Heaven's Reach

Kaa

PILOT, WAKE UP! COME QUICKLY, YOU ARE needed!”

Like a fish with a hook in its jaw, tugged out of the sea by a cruel line, Kaa felt brutally yanked as intruding words pierced his dream, shattering a sonic phantasm of Peepoe.

She had been swimming beside him. Or rather, a pattern of echoes and sonar shadows, reflecting off his cabin, had coalesced as a likeness of her graceful form, undulating happily nearby, almost close enough to touch. Jijo’s gentle sea had surrounded their bodies as they plunged ahead, naked and free.

Dolphins sleep just one hemisphere at a time. But this episode had the full flux and power of the Whale Dream, enveloping him in the presence of his beloved, and the planet where they had hoped to spend their lives together.

When the noisome voice broke in, shattering that blissful illusion, he felt the loss of Peepoe all over again, finding himself once again stranded in harsh metal purgatory, megaparsecs away from her.

In frustration, Kaa thrashed his flukes on the flotation bed of his walker unit. Bleary from fitful sleep, his right eye focused at last to regard the strange figure of Huck, a creature whose physical form seemed like an improbable swirl of organic and mechanical parts. Rolling on twin jittery wheels, the young g’Kek waved all four eyestalks in frantic agitation, jabbering rapidly about something that had her terribly upset.

Anglic speech patterns came slowly to waking neodolphins, especially after immersion in the Whale Dream, but this time Kaa’s anger bulled through, driving a hot response.

“I sssaid I wasn’t to be disturbed … except in an emergency!”

Huck’s frantic words penetrated at last.

“This is an emergency!” she wailed. “I j-just woke up and found Pincer-Tip—”

“Yeah?” Kaa asked, sending a signal down his neural tap to power up the walker. “What about him?”

The g’Kek was already rolling swiftly out of the little cabin, two eyes aimed ahead and two back at Kaa.

“Come quick! Pincer’s dying!”

The little red qheuen lay collapsed near the airlock — a crablike figure with five legs splayed outward symmetrically, like an ailing starfish. Several claws still shuddered and snapped reflexively, but there was no other sign of movement. When Kaa brought his walker unit closer, aiming its forward camera for a close look, he saw trails of ugly-looking substance — like ichor — dribbling from beneath the wide chitin carapace.

“What-t happened?” he asked anxiously.

Huck snapped back.

“How should I know? I told ya, I was in that little cabinet you assigned me as a hiding place, tryin’ to sleep, since you won’t let me leave the ship. When I came out, he was like this!”

“But-t … don’t you know what’s wrong with him? Can you do anything?”

“Hey, just because I’m a g’Kek, that don’t make me a doctor, any more’n every dolphin is a pilot. We’ve got to call for help!”

Kaa listened to the sick qheuen’s ragged breathing. Whatever the nauseating substance was, it came from all five armpits, where the delicate air vents lay. Clearly, the poor thing was nearing total collapse.

“We …” He shook his sleek gray head left and right. “We can’t do that.”

“What?” Huck rocked back so hard that both rims bounced off the floor. Her spokes hummed and she stared with all four eyes. “We’re not in a wilderness anymore, fish-head. We’re at civilization! They got all sorts of things out there, beyond that airlock. Stuff we Jijoans only read about in books, like hospitals and autodocs. They might save him!”

Kaa felt the young g’Kek’s wrath and outrage. The heat of her devotion to a friend. He sympathized. But there could only be one answer.

“We can’t call attention to ourselves. You know that. If anyone here even suspected that a dolphin was aboard this ship, they’d cut it apart to get at me. And the same holds for a g’Kek. We’ll just have to wait for Alvin and Ur-ronn to get back. They can move about without attracting attention. Or better yet, when Tyug returns, the alchemist can try—”

“That could take miduras! You know Alvin’s got himself a star-hoon girlfriend. Tyug’s spying on the Jophur, and Ur-ronn stays out longer and longer each time, talking to engineers!”

That was the plan, of course, for that trio to act as spies and envoys, getting to know the nature of things within Kazzkark Base, and in the Five Galaxies at large. If possible, they would make contact with some of Earth’s few allies, or else look for some way to buy passage toward Galaxy Two. While attempting to deliver Gillian Baskin’s message to the Terragens Council, they would also try to learn about their own kind, finding some way of securing future livelihoods, for themselves and their friends.

Huck was right. Alvin and Ur-ronn might stay out for hours longer. Pincer would not last that long.

“I’m sssorry,” Kaa said. “We can’t risk throwing everything away for just a sssslim chance of—”

“I don’t care how slim it is, or about the risk! It doesn’t matter!”

Her eyestalks waved and twined in furious anger. But while she cursed him roundly, Kaa knew he must be firm for her sake, even more than his own. With all the g’Keks of Jijo now in peril of genocide — deliberate extinction by wrathful Jophur, bent on satisfying an ancient vendetta — this one little female might be the sole hope of her entire species. Along with a tube of seminal plasm, stored in the scoutboat’s refrigerator, she might possibly reestablish her posterity in some safe hiding place, protected by sympathetic guardians.

Although it was not a role the adventurous Huck relished, she had claimed to see its importance. Until now, that is, when she would toss it all away for friendship.

Personal loyalty. Love. These are supposed to outweigh all other considerations, Kaa thought, wallowing in misery, even as the young g’Kek railed at him, demanding over and over that he open the door.

Raised on Earthling novels, she feels the same way about it that I do. That only the worst sort of person would put stark pragmatism above intimate devotion, abandoning someone you care about to certain death … or something worse … even if it is logically the “right” thing to do.

So Kaa silently derided himself while Huck did it aloud, making the small control room echo with her wails.

Yet, he would not relent.

Anyway, the issue was settled soon. Just a few duras later, Pincer-Tip was dead.

Huck lacked both strength and will to help dispose of the body. That chore was left to Kaa, using the mechanical arms of his walker to heave the bulky qheuen toward the recycler. Huck turned three eyes away from the gory scene, but the remaining stalk quivered and stared, as if dumbly transfixed.

How could this happen? Kaa worried as he sent control messages down his neural tap, causing the machine to move like an extension of his body. Did someone attack the ship? Or was this caused by the disease we heard about … the one that slaughtered many qheuens back on Jijo?

If so, how was Pincer exposed?

Abruptly, Huck let out an amazed cry. Her whistling shouts brought Kaa spinning around, stomping back from his grisly task. He looked down where she pointed, at the bloody deck where Pincer had lain.

There, partly masked by gruesome liquids, both of them now made out a design of some sort, carved deeply into the metal deck.

“He … he …,” Huck stammered. “He musta cut it with his teeth, while he was dying! Poor Pincer couldn’t walk or talk, but he could still move his mouth, as it lay against the floor!”

Kaa stared, in part amazed by the slicing power of qheuen jaws, and by the acute — even artistic — rendering that had been the poor creature’s final act.

It showed a face, vaguely humanoid, but somewhat feral looking, with lean, ravenous cheeks and a small, bitter mouth. He recognized the shape at once.

“A Rothen!”

The race of sneaky criminals and petty connivers, who had persuaded a cult of humans to believe they were patrons of all Earthclan, and rightful gods of Terran devotion.

Then he remembered. There had been such a creature aboard Streaker! A prisoner, brought aboard in secret at Wuphon Port. A Rothen overlord named Ro-kenn, mastermind of many felonies against the Six Races of Jijo.

“He musta stowed away aboard this ship!” Huck cried. “Stayed hidden till we docked, then came out an’ killed poor Pincer to get at the door!”

Kaa’s mind roiled over the disastrous implications. No matter how capable, Ro-kenn could not have managed such an escape all by himself. He must have had help aboard Streaker. Moreover, if this Rothen made it into Kazzkark, all their plans might be in jeopardy.

Stay calm, he told himself. Ro-kenn can’t go to the authorities. The crimes he committed on Jijo are worse than anything the sooners did.

Yes, hut he might hurry to one of the big fanatic clans or alliances, and try to sell them information about Streaker and Jijo. At the very least, he’ll send word to other Rothen.

“We had better try to contact Alvin and Ur-ronn,” Kaa said. And for once he could tell that Huck agreed.

Only that was far from easy. It seemed that all available telecomm lines were jammed with frantic traffic. And things only got worse as another wave of subspace disruptions hit, causing the planetoid to shake and rattle, resonating like a great, hollow bell.