12 ::: Galactics

Feeling the joy of patronhood and command, the Soro, Krat, watched the creatures, the Gello, the Paha, the Pila, her creatures, as they guided the Soro, fleet toward battle once more.

"Mistress," the Gello detection officer announced. "We are approaching the water world at one-quarter of light speed per your instructions."

Krat acknowledged with a bare flick of her tongue, but secretly she was happy. Her egg was healthy. When they won here she would be due to go home and mate once more. And the crew of her flagship was working together like a finely tuned machine.

"The fleet is one paktaar ahead of timetable, mistress," the detection officer announced.

Of all the client species owing allegiance to the Soro, the Gello were special to Krat. They were her own species' first clients, uplifted by the Soro long ago. The Gello had in their turn become patrons as well, and brought two more client races into the clan. They had made the Soro proud. The chain of uplift went on.

Deep in the past had been the Progenitors, who began Galactic Law. Since then, race had aided race to sentience, taking indentured service as payment.

Many millions of years ago, the ancient Luber had uplifted the Puber or so the Library said. The Luber were now long extinct. The Puber still existed, somewhere, though now degenerate and decadent.

Before their decadence, though, the Puber raised up the Hui, who in turn made clients of Krat's stone-chopping, Soro ancestors. Shortly thereafter, the Hui retired to their homeworld to become philosophers.

Now the Soro themselves had many clients. Their most successful upspring were the Gello, the Paha, and the Pila.

Krat could hear the high voice of the Pila tactician Cubber-cabub, haranguing its subordinates in planning section. It was insisting they strive harder to coax the information she had requested from the shipboard mini-Library. Cubber-cabub sounded frightened. Good. It would try harder if it feared her.

Alone of those aboard, the Pila were mammals, short bipeds from a high-gravity world. They had become a powerful race in many Galaxy-wide bureaucratic organizations, including the important Library Institute. The Pila had raised clients of their own, bringing credit to the clan.

Still, it was too bad the Pila were no longer indentured clients. It would have been nice to meddle with their genes again. The furry little sophonts shed, and had a bothersome odor.

No client race was perfect. Only two hundred years ago, the Pila had been thoroughly embarrassed by the humans of Earth. The affair had been difficult and expensive to cover up. Krat did not know all of the facts, but it had something to do with the Earthlings' sun. Since that time, the Pila had hated humans passionately.

Krat's mating claw throbbed as she thought of Earthlings. In only three hundred of their years they had become almost as great a nuisance as the sanctimonious Kanten, or the devil-trickster Tymbrimi!

The Soro race patiently awaited the right opportunity to erase the blot on their clan honor. Fortunately, the humans were almost pathetically ignorant and vulnerable. Perhaps the chance had already come!

How delicious it would be to have Homo sapiens assigned to the Soro as indentured foster clients. It could happen! Then what changes could be made! How humans could be molded!

Krat looked at her crew and wished she were free to meddle, to alter, to shape at will even these adult species. So much could be done with them! But that would require changing the rules.

If the upstart water-mammals from Earth had discovered what she thought they had, then the rules might be changed… if the Progenitors had, indeed, come back. How ironic that the newest spacefaring race should discover this derelict fleet! She almost forgave them for existing, for giving those humans the status of patrons.

"Mistress!" the tall Gello announced. "The Jophur-Thennanin alliance has broken up. They are fighting amongst themselves. This means they are no longer pre-eminent!"

"Maintain vigilance." Krat sighed. The Gello shouldn't make a big deal out of one little act of treachery. It was not unusual. Alliances would form and dissolve until one force emerged supreme. She intended that that force be Soro. When the battle was won she would collect the prize.

The dolphins must be here! When she won this battle, she would pry the handless ones out from their underwater sanctuary and make them tell all!

With a languid wave of her left paw, she summoned the Pil Librarian from his niche.

"Look into the data on these water creatures we pursue," she told it. "I want to know more about their habits, what they like and dislike. It is said their bonds to their human patrons are weak and corruptible. Give me a lever to pervert these… dolphins."

Cubber-cabub bowed and withdrew into the Library section, the sector with the rayed spiral glyph above its opening.

Krat felt destiny all around her. This place in space was a fulcrum of power. She didn't need instruments to tell her that.

"I will have them! The rules will be changed!"

13 ::: Toshio

Toshio found Ssattatta by the bole of the giant drill-tree. The fin had been thrown against the monstrous plant and crushed. Her harness was a jumble of broken pieces.

Toshio stumbled through the ruined undergrowth whistling a Trinary call when he felt able. Mostly he tried very hard to stay on his feet. He hadn't walked much since leaving Earth. Bruises and nausea didn't help much, either.

He found K'Hith lying on a soft bed of grass-like growth. His harness was intact, but the dolphin planetologist had already bled to death from three deep gashes in his belly. Toshio made a mental note of the spot and moved on.

Closer to the shore he found Satima. The little female was bleeding and hysterical, but alive. Toshio bound her wounds with fleshfoam and repair tape. Then he took the manipulator arms of her harness and used a large rock to pound them into the loam. It was the best he could do to bind her to the ground before the fifth wave hit.

It was more a flooding than a wave. Toshio clung to a tree as it flowed past, tugging at him and rising almost to his neck.

As soon as the wave began to recede, he let go and floundered over to Satima. He groped until he found the catch on her harness, then released her to float in the growing backtow. He pushed hard to join the flood and keep from being left behind.

He was struggling to shove her around a clump of shrubs, against the growing pull of the backwash, when a swift motion in a tree overhead caught his eye. The movement didn't fit into the overall pattern of swaying subsidence. He looked up, and met the gaze of a pair of small, black eyes.

There was little time for more than a startled double take before the tide pulled him and Satima straight through the obstruction and into a small, recently made marsh. Toshio was suddenly too busy to look anywhere but straight ahead.

He had to pull Satima down the last few yards of slippery sea-plant, taking care not to reopen her wounds. In the last few minutes it had seemed she was more lucid. Her Dolphin squeakings were starting to take on form and sound like Trinary words.

A whistle brought Toshio's head up. Keepiru was only forty meters offshore, driving the sled toward him. The fin had on a breather, but he could still signal.

"Satima!" Toshio shouted to the wounded dolphin. "Go to the sled! Go to Keepiru!"

"Lash her to an airdome!" he called to Keepiru. "And keep your eye on that sonar screen! Get back out there when you see a wave coming!"

Keepiru tossed his head. As soon as Satima was a hundred feet out he used the sled to herd her toward deeper water.