Mosaic (Breakthrough Book 5)

by Michael C. Grumley

  And they were everywhere.

  Platforms that were now visible under the glow of the bright lights behind him. Each ledge was surrounded by deep shadows, with the wall itself appearing in the same dark gray.

  Tay slowly twisted his head, completely shocked. He was wrong again. There weren’t thousands. There were tens of thousands. All arranged in careful formation at equal distances from one another, almost reminding Tay of a perfect grid.

  His eyes glanced at the water, now reflecting brightly under the same light and appearing as clear as glass.

  Treading water, Tay raised his hand briefly and studied it, almost crying out in elation. It had been days since he’d seen any part of his own body.

  He quickly raised the other and grinned at both hands before blinking and turning his head. From over his shoulder, the floodlight behind him had begun to soften. The glow was still bright but now less blinding.

  Tay twisted himself around in the water and gasped.

  The new wall, which he’d found in the darkness, towered over him––high into the dark, damp air. Each line or groove he’d previously found running up the wall, now disappeared overhead into the darkness. But it was what he saw between those two lines that caused Tay’s jaw to slowly fall open.

  There was no longer a wall. Nothing at all existed but empty space between them, revealing a darker area further inside. An area dark and pulsing gently in a soft green glow.

  It was then that it hit him. The larger wall behind him, the one he’d come through, was not the actual ship at all. This was the ship. The smaller, inner wall. Part of which was, somehow, now open before him.

  39

  Speechless was an understatement.

  Tay’s eyes followed the opening as it extended up the metal wall, revealing a slope at the top where the bright lines curved out of sight. The rest of the opening extended down past the surface of the water, stopping a few feet below––just inches, it appeared, from the gap he’d found with his foot.

  Shaking in his excitement, Tay swam forward cautiously, until he reached the rim and peered inside, over the top of the water’s edge. It was fascinating. Even with the water level a few feet above the base of the door, he could not see any water inside the vessel itself. Just a soft glowing floor forming a platform and narrow path, which led to a larger opening further inside.

  Nervously, he touched one side of the opening. Gingerly fingering the still glowing groove, he studied it closely before reaching forward with his index finger and sliding it past the edge into nothingness. Just air. Cool, dry air that was cold to the touch, instinctively causing him to pull it back. Then slowly, Tay stretched out his hand and eased it through, this time higher up.

  He hesitated for a moment then carefully gripped the right side, abruptly reaching out his left arm to grasp the other. Both hands now above the waterline.

  With two secure handholds, he finally relaxed his legs and allowed himself to float.

  This…is…unreal.

  Tay pulled himself forward, peering over the top of the water’s surface and down into the walkway. Something was keeping the water back. He moved a foot forward, still underwater, and watched his toes emerge from the wall of liquid below––into the cool air of the interior.

  He followed the opening into the ship with his eyes before returning to what appeared to be metal flooring several feet directly below. Remembering his knife, he reached below the waterline to retrieve it.

  Now with the blade out, Tay extended it forward and touched its tip against an inside section of wall, where it made a soft clink.

  He used the blade to probe the wall at various spots above and below him. Finally gaining enough confidence to reach forward and drop the knife entirely, he watched it land with a loud bang against the strange walkway below.

  At least it was solid.

  Having explored what he could reach, Tay took a deep breath. With one powerful surge, he pulled himself forward through the water until he reached the edge and fell forward into the open air. He fell several feet and landed with a thud onto the glowing metal, less than a foot from his knife.

  He immediately scrambled back to his feet and steadied himself, shifting his full weight alternately to each foot before taking a cautious step forward. Just far enough to retrieve his knife and return it to its sheath.

  Tay squinted and stared into the darkness. He then took a second step.

  40

  On the other side of the giant wall, Sally remained motionless in the water. Listening carefully, along with the rest of the dolphins.

  No hear Alison. No more.

  A few yards behind her, Alison nodded. “Neither do I.” She tilted her mask up toward the surface, causing a beam of light to reflect off the glass faceplate. “Did you get all that, Chris?”

  From his chair, Chris glanced back at Smitty, who was wearing a set of headphones and nodding. “Yep. We sure did. Make sure you thank Sally and her friends.”

  Alison grinned. “I think they can hear you.”

  Friend trouble Alison.

  “Yes, he is,” she replied. “But we’re trying to help him.”

  We help.

  Alison reached out and gently stroked Sally’s long back as the dolphin drifted in place. “Thank you, Sally.” Her brown eyes fell to Sally’s soft white belly where she could see the small bump. She ran her hand closer to the area. “May I touch, Sally?”

  Yes.

  She placed her hand affectionately on Sally’s stomach. There was no movement, yet.

  “Are you happy, Sally?”

  The dolphin brought her head around. Much happy Alison. Me mother.

  “It’s wonderful. I’m very–”

  Me soon male.

  Alison wrinkled her brow. “What?”

  Me soon male.

  “Chris, did you hear that?”

  “Uh, yeah,” crackled his reply. “That was kind of hard to miss.”

  “You’re having a boy, Sally?”

  Yes. Sally turned now to stare at Alison through large round eyes. You funny.

  Alison opened her mouth to reply but stopped, and instead closed it again, trying to think through IMIS’s still limited vocabulary. How could she explain that humans couldn’t tell the sex of their babies? At least not without help. Although Alison had heard some mothers claim they could sense it from the beginning, she wasn’t sure if that was really true.

  “She’s saying they can tell what they’re having?” Chris questioned through his microphone.

  “Sounds like it.” Alison smiled. “Something else to add to our list of surprises.” She suddenly paused, thoughtfully. “I wonder…if we were ever able to do that.”

  “Beats me. But after everything else, would we really be surprised?”

  “And if Sally’s right, if they can tell the sex instinctively, can other animals too?”

  “Wow.”

  “Remember what Neely said. All animals on the planet share a lot of DNA.”

  “Ali, I just don’t know how much more of this my brain can take.”

  Inside her mask, Alison chuckled, still studying Sally. Below, dozens of the dolphins had dispersed. Many were now circling her and Sally again, curiously. “Sally, I want to talk more, okay?”

  Yes Alison. Like talk.

  She stared at the dolphin through her mask, contemplating, her legs moving her fins gently to stay in place. “How did Dirk see his way out of those caves?”

  There was no error in her sentence, but she wasn’t sure Sally understood her question. She decided to rephrase. “How did he see through the caves?”

  No understand.

  Alison continued peering through puffs of breath inside her mask, the vapor briefly fogging the lower half before disappearing just as quickly. It seemed she was always struggling to figure out a way for Sally to understand her questions. There was much more the dolphins could do. She was sure of it. Their brains were hugely complex, and there were numerous telltale indicators of more
capabilities than just a playful disposition. People who spent any real time with dolphins, in captivity or not, almost universally came away with the same feeling.

  After all, encephalization, or brain expansion, was the very foundation of modern social cognition. Abilities like language, teaching, empathy, and even group decision-making were not exclusive to humans. Not even close. In fact, there were so many cognitive and social similarities, especially now that they’d broken the language barrier––and it only made Alison that much more certain.

  She was reminded of a dolphin named Kelly, who was trained to help keep her tank clean. She was rewarded with a fish for every piece of litter she brought to her trainer. But what Kelly quickly learned was that, by lodging a piece of litter under a stone, she could tear off smaller pieces and present each one for another piece of fish. That simple act might seem cute to most people, but the reasoning behind her tactic was much more complex. And the speed at which Kelly had realized it was stunning.

  However, the real surprise was when Kelly taught the same strategy to her calf. Along with the idea of using some of their fish to lure gulls closer to the water where they could be caught.

  It was a perfect lesson of how, in cognition, learning was one thing, but reasoning and teaching resided on much deeper levels. The same realization now had some scientists concluding that the measure of intelligence was perhaps more behavioral than structural.

  And then, of course, there were the whales. Also in the cetacean species, whales held even more secrets all by themselves. While some like the Belugas could actually emulate the language of dolphins, what was truly fascinating were their songs. Whale songs, when dissected carefully, had been revealed to have far more depth than previously thought.

  Within the songs, small units of sounds built patterns followed by phrases and finally themes––not only mimicking the same level of sophistication as a language but even a form of grammar itself.

  The fact was, when coupled with a large heavy brain, there was no telling what these cetaceans knew or what they could do.

  But what really excited Alison about Sally was more than just the translation they were able to achieve with IMIS. It was the ability to really listen to them. And she hoped IMIS would now provide them with the means of listening to what Sally would ultimately go on to teach her newborn calf. If that happened, it would be a level of scientific observation like no other.

  For hundreds of years, visual observation alone had provided human researchers a treasure trove of information about the world around them, from Zoology to Ichthyology to Mammalogy. The stepping stones of modern study had provided vast amounts of understanding. But now, what would it be like to hear the actual words between a mother and her young? The true instructions of life, between a mother and child in another intelligent species. From a scientific standpoint, the idea was simply astonishing.

  Then another thought struck Alison like a thunderbolt. If they could observe speech in dolphins between mother and child, why couldn’t they do it with gorillas too? In fact, why couldn’t they do it with many other species?

  An excited Alison turned with a question for Sally but was suddenly interrupted by a strange sensation that hit her and ran through her entire body. She recognized it immediately as the same buzzing she’d felt before while talking to Dirk.

  “Chris!” she blurted out, abruptly turning and swimming backward. “It’s back. I’m feeling it again. That sensation. And it’s stronger this time.”

  “Can you tell where it’s coming from?”

  She twisted her body from side to side, scanning the depths. “I’m not sure. Below me, I think.” She continued her retreat, still peering downward. “Too deep for me to see.”

  She called out to her friend. “Sally, I feel something strange. What is that?”

  A moment later, Alison heard the frustrating sound of an error. Sally didn’t know the word strange. “Sally, I feel something different.”

  No error this time, but it was followed only by silence. Sally turned to watch her curiously, leaving Alison wondering if the translation was successful.

  “Sally?”

  Yes.

  “What is that feeling?!”

  No understand Alison.

  The buzzing stopped without warning, just as quickly as it had begun.

  Alison. We talk.

  “Yes, Sally. But I need to know what that is.”

  It was only after her words were finally translated that a slow movement showed itself in the darkness below them. Alison stared intently, trying to determine what was there and finally recognized the outlines of two of Sally’s elders, accompanied by Dirk. But it was the shape which appeared last that made Alison gasp inside her mask.

  Her words were faint but clear enough for Chris to hear through his headphones. “Oh…my…God.”

  41

  For the next sentence, Alison’s voice rose barely above a whisper. Not out of fear, but fascination.

  “Are you seeing this, Chris?”

  Above her, Chris was simultaneously staring into his own screen, with Smitty hovering over his shoulder. He turned and looked expectantly at the tall, red-haired engineer. Smitty shook his head, prompting Chris to follow suit. “No. It’s too dark for the camera. What is it?”

  Alison watched, unmoving, as the unusual shape gradually approached. It took several seconds for her eyes to confirm it was still a dolphin. But this one looked different. Very different. Its outline was noticeably shorter than the others. And fatter.

  When it drew closer, Alison’s lips parted slightly. The color of its skin was darker and on its head was a giant, oddly shaped lump: part of the melon all dolphins had. A large mass of adipose tissue, it modulated the animal’s vocalization and acted as a powerful sound lens. The entire species shared the adaptation, but in comparison, this dolphin’s melon was…enormous.

  “Wowww,” Alison murmured, as it continued approaching. The creature seemed to be studying her as much as she was studying it. “Chris?”

  “We see it now. Whoa! What the­…”

  She didn’t reply. Instead, Alison merely stared at the dolphin through swirling currents, where it hovered several feet away. The dark skin on its back and tail gave it a deceiving appearance, resembling camouflage, allowing parts of the animal to blend into the vast expanse of darkness behind it.

  “Is that,” Chris said hesitatingly, “what I think it is?”

  Alison nodded, simultaneously muting the microphone on her vest.

  Behind Chris, Smitty raised his eyebrows. “What is it? A different species?”

  “I don’t think so,” Alison’s voice answered.

  Smitty eyed Chris, who responded in a low voice as if thinking out loud. “It’s something we’ve wondered about for a long time but never actually seen before.”

  “I think we were right, Chris,” Alison whispered.

  He nodded in response, with an air of bewilderment. “It appears so.”

  “It only made sense.”

  Smitty’s eyes were now darting back and forth, from the monitor to Chris and back. “What made sense?”

  Chris Ramirez leaned back in his chair, wearing a look of disbelief. “They had to be out there, somewhere. I just didn’t…”

  “Me either,” replied Alison.

  With a loud sigh, Smitty straightened behind Chris. “You can hear me, right?”

  “Most people don’t realize just how many dolphins are really out there,” Chris answered. His eyes remained glued to the oddly shaped animal floating in front of Alison’s vest. “But there are millions. Maybe tens of millions. Not unlike the number of humans just a few hundred years ago.”

  “So, what does that mean?”

  “It means that, statistically, we would at some point expect to see certain variations, just like we do in humans.”

  “Variations,” Smitty repeated. He remained still, thinking. “What does that mean? Like short or fat?”

  “No. More like…handica
pped or exceptional. Sort of.”

  Smitty stared again at the screen. “Are you saying this is some kind of disabled dolphin?”

  “No, not disabled,” Chris shook his head. “We’ve already seen those. We’re talking about another possibility. Something different, like…a savant.”

  42

  “That’s where it’s coming from, Chris,” Alison said. “The buzzing.”

  “From that dolphin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow, would you look at the size of that melon?” Chris’s voice was nearly a whisper. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Mother Nature may be strange, but she’s not wasteful.”

  “No, she is not. And just like Neely says, there is no free lunch.”

  Alison nodded and forced herself to relax. It was true. Abilities and disabilities, of all kinds, typically came at a cost over one another. Like a biological tradeoff. And it was especially true in human savants. Born with incredible skills or abilities, their gifts came at the cost of having other deficiencies, often related to brain function or processing. For example, most savants scored surprisingly low on IQ tests while simultaneously demonstrating profound talents, like music. Or brilliance in other areas, like mathematics.

  But it also went far beyond that. Even in those who were not considered a savant. Alison remembered an internship in her first year of college, at the local hospital. She spent two months working with mentally disabled kids. These children had difficulty performing a variety of physical or mental tasks, but at the same time were simply some of the sweetest and most beautiful souls she had ever met. By the end of the summer, she came to love every one of those kids and learned that each of them had special talents or abilities that were not immediately noticeable at first glance. Some were incredible with numbers. Some could finish a book in barely an hour. And one, she remembered, often seemed to know what Alison was going to say before she said it. For Alison, the experience was a hard lesson that while Mother Nature may not always be fair, strangely and often perversely, she was always balanced. It was just a question of how.