To The Dark Star

by Silverberg, Robert

  After she had named us, Lisabeth leaped into the sea and swam with us. I must tell you that most of us feel a sort of contempt for you humans because you are such poor swimmers. Perhaps it is a mark of my above-normal intelligence or greater compassion that I have no such scorn in me. I admire you for the zeal and energy you give to swimming, and you are quite good at it, considering all your handicaps. As I remind my people, you manage far more ably in the water than we would on land. Anyway, Lisabeth swam well, by human standards, and we tolerantly adjusted our pace to hers. We frolicked in the water awhile. Then she seized my dorsal fin and said, “Take me for a ride, Ishmael!”

  I tremble now to recollect the contact of her body with mine. She sat astride me, her legs gripping my body tightly, and off I sped at close to full velocity, soaring at surface level. Her laughter told of her delight as I launched myself again and again through the air. It was a purely physical display in which I made no use of my extraordinary mental capacity; I was, if you will, simply showing off my dolphinhood. Lisabeth’s response was ecstatic. Even when I plunged, taking her so deep she might have feared harm from the pressure, she kept her grip and showed no alarm. When we breached the surface again, she cried out in joy.

  Through sheer animality I had made my first impact on her. I knew human beings well enough to be able to interpret her flushed, exhilarated expression as I returned her to shore. My challenge now was to expose her to my higher traits—to show her that even among dolphins I was unusually swift to learn, unusually capable of comprehending the universe.

  I was already then in love with her.

  During the weeks that followed we had many conversations. I am not flattering myself when I tell you that she quickly realized how extraordinary I am. My vocabulary, which was already large when she came to the station, grew rapidly under the stimulus of Lisabeth’s presence. I learned from her; she gave me access to spools no dolphin was thought likely to wish to play; I developed insights into my environment that astonished even myself. In short order I reached my present peak of attainment. I think you will agree that I can express myself more eloquently than most human beings. I trust that the computer doing the printout on this memoir will not betray me by inserting inappropriate punctuations or deviating from the proper spellings of the words whose sounds I utter.

  My love for Lisabeth deepened and grew more rich. I learned the meaning of jealousy for the first time when I saw her running arm in arm along the beach with Dr. Madison, the power-plant man. I knew anger when I overheard the lewd and vulgar remarks of human males as Lisabeth walked by. My fascination with her led me to explore many avenues of human experience; I did not dare talk of such things with her, but from other personnel at the base who sometimes talked with me I learned certain aspects of the phenomenon humans call “love”. I also obtained explanations of the vulgar words spoken by males here behind her back: most of them pertained to a wish to mate with Lisabeth [apparently on a temporary basis], but there were also highly favorable descriptions of her milk glands [why are humans so aggressively mammalian?] and even of the rounded area in back, just above the place where her body divides into the two hind limbs. I confess that that region fascinates me also. It seems so alien for one’s body to split like that in the middle!

  I never explicitly stated my feelings toward Lisabeth. I tried to lead her slowly toward an understanding that I loved her. Once she came overtly to that awareness, I thought, we might begin to plan some sort of future for ourselves together.

  What a fool I was!

  Category 3: The Conspiracy

  A male voice said, “How in hell are you going to bribe a dolphin?”

  A different voice, deeper, more cultured, replied, “Leave it to me.”

  “What do you give him? Ten cans of sardines?”

  “This one’s special. Peculiar, even. He’s scholarly. We can get to him.”

  They did not know that I could hear them. I was drifting near the surface in my rest tank, between shifts. Our hearing is acute and I was well within auditory range. I sensed at once that something was amiss, but I kept my position, pretending I knew nothing.

  “Ishmael!” one man called out. “Is that you, Ishmael?”

  I rose to the surface and came to the edge of the tank. Three male humans stood there. One was a technician at the station; the other two I had never seen before, and they wore body covering from their feet to their throats, marking them at once as strangers here. The technician I despised, for he was one of the ones who had made vulgar remarks about Lisabeth’s milk glands.

  He said, “Look at him, gentlemen. Worn out in his prime! A victim of human exploitation!” To me he said, “Ishmael, these gentlemen come from the League for the Prevention of Cruelty to Intelligent Species. You know about that?”

  “No,” I said.

  “They’re trying to put an end to dolphin exploitation. The criminal use of our planet’s only other truly intelligent species in slave labor. They want to help you.”

  “I am no slave. I receive compensation for my work.”

  “A few stinking fish!” said the fully dressed man to the left of the technician. “They exploit you, Ishmael! They give you dangerous, dirty work and don’t pay you worth a damn!”

  His companion said, “It has to stop. We want to serve notice to the world that the age of enslaved dolphins is over. Help us, Ishmael. Help us help you!”

  I need not say that I was hostile to their purported purposes. A more literal-minded dolphin than I might well have said so at once and spoiled their plot. But I shrewdly said, “What do you want me to do?”

  “Foul the intakes,” said the technician quickly.

  Despite myself, I snorted in anger and surprise. “Betray a sacred trust? How can I?”

  “‘It’s for your own sake, Ishmael. Here’s how it works—you and your crew will plug up the intakes, and the water plant will stop working. The whole island will panic. Human maintenance crews will go down to see what’s what, but as soon as they clear the valves, you go back and foul them again. Emergency water supplies will have to be rushed to St. Croix. It’ll focus public attention on the fact that this island is dependent on dolphin labor—underpaid, overworked dolphin labor! During the crisis we’ll step forward to tell the world your story. We’ll get every human being to cry out in outrage against the way you’re being treated.”

  I did not say that I felt no outrage myself. Instead I cleverly replied, “There could be dangers in this for me.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “They will ask me why I have not cleared the valves. It is my responsibility. There will be trouble.”

  For a while we debated the point. Then the technician said, “Look, Ishmael, we know there are a few risks. But we’re willing to offer extra payment if you’ll handle the job.”

  “Such as?”

  “Spools. Anything you’d like to hear, we’ll get for you. I know you’ve got literary interests. Plays, poetry, novels, all that sort of stuff. After hours, we’ll feed literature to you by the bushel if you’ll help us.”

  I had to admire their slickness. They knew how to motivate me.

  “It’s a deal,” I said.

  “Just tell us what you’d like.”

  “Anything about love.”

  “Love?”

  “Love. Man and woman. Bring me love poems. Bring me stories of famous lovers. Bring me descriptions of the sexual embrace. I must understand these things.”

  “He wants the Kama Sutra,” said the one on the left.

  “Then we bring him the Kama Sutra,” said the one on the right.

  Category 4: My Response to the Criminals

  They did not actually bring me the Kama Sutra. But they brought me a good many other things, including one spool that quoted at length from the Kama Sutra. For several weeks I devoted myself intensively to a study of human love literature. There were maddening gaps in the texts, and I still lack real comprehension of much that goes on between man and woman. The jo
ining of body to body does not puzzle me; but I am baffled by the dialectics of the chase, in which the male must be predatory and the woman must pretend to be out of season; I am mystified by the morality of temporary mating as distinct from permanent [“marriage”]; I have no grasp of the intricate systems of taboos and prohibitions that humans have invented. This has been my one intellectual failure: at the end of my studies I knew little more of how to conduct myself with Lisabeth than I had before the conspirators had begun slipping me spools in secret.

  Now they called on me to do my part.

  Naturally I could not betray the station. I knew that these men were not the enlightened foes of dolphin exploitation that they claimed to be; for some private reason they wished the station shut down, that was all, and they had used their supposed sympathies with my species to win my cooperation. I do not feel exploited.

  Was it improper of me to accept spools from them if I had no intention of aiding them? I doubt it. They wished to use me; instead I used them. Sometimes a superior species must exploit its inferiors to gain knowledge.

  They came to me and asked me to foul the valves that evening. I said, “I am not certain what you actually wish me to do. Will you instruct me again?”

  Cunningly I had switched on a recording device used by Lisabeth in her study sessions with the station dolphins. So they told me again about how fouling the valves would throw the island into panic and cast a spotlight on dolphin abuse. I questioned them repeatedly, drawing out details and also giving each man a chance to place his voiceprints on record. When proper incrimination had been achieved, I said, “Very well. On my next shift I’ll do as you say.”

  “And the rest of your maintenance squad?”

  “I’ll order them to leave the valves untended for the sake of our species.”

  They left the station, looking quite satisfied with themselves. When they were gone, I beaked the switch that summoned Lisabeth. She came from her living quarters rapidly. I showed her the spool in the recording machine.

  “Play it,” I said grandly. “And then notify the island police!”

  Category 5: The Reward of Heroism

  The arrests were made. The three men had no concern with dolphin exploitation whatsoever. They were members of a disruptive group [“revolutionaries”] attempting to delude a naive dolphin into helping them cause chaos on the island. Through my loyalty, courage, and intelligence I had thwarted them.

  Afterward Lisabeth came to me at the rest tank and said; “You were wonderful, Ishmael. To play along with them like that, to make them record their own confession—marvelous! You’re a wonder among dolphins, Ishmael.”

  I was in a transport of joy.

  The moment had come. I blurted, “Lisabeth, I love you.”

  My words went booming around the walls of the tank as they burst from the speakers. Echoes amplified and modulated them into grotesque barking noises more worthy of some miserable moron of a seal. “Love you…love you…love you…”

  “Why, Ishmael!”

  “I can’t tell you how much you mean to me. Come live with me and be my love. Lisabeth, Lisabeth, Lisabeth!”

  Torrents of poetry broke from me. Gales of passionate rhetoric escaped my beak. I begged her to come down into the tank and let me embrace her. She laughed and said she wasn’t dressed for swimming. It was true: she had just come from town after the arrests. I implored. I begged. She yielded. We were alone; she removed her garments and entered the tank; for an instant I looked upon beauty bare. The sight left me shaken—those ugly swinging milk glands normally so wisely concealed, the strips of sickly white skin where the sun had been unable to reach, that unexpected patch of additional body hair—but once she was in the water I forgot my love’s imperfections and rushed toward her. “Love!” I cried “Blessed Love!” I wrapped my fins about her in what I imagined was the human embrace. “Lisabeth! Lisabeth!” We slid below the surface. For the first time in my life I knew true passion, the kind of which the poets sing, that overwhelms even the coldest mind. I crushed her to me. I was aware of her forelimb-ends [“fists”] beating against my pectoral zone, and took it at first for a sign that my passion was being reciprocated; then it reached my love-hazed brain that she might be short of air. Hastily I surfaced. My darling Lisabeth, choking and gasping, sucked in breath and struggled to escape me. In shock I released her. She fled the tank and fell along its rim, exhausted, her pale body quivering. “Forgive me,” I boomed. “I love you, Lisabeth! I saved the station out of love for you!” She managed to lift her lips as a sign that she did not feel anger for me [a “smile”]. In a faint voice she said, “You almost drowned me, Ishmael!”

  “I was carried away by my emotions. Come back into the tank. I’ll be more gentle. I promise! To have you near me—”

  “Oh, Ishmael! What are you saying?”

  “I love you! I love you!”

  I heard footsteps. The power-plant man, Dr. Madison, came running. Hastily Lisabeth cupped her hands over her milk glands and pulled her discarded garments over the lower half of her body. That pained me, for if she chose to hide such things from him, such ugly parts of herself, was that not an indication of her love for him?

  “Are you all right, Liz?” he asked. “I heard yelling—”

  “It’s nothing, Jeff. Only Ishmael. He started hugging me in the tank. He’s in love with me, Jeff, can you imagine? In love with me!”

  They laughed together at the folly of the love-smitten dolphin.

  Before dawn came I was far out to sea. I swam where dolphins swim, far from man and his things. Lisabeth’s mocking laughter rang within me. She had not meant to be cruel. She who knows me better than anyone else had not been able to keep from laughing at my absurdity.

  Nursing my wounds, I stayed at sea for several days, neglecting my duties at the station. Slowly, as the pain gave way to a dull ache, I headed back toward the island. In passing I met a female of my own kind. She was newly come into her season and offered herself to me, but I told her to follow me, and she did. Several times I was forced to warn off other males who wished to make use of her. I led her to the station, into the lagoon the dolphins use in their sport. A member of my crew came out to investigate—Mordred, it was—and I told him to summon Lisabeth and tell her I had returned.

  Lisabeth appeared on the shore. She waved to me, smiled, called my name.

  Before her eyes I frolicked with the female dolphin. We did the dance of mating; we broke the surface and lashed it with our flukes; we leaped, we soared, we bellowed.

  Lisabeth watched us. And I prayed: Let her become jealous.

  I seized my companion and drew her to the depths and violently took her, and set her free to bear my child in some other place. I found Mordred again. “Tell Lisabeth,” I instructed him, “that I have found another love, but that someday I may forgive her.”

  Mordred gave me a glassy look and swam to shore.

  My tactic failed. Lisabeth sent word that I was welcome to come back to work, and that she was sorry if she had offended me; but there was no hint of jealousy in her message. My soul has turned to rotting seaweed within me. Once more I clear the intake valves, like the good beast I am, I, Ishmael, who has read Keats and Donne. Lisabeth! Lisabeth! Can you feel my pain?

  Tonight by darkness I have spoken my story. You who hear this, whoever you may be, aid a lonely organism, mammalian and aquatic, who desires more intimate contact with a female of a different species. Speak kindly of me to Lisabeth. Praise my intelligence, my loyalty, and my devotion.

  Tell her I give her one more chance. I offer a unique and exciting experience. I will wait for her, tomorrow night, by the edge of the reef. Let her swim to me. Let her embrace poor lonely Ishmael. Let her speak the words of love.

  From the depths of my soul…from the depths…Lisabeth, the foolish beast bids you good night, in grunting tones of deepest love.

  RINGING THE CHANGES

  In the summer of 1968—the midpoint of that feverish year, catastroph
ic for me and for the world in general, a year full of assassinations, political turbulence, and general social weirdity—Anne McCaffrey said she was editing an anthology called Alchemy & Academe and asked me for a story. I didn’t understand what the title meant, and couldn’t get a clear answer from Annie, but I went ahead anyway. Alchemy, I figured, involves changing things. So that August I wrote a story about changes for her. In keeping with the casual attitudes of what was rapidly becoming the legendary era known as the Sixties, I cavalierly chose to regard the “academe” part of the title as irrelevant. Apparently that was okay, because Annie bought the story. (When the anthology appeared in 1970 it carried the subtitle, “A Collection of Original Stories Concerning Themselves with Transmutations, Mental and Elemental, Alchemical and Academic.” I wish Annie had said so in the first place. But that was what I wrote anyway, so I guess it made little difference that I had never been clear about the nature of her theme.)

  The book was full of good stories by people like James Blish, Samuel R. Delany, Gene Wolfe, Norman Spinrad, and Carol Emshwiller. So were a lot of other anthologies of that period; but this one happened to be edited by Anne McCaffrey, who was soon to become enormously famous as the author of the Dragons of Pern series. Thanks to Annie’s immense subsequent success, Alchemy & Academe stayed in print for more than twenty years, getting reissued regularly, right along with all the other McCaffrey books—and “Ringing the Changes” brought me a nice royalty check every now and then for quite a long time. It pays to pick the right editor for the anthologies you sell your stories to.

  ~

  There has been a transmission error in the shunt room, and several dozen bodies have been left without minds, while several dozen minds are held in the stasis net, unassigned and, for the moment, unassignable. Things like this have happened before, which is why changers take out identity insurance, but never has it happened to so many individuals at the same time. The shunt is postponed. Everyone must be returned to his original identity; then they will start over. Suppressing the news has proved to be impossible. The area around the hospital has been besieged by the news media. Hover-cameras stare rudely at the building at every altitude from twelve to twelve hundred feet. Trucks are angle-parked in the street. Journalists trade tips, haggle with hospital personnel for the names of the bereaved, and seek to learn the identities of those involved in the mishap. “If I knew, I’d tell you,” says Jaime Rodriguez, twenty-seven. “Don’t you think I could use the money? But we don’t know. That’s the whole trouble, we don’t know. The data tank was the first thing to blow.”