The Dolphin
Copyright© 2017 by Colin Barrett
Chapter 7
I am with Kitik again! All else is unimportant.
We do not speak of how he comes to be in this place, or how I come to be with him. Those things are shadow, and I already live too long in shadow. For long we do not speak at all, it is enough that we are together in the now.
In time Acou comes to my mind again. I tell Kitik of him, of how he calls himself Lone One instead of his name and how he swims always alone. Kitik knows the story of Acou and is sad for him, but he is glad for me that I know my father even only for short.
Kitik shows me the place where we are. I think it is a good place but it is very small, and there is land and the rock-weed that is all around us. There is only the way I come, and I am not sure I could go out in that way. I do not like to think how near it is that I strike the land when I come back from high. The water is less on this side of the land; I could not dive so deep as I do outside, and I am not sure I could go so high again to go back out of this place.
And Kitik cannot go so high as I, and I will not leave this place without him.
There is no food in this place; the food cannot cross the land and the rock-weed except very small through the holes in the rock-weed, and such small food is not good.
I ask Kitik and he tells me a strange tale of how food is given to him by creatures who live on the land. He says it is still food, and sometimes it is very cold and even hard, but it is good to eat. I think it is like the food the boat-creatures give, and I tell him of that. He says it is like that but the food does not fall into the water, he goes to take it from the creature the way that he and I take food from Mother when we are small.
When I ask why does this creature give food like Mother the tale becomes even more strange. He tells how the creature first comes into the water to leave food for him to take, and how in time he grows comfortable with the creature near him. He says sometimes the creature touches him and it is pleasant to feel.
I sense that Kitik truly cares for this creature. He says the creature nurses him and gives him food when he is sick, the same way that Mother takes him when he is a calf. I try to understand but it is very hard.
Kitik tells me the creature appears to like it when he makes joy in the water. It is the same as the boat-creatures who give food when I make pretend joy near them. He says the creature makes movements with its stick-out parts when it wishes him to make joy or do other things. Sometimes the creature makes sounds to show it wishes him to make joy or do the other things, and it also seems pleased when he makes the same sounds.
I think I must do these things too if I am to be here with Kitik. It is like when I learn to hunt with Mother; this is a different way, but it is the same in that it is the way to get food in this place.
There are many of the land-creatures, Kitik tells me. One of the others also gives him food and touches him, he says. He says that one is good too, but I do not sense the same feeling in him as when he speaks of the other. He says this second one also makes sounds and movements to ask him to do things, and he does them then as well.
I know there is much here for me to learn. Kitik says he will show me, and to do as he does until I am easier.
A creature comes on the land. I watch as Kitik goes to the edge of the land near the creature and comes to breathe. The creature holds out food in a stick-out part and Kitik takes the food and goes to eat. I can do this. I do as Kitik does, and the creature holds out more food. I am careful as I take it, but there is no threat and I go to eat. Kitik returns for more food, but it is slow and when I am finished eating I go up beside him.
This time there is no food, and I see the creature fall down on the land where it is. It makes many noises, and I do not understand. Kitik says to wait, but then the creature goes away. There is not enough food, I am still hungry. Kitik and I go below, and he tells me it may please the creature if we make joy together. It is pretend joy in a way, it does not begin inside, but I have joy inside for being with Kitik again and I am glad to make it with him. We go high, and when we come down I tell Kitik this time let us make joy with a turn for extra, and we do that together.
Together! It is long since that is so. There is true joy in me for this.
When we return to the place by the land this time there are two creatures on the land. The first one holds out two foods, and we both take. I hear the creatures making sounds between them. When we go back it is the second creature that holds out the foods, but I see Kitik take and I do the same. And both of the creatures give us food until I am no longer hungry.
The restaurant also provided nightly entertainment, and Morris was often to be found there until closing at 1:00 a.m. Consequently, unless the front desk was unusually busy he tended to sleep in until mid-morning. But he’d always told his staff to wake him any time if there was good reason for it.
Jason and Maggie judged there was good reason.
“Shit,” he muttered when they told him what had happened. He dressed hurriedly and followed them out to the lagoon, where the two dolphins were both visible near the surface. “Shit,” he said again. He turned to Maggie.
“OK, lady marine biologist, so tell me this: why the hell are they still here?“
She looked at him blankly. He sighed in annoyance.
“Figure it out,” he said with exaggerated patience. “The new fishy got in last night, right?” She nodded; she’d long since given up correcting him when he called Toby a fish. “I don’t think it came in through the lobby, right?”
“Morris—”
“So it came in someplace where dolphins can go. There’s a way in, usually the same way goes out, too. How come they didn’t just pack up and leave?”
“Morris, I have no idea,” she said.
“Might be a good plan to find out, don’t you think?” He suddenly became businesslike. “Jason, you still got that scuba gear?”
“Sure.”
“Get it on, OK? Either a hole in the fence or the gate’s sprung. Go check it out right now, let’s see if we can seal it back up while they’re still inside. Dammit, that fish cost me a bundle, and there’s the advertising and ... Go on, let’s try to get the barn door shut before the horse goes missing.”
Jason turned and started away.
“Jason!” Maggie called after him. He turned back. “Do it from outside, not in the lagoon. There’s a strange one in the water now, we don’t know how it’s likely to act.” He paused a moment, then nodded and started off again. Then he turned a second time.
“Maggie, you know how you’ve been bitching about only one dolphin? You got two now, and you say they’re talking it up, you might want to drop the hydrophones, huh?”
“My God, I never thought,” she said, already starting toward her tiny office. “Morris, give me a few minutes,” she called back over her shoulder.
Morris was walking back and forth distractedly on the apron. He wordlessly helped her set the equipment and then resumed his restless pacing as she went back for a video camera. “I usually just make notes,” she explained to an unheeding audience, “but this may get complicated.”
“You got any clue what happened, Maggie?” he asked as she was finishing the connection that would coordinate the audio and video records. “A guess even?”
“Not now,” she admitted. She looked out at the formidable sea-wall and the tall fencing closing off the harbor entrance. “I don’t see how the new one could have come over, jumped it. That should be enough of a barrier for any dolphin, and if it weren’t we would have lost Toby a long time ago. So I guess you have to be right about the fence or the gate. But...
“I suppose one possibility is that the fence somehow got punched in from the outside. A hole, but with the edges of the puncture pushed into the lagoon. That would let the new one get in, but the sharp points might discourage them from going out. Or maybe some erosion under the fence and something makes it harder to go out than get in ... We’ll just have to wait for Jason.
“But why?“ she continued, now more to herself than Morris.
“What ‘why?’” he grumbled. “There’s a hole, there’s free food on the other side, it’s like bird feeders.”
She burst out laughing. “Sure, Morris, you could have just left the gate open and dropped a few fish in the water and you’d have a whole pod instead of paying money for Toby.”
He gave a shrug of acknowledgment. “Then you tell me why,” he said. “Mostly you break out of jail, not into it, so how come we got a strange dolphin?”
“I’ve got a guess,” she said slowly.
“So?”
“Not yet. It’s pretty far-fetched, and I’m probably wrong, but I can at least check part of it out if I can get a good look at the new one.”
The easiest way to do that, she figured, was to try to work a little with Toby. She wasn’t sure he’d respond at all, but if he would the new one might be curious enough to come to the surface nearby. It had already shown itself willing to take food from the humans, perhaps it would approach again even if there weren’t anything to eat. And in any case the activity might distract the dolphins while Jason found the breach in the fencing.
Unsure of what to expect, she walked over and slapped the apron with her hand, at the same time calling Toby’s name aloud. She was pleasantly surprised when his familiar snout poked up at her feet almost immediately. The other was nowhere in view, but if he’d respond to commands...
She started with the simplest, calling “jump!” while at the same time making a lifting motion with one hand. The animal immediately submerged, and in a moment she was astonished to see both of them leap together near the center of the lagoon just as they’d done the first time she saw the new one. Even more astonishingly, when Toby returned his companion’s snout poked up almost simultaneously just a couple of feet away.
“Well, hello,” she said. Almost automatically she reached out to pet Toby as she and Jason normally did after a successful trick. The other kept a careful distance; but when Maggie trailed a second hand invitingly in the water she was astonished yet again when, after a moment, she felt an underwater nudge against that hand as well.
“Jesus,” she said, now oblivious of the hovering Morris in her focus on the dolphins. “You guys have got to be talking up a storm down there. I hope to hell I’m getting it and I can make some sense of it.
“Let’s see how far it goes,” she went on. She stood back up. “Okay, Toby, roll,” she called, accompanying her words with the rotating movement of her hand that Jason had long used for that purpose.
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