An effort to exile Thet and his followers to a freshly bioformed world in the Aurum system had run afoul of outraged biologists and conservatives who had deliberately sabotaged the ecosystem of the new world to make it dangerous for settlement by primitivists. Drin had played a leading and ultimately tragic role in overcoming the conspiracy, but the ecological damage had been done, and any resettlement program was octades in the future. Human Monitor agents were trying, with mixed success, to attrit the colony voluntarily. Meanwhile, Thet was out of control, restrained only by threats of violence that, occasionally, had to be validated.
“Yes,” Drin added, “I know they were having a hard time with getting editorial support because of how Zo Kim panned the first volume for being too wishy-washy and boring.” With some justification, Drin thought— he’d read the first volume. But the word had to get out somehow.
Mary shook her head. “I have a hard time with Kleth publicly deriding his mate’s work.”
Drin nodded. A “Kleth Divorce” was common vernacular for any mutually destructive parting of the ways. “Zo Kim found pollution in everyone’s work. So if it’s murder, and Zo Kim’s reviews are the motive, we’ll have literally a million suspects, given how long Zo Kim has been cutting away at people’s artistic efforts.”
“Yeah. Well, anyway, I’d rather pursue that lead than try to locate Bi Tan.”
Drin nodded slowly; the body of Zo Kim’s mate had not been recovered—indeed, she might be still alive, working away in isolation, unaware that her mate was dead. If so, the approach to her would have to be sophisticated—and delayed as long as honorably possible.
One didn’t run up to a solitary Kleth and spout, “We’ve been looking all over for you! Uh...” Drin had no desire to view a repeat performance of Zo Kim’s death. If Bi Tan were still alive, the Kleth would handle it, in privacy, with dignity.
Drin had remembered the death of a fellow monitor whose mate had been killed in the line of duty with Do Tor and Go Ton. They silently offered him a drug to lessen the initial shakes, and left him alone in his office to close the couple’s affairs. A few minutes later, he’d invited the group back to say his farewells, and nodded to Do Tor. The Kleth were so intelligent that one sometimes let float loose the fact that they lived twice as close to death as a human or Do’utian, and had attitudes toward sacrifice, pain, and the eating of flesh that were so different, that the other two species’ instincts sometimes seemed mere variations on the same theme.
Handled properly, Bi Tan, if still alive, could make whatever statements she needed to make painlessly, finish her business, and depart with her dignity intact.
But Gonikli’ibida came first. The outward subservience of an intelligent Do’utian female was a fragile behavioral artifact, founded as much on fear as biology. Given a cause, a Do’utian woman could do anything to achieve her ends; however horrible, anything. It was their saying that the cow defends her children not to her death, but to yours. Gonikli had no children—but she was an author.
“It’s an old Do’utian family,” Drin said. “Relatives of mine. Their place is on the south coast of Droni Island, near the Innil Glacier. Actually, it’s not far from my birthplace. My sister lived with them as part of the Doglaska’ib harem.” By a face-saving formal arrangement only, Drin added to himself. Memories. His sister Bodil’ib had died in a fall on the glacier, almost eight-squared years ago, of a broken back and internal injuries before adequate help could reach her. He’d learned about it while in Monitor training. Officially, her life had been incomplete and she had struggled, courageously, against the end.
Her life was less incomplete than most knew. He hadn’t been there for her. He’d mated, imprinted, then denied it and left as if he were a human. It had seemed so reasonable, so Trimusian, at the time.
“Are you feeling OK, Drin?” Mary asked.
Trimus orbits tide-locked to the brown dwarf Ember, that supplies half its insolation. The other half is supplied by the K2 primary, Aurum, about which Ember, its associated satellites, and the Trojan worlds revolve at five and a half Trimus light-minutes’ distance. Trimus’s atmospheric pressure was engineered to be similar to that of Do’utia and Kleth, about one and a quarter that of Earth. Average surface temperatures range from one and an eighth times the freezing point of water on the inner pole to just overfreezing at the outer pole. Trimus has extensive icecaps and continental masses at the east and west poles. Random volcanic isles and impact crater rims spot its oceans.
The north polar area of Trimus is dominated by an ice cap, partly over a number of large, volcanic islands and partly over sea. Volcanoes are more common in the north due to the thinness of crust, a product of tidal distortion as well as the complex orbital resonance involving Clinker (Ember’s third major satellite) and distant Aurum that results in Trimus’ one-sixth-radian libration. A volcanic island arc circles the ice cap at the top of the inner hemisphere, well north of the Trimus arctic. Following bioforming, a north flowing current formed which moderates the climate along this arc—the seas there are usually free of heavy pack ice.
The Polar Sea was Drin’s element. As the temperature dropped his metabolism increased and he brought his sustained speed up to half a charter unit per beat. Northward, northward. Mary’s submarine kept pace beside him. Now and then he would sound deep, turn and fling his tail at the water five or ten times until he had to shut his eyes against the slipstream. Then with one mighty, convulsive twist, he’d broach like a rocket, shooting almost two charter units above the wavetops. From there, he’d scan the horizon for signs of food or distant land. Then he could either knife into the water to pursue a fish normally too fast for him to catch, or slam flat on the surface, scouring the parasites from his hide.
His monitor comset, of course, could tell him exactly where he was—but using that didn’t feel like seeing for himself. His was a spacefaring race and hungered for the wide view as well as the deep.
Once, just to show that her submarine could do it too, Mary followed him into the air, using its buoyancy tank exhausts like jets to nose it over smoothly into the water.
On one of these leaps he saw the wind ship; a cloud of sails scudding north.
Once they were under water, he let loose several blasts of sound and watched the sonic image of the water-air interface shimmer as the parts of his brain that actually “saw” interpreted the sonic information gathered by his ears. There was an oval bump about eight cubed charter units east of them. A check with the locator aerostat showed no electronics at that position. A primitivist whaler? This far north?
“Mary, look out for a primitive ship almost due east of us, possible poacher, about point four. No comset, or any electronics.”
“Roger, I have it at point-three-seven pi radians from north. Small single hull, just under two charter units. Wide beam. I don’t think it’s a whaler, Drin.”
“Let’s hope not.” He and Mary both still bore scars from an unlucky harpoon shot from an earlier encounter with a ship from Thet’s polar sea colony. Ignored by Trimus’s mainly complacent civilization of philosophers, recreationalists, and artists, it had recruited disaffected, hostile, or bored humans until it had become a behavioral problem. Drin and Mary had been given the job of cleaning up one of its nastier messes—humans hunting Do’utians with harpoons. “But we’d better check it out.”