“I must find out if you are correct!” he calls back.
Rob spent nearly eight hours seething inside the shelter before he could get Graves to leave the Ilmatarans alone and talk to his fellow humans. “So how the hell did you kill a Sholen?”
“Back at Hitode. I was sabotaging the hydrophone net, trying to set things up for future infiltration. A single Sholen came along and tried to stop me. We fought, I won. Stabbed it with my utility knife.”“Jesus, Dickie, what are you trying to do? You can’t just go around killing people!”
“I didn’t kill any people. I killed one of the Sholen. You know, the ones who killed Isabel.” The anger was back in his voice.
“Yeah, yeah. We’re enemies. I know. But still. Are you sure it was Gishora?” asked Rob.
“Yes. My computer was recording ambient sound at the time, and I’ve compared the noises he made with some old samples of Gishora speaking. When I baselined the phonemes it was a perfect match.”
“I’m going to assume what you just said isn’t complete bullshit,” said Rob. “Okay, so you shanked Gishora. So what? Just randomly killing people—or Sholen—doesn’t accomplish anything.”
“Oh, but it does!” said Graves. “The Sholen put great store in personal loyalty. Leaders and followers develop an intense bond with a strong sexual component.”
“Yeah, we know all about that. The whole bonobo thing.”
“Exactly. With the leader gone, the followers are going to be emotionally devastated and competing for the leadership role. Imagine a human family after a parent dies.”
“Um, Dickie, if someone stabbed my dad I guess my sisters and I might be a little disor ganized, but I’m pretty sure we’d also be kind of pissed off. What if the other Sholen try some kind of reprisals? What if they kill someone back at Hitode?”
“They would not do that!” said Alicia. “The Sholen are—”
“What?” asked Dickie, turning on her. “Nonviolent? Remember how nonviolently they beat Isabel to death.”
Rob felt queasy. Sholen were bigger than humans, and had claws and teeth. He could picture angry aliens rampaging through Hitode, people trying to flee, blood running in the drains under the floor grid. “Jesus, Dickie. Do you want them to kill more people?”
“If that’s what it takes to make the others understand, yes! Everyone here—you, and Sen, and all the others—think this is all some kind of a game. We follow the rules and the Sholen follow the rules and nobody gets hurt. Well, it isn’t a game, and I’m sure the Sholen don’t think it is, either. They brought weapons, which means they’re prepared to use them. To kill us. We have to be ready to do the same.”
Everyone except Josef Palashnik looked uncomfortable, but nobody said anything for a moment. Finally Rob spoke. “I’ve got to ask this,” he said. “Does anyone think we should surrender now? Give ourselves up to the Sholen and try to defuse the situation?”
The other three all shook their heads. “We cannot abandon the Coquille now,” said Alicia. “We’ve made such a breakthrough with the Ilmatarans!”
“Okay,” said Rob. “We’re staying, at least for now. But I think it would be really dumb for us to do any more attacks against Hitode or the Sholen—especially solo missions. If we are going to do anything, we have to agree on it and plan it out in advance. Does that sound good to everybody?”
“I’ll try to come up with a list of objectives in the next couple of days,” said Graves.
“I figured you’d want to spend time with the Ilmatarans,” said Rob, not without a little malicious pleasure.
Dickie’s face was a study in conflict. Finally he nodded. “All right. Good idea. We’ll lie low for a while.”
Broadtail is hungry. The rocks for a cable around are scoured clean, and even with the Builders’ help he and Holdhard cannot catch enough swimmers, unless they do nothing but hunting, which is the last thing Broadtail wants.
He reaches a decision, and finds Holdhard digging for larvae in the soft bottom. “I must go to Longpincer.”
“Your friend?”
“I hope so. I remember him lending me servants and a towfin, and all are dead or lost now. But this discovery of ours is important and must be shared.”
“How can you share the Builders?” she asks. “You do not own them.”
He remembers being surprised several times by her mix of cleverness and ignorance. “Share the knowledge about them. This is the most important discovery I can think of. I imagine dying by accident or violence, and all I know about the Builders lost. I must go to Longpincer.” That is the easy part to say. He pauses before the hard part, then surges ahead. “And I invite you to accompany me as my apprentice.”
She considers the offer. Broadtail knows he is a poor choice for a mentor—no property, no wealth at all but his notes and what is in his mind. Does she understand the value of that?
“Is it far?” she answers at last.
“Yes—we swim across-current to the rift, then follow it to the Bitterwater vent. The first part is hardest, with nothing but coldwater hunting as we go. At the rift there are swimmers and rocks to scour.”
“Here. I have six larvae. We need food for the trip.”
In the morning the Ilmataran was gone. Alicia and Dickie swam out from the Coquille in opposite spirals, but they found no sign of it within half a kilometer. While the two of them were out searching, Rob took the opportunity to have a talk with Josef in the privacy of the submarine.
“I think the Sholen are going to come looking for us,” he said. “It’s a big ocean, but the longer we stay out here the better the odds get that they’ll find us. You’re the Navy guy—what can we expect when they show up?”
Josef stared off above Rob’s head. “Depends on weapons,” he said. “Simplest is knives, maybe spears. Good underwater, easy to make, and Sholen are stronger than humans. We fight by keeping hidden, setting ambushes, and running away before Sholen stab us.”
“Right. Anything else?”
“Possibly firearms. Many Special Forces on Earth have guns modified to work underwater. Very short range, though: only five or ten meters. Also maybe handheld micro-torpedo launchers.”
“Is that those funny guns they have? With the big barrels?”
“Most likely. Microtorps are like little drones with grenadesize warheads. Usually self-guided, not very smart. Can be dodged, but explosions are dangerous several meters away.”
“Jesus! How can we fight against any of that? We don’t have guns or anything.”
“As I said: keep hidden, set ambushes, run away.”
“If we assume they’ve been bringing down more troops by elevator, then there could be at least nine Sholen soldiers at Hitode. It would be dumb to send out all of them, so assume they keep back a third as a garrison. That leaves six who can come looking for us. Even if they don’t have guns or torpedoes I don’t like those odds at all. Sholen are big.”
“You are both right, you and Graves.”
“What do you mean?”
“You say we cannot fight against guns and microtorps. True. He says we must fight. Also true.”
“You sound like the guy in Robot Monster. ‘Must! Cannot!’ So tell me, Great One, what are we supposed to do?” Rob demanded.
“Not sure. First task is survival. For now do nothing foolish. But at some point that changes.”
Longpincer and about half of the Bitterwater Company are gathered in the dining room. Broadtail enters, with Holdhard helping him carry reels of notes. Longpincer makes a sound of dismay as he realizes all that line is from his own store-holes.