I let myself in through the rear door, moved to the sink, and got the disposal unit open. It took me a minute or so to work the bag out. I opened it, seized a double fistful, and carried them back outside.
“Cup your hands,” I said to him.
He did, and I filled them.
“How’s that?”
He raised them, moved nearer the light spilling through the open door.
“My God!” he said. “You really do!”
“Of course.”
“All right. I’ll dispose of them for you. Thirty-five percent.”
“Twenty-five is tops. Like I said.”
“I know of a gem-and-mineral show a week from Saturday. A man I know could be there if I gave him a call. He’d pay a good price. I’ll call him—for thirty percent.”
“Twenty-five.”
“It’s a pity we are so close and can’t quite come to terms. We both lose that way.”
“Oh, all right. Thirty it is.”
I took back the stones and dumped them into my pockets, and we shook on it. Then Frank turned.
“I’m going over to the lab now,” he said. “See what’s the matter with that unit you brought back.”
“Let me know when you find out, will you? I’d like to know.”
“Sure.”
So he went away and I restashed the gems, fetched a dolphin book, and began to page through it. Then it struck me just how funny it was, the way things were working out. All the talk about dolphins, all my reading, speculating, including a long philosophical dissertation on their hypothetical dreamsongs as a religio-diagogical form of Indus—for what? To find that it was probably all unnecessary? To realize that I would probably get through the entire case without even seeing a dolphin?
Well, that was what I had wanted, of course, what Don and Lydia Barnes and the Institute wanted—for me to clear the good name of the dolphin. Still, what a tangled mess it was turning out to be! Blackmail, murder, diamond smuggling, with a little adultery tossed in on the side…How was I going to untangle it sweetly and neatly, clear the suspects—who were out practicing their ludus and not giving a damn about the whole business—and then fade from the picture, as is my wont, without raising embarrassing questions, without seeming to have been especially involved?
A feeling of profound jealousy of the dolphin came over me and did not entirely vanish. Did they ever create problem situations of this order among themselves? I strongly doubted it. Maybe if I collected enough green karma stamps I could put in for dolphin next time around…
Everything caught up with me, and I dozed off with the light still burning.
A sharp, insistent drumming awakened me.
I rubbed my eyes, stretched. The noise came again, and I turned in that direction.
It was the window. Someone was rapping on the frame. I rose and crossed over, saw that it was Frank.
“Yeah?” I said. “What’s up?”
“Come on out,” he said. “It’s important.”
“Okay. Just a minute.”
I went and rinsed my face, to complete the waking-up process and give me a chance to think. A glance at my watch showed me that it was around ten-thirty.
When I finally stepped outside, he seized my shoulder.
“Come on! Damn it! I told you it was important!”
I fell into step with him.
“All right! I had to wake up. What’s the matter?”
“Paul’s dead,” he said.
“What?”
“You heard me. Dead.”
“How’d it happen?”
“He stopped breathing.”
“They usually do. But how did it happen?”
“I’d gotten to fooling with the unit you’d brought back. It’s over there now. I moved it in when my time came to relieve Barthelme, so that I could keep working on it. Anyway, I got so involved that I wasn’t paving much attention to him. When I finally did check on him again, he was dead. That’s all. His face was dark and twisted. Some sort of lung failure, it seems. Maybe there was an air embolism…”
We entered the rear of the building, the nearest entrance, the water splashing softly behind us, a light breeze following us in. We passed the recently set-up workbench, tools and the partly dismantled sonic unit spread across its surface. Rounding the corner to our left, we entered the room where Paul lay. I switched the light on.
His face was no longer handsome, bearing now the signs of one who had spent his final moments fighting for breath. I crossed to him, felt for a pulse, knew in advance I would find none. I covered a fingernail with my thumb and squeezed. It remained white when I released it.
“How long ago?” I asked.
“Right before I came for you.”
“Why me?”
“You were nearest.”
“I see. Was the sheet torn in this place before, I wonder?”
“I don’t know.”
“There were no cries, no sounds at all?”
“I didn’t hear anything. If I had, I would have come right away.”
I felt a sudden desire for a cigarette, but there were oxygen tanks in the room and no smoking signs all over the building. I turned and retraced my steps, pushed the door open, held it with my back—leaning against it—lit a cigarette, and stared out across the water.
“Very neat,” I said then. “With the day’s symptoms behind him, he’ll warrant a ‘natural causes’ with a ‘possible air embolism,’
‘congestive lung failure,’ or some damn thing behind it.”
“What do you mean?” Frank demanded.
“Was he sedated? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I’d imagine you used the recompressor. Right? Or did you tough it out and just smother him?”
“Come off it. Why would I—”
“In a way, I helped kill him,” I said. “I thought he was safe with you here because you hadn’t done anything about him all this time. You wanted to keep her, to win her back. Spending a lot of money on her was one way you tried. But it was a vicious circle, because Paul was a part of your source of extra revenue.
Then I came along and offered an alternative supply. Then today’s accident, the whole setup here tonight…You rose to the occasion, seized the opportunity, and slammed the barn door. Not to mention striking while the iron was hot. Congratulations. I think you’ll get away with it. Because this is all guesswork, of course. There is no real proof. Good show.”
He sighed.
“Then why go into all that? It’s over. We will go sec Barthelme now and you will talk because I will be too distraught.”
“But I’m curious about Rudy and Mike. I’ve been wondering all along. Did you have any part in it when they got theirs?” “What do you know?” he asked slowly. “And how do you know it?”
“I know that Paul and Mike were the source of the stones. I know that Rudy found out and tried to blackmail them. They dealt with him, and I think Paul took care of Mike for good measure at the same time. How do I know? Paul babbled all the way back this afternoon and I was in the decompressor with him, remember? I learned about the diamonds, the murders, and about Linda and Paul, just by listening.”
He leaned back against the workbench. He shook his head.
“I was suspicious of you,” he said, “but you had the diamonds for proof. You came across them awfully fast, I’ll admit. But I accepted your story because of the possibility that Paul’s deposit was really somewhere quite near. He never told me where it was either. I decided you had to have either stumbled across it or followed him to it and known enough to recognize it for what it was. Whichever way, though, it doesn’t matter. I would rather do business with you. Shall we just leave the whole thing at that?”
“If you will tell me about Rudy and Mike.”
“I don’t really know any more than what you’ve just said. That was none of my affair. Paul took care of everything. Answer one for me now: How did you find the deposit?”
“I didn’t,” I said. “I haven’t the
least idea where he got them.”
He straightened.
“I don’t believe you! The stones—where did they come from?”
“I found where Paul had hidden a bag of them. I stole it.”
“Why?”
“Money, of course.”
“Then why did you lie to me about where you got them?”
“You think I’d come out and say they were stolen? Now, though—”
He came forward very fast, and I saw that he had a large wrench in his hand.
I jumped backward, and the door caught him on the shoulder as it snapped inward. It only slowed him for an instant, though. He burst through and was at me again. I continued my retreat, falling into a defensive position.
He swung and I dodged to the side, chopping at his elbow. We both missed. His backstroke grazed my shoulder then, so that the blow I did land, seconds later, fell near his kidney with less force than I had hoped for. I danced back as he swung again, and my kick caught him on the hip. He dropped to one knee, but was up again before I could press in, swinging toward my head. I backed farther and he stalked me.
I could hear the water, smell it. I wondered about diving in. He was awfully close, though…
When he came in again, I twisted back and grabbed for his arm. I caught hold near the elbow and hung on, hooking my fingers toward his face. He drove himself into me then and I fell, still clutching his arm, catching hold of his belt with my other hand. My shoulder smashed against the ground, and he was on top of me, wrestling to free his arm. As he succeeded in dragging it away, his weight came off me for an instant. Pulling free, I doubled myself into a ball and kicked out with both legs.
They connected. I heard him grunt.
Then he was gone.
I heard him splashing about in the water. I also heard distant voices, calling, approaching us from across the islet.
I regained my feet. I moved toward the edge.
Then he screamed—a long, awful, agonized wail.
By the time I reached the edge, it had ceased.
When Barthelme came up beside me, he stopped repeating “What happened?” as soon as he looked down and saw the flashing fins at the center of the turmoil. Then he said, “Oh, my God!” And then nothing.
In my statement, later, I said that he had seemed highly agitated when he had come to get me, that he told me Paul had stopped breathing, that I had returned with him to the dispensary, determined that Paul was indeed dead, said so, and asked him for the details; that as we were talking he seemed to get the impression that I thought he had been negligent and somehow contributed to the death; that he had grown further agitated and finally attacked me; that we had fought and he had fallen into the water. All of which, of course, was correct. Deponent sinneth only by omission. They seemed to buy it. They went away. The shark hung around, waiting for dessert perhaps, and the dolphin people came and anesthetized him and took him away. Barthelme told me the damaged sonic projector could indeed have been shorting intermittently.
So Paul had killed Rudy and Mike; Frank had killed Paul and then been killed himself by the shark on whom the first two killings could now be blamed. The dolphins were cleared, and there was no one left to bring to justice for anything. The source of the diamonds was now one of life’s numerous little mysteries.
.…So, after everyone had departed, the statements been taken, the remains of the remains removed—long after that, as the night hung late, clear, clean, with its bright multitudes doubled in their pulsing within the cool flow of the Gulf Stream about the station, I sat in a deck chair on the small patio behind my quarters, drinking a can of beer and watching the stars go by.
.…I needed but stamp closed on my mental file.
But who had written me the note, the note that had set the infernal machine to chugging?
Did it really matter, now that the job was done? As long as they kept quiet about me…
I took another sip of beer.
Yes, it did, I decided. I might as well look around a bit more.
I withdrew a cigarette and moved to light it…
When I pulled into the harbor, the lights were on. As I climbed to the pier, her voice came to me over a loudspeaker.
She greeted me by name—my real name, which I hadn’t heard spoken in a long while—and she asked me to come in.
I moved across the pier and up to the front of the building. The door stood ajar. I entered.
It was a long, low room, completely Oriental in decor. She wore a green silk kimono. She knelt on the floor, a tea service laid before her.
“Please come and be seated,” she said.
I nodded, removed my shoes, crossed the room and sat down.
“O-cha do desu-ka?” she asked.
“Itadakimasu.”
She poured, and we sipped tea for a time. After the second cup I drew an ashtray toward me.
“Cigarette?” I asked.
“I don’t smoke,” she said. “But I wish you would. I try to take as few noxious substances into my own system as possible. I suppose that is how the whole thing began.”
I lit one for me.
“I’ve never met a genuine telepath before,” I said, “that I know of.”
“I’d trade it for a sound body,” she said, “any day. It wouldn’t even have to be especially attractive.”
“I don’t suppose there is even a real need for me to ask my questions,” I said.
“No,” she said, “not really. How free do you think our wills might be?”
“Less every day,” I said.
She smiled.
“I asked that,” she said, “because I have thought a lot about it of late. I thought of a little girl I once knew, a girl who lived in a garden of terrible flowers. They were beautiful, and they were there to make her happy to look upon. But they could not hide their odor from her, and that was the odor of pity. For she was a sick little girl. So it was not their colors and textures from which she fled, but rather the fragrance which few knew she could detect. It was a painful thing to smell it constantly, and so in solitude she found her something of peace. Ilad it not been for her ability she would have remained in the garden.”
She paused to take a sip of tea.
“One day she found friends,” she continued, “in an unexpected place. The dolphin is a joyous fellow, his heart uncluttered with the pity that demeans. The way of knowing that had set her apart, had sent her away, here brought her close. She came to know the hearts, the thoughts of her new friends more perfectly than men know those of one another. She came to love them, to be one of their family.”
She took another sip of tea, then sat in silence for a time, staring into the cup.
“There are great ones among them,” she said finally, “such as you guessed at earlier. Prophet, seer, philosopher, musician—there is no man-made word I know of to describe this sort of one, or the function he performs. There are, however, those among them who voice the dreamsong with particular subtlety and profundity—something like music, yet not, drawn from that timeless place in themselves where perhaps they look upon the infinite, then phrase it for their fellows. The greatest I have ever known”—and she clicked the syllables in a high-pitched tone—“bears something like ’Kjwalll’kje’k’koothaïlll’kje’k for name or title. I could no more explain his dreamsong to you than I could explain Mozart to one who had never heard music. But when he, in his place, came to be threatened, I did what must be done.”
“You see that I fail to see,” I said, lowering my cup.
She refilled it, and then, “The Chickcharny is built up over the water,” she said, and a vision of it came clear, disturbingly real, into my mind. “Like that,” she said.
“I do not drink strong beverages, I do not smoke, I seldom take medication,” she said. “This is not a matter of choice. It is a physiological rule I break at my own peril. But should I not enjoy the same things others of my kind may know, just as I now enjoy the cigarette we are smoking?”
“I begin to see—”
“Swimming beneath the ashram at night, I could ride the mounting drug dreams of that place, know the peace, the happiness, the joy, and withdraw if it turned to something else—”
“Mike—” I said.
“Yes, it was he who led me to ’Kjwalll’kje’k’koothaïlll’kje’k, all unknowing. I saw there the place where they had found the diamonds. I see that you think it is near Martinique, since I was there just recently. I will not answer you on this. I saw there too, however, the idea of hurting dolphins. It seemed that they had been driven away from the place of their discovery—though not harmed—by dolphins. Several times. I found this so unusual that I was moved to investigate, and I learned that it was true. The place of their discovery was in the area of his song. He dwells in those waters, and others come to hear him there. It is, in this sense, a special place, because of his presence. They were seeking a way to ensure their own safety when they returned for more of the stones,” she went on. “They learned of the effects of the noises of the killer whale for this purpose. But they also obtained explosives, should the recording prove insufficient over a period of days.
“The two killings occurred while I was away,” she said. “You are essentially correct as to what was done. I had not known they would take place, nor would my telling of Paul’s thoughts ever be admissible in any court. He used everything he ever got his hands or mind around, that man—however poor his grasp. He took Frank’s theory as well as his wife, learned just enough to find the stones, with a little luck. Luck—he had that for a long while. He learned just enough about dolphins to know of the effects of the sounds of the killer whale, but not how they would behave if they had to fight, to kill. And even there he was lucky. The story was accepted. Not by everybody. But it was given sufficient credence. He was safe. And he planned to go back to—the place. I sought a way to stop him. And I wanted to see the dolphins vindicated—but that was of secondary importance, then. Then you appeared, and I knew that I had found it. I went to the station at night, crawled ashore, left you a note.”
An Exaltation of Stars (1973) Anthology Page 14