without sending out echolocation clicks than a chimp could nap without scratching himself.
Creideiki snorted. Beach himself if he’d let a shipboard requirement give him insomnia! He blew emphatically and began to count sonar clicks. He started with a tenor rhythm, then slowly built a fugue as he added deeper elements to the sleep-song.
Echoes spread from his brow and diffracted about the small chamber. The notes drifted over one another, overlapping softly in faint whines and basso growls. They created a sonic structure, a template of otherness. The right combinations, he knew, would make the walls themselves seem to disappear.
Deliberately, he peeled away the duty-rigor of Keneenk—welcoming a small, trusted portion of the Whale Dream.
* When the patterns—
In the cycloid
* Call in whispers—
Soft remembered
* Murmuring of—
Songs of dawning
* And of the Moon—
The sea-tide’s darling
* Then the patterns—
In the cycloid
* Call in whispers—
Soft remembered … *
The desk, the cabinets, the walls, were covered under false sonic shadows. His chant began to open on its own accord a rich and very physical poetry of crafted reflections.
Floating things seemed to drift past, tiny tail-flicks of schools of dream creatures. The echoes opened up space around him, as if the waters went on forever.
* And the Dream Sea,
Everlasting
* Calls in whispers
Soft remembered … *
Soon he felt a presence nearby, congealing gradually out of reflections of sound.
She formed slowly next to him as his engineer’s consciousness let go … the shadow of a goddess. Then Nukapai floated beside him … a ghost of ripples, ribbed by motes of sound. The black sleekness of her body passed back into the darkness, unhindered by a bulkhead that seemed no longer there.
Vision faded. The waters darkened all around Creideiki, and Nukapai became more than just a shadow, a passive recipient of his song. Her needle teeth shone, and she sang his own sounds back to him.
* With the closeness—
Of the waters
* In an endless—
Layer of Dreaming
* As the humpback—
Older sibling
* Sings songs to the—
Serious fishes
* Here you find me—
Wandering brother
* Even in this—
Human rhythm
* Where the humans
And other walkers
* Give mirth to—
The stars themselves … *
A type of bliss settled over him as his heartbeat slowed. Creideiki slept next to the gentle dream-goddess. She chided him only teasingly for being an engineer, and for dreaming her in the rigid, focused verse of Trinary rather than the chaotic Primal of his ancestors.
She welcomed him to the Threshold Sea, where Trinary sufficed, where he felt only faintly the raging of the Whale Dream and the ancient gods who dwelt there. It was as much of that ocean as an engineer’s mind could accept.
How rigid the Trinary verse sometimes seemed! The patterns of overlapping tones and symbols were almost human precise … almost human-narrow.
He had been brought up to think those terms compliments. Parts of his own brain had been gene-designed along human lines. But now and then chaotic sound-images slipped in, teasing him with a hint of ancient singing.
Nukapai clicked sympathetically. She smiled …
No! She did no such land-ape thing! Of cetaceans, only the neo-dolphin “smiled” with their mouths.
Nukapai did something else. She stroked against his side, gentlest of goddesses, and told him,
* Be now at peace *
* It is That is … *
* And engineers *
* Far from the ocean *
* Can hear it still *
The tension of several weeks at last broke, and he slept. Creideiki’s breath gathered in glistening condensation on the ceiling bulkhead. The breeze from a nearby air duct brushed the droplets, which shuddered, then fell on the water like gentle rain.
When the image of Ignacio Metz formed a meter to his right, Creideiki was slow to become aware of it.
“Captain…” the image said. “I’m calling from the bridge. I
Creideiki snorted. Beach himself if he’d let a shipboard requirement give him insomnia! He blew emphatically and began to count sonar clicks. He started with a tenor rhythm, then slowly built a fugue as he added deeper elements to the sleep-song.
Echoes spread from his brow and diffracted about the small chamber. The notes drifted over one another, overlapping softly in faint whines and basso growls. They created a sonic structure, a template of otherness. The right combinations, he knew, would make the walls themselves seem to disappear.
Deliberately, he peeled away the duty-rigor of Keneenk—welcoming a small, trusted portion of the Whale Dream.
* When the patterns—
In the cycloid
* Call in whispers—
Soft remembered
* Murmuring of—
Songs of dawning
* And of the Moon—
The sea-tide’s darling
* Then the patterns—
In the cycloid
* Call in whispers—
Soft remembered … *
The desk, the cabinets, the walls, were covered under false sonic shadows. His chant began to open on its own accord a rich and very physical poetry of crafted reflections.
Floating things seemed to drift past, tiny tail-flicks of schools of dream creatures. The echoes opened up space around him, as if the waters went on forever.
* And the Dream Sea,
Everlasting
* Calls in whispers
Soft remembered … *
Soon he felt a presence nearby, congealing gradually out of reflections of sound.
She formed slowly next to him as his engineer’s consciousness let go … the shadow of a goddess. Then Nukapai floated beside him … a ghost of ripples, ribbed by motes of sound. The black sleekness of her body passed back into the darkness, unhindered by a bulkhead that seemed no longer there.
Vision faded. The waters darkened all around Creideiki, and Nukapai became more than just a shadow, a passive recipient of his song. Her needle teeth shone, and she sang his own sounds back to him.
* With the closeness—
Of the waters
* In an endless—
Layer of Dreaming
* As the humpback—
Older sibling
* Sings songs to the—
Serious fishes
* Here you find me—
Wandering brother
* Even in this—
Human rhythm
* Where the humans
And other walkers
* Give mirth to—
The stars themselves … *
A type of bliss settled over him as his heartbeat slowed. Creideiki slept next to the gentle dream-goddess. She chided him only teasingly for being an engineer, and for dreaming her in the rigid, focused verse of Trinary rather than the chaotic Primal of his ancestors.
She welcomed him to the Threshold Sea, where Trinary sufficed, where he felt only faintly the raging of the Whale Dream and the ancient gods who dwelt there. It was as much of that ocean as an engineer’s mind could accept.
How rigid the Trinary verse sometimes seemed! The patterns of overlapping tones and symbols were almost human precise … almost human-narrow.
He had been brought up to think those terms compliments. Parts of his own brain had been gene-designed along human lines. But now and then chaotic sound-images slipped in, teasing him with a hint of ancient singing.
Nukapai clicked sympathetically. She smiled …
No! She did no such land-ape thing! Of cetaceans, only the neo-dolphin “smiled” with their mouths.
Nukapai did something else. She stroked against his side, gentlest of goddesses, and told him,
* Be now at peace *
* It is That is … *
* And engineers *
* Far from the ocean *
* Can hear it still *
The tension of several weeks at last broke, and he slept. Creideiki’s breath gathered in glistening condensation on the ceiling bulkhead. The breeze from a nearby air duct brushed the droplets, which shuddered, then fell on the water like gentle rain.
When the image of Ignacio Metz formed a meter to his right, Creideiki was slow to become aware of it.
“Captain…” the image said. “I’m calling from the bridge. I
Similar Books
Just Myrto
Laurie Gray
Starship Spring
Eric Brown
A Lotus For Miss Quon
James Hadley Chase
The Buccaneers' Code
Caroline Carlson
The Homesteader's Sweetheart
Lacy Williams
A Night Like This
Julia Quinn
The Dark Gifts Birthright
Willow Cross
Trap (9781476793177)
Robert K. Tanenbaum
Love Will
Lori L. Otto
Five Weeks in a Balloon
Jules Verne