“Acknowledged, Commander. Good luck. And…take care of the captain.”
“We will, Aili. Good luck to you too—for everyone’s sake. Vale out.”
Aili swam toward the squales and began singing, loudly enough to reach the whole contact pod. She had to persuade them to help her, for not enough of the squales knew her language, and her voice alone could not carry far enough through the ri’Hoyalina. Expressing her gratitude for all their help, she pleaded with them to help her one more time, and help save their world in the process.
They were reluctant, though. By now, the first reports were reaching them through the long-range channel—songs of fury from squales elsewhere on the planet, battling the perceived invasion of their world. Aili’s voice had to outweigh that angry chorus, and it was hard. The defender squales went on their guard, like troops reacting to a declaration of war, and counseled against doing anything to help the offworlders. Alos and Gasa came to Aili’s defense, but Cham argued them down, scoffing at the notion that dumping lifeless, alien things into the World Below, the very source of the Song, could heal it rather than harming it worse. Aili hoped Melo would come to her defense again, but the elderly pod leader seemed uncertain, more comfortable with abstract science and philosophy than concrete political decisions.
Still, Aili pleaded with them. “You know me,” she sang, using Selkie but approximating their musical idiom as closely as she could. “You have saved my life, and his, so many times. You’re podmates to me, all of you. Would I betray you now?”
“The others…”Cham began.
“They’re the same as me. They’d do no willing harm. And listen,”she said, calling their attention to the news of battles from distant fronts. “They would give their lives to mend the harm they’ve done. To save your people, even if you kill them in return.
“You know me. You, of all the squales, have touched another world, and felt its Song. Through me. Your sister. Trust what you have heard. Trust me, if no one else. I only ask you, help me sing!”
Alos and Gasa swam to her side. “We shall,”they sang in chorus. “She is our podmate. Our responsibility! Must students teach our mentors now where obligation lies?”
“Your duty’s to the Song!”Cham intoned.
“And that’s the duty that we serve! All things are voices in the Song; they play their destined parts. Aili and we, converging here, as discord finds its peak—might this not be the key that will resolve the Song again?”
The two young squales told Aili to sing her case to the world; they would amplify it for her if no one else would. The defender squales swam forward, but Cham interceded; despite his distrust of Aili, he was angered that they would threaten to turn on podmates. Taking a chance that she would not be stopped, Aili began to sing in Selkie, as loudly as she could. The boys joined her in harmony: Gasa repeated her Selkie words, mimicking her voice as perfectly as any amplifier, but adding strength so it could carry further; while Alos sang the squale translation as a counterpoint. A humanoid might have been confused, but the squales normally communicated this way, in multiple parallel lines of song.
With just the three of them, her song was inadequate to carry far. But Alos and Gasa’s fellow apprentices began joining in one by one, some amplifying her own words as Gasa did, others offering translations. To Aili’s ears, it seemed they were not all singing the same thing, but interpreting in more than one way, offering different lines of argument at the same time.
At first, it was simply a matter of getting the squales’ attention. She sang introductory verses to identify herself, to explain how she came to be here. All the world knew of her by now, of course, but they had not heard her side of it. As she sang of her origins in a different, much smaller ocean, Melo joined in, perhaps intrigued enough by the subject matter of the song to want to sing along. Even one or two of the defender squales were singing with her now. After all, Aili realized, one of the things they believed in defending was the right of all individuals to make their voices heard, whether they agreed with what was sung or not.
And that was something she could build on. “Our mission’s to explore,”she sang.
“To seek out strange new worlds, new life,
To go where we have never gone, and meet the people there.
We voyage in the name of peace. We celebrate all life.
Diversity combined: it’s the refrain that guides our quest.
For different voices, even those that frighten us at first
Can join with ours in harmonies we never could have dreamed;
Just as your voices all combine to sing the Song of Life—
A whole that’s greater than the sum, a chord of destiny.”
As she elaborated further on the theme, she heard Alos and the other squale translators begin to improvise upon it, illustrating it by the very act as well as by the words. She reflected that Riker would love the jazzy spirit of it. Together, they developed the theme that all things in the cosmos, even those that are dangerous or painful or discordant, were nonetheless harmonics of the same fundamental tone, the over-arching Song that sang the universe into being. As alien as she and her companions seemed, she told them, they were still part of the same continuum of life and mind.
At this point, Cham began singing too, but not to reinforce her words. His was a counterpoint conceptually as well as musically, reminding the squales of the crisis precipitated by the offworlders. The defender squales not singing her part took his, amplifying it to compete with hers.