Part 10 (1/2)

IV.

, his news upset Cora even more than she showed.

”So we're to suffer a bodyguard.” She tried to make light of it. ”So the powers that be are afraid someone might try to-what was it you and Pucara were talk- ing about?-explosively debond my molecular struc- ture or something.”

Mataroreva did not smile. ”If there are groups or individuals who are preying on the floating towns, and if they are already responsible for the deaths of twenty- five hundred people, it's unlikely they'd balk at a.s.sas- sinating a few imported specialists if they felt that action would continue to keep their operations secret and unimpaired.”

She had no reply for that, fumed silently at the lack of specific information. Perhaps the original settlers could provide some information, despite all she had heard about their famous (or infamous) insistence on privacy. They were the real, secret reason for her leaving her comfortable post on Earth and coming all this way, regardless of the potential danger of the a.s.signment. She found herself trying to see over the enclosing reef, out beyond the garland of gla.s.s that surrounded the lagoon, to the open ocean beyond.

”I want to meet the whales, Sam.” He continued to steer the skimmer, listening. ”I need to meet some of them. Ever since I was a little girl I've read about

45.

46.

CACHALOT.

CACHALOT.

47.

the whales of Cachalot. Every adult oceanographer's dream is to come here and perhaps be granted one of those extremely rare opportunities to study them, if only briefly. To w.a.n.gle the chance to come here, to observe what many consider to be the greatest ex- periment in Terran sociohistory ... I couldn't return, couldn't leave, without doing that.”

”I'd like to see some of them, too.” Rachael was peering over the side of the skimmer, studying the rising bottom.

”Well, you won't see any of them here,” Cora chided her. ”It's unlikely they'd come into the lagoon.”

”As a matter of fact,” Sam countered, ”there are a couple of pa.s.sages through the reef large enough to admit them. The lagoon is big enough and deep enough to accommodate some. Many, I understand, like to calve in the larger lagoons. But not in Mou'- anui.”

”Why not?” Cora asked.

Sam told her, his words touched with something beyond his usual carefree self. ”They could explain in words, but they don't wish to. It's simple enough to guess. They came to Cachalot to get away from people, remember.”

”I would think that by this time,” she murmured, ”on an alien world, having come from a common planet of origin, all mammals together-”

Sam interrupted her gently. ”You'll understand better if you do meet any of them.”

”What do you mean 'if? I know it's difficult, but surely it can be arranged. It's unthinkable to come all this way and-”

”Mother,” Rachael said admonis.h.i.+ngly, ”we weren't sent here to study whales. We were sent to find a solu- tion, or at least a causative factor, for a very dangerous situation.”

”I know, I know. But to come to Cachalot and not study the cetaceans ...”

”Remember that they don't wish to be studied,”

Sam told her. ”Part of the Agreement of Transfer is that they can't be studied or bothered unless they specifically ask to be. There are certain species who are friendlier than others, of course. You know about the porpoises and their relatives. But the great whales shy away from any human contact. They find us ...

well, irritating. Their privacy is their right. The details of the Agreement of Transfer go back to before the Amalgamation and the formation of the Common- wealth. No one would even think of violating it.”

”What about individuals?”