The Dolphins of Altair

by Margaret St. Clair

  He stood upright for a moment, swaying on his feet, and th en fell forward. He was dead, I think, before he hit the ground.

  The girl put her hands over her face. Sven hopped around so he faced her. “Don’t fold up,” he said. “There isn’t time. Help me get untied.”

  Together they loosed the knots. It was raining again, with thunder not too far off. “We’ve got to do something with the body,” Sven said.

  “Have we?” Madelaine answered. Her tone was calm, but she was panting for breath. “The gun’s in his hand, and there must be powder stains on his hand and his head. For all anybody could tell, he committed suicide.”

  Sven considered. “Why would he suddenly bring the ’copter down and kill himself?”

  “Why do people kill themselves? There’s not going to be an inquest at a time like this.”

  There was a silence. The rain had stopped momentarily, and lightning leaped in the sky. At last Sven said, “We don’t dare risk it. It might just make somebody suspicious. Help me put his body back in the ’copter, Maddy—I’m going to set it on fire.”

  “You mean, they’ll think the ’copter had engine trouble and caught fire?”

  “Or was struck by lightning, like the bigger plane. We’ll be destroying the evidence.”

  Sven put the guns Trott had carried back in their holsters, and they dragged the body over to the ’copter and put it in the pilot’s seat. Sven found the gas tank, uncapped it, and got out the matches Fletcher had given him. He split a stick, stuck a match in the cleft, and lit it. Then at arm’s length, standing as far back as he could get, he poked the stick at the gas tank.

  It caught. There was a low roar. Sven had run back the instant he knew the gas had caught. He grabbed Madelaine by the wrist and pulled her back with him.

  From a safe distance, they watched the tank explode. The ’copter was burning furiously. Through the haze of smoke, they saw its metal frame buckle and warp.

  “That’s that,” Sven said at last. “Even if they tried to do an autopsy on him, there wouldn’t be anything left to inspect We’re safe.”

  “Are we? Sven! There’s blood on my skirt, from where we carried him.”

  “The rain will wash it away. But Maddy, you don’t seem to realize, the sea people are safe, too. The only man who suspected that they might have any connection with the floods is gone. They’re really safe now. Aren’t you glad?”

  She drew a long breath. “Yes, I’m glad. And now, let’s get started on our way to the refuge camp.”

  They were accepted at O’Brien without question. They gave false names, but it probably wasn’t necessary. Madelaine, who was a good typist, was put to work in the office immediately, and Sven became a mechanic in the camp garage.

  Life at the camp was chiefly remarkable for the poor quality of the food, and the very high death rate. Everyone who came in was given shots by the harried doctors; but diseases were epidemic for which no shots had ever been devised. Disposing of the bodies of the dead was a more serious problem than getting food for those who remained alive.

  And yet, O’Brien was one of the more successful camps. On the East Coast there were camps in which, week after week, two-thirds of the current refugee population died. This was partly because the eastern camps were more crowded, but also because several strains of viruses from the biological-warfare people got loose. Microorganisms do not distinguish between friend and foe.

  (I may say here that Split demographers think that, of the one and a half or two billion Splits who died as a result of the floods, at least sixty percent died of hunger, exposure or disease. Simple drowning played a lesser part in the toll. Some demographers have called the floods a blessing in. disguise, since they brought the world population down to a point where it was more compatible with world resources. Myself, I find it difficult to think of anything that kills so many as a blessing, though it certainly has been one for us people of the sea.) Sven and Madelaine had been at O’Brien only a few hours when news came that new floods were sweeping up from the south. This meant that new areas were inundated, more people were drowned, and new epidemics and earthquakes occurred. For the people in the camp, it was more of the same thing. The increase in the scale of the catastrophe had not changed its quality.

  Sven and Madelaine were kept too busy to see much of each other. They were not precisely unhappy, despite the distress around them, and they managed to keep in good health while so many others, older and younger, died. When they could, they sat beside each other in the dining hall. They both say they dreamed of us sea people almost every night.

  The camp came under U.N. auspices (there were at that time two men who claimed to be president of the United States, one with army support, the other favored by the air force), and conditions improved somewhat.

  Time passed. One night, about six weeks after she and Sven had arrived at the camp, Madelaine woke on her sagging cot with a message ringing in her ears. She got up and dressed quietly, not wanting to wake the other women in the tent. Moonlight coming through the canvas walls made objects within palely visible. When she got to the muddy walk that marked the division between the men’s and women’s quarters, she found Sven waiting for her.

  “They want us,” she said. “Yes. Which way do we go? You’re better at things like that than I am, Madelaine.”

  “Straight over the hills and toward the coast. I know exactly where they are.”

  They began to walk. As soon as they were out of the camp, which was kept constantly sprayed with insecticide, mosquitoes began to buzz around them. Frog voices boomed and croaked on every side. The flooding moonlight made the grassy hills look flat. But the man and the girl climbed and descended, descended and climbed. It was not until they were going through a long level valley that Madelaine had breath enough to say, “I’ve been thinking about Dr. Lawrence lately. I’ve been wondering if he was right.”

  “Right? What about?”

  “He used to say that I was too high-minded to do what had to be done, and that he always had to take the onus of necessary action on himself.”

  “Well?”

  “Did I—when he dispatched the ahln devices to the poles, wasn’t he, after all, doing what I really wanted him to do? Doing what you and I both wanted him to do?”

  “I don’t think it matters,” Sven said. “You might have wanted it to happen—in a way, we both wanted it to happen. But we’d never have acted on our wishes. One doesn’t have to take guilt for wishes one would never carry out.”

  The moon had set. The sun was beginning to come up in the east when they got to the ocean. And there, waiting for them as close as we could get, were the four of us.

  “I’ve missed you so!” Sosa said when the first joy of reunion was over. “Tell me, what’s been happening with you? How has the flood affected the sea people?”

  “Some of us have been sick,” I told her. “The water’s so much less salty most places than it used to be that we get infections. I think a good many sea people have died.

  “But we have lots more water to swim in. And if it’s less salty, it’s also less radioactive. We’re sure of being able to survive. We’re much better off than we used to be, Moonlight.”

  “What’s the world like now?” Sven asked curiously. “I mean, the seas of the world. We don’t get much news at the camp.”

  “The water’s about a hundred feet deeper everywhere than it used to be,” I said. “There’s a lot less land than there used to be. There are places where we can swim in for fifty miles beyond the old coastline. I think there will be more changes in the shape of the land masses. There are more earthquakes coming, for one thing.”

  Moonlight sighed. Then she said, “Could you take us for one last ride on your backs?”

  “Of course. I was going to suggest it.”

  She got on my back, and Sven on Djuna’s. We did not take them far. The air was too heavy with the sorrow of parting for any of us to enjoy it very much.

  “We’d better be
getting back to the camp,” Sven said when they were standing on the shore again.

  “Yes,” Madelaine agreed sadly. “Good-bye Amtor and Djuna, good-bye, Ivry and Pettrus. Oh, I’ll, miss you so! Will we see each other again?”

  “Of course, dear Sosa. Don’t doubt it. The days will come when you will be with us again.”

  We began to swim away. The two Splits stood watching us, Sven’s arm around the girl’s waist. As we moved through the water, I heard him say to her, “There they go, Maddy. The new lords of the earth. The gentle new lords of the earth.”

  But I knew then, and I know now, that there is a task yet unaccomplished. The final fusion of the human and dolphin natures is yet to come. Then we sea people will walk on land, and you Splits will be free of the sweet depths of the ocean. The covenant looks forward. The best is yet to come.”

  The End

  Book information

  The Dolphins of Altair

  by MARGARET ST. CLAIR

  A DELL BOOK/AN ORIGINAL NOVEL

  Published by DELL PUBLISHING CO., INC.

  750 Third Avenue New York, N.Y. 10017

  Copyright © 1967 by Margaret St Clair Dell ® TM 681510, De ll Publishing Co., Inc.

  All rights reserved First Dell Printing - May 1967

  COVER ILLUSTRATION: LEHR

  Printed in U.S.A.

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