The Dolphins of Altair

by Margaret St. Clair

  “Can you contact her telepathically and find out what she knows?” Lawrence asked.

  “No. I mean, yes, we probably could contact her telepathically if she was open to being contacted. But as far as finding out anything precise goes, it would be a waste of time. Telepathic impressions are more emotional than accurate. If we really want to find out what she knows about the ahln, we’ll have to go to see her. There is no real substitute for articulate speech.”

  “But wouldn’t Udra—”

  “No. Udra is more motor. If we were trying to get her to come to see us it might work. But she’s old. It would take her a long time to come here.”

  The doctor sighed. “Well, where does she live?—I don’t know whether a dolphin can be said to ‘live’ anywhere. But where would we have to go to have a meeting with her?”

  “She used to spend most of her time in the Indian Ocean, near the—I think you call them—the Maldive Islands.” I heard Lawrence give a grunt of dismay.

  “She’s not there any more, Amtor,” Pettrus put in. “I talked to one of her great-great nephews while we were in the DRAT pens. He said she was staying near some rocks off the Baja California coast. The water near the Maldives got too hot—radioactive—after the U.S. Navy lost an H-bomb off the Seychelles. Kendry had to move.”

  “Could you find the rocks?” Lawrence asked.

  “Yes, I think so,” Pettrus answered.

  “And she’s still there?”

  “I think so,” Pettrus said. “We’d have heard if she’d been killed or captured. And since she’s old, she doesn’t go far from where the fish are.”

  “Some rocks off Baja California,” the doctor repeated thoughtfully. “Well, it could be worse.” He yawned and stretched.

  “I’ll get some gas into the Akbar,” he said, “and then take her into the Marina Boat Exchange and see if I can turn her in on something a little more seaworthy. We can’t make it down to Baja California in a houseboat.

  “It’s too bad I’m not more of a sailor, but I imagine I can set a course that will get us near where we want to go, particularly with the dolphins to help if I make any bad mistakes.—Maddy, what do you think of all this? You haven’t said anything.”

  “What? Oh, I think we’d better go. I was thinking about Sven.”

  In the next few hours, the doctor traded the Akbar in on a small electric-powered cruiser, stocked the Naomi (the new boat) with canned goods and water, and bought charts, a marine compass and so many power packs that the dealer asked him whether he was planning a trip around the world. He also got life jackets for himself and Madelaine. By ten o’clock, we were ready to leave Sausalito.

  We dolphins were relieved to be getting out of the bay. The restricted waters had always made us feel as if we were in a trap, and the dirtiness and atomic pollution of the bay water was a constant irritation to us. Also, though our trip to find Kendry might be a fool’s errand, it was action. We were no longer waiting passively for the navy to make the next move. We swam sedately beside the Naomi, however, trying to keep within the boat’s small shadow.

  The bay was alive with small and medium-sized craft, and as we passed under the Gate Bridge we saw the reason: the big bridge was still closed to traffic. Then we were through the gate and out into the open sea.

  It had been arranged that Moonlight and the doctor should stand four-hour tricks at the Naomi’s helm, with Lawrence taking the first trick. But as we emerged into the turbulent off-coast water, the Naomi bobbed about like a cork. Lawrence turned pale green. He had to relinquish the helm to Madelaine, and he hurried into the tiny cabin to dose himself with neo-dramamine from his medical bag.

  This was fortunate, for when a navy ’copter flew low over the Naomi, the pilot saw a laughing girl at the helm of a smart cruiser, who smiled and waved at him. If Lawrence had been steering, it might have been different. Even swimming in the Naomi’s shadow, we dolphins were visible enough from the air. But human females can distract human males.

  It took us about three days to get down to Baja California. The days were getting longer, and at night the half-full moon lit up the sky. We knew when we passed Los Angeles: even out at sea, the haze of bluish smog marked the city’s site. There were occasional flurries of rain.

  We were getting near to the place where we could start looking for Kendry when a strange dolphin joined us. He was a half-grown male, rather lighter than we usually are, and we soon found out that, though he could hear what we said to him, he couldn’t talk.

  “Who’s that?” Sosa (she was steering ) asked.

  “He can’t tell us his name,” I answered. “I think he’s a mutant. There’s something wrong with his tongue.”

  We swam along companionably with the new dolphin for a while. We were glad to have him; we sea people are always glad to be with our kind. Then Madelaine said, “What are those scars on his head?”

  “Scars? I don’t see any.” We were swimming somewhat ahead of the Naomi.

  “Where his head bulges, above his eyes,” she called to us.

  “Oh. I expect he had a run-in with a shark,” I answered.

  “Um. Ask him whether he was ever in one of the DRAT pens,” she said. “He must be able to grunt, or something, when he means yes.”

  I didn’t see any particular point in the question; a lot of us had been kept at the Naval Research Stations. But I did as she asked, telling the new dolphin to make a noise in his throat if he’d ever been in the pens.

  His eyes flickered. His lips writhed. He seemed to be struggling to speak, but no noise came out of his throat. I don’t know, even now, whether he would have co me out with a grunt if he’d had time to make one. The next moment Sosa shouted at us, in that vibrant, imperative voice we had heard her use twice before, “Jump! Out of the water, all of you! High! Jump!”

  The strange dolphin may or may not have understood her; at any rate, he didn’t obey. But Ivry and Pettrus and I acted instantly, making our best and highest jumps. When we were at the top of our springs, we saw the space under us suddenly full of flying red gobbets and churned-up spray. The strange dolphin had disappeared.

  When we came down, Madelaine was clinging to the wheel for. support. She looked ready to faint. Her white dress was stained with blood, and bits of flesh and bone had been spattered all over her. Dr. Lawrence had come running out of the cabin and was shaking her arm.

  “What’s the matter?” he cried. “What’s happened? Are you hurt?”

  “No, not hurt. The dolphin—he exploded. The navy must have…” Her voice was faint.

  Lawrence couldn’t make much sense of this, but he got his medical bag and broke an ampule from it under her nose.

  “There, that’s better,” he said. “What happened? I thought we’d struck a rock, at first. I was almost thrown off the settee.”

  She drew a deep breath. “The navy sent out a dolphin,” she said. “There were electrodes in his brain, so he couldn’t disobey, and a charge of explosive somewhere in his body cavity. He was supposed to seek out his own kind, and then the explosive would detonate.”

  “You mean—the navy knows where we are?” Lawrence asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so.” Her color was coming back. “I think it was a time bomb, set to go off after a certain length of time.

  “Poor thing, he couldn’t help himself. They cut out his tongue, so he couldn’t give a warning, even if he’d dared.”

  She started to cover her eyes with her hands, but the touch of her skin, sticky with blood, made her lower them again. “I’m covered with his blood and flesh,” she said. “Oh, poor thing, poor thing!”

  She was trembling violently. Lawrence said nothing, but he brought her some medicine in a glass and made her drink it.

  “How about you?” he asked, looking over the side at where we were floating. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Sosa saved us again. She warned us in time.”

  “Good. The Naomi seems to be all right. She’s
no lower in the water than she was.” He went to the helm. He turned the wheel, but, though the ship still had some weight on, she did not respond. The explosion seemed to have damaged her steering gear.

  Lawrence leaned over the bow. “The link’s broken,” he said. “I can probably fix it up, but—Amtor, how far are we from where you think Kendry is?”

  “Not so very far,” I answered. “About two hours, if we take you in on our backs. We’d have to take you in part of the way, anyhow. The water around the rocks is too shallow for a boat.”

  “In that case, I think we might leave the repairs to the Naomi until later. We can anchor her here as well as anywhere else. And I’m anxious to try to see Kendry before anything else happens. Maddy, what do you think?”

  She had taken off her dress and slip and was dipping them up and down in the water over the stern of the ship, trying to clean the blood and flesh from the cloth. “It’s no use,” she said, straightening. “The blood won’t come out.” She let the garments float away in the water. “Go to see Kendry? All right. We’d better hurry, though. All that blood in the water may draw sharks.”

  While Madelaine was putting on another dress, Lawrence let down the Naomi’s anchor and got canteens and food parcels for himself and the girl. I dove to check the security of the anchoring. When I came back up, Lawrence had put on a life jacket and was slipping a hunting knife on his belt.

  “Maddy, you’d better put on a life jacket,” he told her.

  “It isn’t necessary now. Later, it may be. Let’s get into the water. Kendry will be expecting us.”

  She stepped over the Naomi’s rail and let herself down into the water. She did this with aplomb, though she was still trembling a little from the recent danger—she always liked riding with us. But the doctor hesitated an instant before following her, and I perceived that he not only did not trust us completely, but also that he was afraid of the water.

  We began to swim away from the ship. Madelaine was silent. I knew she was thinking of the other time she had ridden with us on a dubious project of Lawrence’s. Sven had been with her then. Now the doctor was her companion, and Sven—“What makes you think Kendry will be expecting us?” Lawrence asked her. “ESP?”

  “No, she’ll have smelled the traces the sea people leave in the water. Perhaps the blood, too. The currents around her rock will take the smell to her.—You’ve brought something to write with, haven’t you, Doctor?”

  “Yes, in my breast pocket. I didn’t want to trust what we might learn about the ahln to memory.”

  Madelaine nodded agreement. I noticed that Lawrence did not treat her knowledge of the currents around Kendry’s rock as if it came from ESP, and I don’t think it did. That she knew about the currents meant that she was perceiving the surface of the water in the way that a dolphin would.

  We swam on in silence. Moonlight had stopped trembling and seemed to be enjoying herself, but Lawrence kept looking around the horizon rather anxiously, I suppose from fear of sharks. Pettrus, who was carrying him, said that he gripped unpleasantly tightly with his knees.

  In a little more than an hour, Kendry came out to meet us. She was one of the biggest dolphins I have ever known, and I think she had grown a little since I had last seen her. Her skin color had lightened, probably because she was living among light-colored rocks, and there was a pale film over her eyes that hadn’t been there when I had last seen her, four or five years ago. She was a very old dolphin, indeed.

  “I’m glad to see you,” she said in our language. She nuzzled us three sea people affectionately. “And Sosa, too—it’s good to see her again.”

  “Again?” I asked.

  “Yes, again. Sosa—some Sosa—always comes when there’s need of her.”

  Madelaine laughed. Kendry said, “Does she understand our speech?”

  “Tell her,” Madelaine said, “that I can understand a good deal of it, since I slept for so long. My hearing has greater range, for one thing, But I can’t speak it, of course.”

  I relayed this message to Kendry. Lawrence was growing restless during this, to Mm, silent interchange. “Does Kendry—I suppose this dolphin is Kendry—speak English?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “It takes a good deal of training for a dolphin to do that.”

  Madelaine said, “She knows we came to get help. Does she know what kind of help we want?”

  The four of us talked for quite a long time, Madelaine listening intently, Kendry found the idea of melting the polar ice as astonishing as we tod when Lawrence had first proposed it, and in order to make it seem plausible to her I had to tell her what had already happened.

  “I knew that the sea people were under attack,” she said when I had finished. “I have seen more than one wounded dolphin lately. But I didn’t know why. I was puzzled to know why the Splits had suddenly begun to hate us.

  “But you came to get me to help you. I don’t understand, Amtor, how I can help you with a project like that.”

  “Don’t you remember telling me once about the ahln, a thermal device the Old Ones had?” I answered.

  “The ahln. Yes, there was such a thing.”

  “Do you know how it was made?”

  “There is a tradition. It seems to me that I was once told…” The film over Kendry’s eyes looked thicker, but that was only because she was thinking hard. “I have forgotten how it is made. But I may be able to remember. I will try.”

  We had been swimming slowly eastward all the time we were talking. Now we saw Kendry’s rocks ahead of us.

  The cluster, not more than ten feet across, could have been called an islet only by courtesy. It must have been almost submerged at high tide. Patches of sea growth clung to it, and it was white with the droppings of birds.

  Madelaine looked at it, shielding her eyes against the light. “I have seen—” she said, and then stopped.

  “Seen what?” the doctor asked her.

  “Seen these rocks before. Do you remember the dream I told you that last morning, just before I went to Drake’s Bay? About standing on some rocks in a wild sea during a wild storm? These are the rocks in my dream.”

  “Yes, I remember,” Lawrence answered. His face did not change. “Does Kendry know how to make the ahln? That’s the important thing.”

  “She thinks she knew once. She is trying to remember. Let’s get up on the rocks, Doctor, and eat our lunch. She will do better being by herself.”

  They did as she suggested. Kendry had swum apart and was floating motionless. We others did a little fishing, but mainly we stayed near the rock cluster, since we knew Lawrence was somewhat mistrustful.

  The two Splits ate in silence. The gulls swooped around them. Sosa dabbled her fingers in the water to clean them; Lawrence lit a cigarette, smoked furiously for a moment or two, and then squashed the cigarette out against the rock. He shifted his legs impatiently. “Madelaine, do you think—oh, here she comes.”

  Kendry stopped in front of Madelaine. We were all listening. “Sosa—I cannot remember,” she said.

  Chapter 12

  Dr. Lawrence looked around the horizon. Kendry’s rocks were so little elevated above the surface of the sea that he was almost as low as if he sat in a rowboat. He seemed to find no help in the wide, flat prospect, and his gaze returned to Madelaine.

  “Kendry says she can’t remember?” he repeated. “She must remember. Getting the ahln is too important to dismiss like this. Can’t you enter her mind, Madelaine, the way you did with me when I couldn’t remember how to get rid of the pyrtrol foam?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’s a dolphin, and her brain is much more complex than yours. Besides, she is very old. If I tried to enter her mind, in any but the most superficial way, I would probably kill her.”

  “Well, for Christ’s sake, there must be some way of reminding her.”

  “Perhaps there is, but it can’t be forced.”

  Kendry, though she had not understoo
d Lawrence’s words, had understood his tone and was looking at him intently. To me she said, “This is the Split who betrayed us?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “Is he really our friend now?” she asked.

  “I think so. We have had no reason to mistrust him since he came back. And Sosa seems to think he is reliable.”

  Madelaine, who was following our conversation, nodded her head, though not very enthusiastically. “Tell Kendry he is worried because she can’t remember,” she said.

  I relayed this message, adding, “Is there any reference to the ahln in the poem of the covenant, Kendry?”

  “There may be,” my great-great-great aunt answered slowly. I seemed to have started her on a new train of thought. “There is that passage about the parting and wasting of the waters that might refer to it. I never thought of it in that light before.”

  We were all quiet—even the doctor, though he did not understand what had been said—while Kendry softly recited the verses. At the end, she said, “Yes, I think it does mean the ahln. But I still cannot remember how I was told it is made.”

  Moonlight let out her breath in disappointment. She shook her head in response to Lawrence’s look of inquiry. A gull swooped low over her head, and she put up her arm to protect herself. The motion made the loose cap sleeve of her dress fall away from her shoulder.

  “How did Sosa get that scar on her arm?” Kendry asked.

  “That’s where she was wounded during the attack on Noonday Rock,” I answered. “Don’t you remember our telling you she was hurt in the arm?”

  “Yes, I remember. I have seen such a scar before—it was—I—no, it’s gone.”

  Madelaine had turned to the doctor. “Give me your hunting knife,” she said in a low voice.

  He drew it from the sheath and handed it to her. I thought she seemed a little paler than usual. “Tell Kendry this—this will help her remember,” she told me. She drew the hunting knife forcefully across the barely healed scar.

  Blood gushed out. Lawrence jumped to his feet and snatched the knife away from her. “Maddy! What are you doing? What’s the big idea?”