The Matriarch

The Matriarch of Pod1 watched a morsel of sardine drift past her face, envying how ignorant the fish had been of its impending doom. Deftly, she snatched the portion with her beak and re-examined the top-secret report shimmering in the water above her desk. Her fluke started to twitch, a stress habit she had never been able to completely suppress. As much as she wished it were not, she knew the data was correct; their planet’s sun would go supernova in less than thirty-six thousand turns.

 The Matriarch remembered the promise she had made to her mother, as the former Matriarch lay dying from a rare dolphin virus. “I will protect those in my care,” she had pledged. For her mother that protection had extended only as far as their Pod, but for the Matriarch it now included all the Cetaceans and, as President of the Sentient Council, the Simians as well. Over the turns she had strived to fulfil that death-bed commitment, but now she would fail. 

For turns beyond memory, the Cetaceans and Simians had worked to bring their planet back to what they had imagined it had been like before the humans had ruined, then abandoned it. Now the effort of generations of intelligent, cooperative species would be wasted. There was no hope of escape; the Simians weren’t even close to achieving space travel at a level which could evacuate the whole planet. They had established a base on Luna, but its main purpose was to coordinate solar shots of material deemed too hazardous to remain on the planet - mostly consignments of human offal from the ocean floor, or found buried underground. The Matriarch wondered if they had been responsible for their own demise by treating the sun as a dumping ground. It had been successfully argued at the time that the waste would fuel the sun and extend its life, now it appeared the opposite was true. It was the ultimate absurdity; their planet was to be incinerated by the very thing it had relied on to nourish it back to health. 

Luna would quickly follow its parent’s fate when the time came. The Matriarch knew that the Simians were planning an expedition to the Red Planet, but that was at least ten Simian years away. In any case, it would be no safer haven than Luna from the coming catastrophe.

The Matriarch blew a bubble of air in disgust. There was no point swimming against the current. If the sun was going to vaporise the planet, perhaps there was still time to try and salvage something; her mother would have expected that from her at least. She rotated her left flipper, which seemed to ache more and more these tides, and the soluble control panel appeared. She pushed a call sequence and moved her head slightly to the right, partially obscuring from the camera the distinct coral-fan birthmark that touched her blowhole, rostrum, and eye on that side of her head. 

As she waited for the connection, the Matriarch’s sixth sense indicated that Epsilon, her favourite daughter, was waiting by her office’s entrance. Without turning around the Matriarch waved her in.

“Alpha,” said her daughter, using the honorific-superior greeting. 

“Mare,” replied the Matriarch, indicating informal-family mode by using her daughter’s pet name. She saw much of herself in her daughter. Although exhibiting her father’s dorsal, she had inherited the Matriarch’s singular beak - slightly longer than normal and considered a distinguishing family mark.

“Can you wait outside? I have an important call to make,” the Matriarch said.

Her daughter bobbed in acquiescence and swam back out of the portal. Mare’s flukes had only just disappeared when the view screen shimmered and the chimpanzee face of Julian, King of the Simians, appeared. Julian was small for a fully grown male chimp, and had a premature balding patch on his forehead which prominent eyebrow ridges could not conceal. But the missing top of his right ear was evidence of a physical prowess which was more than matched mentally. The Matriarch knew from experience that he should never be underestimated. Many great apes had made that mistake, and had paid the political price for it.

“Well, well,” Julian said, the voice-encoding system translating his chatter into dolphin clicks. “If it isn’t ‘The Queen Under the Sea’.”

The Matriarch ignored the insult. For Julian to call her a ‘Queen’ was trite and uncivilised. The dolphins’ hierarchy was based on linear pod promotion, with the pods arranged in strict chronographic ranking. She, as the eldest Matriarch of all the pods, led them. Most of the other Cetaceans used the same method, except the great whales who voted, but only for a male leader. Suffrage was a sore point with them, but she was working on that with some of the elder female sperm whales. 

“Hello?” Julian said. “You pushed the ‘Only Use in an Awful Emergency’ button, so I assume this isn’t a social call.”

The Matriarch wondered if she should moderate her tidings, but decided that straight out was best. “I have bad news.”

“You want to hear bad news? The banana crop has ripened too early, and it looks like we’ll be living on bugs for the winter.” He broke into slightly maniacal laughter, as if this were a rich jest he had invented just for her amusement.

“Actually, it’s the heat I wanted to talk to you about. It appears we’re all going to die within a hundred of your years.” 

To be fair, Julian did stop laughing. The Matriarch expected him to make some sort of inane joke, but instead he just sat back and crossed his arms.

“Yes,” Julian said, “I know.”

The Matriarch opened her beak and stared at the screen. Her loss of clicks was all the more embarrassing because she supposed, deep down, that she should have been prepared for this. The Simians were obsessed by space. If pre-historic research was correct, it was actually monkeys that were the first mammals sent (no doubt involuntarily) beyond the planet’s atmosphere. The dolphins liked to think that they were the academics of the Sentient world, but most dolphin scientists, if their flukes were twisted, would acknowledge that the Simians had the edge technologically. Of course she would never admit this to Julian.

The Matriarch closed her beak and tried to counter. “If you knew that, then why haven’t you told us?”

Julian reached offscreen and brought back a banana that looked distinctly past its prime. He peeled it methodically, took a large bite then chewed slowly. With every movement of his jaw, the Matriarch felt the tension in her flippers increasing. 

Eventually, Julian swallowed and belched productively. “My Dear Lady, if we had told you then you’d have only panicked, exactly as you are doing now.”

The Matriarch felt a glimmer of hope. “So we shouldn’t panic?”

Julian tossed the rest of the banana aside. “Panic? Yes. Give up? No.”

“How long have you known?”

Julian began to pick his teeth with his fingernails. “Oh, for some time now. Luna base started experiencing localised communication problems some months ago, and when we checked we found that the sun’s corona had expanded and solar output had increased alarmingly.” He shook his head and scratched under one armpit. “Looks like the humans had it right after all.”

“Are you saying they knew about this even back then?” the Matriarch found it hard to keep the surprise out of her voice.

“Who knows? Maybe they saw it coming, and jumped out of the tree before the storm blew it down. Maybe they had a tip-off, if you believe the theories your orca keep spouting.”

“You think the orcas are right?”

“Who cares? But if they are, you dolphins are going to have to eat a large slice of humble fish-pie. Anyway, we’ve got our own problems to solve.”

“So, what do we do now?” the Matriarch asked.

“Call a meeting of the Sentient Council, that’s your job by the way, and I’ll present our findings. Better make it sooner rather than later, the sun’s not getting any colder after all.”

Julian disconnected before the Matriarch could think of a suitable retort. Damn that ape, she thought.

To the underwater dwellers, the Simians were in many ways uncivilised. But there was no denying their cleverness, and ability to engineer the most ingenious devices. They had a way of solving problems that the aquatic cognoscenti just could not get to grips with (sometimes literally). In the fluidity and pressure of the oceans, the Cetaceans were incomparable: fluid dynamics, pressure manipulation, electro-aquatic power; in these areas and more they had made wonderful advances. Yet the conquest of space had so far proved impossible for them. Even with the use of neg-grav suits, the Cetaceans just could not acquire the skills to manipulate the terrestrial environment. Tests of rockets constructed underwater had proved ineffective. Below the surface they functioned properly - continuing to do so some distance above the ocean - but once they approached the stratosphere, things started to go wrong. Whatever the problem, the Simians currently had space all to themselves.

The Matriarch sensed her daughter’s impatience, and sent an empathic acknowledgement that her call was finished. 

Mare swam back in to float beside her. “You look troubled, Mor. Can I do anything to help?”

The Matriarch considered this. Her daughter was a rising star in the Dolphin Academy of Sciences, and although her speciality of Human Studies did not immediately seem relevant, since the science of miracles appeared to be required, the Matriarch still wondered. 

“Have you and Tube ever discussed the Orca Hypothesis?” said the Matriarch. She had to be careful talking to her daughter about her mate. Tube was a striped dolphin and some of the predominantly bottlenose population, as enlightened as they all were supposed to be, still clung to ancient prejudices. 

Mare snorted, the perma-breathe apparatus emitting a mournful, horn-like sound as it processed the faster-than-expected movement of air. “That awful chum? Not likely.”

The Matriarch put a flipper around her. “Nevertheless, I’d like you and Tube to review all data pertaining to the humans’ departure from the planet, and correlate it with the Orca Hypothesis.”

“Mother, you can’t be serious!” Mare shot out from her mother’s embrace. “It’s a complete waste of time. Even the orcas don’t know where the Hypothesis came from. They’re just repeating some drivel their ancestors dreamt up.”

“Do I need to make it an official order Epsilon Daughter?” the Matriarch switched to formal-family mode. 

Mare shuddered. “Do you have any idea how much information we have on the humans’ exodus? None. I believe ‘sweet flipper all’ is the in-vogue expression.” She swam for the portal, but stopped and turned around. “If this is a punishment because I mated with Tube against your wishes then ⎯”

“Stop,” the Matriarch held up a flipper. “Dearest One this is nothing of the sort. I can see that you and Tube are happy, and I know he is a fine male who wishes nothing more than to please you. It rewards me that you have found such joy.” She rotated her beak to indicate lack of concealment. “This is a serious request, triggered by serious events. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific, but I’m about to call a meeting of the Sentient Council and the results of your findings, which by the way you have ten tides to complete, will be presented there.”

Mare seemed to be looking for a sign that this was some sort of motherly prank, but apparently seeing nothing to indicate it, bowed formally. “As you have requested, so shall it be done. We’ll do what we can in the tides given, but it will not be scientific.”

The Matriarch swept herself backwards. “Science has never been one of the primary leads at the Sentient Council. Just do your job and have the report filed by the tenth tide.”

Mare started to swim out, but stopped at the cusp of the portal and turned around. “Mor, is everything all right?”

The Matriarch of Pod1, Alpha Female and Epsilon’s Mother looked at her daughter, realising that any calves Mare and Tube had might not live long enough to have their own offspring. “No,” she replied in a heavy voice. “Everything is far from all right.”