The Dolphin
Copyright© 2017 by Colin Barrett
Chapter 4
This one is different from the others I meet here near the land.
I see him several times before during my search, though only at a distance. He is easy to recognize even far away; one side is badly scarred and he is very thin. Always he is by himself, never with others.
When I see him yet again I am surprised. I travel far and no others are familiar to me. I wonder does this one follow me, and why does he do that.
I turn and swim toward him. For a moment he begins to turn away, but then he stops and looks directly at me, waiting. For the first time I am near enough to get his scent. It is one I never smell before, but it is also somehow familiar. I feel a sense of comfort that I do not feel with the others I meet.
He at last swims a little to me as I near him. I give him greeting and tell my name.
“Minacou?” he repeats. Then he speaks a thing I do not understand, as though he does not even speak to me. “She says she will do this.”
He does not say his name immediately. That is not usual, when two meet the names are the first things said. I do not speak but wait.
“They call me the Lone One,” he says at last. That is a curious way to say it, as if he does not have his name from a calf and must let strangers name him. But that is not for me to speak.
We exchange greetings. But I come to ask a question. “I see you before, Lone One,” I say. “More than one time, and far apart. Is it chance or do you follow me?”
“I watch,” he says after a small time. “Yes, I am watching. What do you do that you journey so far by yourself?”
“I seek one who is my companion,” I tell him.
“Your male?” he asks. I answer yes. “How do you come to be apart from him? Is it his wish to go from you?”
I begin to tell him how Kitik is taken. But before I can go far with my tale I see a sudden change in this Lone One before me. He turns and begins to swim fast toward me. It is the way that I swim to beat on an evil mouth or to strike food to make it go still. It is so strange a thing to do that I almost do not move as he comes nearer, but then I do move. As I move he turns away from me and slows.
I do not know what to think of this. I do not know what I speak that would give such deep offense. I wish to think for a time, and I go above to breathe. I am still not sure what I should do when he comes to the surface beside me.
“I wish to hear all of your story,” he says. “I will— this will not happen again, you need not fear me.”
I do not fear him; he is very slow and I am quick, he can do me no hurt. But I do not say this. Instead I ask if he will talk. For a time neither of us speaks, but I wait for him.
“No,” he says in time. “It is shadow. Shadow is heavy in me sometimes. It is done now, for this time.”
I tell him I live in shadow too, for Kitik is shadow now and yet I cannot leave him. And I tell the Lone One how our parting comes to be.
In a way the telling is good. It is the first time I am able to say my tale to one who listens. In my pod none wish to hear me, and here by the land it is the same until now. But as I speak I am sad once again, and the Lone One makes it more sad when he tells me what I tell myself. “The land is very big,” he says. “Much bigger than you know. Even if you are right that the boat takes him there, I do not think you will find him.”
I ask him what is a boat, and he says it is the name for the hollow floating things I see. When I ask how he knows this, he says that is part of his shadow. We are quiet on the surface for a time; I think each of us is in our own shadow.
“If I do not search, I will not find,” I say at last. “It may be that you are right, but I will search more.”
“You must do what you must do,” he says. I think of Altauk as he speaks.
I sense there are many food nearby, and I am hungry. “There is food,” I say. “Shall we hunt together, you and I?”
“The hunt is not easy for only two, and I am old and slow and will be of small help,” he says. I know he is right, I am sure it is why he is so thin. But if we hunt together then at least this time he will eat well, and I wish to give him this for what he gives to me by hearing my talk.
“I know a way,” I tell him. “I will lead, as I lead in the pod.”
I tell him how we will hunt as we swim toward the food. Then we stop our talk so the food will not be frightened away. Very softly I dive until I am beneath the food. They swim together, as they always do; if I am not careful they will turn as one and escape us with no others to block the way.
But I am careful, and they come directly above me. Then I blow air to make bubbles and it makes confusion for them, they do not swim together for the time and they make their own block to an escape. I call to Lone One to strike, and I strike too as quickly as I can. With Lone One striking from above and me from below, we make many of the food still and we eat more of them immediately. Then the big number of food goes away in fear, but we have many to eat without haste.
When I eat all I want I am ready to go on. I tell Lone One this, and ask him will he still follow me. “Or does it please you to come with me?” I ask. “If you will follow, is it not better that we go together?”
He does not speak for long, until I think he will not speak at all. When he speaks at last it is slow and almost as if it is painful for him.
“There is a place... , “ he begins. “Minacou, there is a place. I do not know if your Kitik will be in this place, but I know of a place for your search if you dare.”
“‘If I dare?’” I repeat his speech. “Is it a place of danger?”
“I do not know,” he says. “It is long in shadow that I am there. I will not go again. But I will take you near and show you if you wish.”
I ask him why he thinks that Kitik may be in this place. “That is shadow too, and I do not speak of shadow,” he says. “But if you will search and you do not know where you search, is this place not as good as any other for your search?”
“You are right, Lone One,” I say, deciding. “If you will lead me to this place I will go with you.”
Well, she supposed it was progress of a sort. But she was disappointed.
Toby was growing quite adept at picking up the words she was trying to teach. He continued to respond well to plain voice commands unaccompanied by the gestures Jason had been using in his training, and he was quick to repeat the words in his Donald Duck “voice.” He even did so appropriately in most cases; when he leaped he would often call out “jump!” as he leaped, he rang the apronside bell with a lusty “bell!”, he asked for fish often, and other words were entering his vocabulary.
But that was where things had stalled. The dolphin showed no ability at all to put the words together into phrases or sentences, and originated nothing that even hinted at real communication. She knew perfectly well that so far she’d achieved nothing more than what many others before her had done, and there was no sign that further progress lay on the horizon.
Nor had she been able to make a particle of sense out of the animal’s own emissions. So far as she could tell at this point the sounds he gave out—clicks, squeaks, something that sounded vaguely like a tenor growl, and others—were entirely random, wholly unrelated to either his own actions or events around him. She’d fed hours of hydrophone recordings into her laptop computer together with her observations of Toby’s behavior and presumed perceptions, and got zero by way of correlation.
“I wish your captain had managed to get that second dolphin,” she complained to Jason one day. “If there were two of them they might be communicating between themselves, and I could eavesdrop. But with just one there’s nobody for him to talk to but us, and I think he doesn’t care about that.”
“Probably thinks we’re too dumb,” the boy said breezily. “Sometimes I can agree with him. What about that idiot who wanted to jump in the water with him the other day?”
Swimming with the dolphin was something Morris flatly prohibited for the guests and visitors, and he was unhappy when even she or Jason got in the water, though they did it often. “Read the literature,” he told her. “They can be dangerous, and the last thing I need is some damn lawsuit. Not to mention the publicity.”
In fact dolphins had been known to have attacked humans. All the cases she’d heard of had involved some fairly severe provocation, usually abuse of some sort by the nominal victim—in one case, for example, said victim had been in the process of trying to jam objects into the dolphin’s blowhole. But the risk was there and it was real; dolphins could grab human arms or legs in their jaws and drag them under water, and the dolphin’s normal method of attack— hard butts of its formidable snout—could break bones.
But not all the guests were satisfied simply watching the shows. Morris had set up chain-link fencing around all accessible areas of the lagoon not protected by the splash guard, and posted prominent signs prohibiting entry, but a few persistent souls kept trying anyway. Several days earlier one especially obnoxious man, clearly several drinks to the worse, had simply ignored their orders and started climbing the fence to jump into the water. Ultimately Jason had solved the problem by the simple expedient of landing a discreet but solid punch to the man’s paunchy midsection; they’d waited for him to finish vomiting and then guided him quickly away, and Morris had promptly invited him and his mousy wife to find other accommodations.
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