The Dolphin
Copyright© 2017 by Colin Barrett
Chapter 22
Jerry comes again. He speaks only short about Acou. He says he does not know Acou in that time, but he hears of Acou from others. He seems truly happy to learn that Acou lives.
I watch Maggie carefully when she is with Jerry. She is not the same with him as I see her with others. But it is not that she seems to fear him, or to be at his command, even though it is he who gives her money.
In the pod I know that I am also different with Altauk than I am with others. Altauk is leader, and I wish to show respect. But Altauk does not command me. I think it may be so with Maggie and Jerry. She shows respect, but she does not lose her will. As Minacou commands Minacou, I think that Maggie commands Maggie.
When Jerry speaks of Acou I wish to ask him much. I wish to know is it so that humans do not give him food when he does not do as they want, and whether humans cause pain in him. Acou says these things are so, but they are long in shadow and it is a shadow of much pain for him, and perhaps what he remembers in the now is not the same as how it is in that time.
But I do not ask these things. I would not ask them of Altauk; when he tells me of Acou I do not question his speech, that would not be respectful. If Jerry is to Maggie in the same way that Altauk is to me then it is right that I also show respect to him. In a later time perhaps I may ask this of Maggie.
Another is with Jerry. The other has a name that is only one sound, which is not a proper name, but I know that humans do not know the way of names. This one does not speak to me at all, but after Jerry and Maggie talk for a time it begins to place some things in the water.
Jerry tells that he must leave to be with other humans, but that the new one will stay to help Maggie and that the things this one puts in the water will make our speech. I do not understand how a thing may make speech, but I know the ways of humans are different and I wait to see. The new one and Maggie spend much time doing things that I do not understand, and then at last the thing begins to give out noises.
It is funny. I call to Kitik to be with me to hear this thing. I tell Kitik what Jerry says about the thing making our speech and Kitik thinks it is funny too. When Maggie asks do I understand the noises that come from the thing that is even more funny.
I tell her that this is not our speech, it is only noise. The one who has come does more and the thing in the water makes other noises, but none are our speech. When Maggie tells me it speaks my name and Kitik’s I listen and perhaps the noises may be something like our names if one is told to hear our names. But none would recognize the noises without the telling. And even when Maggie tells me the noises are meant to mean evil mouth and other small things I teach her I cannot hear that.
After a time the one with Maggie begins to grow agitated. I do not like its way with Maggie, it seems to me it speaks badly like the mate of Morris. I think to push water at it as I do with her, but Maggie knows that I think this and she asks me not to do it. She tells the other to remove the things from the water and she sends that one away.
I am glad it is no longer here. I ask Maggie that it not return. I tell Maggie that she does not say our speech right but that I can sometimes understand when she tries to do so. I say I wish to talk to her, not to thing.
“I gather it didn’t go all that well.”
That afternoon Jerry had appeared, again unexpectedly, with a younger technician Maggie hadn’t met before and a request to test out their dolphin-speech emulator. “We’ve had mixed results with it using some of the sounds you’ve given us, and we’d like Minacou’s take on it.” It seemed a pretty reasonable thing to ask given that he was financing her, and she’d agreed to work with the technician, Mike, to program the equipment. Now Jerry was on the phone to discuss the results.
Maggie laughed. “I think you could say that.”
“When Mike got back he was foaming at the mouth,” he told her. “Said you’d pretty much ordered him off the premises before he could—”
“Oh, balls, Jerry,” she cut him off. “The kid was full of himself, thought he’d invented sliced bread. Then his stuff bombed, and he got all into a huff and started taking it out on me and Minacou and everything else but what the problem was, which is his set-up. Minacou was getting pissed, she was going to give him the Barbie treatment”—she’d told him of Morris’ wife’s visit—”until I asked her not to. But it was time for him to leave, and I said so. It wasn’t ever going to work.”
“Not even close?”
“Jerry, did you ever see a dolphin laugh?”
“Not so I knew about it,” he said.
“They don’t go ha-ha, they just sort of wriggle in the water. If they’re on the surface they might slap their flukes if they think something’s funny.”
“So?”
“Going by Minacou’s reaction this one was a side-splitter. She got Kitik over and he started the same thing. Jerry, what you have is an electronic stand-up comedy act to a dolphin. No wonder it’s giving you what you called ‘mixed results’ down there.”
“Shi— Nuts,” he said.
“You can say ‘shit,’” she said. “Hell, it’s what I’d say if it were my system and it had washed out that bad.”
“And I’ve got six figures sunk into it,” he complained. “Well, the hardware and the programming. Look, are we even getting warm?”
“If I told her ahead of time she said she could maybe recognize her own name and Kitik’s, but she said no dolphin in the world would pick it up without advance notice. The other stuff, the sounds for shark and danger warning and farewell and so on, she couldn’t get even if I told her. Said I do it better, at least she can understand me.”
There was a pause. “You get any fix on where the problem is?” he finally asked. “Audio, processor, software, programming, like that?”
“That’s it, you got it.”
“What?”
“All of it,” she said. “I think you’re back to the drawing board.”
“Really that bad?”
“Well, I’m paraphrasing, but Minacou said something to the effect that any dolphin that sounded like that had to have been dead for a few weeks. That’s when your boy really started to simmer.” Actually the dolphin had told her, “Think sound like one go land before. Long before. Not know, not hear one talk after go land.”
Jerry laughed. “I can’t believe I’m saying this about a dolphin, but she does have a way with words.”
“She does. But seriously, Jerry, I think you’re going at this all wrong. Have you ever heard a bagpipe play?”
“A what?” he asked, started at the seeming non sequitur.
“Bagpipe. Scots instrument, you know. Ugly as homemade sin, always reminds me of fingernails on a blackboard. Ever hear one?”
“Sure, but what’s that got to do with it?” he asked.
“The first thing you notice about a bagpipe is the drone note, right? That kind of whine that keeps going in the background underneath whatever it’s playing.”
“So?”
“Take that drone note away and you wouldn’t even know it was a bagpipe. I don’t know what it’d sound like, and I doubt I’d like it anyway—I think you have to be a Scot to like the damn things—but you wouldn’t recognize it as a bagpipe.”
“Sure, OK, but what does this have to do with—”
“Dolphin talk is a lot like that in a way,” she explained. “They’ve always got their sonar working, kind of like the drone note. Speech is sort of a counterpoint to that, it flits in and out and wraps around and I don’t know what all else, but you get the idea. Take the drone note, the sonic ambience, away and it’s like listening to a flute play the William Tell overture all by itself. If you’re used to the one you won’t recognize the other.”
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