Margaret St. Clair - The Dolphins of Altair

“You didn’t mention this when we were discussing how to break down the sea walls on the pools,” Dr. Lawrence observed mildly.

“Of course not,” I answered. “To cause a quake deliberately would be a violation of the covenant”

Pettrus—a half-brother of mine, and the other dolphin who had escaped with Djuna from the pools at Capitola—came coasting through the water and stopped as close as he could get to where the Splits were sitting on the beach. “A violation of the covenant would be justified in self-defense,” he said in his high-pitched voice. “But a quake would kill people, perhaps millions of them, who haven’t harmed us and whose deaths wouldn’t benefit us. We can’t do that.”

“But it—” said Dr. Lawrence, and then stopped. He got to his feet, peering through the blur of raindrops toward a commotion in the distant water, a hundred yards or so from the rocky shore. Madelaine had risen, too, and was pressing her hands to her head. She told me afterwards that she had had a sharp, sudden impression of urgency and distress.

We had all turned and were swimming outward. The water held the smell of suffering. Djuna and I bore the messenger—it was Baldus, a full brother of mine—up between our bodies and swam gently with him through the parting ranks of the sea people toward the beach. He was hurt; he would have drowned without our help.

“What is it?” Sven asked. “What’s happening?”

No one answered him immediately. We were all clustered around Baldus, listening to his painfully gasped message. Then his body relaxed, and Djuna and I knew he was dead. The smell of death spread through the sea.

“What is it?” Sven repeated. “What’s happening?”

We let his body drop gently to the bottom. We would take Baldus later to one of the places where we leave our dead.

“He was a messenger,” I told the Splits, who were looking eagerly toward us. “He came to say that the navy has been hunting down sea people with an electric shock device. They have captured about fifty more of us. He was hurt, but managed to escape to tell us what was happening. Now—he is dead.”

Dr. Lawrence coughed. The rain showed no sign of slackening. “There’s your answer,” he said. “If your scruples still bother you, let me point out that human beings wouldn’t be bothered by them for an instant. Generally speaking, they are not deterred from an action by respect for their own or any other sort of life.”

“Yes,” Pettrus answered, rather wobblingly (Baldus had been his half-brother, too, and we sea people love one another), “but we have rather higher standards of conduct for ourselves than Splits do.”

Madelaine had been standing immobile, her hands pressed to her breast. Now she said, in a low, carrying voice, “There must be a quake.”

We were all looking at her, sea people and Splits alike, “Dr. Lawrence forgot the final argument,” she went on slowly. “He says that a quake is long overdue, that it may happen at any time. That means—there might be a quake on a weekday, when children were in school, the stores full of people, the freeways roaring with traffic. But if we make the quake, we can choose the time for it. We can select a time for it when the loss of life will be kept to a minimum, “Late Sunday night—before sunrise Monday morning—would be best, I think. Yes, that would be a good time. But we must have a quake.”

“I ought to have thought of that,” Dr. Lawrence said in a rather dissatisfied voice. “But she’s right, of course. There will be much less destruction this way than if we merely leave it to nature.”

“Can’t we warn them a quake is coming?” Pettrus asked hesitantly.

“No. If we warned them, they would strengthen the walls or evacuate the dolphins,” Madelaine answered. There was something odd in her voice—there had been something odd ever since she had said, “There must be a quake”—and she stood in the pouring rain without appearing to notice it at all. I did not realize until much later what was affecting her.

“Let’s have a vote on it,” Dr. Lawrence said, stepping forward. “We three are in favor of having a quake, I kn ow. Amtor, what do your sea people say?”

I felt their minds. It seemed to be unanimous, but I wanted to be positive. “Is there anyone opposed to triggering an earthquake by exploding a bomb in Benthis Canyon?” I asked in the high pitch that is inaudible to human ears.

Silence. “We all think we should try to cause the quake,” Pettrus said after a minute. “But it must be on Sunday night, as Moonlight” (that was one of the names we had for Madelaine) “said.”

“We are all in favor of the earthquake,” I reported. “But it must be on Sunday night.”

“Good,” said Dr. Lawrence. “Today is Thursday. Sven, you used to be a demolitions expert. Do you think you can get a bomb for us, perhaps from Port Chicago or Benecia, by sometime on Saturday?”

The doctor seemed to have elected himself our leader. He was intelligent, his plans were realistic, And yet, I did not trust him. I did not trust him at all.

How can an unarmed man get safely away with a bomb from a U.S. Navy arsenal? Sven had devoted a lot of thought to this problem, but the plan of action he had come up with was rudimentary indeed. For the most part, he felt he would have to rely on luck.

He left the Rock before sunset. Madelaine and Dr. Lawrence gave him what money they had with them, and Dr. Lawrence got a prescription pad out of his briefcase and wrote a prescription for a powerful, quick-acting hypnotic.

“I’ve made the signature ‘To be taken as needed’,” he told Sven, unsmiling. “Any drugstore ought to be able to ill it for you.” He put the prescription inside his rubber-lined tobacco pouch and handed it to Sven.

Sven put the pouch in his pants pocket, beside his pocket knife. “Does the stuff dissolve quickly?” he asked.

“Yes. It might taste a little bitter. Beer would be a good medium to administer it in.”

They shook hands. The doctor wished Sven good luck. Madelaine, more demonstrative, kissed him on both cheeks. Then Sven got on Djuna’s back—Djuna and Pettrus were ferrying him to Port Chicago—and was carried away from the Rock. He turned to wave good-bye at Madelaine and Lawrence, standing on the shingle in the glowing light. He was gone.

I should have liked to go with them. A historian ought to be where the action is. But my deformity would have slowed the party down, and three dolphins and a man were a little more apt to attract attention than two dolphins and a man. We didn’t want to attract any attention at all. So I stayed behind, near Noonday Rock.

Sven, astride Djuna’s back, experienced again the extraordinary contentment he had found before in physical contact with one of the sea people. The contentment was always there, like a basic theme in a piece of music, and when he speculated about it, he was always surprised by its intensity. The conscious part of his mind was occupied, however, with the problem of the night: how can an unarmed man get safely away with a bomb from a navy arsenal? Not quite unarmed, perhaps—the knife in his pocket had a sharp two-and-a-half-inch blade. But it was splitting hairs to think of the knife in his dungarees as a weapon. He had never used it for anything more serious than stripping the insulation from electric wires.

Sven had been stationed at Port Chicago for two months’ special training before he had been shipped out to the Middle East. He’d got to know several of the civilian dockside workers well enough to be on drinking terms with them. He’d liked a fellow Scandinavian, a man named Karl Eting, particularly well. If he could find Karl now—but it had been several years; Karl might not be working at the arsenal any more.