Where are you now, my love?
He recalled a Japanese haiku from the eighteenth century, by the great poet Yosa Buson.
As the spring rains fall,
Soaking in them, on the roof,
Is a child's rag ball.
Watching blank images in the dents on the psi-globe, he listened to the creaking of the flat jungle — its skittering little animal sounds — the wind riffling through the wet, flat leaves.
Where is that part of me that has departed?
He listened to the slow pulse of a world ocean, watched patterns in the metal, and after a while, in the reflections in the dents and creases, an image came to him.
A blunt, bulky, wedge shape approached a place that was a not-place, a shining blackness in space. As he watched, the bulky thing cracked open. The thick carapace slowly split apart, like a hatching egg. The shards fell away, and there remained a slender nubbed cylinder, looking a bit like a caterpillar. Around it glowed a nimbus, a thickening shell of probability that hardened even as he watched.
No illusion, he decided. It cannot be an illusion.
He opened himself to the image, accepting it. And from the caterpillar a thought winged to him.
Blossoms on the pear
and a woman in the moonlight
reads a letter there…
His slowly healing lips hurt as he smiled. It was another haiku by Buson. Her message was as unambiguous as could be, under the circumstances. She had somehow picked up his trance-poem, and responded in kind.
"Jill…" he cast as hard as he could.
The caterpillar shape, sheathed in a cocoon of stasis, approached the great hole in space. It dropped forward toward the not-place, grew transparent as it fell, then vanished.
For a long time Tom sat very still, watching the highlights on the metal globe slowly shift as the morning passed.
Finally, he decided it wouldn't do him or the universe any harm if he started doing something about survival.
125 ::: The Skiff
"Between you two crazy males, have you come any closer to figuring out what he'sss talking about?"
Keepiru and Sah'ot just stared back at Hikahi. They turned back to their discussion without answering her, huddling with Creideiki, trying to interpret the captain's convoluted instructions.
Hikahi rolled her eyes and turned to Toshio. "You'd think they'd include me in these seances of theirs. After all, Creideiki and I are mates!"
Toshio shrugged. "Creideiki needs Sah'ot's language skill and Keepiru's ability as a pilot. But you saw their faces. They're halfway into the Whale Dream right now. We can't afford to have you that way while you're in command."
"Hmmmph." Hikahi spumed, only slightly mollified. "I suppose you've finished the inventory, Toshio?"
"Yes, sir." He nodded. "I have a written list ready. We're well enough stocked in consumables to last to the first transfer point, and at least one beyond that. Of course, we're in the middle of nowhere, so we'll need at least five transfer jumps to get anywhere near civilization. Our charts are pitifully inadequate, our drives will probably fail over the long haul, and few ships our size have even taken transfer points successfully. Aside from all that, and the cramped living quarters, I think we're all right."
Hikahi sighed. "We can't lose anything by trying. At leasst the Galactics are gone."
"Yeah," he agreed. "It was a nice stroke, Gillian taunting the Eatees from the transfer point. It let us know they got away, and got the Eatees off our backs."
"Don't say 'Eatees,' Toshio. It'ss not polite. You may offend some nice Kanten or Linten one day if you get into the habit."
Toshio swallowed and ducked his head. No matter where or when, no lieutenant had ever been known to slacken off on a middie. "Yes, sir," he said.
Hikahi grinned and flicked a small splash of water on the youth with her lower jaw.
* Duty, duty
Brave shark-biter
* What reward
Could taste better?
Toshio blushed and nodded.
The skiff started to move again. Keepiru was back in the pilot's saddle. Creideiki and Sah'ot chattered excitedly in a semi-Primal rhythm which still sent shivers down Hikahi's spine. And Sah'ot had said that Creideiki was toning it down on purpose!
She was still getting used to the idea that Creideiki's injury might have been a door opening, rather than a closing.
The skiff lifted from the sea and began to speed eastward, following Creideiki's hunch.
"What about passenger morale?" Hikahi asked Toshio.
"Well, I guess it's all right. That pair of Kiqui are happy so long as they're with Dennie. And Dennie's happy… well, she's happy enough for now."
Hikahi was amused. Why should the youth be embarrassed about Dennie's other preoccupation? She was glad the two young humans had each other, as she had Creideiki.
In spite of his new, eerie side, Creideiki was the same dolphin. The newness was something he used, something he seemed only to have begun exploring. He could hardly speak, but he conveyed his great intellect — and his caring — in other ways.
"What about Charlie?" she asked Toshio.
Toshio sighed. "He's still embarrassed."
They had found the chimp a day after the great earthquakes, clinging to a floating tree-trunk, sopping wet. He had been unable to speak for ten hours, and had kept climbing the walls in the skiff's tiny hold until he finally calmed down.
Charlie finally admitted that he had scrambled to the top of a tall tree just before the island blew. It had saved his life, but the stereotype mortified him.
Toshio and Hikahi crowded in behind Keepiru's station and watched as the ocean rolled swiftly beneath the skiff. For minutes at a time the sea turned a brilliant green as they passed over great swatches of vine. The little boat sped toward the sun.
They had been searching for almost a week, ever since Streaker had departed.
First found had been Toshio, swimming purposefully westward, never giving up. Then Dennie had led them to another island where there was a tribe of Kiqui. While she negotiated another treaty, they searched for and found Charles Dart.
Takkata-Jim's Stenos were all missing or dead.
After that had come one last, and apparently forlorn, search. They had been at this last phase for several days now.
Hikahi was about to give up. They couldn't go on wasting time and consumables like this. Not with the journey they had ahead of them.
Not that they really had much of a chance. No one had ever heard of a voyage like they planned. A cross-Galactic journey in the skiff would make Captain Bligh's epic crossing of the Pacific in the Bounty's longboat seem like an afternoon jaunt.
She kept her appraisal to herself, though. Creideiki and Keepiru probably understood what lay ahead of them. Toshio seemed to have guessed part of it already. There was no reason to inform the others until they had to cut the rations for the fourth time.
She sighed.
* Of what else
Are heroes made
* Than men and women
Who, like us,
* Try — *
Keepiru's fluting call of triumph was like a shrill trumpet. He squawled and tossed on his platform. The skiff rolled left and right in a wiggle-waggle, then went into a screaming climb.
"What the f — !!" Toshio stopped himself, "Holy jumping turtle-fish, Keepiru! What is it?"
Hikahi used a harness arm to grab a wall stanchion, and looked out a port. She sighed for a third time, long and deep.