To them, a river or a tree is an embodied spirit. This won’t be that profoundly different to them.”

“But many Lumbuans are of a more skeptical bent,” Tuvok said. “Belief in spirits is not universal. Might not our presence shift the balance toward a revival in animist belief?”

“Maybe. But if we leave without tangible evidence, it will just be a few dozen people’s testimony added to a whole world’s ongoing philosophical dialogue. And Mawson and her nurses will probably help confuse the issue. These are a people who relish debate and are slow to come to a consensus.” She smirked. “I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the eyewitnesses ended up getting persuaded that they imagined what they saw.”

“That may be more difficult than you think, Counselor,” Tuvok said.

“Well, anyway, they’ve got more immediate concerns, with the future of their nation at stake. This will probably fade from public attention before long.”

Ree said to Tuvok, “Commander, if we can get to a suitably private place, I can remotely shut down the jamming field and have us beamed to the Horne. We can then beam your team back to your shuttle and depart together.”

“An excellent suggestion, Doctor. However, we have one more loose end to resolve. The locals have photographic documentation of our presence.”

Tuvok and his team began discussing how to track down the photographs and retrieve or destroy them without detection. Deanna tuned them out, trusting them to get the job done. Right now, the baby in her arms was her entire universe.

CHAPTER S

IXTEEN

DROPLET

Once she was sure Riker could manage without her, Aili swam back out to the squales, determined to extract some answers about the status of her crewmates. She realized now that she hadn’t pressed the issue hard enough before, perhaps because she’d been enjoying the escape too much. It was an error she was determined to remedy.

It took a while, but Aili finally managed to ask the right questions. “Are my people still in the ocean?” had initially brought the same answer from the members of the contact pod: “Not for Aili.”Alos and Gasa had accompanied the answer with chorused assurances that they were here for her now. Once her song had been transposed, they sang, she could join their choir.

“It’s not like that for us,” she told them. “We don’t change pods as easily as you. We want our old pod back.”

“That’s clear enough,”Cham sang in harmony with Gasa’s refrain of comfort. “But they are silent to the found lings’ ears. We cannot change their ways; for that, we need to comprehend.”

“Change their ways?” Aili pressed the issue. Did that mean they were still on Droplet after all?

With further questioning, she confirmed the impression Cham had given. Once she understood, she rushed to the surface to give the news to Riker. A little hope would do wonders for him right now.

“We’ve been assuming they were holding us prisoner,” she said. “That if Titanwas still here, the squales were unwilling to return us to them.”

Riker nodded. “Hostages,” he said weakly. “Or guinea pigs.”

“At first, that was probably true. They didn’t know what to make of us and were being cautious. But they’ve come to trust us now. A lot of other squales still blame us for the crisis, but the contact pod understands we meant no harm. But when they wouldn’t reunite us with the others, I was afraid that maybe Titanhad been destroyed by the asteroid, or had written us off for dead and abandoned us.”

“I know Deanna’s alive,” he said, more to himself than to her.

“Yes, sir. And Titan’s still here. The squales confirmed it.”

“So why wouldn’t they tell us before, if we weren’t their prisoners?”

“The thing is,” she said, “the squales are always in touch with each other. The deep sound channel lets them communicate with squales thousands of kilometers away—or relay messages through other squales to communicate with any other squale, anywhere on Droplet. They’re as con nected as we are with our combadges. It’s slower, but they can hear about anything happening anywhere on the planet within six hours.

“So they just take it for granted that keeping track of every member of your species is a natural ability of intelligent beings. And so they assumed we had the same ability.

“So when Titandidn’t come to retrieve us, it never occurred to the squales that they didn’t know where we were. They assumed that, for some alien reason, our people had abandoned us.”

“Wait a minute,” Riker said. “They knew we didn’t know where the others were. Wasn’t that a clue?”

“They pretty much assumed it took mutual cooperation. If you call out to someone and they don’t answer, you can’t tell where they are.”

“But wouldn’t they have heard you if you gave out any such calls?”

“I’m an alien,” she said with a shrug. “They don’t know what strange ways we may have for staying in contact with our people. But it just never occurred to them to consider that we couldn’t. They take the ability as much for granted as—well, as water. This is their first alien contact,” she said in their defense. “They don’t know what assumptions they need to unlearn.”

He still wasn’t convinced. “Our people must have looked for us. Sent out shuttles.”

“They knew our people were looking for something. Some of them suspected it was us, since we were silent inside the healing pods. But once we were released and our people still didn’t come for us, they didn’t know what to think.”

Riker nodded. “So now that they understand?”

“I think they’d be happy to reunite us, sir. Since we won’t go through the change, it’s our only chance. They don’t want us to die.”

“Even the ones who blame us for ruining their Song?”

“They just want us to leave so their world can be pure again.”

He perked up. “Then they’ll help us find Titan?” he asked, his voice strengthening. Aili had been right; the news had been nourishment in itself.

“They’re waiting for me now,” she replied with a smile. “We just need to dive to the deep sound channel and start asking around, track down the nearest crew from Titan. It shouldn’t be more than a few hours.”

For the first time in days, the familiar Riker grin was on his gaunt face. “Then you’d better get started, Ensign. That’s an order.”

She beamed back. “Aye, Captain.”

Xin Ra-Havreii wished Aili Lavena were still around. Not only because he missed her and feared for her survival, but because he wasn’t entirely sanguine about his own at the moment.

All of Titan’s available shuttles were spreading out planetwide to initiate the probe deployment, after depositing further crews with their own probe allotments on the main floater-island base and other floater colonies across the planet; by following the currents, they would be able to cover a wide swath of Droplet’s surface and drop probes at regular intervals, turning the floaters into additional “vessels” at Titan’s disposal. Vale herself was supervising from the main base; she had brought Ra-Havreii with her to oversee the first drop. He had demurred that he was more a man of theory than execution and that Lieutenant Tylith or Ensign Crandall could supervise the deployment effectively. But Vale had wanted him there for his communication skills, to try to inform the squales that the aliens seemingly invading their world and dropping hundreds of large technological devices into its depths were acting in their best interests.

And so here he was, out in the middle of the open sea in a tiny scouter gig, facing down a pod of angry squales and trying to negotiate with them in Selkie, a language he had studied recreationally but had limited fluency in. Aili, he reflected, would be so much better for this on every level. At least they had been willing to listen to her.

This pod, however, didn’t seem to be in the mood for listening, despite the new EM dampers on the gig and equipment. It was a largish pod, nearly two dozen members, and thus presumably was aggregated from several smaller pods, banded together for mutual protection. Many of the squales were scarred or missing limbs. They seemed to be swimming in rather a hurry for a region several hundred kilometers south of the main base, a heavily defended location containing multiple large spiral structures that appeared to serve an agricultural function. Normally, Ra-Havreii wouldn’t have dreamed of getting in their way. But this was the first pod that had passed near enough to the base to engage with.

But they were too angry, too embittered by the growing turmoil of their world. They didn’t deign to respond to his Selkie entreaties in kind, but Y’lira Modan had deciphered enough of their own language by now to get a rough idea of their response. “They say we corrupt the sea by being here,” she told Ra-Havreii from her seat behind him in the gig, studying her tricorder. “They object to our fouling the sea with any more of our devices.”

He sighed. “Yes, I could’ve guessed that. The fact that our devices are more squale-friendly now hasn’t changed their opinions, has it?”

“Apparently not, sir.”

“Of course not,” he muttered. “They’ve made up their minds.” Tapping he combadge, he called Vale at the base. “Commander, we’re not getting anywhere here, and we don’t have time to keep going in circles. I say just deploy the first probe. At least we explained first, whether they listened or not. Once they sense the magnetic field healing and the biosphere calming down over the next few days, maybe they’ll realize we were telling the truth.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”came Vale’s voice.

“I think we’re beyond having the luxury of good ideas. It’s what we’ve got.”

“Strangely, I can live with that. Okay, we’re deploying the first probe.”

Naturally, it didn’t prove that easy. According to the reports Ra-Havreii received from the base camp, as soon as the probe was released from the floater island, sensors showed a pod of squales racing to intercept it. They must have been ready for this, since they managed to catch it within a minute and proceeded to carry it to a barren, dead floater islet on the outskirts of the cluster, pushing it up and out onto the surface.

“I think they’ve made their point,”Vale said. “So you’d better make ours again.”

Feeling set upon, Ra-Havreii tried again. He explained to them why the planet’s magnetic field was causing them discomfort and how the probes would repair the problem. He promised them that Titan’s crew would gladly leave their world alone once the balance had been restored. He offered them medical help to tend their wounds, assuring them that Titan’s medical facilities could provide treatments they would find miraculous. Oddly, Y’lira reported that they reacted to that with amusement.

Finally, he lost his patience. “The simple truth,” he intoned in awkward Selkie, “is that you can’t stop us. You can’t prevent all our probes from descending. And what do you plan to do with the ones you catch and hold on the surface? Everything on this world sinks eventually, you know!”

Y’lira stared at him. “Doctor, I’m unfamiliar with this style of diplomacy.”

So am I,he silently confessed. But he was fed up with catering to their technophobic superstition. “Just let us do this,” he told them. “You’re only hurting yourselves and wasting your effort by trying to stop us.”

“Uh…Doctor?”

“Don’t worry, Modan,” he said, switching back to Standard. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Doctor!” Y’lira shoved her tricorder in front of him. Its proximity scan showed several new shapes coming in from a distance. Several very large shapes.

“Doctor,”came Vale’s voice from the main base, “we’re detecting multiple large creatures moving in. Eviku says they’re the same armored things the squales used to destroy our warning klaxon before.”

“They’re moving in on us, too,” Ra-Havreii told her. “I think we’d better get out of here.”

“Agreed.”

But that was easier said than done. The gig was surrounded by squales on all sides, in the center of a circle some thirty meters wide. “Oh, no. What do we do?”

“Could we ram one of them?” Y’lira asked.

“They’re heavier than the gig. We’d come to a rather abrupt stop and end up either in the water or in the tentacles of the next squale over. And I’d rather not kill any of them while the others are in a surly enough mood to begin wi—” He broke off, gazing westward.

“Commander?” Y’lira said.

A large ocean swell, a good dozen meters high, was approaching the gig from beyond the circle of squales. “I think I see a way out. Brace yourself.”

The swell soon reached the circle of squales, lifting the ones on the western side higher and higher into the air. The squales took it in stride (or in stroke), remaining in formation despite the warping of the circle. But as soon as the crest of the swell had passed under the squales on the western edge, Ra-Havreii gunned the gig’s engine and drove west at maximum acceleration. The gig rose up the slanted surface, using it as a ramp, and shot into the air as it crested the swell. The gig’s arc carried it clear over the squales, though Ra-Havreii could swear he heard and felt a tentacle slap against the rear of the hull. After a stomach-wrenching moment in free fall, the gig splashed down hard. Ra-Havreii banged his elbow and his teeth slammed together painfully. But at least they were free of squale encirclement. Not letting up on the throttle, he veered on course for the main base. As much as he hated the floater island, it was the closest thing to a safe haven on this planet now.

Any further thoughts were driven from Ra-Havreii’s head by the immediate need to vomit. He managed to get his head over the side before it came, which was small comfort as his entire digestive tract seemed to be trying to force itself out through his mouth for a good minute to come. When his heaves became dry and finally subsided, he gasped in exhaustion for a while, then looked back and croaked, “There, you damned squid. How’s that for contaminating your precious ocean?”

But then the water bowed up around a large, dark form, and a sharp armored prow cleaved out through the middle of it, tentacles writhing beneath the bow wave as it drove toward the gig. Ra-Havreii instantly turned back to the controls and pushed the throttle to its limit. “Y’lira to Vale,” he heard the Selenean saying. “We need assistance.”

“Sorry, but we’ve got our hands full right now. They’re attacking the whole island.”

It turned out that Aili had misinterpreted the pod’s intentions slightly. When they took her down to the deep sound channel, it wasn’t just to search randomly for a team from Titan. To her surprise, the squales brought her to a device she recognized as one of Titan’s hydrophone probes. Melo explained that many probes had been blaring noise into the ocean following the asteroid impact, and that most had been destroyed to clear the lines of communication. Aili asked, a bit heatedly, whether it had occurred to any of them that the probes might have been an attempt to make contact. Most had not, Cham replied; inanimate objects were so foreign to them that they had not thought to associate them with intelligent communication. Members of his own pod and some others had considered that the probes might have been analogous to their own engineered helper species, but Cham himself had dismissed the notion, unable to accept that something inanimate (a concept they had needed to coin a new word for) could communicate like a living being. And the majority of squales participating in the global discussion had shared his opinion.

“But they would have called our names,” Aili insisted. “You must have heard the sound.”

Melo acknowledged that some patterns vaguely similar to the names “Riker” and “Lavena” had been heard in the probe chatter, but Cham objected that overall they were too different. Apparently it was an argument they had had before, with Cham and the majority of squales convincing those like Melo that they had imagined the similarity, reading a pattern into randomness because they had wished to find one. Listening to the debate, Aili discerned that the squales perceived the emissions of a speaker differently from those of a living voice. Perhaps the output from the speakers was missing too many ultrasonic overtones, although it sounded to her as though they perceived some additional components not present in humanoid speech. Aili guessed that it might have been the probes’ EM emissions; from the way the squales described the source of the Song of Life, she was coming to suspect that it had some connection to their ability to sense the planet’s strong magnetic field.

In any case, Melo went on, the contact pod had intercepted this probe and figured out how to deactivate it, preserving it for study. The elderly squale was quite proud of his apprentices, Alos included, for having the courage to approach the disquieting object and the insight to shut it down. Aili suspected it had been as much luck as insight, but that didn’t stop Melo from gloating to Cham that his team’s preservation of the object had not been a waste of effort after all.

Aili gave Melo a huge hug, grateful to him for the spirit of curiosity that had led him to preserve the probe intact. At the limited speed of sound through this huge ocean, she’d assumed it would take hours to summon help, and Riker’s condition was tenuous as it was. But assuming there was a receiver close enough to pick up this probe’s signals through the interference, then help could be on the way in minutes.

Finding the controls, Aili activated the probe. The squales writhed in discomfort and retreated, and she sang apology to them. Soon, they came to rest at a safe distance, and she turned back to the input. “Lavena to anyone who can hear me. Repeat, this is Ensign Lavena calling anyone from Titan. Do you read?”

Even with the base’s inertial damping field on maximum, Christine Vale could feel the ground shuddering beneath her feet as the sharp-prowed leviathans rammed into the floater island over and over. The squales clearly meant business now, even attacking the island itself, and Vale was coming to realize that even this, the largest, most stable piece of “land” on the planet, was still a small, imperma nent thing. Beyond the field perimeter, though she couldn’t feel it, the cluster of linked floaters was rocking and warping like the ground during an earthquake as the icebreakers (as Vale had dubbed the creatures, wondering if they might actually have been bred for that purpose but not really caring at the moment) assailed it from multiple sides, including below. The squales were directing them purposefully, aiming them at the joins between the outer floater segments, the weakest points. She watched in shock as one segment broke free under a decisive blow and spun away. It was listing, taking on water through a gouge that a misplaced blow had left in its side. Closer to Vale, outside the base’s field perimeter, the small crustacean-and insect-like creatures that dwelled atop the island were retreating inland, along with other creatures that normally lived below but had climbed to the surface to flee the bombardment.

Sorry, folks,she thought, but I don’t think going inland will be much of a defense. They’ll tear this whole thing apart to get to us.And the force field would be small comfort if the icebreakers managed to hull the floater beneath her feet and sink it, base and all.

Hell, at least that way some of the probes will get sunk.Vale had ordered the crew to proceed with the deployment, despite the fact that doing so would subject them to squale attack. A choice between saving themselves and saving this world was no choice at all. But so far, success had been minimal. Only a few probes had avoided capture and beaching, and many of those were damaged or off course from glancing blows. At this rate, the percentage that reached the dynamo layer would be too low to make a difference. But they had to keep trying.

She struck her combadge. “Vale to Titan. Any luck with those transporters?”

“Commander, this is Torvig,”came the reply. “We’re unable to boost the confinement beam sufficiently to ensure a safe transport. I have an idea how to get around the problem, but Mister Radowski is resistant.”

“Radowski?” Vale called, knowing the lieutenant would be beside Torvig in the main transporter room. “What’s the problem?”

“Commander. He wants to rebuild one of the confinement beam emitters into a wormhole generator.”

“Not a wormhole per se, ma’am. More of a subspatial catenation.”

“Torvig, what the hell—” She took a breath. “Ensign, even if your…theory is sound, how long do you estimate it would take to rebuild and test the emitter? In practical terms?”

She heard the little purring hum Torvig often made when mulling over a problem. “Given current crew allocation, I’d say…about three weeks, ma’am. Assuming success on the initial test.”

“Do you perceive a snag in your proposal, then?”

A pause. “Ah.”

“Ah. Do you have any usefulideas?” You had to love Torvig, but his enthusiasm for his wild hypotheses often blinded him to their practical flaws, and at times it took some prodding to get him focused on the same consensus reality as everyone else.

“Is retrieval by shuttle still not an option?”

“The shuttles are needed to deploy the probes. We have to try to get someof these probes past the squale blockade.”

“Hrrmmm…An orbital phaser barrage around your position?”

“I’ll keep it in mind, Ensign. Keep thinking about how to boost the transporter– beforewe run out of island down here. Vale out.”

The island shuddered again, and a treelike stalk a few segments over snapped and fell over. It may come to using phasers,she thought. But she was reluctant to give the order. After all, she was the invader here, and her crew had done enough damage to this world. Ship’s phasers could be set on stun, but the effect was unreliable. A hand phaser had feedback sensors that could calibrate the beam strength and duration to the target’s metabolism to keep the effect nonlethal, but that kind of feedback wasn’t possible from orbit. That was why Starfleet policy discouraged the practice. Besides, given the squales’ unusual sensitivity to energy fields, Vale couldn’t be sure that even a stun charge wouldn’t have a more serious effect on them. Even firing to frighten them off might be a bad idea. Hell, the way things are going, it’d probably just make them madder.

As Vale heard the now-familiar sound of another floater segment being broken away behind her, she almost missed the hail on her combadge. “—salis to Vale. Come in!”

She tapped the badge. “Olivia? Is that you?”

“Yes, Commander!”Bolaji, calling from the Marsalis, sounded excited. “You need to hear the signal we just picked up! I’m patching it in.”A pause, then: “Go ahead, Ensign.”

A moment later, Vale’s’s annoyance at the distraction vanished when she heard: “Lavena to Vale. Do you read me?”

Her heart raced. “Holy shit, Aili, is that you?”

Laughter. “Oh, Commander, thank the Deep! I’m here, I’m fine. Captain Riker is alive, but he’s very ill. We need a rescue shuttle right away. He’s on a floater not far from my position.”

“Bolaji? How close are you to Lavena?”

“About six minutes, ma’am.”

Under the circumstances, they could certainly spare the delay. “Permission granted to divert from probe deployment to retrieve the captain.”

“Aye, Commander! Diverting to retrieve the captain!”came Bolaji’s immediate reply.

Another voice intruded on the channel. “Aili, is that really you? Ah, Ra-Havreii here!”From the background noise, he was still in the scouter gig, heading toward the base at top speed. Vale wondered if the base would provide any refuge for him by the time he arrived.

“Xin! It’s good to hear your voices, all of you.”

“Aili, we could really use your diplomacy right now. We’re under attack from the squales!”

“What? Why? What did you do?”

“Wha—what the hell do you mean, what didwe do?! We’re only trying to save their whole damned planet, and they’re showing their gratitude by trying to kill me!”

“Hello, superior officer here!” Vale shouted. “Listen, Aili. Are you on good terms with the squales?” It stood to reason, if she and Riker were still alive.

“Some of them, Commander.”

“Well, it’s a start. Ra-Havreii’s right, we’re having a diplomatic meltdown of the potentially fatal variety, and I don’t just mean for us. Listen—”

As Vale spelled out the immediate threat to her crewmates and the larger threat to Droplet in a few terse sentences, Aili absorbed it with growing dismay. She understood perfectly why the squales were so afraid and angry, so she could not blame them for their actions. But if they couldn’t be made to understand the truth, their own fear would doom them.

And Aili Lavena was the only one who could make them understand. Only she knew them well enough to make the case in terms that would hold meaning for them. The fate of this entire world rested on her voice.

Why me?an old, familiar part of her asked. I can’t handle this. There must be someone else.

But that impulse was quickly damped. Aili was done running from responsibility. She’d always done more harm than good that way.

“Acknowledged,” she told Vale. “I’ll talk to them. All of them. But I have to leave the probe. I need the squales’ help, and they can’t stand being close to it.”

“We can damp the EM fields now. We can drop more probes, get your message out quicker.”

“It won’t work, Commander. They don’t hear speakers the same way as voice. I need to do this the natural way. Through the ri’Hoyalina—the deep sound channel. It will take a few hours, but it’s the only way.”

After a brief pause, Vale said, “Do it. We’ll hold out as long as we can.”

“Acknowledged, Commander. Good luck. And…take care of the captain.”

“We will, Aili. Good luck to you too—for everyone’s sake. Vale out.”

Aili swam toward the squales and began singing, loudly enough to reach the whole contact pod. She had to persuade them to help her, for not enough of the squales knew her language, and her voice alone could not carry far enough through the ri’Hoyalina. Expressing her gratitude for all their help, she pleaded with them to help her one more time, and help save their world in the process.

They were reluctant, though. By now, the first reports were reaching them through the long-range channel—songs of fury from squales elsewhere on the planet, battling the perceived invasion of their world. Aili’s voice had to outweigh that angry chorus, and it was hard. The defender squales went on their guard, like troops reacting to a declaration of war, and counseled against doing anything to help the offworlders. Alos and Gasa came to Aili’s defense, but Cham argued them down, scoffing at the notion that dumping lifeless, alien things into the World Below, the very source of the Song, could heal it rather than harming it worse. Aili hoped Melo would come to her defense again, but the elderly pod leader seemed uncertain, more comfortable with abstract science and philosophy than concrete political decisions.

Still, Aili pleaded with them. “You know me,” she sang, using Selkie but approximating their musical idiom as closely as she could. “You have saved my life, and his, so many times. You’re podmates to me, all of you. Would I betray you now?”

“The others…”Cham began.

“They’re the same as me. They’d do no willing harm. And listen,”she said, calling their attention to the news of battles from distant fronts. “They would give their lives to mend the harm they’ve done. To save your people, even if you kill them in return.

“You know me. You, of all the squales, have touched another world, and felt its Song. Through me. Your sister. Trust what you have heard. Trust me, if no one else. I only ask you, help me sing!”

Alos and Gasa swam to her side. “We shall,”they sang in chorus. “She is our podmate. Our responsibility! Must students teach our mentors now where obligation lies?”

“Your duty’s to the Song!”Cham intoned.

“And that’s the duty that we serve! All things are voices in the Song; they play their destined parts. Aili and we, converging here, as discord finds its peak—might this not be the key that will resolve the Song again?”

The two young squales told Aili to sing her case to the world; they would amplify it for her if no one else would. The defender squales swam forward, but Cham interceded; despite his distrust of Aili, he was angered that they would threaten to turn on podmates. Taking a chance that she would not be stopped, Aili began to sing in Selkie, as loudly as she could. The boys joined her in harmony: Gasa repeated her Selkie words, mimicking her voice as perfectly as any amplifier, but adding strength so it could carry further; while Alos sang the squale translation as a counterpoint. A humanoid might have been confused, but the squales normally communicated this way, in multiple parallel lines of song.

With just the three of them, her song was inadequate to carry far. But Alos and Gasa’s fellow apprentices began joining in one by one, some amplifying her own words as Gasa did, others offering translations. To Aili’s ears, it seemed they were not all singing the same thing, but interpreting in more than one way, offering different lines of argument at the same time.

At first, it was simply a matter of getting the squales’ attention. She sang introductory verses to identify herself, to explain how she came to be here. All the world knew of her by now, of course, but they had not heard her side of it. As she sang of her origins in a different, much smaller ocean, Melo joined in, perhaps intrigued enough by the subject matter of the song to want to sing along. Even one or two of the defender squales were singing with her now. After all, Aili realized, one of the things they believed in defending was the right of all individuals to make their voices heard, whether they agreed with what was sung or not.

And that was something she could build on. “Our mission’s to explore,”she sang.