Squeak wondered desperately why the other whales from their old pod weren't coming to their defense.
"Please, my calf . . . my calf is no threat to anyone." Mercy.
"No one doubts that you love your calf, Tailspinner. Mother and calf, brother and sister are of one flesh." Compassion. "But you forget that all whales are one family. Your calf may be blameless, but her genes-her genes can do fathomless harm to future generations."
"She won't breed!" Please. "Nor will I. I haven't mated since . . . since . . ."
"We all swim in the same waters," Hammerhead recited. "What each one of us does affects us all. Without exception. Did they not have the Breeding Laws in your pod? Were they not orcas?" Hear me.
The circle of whales hemming Squeak and her mother drew tighter. She could feel the impact of every echolocation pulse. One of them beamed her in the face and she let out a little squeak of pain.
"Before the Migration, we were little more than animals. Before the Migration, we breathed air. There is no air here, and we breathe with gills. If we wish to maintain ourselves without regression, genetic hygiene must be observed." Hear me. "She is defective! Blind!"
As if reading the echo beam of one of her captors, Squeak imagined how they saw her: overgrown calf, head shriveled where her melon should be. Unable to produce the focused beams of sound orcas used for echolocation, she was dependent upon the beams of others like her mother to see.
A swell of water sloshed Squeak away when her mother rolled to one side, adopting the posture of submission. Squeak wondered fearfully what she was doing. But then her mother tight-beamed her a single word: "Flee."
Broadcasting a steady stream of sonar clicks, Squeak's mother rammed into one of the encircling whales.
Before the others could react, Squeak shot through the opening. Her tail pounded the water, the thought boiling through her mind: They want to kill me, they want to kill me! She imagined teeth tearing her flesh, the sharp tang of her blood filling the water. . . .
From behind came sounds of churning water and the explosive shock of a tail blow. Her mother! What was happening to her mother? Why was no one helping them? Squeak didn't know what to do. She wanted to help but her mother had told her to flee, and Squeak always did what her mother told her. And she was so afraid, terribly afraid. They want to kill me.
Then Squeak felt the brush of a sonar beam against her tail and realized they were pursuing her. Her heart pounding like a second tail in her chest, she fought to think. If only she could see! She recalled the image she had received from her mother's sonar a moment before. Below and to her left would be the herd of bredfish, hemmed in by circling orcas for feeding. Inclining her head in that direction, she heard in her jawbone the familiar rustling of dozens of small, agitated swimmers.
Into the herd she dove, mouth agape. Squeak whirled, batted her flippers, kicked her tail, sending the panicked fish flying. Without thinking she snatched one in her jaws and gobbled it down. Then she shot off in a random direction, leaving a confusion of sonar echoes in her wake.
Squeak fled on into the darkness, straining to hear sounds of pursuit. But none came. When she felt she could go no further, she drifted to a stop in the water.
Squeak was alone. She had never been alone before. The very notion seemed incomprehensible. Social as they were, most orcas went on occasional forays away from the pod, but not Squeak. How would she find her way back? What if she were set upon by a pack of Songless whales? So her mother had always said, and Squeak always listened to her mother.
Was she afraid? She didn't know how she felt. Her head was full of little explosions. She felt like she was losing her sapience, becoming one of the Songless. She was alone. Her mother's touch, the background hiss and grumble of whale voices, the wandering currents of a mob of milling orcas . . . all her bearings were gone. What was she supposed to do? What was she supposed to feel?
As the roar in her head subsided, Squeak began to hear sounds. Creaks and booms drifted down from above-that was the shell of ice that covered the ocean world, forever worked by Europa's tides. Back the way she had come was the soft susurration of the hydrothermal vent, spewing hot minerals that fed the euplankton which in turn fed the pod's herds of bredfish. The water had its own voice: a textured sigh, shaped by the slopes of the valley in which the pod made its home. And through it came the squeaks and groans of whalesong. Behind her was a muted babble of many voices, her own adopted pod. From another direction a faint call drifted, a message transmitted across the ocean to some distant friend or relative. And beneath it all was the Song of the Grandfathers, the living memory of the whale colony, telling of their voyage upon the vessels of the No-Fins from the dying seas of Earth and their lives on this new world. Of course, no whale was ever alone. It was the first lesson of the Song.
Then, as Squeak listened to the sea, a voice from out of the darkness touched her like a caress: Squeak, mother calls. To me, to me! It was one of the first songs a whale learned, simple and repetitive, intended to lead a lost child to her mother. Tailspinner was alive! Her mother was alive, and searching for her.
Squeak started to reply, then cut herself short. Were the tail-biters hunting her? If she spoke it would give away her position. But she desperately needed some contact with her mother. The danger seemed distant now, unreal. But her loneliness was very close.
She sang a short response: Tailspinner, await me, I come! Normally such songs would be repeated many times, so that the intended recipient would eventually hear it over the hubbub of whale life. But that would be too risky.
Moments later, a familiar male voice called out of the dark: Come home, little fish, we are waiting for you. It came from the same general direction as her mother's, but closer, much closer.
Squeak pondered several miserable seconds and then fled. Off to one side she could hear the moaning of the tidal current surging through a narrow channel. If she guessed correctly, this was the mountain pass through which she and the remaining stragglers of her former pod had wearily made their way here. It might offer some place to hide.
Why were they doing this to her? She and her mother weren't harming anyone! The Broken Tail pod only killed dangerous defectives such as the Songless-genetic throwbacks to pre-sapience-and those that were so terribly malformed that it was an act of mercy. Squeak and her mother had only been banned from breeding. Of course, no male would want to breed with a female once she had borne a defective. And Squeak's mother was always too busy taking care of her to be interested in more offspring anyway. She had always said that Squeak was all she needed. Their family status had suffered, but what did that matter?
The sound was very loud now-she must be almost there. Behind, her mother's call came again and she fought the desperate urge to respond. Then she heard traces of sonar clicks hunting for her. Too far away to resolve an echo perhaps, but for how long? Tired as she was, Squeak forced herself to swim faster.
Then there was an impact, and suddenly Squeak found herself bathed in cold water. She had entered the current! The border between the warm and cold water would confuse the echolocation signals-for a moment anyway, until her pursuers penetrated the current as well.
Squeak turned her head this way and that, getting a sense for the space. The sound of the rushing water was not as precise as a sonar echo, but it told her that she was in a long, narrow canyon sculpted by the tides. One side had collapsed, covering the bottom with a maze of tumbled stone. Hopefully she would be able to conceal herself there.