David Brin - Infinity's Shore

And yet … what if we do manage it? After all, the Jophur may get engine trouble at just the right moment. They might decide we’re not worth the effort.

The sun might go nova.

In that case, where can Streaker go next?

We’ve tried seeking justice from our own oxy-culture — the Civilization of the Five Galaxies — but the Institutes proved untrustworthy. We tried the Old Ones, but those members of the Retired Order proved less impartial than we hoped.

In a universe filled with possibilities, there remain half a dozen other “quasisapient” orders out there. Alien in both thought and substance. Rumored to be dangerous.

What have we got to lose?

Kaa

GLEAMING MISSILES STRUCK THE WATER WHENEVER he surfaced to breathe. The spears were crude weapons — hollow wooden shafts tipped with slivers of vol-canic glass — but when a keen-edged harpoon grazed his flank, Kaa lost half his air in a reflexive cry. The harbor — now a cramped, exitless trap — reverberated with his agonized moan.

The hoonish sailors seemed to have no trouble moving around by torchlight, rowing their coracles back and forth, executing complex orders shouted from their captains’ bulging throat sacs. The water’s tense skin reverberated like a beaten drum as the snare tightened around Kaa. Already, a barrier of porous netting blocked the narrow harbor mouth.

Worse, the natives had reinforcements. Skittering sounds announced the arrival of clawed feet, scampering down the rocky shore south of town. Chitinous forms plunged underwater, reminding Kaa of some horror movie about giant crabs. Red qheuens, he realized, as these new allies helped the hoon sailors close off another haven, the water’s depths.

Ifni! What did Zhaki and Mopol do to make the locals so mad at the mere sight of a dolphin in their bay? How did they get these people so angry they want to kill me on sight?

Kaa still had some tricks. Time and again he misled the hoons, making feints, pretending sluggishness, drawing the noose together prematurely, then slipping beneath a gap in their lines, dodging a hail of javelins.

My ancestors had practice doing this. Humans taught us lessons, long before they switched from spears to scalpels.

Yet he knew this was a contest the cetacean could not win. The best he could hope for was a drawn-out tie.

Diving under one hoonish coracle, Kaa impulsively spread his jaws and snatched the rower’s oar in his teeth, yanking it like the tentacle of some demon octopus. The impact jarred his mouth and tender gums, but he added force with a hard thrust of his tail flukes.

The oarsman made a mistake by holding on — even a hoon could not match Kaa, strength to strength. A surprised bellow met a resounding splash as the mariner struck salt water far from the boat. Kaa released the oar and kicked away rapidly. That act would not endear him to the hoon. On the other hand, what was there left to lose? Kaa had quite given up on his mission — to make contact with the Commons of Six Races. All that remained was fighting for survival.

I should have listened to my heart.

I should have gone after Peepoe, instead.

The decision still bothered Kaa with nagging pangs of guilt. How could he obey Gillian Baskin’s orders — no matter how urgent — instead of striking off across the dark sea, chasing after the thugs who had kidnapped his mate and love?

What did duty matter — or even his oath to Terra — compared with that?

After Gillian signed off, Kaa had listened as the sun set, picking out distant echoes of the fast-receding speed sled, still faintly audible to the northwest. Sound carried far in Jijo’s ocean, without the myriad engine noises that made Earth’s seas a cacophony. The sled was already so far away — at least a hundred klicks by then — it would seem forlorn to follow.

But so what? So the odds were impossible? That never mattered to the heroes one found in storybooks and holosims! No audience ever cheered a champion who let mere impossibility stand in the way.

Maybe that was what swayed Kaa, in an agonized moment. The fact that it was such a cliché. All the movie heroes — whether human or dolphin — would routinely forsake comrades, country, and honor for the sake of love. Relentless propaganda from every romantic tale urged him to do it.

But even if I succeeded, against all odds, what would Peepoe say after I rescued her?

I know her. She’d call me a fool and a traitor, and never respect me again.

So it was that Kaa found himself entering Port Wuphon as ordered, long after nightfall, with all the wooden sailboats shrouded beneath camouflage webbing that blurred their outlines into cryptic hummocks. Still hating himself for his decision, he had approached the nearest wharf, where two watchmen lounged on what looked like walking staffs, beside a pair of yawning noor. By starlight, Kaa had reared up on his churning flukes to begin reciting his memorized speech of greeting … and barely escaped being skewered for his trouble. Whirling back into the bay, he dodged razor-tipped staves that missed by centimeters.

“Wait-t-t!” he had cried, emerging on the other side of the wharf. “You’re mak-ing a terrible mistake! I bring news from your own lossssst ch-ch-children! F-from Alvi—”

He barely escaped a second time. The hoon guards weren’t listening. Darkness barely saved Kaa as growing numbers of missiles hurled his way.

His big mistake was trying a third time to communicate. When that final effort failed, Kaa tried to depart … only to find belatedly that the door had shut. The harbor mouth was closed, trapping him in a tightening noose.

So much for my skill at diplomacy, he pondered, while skirting silently across the bottom muck … only to swerve when his sonar brushed armored forms ahead, approaching with scalloped claws spread wide.

Add that to my other failures … as a spy, as an officer … Mopol and Zhaki would never have antagonized the locals so, with senseless pranks and mischief, if he had led them properly.

… and as a lover.…

In fact, Kaa knew just one thing he was good at. And at this rate, he’d never get another chance to ply his trade.

A strange, thrashing sound came from just ahead, toward the bottom of the bay. He nearly swung around again, dodging it to seek some other place, dreading the time when bursting lungs would force him back to the surface.…

But there was something peculiar about the sound. A softness. A resigned, melodious sadness that seemed to fill the water. Curiosity overcame Kaa as he zigzagged, casting sonar clicks through the murk to perceive—

A hoon!

But what was one of them doing down here?

Kaa nosed forward, ignoring the growing staleness of his air supply, until he made out a tall biped amid clouds of churned-up mud. Diffracted echoes confirmed his unbelieving eyes. The creature was undressing, carefully removing articles of clothing, tying them together in a string.

Kaa guessed it was a female, from the fact that it was a bit smaller and had only a modest throat sac.

Is it the one I pulled overboard? But why doesn’t she swim back to the boat? I assumed…

Kaa was struck by a wave of image-rupture alienation — a sensation all too familiar to Earthlings since contact — when some concept that had seemed familiar abruptly made no sense anymore.

Hoons can’t swim!

The journal of Alvin Hph-wayuo never mentioned this. In fact, Alvin implied that his people passionately loved boats and the sea. Nor were they cavalier about their lives, but mourned the loss of loved ones even more deeply than a human or dolphin would. Kaa suddenly knew he’d been fooled by Alvin’s writings, sounding so much like an Earth kid, never mentioning things that he simply assumed.