by Mark Wandrey
It seemed like a ridiculous amount of money, until you participated. The bottlenoses were an amusement park ride, a workout, and a comedy show combined. They only talked about how fun it was to be a dolphin, or about the games they often made up on the fly. They didn’t preach about Shool; they didn’t believe in it. They said life was a gift of then and now.
“They’re hedonists,” Dr. Orsage had told him. Terry’d had to look up what that meant, then he’d laughed afterward.
They hadn’t asked for much after getting their translators, using the same description for them as the orcas, talk box. The one thing they’d asked for, and gotten, was live fish.
“Miss chase, catch, eat!” they said.
Terry’s father had balked at the extra cost, until he’d found out they didn’t care what kind of fish, as long as it was fast and alive. They happily caught and ate fish they’d previously turned down before getting their translators. Just as he came in, the bottlenoses were playing a new game.
They picked a Human, who would then get a live fish from the holding tank and put it in the water. If the fish evaded the bottlenose dolphins for more than 10 seconds, the Human who’d released the fish got to ride a dolphin. Everyone was having a grand time. The Humans in the water were trying to get in the bottlenoses’ way, which looked like a brand-new strategy by the Humans. The dolphins responded by performing incredible leaps over the Humans, much to the latters’ delight.
The tactic worked the first time; the fish was caught 12 seconds after release, and a teenage girl with incredibly long blonde hair tied in a ponytail and in an alarmingly skimpy bikini got to ride one of the dolphins. Skritch, Terry thought. There were 19 of the bottlenoses, and he hadn’t had enough time with them to memorize more than a few of them by sight alone.
Terry marveled at the athletic girl’s body as she rode the dolphin through tight turns and a couple of jumps out of the water. The way her hair flowed behind her and the fit of her bikini made him feel...funny. Kind of like when he’d seen Yui changing into her diving clothes one time.
The ride ended, and the spell was broken. Terry finished pushing his garbage trolley into the habitat, and the bottlenose inhabitants instantly spotted him.
“Terry! Terry! We greet you!” the cheer went up around the pool, making the people who’d been enjoying the encounter look around for the source of their excitement.
“That’s Terry Clark,” Dr. Jesus Hernandez said. He was the senior scientist in charge of the bottlenose dolphins, and was an old, short, balding Hispanic man with a large tummy. Terry liked him a lot. “Terry’s the son of our director here, and a favorite of our dolphin pod.”
“Sunrise Pod, Sunrise Pod!” the dolphins yelled.
Dr. Hernandez smiled and bowed. “I’m sorry,” he said to the guests and the bottlenoses, “Sunrise Pod. Although I think they only gave themselves a name because they were jealous of the orcas.” Three bottlenoses flipped over and used their flukes to send jets of water at Dr. Hernandez, nearly knocking the portly man into the pool. The 19 dolphins laughed uproariously. Terry had never heard the translators render cetaceans’ language into a laugh.
One of the bottlenoses surfaced next to Terry and spoke.
“Light fem ride me now?”
“I think she has to win again,” he told the bottlenose he recognized as Hoa.
The dolphin shot water at him with his long mouth, the equivalent of a snort, and spun away. While Terry worked at cleaning out cans, another fish was tossed into the water, and the dolphins were in hot pursuit. Two of them raced to corner the fish. Then, just as they were an instant from catching it, Hoa swam into their way, stopping them from completing the catch, and letting the Human win the game.
The entire pod exploded in angry chatter; much of it was not rendered into English. Terry had noticed that happened most often with the dolphins. The researchers weren’t quite sure why, either. An alien elSha technician who’d helped with the implants was working on the programming, something called a translation matrix algorithm, trying to find out what was wrong. Skritch swam over and came out of the water next to Terry.
“What he do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Hoa break game! Not play right way! What he do? Word?”
Hoa was over by the blonde girl, paddling lazily next to her.
“Oh, I guess he cheated.”
“Cheat? That word?”
“Yes,” Terry said, “it means he didn’t play fair, or by the rules.”
“Cheat, cheat, cheat!”
Meanwhile Hoa was discovering it wasn’t the blonde teenager who won the ride, but a man in his early 20s who’d released the fish, and he wanted the ride.
“No,” Hoa said, “give ride light fem!” He squirted some water at the blonde teenager, who looked confused.
“I’m the one who let the fish go,” the man said.
Hoa flicked his flukes and hit the man in the face with a powerful wave of water, knocking him on his hind end. “Light fem ride!” The girl looked confused and backed away, up out of the water into the shallower area. Hoa pursued. She gave a squeak of concern, and Skritch plowed into Hoa’s side, sending the other dolphin rolling into the deeper water.
“No more game you play!” Hoa said, the clicks emphasized with powerful snaps of his rostrum.
Dr. Hernandez checked his watch. “Okay, folks, that’s about all the time we have for the encounter now. If you’ll head for the locker rooms and change, I believe lunch is probably waiting for us! You’ll have a few minutes after lunch to talk to the dolphins, after they’ve had time to rest.”
The blonde girl looked around, confused, but an older man, her father maybe, came over and put a hand around her shoulder to lead her away. The mood was more somber and confused as the group began to leave.
“Terry?”
“Yes, Dr. Hernandez?”
The doctor had walked over to Terry, and he looked disappointed. “Did you teach Skritch the word ‘cheat?’”
Terry felt his face getting hot. “Yes, Dr. Hernandez.”
“Please don’t do that again. You know how much trouble we’re having with the bottlenoses, getting them to interact with Humans in a constructive manner.”
“Yes, Dr. Hernandez.”
“Terry swim?” a bottlenose asked. Terry recognized the female, named Ihu due to her particularly long rostrum and sleek melon, the bump on their head where a Human’s forehead would be. It was the organ which let them send sonar pulses in the water.
“I think Terry still has work,” Dr. Hernandez said.
“Work,” Ihu said, and let out a convincing raspberry sound, requiring no translation.
“I’m done,” Terry said. “May I, please?”
Dr. Hernandez looked at him sternly, placed his hands on his hips, and scowled. Terry put on his most innocent smile, and the doctor laughed. He looked at the pod, and could see Hoa was off to one side with two other males. They appeared to be talking, and Hoa was slowly flexing his side. Even under a couple meters of water, Terry could see the bruise. “If it is okay with Skritch,” the doctor said.
“Like Terry swim,” Skritch said, “like Terry play.”
“Very well,” Dr. Hernandez said. “One hour.”
“Thanks, sir,” Terry said, and bolted for the staff locker room, his garbage trolley completely forgotten. He came out of the locker room in less than a minute, facemask already in place, still tying his swim trunks as he ran. Ihu saw him running and swam along his path, her powerful flukes moving almost too fast to see. When he was a few meters from the edge of the pool, he leaped into the water. Ihu jumped, turning her body to present a dorsal fin—which Terry caught—and they hit the water together.
In the water, Ihu rolled on her belly, swimming upside down, while Terry lay against her, one hand holding each pectoral fin, his body melding with her mighty strokes. They rocketed through the water with such powerful strokes, his mask compressed against his face hard enough to hurt. H
e didn’t care, he felt like a Human torpedo!
“I like swim you,” Ihu said later. She was breathing in and out from her blowhole every few seconds, which was the equivalent of a Human gasping for breath.
“It’s fun swimming with you, too.”
“Yui swim more?”
“Some time, I hope.” She’d come over just before the bottlenoses had undergone their surgeries for translators. None of the researchers had been there with translators, but it hadn’t mattered. Ihu and several other dolphins had played in the water with Terry and Yui. The Humans threw volleyballs, which the bottlenoses either caught or bounced off their rostrums. The Humans had marveled at how accurate the dolphins could be with nothing more to strike the balls with than the tip of their noses.
“Yui you mate?”
Terry slipped off the edge he’d been holding to catch his breath. His head dipped below the surface, and he sucked in a mouthful of the tank’s treated seawater. Ihu pushed him back above the surface with a pectoral fin and watched him as the Human spluttered and gasped for breath.
“No!” he said finally.
“No like Yui?”
“Yeah, I like her just fine.”
“Then mate!”
“Ihu, we don’t work like that.” The dolphin lifted out of the water so her eye could regard Terry suspiciously. “I mean, yeah, Humans do, but we’re just kids!”
“What kid?”
“You know...” He was so flustered, it took him a minute. “We’re just calves.”
She regarded him again, and he felt a thrum against his torso several times. He’d never felt anything like that in the water before, and wondered if something was wrong with the treatment system or the pumps. Then he saw Ihu had her melon pointed at him, and felt it again. “Ihu, what are you doing?”
“Kleek you.”
“Could you stop? It feels funny.” The thrumming stopped. “Thanks. Well, I better go. Thanks for the play, it was fun.”
“Fun, yes, bye.”
Terry used his arms to push out of the water and walked toward the locker room. He looked back and saw Ihu watching him go with an inquisitive eye. Two other bottlenoses were gliding up next to her, and he was sure they were talking about him. That was twice in one afternoon he’d been embarrassed. Once by an adult, and then by a damned dolphin.
He was mumbling to himself in the shower when Dr. Hernandez came in. The man stripped out of his soaked coveralls, courtesy of the spraying he’d gotten earlier, and went to the next shower over. “Did you have fun, Terry?”
“Sorta,” he said.
“What happened?”
He thought about it for a minute, then decided his curiosity was worse than being further embarrassed. Besides, it seemed less embarrassing to talk to Dr. Hernandez than his mother or father. When he was done, the older man gave a half-grunting chuckle and sighed.
“So what was that all about?” Terry asked after nothing more was forthcoming.
“The cetaceans have a hard time telling adults from children. Once we’re about half adult size, they just figure you’re small.”
“They know I’m a...calf,” he said, saying the word with some distaste. He wasn’t a baby, and “calf” made him think of a baby cow.
“Yes, but apparently in the cetaceans’ language, there are no different words for children of a parent and grown children. Either that, or the difference is too subtle for the translators to pick it up.”
“Oh, I think I get it,” he said. “But what does that have to do with...Ihu saying what she said?”
“Sex, to the dolphins, isn’t as big a deal as it is to us,” Dr. Hernandez explained. “Sometimes it’s just a bonding thing. In captive groups, it’s been observed as an activity they engage in, almost out of boredom.”
“Weird,” Terry said.
“Maybe, maybe not. We don’t have enough wild observations to know if it’s abnormal and a stress response from captivity. Either way, your unwillingness to mate with your friend confuses them.”
It confuses me too, Terry thought. “Do you know what ‘kleek’ means?”
“We only figured it out a few days ago. It’s in relation to using their sonar. They’ve been observed pulsing sonar at the opposite sex to see if they’re receptive to breeding.”
Terry was immeasurably glad there was a metal wall between himself and the doctor, because he was sure he was blushing from his head to his toes. “She was sonar scanning my...my body?”
“Yes, I suppose she was. It was just curiosity. I don’t believe they think in perverted ways.”
“What about Hoa?” Terry suspected he knew what the dolphin’s behavior meant. He might only be 10, but he knew an erection when he saw one.
“Yes, Hoa,” Dr. Hernandez said. He laughed, then sighed. “Let’s just say, some dolphins aren’t particular about what species is the target of their desires.”
Terry was glad to finish drying off and get dressed. He’d had enough of such conversations for one day. Maybe enough for the year. He went back to tend to his forgotten trolley. Luckily, the dolphins had left the encounter pools and gone on to talk with the guests.
* * * * *
Chapter 8
Poaiwa, Shipwreck Beach, Lanai, Hawaii, Earth
November 23rd, 2035
Terry surfaced and shook the water from his hair before pulling his mask back and orienting himself toward Krispin. The Saturday afternoon skies were growing darker, hinting at possible rain. Doc was sitting on the diving platform, skinning one of the uku, or gray snapper, they’d caught. Yui surfaced next to him. Part of the YOGN 42 wreck was just poking out of the water, and they’d been exploring the superstructure. Doc had caught the fish and surfaced a minute before the two kids, first making sure they were clear of the wreck.
“Find anything?” he called as they paddled toward the boat.
“Yui found a plate,” Terry said. She held up the item, half barnacles, half tarnished steel. “I struck out.” Terry sighed and shook water out of his eyes. He wished he’d found something interesting or that the fun had gone on longer. He didn’t want it to end, because he’d have to give Yui the bad news.
“YOGN 42 is just a junk pile,” Doc admitted, flipping guts into the water. “It’s got a big open superstructure, so it’s fun to dive in.” YOGN 42 was the resting remains of a WWII liberty ship. When the war had ended, instead of scrapping it, the military had simply grounded the ship and left it to rust.
“Yeah, it was cool,” Yui agreed. “It’s like a haunted castle or something.”
The two young people reached the platform as Doc finished cutting up the uku. He helped them as they handed up their tanks and flippers, then the kids got themselves up onto the platform. As Doc gathered up the fillets, Terry watched small reef fish helping themselves to the uku remains.
A few minutes later, they were sitting on Krispin’s transom as Doc fanned the coals to white and put the fillets on a grill. Yui and Terry sipped bottles of Coke, enjoying the cold sweetness. Doc had a beer.
“Do you believe they’re talking about making it illegal?” Doc said, pointing at the bottles with a spatula.
“Coke? Why Coke?” Terry asked.
“Not Coke specifically,” Doc said, flipping a fillet and checking its doneness. “The sugar in it.”
“I like sugar,” Yui said. Terry nodded and took a big drink, making an over-exaggerated “Ahhh!”
“Of course you do,” Doc said. “It tastes good because Humans were programmed over a million years of evolution to crave it.”
“Then why do they want to make it illegal?” Terry asked.
“Because some people abuse it. They get overweight, and then they get heart disease, which kills them.”
“So, that means I don’t get sugar?” Terry asked. Doc nodded. “Why?”
“Some people think if someone abuses a thing, nobody should have it.”
“That’s stupid,” Terry replied.
“That’s government,” Doc said
, “and a certain political ideology,” he said under his breath.
“What was that?” Yui asked.
“Nothing. Fish is done!”
They spent an hour eating on the small inset chairs up on the flying bridge. Doc microwaved some rice and vegetable packages to go with the uku, and Terry loved the taste. Fresh seafood was something he loved about Hawaii. He liked hamburgers more, but those were expensive on the islands.
“Doc,” Terry said as he chased a last bit of fish with a plastic fork.
“Yeah, kid?”
“Why didn’t you tell us you were a Navy SEAL?” Yui looked up, quietly listening. “And please don’t say we never asked.”
Doc laughed and shook his head. “Well, you didn’t ask.” Terry threw his fork at Doc, who caught it. He sighed. “Look, being a SEAL was a big part of my life. I had a grandfather who was one of the first. From the moment I was old enough to be a SEAL, I wanted to be one. Having the trident punched on my chest was the single greatest moment of my life.” Terry looked confused. Doc held up a hand. “Some other time.”
“Anyway,” he continued after taking a sip of his beer, “we were being inserted during the attack on Iran. A ‘target of opportunity,’ they called it. If everything went right, we’d get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity while the aliens were kicking the shit out of the jihadis.” He shrugged. “It didn’t go right.”
“What happened?” Yui asked.
Doc looked at them for a long time, thinking. He seemed to come to a decision. “I knew going off to the stars to fight those alien bastards was a mistake. Only I wasn’t conscious enough to tell anyone at the time. By the time I was, it was too damned late.” He drained the beer and tossed the bottle into a can on deck. “You want to know why I’m teaching MST? Because I think I can help some kids make the right decision, or at least keep them from making the wrong decision.”
The three sat in the lengthening afternoon light and watched the clouds heading in from the west. Doc looked over at the controls. Terry could see him thinking about how long it would take to get back to Molokai, and wondering if they could beat the storm. He got up to put away the grill, and the kids pitched in, securing everything. In a few minutes, Krispin was roaring to the north, toward Molokai.