“Change their ways?” Aili pressed the issue. Did that mean they were still on Droplet after all?
With further questioning, she confirmed the impression Cham had given. Once she understood, she rushed to the surface to give the news to Riker. A little hope would do wonders for him right now.
“We’ve been assuming they were holding us prisoner,” she said. “That if Titanwas still here, the squales were unwilling to return us to them.”
Riker nodded. “Hostages,” he said weakly. “Or guinea pigs.”
“At first, that was probably true. They didn’t know what to make of us and were being cautious. But they’ve come to trust us now. A lot of other squales still blame us for the crisis, but the contact pod understands we meant no harm. But when they wouldn’t reunite us with the others, I was afraid that maybe Titanhad been destroyed by the asteroid, or had written us off for dead and abandoned us.”
“I know Deanna’s alive,” he said, more to himself than to her.
“Yes, sir. And Titan’s still here. The squales confirmed it.”
“So why wouldn’t they tell us before, if we weren’t their prisoners?”
“The thing is,” she said, “the squales are always in touch with each other. The deep sound channel lets them communicate with squales thousands of kilometers away—or relay messages through other squales to communicate with any other squale, anywhere on Droplet. They’re as con nected as we are with our combadges. It’s slower, but they can hear about anything happening anywhere on the planet within six hours.
“So they just take it for granted that keeping track of every member of your species is a natural ability of intelligent beings. And so they assumed we had the same ability.
“So when Titandidn’t come to retrieve us, it never occurred to the squales that they didn’t know where we were. They assumed that, for some alien reason, our people had abandoned us.”
“Wait a minute,” Riker said. “They knew we didn’t know where the others were. Wasn’t that a clue?”
“They pretty much assumed it took mutual cooperation. If you call out to someone and they don’t answer, you can’t tell where they are.”
“But wouldn’t they have heard you if you gave out any such calls?”
“I’m an alien,” she said with a shrug. “They don’t know what strange ways we may have for staying in contact with our people. But it just never occurred to them to consider that we couldn’t. They take the ability as much for granted as—well, as water. This is their first alien contact,” she said in their defense. “They don’t know what assumptions they need to unlearn.”
He still wasn’t convinced. “Our people must have looked for us. Sent out shuttles.”
“They knew our people were looking for something. Some of them suspected it was us, since we were silent inside the healing pods. But once we were released and our people still didn’t come for us, they didn’t know what to think.”
Riker nodded. “So now that they understand?”
“I think they’d be happy to reunite us, sir. Since we won’t go through the change, it’s our only chance. They don’t want us to die.”
“Even the ones who blame us for ruining their Song?”
“They just want us to leave so their world can be pure again.”
He perked up. “Then they’ll help us find Titan?” he asked, his voice strengthening. Aili had been right; the news had been nourishment in itself.
“They’re waiting for me now,” she replied with a smile. “We just need to dive to the deep sound channel and start asking around, track down the nearest crew from Titan. It shouldn’t be more than a few hours.”
For the first time in days, the familiar Riker grin was on his gaunt face. “Then you’d better get started, Ensign. That’s an order.”
She beamed back. “Aye, Captain.”
Xin Ra-Havreii wished Aili Lavena were still around. Not only because he missed her and feared for her survival, but because he wasn’t entirely sanguine about his own at the moment.
All of Titan’s available shuttles were spreading out planetwide to initiate the probe deployment, after depositing further crews with their own probe allotments on the main floater-island base and other floater colonies across the planet; by following the currents, they would be able to cover a wide swath of Droplet’s surface and drop probes at regular intervals, turning the floaters into additional “vessels” at Titan’s disposal. Vale herself was supervising from the main base; she had brought Ra-Havreii with her to oversee the first drop. He had demurred that he was more a man of theory than execution and that Lieutenant Tylith or Ensign Crandall could supervise the deployment effectively. But Vale had wanted him there for his communication skills, to try to inform the squales that the aliens seemingly invading their world and dropping hundreds of large technological devices into its depths were acting in their best interests.
And so here he was, out in the middle of the open sea in a tiny scouter gig, facing down a pod of angry squales and trying to negotiate with them in Selkie, a language he had studied recreationally but had limited fluency in. Aili, he reflected, would be so much better for this on every level. At least they had been willing to listen to her.
This pod, however, didn’t seem to be in the mood for listening, despite the new EM dampers on the gig and equipment. It was a largish pod, nearly two dozen members, and thus presumably was aggregated from several smaller pods, banded together for mutual protection. Many of the squales were scarred or missing limbs. They seemed to be swimming in rather a hurry for a region several hundred kilometers south of the main base, a heavily defended location containing multiple large spiral structures that appeared to serve an agricultural function. Normally, Ra-Havreii wouldn’t have dreamed of getting in their way. But this was the first pod that had passed near enough to the base to engage with.