Of course! I am an idiotic, overrated fish! Why didn't I think!

First he sent a neural command jettisoning the torch. It was useless anyway. Then he set his harness arms in motion.

* Those who choose

Reversion's patterns

* Need not space,

Nor a spacer's tools *

With one claw he seized the neural link in the side of K'tha-Jon's head. The monster's eyes widened, but before he could do a thing, Keepiru wrenched the plug free, making sure to cause the maximum amount of pain and damage. While his enemy screamed, he ripped the cable out of its housing, rendering the harness permanently useless.

K'tha-Jon's harness arms, which had been pulsing under his, went dead. The tiny whine of the laser rifle was silenced. K'tha-Jon howled and thrashed.

Keepiru gasped for breath as the mutant's bucking brought them both briefly out of the water in a great leap. They crashed back underwater as he transferred his grip on K'tha-Jon's harness. He held on with two waldo-arms. "Kootchie Koo," he crooned as he brought the other into play, ready to tear into his enemy.

But in a writhing body twist, K'tha-Jon managed to fling him away. Keepiru sailed through the air, to land with a great splash on the other side of a narrow mudbank.

Puffing, they eyed each other across the tiny shoals. Then K'tha-Jon clapped his jaws and moved to find a way around the barrier. The chase was on again.

All subtlety went out of the fight with the coming of dawn. There were no more delicate sonic deceptions, no tasteful taunts. K'tha-Jon chased Keepiru with awesome single-mindedness. Exhaustion seemed to hold no meaning to the monster. Blood loss only seemed to feed his rage.

Keepiru dodged through the narrow channels, some as shallow as twelve inches, trying to run the wounded pseudo-Orca ragged before he himself collapsed. Keepiru no longer thought of getting away. This was a battle that could only end in victory or death.

But there seemed no limit to K'tha-Jon's stamina.

The hunt-scream echoed through the shallows. The monster was casting about, a few channels over.

"Pilot-t-t! Why do you fight-t-t? You know I have the food chain on my sssside!"

Keepiru blinked. How could K'tha-Jon bring religion into this?

Prior to uplift, the concept of the food chain as a mystical hierarchy had been central to cetacean morality — to the temporal portion of the Whale Dream.

Keepiru broadcast omni directionally.

"K'tha-Jon, you're insane. Jussst because Metz stuffed your zygote with a few mini-Orca genes, that doesn't give you the right to eat anybody!"

In the old days humans used to wonder why dolphins and many whales remained friendly to man after experiencing wholesale slaughter at his hands. Humans began to understand, a little, when they first tried to house Orcas and dolphins next to each other at ocean parks, and discovered, to their amazement, that the dolphins would leap over barriers to be with the killer whales… so long as the Orcas weren't hungry.

In Primal, a cetacean did not blame a member of another race for killing him, not when that other race was higher on the food-chain. For centuries cetaceans simply assumed that man was at the topmost rung, and begrudged only the most senseless of his killing sprees.

It was a code of honor which, when humans learned about it, made most of them more, not less ashamed of what had been done.

Keepiru slid out into the open channel to change his location, certain that K'tha-Jon had taken a fix from that last exchange.

There was something familiar about this area. Keepiru couldn't pin it down, but there was something to the taste of the water. It had the flavor of stale dolphin death.

* Eating — eaten

Biting — bitten

* Repay the sea…

Come and feed me! *

Too close. K'tha-Jon's voice was much too near, chanting religious blasphemies. Keepiru headed for a crevice to take cover, and stopped suddenly as the death-taste became suddenly overpowering.

He nosed in slowly, and halted when he saw the skeleton suspended in the weeds.

"Hist-t!" he sighed.

The dolphin spacer had been missing since that first day, when the wave had stranded Hikahi and he had behaved like such a fool. The body had been picked clean by scavengers. The cause of death was not apparent.

I know where I am… Keepiru thought. At that moment the hunt-scream pealed again. Close! Very close!

He whirled and darted back into the channel, saw a flash of movement, and dove out of the way even as a monstrous form plunged past him. He was knocked spinning by a whack from the giant's flukes.

Keepiru arched and darted away, though his side hurt as if a rib was broken. He called out.

* After me — reverted scoundrel

* I know — now it's time to feed you *

K'tha-Jon roared in answer, and charged after him.

A body length ahead, now two, now a half, Keepiru knew he only had moments. The gaping jaws were right behind him. It's near here, he thought. It's got to be!

Then he saw another crevice and knew.

K'tha-Jon roared when he saw that Keepiru was trapped against the island.

# Slow, slow

or fast, fast

# Time to feed me — feed me! #

"I'll feed you," Keepiru gasped as he dove into the narrow-walled canyon. On all sides a dangling-weed bobbed, as if tugged by the tide.

# Trapped! Trapped!

I have you… #

K'tha-Jon squawked in surprise. Keepiru shot to the surface of the crevice, struggling to reach the top before vines closed in around him. He surfaced and blew, inhaling heavily and clinging close to the wall.

Nearby the water churned and frothed. Keepiru watched and listened in awe, as K'tha-Jon struggled alone, without harness or any aid, tearing great ropes of the killer weed with his jaws, thrashing as strand after strand fell over his great body.

Keepiru was busy as well. He forced himself to remain calm and use his harness. The strong claws of his waldo-arms snapped the strands that grabbed at him. He recited his multiplication tables in order to stay in Anglic thought patterns, dealing with the vines one at a time.

The half-Orca's struggle sent geysers of seawater and torn vegetation into the sky. The surface of the water soon became a beaten green-and-pink froth. The hunt-scream filled the cavern with defiance.

But the minutes passed. The ropes that attempted to seize Keepiru grew fewer and fewer. More and more descended to fall upon the struggling giant. The hunt-scream came again, weaker — still defiant, but desperate, now.

Keepiru watched and listened as the battle began to subside. A strange sadness filled him, as if he almost regretted the end.

* I told you — I would feed you *

He sang softly to the dying creature below.

* But I did not say who -

I would feed you to… *