by J C Ryan
“I can do my best,” she replied. “But I’d better not find out they’ve ever harmed a single one of these creatures. The Navy has denied these allegations. If I find out they’re lying, I’m going to kick some butt.”
The mental picture of his Mackie kicking an admiral’s butt sent Carter into raucous laughter. “I’d like to see that!” Sobering, he went on. “I’ve got my own doubts, Mackie. There are already a lot of people who know about this. And while I trust all our colleagues who are here, it takes only one unguarded moment to bring utter chaos. Can you imagine what would happen if the Nabateans got hold of this information? That there exists a library from the ancients with the plans for an interspecies communication device? Never mind all the rest of it. Forget about the Nabateans for a moment, do you think there is a country on earth who wouldn’t want to have this for themselves? We’d have to stave off an armed invasion.”
“Believe me, I understand,” Mackenzie said. “I just don’t want anyone to hurt these beautiful animals. But I understand that what we have here is revolutionary. It’s pretty much an ‘everything you thought you knew is wrong’ situation. It’s mindboggling, and we haven’t even scratched the surface. So, what’s next?”
“Well, we have to get Bill involved if we want to talk to the Navy, and I think we have to. Of course, that means the President. James and Irene, too. I’d say we’re in for several days’ briefing and debriefing at the very least. Do you have your presentation ready?”
“Yes, just a few last-minute details need to be added. I’ll be ready as soon as you can set up the meeting.”
“I’ll hold you to that. Give me forty-eight hours.”
Carter sent James an encoded message that they needed to have a face-to-face meeting and then went to notify Dylan that he, Mackenzie, and some of the team would soon be leaving the safety of Freydís for a few days. He wasn’t looking forward to it, especially since it meant leaving Liam and Beth behind. He’d miss them. But risking their safety wasn’t an option. They’d be much safer here with their grandparents and Bly and Ahote.
Chapter 52 -
We can talk to them!
To say that the Navy top brass who were present were blown away by Mackenzie’s presentation would be an exaggeration. In fact, they didn’t have anything complimentary to say at all. They called it a bunch of anecdotal claptrap and waved off the scholarly papers and studies she’d cited, saying there were nothing new. She barely kept her temper in check as she whispered fiercely to Carter, “Make them listen.”
Carter wasn’t in too forgiving a mood when it was his turn to show what they’d found in the giants’ library. No one treated his Mackie that way. Consequently, he didn’t give much background on what they were about to hear and see before going straight to his presentation. He watched with satisfaction as the dim light in the room revealed how all but a few diehard Navy officers in the audience dropped their jaws.
His presentation consisted of still images of the giants in their cities, some in the City of Lights to provide a sense of scale, and some of the giants on quays or docks in attitudes of conversation with what were clearly bottlenose dolphins. The kicker was when he played the sound files of Giantese interspersed with the characteristic squeaks and whistles of the dolphins. Although they found the images convincing, a few were still holdouts on the conversations, some even openly accusing Carter of a hoax.
However, when Professor Wasserman, whose reputation was well-known and impeccable, gave his presentation, even the holdouts couldn’t deny it any longer.
“Exactly what do you want us to do with this information?” asked the Chief of Naval Operations, who’d insisted on being present for the exchange of classified information.
“We’d like the cooperation of your dolphin project personnel in turning over anything they think could help us in our studies. We may also want to interact with your dolphins, both youngsters that haven’t been conditioned or trained yet and veterans that have. In return, whatever we learn about dolphin language and the plans for the communications device we’ll share with you.”
“Fair enough.” The Chief of Naval Operations replied but just because he had orders from the President to cooperate. “But anyone in your group must have Top Secret Clearance first.”
The Chief of Naval Operations was stumped when Carter grinned and said, “which all of us already have, but any of your personnel will need Level Q Clearance in addition to their Top Secret Clearance.”
Startled, the admiral sent Carter a questioning look. Carter in turn looked at James Rhodes, who answered the admiral’s unspoken question. “What the dolphins may be able to tell us will require that level of clearance, unfortunately I can’t tell you more until you have that clearance.”
Q-type clearance was a Department of Energy (DOE) security clearance required for access to Top Secret, Secret Restricted Data, and DOE "security" areas, the highest-risk sensitivity levels in the country. People with these clearances held exceptional accountability because of the potential to cause grave and immeasurable damage to the national security of the United States. It was required for anyone with access to "SIN-widee," CNWDI (Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information).
Mackenzie tried her best not to grin with satisfaction.
A very unsettled admiral decided not to delve any deeper and left the gathering just before the Freydís group and the excited Navy dolphin scientists began an informal discussion among themselves, while enjoying a catered lunch. It didn’t take long before the two groups came to consensus that a translation device should be built at once.
“Of course, you realize,” Professor Wasserman began in his classroom voice, “the giants weren’t speaking English, but rather a proto-Semitic language we’ve only just begun to translate. We have a great deal of work to do to program the device so that the dolphins can understand us.”
“We’ve observed the older ones teaching the young ones,” one of the marine biologists said. “Not everyone agreed with our superior officers dismissing your presentation, Mrs. Devereux. You did a great job of pulling together nearly everything we know and then some.”
Mackenzie was still fuming about the treatment she received earlier and was on the verge of telling him to address her as doctor when Carter winked at her, reading her feelings perfectly. “Can we all dispense with the titles and just go on a first-name basis? We’re on the same page now, yes?”
The Navy personnel quickly agreed it would be much simpler. Several of them realized that if they wanted to be in on one of the greatest scientific leaps of humankind, they’d better apply for Q Clearance immediately.
***
Within a few weeks, Professor Wasserman had translated enough of the conversations to be able to work with Sam and Rick to build a database of equivalent English words. A DARPA engineer was tapped to build the device and soon it only remained to work with the dolphins to begin the process of understanding their sounds and map it to English words so the databases could be populated.
After that, the sophisticated sound synthesis engineering within the device would allow actual conversations. Mackenzie was in a constant state of jubilation that the creatures she’d loved and admired all her life might soon become true friends.
As soon as the device was ready and programmed with as many of the words as they could be sure of, Carter made the arrangements for himself, Mackenzie, Sam, Liu, and the directors of A-Echelon, James, and his second-in-command, Irene, to meet with the head of the Navy’s dolphin project, and of course, with the dolphins themselves. On hand, would also be Lieutenant Gerald Hooper, Gerry to his friends, who worked directly with the dolphins.
The Freydís group and their Executive Advantage security detail arrived in San Diego by chartered jet early in the afternoon. With a pang, Mackenzie thought about how much Liam would have loved to see the dolphins. Even baby Beth, loved animals. Both had been raised with the benevolent wolves in attendance, and with childlike faith in the goodness of all living cre
atures, approached all the wildlife on the ranch with arms wide open. Liam, Shane, John and Jennie Ruschin’s boy, and Jeha had already learned that skunks didn’t particularly appreciate human friendship. Especially when they were frightened or startled.
The group followed Gerry straight to the training pool. He had done his best to prepare his dolphins, because they were going to listen in on the trained dolphins’ “chatter” first. Gerry had always believed the dolphins understood his full English sentences at least as well as dogs would, so he’d told them that there would be some visitors there to listen to them talk, and they should feel free to talk about whatever was on their minds. Nevertheless, he made sure he was alone when he did it.
“Folks, I’d like you to meet John and Jason, our pair-bonded males. You know of course, about dolphin social structure?”
As Mackenzie started to say yes, Carter also spoke. “Some of us are more familiar than others. Why don’t you go ahead and explain?”
“All right. Well, pods of dolphins are what you might call ad hoc groups. They get together for certain purposes and later disband and gather for other purposes. However, the males tend to pair up as sort of best friends, and a pair-bonded duo will do everything together. As far as we know, that’s a lifetime bond. Groups of females also hang out together, and since it’s a matriarchal society, you’ll find them helping each other with the calves when they’re newborns, teaching the older, immature ones in groups, and cooperating in hunting. In fact, mixed pods will do the latter or come together for protection. Dolphins also socialize by mating, and we think they and the apes are the only other animals, besides humans, who have sex for pleasure.”
Gerry’s fair skin was a bit pink as he said the last sentence, and he sent an apologetic glance at Mackenzie and the other ladies present. She nudged Carter.
“Okay,” Carter said, studiously looking anywhere but at his wife. “So here we have John and Jason.” He noticed the two dolphins were close to the edge of the pool and could almost imagine them eavesdropping. Evidently, they were more mature than humans, since they hadn’t appeared to be as amused as Mackenzie by the lieutenant’s discomfort. A few feet away but also close to the edge, several other dolphins swam back and forth in a tight arc. “And who are these lovely ladies?”
Gerry named the females, Nola, Jewel, Jessie, Michele, Bess, and Dakota, and then explained their complex relationships. Nola was the only one not born within the program. She had been rescued by a Coast Guard patrol some twenty years before after a shark attack had left one fin dangling from her body, useless. Today, she had a prosthetic attachment that replaced the part of her fin that had to be amputated. She didn’t seem to notice it wasn’t part of her. Jonah and Jewel were her offspring by the same sire, and Bess by a different male. Jessie had been born to another captive dolphin at Sea World, as had Jason and Michele, the latter to a different dam. Dakota was Bess’s half-sister, through their sire.
“Is there going to be a test later?” quipped James, whose head was spinning.
Irene muttered, “Lord, I hope not!”
Gerry smiled. “You’ll get to know them and be able to tell them apart soon. I can tell you that from experience. They’ve all been in the program longer than me.”
Carter, who’d been given detailed instructions by the engineer who constructed the translation device, programmed it to recognize each one by asking Gerry to have them “speak”.
“To tell you the truth, each sound they make, whether a hoot, whistle, or squeak, sounds different to me, but I can’t tell the difference between two whistles, for example, or two hoots.” Gerry said.
This time Mackenzie did dissolve in laughter. The bewildered lieutenant gave her a look, and she explained, “So the dolphins do give two hoots?”
Carter shook his head. “You’ve been around me too long, Mackie.”
After that bit of silliness, they got down to business. For now, they wouldn’t try to speak to the dolphins. Gerry showed the dolphins pictures, and Sam made a notation of which picture was being shown each time one of the dolphins vocalized. They noticed that it was usually Nola who responded to the pictures, but occasionally one of the younger dolphins would also respond. Everyone found it fascinating that the sounds were similar in those cases.
What they didn’t recognize was that when pictures of different items of the same objects were shown, the dolphin sounds were the same. Mostly this was because these pictures weren’t shown in succession, but were all mixed up. In this way, they hoped to verify that the dolphins were indeed recognizing and “naming” objects, rather than just making random noises. It would take careful analysis of the sounds on the track to distinguish the noises and map them to the pictures.
Most puzzling was the times when the dolphins opened their mouths, but no sound was emitted. Until Mackenzie reminded them that dolphins could make sounds humans couldn’t hear. Then they could only hope the device was recording them, and they’d be able to use various devices to measure the properties of the sounds and assign words to them. That was when Sam asked Gerry to show the pictures again that the dolphins had reacted to but no sound was heard. This time she notated every reaction and the picture that caused it. This was going to be more complicated than she’d thought.
After several hours and dozens of pictures, the dolphins signaled that they were tired of this game by swimming away. Bowing to the unmistakable withdrawal of cooperation, the Freydís group retired to on-base accommodations to spend the night. They were all exhausted by that time anyway, as jet lag caught up to them.
In the morning, Sam, Liu, James, and Irene stayed behind to see what they could learn about the first experiment, while Carter and Mackenzie met with the commander in charge of the project to arrange for future visits.
First Sam fed the sounds into the database along with the pictures that went with them. While uploading the sound files wasn’t difficult, identifying the beginning and end of each sound required careful comparison on a sine-wave chart. Especially when more than one of the creatures got involved in the conversation. Liu, James, and Irene provided extra sets of eyes, with Sam both teaching them what to look for and verifying their work.
At the beginning of the recording, there was quite a bit of chatting among the dolphins. Sam would have given a pretty penny to know what they were saying. Maybe someday they would.
The first breakthrough came when she located identical words for images of various people, not only pictures of the individuals involved in the experiment, but those of random people, and even a couple of silhouettes with no features visible. Every time an image of a human was shown, Nola made the same sound. The first translated word in the database was “human”. The next was “ball”, and then as they distinguished “word” after “word”, it was time to declare the experiment a success.
Sam was afforded the honor of telling Carter, Mackenzie, and Gerry. “Guys! We’ve done it! We know the words for human, ball, fish, bucket, and a whole bunch of others! We can talk to them!”
While everyone was excited and in fact elated, giving high-fives all around, it was nothing short of what Mackenzie had expected all along. She hugged Liu, and whispered, “I never would have thought this possible before hearing those sound files.”
Liu had been overcome with emotion most of the morning. All she could do was cling to Mackenzie and nod. “When are we going to try to talk back to them?” she asked.
“We have more work to do before we attempt that. Today, we’re going to try to show them images that convey action and abstracts,” Mackenzie answered. “Only then will we be able to get ideas across. Let’s see what comes of today’s work before we schedule a talk-back with them.”
In fact, no one, not even Gerry, knew whether the dolphins would cooperate today. And it seemed they weren’t in the mood, as they insisted on playing hide and seek for about half an hour before they would come to the side and look at the pictures.
Now the pictures were of people in action, li
ke running, swimming, eating, and so on. In the afternoon, there were pictures of humans hugging and dolphins swimming close together and other images meant to evoke abstract concepts like love, help, arguments, and more. The dolphins again cooperated for several hours and then signaled they were done. Interestingly, it was about the same time in the afternoon when they swam away from the humans.
“I wonder how they know it’s quitting time?” Carter asked. It was a rhetorical question, but Gerry answered it in all seriousness.
“Probably the changing quality of the light,” he answered. “We can never get them to do anything after five o’clock.”
“I’ll be damned. Do they have a union?”
Once again, the earnest young lieutenant was caught short by Carter’s joke. When he failed to laugh, Carter decided some people just had no sense of humor.
As it turned out, though, they discovered the dolphins did. Of course, Mackenzie had known it, but there was no question in anyone’s mind now. The dolphins had the same sound-wave reaction to a picture of a child being tickled as to one of a dolphin hiding from a human. Even more interesting, they had the same reaction to a picture of a human running as they did to a dolphin with a shark in the same picture.
“What word should I assign to that?” Sam wondered. “I don’t get it.”
Mackenzie and Carter were observing the process, and Mackenzie answered. “Fear. But I wonder what they’ve seen that makes them think a running human is afraid? Like they are, of the shark, I mean.”
It was an interesting enough phenomenon that they called Gerry to come and brainstorm with them. He supplied the answer. “Oh. I don’t think they’ve ever seen anyone running, except the time when Dakota was trapped underwater by an obstacle that came loose from its moorings. The others were trying to lift her so she could breathe, and one of the other trainers and I had to run from one of the other pools to get to her in time. We could hear the commotion in here, and it sounded like they were all very agitated. When we saw what was happening, we dived in and lifted the obstacle so she could get to the surface, it was a close call. They can only stay under water for about fifteen to seventeen minutes.”