Robert Silverberg - Ishmael in Love

He said, “Look at him, gentlemen. Worn out in his prime! A victim of human exploitation!” To me he said, “Ishmael, these gentlemen come from the League for the Prevention of Cruelty to Intelligent Species. You know about that?”

“No,” I said.

“They’re trying to put an end to dolphin exploitation. The criminal use of our planet’s only other truly intelligent species in slave labor. They want to help you.”

“I am no slave. I receive compensation for my work.”

“A few stinking fish!” said the fully dressed man to the left of the technician. “They exploit you, Ishmael! They give you dangerous, dirty work and don’t pay you worth a damn!”

His companion said, “It has to stop. We want to serve notice to the world that the age of enslaved dolphins is over. Help us, Ishmael. Help us help you!”

I need not say that I was hostile to their purported purposes. A more literal-minded dolphin than I might well have said so at once and spoiled their plot. But I shrewdly said, “What do you want me to do?”

“Foul the intakes,” said the technician quickly.

Despite myself, I snorted in anger and surprise. “Betray a sacred trust? How can I?”

“‘It’s for your own sake, Ishmael. Here’s how it works—you and your crew will plug up the intakes, and the water plant will stop working. The whole island will panic. Human maintenance crews will go down to see what’s what, but as soon as they clear the valves, you go back and foul them again. Emergency water supplies will have to be rushed to St. Croix. It’ll focus public attention on the fact that this island is dependent on dolphin labor—underpaid, overworked dolphin labor! During the crisis we’ll step forward to tell the world your story. We’ll get every human being to cry out in outrage against the way you’re being treated.”

I did not say that I felt no outrage myself. Instead I cleverly replied, “There could be dangers in this for me.”

“Nonsense!”

“They will ask me why I have not cleared the valves. It is my responsibility. There will be trouble.”

For a while we debated the point. Then the technician said, “Look, Ishmael, we know there are a few risks. But we’re willing to offer extra payment if you’ll handle the job.”

“Such as?”

“Spools. Anything you’d like to hear, we’ll get for you. I know you’ve got literary interests. Plays, poetry, novels, all that sort of stuff. After hours, we’ll feed literature to you by the bushel if you’ll help us.”

I had to admire their slickness. They knew how to motivate me.

“It’s a deal,” I said.

“Just tell us what you’d like.”

“Anything about love.”

“Love?”

“Love. Man and woman. Bring me love poems. Bring me stories of famous lovers. Bring me descriptions of the sexual embrace. I must understand these things.”

“He wants the Kama Sutra,” said the one on the left.

“Then we bring him the Kama Sutra,” said the one on the right.

They did not actually bring me the Kama Sutra. But they brought me a good many other things, including one spool that quoted at length from the Kama Sutra. For several weeks I devoted myself intensively to a study of human love literature. There were maddening gaps in the texts, and I still lack real comprehension of much that goes on between man and woman. The joining of body to body does not puzzle me; but I am baffled by the dialectics of the chase, in which the male must be predatory and the woman must pretend to be out of season; I am mystified by the morality of temporary mating as distinct from permanent [“marriage”]; I have no grasp of the intricate systems of taboos and prohibitions that humans have invented. This has been my one intellectual failure: at the end of my studies I knew little more of how to conduct myself with Lisabeth than I had before the conspirators had begun slipping me spools in secret.

Now they called on me to do my part.

Naturally I could not betray the station. I knew that these men were not the enlightened foes of dolphin exploitation that they claimed to be; for some private reason they wished the station shut down, that was all, and they had used their supposed sympathies with my species to win my cooperation. I do not feel exploited.

Was it improper of me to accept spools from them if I had no intention of aiding them? I doubt it. They wished to use me; instead I used them. Sometimes a superior species must exploit its inferiors to gain knowledge.

They came to me and asked me to foul the valves that evening. I said, “I am not certain what you actually wish me to do. Will you instruct me again?”

Cunningly I had switched on a recording device used by Lisabeth in her study sessions with the station dolphins. So they told me again about how fouling the valves would throw the island into panic and cast a spotlight on dolphin abuse. I questioned them repeatedly, drawing out details and also giving each man a chance to place his voiceprints on record. When proper incrimination had been achieved, I said, “Very well. On my next shift I’ll do as you say.”

“And the rest of your maintenance squad?”

“I’ll order them to leave the valves untended for the sake of our species.”

They left the station, looking quite satisfied with themselves. When they were gone, I beaked the switch that summoned Lisabeth. She came from her living quarters rapidly. I showed her the spool in the recording machine.

“Play it,” I said grandly. “And then notify the island police!”

The arrests were made. The three men had no concern with dolphin exploitation whatsoever. They were members of a disruptive group [“revolutionaries”] attempting to delude a naive dolphin into helping them cause chaos on the island. Through my loyalty, courage, and intelligence I had thwarted them.

Afterward Lisabeth came to me at the rest tank and said; “You were wonderful, Ishmael. To play along with them like that, to make them record their own confession—marvelous! You’re a wonder among dolphins, Ishmael.”

I was in a transport of joy.

The moment had come. I blurted, “Lisabeth, I love you.”

My words went booming around the walls of the tank as they burst from the speakers. Echoes amplified and modulated them into grotesque barking noises more worthy of some miserable moron of a seal. “Love you…love you…love you…”

“Why, Ishmael!”

“I can’t tell you how much you mean to me. Come live with me and be my love. Lisabeth, Lisabeth, Lisabeth!”

Torrents of poetry broke from me. Gales of passionate rhetoric escaped my beak. I begged her to come down into the tank and let me embrace her. She laughed and said she wasn’t dressed for swimming. It was true: she had just come from town after the arrests. I implored. I begged. She yielded. We were alone; she removed her garments and entered the tank; for an instant I looked upon beauty bare. The sight left me shaken—those ugly swinging milk glands normally so wisely concealed, the strips of sickly white skin where the sun had been unable to reach, that unexpected patch of additional body hair—but once she was in the water I forgot my love’s imperfections and rushed toward her. “Love!” I cried “Blessed Love!” I wrapped my fins about her in what I imagined was the human embrace. “Lisabeth! Lisabeth!” We slid below the surface. For the first time in my life I knew true passion, the kind of which the poets sing, that overwhelms even the coldest mind. I crushed her to me. I was aware of her forelimb-ends [“fists”] beating against my pectoral zone, and took it at first for a sign that my passion was being reciprocated; then it reached my love-hazed brain that she might be short of air. Hastily I surfaced. My darling Lisabeth, choking and gasping, sucked in breath and struggled to escape me. In shock I released her. She fled the tank and fell along its rim, exhausted, her pale body quivering. “Forgive me,” I boomed. “I love you, Lisabeth! I saved the station out of love for you!” She managed to lift her lips as a sign that she did not feel anger for me [a “smile”]. In a faint voice she said, “You almost drowned me, Ishmael!”