Roger Zelazny - My Name is Legion

I looked at her, trying to see something beyond the apparently amused expression with which she faced me.

You told me to think about it, I said; to try to feel it.

It would be strange if you were correct, would it not?

I nodded.

And probably well worth the pilgrimage, I said, standing, if only I could find an interpreter ... I thank you for the minute I took and the others you gave me. Would you mind terribly if I dropped by again sometime?

I am afraid I am going to be quite busy, she said.

I see. Well, I appreciate what you have given me. Good night, then.

Good night.

I made my way back down the ramp to the speedboat, brought it to life, guided it about the breakwall and headed toward the darkening sea, looking back only once, in hopes of discovering just what it was that she called to mind, sitting there, looking out across the waves. Perhaps the Little Mermaid, I decided.

She did not wave back to me. But then it was twilight, and she might not have noticed.

Returning to Station One, I felt sufficiently inspired to head for the office/museum/library cluster to see what I could pick up in the way of reading materials having to do with dolphins.

I made my way across the islet and into the front door, passing the shadow-decked models and displays of the museum and turning right. I swung the door open. The light was on in the library, but the place was empty. I found several books listed that I had not read, so I hunted them up, leafed through them, settled on two, and went to sign them out.

As I was doing this, my eyes were drawn toward the top of the ledger page by one of the names entered there: Mike Thomley. I glanced across at the date and saw that it happened to be the day before his death. I finished signing out my own materials and decided to see what it was he had taken to read on the eve of his passing. Well, read and listen to. There were three items shown, and the prefix to one of the numbers indicated that it had been a tape.

The two books turned out to be light popular novels. When I checked the tape, however, a very strange feeling possessed me. It was not music, but rather one from the marine-biology section. Verily. To be precise, it was a recording of the sounds of the killer whale.

Even my pedestrian knowledge of the subject was sufficient, but to be doubly certain, I checked in one of the books I had right there with me. Yes, the killer whale was undoubtedly the dolphin's greatest enemy, and well over a generation ago experiments had been conducted at the Naval Undersea Center in San Diego, using the recorded sounds of the killer whale to frighten dolphins, for purposes of developing a device to scare them out of tuna nets, where they were often inadvertently slaughtered.

What could Thomley possibly have wanted it for? Its use in a waterproof broadcasting unit could well have accounted for the unusual behavior of the dolphins in the park at the time he was killed. But why? Why do a thing like that?

I did what I always do when I am puzzled: I sat down and lit a cigarette.

While this made it even more obvious to me that things were not what they had seemed at the time of the killings, it also caused me once again to consider the apparent nature of the attack. I thought of the photos I had seen of the bodies, of the medical reports I had read.

Bitten. Chewed. Slashed.

Arterial bleeding, right carotid ...

Severed jugular; numerous lacerations of shoulders and chest ...

According to Martha Millay, a dolphin would not go about it that way. Still, as I recalled, their many teeth, while not enormous, were needle-sharp. I began paging through the books, looking for photographs of the jaws and teeth.

Then the thought came to me, with dark, more than informational overtones to it: there is a dolphin skeleton in the next room.

Mashing out my cigarette, I rose then, passed through the doorway into the museum, and began looking about for the light switch. It was not readily apparent As I sought it, I heard the door on the other side of the room open.

Turning, I saw Linda Cashel stepping across the threshold. With her next step, she looked in my direction, froze, and muffled the beginning of a shriek.

It's me. Madison, I said. Sorry I alarmed you. I'm looking for the light switch.

Several seconds passed. Then, Oh, she said. It's down in back of the display. I'll show you.

She crossed to the front door, groped behind a component model.

The lights came on, and she gave a nervous laugh.

You startled me, she said. I was working late. An unusual thing, but I got backed up. I stepped out for a breath of air and didn't see you come in.

I've got the books I was looking for, I said, but thanks for finding me the switch.

I'll be glad to sign them out for you.

I already did that, I said, but I left them inside because I wanted to take another look at the display before I went home.

Oh. Well, I was just going to close up. If you want to stay awhile, I'll let you do it.

What does it consist of?

Just turning out the lights and closing the doors, we don't lock them around here. I've already shut the windows.

Sure, I'll do that ... I'm sorry I frightened you.

That's all right. No harm done.

She moved to the front door, turned when she reached it, and smiled again, a better job this time.

Well, good night.

Good night.

My first thought was that there were no signs of any extra work having come in since the last time I had been around, my second one was that she had been trying a little too hard to get me to believe her, and my third thought was ignoble.

But the proof of the pudding would keep. I turned my attention to the dolphin skeleton.

The lower jaw, with its neat, sharp teeth, fascinated me, and its size came close to being its most interesting feature. Almost, but not quite. The most interesting thing about it had to be the fact that the wires which held it in place were clean, untarnished, bright and gleaming at their ends, as if they had just recently been cut, unlike their more oxidized brethren everyplace else where the specimen had been wired.

The thing I found interesting about the size was that it was just about right to make it a dandy hand weapon.

And that was all. That was enough. But I fingered the maxillary and premaxillary bones, running my hand back toward the blowhole; I traced the rostrum; I gripped the jaw once more. Why, I did not really know for a moment, until a grotesque vision of Hamlet filtered into my mind. Or was it really that incongruous? A phrase out of Loren Eiseley came to me then: ... We are all potential fossils still carrying within our bodies the crudities of former existences, the marks of a world in which living creatures flow with little more consistency than clouds from age to age. We came from the water. This fellow I gripped had spent his life there. But both our skulls were built of calcium, a sea product chosen in our earlier days and irrevocably part of us now; both were housings for large brains, similar, yet different; both seemed to contain a center of consciousness, awareness, sensitivity, with all the concomitant pleasures, woes, and available varieties of conclusions concerning existence which that entailed, passing at some time or other within these small, rigid pieces of carbonate of lime. The only really significant difference, I suddenly felt, was not that this fellow had been born a dolphin and I a man, but only, rather, that I still lived, a very minor point in terms of the time scale onto which I had wandered. I withdrew my hand, wondering uncomfortably whether my remains would ever be used as a murder weapon.

Having no further reason for being there, I collected my books, closed up, and cleared out.

Returning to my cottage, I deposited the books on my bed table and left the small light burning there. I departed again by means of the back door, which let upon a small, relatively private patio, pleasantly situated right at the edge of the islet with an unobstructed view of the sea. But I did not pause to admire the prospect just then. If other people might step out for a breath of air, so could I.