Part 55 (1/2)
”Sure. It would have mattered no matter who had been in the water, right?” Not wanting an answer, she slipped past him before he could offer one she wouldn't like.
Dawn was waiting to confront her. She stared the older woman squarely in the eye, said, ”That was the bravest thing I ever saw anyone do.”
Cora hesitated, then smiled. ”I didn't think of it as particularly brave. Sam was right. It was a stupid thing to do. I was lucky.” Then it hit her, in detail, ex- actly what she had done. ”In fact, I didn't think of it at all. I just did it.”
Behind them both, Merced was nodding under- standingly.
Cora was standing in the bow, watching the spouts and backs leading the s.h.i.+p. Mataroreva had rejoined her and they watched together.
”What do you think will happen when the catodons confront a baleen or two the way we confronted the blue, and demand an explanation?”
”I've no idea,” he said slowly. ”I don't think they'll risk the cetacean peace. But as you've already seen, they can be considerably more forceful than most of their relatives. And where the orcas couldn't do any- thing with that bull, a couple of catodons could.”
”You think the baleens might fight rather than talk?”
”No way of telling. Normal relations.h.i.+ps are being upset on this world.” He nodded toward the distant, curving backs of the herd. ”It's awkward, though.
234 CACHALOT.
They might risk a breach of the peace to sate their curiosity, but they won't do it to save a thousand hu- man lives. It would be easy to learn to hate them for that.”
”That wouldn't bother them, either,” she reminded him. ”They don't care at all how we look at them.”
”Self-centered egotists,” he muttered.
”Not necessarily. Maybe they're right.”
”How so?”
”Maybe we're just not very interesting.”
They went quiet, each absorbed in personal thoughts. A pair of familiar shapes raced the s.h.i.+p to port. Wenkoseemansa and Latehoht had rejoined them.
The rest of the orca pack, they explained, had turned back for Mou'anui. They had come to rescue human from human. That task accomplished, they saw noth- ing to be gained by remaining with the suprafoil. And they found the company of their supercilious cousins wearying.
Somehow the sonarizer operator managed to keep a scan ahead of the cl.u.s.ter of blips that identified the leading pod.
”There's something out there,” he reported over the communicators.
”Baleen?” Mataroreva asked quickly.
”Big enough to be. And there's more than one showing. I read five or six.”
”Species?”
”Too far for resolution.”
The catodons had sensed them, too. The herd turned with precision and the foil angled to remain with them.
As the distance closed, the sonarizer operator con- tinued to report. ”I make out seven now. Not hump- backs. Not rights. Fins or blues. Ten ... no, close to twenty now. Fins, I think.”