by J. R. Rain
“Then you can stay right beside the boat. The sharks won’t come close to it; they know they’re not welcome. It should be safe enough.”
“It should be,” I agreed. I swam right up against the side of the boat. “Open your mind to mine, so I can enter and settle.”
Tayle did, and I leaped in a fashion, out of my body, out of the water, and into her head. It felt like landing in a thick bed of seaweed, only it wasn’t physical.
“Oh, I feel you!” Tayle exclaimed. “Like hugging you, only with my mind.”
“Yes, you are holding me now,” I agreed. “Piggy-back.”
“Can you see out of my eyes, the way I did with yours?”
I tried. “Yes. I see the deck.”
“I’ll walk around the boat.” Tayle did so, and I saw the view of it shifting as she walked, as if she were swimming. Swimming with no water.
“This is weird,” I said, using a term she liked.
“Maybe it’s like riding a horse, only closer.”
I picked up the image and feeling from her mind. “Close enough,” I agreed.
“Sorry I can’t do much, here on the boat. I wonder how you would like a roller coaster?”
I picked up that giddy concept too. “Not right now, please.”
She laughed. “So what else is there? I can’t give you the kind of tour you gave me.”
“This is enough. We can talk to your father. I am going to need his support, if I am to get in touch with a human leader.” Because I understood that she had no legal standing in her culture, while her father did. That was one of the differences between humans and dolphins: not just anyone could do some things.
Tayle nodded. “I guess so. I don’t know how well he has adjusted to your earlier contact. He’s been doing a lot of thinking.”
“Tell him I’m with you.”
“Okay,” she said doubtfully. “But you may have to jump back into the water in a hurry.”
Return to my body. I was peripherally aware of it, floating beside the boat, quietly breathing. “I can do that.”
She walked to the cabin, where the man sat with his tools. “Hey, dad, can we talk? I’ve got something big to tell you.”
“About the strange dolphin?”
“Yes. She’s with me now. In my head, I mean.”
He studied her. “So I wasn’t imagining things yesterday.”
“You weren’t,” Tayle agreed. “She’s a telepathic dolfin, and she needs to talk with you.”
He smiled. “And I think I need to talk with her. It’s that, or question my own sanity, after that voice I heard yesterday. I pondered overnight, and concluded that I’d rather verify a telepathic dolphin.”
He was coming to terms with it! But I did not try to contact him directly, after the way he had reacted yesterday. It was better going though Tayle. “She wants to tell you her story,” she said, responding to my thought.
“You’re sure she’s friendly? Not trying to lure you into some alien mind trap, like one of your junk movies?”
Tayle smiled. “Pretty sure, dad. We’re sharing minds. She just took me on a deep sea tour. We met a manta ray.”
“So if it’s insanity, we’re both suffering it.”
“A talking dolfin’s easier,” Tayle said, smiling.
“So what’s her story?”
“Well, it’s complicated to explain, dad. She—”
“Can she talk through you?”
“I guess.” Tayle turned to me, inwardly. “Can you?”
I tried. I activated her vocal chords. “Hello, Tayle’s sire.” I said slowly. I was not doing a perfect job, and the voice was significantly different from her natural one. I had to translate my thoughts into the human language, which was not a song or whistle. It was awkward. I couldn’t think in human.
“Er, hello dolphin,” he answered. “Who are you? I am Johnson Davis. Jon for short.”
“I am Azael, a dolphin.”
“So you say. And you are in, ah, my daughter’s mind but you are not pure imagination,” he said.
Did he believe it, or was he humoring his daughter? I touched his mind without interfering, and discovered extreme tension. The idea of insanity truly appalled him, but it was difficult to believe in a telepathic dolphin. He did value his sanity more, but was not at all sure he wasn’t going crazy.
That gave me the key. “I know how you feel, Jon,” I said carefully. “I felt that way when a giant squid spoke to me telepathically. I was afraid it wanted to eat me. But instead it gave me telepathy. Then I knew it was not hostile. I can share that telepathy with you, and then you will know that you’re not crazy.”
“A giant squid,” he repeated.
“It was surprised too. It had been contacted by aliens.”
“Aliens.”
“They are deep sea creatures. They can’t come to land themselves. So they sent the squid to me, with the telepathy, and it sent me to you. We have to reach your pod leader, because there is great danger to all of Earth.”
“That does it,” Jon said. “This is a grade Z movie, testing me to see how much bilge I’ll believe. We’re getting out of here.” And he jumped up and went to the motor controls.
I had thought we were making progress! Was it all about to be lost? What could I do to save the situation?
Chapter Thirteen
The engine rumbled to life.
I knew of such engines, as I’ve heard them throughout my life. My mother had taught me to be wary of the sound of approaching engines. For good reason! Their great nets had spread far and wide, catching anything and everything, including our fleeing pod. Hearing the sound now, and being so close to it, awakened old fears and anger...and hate.
Be calm, cautioned Tayle. He’s just my father. He would never hurt a dolfin. We are not commercial fisherman. He is just confused and, true to his nature, tends to run away from problems. He ran away from my mother years ago when things got rough.
Where is your mother now? I silently asked.
She’s passed, Azael.
This was a strange term, but accompanied with images of seeing her mother dying in a strange white room, surrounded by more man-made machines, I understood the concept.
We have that in common, I thought.
Tayle merely nodded, and I sensed within her that the loss of her mother was as fresh as the loss of my own. I gave her a mental squeeze and she returned it.
Meanwhile, the boat was moving, and I reached out to my idly floating dolphin self and kicked once, twice and moved away from the sharp propellers.
I considered our dilemma. Her father truly feared he was going insane, which I understood as losing one’s ability to think rationally. We didn’t worry about such things in the ocean. We worried about food. We worried about sharks. We worried about man. We didn’t worry about our minds.
My father likes to worry, thought Tayle to me now. He’s always worrying and pacing and seeing his doctors and taking medicine.
All of these were, of course, foreign concepts to me, but I quickly grasped their meaning—or tried to—based on the images and feelings and memories Tayle had of each word.
Apparently, there were other humans who treated other sick humans with something called medicine, something that appeared magical, at least in Tayle’s mind. Perhaps one of these medicine men, or doctors, was who I should seek.
But first things first, how to convince her father—one who was already prone to worry—that he wasn’t going insane? That a dolphin really was speaking through his daughter, and that he should not only trust us, but help us. Or help me to deliver the message I needed to deliver.
I pondered as the boat began moving toward the shore. I permitted my dolphin-self to follow safely a few lengths behind.
I saw the crux of the problem. Any attempt to prove that I was who I claimed that I was, would only further convince him that he was going crazy.
As the ship bounced over the choppy waves, wind whipped Tayle’s long hair, which fluttered aro
und her face like so much seaweed. I still could not see the appeal of having such a long mane.
Tayle giggled. Hair is fun, silly. I can put a bow in it or make pig tails out of it. But my favorite is a ponytail. Anything that has to do with ponies are my favorite.
Point taken, I thought, although I was glad that dolphins did not have to deal with the mess.
I considered my options. We were heading toward shore, and somewhere on shore would be the pod leader, who would have the answer. Or, rather, who would have the ability to make the necessary decision. It was a big decision. Humanity was in for a surprise. We all were. There was not much time to waste. In fact, we were fast approaching a small wooden dock.
Yes, that’s our dock, thought Tayle. Our private dock. You would be safe there, perhaps even under it. No one would mess with you there or even see you.
I thought about that, and realized that now, better than later, would be ideal to forward this mission. I needed her father to come around.
I considered the idea of his medicine, and asked Tayle to explain them further.
They’re supposed help him relax, thought Tayle. At least, that’s what he always says.
And then it hit me. I could help him relax. In fact, I had direct access to his mind, much like the medicine.
Let’s go talk to your father again, I projected to Tayle.
Please don’t hurt him. He’s kind of messed up, but he’s all I have.
I won’t hurt him, I reassured her. I’m going to work with him much the same way his medicine works for him.
Dolphin medicine!
Something like that, I thought.
We soon stood next to him on the bridge, as Tayle thought of it. This was a strange room with many sparkling blinking machines. Why humans make everything so complicated, I would never know. As Tayle stood next to her father, he jumped a little, and then gave her a small smile and patted her head lovingly. He loved her, I sensed it from her and him. He was just, perhaps, a little frightened.
As we stood there, I reached gently toward his mind. Yes, good, he was calming down. He was telling himself over and over again that his daughter just had an overactive imagination. This seemed to be working for him, but it was not accurate. His daughter, of course, was not imagining me.
I reached deeper, beyond this first layer of thought, and reached a deeper layer within his mind. Here, I suggested to him that all was okay with him, that he was not going crazy, that there really were aliens in the deep, and there really was a looming threat to the earth.
When I had done all I could, I retreated out of his mind and back into Tayle’s own, and when the boat finally docked and after her father had properly secured it, and as my own gently swimming dolphin self glided safely under our feet to rest near some wooden pylon, her father turned to us and said, “So, you would like for me to take you to our pod leader?”
I spoke through Tayle. “Yes, sir.”
“Then let’s go.”
Chapter Fourteen
What did you do? Tayle asked me internally. He’s completely different.
I went deeper into his mind, I answered. I reassured his—I think you call it subconscious—his subconscious mind that this is legitimate and he’s not crazy.
But if you can do that, couldn’t you also convince him that purple fairies rule the world? That the Flying Spaghetti Monster is God?
I don’t think so, because the truth works better than a lie.
That’s good. She was reassured. She didn’t much like lies, necessary as they might be on occasion.
We got off the boat and walked along the dock to their house. Then to what I learned from her mind was their car: a kind of boat that moved on land. “Where are we going?” Tayle asked her father.
“Bill Norris’s office. He has the connections we need.”
“Gee.”
He smiled. “Don’t be impressed, kid. He’s just a two-bit politician like the rest of them, hungry for votes, money, and notoriety, in that order. But he has the connections we need, being a congressman. If Azael can persuade him the way she persuaded me, he’ll be a useful link.” He glanced at her. “But stay out of his reach, girl, you understand me?”
“He grabs girls?”
“Parts of them. Don’t say anything, just stay clear.”
“I will,” Tayle promised.
I understood more of that warning than she did. So human males could go after girl children, just as rogue dolphins or orcas did. Indeed, she should stay out of reach.
We got in the car, which was a sort of house with turning wheels, a thing I had never encountered before, but understood from Tayle’s mind. Tayle fastened what she knew to be a seat belt in the passenger seat, while her father took the driver’s seat. Then he did something, and the motor came to life.
I cringed, but handled it. It was no worse than the boat motor, and Tayle had no fear of it at all. The car moved out, maneuvered to reach the street, then went faster along it. In fact the trees and houses fairly zipped by on either side; this thing was zooming! Yet it left no wake in the road behind. It was a different kind of craft.
There was a red boat light ahead, and the car stopped. Then there was a green light, and the car moved forward again. It obeyed the commands of the lights! Was a colored light the ruler of the land?
No, silly! Tayle thought, laughing. The lights just direct traffic so cars don’t crash into each other at intersections.
I learned to do what she did: tune out the things outside the car. They were her father’s concern, not ours. I could not afford to get lost in incidental details. I needed to make the necessary connection, then return gratefully to the sea.
“Now Azael,” Jon said.
I used Tayle’s mouth to answer. “Yes.”
“First we need to get in to see Rep Norris. His secretary will block us. It’s her job to keep un-wealthy constituents away from him. Will you be able to persuade her to let us in?”
“I think so.”
“And once we’re in his presence, you can persuade him to listen? Because he’s going to be ten times as balky as I was, and he doesn’t much care about the health of the world the way we do. He’ll never believe about dolphins, aliens, or global threats just from the telling. Not unless there’s money in it. You’ll have to tweak his mind.”
So Jon understood what I had done with him, and accepted it. He was on our side. “I will try,” I agreed.
“Good girl.”
Once dad gets convinced, he stays convinced, Tayle thought.
But I knew that the representative would not have a daughter he loved to help persuade him. This could be a difficult case to make.
In due course we reached the office complex. Tayle and her father got out of the car and entered the building. Sure enough, there was a desk with a secretary, a forbidding woman, physically and mentally. She assessed his rough clothing and humble demeanor at a glance and knew he was not worth the representative’s time. “May I help you, sir?” she inquired, with no intention of helping him do anything but get quickly out of the office.
I didn’t fool with her. I reached into her mind and thought THIS GUY’S IMPORTANT. HE HAS MONEY. This was a concept I had picked up from Tayle: there were layers of importance in the human culture, and they all had to be properly navigated. Money was completely foreign to my experience, but magical here. Jon didn’t have much of it, so this was a lie that needed to be replaced with the truth as soon as possible.
Jon opened his mouth. But the secretary, subtly persuaded, was already buzzing the inner office. “Go right in,” she said, smiling superficially.
“Thank you.” Privately Jon was smiling, enjoying this. You’re good, dolphin, he thought to me.
I am drawing on Tayle’s mind for power, since my own host body is distant, I replied. I don’t know how far it will stretch.
Draw on my mind too, he suggested.
Thank you. I may have to.
Representative Bill Norris stood up from his c
hair behind his desk as we entered. “Always glad to meet a campaign contributor,” he said, shaking Jon’s hand. This was a sort of touching of flippers, a formal greeting humans did.
“Well, it’s not exactly that,” Jon said. “It’s more important.”
The man frowned. “Oh?” As if anything could be more important than votes and money, two aspects of the same currency.
“The world is in great danger.”
The frown deepened. This threat did not make the politician’s top ten. “Global warming, if it exists at all, is not my bailiwick.”
“Not that. This is more immediate.” Azael, he thought. Your turn.
I plunged in to the man’s mind, bypassing the first three layers, as votes, money and notoriety were not my concerns. Down under global warming and pollution, which he did not believe in, was something he did: a threat to his frequent yacht vacations with his very young and adoring mistress. He did not want bad weather on those dates; sea sickness was hell on sex. But would this tie in with the larger threat to the world? Because I needed to find an avenue in his mind from yacht weather to the deadly magnetic bubble, and I needed to do it fast, before I lost his attention. My powers of persuasion were weakening with distance and the involvement of other minds, so it had to make sense on his terms. Could I manage it?
Chapter Fifteen
I used all my focus to project an image of the earth’s destruction. It was, in fact, the same image that had been projected into my mind from Levy who, I suspected, received his image from the aliens themselves.
As I delivered the image, Norris blinked and sat up straight. He shook his head a few times, and then rubbed his eyes.
I sent him an image of the earth’s destruction, I told Jon.
Tayle father’s nodded, and said, “Are you okay, sir?”
“I’m, ah, not entirely sure.” The representative rubbed his head some more, as I sent further details of the earth’s destruction: human cities collapsing, mountains crumbling, oceans burning.