At the sight of those terrible, peg-shaped teeth, there was a respectful murmur from the audience. Perhaps Snowy knew the impression she had created, for she yawned again, even more widely, giving a still better view of her formidable dentures. Dolphins have small, pinlike teeth, intended merely for grasping fish before they are swallowed whole, but these teeth were designed to do the same job as a shark's. They could bite clean through a seal or a dolphin—or a man.
Now that the island had acquired a killer whale, everyone wanted to see what the Professor would do with her. For the first three days, he left her alone, until she had become used to her new surroundings and had recovered from the excitement of the trip.
Since she had already been in captivity for several months, and was quite used to human beings, she quickly settled down and accepted both live and dead fish when they were given to her.
The task of feeding the whale was undertaken by Mick's family, usually by his father Jo Nauru or his uncle Stephen, skipper of the Flying Fish. Though they took on the job merely to earn some extra money, they soon became quite fond of their charge. She was intelligent, which everyone had expected, but she was also good-natured—which hardly seemed right for a killer whale. Mick grew particularly attached to her, and she showed obvious pleasure when he came near the pool—and disappointment if he left without giving her anything.
When he was quite sure that Snowy had settled down and was taking a healthy interest in life, the Professor began his first tests. He played some simple phrases of Dolphin to her through the underwater hydrophones, and studied her reactions.
At first, they were quite violent. She charged around the pool in all directions, looking for the source of the noise. There was no doubt that she associated dolphin voices with food, and thought that dinner had been served.
It took her only a few minutes to realize that she had been fooled and that there weren't any dolphins in the pool. After that, she listened attentively to the sounds that were played to her, but refused to go chasing after them. Professor Kazan's hope that she would reply to some of the Dolphin talk in her own language was not fulfilled; she remained stubbornly dumb.
Nevertheless, he was making a little progress in "Orcan," using tape recordings of killer-whale sounds. He used OSCAR's infallible computer memory to hunt through the mass of material for Dolphin words. He found many. The names of several fish, for example, were almost the same in Orcan as in Dolphin. Probably both languages—like English and German, or French and Italian—sprang from some common ancient origin.
Professor Kazan hoped so, for it would greatly simplify his work.
He was not too disappointed by Snowy's lack of cooperation, for he had other plans for her, which could be carried out whether she co-operated or not. After she had been on the island for two weeks, a team of medical technicians arrived from India and began to install electronic equipment at the edge of the pool. When they were ready, the water was drained off, and the indignant whale was stranded helplessly in the shallows.
The next step involved ten men, some strong ropes, and a massive wooden framework that had been designed to hold the whale's head clamped in a fixed position. She was not at all pleased with this, nor was Mick, who had to assist with the project by playing a hose pipe over Snowy to, prevent her skin from drying in the sun.
"No one's going to hurt you, old girl," he said reassuringly. "It'll all be over in a minute, and you can start swimming around again."
Then, to Mick's alarm, one of the technicians approached Snowy with an object that looked like a cross between a hypodermic needle and an electric drill. With great care, he selected a spot on the back of the whale's head, placed the device against it, and pressed a button. There was a faint, high-pitched whine, and the needle sank deep into Snowy's brain, going through the thick bone of the skull as effortlessly as a hot knife through butter.
The operation upset Mick much more than it did Snowy, who seemed scarcely aware of the pinprick. This would not have surprised anyone with a knowledge of physiology, but Mick, like most people, did not know the curious fact that the brain has no sense of feeling. It can be cut or pierced without any discomfort to its owner.
Altogether, ten probes were sunk into Snowy's brain. Wires were connected to them and taken to a flat, streamlined box that was clamped to the top of the whale's head. The whole operation took less than an hour. When it was over, the pool was flooded again and Snowy, puffing and blowing, started to swim lazily back and forth. She was obviously none the worse for her experience, though it seemed to Mick that she looked at him with the hurt expression of a person who had been let down by a trusted friend.
The next day, Dr. Saha arrived from New Delhi. As a member of the Institute's Advisory Committee, he was an old friend of Professor Kazan's. He was also a world authority on that most complex of all organs, the human brain.
"The last time I used this equipment," said the physiologist, as he watched Snowy swimming back and forth in the pool, "it was on an elephant. Before I'd finished, I could control his trunk accurately enough to type with it."
"We don't need that sort of virtuosity here," Professor Kazan answered. "All I want to do is to control Snowy's movements and to teach her not to eat dolphins."
"If my men have put the electrodes in the right area, I think I can promise that. But not immediately; I'll have to do some brain-mapping first."
This "brain-mapping" was slow, delicate work, requiring great patience and skill, and Saha sat for hours at his instrument panel, observing Snowy's behavior as she dived, basked in the sun, swam lazily around the pool, or took the fish that Mick offered her.
All the time her brain was broadcasting like a satellite in orbit, through the radio transmitter attached to it. The impulses picked up by the probes were recorded on tape, so that Dr. Saha could see the pattern of electrical activity corresponding to any particular action.
At last he was ready for the first step. Instead of receiving impulses from Snowy's brain, he began to feed electric currents into it.
The result was both fascinating and uncanny—more like magic than science. By turning a knob or closing a switch, Dr. Saha could make the great animal swim to right or left, describe circles or figure eights, float motionless in the center of the pool, or carry out any other movement he wished. Johnny's efforts to control Sputnik and Susie with the communicator, which had once seemed so impressive, now appeared almost childish.
But Johnny did not mind, Susie and Sputnik were his friends, and he preferred to leave them freedom of choice. If they did not wish to obey him—as was often the case— that was their privilege. Snowy had no alternative; the electric currents fed into her brain had turned her into a living robot, with no will of her own, compelled to carry out the orders Dr. Saha gave her.
The more that Johnny thought about this, the more uncomfortable he became. Could the same control be applied to me? When he made inquiries, he found that this had indeed been done, many times, in laboratory experiments. Here was a scientific tool that might be as dangerous as atomic energy if used for evil instead of good.
There was no doubt that Professor Kazan intended to use it for good—at least, for the good of dolphins—but how he intended to use it still puzzled Johnny. He was not very much wiser even when the experiment moved into its next stage, with the arrival on the island of a most peculiar object—a life-size mechanical dolphin, driven by electric motors.
It had been built twenty years ago by a scientist at the Naval Research Laboratories, who couldn't understand how dolphins managed to swim as fast as they did. According to his calculations, their muscles should not be able to drive them at much more than ten miles an hour— yet they could cruise comfortably at twice that speed.
So the scientist had built a model dolphin and studied its behavior as it swam up and down, loaded with instruments. The project had been a failure, but the model was so beautifully made and performed so well that no one had had the heart to destroy it, even when its
designer had given up in disgust. From time to time the Lab technicians dusted it off for public demonstrations, and thus the Professor had come to hear of it. In its small way, it was quite famous.
It would have fooled any human observer, but when it was lowered into Snowy's tank, before scores of fascinated spectators, the result was an utter anticlimax. The whale took one contemptuous glance at the mechanical toy and then ignored it completely.
"Just what I was afraid of," said the Professor, without too much disappointment. Like all scientists, he had long ago learned that most experiments are failures, and he was not ashamed to make a fool of himself, even in public. (After all, the great Darwin once spent hours playing the trumpet in a vegetable garden, to see if sound affected plant growth.) "She probably heard the electric motor and knew the thing was a fake. Well, there's no alternative. We'll have to use real dolphins as bait."
"Are you going to call for volunteers?" asked Dr. Saha, jokingly.
The joke, however, backfired on him. Professor Kazan considered the suggestion carefully, then nodded his head in agreement.
"I'll do exactly that," he said.
Chapter 17
"There's a general feeling around the island," said Mick, "that the Prof has gone stark, staring mad."
"You know that's nonsense," retorted Johnny, springing to the defense of his hero.
"What's he done now?"
"He's been using that brain-wave gadget to control Snowy's feeding. He tells me to offer her one kind of fish, and then Dr. Saha stops her from eating it; after he's given her several jabs, she doesn't even try any more. He calls it 'conditioning.' Now there are four or five big jacks swirrirning round in the pool, but she won't look at them. She'll eat any other fish, though."
"Why does that make the Prof crazy?"
"Well, it's obvious what he's up to. If he can keep Snowy from eating jacks, he can keep her from eating dolphins. But what good will that be? There are millions of killer x whales—he can't condition them all!"
"Whatever the Profs doing," said Johnny stubbornly, "there's a good reason for it. Wait and see."
"All the same, I wish they'd stop bothering Snowy. I'm afraid it'll make her bad-tempered."
That was an odd thing to say about a killer whale, thought Johnny.
"I don't see that that matters very much," be said.
Mick grinned rather shamefacedly and scuffed the ground with his feet.
"You promise you won't tell anyone?" he asked.
"Of course."
"Well, I've been swimming with her a good deal. She's more fun than your little tadpoles."
Johnny stared at him in utter amazement, quite ignoring the insult to Susie and Sputnik.
"And you said the Professor was mad!" he exclaimed, when he had got his breath back.
"You aren't pulling my leg again, are you?" he added suspiciously. By now he could usually spot one of Mick's jokes, but this time he seemed to be serious.
Mick shook his head.
"If you don't believe me, come down to the pool. Oh, I know it sounds crazy, but it's really quite safe. The whole thing started by accident: I got careless one day when I was feeding Snowy, slipped on the edge of the pool, and fell in."
"Phew!" whistled Johnny. "Bet you thought your last moment had come!"
"I sure did. When I came up, I was looking straight into Snowy's mouth." He paused.
"You know, it isn't true about recalling your past life at moments like this. All I thought about was those teeth. I wondered if I'd go down in one piece, or whether she'd bite me in two."
"'And what happened?" asked Johnny breathlessly.
"Well, she didn't bite me in two. She just gave me a gentle nudge with her nose, as if to say, 'Let's be friends.' And that's what we've been ever since. If I don't go swimming with her every day, she gets very upset. Sometimes it's not easy to manage, because if anyone sees me, they'll tell the Prof, and that'll be the end of it"
He laughed at Johnny's expression, which was a mixture of alarm and disapproval.
"It's a lot safer than lion-taming, and men have been doing that for years. I get quite a kick out of it, too. Maybe someday I'll work up to the big whales, like a hundred-and-fifty ton Blue."
"Well, at least one of those couldn't swallow you," said Johnny, who had learned a good deal about whales since coming to the island. "Their throats are too small—they can eat only shrimps and little things like that."
"All right then—what about a sperm whale—Moby Dick himself? He can swallow a thirty-foot squid in one gulp."
As Mick warmed to his theme, Johnny slowly realized that he was motivated by straightforward envy. Even now, the dolphins merely tolerated him and never showed any of the affectionate delight they showered upon Johnny. He felt glad that Mick had at last found a cetacean friend, but wished it had been a more sensible one.
As it happened, he never had a chance to see Mick and Snowy swimming together, for Professor Kazan was now ready for his next experiment. He had been working for days, splicing tapes and composing long sentences in Dolphin; even now he was not certain whether he could convey the exact meaning he wanted to. He hoped that in the parts where his translation fell down, the intelligence of the dolphins would bridge the gap.
He often wondered what they thought of his conversation, built up of words from many different sources. Each sentence he broadcast into the water must sound as if there were a dozen or more dolphins, each taking his turn to speak a few words in a different accent. It must be very puzzling to his listeners, since they could hardly imagine such things as tape recording and sound-editing. The fact that they made any sense at all out of his noises was a tribute both to their intelligence and their patience.
As the Flying Fish pulled away from her moorings, Professor Kazan was unusually nervous.
"Do you know what I feel like?" he said to Dr. Keith as they stood on the foredeck together. "It's as if I'd invited my friends to a party, just to let loose a man-eating tiger among them."
"It's not as bad as that," laughed Keith. "You've given them fair warning, and you do have the tiger under control."
"I hope" said the Professor.
Somewhere on board, a loud-speaker announced: "They're opening the pool gate now.
She doesn't seem in a hurry to leave."
Professor Kazan raised a pair of binoculars and stared back at the island.
"I don't want Saha to control her until we have to," he said. "Ah, here she comes."
Snowy was moving down the channel from the pool, swimming very slowly. When the channel came to an end and she found herself in open water, she seemed quite bewildered and turned around several times as if finding her bearings. It was a typical reaction of an animal—or a man—that had spent a long time in captivity and had now been turned loose into the great outside world.
"Give her a call," said the Professor. The Dolphin "COME HERE!" signal went out through the water; even if the phrase was not the same in Snowy's own language, it was one of those that she understood. She began to swim toward the Flying Fish and kept up with the boat as it drew away from the island, heading out for the deeper water beyond the reef.
"I want plenty of room to maneuver," said Professor Kazan. "And I'm sure Einar, Peggy, and Co., would prefer it that way—just in case they have to run."
" If they come. Perhaps they'll have more sense," Dr. Keith answered doubtfully.
"Well, we'll know in a few minutes. The broadcast has been going out all morning, so every dolphin for miles around must have heard it."
"Look!" said Keith suddenly, pointing to the west Half a mile away, a small school of dolphins was swimming parallel to the ship's course. "There are your volunteers, and it doesn't look as if they're in a hurry to come closer."
"This is where the fun begins," muttered the Professor. "Let's join Saha up on the bridge."
The radio equipment that sent out the signals to the box on Snowy's head, and received her brain impulses in return, had been set
up near the wheel. This made the Flying Fish's little bridge very crowded, but direct contact between skipper Stephen Nauru and Dr.
Saha was essential. Both men knew exactly what to do, and Professor Kazan had no intention of interfering, except in case of emergency.
"Snowy's spotted them," whispered Keith.
There was no doubt of that. Gone now was the uncertainty she had shown when first released; she began to move like a speedboat, leaving a foaming wake behind her as she headed straight for the dolphins.
Understandably, they scattered. With a guilty twinge, the Professor wondered just what they were thinking about him at this moment, that is, if they were thinking of anything except Snowy.
She was only thirty feet from one sleek, plump dolphin when she shot into the air, landed with a crash in the water, and lay there motionless, shaking her head in an almost human manner.
"Two volts, central punishment area," said Dr. Saha, taking his finger off the button.
"Wonder if she'll try it again?"
The dolphins, doubtless surprised and impressed by the demonstration, had re-formed a few hundred yards away. They, too, were motionless in the water, with their heads all turned watchfully toward their ancient enemy.
Snowy was getting over her shock and beginning to move once more. This time she swam quite slowly and did not head toward the dolphins at all. It was some time before the watchers understood her tactics.
She was swimming in a wide circle, with the still motionless dolphins at its center. One had to look closely to see that the circle was slowly contracting.
"Thinks she can fool us, does she?" said Professor Kazan admiringly. "I expect she'll get as close as she dares, pretending she's not interested, and then make a dash for it."
This was exactly what she did do. The fact that the dolphins stood their ground for so long was an impressive proof of their confidence in their human friends, and yet another demonstration of the amazing speed at which they learned. It was seldom necessary to tell a dolphin anything twice.
Dolphin Island (Arthur C. Clarke Collection) Page 10