Stillness swept over the spectators as she approached with Kit, and they recognized who she was. And a single note began to go up from them, starting at the fringes of the circle, working its way inward even to the Celebrants, until she heard even Aroooon’s giant voice taking it up. One note, held in every range from the dolphins’ dog-whistle trilling to the water-shaking thunder of the blues. One thought, one concept in the Speech, trumpeting through the water with such force that Nita began to shake at the sound of it. Praise. They knew she was the Silent One. They knew what she was going to do for them. They were thanking her.
Stunned, Nita forgot to swim — just drifted there in painful joy.
From behind, as the note slowly ebbed away, Kit nudged her. “Get the lead out, Neets,” he sang, just for her hearing. “You’re the star of this show-So start acting like it! Go in there and let them know you’re here.”
She swam slowly through the spectator whales, into the clear water in the center of their great circle, where the Celebrants were gathered.
One by one, as she circled above the weed-covered remnant of the trawler, Nita quickly identified the whales she knew. Aroooon, yes, swimming on more or less by himself to tideward, singing his deep scrape of notes with the absent concentration of a perfectionist who has time to hunt perfection; Hotshot, doing barrel rolls near the surface and chattering through the quick bright harmonies of some part of the Wanderer’s song; Areinnye, aloof from both Wanderer and Blue, running again and again over a phrase of the Gray Lord’s song and paying no further attention to Nita after a quick glance.
There were also five other whales whom Nita didn’t know, exactly as Kit had pegged them. A beluga, dolphin-sized but whale-shaped, lazing near the surface and singing some longing phrase from the Gazer’s song; a pilot whale, long and slim and gray, silent for the moment and looking at Nita with interest; a right whale, with its huge, strange, bent-out-of-shape baleen mouth, listening to the beluga; a killer whale, the sharp blacks and whites of its hide a contrast to the grays and quiet mottlings of most of the others.
And — thank Heaven! — S’reee, swimming toward Nita from beside the killer. Nita had been shaken by the sight of the killer — killer whales being one of a humpback’s most persistent natural enemies — but just now her composure was so unraveled, there wasn’t much more damage that could be done to it. As S’reee came up to greet her, Nita managed to sing in something like a calm voice, and as if she were actually in charge, “Well, we’re late. Should we get started?”
“Good idea,” said S’reee, brushing skin briefly and reassuringly with Nita. “Introductions first, though.”
“Yes, please.”
S’reee led Nita off to the north, where several of the singers were working together. “We’ve been through the first part of the Song already this morning,” said S’reee, “the name-songs and so forth. I’ve heard you do yours, so there was no need for you to be here till late. We’re up to the division now, the ‘temptation’ part. These are the people singing the Undecided group—“
“Hi, Hotshot,” Nita sang as she and S’reee soared into the heart of the group. The dolphin chattered a greeting back and busied himself with his singing again, continuing his spirals near the surface, above the heads of the right whale and a whale whose song Nita hadn’t heard on the way in, a Sowerby’s beaked whale. She immediately suspected why she hadn’t heard it; the whale, undoubtedly there to celebrate the Forager’s part, was busy eating — ripping up the long kelp and redweed stirring around the shattered deck-plates of the wreck. It didn’t even look up as she and S’reee approached. The right whale was less preoccupied; it swam toward Nita and S’reee at a slow pace that might have been either courtesy or caution.
“HNii’t, this is Tlhlki,” said S’reee. Nita clicked his name back at him in greeting, swimming forward to brush skin politely with him. “He’s singing the Listener.”
Tlhlki rolled away from Nita and came about, looking at her curiously.
When he spoke, his song revealed both great surprise and some unease. “S’reee — this is a human!”
“Tlhlki,” Nita said, wry-voiced, with a look at S’reee, “are you going to be mad at me for things I haven’t done too?”
The right whale looked at her with that cockeyed upward stare that rights have — their eyes being placed high in their flat-topped heads. “Oh,” he said, sounding wry himself, “you’ve run afoul of Areinnye, have you. No fear, Silent Lord — HNii’t, was it? No fear.” Tlhlki’s song put her instantly at ease. It had an amiable and intelligent sound to it, the song of a mind that didn’t tend toward blind animosities. “If you’re going to do the Sea such a service as you’re doing, I could hardly do less than treat you with honor. For Sea’s sake don’t think Areinnye is typical…
“However,” Tlhlki added, gazing down at the calmly feeding beaked whale, “some of us practically have to have a bite taken out of us to get us to start honoring and stop eating.” He drifted down a fathom or so and bumped nose-first into the beaked whale. “Roots! Heads up, you bottom-grubber, here comes the Master-Shark!”
“Huh? Where? Where?” the shocked song came drifting up from the bottom. The kelp was thrashed about by frantic fluking, and through it rose the beaked whale, its mouth full of weed, streamers of which trailed back and whipped around in all directions as the whale tried to tell where the shark was coming from. “Where — what— Oh,” the beaked whale said after a moment, as the echoes from its initial excited squeaking came back and told it that the Master-Shark was nowhere in the area. “Ki,” it said slowly, “I’m going to get you for that.”
“Later. Meantime, here’s S’reee, and HNii’t with her,” said Tlhlki. “HNii’t’s singing the Silent Lord. HNii’t, this is Roots.”
“Oh,” said Roots, “well met. Pleasure to sing with you. Would you excuse me?” She flipped her tail, politely enough, before Nita could sing a note, and a second later was head-down in the kelp again, ripping it up faster than before, as if making up for lost time.
Nita glanced with mild amusement at S’reee as Hotshot spiraled down to join them. “She’s a great conversationalist,” Hotshot whistled, his song conspiratorially quiet. “Really. Ask her about food.”
“I kind of suspected,” Nita said. “Speaking of the Master-Shark, though, where is Ed this morning?”
S’reee waved one long fin in a shrug. “He has a late appearance, as you do, so it doesn’t really matter if he shows up late. Meanwhile, we have to meet the others. Ki, are you finished with Roots?”
“Shortly. We’re going through the last part of the second duet. I’ll catch up with you people later.” The right whale glided downward toward the weeds, and S’reee led Nita off to the west, where the Blue drifted in the water, and the beluga beside him, a tiny white shape against Aroooon’s hugeness. “Aroooon and I are two of the Untouched,” said S’reee. “The third, after the Singer and the Blue, is the Gazer. That’s Iniihwit.”
“HNii’t,” Aroooon’s great voice hailed them as Nita approached.
Nita bent her body into a bow of respect as she coasted through the water. “Sir,” she said.
That small, calm eye dwelt gravely on her. “Are you well, Silent Lord?” said the Blue.
“As well as I can be, sir,” Nita said. “Under the circumstances.”
“That’s well,” said Aroooon. “Iniihwit, here is the human I spoke of.”