The Dolphins of Altair

by Margaret St. Clair

  I soon realized that Moonlight was alive and conscious, but I wanted to know what had happened. I called softly until Dr. Lawrence came out on deck. He explained what had happened, and added, “Tomorrow I’ll get some sort of heater from the village—a charcoal brazier, if they don’t have any better means of warming themselves—and we’ll try again. Madelaine has to be kept warmer during the reaching-out ramp than I realized.”

  Ivry said, “We want to see Moonlight.”

  “She’s still weak—”

  “You can carry her, can’t you?” Ivry was getting excited. “Bring her out on the deck!”

  Lawrence shrugged. In a minute he came back carrying Madelaine in his arms. She was a small light girl, but he was a small man; he was panting when he put her down.

  “I’m all right,” she told us. “The doctor was right to rouse me when he did, but it must have been horrid for you, Amtor.”

  She had answered my not quite conscious fear that Lawrence had roused her when he did to damage us both. “We’ll try again tomorrow,” I said, not much liking the idea.

  She was silent for a perceptible length of time before she said, “Yes.”

  Early next morning Lawrence went shopping in the village and came back with a brazier, a basket of charcoal, and a machine-made serape. “Half the population was following me,” he told Madelaine as he put his purchases away. “They watched every move I made. I never was more stared at in my life.”

  “Why do you think that was?” the girl asked from the settee. She was still lying down; Lawrence insisted on her getting as much rest as she could.

  “I don’t know enough Spanish to be sure, but I gather they’re puzzled why anybody should stay in Bahia what’s-its-name any longer than he has to. They think something funny is going on, and they’re curious. I hope their curiosity gets satisfied before tonight.”

  Madelaine was twisting her fingers together nervously. “Doctor,” she said, “I’m—I’m afraid.”

  “Afraid? You mean, of this reaching-out-to-Altair stuff?”

  “Yes.”

  He sat down on the cabin floor facing her, in a languid pose. It was odd, Madelaine said later, to observe how this avowal of fear on her part had returned him to his role of psychotherapist, and her self to the place of his patient.

  “Afraid,” he said thoughtfully. “What does it seem to you that you’re afraid of?”

  “I don’t know. Of nothing. I mean, of nothingness.”

  “Can you pinpoint your fear a little more exactly?”

  “I’ll try. I’m afraid of getting so far away from my body. It’s such a long way to Altair!” She tried to laugh.

  “It sounds as if you were afraid of dying,” Lawrence offered.

  “I don’t think it’s that. I mean, you’re a doctor. You’d keep me from dying, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’d certainly try to. I doubt there’s really much danger of your dying.”

  She sighed. Before she could say anything more, they both heard footsteps on the jetty. Somebody peeked in at the cabin window and then, when they looked up, quickly withdrew.

  “Peeping Tom,” Lawrence said. “—If you don’t think you’re afraid of dying, what do you think it is?”

  “It frightens me to think of what I’m afraid of.”

  “We get this sort of thing in therapy all the time,” he observed. “If we had plenty of time to put in on it, I could probably get you over being frightened to think of the cause of your fear. As it is, I recommend that you endure being frightened, and try to tell me what frightens you.”

  “All right. I’m afraid of being all alone in the abyss of space.”

  “Um. Will you be all alone? I thought Amtor would be with you.”

  “Amtor!” Her face relaxed a little. “Yes, but that’s not enough. Perhaps the abyss in him is what I’m afraid of. I’m not sure. It seemed like that, last night.

  “After all, Doctor, nobody has ever done anything like this before. It’s natural I should be afraid.”

  “I suppose you mean that your fear is something there’s no use in trying to deal with by psychotherapy,” Lawrence said. “You may be right. Are you too afraid to try the reaching-out -to-Altair stunt, though?”

  “Ye—No. Kendry wouldn’t have told us to try it unless it were possible. I’m frightened. But I’ll try.”

  At ten o’clock that night the Naomi was still under surveillance by the villagers. Ivry and Pettrus and I, back from our fishing, could see the dark shapes of men along the beach and hear the low murmur of talk. Now and then somebody would run up on the jetty, peer in the Naomi’s window, and then run away again.

  We were all getting restless. Lawrence had made a fire in the brazier, and the cabin was suitably warm. But Madelaine was keyed-up and tense, a bad mood in which to attempt telepathic contacts or Udra; and we sea people wanted to consult with our Split friend before making a second attempt at what Lawrence called “the Altair bit.” We waited impatiently.

  “Let’s put out the light in the cabin,” the doctor suggested to Madelaine. “If they think we’ve gone to bed, they may go away.”

  “All right. I wonder why they’re so suspicious of us? Our behavior hasn’t been peculiar enough to account for all this. Something unpleasant must have happened here recently. I can almost pick up what it was.”

  Lawrence switched off the light and sat down on the cabin floor. Time passed. Madelaine coughed nervously. At last the doctor rose and softly went to the cabin window. He peered out just as one of the villagers, who had tiptoed along the jetty, peered in.

  For a moment the two shadowy faces stared at each other, locked in mutual consternation. Then the villager broke away. His running feet pounded along the jetty and out on the sand.

  “‘Das ist der Teufel, sicherlich,’” said Lawrence, sitting down again on the floor. “Now I know what Papageno felt when he encountered the villainous Monostatos unexpectedly. But the worst of it is, our watchers now are sure we aren’t asleep. Who will out-wait whom?”

  “I wish we could get started,” Sosa said. “Amtor’s getting impatient, too. But I want to talk to him before we try it. It’s going to be hard enough anyhow.”

  “Yes. Maddy, had it occurred to you to wonder what the nature of the force is that you’re going to use in the reaching-out process?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Well, I suppose it will be basically telepathic. Amtor said it would be something like Udra at first—”

  “Yes.”

  “But what is Udra. Or, for that matter, telepathy? It’s always assumed that telepathy operates instantaneously. But on a terrestrial scale, that could mean it operates at the speed of light. Nobody has timed telepathic experiments to be sure there’s not that much of a time lag.

  “But when it comes to contacting Altair, the force must be instantaneous. Otherwise, it would take Amtor and you fifteen and a half years to get there with your question, and fifteen and a half years to get back with the answer. Now, what is it that, over a space which light takes almost sixteen years to span, can be instantaneous? What is the nature of the force?”

  “I don’t know,” Madelaine answered. “I wish you’d stop, Doctor.”

  “Why? Am I making you nervous?”

  “Yes. Uncomfortable. It’s like a surgeon discussing the technique of an operation with the patient he’s going to operate on. I—what was that?”

  Something had struck the Naomi’s hull a sharp blow. “I think somebody threw a rock at us,” Lawrence answered. “I’m going outside.”

  There was nobody on the jetty, but he could see, dimly outlined against the sky, the shapes of men. “Hey!” he shouted in English into the darkness, “Who threw that rock?”

  There was no answer, but, after a moment, another rock whizzed past his head.

  Lawrence could see no point in staying longer at such a hostile anchorage; with what dignity he could muster, he untied the Naomi and started her m
otor. “Buenas noches!” He shouted ironically to the faceless men in the dark. The Naomi moved away from the jetty, to the accompaniment of a muttering from the men on the shore. She turned in the little bay and headed straight out to sea.

  We sea people followed, of course. It was a very dark night. When we were out of earshot of the village, Lawrence cut the little craft’s speed. “Amtor! Could one of you dolphins find out what the bottom’s like here? I’ll anchor if it’s suitable.”

  “I’ll go,” Pettrus said from the water in his loud, gabbling voice. Pettrus had an acute pressure sense and was the best of us three when it came to gauging depth.

  When he came back with the news that the bottom was quite suitable, Moonlight was standing by the rail, talking to me.

  “Are you afraid, Amtor?” she asked. “Yes, Sosa.”

  “What of? Or do you know?”

  “Of—of the terrible gulf of space. Of bottomless space.”

  “The inner space, or outer space?”

  “Both,” I replied.

  “But we’ll be together in outer space, won’t we?” she asked.

  “Yes, of course. And we may not even perceive it as outer space.”

  “So all we have to worry about is the inner space!” She laughed though she did not sound particularly amused. “Amtor, I’ve be en thinking that perhaps you ought to be kept warm, too, when we try to reach out.”

  “I expect I should. But the water here is warm, much warmer than I’m used to, and Ivry and Pettrus will be beside me in case my body loses buoyancy. Don’t worry about it, Moonlight. As to the inner gulf that frightens us both—”

  “Well?”

  “I think there is a way to bridge it.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you know, Sosa?”

  “Yes, I think I do. Love is the bridge over the gulf.” She leaned far over the rail, so that her fingertips were in the water, and I nuzzled them. “You and I were in close contact that time before, when Dr. Lawrence thought he had to rouse me. What comes after that stage?”

  “I expect we must lose all sense of our, separate identity. Don’t be frightened, Sosa. Trust yourself to me. I’ll do the reaching-out toward our home star.”

  “All right.” She went into the cabin. Lawrence had put more charcoal in the brazier, and the cabin, though he had left the door ajar for ventilation, was very warm. He had her lie down and covered her with the serape he had bought. He took her pulse, listened to her heart, and read her temperature. “All OK,” he said. “You and Amtor can begin.” He sat down beside her on the floor.

  The first stages of contact were easier than they had been last time. The Naomi slewed about occasionally; she was more in motion than she would have been at the jetty in Bahia what-have-you. It did not disturb Madelaine unduly, though once or twice she sighed. I think Lawrence found the loose motion more disturbing than she did.

  Abruptly, her mind and mine were coterminous. Lawrence said a gray wisp came out of her mouth. And then she and I both felt, not a sense of gulfs and emptiness, but a dreadful sense of pressure.

  For me, it was like making a very deep dive much too fast. That is a translation into physical terms, of course. Moonlight said she felt as if her mind, her personality, had become an exquisitely sensitive bladder, and the bladder were being insupportably compressed on all sides.

  It was not only psychologically painful, but it frightened us besides. We both realized it was because, though our minds were coterminous, they were not really united yet. We exerted pressure on each other because we were still separate. There was an embrace yet to be made that we both shrank from; and only our affection for each other could make us brave enough to dare the gulf.

  The pressure increased. Painful as it was, we hesitated an instant longer. But we were committed, and the love between the woman and the dolphin was perfectly real. The union could, and must, be made.

  We dared it. It gave immediate relief from the pressure, but we had barely enough time to realize that our minds were truly joined before the whirling began. We went whirling over and over like a patchwork pinwheel, a hand-standing harlequin, a gaudy double tumbler. There was something joyous in our intoxicated mental motion, and if I was a tumbler doing cartwheels, Madelaine was a dolphin leaping in the sun. Actually, we both were each other.

  The giddy whirling stopped. No time to waste. The duad of Sosa and Amtor must reach out. It knew its goal.

  It must have been about this time that Lawrence, in the well-heated little cabin, took Madelaine’s body temperature. It was below normal, but not dangerously so, and he felt that the “reaching-out-to-Altair bit” could be allowed to go on. Ivry and Pettrus, who floated beside me during the whole experiment, said that my breathing had become noticeably slow.

  To “reach out” meant that the Sosa-Amtor duad had to extricate itself from the grip, of which people are ordinarily quite unconscious, of all the billions of minds on our one earth. Usually dolphins and men are stuck in a sort of psychic glue. That is what the duad now experienced.

  We churned helplessly in the grip of this mental adhesive until we—the duad—realized it must draw in on itself, become hard and smooth and small. It must encapsulate itself, like a seed. Then it would be out, and free.

  I don’t know why this was easy, but it was. As soon as we thought of it, it happened. The duad was on its way.

  It takes light almost sixteen years to reach the earth from Altair, The duad would have been there instantly, without regard for the distance—space is nothing—but there were interstellar magnetic fields in the way. I do not mean to give the impression that there was any visual awareness of this. That was not how the duad knew of the existence of the fields. But our progress was slowed.

  Slowed and stopped. This was the isolation Sosa and I had feared, the terrible gulf of outer space. We were mere points, the duad was one point. But its duality comforted itself.

  The fields must be overleaped somehow. Here, I think, the duad drew without knowing it on the same force that powers the ahln. But here it was volitional and personal.

  Other stars’ clutched at us. The duad might, even now, have been deflected. But our old home star was reaching out its hands to help; there are billions of minds on that sun’s planet. They are different from the minds of dolphins or men, of course. The million years between have made much difference. But the Sosa-Amtor duad could not only communicate with the minds of Altair’s planet, it was also expected there and welcome. Those minds had had something to do with Madelaine before, when she slept so long.

  Now those minds impressed our single consciousness as a wavering, patterned brightness. It seemed to advance and withdraw continually. When Madelaine and I discussed this later, we agreed that the minds of Altair’s planet had been afraid of distressing their duad visitor, and that they had hidden from it something of what they were, under this image of fire.

  What were the people of that planet like physically? (They weren’t, of course, disembodied intelligences.) Here Madelaine and I disagree, she thinking them to be like Splits, and I like the sea people. Perhaps some day we shall really find out.

  At any rate, the duad could communicate with them. They knew why it had come. There was no need to argue or beg. Someone—they—many people—the wavering brightness—told the duad what it wanted to know: the secret of powering the ahln.

  It was simple, a thing to be learned instantly and remembered easily. And now that it was learned, the Sosa-Amtor duad wanted to get back. Bodies cannot last long without their psychic tenants; our bodies, back on earth, drew us powerfully. And earth herself, with all the kindred minds, called like a familiar voice.

  Once more the duad had to overleap the magnetic fields. It must make haste. But the way back was easier. Earth pulled her exiles as the planet of Altair had not.

  Sosa’s mind and mine fell away from each other suddenly. The duad was two separate beings now. The strange identity was over. We were back on earth.

  Madelai
ne stirred on the little couch in the Naomi’s cabin, and then sat up. She was shivering violently. Lawrence, who was hovering over her, was rubbing her arms and hands. “Did you do it?” he asked eagerly. “Your heart was so slow I was afraid you weren’t all right.”

  She yawned and smoothed her hair. “Yes, we’ve been there,” she answered soberly. “We got what we went for. It’s easy to use. It frightens me that they trusted us with it.

  “We learned other things too, I think. There may be at least one useful side product. But the chief thing is, we know how to power the ahln.”

  Chapter 14

  DR. SOUTHGATE’S NARRATIVE

  The contractions of the synthi-womb had begun. My patient, Sven Erickson, was dimly visible through its clouded plastic walls, lying curled up naked in the fetal position. His respiration, somewhat depressed by drugs, was cared for by an oxygen-poor mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide, and an array of tubes and pumps handled the excretory and nutritive phases of his metabolism. He had been in the synthi-womb for almost two weeks now. It was time for him to be born.

  I didn’t know too much about Erickson’s history. I had heard that he had been picked up on one of the Farallons, in the company of a group of spies and saboteurs, and had been brought to headquarters for questioning. They had interrogated him for several days under the influence of sodium pentathol, but his answers had been so contradictory and confused that it had been decided to attempt a more fundamental treatment. At this point he had been handed over to me, and I was now at my usual job of monitoring the process of artificial birth.

  It had been found that a preliminary processing by drugs, followed by a simulation of human fetal growth and birth, was extraordinarily effective in making possible a radical change of personality in patients subjected to it. People who had been through it were like young babies, but young babies who were exceptionally apt and teachable. They learned to walk in ten days, they learned to talk in two weeks. And they could be made into whatever the processes wanted, broadly speaking. I suppose, though I don’t know for certain, that my superiors were going to condition Erickson to act as a spy, a perfectly docile and committed spy, on the faction with which he had been connected formerly.