Margaret St. Clair - The Dolphins of Altair

“It isn’t necessary now. Later, it may be. Let’s get into the water. Kendry will be expecting us.”

She stepped over the Naomi ’s rail and let herself down into the water. She did this with aplomb, though she was still trembling a little from the recent danger—she always liked riding with us. But the doctor hesitated an instant before following her, and I perceived that he not only did not trust us completely, but also that he was afraid of the water.

We began to swim away from the ship. Madelaine was silent. I knew she was thinking of the other time she had ridden with us on a dubious project of Lawrence’s. Sven had been with her then. Now the doctor was her companion, and Sven—“What makes you think Kendry will be expecting us?” Lawrence asked her. “ESP?”

“No, she’ll have smelled the traces the sea people leave in the water. Perhaps the blood, too. The currents around her rock will take the smell to her.—You’ve brought something to write with, haven’t you, Doctor?”

“Yes, in my breast pocket. I didn’t want to trust what we might learn about the ahln to memory.”

Madelaine nodded agreement. I noticed that Lawrence did not treat her knowledge of the currents around Kendry’s rock as if it came from ESP, and I don’t think it did. That she knew about the currents meant that she was perceiving the surface of the water in the way that a dolphin would.

We swam on in silence. Moonlight had stopped trembling and seemed to be enjoying herself, but Lawrence kept looking around the horizon rather anxiously, I suppose from fear of sharks. Pettrus, who was carrying him, said that he gripped unpleasantly tightly with his knees.

In a little more than an hour, Kendry came out to meet us. She was one of the biggest dolphins I have ever known, and I think she had grown a little since I had last seen her. Her skin color had lightened, probably because she was living among light-colored rocks, and there was a pale film over her eyes that hadn’t been there when I had last seen her, four or five years ago. She was a very old dolphin, indeed.

“I’m glad to see you,” she said in our language. She nuzzled us three sea people affectionately. “And Sosa, too—it’s good to see her again.”

“Again?” I asked.

“Yes, again. Sosa—some Sosa—always comes when there’s need of her.”

Madelaine laughed. Kendry said, “Does she understand our speech?”

“Tell her,” Madelaine said, “that I can understand a good deal of it, since I slept for so long. My hearing has greater range, for one thing, But I can’t speak it, of course.”

I relayed this message to Kendry. Lawrence was growing restless during this, to Mm, silent interchange. “Does Kendry—I suppose this dolphin is Kendry—speak English?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “It takes a good deal of training for a dolphin to do that.”

Madelaine said, “She knows we came to get help. Does she know what kind of help we want?”

The four of us talked for quite a long time, Madelaine listening intently, Kendry found the idea of melting the polar ice as astonishing as we tod when Lawrence had first proposed it, and in order to make it seem plausible to her I had to tell her what had already happened.

“I knew that the sea people were under attack,” she said when I had finished. “I have seen more than one wounded dolphin lately. But I didn’t know why. I was puzzled to know why the Splits had suddenly begun to hate us.

“But you came to get me to help you. I don’t understand, Amtor, how I can help you with a project like that.”

“Don’t you remember telling me once about the ahln, a thermal device the Old Ones had?” I answered.

“The ahln. Yes, there was such a thing.”

“Do you know how it was made?”

“There is a tradition. It seems to me that I was once told…” The film over Kendry’s eyes looked thicker, but that was only because she was thinking hard. “I have forgotten how it is made. But I may be able to remember. I will try.”

We had been swimming slowly eastward all the time we were talking. Now we saw Kendry’s rocks ahead of us.

The cluster, not more than ten feet across, could have been called an islet only by courtesy. It must have been almost submerged at high tide. Patches of sea growth clung to it, and it was white with the droppings of birds.

Madelaine looked at it, shielding her eyes against the light. “I have seen—” she said, and then stopped.

“Seen what?” the doctor asked her.

“Seen these rocks before. Do you remember the dream I told you that last morning, just before I went to Drake’s Bay? About standing on some rocks in a wild sea during a wild storm? These are the rocks in my dream.”

“Yes, I remember,” Lawrence answered. His face did not change. “Does Kendry know how to make the ahln? That’s the important thing.”

“She thinks she knew once. She is trying to remember. Let’s get up on the rocks, Doctor, and eat our lunch. She will do better being by herself.”

They did as she suggested. Kendry had swum apart and was floating motionless. We others did a little fishing, but mainly we stayed near the rock cluster, since we knew Lawrence was somewhat mistrustful.

The two Splits ate in silence. The gulls swooped around them. Sosa dabbled her fingers in the water to clean them; Lawrence lit a cigarette, smoked furiously for a moment or two, and then squashed the cigarette out against the rock. He shifted his legs impatiently. “Madelaine, do you think—oh, here she comes.”

Kendry stopped in front of Madelaine. We were all listening. “Sosa—I cannot remember,” she said.

Dr. Lawrence looked around the horizon. Kendry’s rocks were so little elevated above the surface of the sea that he was almost as low as if he sat in a rowboat. He seemed to find no help in the wide, flat prospect, and his gaze returned to Madelaine.

“Kendry says she can’t remember?” he repeated. “She must remember. Getting the ahln is too important to dismiss like this. Can’t you enter her mind, Madelaine, the way you did with me when I couldn’t remember how to get rid of the pyrtrol foam?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s a dolphin, and her brain is much more complex than yours. Besides, she is very old. If I tried to enter her mind, in any but the most superficial way, I would probably kill her.”

“Well, for Christ’s sake, there must be some way of reminding her.”

“Perhaps there is, but it can’t be forced.”

Kendry, though she had not understood Lawrence’s words, had understood his tone and was looking at him intently. To me she said, “This is the Split who betrayed us?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Is he really our friend now?” she asked.

“I think so. We have had no reason to mistrust him since he came back. And Sosa seems to think he is reliable.”

Madelaine, who was following our conversation, nodded her head, though not very enthusiastically. “Tell Kendry he is worried because she can’t remember,” she said.

I relayed this message, adding, “Is there any reference to the ahln in the poem of the covenant, Kendry?”

“There may be,” my great-great-great aunt answered slowly. I seemed to have started her on a new train of thought. “There is that passage about the parting and wasting of the waters that might refer to it. I never thought of it in that light before.”

We were all quiet—even the doctor, though he did not understand what had been said—while Kendry softly recited the verses. At the end, she said, “Yes, I think it does mean the ahln. But I still cannot remember how I was told it is made.”

Moonlight let out her breath in disappointment. She shook her head in response to Lawrence’s look of inquiry. A gull swooped low over her head, and she put up her arm to protect herself. The motion made the loose cap sleeve of her dress fall away from her shoulder.