Tkett
He came fully conscious again, only to discover with mild surprise that he was already swimming fast, leaping and diving through the ocean's choppy swells, propelled by powerful, rhythmic fluke-strokes.
Under other circumstances, it might have been disorienting to wake up in full motion. Except that a pair of dolphins flanked Tkett, one on each side, keeping perfect synchrony with his every arch and leap and thrust. That made it instinctively easy to literally swim in his sleep.
How long has this been going on?
He wasn't entirely sure. It felt like perhaps an hour or two. Perhaps longer.
Behind him, Tkett heard the low thrum of a sea sled's engine, cruising on low power as it followed the three of them on autopilot.
Why aren't we using the sled? He wondered. Three could fit, in a pinch. And that way they could get back to Makanee quicker, to report that...
Stale air exchanged quickly for fresh as he breached, performing each move with flawless precision, even as his mind roiled with unpleasant confusion.
... to report that Mopol and Zhaki are dead.
We found Peepoe, safe and well, wandering the open ocean.
As for the "machine" noises we were sent to investigate...
Tkett felt strangely certain there was a story behind all that. A story that Peepoe would explain later, when she felt the time was right.
Something wonderful, he recited, without quite knowing why. A flux of eagerness seemed to surge out of nowhere, priming Tkett to be receptive when she finally told everyone in the pod about the good news.
He could not tell why, but Tkett felt certain that more than just the sled was following behind them.
"Welcome back to the living," Peepoe greeted in crisp Underwater Anglic, after their next breaching.
"Thanks I... seem to be a bit muddled right now."
"Well, that's not too surprising. You've been half asleep for a long time. In fact, one might say you half slept through something really important."
Something about her words flared like a glowing spark within him -- a triggered release that jarred Tkett's smooth pace through the water. He re-entered the water at a wrong angle, smacking his snout painfully. It took a brief struggle to get back in place between the two females, sharing the group's laminar rhythm.
I... slept. I slept on it.
Or rather, half of him had done so.
It slowly dawned on him why that was significant.
There aren't many water-dwellers in the Civilization of Five Galaxies, he mused, reaching for threads that had lain covered under blankets of repose. I guess the Buyur never figured...
A shiver of brief pain lanced from right to left inside his skull, as if a part of him that had been numb just came to life.
The Buyur!
Memories flowed back unevenly, at their own pace.
They never figured on a race of swimmers discovering their experiments, hidden for so long under Jijo's ocean waves. They had no time to study us. To prepare before the encounter.
And they especially never took into account the way a cetacean's brain works.
An air-breathing creature who lives in the sea has special problems. Even after millions of years evolving for a wet realm, dolphins still faced a never-ending danger of drowning. Hence, sleep was no simple matter.
One way they solved the problem was to sleep one brain hemisphere at a time.
Like human beings, dolphins had complex internal lives, made up of many temporary or persistent subselves that must somehow reconcile under an overall persona. But this union was made even more problematic when human genetic meddlers helped turn fallow dolphins into a new sapient race. All sorts of quirks and problems lay rooted in the hemispheric divide. Sometimes information stored in one side was frustratingly hard to get at from the other.
And sometimes that proved advantageous.
The side that knew about the Buyur -- the one that had slept while amnesia was imposed on the rest -- had much less language ability than the other half of Tkett's brain. Because of this, only a few concepts could be expressed in words at first. Instead, Tkett had to replay visual and sonic images, reinterpreting and extrapolating them, holding a complex conversation of enquiry between two sides of his whole self.
It gave him a deeper appreciation for the problems -- and potential -- of people like Chissis.
I've been an unsympathetic bastard, he realized.
Some of this thought emerged in his sonar echoes as an unspoken apology. Chissis brushed against him the next time their bodies flew through the air, and her touch carried easy forgiveness.
"So," Peepoe commented when he had taken some more time to settle his thoughts. "Is it agreed what we'll tell Makanee?"
Tkett summed up his determination.
"We'll tell everything... and then some!"
Chissis concurred.
# Tell them tell them
# Orca-tricksters
# Promise fancy treats
# But take away freedom! #
Tkett chortled. There was a lot of Trinary elegance in the little female's Primal burst -- a transition from animal-like emotive squawks toward the kind of expressiveness she used to be so good at, back when she was an eager researcher and poet, before three years of hell aboard Streaker hammered her down. Now a corner seemed to be turned. Perhaps it was only a matter of time till this crewmate returned to full sapiency... and all the troubles that would accompany that joy.
"Well," Peepoe demurred. "By one way of looking at things, the Buyur seem to be offering us more freedom. Our descendants would experience a wider range of personal choices. More power to achieve their wishes. More dreams would come true."
"As fantasies and escapism," Tkett dismissed. "The Buyur would turn everybody into egotists... solipsists! In the real world, you have to grow up eventually, and learn to negotiate with others. Be part of a culture. Form teams and partnerships. Ifni, what does it take to have a good marriage? Lots of hard work and compromises, leading to something better and more complicated than either person could've imagined!"
Peepoe let out a short whistle of surprise.
"Why, Tkett! In your own prudish, tight-vented way, I do believe you're a romantic."
Chissis shared Peepoe's gentle, teasing laughter, so that it penetrated him in stereo, from both sides. A human might have blushed. But dolphins can barely conceal their emotions from each other, and seldom try.
"Seriously," he went on. "I'll fight the Buyur because they would keep us in a playpen for eons to come, denying us the right to mature and learn for ourselves how the universe ticks. Magic may be more romantic than science. But science is honest... and it works.
"What about you, Peepoe? What's your reason?"
The was a long pause. Then she answered with astonishing vehemence.
"I can't stand all that kings and wizards dreck! Should somebody rule because his father was a pompous royal? Should all the birds and beasts and fish obey you just because you know some secret words that you won't share with others? Or on account of the fact that you've got a loud voice and your egotistic will is bigger than others?
"I seem to recall we fought free of such idiotic notions ages ago, on Earth... or at least humans did. They never would've helped us dolphins get to the stars if they hadn't broken out of those sick thought patterns first.
"You want to know why I'll fight them, Tkett? Because Mopol and Zhaki will be right at home down there -- one of them dreaming he's Superman, and the other one getting to be King of the Sea."
The three dolphins swam on, keeping pace in silence while Tkett pondered what their decision meant. In all likelihood, resistance was going to be futile. After all, the Buyur were overwhelmingly powerful and had been preparing for half a million years. Also, the incentive they were offering would make all prior temptations pale in comparison. Among the Six Races ashore -- and the small colony of dolphins -- many would leap to accept, and help make the new world of magical wonder compulsory.
We've never had an enemy like this before, he realized. One that takes advantage of our greatest weakness, by offering to make all our dreams come true.
Of course there was one possibility they hadn't discussed. That they were only seeing the surface layers of a much more complicated scheme... perhaps some long and desperately unfunny practical joke.
It doesn't matter, Tkett thought. We have to fight this anyway, or we'll never grow strong and wise enough to get the joke. And we'll certainly never be able to pay the Buyur back, in kind. Not if they control all the hidden levers in Oz.
For a while their journey fell into a grim mood of hopelessness. No one spoke, but sonar clicks from all three of them combined and diffused ahead. Returning echoes seemed to convey the sea's verdict on their predicament.
No chance. But good luck anyway.
Finally, little Chissis broke their brooding silence, after arduously spending the last hour composing her own Trinary philosophy glyph.
In one way, it was an announcement -- that she felt ready to return to the struggles of sapiency.
At the same time, the glyph also expressed her manifesto. For it turned out that she had a different reason for choosing to fight the Buyur. One that Tkett and Peepoe had not expressed, though it resonated deep within.
* Both the hazy mists of dreaming,
* And the stark-clear shine of daylight,
* Offer treasures to the seeker,
* And a trove of valued insights.
* One gives open, honest knowledge,
* And the skill to achieve wonders.
* But the other (just as needed!)
* Fills the soul and sets hearts astir.
* What need then for ersatz magic?
* Or for contrived disney marvels?
* God and Ifni made a cosmos,
* Filled with wonders... let's go live it! *
Peepoe sighed appreciatively.
"I couldn't have said it better. Screw the big old frogs! We'll make magic of our own."
They were tired and the sun was dropping well behind them by the time they caught sight of shore and heard other dolphins chattering in the distance. Still, all three of them picked up the pace, pushing ahead through Jijo's silky waters.
Despite all the evidence of logic and their senses, the day still felt like morning.
THE END
The Real Culture War
