Margaret St. Clair - The Dolphins of Altair

“Yes. I was surprised how easily he believed me. The quake had damaged a good many of the craft in his command, and I suppose he was rather shaken up.”

“Did you advise him to strafe and bomb the rock ?” I asked.

“I wasn’t responsible for the measures he took,” Lawrence replied evasively.

There seemed no particular point in trying to get an admission of guilt from him. “Do you know what’s happened to Sven?” I said.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Lawrence replied quickly. He seemed relieved to change the subject. “I heard that a man had been picked up near the lighthouse.”

“Where is he now?”

“They have him in custody.”

“How about Djuna?”

“I’m not sure. I heard that a dolphin that was swimming near the big island had been wounded but had managed to get away.”

Djuna wounded, and Sven in custody. If Dr. Lawrence had been in the water at that moment, I am sure Pettrus and Ivry and I would have managed to MB him. Our armament is not much, compared to that of a shark, but we do have over a hundred strong sharp teeth. We were so angry we had even forgotten about Madelaine.

Dr. Lawrence was speaking. “It was learning that Sven had been captured that made me realize what I’d done,” he said slowly. “Fate and chance? No, I’d done it. If I’d felt a sort of traitor to join Madelaine’s war on humanity, I knew now that I was a real traitor. I’d betrayed people who trusted me.

“I don’t expect you to believe me. I’ve forfeited your confidence. I’ll have to try to earn it back. But I am on your side.”

Pettrus made a blowing noise. I don’t know how it would have sounded to a Split, but a dolphin would have translated it as the acoustical equivalent of, “Well, well! You don’t say !”

“How did you get away from the navy?” I asked the doctor. “You said you thought you had covered your tracks.”

Lawrence looked at his watch. “It’s time to give Madelaine more penicillin,” he said. “I’ll tell you about my escape—evasion is a better word—after I take care of her.”

He went back to where she was lying. After he had made the injection, he took her temperature and then gave her another drink. He turned the flask upside down to get the last few drops.

“How is she?” I asked when he came back to the water.

“A little better. Not as much better as I would have liked. Even finding out how much fever she has is difficult, she’s in such an awkward place.”

“You were going to tell us about how you got away,” I prompted him.

“Yes. It was easy, actually. They kept me on the flag ship until dark, asking me questions and making me go through my story several times. I gathered my admiral had got into a certain amount of trouble with his superiors for having sent out bombers before he consulted them.

“Then they took me back to my office in the DRAT station and left me there, with a marine on guard in front of the door. I’d already decided that I wanted to get away.

“My private lavatory had a door that communicated with the main corridor. The door was always kept bolted, so I suppose they forgot it was there. All I did was go in the lavatory, unbolt the door, and walk out. It was simple. I left a note on my desk.”

“What did you say in the note?” I asked.

“I told them that I’d been feeling disturbed for a long time, and that I was going to consult a professional colleague and have him examine me. Do you understand? I wanted them to think I was doubtful about my own sanity.

“I underlined everything, and ended all my sentences with exclamation marks. I finished by saying that I hated to leave in such a sneaky way, but that my voices had told me to. It was a very disturbed-sounding note.”

“You were trying to convince them that everything you’d said about the earthquake was imagination?”

“Yes. I wanted them to think my whole story was delusional. It might work. The idea of dolphins causing an earthquake is pretty wild.”

“What about Sven?” Pettrus asked. “The fact that they’ve picked him up would tend to bear out your story.”

“Yes,” Lawrence agreed, rather uncomfortably, “but Sven’s intelligent. He won’t admit anything if he can help it.”

He stood up. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“I’m going to fill my flask and give Madelaine more water. Then I’m going to hunt a decent place to sleep tonight.”

“You’re not staying here?” Ivry asked. He was becoming agitated.

“No; why should I? It won’t do Maddy any good to have me sleep on damp sand. I can’t give her another shot until morning anyhow.”

He clambered up on the dock. We waited. In about five minutes he came back and gave the girl more water.

“What if she gets thirsty during the night?” Ivry asked. “We can’t give her a drink.”

Lawrence may have shrugged. “I’ll be able to do more for per tomorrow if I get some sleep tonight. You ought to let me take her out from under the dock. I promise—” “No.”

Lawrence sighed. “I’ll be back tomorrow about seven,” he said. “Good night.” “Good night.”

He was gone, taking his little black satchel with him. But oddly enough, his refusal to stay with Sosa had increased our confidence in him. We felt that if he were planning to betray us again, he would make a greater show of devotion to her.

We were hungry; we had had nothing to eat all day. One at a time we went out to get food for ourselves, leaving two of us always on guard near Sosa. We thought that if a Split tried to molest her, we might be able to scare him off.

There are plenty of fish in San Francisco Bay, though not all of them are considered fit to eat by Splits. None of us had any difficulty getting a good meal. When I came back from my fishing, Ivry and Pettrus told me that Madelaine had asked for water once, but not urgently. “After she asked for water, she laughed,” Pettrus said. “And then she said, ‘It’s lovely here.’”

“Lovely?” I was puzzled. “What do you think she meant by that? Is she delirious?”

“I don’t think so. She sounded as if she were having pleasant dreams.”

Though we were no longer really hungry, we did a good deal of fishing during the night. This was partly for exercise and diversion, and partly because the dirty water around the dock was a constant vexation to us. It was wonderfully refreshing to swim in clean water again.

The two men came down to the boat quite early, while it was still dark, and cast off. About two hours later Dr. Lawrence appeared.

He was wearing inconspicuous informal clothing—slacks, beach shirt and sandals—and he carried a large paper bag with his doctor’s satchel and street clothing inside. He said, “Good morning” to us curtly, and then went to where Sosa was.

He gave her water from his flask and then, taking advantage of the improved light, examined her with some thoroughness. He finished by giving her another injection of penicillin.

“How is she?” I asked when he came to where we were waiting.

“Some better. Her fever’s down. She’s not as much better as she should be—I’ve given her a lot of penicillin. What I don’t understand is why she’s so comatose. I don’t find anything to account for it. Did she get a blow on the head?”

“Not as far as we know,” I answered.

He was silent. “You’ve got to let me get her out from under there,” he said finally. “It’s not only that I can’t take proper care of her—if I keep going under the dock, I’m sure to be noticed eventually, and then the fat will be in the fire. They’ll put Madelaine in the hospital, and the navy will pick me up again. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”

“We don’t care much about what happens to you,” I told him frankly, “but we don’t want to be separated from her.”