Ensign noted that Winger, Floater, and Fuzzvoice edged around the pod to hover behind Killer. Shorty had separated from both groups and hung off to one side, clearly not a part of either.
“Well, I will take the wager,” Melody sang out. “Look at us. We’re what Teacher made us and I can’t believe he’d steer us falsely.”
“Perhaps not deliberately,” Drummer boomed in the lower registers, the force of his reply roiling the plankton ahead of him. “But he can be as wrong as any of the rest of us.”
“Still, I trust him,” Melody said stubbornly.
“That’s illogical,” Killer told her. “Have you ever seen the band edge storms? I have.”
Melody hesitated and before anyone could respond Teacher spoke. “You say we would all die in the crossings?” he asked sharply.
“Perhaps not, but there wouldn’t be enough of us left. One cannot carry all the songs. Not two, not three. Without enough to make up a choir we’d lose the thing that makes us us.”
“And what is it that makes us? Sharks sing, after all.”
Killer ignored the insult. “They don’t sing like we do.”
“Precisely. Sharks don’t pass on their songs. But what if we lose the songs? Will we still be us then? Not just the Bach Choir, but the entire High Folk. We have to save the songs and you are our best chance.
“So which is greater?” Teacher continued. “Your concern for the Bach Choir or concern for all of the High Folk?”
Killer contracted with rage. He puffed up as if to shout, contracted again and settled for snorting on all frequencies. “You can do what you want,” he said quietly. “I am staying.”
“I’m staying too,” Drummer said and behind him, Wringer, Floater and Fuzzvoice bobbed in agreement.
“I cannot force you,” Teacher said gently.
Killer gave another snort, expanded and cut up over the formation in a swoop that brought him close to passing above and behind Teacher. He couldn’t quite bring himself to do it, so he settled for passing over Ensign so low and close Ensign wanted to reach up and slap his vulnerable underside as he went by. Drummer and the others followed in a loose gaggle.
It’s finally come, Ensign thought numbly. The split they had all dreaded in secret was out in the open. He was surprised to find he was more relieved than anything else. And also obscurely glad he had no part in it.
Simon wheezed something incoherent. A free-swimming remora flapped toward Ensign, then folded its wings tight against his body and settled on one of his earmouths. “Nice folks don’t do things like that!” came Crystal’s easy trill. “Don’t worry about Killer, Ensign. Just let him go off and sulk.”
“Thanks,” Ensign vibrated back to the remora, “I appreciate it.” Then he twitched the remora with the new message off his body to return to the sender.
“If speed is so important won’t the old one slow us down?” The Geek asked to break the tension.
“Perhaps,” Teacher said, “but we will need him.”
He doesn’t seem upset, Ensign thought, watching Teacher closely. Somehow there was more to this than he understood. That bothered him so much he sought out Shorty later. Not only was he several seasons older than the rest of the Bach Choir, he had studied with Teacher longer than any of the others.
“Did you get the feeling Teacher expected the Choir to split when he set his task?” he asked as their grazing brought them close in the plankton fields.
The question seemed to amuse the older male. “Teacher keeps close track of his pupils. There’s probably not a lot that goes on in the Bach Choir he doesn’t know. And what he doesn’t know he can guess.”
“But if he knew it would split us why did he do it?”
Shorty paused and cocked a main eye at Ensign. “Think it through. He doesn’t know where Skyfall will come and he wants the songs to survive. Which has the better chance? One pod or two widely separated ones?”
“But that’s so ruthless!” Among the High Folk splitting a pod in bad feeling was a tragedy.
Shorty moved closer to Ensign, so close it was almost improper. “When it suits his purposes Teacher can be as ruthless as a shark,” he said very softly. “Do you know he’s abandoned remoras just because others came along who could hold more songs?
“I don’t believe it!”
“I was there. We all had full loads and there was no one to take the surplus. So he just dumped them.”
“That’s monstrous!”
“Son, you’ve got a lot to learn about being a pod leader,” Shorty said quietly. “Especially about being as great a leader as Teacher.”
“But he’s so warm, so loving.”
“Oh yes. He genuinely likes all of us. In some ways we’re more his children than the ones he sired. But don’t think that would save any of us if he believed it was necessary to doom us for some higher purpose.”
“And this trip?”
“I think someone convinced him it’s necessary. Probably Simon. And now he’s using what he’s built in the years he taught and nurtured us to get us to go with him.” He rippled his trailing edge in ironic amusement. “All part of a pod leader’s job. You spend your life building up good will and then sometimes you cash that good will in.”
Ensign was shocked to silence. For several minutes they flew side by side without speaking. Finally Shorty broke in on his thoughts.
“Son, one day you’re going to get a chance at the pod leader’s job. Before you take it you’d better think long and hard about what you may have to do in order to do the job right. You just might decide you don’t want that job after all.”
Then with a lift and swoop Shorty moved away, leaving Ensign alone in the lightning-shot dark.
The group spent the night feeding and exchanging remoras with the Choir members who were staying. Unlike most partings, it was a strained, almost ritualistic affair. Both groups kept to themselves and sent the remoras over long distances. That slowed the exchange of information. Worse, many of the Bach Choir’s songs were so complicated that no single remora held all of them. Each group ended up with isolated pieces of some of their most important songs. They would have to try to reconstruct them later.
Already we are losing parts of ourselves, Ensign thought. He wondered how much more they would lose before the journey was over.
The travelers left the next morning, rising up and away from the plankton fields, expanding their bodies to ride the updrafts towards the high, cold sky.
Little enough food in the spaces between the edges, Ensign thought as they floated upward and turned toward the north. Feeding had been fairly good but none of them had much surplus. Plankton was richest and feeding safest in the turbulent areas around the edges of the semi-permanent cyclonic storms that formed in the zones. The upwelling currents sucked up larval plankton, ammonia, water ice and other, more complex compounds from the warmer depths, and the plankton fed and bloomed in the sunlight. When you traveled the relatively calm air between the storms you either didn’t eat or you had to drop down very close to the cloud tops to scavenge what plankton remained. That meant you also became shark bait.
Sharks were creatures of the clouds and lightning-flashed darkness. They didn’t like the sunlight and they couldn’t take the cold and low pressure above the cloud tops as well as the High Folk. But then except for the plankton and remoras, nothing on Ensign’s world could.