The Dolphin
Copyright© 2017 by Colin Barrett
Chapter 3
I am a long way from the pod now. It is a long time of swimming.
The land is not far. But there is so much of it! I do not know before there is so much land. Even if Kitik is there, it is so big to search. I go very near two times now, but I cannot smell Kitik and when I call there is no answer.
And there are many of the monsters above. Some are very big, bigger than anything I ever see. Others are small, and some of those can move very fast. But they can only go straight or turn slow; if they come for me they will not be hard to escape.
I still think of them as monsters because that is what I learn, but they are not monsters at all. They are like a thing that floats at the top of the water, and behind many of them have strange parts that turn very fast and stir the water to make the thing go. I think these parts are dangerous, they move so fast. I stay well away from them.
Inside the floating things seem to be hollow, and strange creatures are in those hollows. The creatures have parts that stick out and move, like an octopus but not so many parts and the parts move more awkwardly. I also see some of these creatures in the water without their floating things, and they swim in a very clumsy way using the stick-out parts. Mostly they swim on top of the water, or if they dive it is very shallow and very short. Some of them cry out loudly and try to swim away when they see me near them, but others do not and a few even try to swim toward me. I do not let them close.
The creatures in the hollows sometimes send things into the water. Some of what they send is food. The food is still, it no longer lives, and sometimes it is old and I do not eat. But mostly the food they send is only newly still so I can eat, and that is good because hunting alone is harder and takes more time. I find that if I leap from the water as though I am making joy they may send more food. I try this sometimes when I see the floating things because it is easier than hunting and I can have more time for searching.
There are others who are here near the land. Some of them do not hunt at all, they spend their time making pretend joy to get food from the floating things. I find an entire pod that lives this way, along with others who are alone or in smaller groups. I try to talk to them, but they have nothing to say. When I tell them of my search they will not hear me and swim away. I think that to take all of one’s food this way is bad, it makes stupid. I take some food from the floating things to save time, but I do not take all, I still hunt.
It is very different here near the land. I do not like it. I know now much better why it is that to us the land is the end of all things. I must stay near it to search for Kitik, but as soon as my search is done I will go away. If I cannot find my pod again Kitik and I will live alone, or we will join another, but I will not stay here.
My search is not done, yet already I despair. It is not only that the land is so big. One time I swim far until the land is on both sides of me. The land stretches on as much as I can see or feel. And when I swim far the water begins to change, it is not right. When I go there I turn and come back. But if the land is that far where I can swim into it, is it that far everywhere? If Kitik is in the land far from the water, how will I find him?
I am not finished my search yet, but already I can begin to think of a time when I must be finished. Altauk tells me to learn how to find Kitik, and that is what I try to do, but what if there is no way? It makes a bad feeling inside me to think of all of my life without Kitik, but perhaps that is what must be.
I will still search, but I must begin to think now of how I may leave shadow at last to learn if there is any brightness yet before me without Kitik. Here at least if I must go to the land, my journey will not be far.
“Would you get the other hydrophone, Jason?”
“Sure.” He walked over to pick up the device.
“I need it dropped about there.” She pointed. “No, not quite, little to the left, past the indent ... that’s it, perfect. About a foot, OK, just get it wet. Thanks, great. Now let me get this one down right ... here.” She sank the instrument in her hands to the same depth; together they would allow stereophonic capture of every sound the dolphin—it was indeed a male, she’d found—produced.
To the observer their chatter was no more than the artless byplay of workers comfortable with each other and their mutual task. But reaching that point had taken Maggie three weeks of steady effort, and even now she was aware that a single blunder on her part could undo the fragile rapprochement she’d achieved.
For all that he’d appeared friendly and cooperative after the initial edginess of their first encounter, Jason had clearly not altogether abandoned his concern about her interference with Toby. In addition, he was highly defensive about his approach to training; he clearly wasn’t prepared to relinquish any part of his heretofore pre-eminent role in the dolphin’s care.
But she needed his acquiescence—his willing cooperation if it could be achieved—to do what she wanted to do. So for the second time in her brief career she harked back to the lessons of the one business management course she’d taken in school, the lessons that had already stood her in good stead during her tenure at Flagler.
It had been one of those “gut” courses designed for the student looking for an easy grade. The professor, an elderly and vaguely middle European man, baldly admitted as much at their first session. “This is easy course,” he’d said in his almost comic-opera accent. “I am too old for hard one. You come, you don’t come, you listen, you don’t listen, same to me, you still pass.
“But you come, you listen, maybe you learn something help you,” he went on with less of a twinkle in his voice. “When you leave here you go to first job. No, no,” he waved away the murmured objections from his class, “not summer job, not part-time, not clerk or waiter or whatever, first real job, first job your field, your profession. First job what you study. Be nice keep that job, do well, succeed, no? I tell you now, not all will do. That is reason for this course, teach you things you should know for yourself but even though you so smart, you going have big degree impress you a lot, you probably don’t.”
So the first assignment she gave herself was to keep her mouth shut as she watched Jason’s unorthodox, almost laughably amateurish efforts to train the dolphin to perform. (“First rule, you don’t start off telling nobody nothing,” her professor’s voice echoed in her head. “You know better way what they do, keep to yourself. Hot-shot degree maybe impress you, maybe not so much others already doing work you only study. If you want come on gangbusters, join gang. Otherwise shut up. Time later pass on all your marvelous learning. Or maybe you learn something yourself.”)
In fact she had quickly “learned something”—that the boy’s approach, amateurish though it might seem, was working! To be sure, the dolphin’s behavior seemed more an effort to please him than a direct response to commands, but he was able to elicit a remarkable range of actions—multiple leaps, mid-air spins, tail-walks, retrieval of thrown objects both floating and non-floating, ringing a bell suspended from an armature extending out from the apron, and so on, all sure crowd-pleasers. There was something to be said, she noted after watching the evident affection between the man and the mammal, for methods based on mutual trust and caring rather than the more imperious exercise of domination and control she’d been used to at Flagler.
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