“And you see the dolphin as dreaming and carrying on his normal mental business at the same time?”
“In a way, yes. But I also see the dreaming itself as a somewhat different process.”
“In what way?”
“Our dreams are largely visual in nature, for our waking lives are primarily visually oriented. The dolphin, on the other hand—”
“—is acoustically oriented. Yes. Granting this constant dreaming effect and predicating it on the neurophysiological structures they possess, it would seem that they might splash around enjoying their own sound tracks.”
“More or less, yes. And might not this behavior come under the heading of Indus?”
“I just don’t know.”
“One form of ludus, which the Greeks of course saw as a separate activity, giving it the name diagoge, is best translated as mental recreation. Music was placed in this category, and Aristotle speculated in his Politics as to the profit to be derived from it, finally conceding that music might conduce to virtue by making the body fit, promoting a certain ethos, and enabling us to enjoy things in the proper way—whatever that means. But considering an acoustical daydream in this light—as a musical variety of ludus—I wonder if it might not indeed promote a certain ethos and foster a particular way of enjoying things?”
“Possibly, if they were shared experiences.”
“We still have no proper idea as to the meanings of many of their sounds. Supposing they are vocalizing some part of this experience?”
“Perhaps, given your other premises.”
“Then that is all I have,” she said. “I choose to see a religious significance in spontaneous expressions of diagoge. You may not.”
“I don’t. I’d buy it as a physiological or psychological necessity, even see it—as you suggested—as a form of play, or ludus. But I have no way of knowing whether such musical activity is truly a religious expression, so for me the ball stops rolling right there. At this point, we do not really understand their ethos or their particular ways of viewing life. A concept as alien and sophisticated as the one you have outlined would be well-nigh impossible for them to communicate to us, even if the language barrier were a lot thinner than it is now. Short of actually find ing a way of getting inside them to know it for oneself, I do not see how we can deduce religious sentiments here, even if every one of your other conjectures is correct.”
“You are, of course, right,” she said. “The conclusion is not scientific if it cannot be demonstrated. I cannot demonstrate it, for it is only a feeling, an inference, an intuition—and I offer it only in that spirit. But watch them at their play sometime, listen to the sounds your ears will accept. Think about it. Try to feel it.”
I continued to stare at the water and the sky. I had already learned everything I had come to find out and the rest was just frosting, but I did not have the pleasure of such desserts every day. I realized then that I liked the girl even more than I had thought I would, that I had grown quite fascinated as she had spoken, and not entirely because of the subject. So, partly to prolong things and partly because I was genuinely curious, I said, “Go ahead. Tell me the rest. Please.”
“The rest?”
“You see a religion or something on that order. Tell me what you think it must be like.”
She hesitated. Then, “I don’t know,” she said. “The more one compounds conjectures the sillier one becomes. Let us leave it at that.”
But that would leave me with little to say but “Thank you” and “Good night.” So I pushed my mind around inside the parameters she had laid down, and one of the things that came to me was Barthelme’s mention of the normal distribution curve with reference to dolphins.
“If, as you suggest,” I began, “they constantly express and interpret themselves and their universe by a kind of subliminal dreamsong, it would seem to follow that, as in all things, some are better at it than others. How many Mozarts can there be, even in a race of musicians? Champions, in a nation of athletes? If they all play at a religious diagoge, it must follow that some are superior players. Would they be priests or prophets? Bards? Holy singers? Would the areas in which they dwell be shrines, holy places? A dolphin Vatican or Mecca? A Lourdes?”
She laughed.
“Now you are getting carried away, Mr.—Madison.”
I looked at her, trying to see something beyond the apparently amused expression with which she faced me.
“You told me to think about it,” I said; “to try to feel it.”
“It would he strange if you were correct, would it not?”
I nodded.
“And probably well worth the pilgrimage,” I said, standing, “if only I could find an interpreter. I thank you for the minute I took and the others you gave me. Would you mind terribly if I dropped by again sometime?”
“I am afraid I am going to be quite busy,” she said.
“I see. Well, I appreciate what you have given me. Good night, then.”
“Good night.”
I made my way back down the ramp to the speedboat, brought it to life, guided it about the breakwall and headed toward the darkening sea, looking back only once, in hopes of discovering just what it was that she called to mind, sitting there, looking out across the waves. Perhaps the Little Mermaid, I decided.
She did not wave back to me. But then it was twilight, and she might not have noticed.
Returning to Station One, I felt sufficiently inspired to head for the office/museum/library cluster to see what I could pick up in the way of reading materials having to do with dolphins.
I made my way across the islet and into the front door, passing the shadow-decked models and displays of the museum and turning right. I swung the door open. The light was on in the library, but the place was empty. I found several books that I had not read listed, so I hunted them up, leafed through them, settled on two, and went to sign them out.
As I was doing this, my eyes were drawn toward the top of the ledger page by one of the names entered there: Mike Thornley. I glanced across at the date and saw that it happened to be the day before his death. I finished signing out my own materials and decided to see what it was he had taken to read on the eve of his passing. Well, read and listen to. There were three items shown, and the prefix to one of the numbers indicated that it had been a tape.
The two books turned out to be light popular novels. When I checked the tape, however, a very strange feeling possessed me. It was not music, but rather one from the marine-biology section. Verily. To be precise, it was a recording of the sounds of the killer whale.
Even my pedestrian knowledge of the subject was sufficient, but to be doubly certain, I checked in one of the books I had right there with me. Yes, the killer whale was undoubtedly the dolphin’s greatest enemy, and well over a generation ago experiments had been conducted at the Naval Undersea Center in San Diego, using the recorded sounds of the killer whale to frighten dolphins, for purposes of developing a device to scare them out of tuna nets, where they were often inadvertently slaughtered.
What could Thornley possibly have wanted it for? Its use in a waterproof broadcasting unit could well have accounted for the unusual behavior of the dolphins in the park at the time he was killed. But why? Why do a thing like that?
I did what I always do when I am puzzled: I sat down and lit a cigarette.
While this made it even more obvious to me that things were not what they had seemed at the time of the killings, it also caused me once again to consider the apparent nature of the attack. I thought of the photos I had seen of the bodies, of the medical reports I had read.
Bitten. Chewed. Slashed.
Arterial bleeding, right carotid…
Severed jugular; numerous lacerations of shoulders and chest…
According to Martha Millay, a dolphin would not go about it that way. Still, as I recalled, their many teeth, while not enormous, were needle-sharp. I began paging through the books, looking for photographs of the jaws and teeth.
&nbs
p; Then the thought came to me, with dark, more than informational overtones to it: There is a dolphin skeleton in the next room.
Mashing out my cigarette, I rose then, passed through the doorway into the museum, and began looking about for the light switch. It was not readily apparent. As I sought it, I heard the door on the other side of the room open.
Turning, I saw Linda Cashel stepping across the threshold. With her next step, she looked in my direction, froze, and muffled the beginning of a shriek.
“It’s me. Madison,” I said. “Sorry I alarmed you. I’m looking for the light switch.”
Several seconds passed. Then, “Oh,” she said. “It’s down in back of the display. I’ll show you.”
She crossed to the front door, groped behind a component model.
The lights came on, and she gave a nervous laugh.
“You startled me,” she said. “I was working late. An unusual thing, but I got backed up. I stepped out for a breath of air and didn’t see you come in.”
“I’ve got the books I was looking for,” I said, “but thanks for finding me the switch.”
“I’ll be glad to sign them out for you.”
“I already did that,” I said, “but I left them inside because I wanted to take another look at the display before I went home.”
“Oh. Well, I was just going to close up. If you want to stay awhile, I’ll let you do it.”
“What does it consist of?”
“Just turning out the lights and closing the doors—we don’t lock them around here. I’ve already shut the windows.”
“Sure, I’ll do that. I’m sorry I frightened you.”
“That’s all right. No harm done.”
She moved to the front door, turned when she reached it, and smiled again, a better job this time.
“Well, good night.”
“Good night.”
My first thought was that there were no signs of any extra work having come in since the last time I had been around, my second one was that she had been trying a little too hard to get me to believe her, and my third thought was ignoble.
But the proof of the pudding would keep. I turned my attention to the dolphin skeleton.
The lower jaw, with its neat, sharp teeth, fascinated me, and its size came close to being its most interesting feature. Almost, but not quite. The most interesting thing about it had to be the fact that the wires which held it in place were clean, untarnished, bright and gleaming at their ends, as if they had just recently been cut—unlike their more oxidized brethren everyplace else where the specimen had been wired.
The thing I found interesting about the size was that it was just about right to make it a dandy hand weapon.
And that was all. That was enough. But I fingered the maxillary and premaxillary bones, running my hand back toward the blowhole; I traced the rostrum; I gripped the jaw once more. Why, I did not really know for a moment, until a grotesque vision of Hamlet filtered into my mind. Or was it really that incongruous? A phrase out of Loren Eiseley came to me then: “…We are all potential fossils still carrying within our bodies the crudities of former existences, the marks of a world in which living creatures flow with little more consistency than clouds from age to age.” We came from the water. This fellow I gripped had spent his life there. But both our skulls were built of calcium, a sea product chosen in our earlier days and irrevocably part of us now; both were housings for large brains—similar, yet different; both seemed to contain a center of consciousness, awareness, sensitivity, with all the concomitant pleasures, woes, and available varieties of conclusions concerning existence which that entailed, passing at some time or other within these small, rigid pieces of carbonate of lime. The only really significant difference, I suddenly felt, was not that this fellow had been born a dolphin and I a man, but only, rather, that I still lived—a very minor point in terms of the time-scale onto which I had wandered. I withdrew my hand, wondering uncomfortably whether my remains would ever be used as a murder weapon.
Having no further reason for being there, I collected my books, closed up, and cleared out.
Returning to my cottage, I deposited the books on my bed table and left the small light burning there. I departed again by means of the back door, which let upon a small, relatively private patio, pleasantly situated right at the edge of the islet with an unobstructed view of the sea. But I did not pause to admire the prospect just then. If other people might step out for a breath of air, so could I.
I strolled until I located a suitable spot, a small bench in the shadow of the dispensary. I seated myself there, fairly well hidden, yet commanding a full view of the complex I had but recently quitted. For a long while I waited, feeling ignoble, but watching anyway.
As the minutes continued their parade, I came near to deciding that I had been mistaken, that the margin of caution had elapsed, that nothing would occur.
But then the door at the far end of the office—the one through which I had entered on my initial tour of the place-opened, and the figure of a man emerged. He headed toward the nearest shore of the islet, then commenced what would have seemed but the continuance of a stroll along its edge to anyone just noticing him then. He was tall, around my height, which narrowed the field considerably, so that it was really almost unnecessary for me to wait and see him enter the cottage that was assigned to Paul Vallons, and after a moment see the light go on within.
A little while later, I was in bed with my dolphin books, reflecting that some guys seem to have it made all the way around; and puzzling and wondering, with the pied typecase Don had handed me, that I was ever born to set it right.
The following morning, during the ambulatory, coffee-tropism phase of preconsciousness, I stumbled across the most damnable, frightening item in the entire case. Or rather, I stepped over it—perhaps even on it—before its existence registered itself. There followed an appreciable time-lag, and then its possible significance occurred to me.
I stooped and picked it up: an oblong of stiff paper, an envelope, which had apparently been pushed in beneath the back door. At least, it lay near to it.
I took it with me to the kitchenette table, tore it open, extracted and unfolded the paper it contained. Sipping my coffee, I read over the block-printed message several times: Affixed to the mainmast of the wreck, about a foot beneath the mud
That was all. That was it.
But I was suddenly fully awake. It was not just the message, as intriguing as I naturally found it, but the fact that someone had selected me as its recipient. Who? And why?
Whatever it was—and I was certain there was something—I was most disturbed by the implication that someone was aware of my extraordinary reasons for being there, with the necessary corollary that that person knew too much about me. My hackles rose, and the adrenaline tingles came into my extremities. No man knew my name; a knowledge of it jeopardized my existence. In the past, I had even killed to protect my identity.
My first impulse was to flee, to throw over the case, dispose of this identity and lose myself in the manner in which I had become adept. But then I would never know, would never know when, where, how, why, and in what fashion I had been tripped up, found out. And most important, by whom.
Also, considering the message again, I had no assurance that flight would be the end of things for me. For was there not an element of coercion here? Of tacit blackmail in the implied imperative? It was as if the sender were saying, I know. I will assist. I will keep silent. For there is a thing you will do for me.
Of course I would go and inspect the wreck, though I would have to wait until the day’s work was done. No use speculating as to what I would find, although I would handle it most gingerly. That gave me the entire day in which to consider what I might have done wrong, and to decide upon the best means of defending myself. I rubbed my ring, where the death-spores slept, then rose and went to shave.
Paul and I were sent over to Station Five that day. Standard inspection and maintenance work.
Dull, safe, routine. We scarcely got wet.
He gave no indication of knowing that I was on to anything. In fact, he even started several conversations. In one, he asked me, “Did you get over to the Chickcharny?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What did you think of it?”
“You were right. A dive.”
He smiled and nodded. Then, “Try any of their specialties?” he asked.
“Just had a few beers.”
“That was safest,” he said. “Mike—my friend who died—used to go there a lot.”
“Oh?”
“I used to go with him at first. He’d take something and I’d sit around and drink and wait for him to come down.”
“You didn’t go in for it yourself?”
He shook his head.
“Had a bad experience when I was younger. Scared me. Anyway, so did he—there, I mean—several times, at the Chickcharny. He used to go in back—it’s a sort of ashram back there.
Did you see it?”
“No.”
“Well, he had a couple bad ones in there and we got in an argument about it. He knew the damn place wasn’t licensed, but he didn’t care. I finally told him he ought to keep a safe supply at the station, but he was worried about the damn company regulations against it. Which I think was silly. Anyhow, I finally told him he could go by himself if he wanted to go that badly and couldn’t wait till the weekend to go someplace else. I stopped going.”
“Did he?”
“Only recently,” he said. “The hard way.”
“Oh.”
“So if you do go in for it, I’m telling you the same thing I told him: Keep your own around if you can’t wait to go someplace farther and cleaner than that.”
“I’ll remember,” I said, wondering then whether he might, perhaps, be on to something about me and be encouraging my breaking the company rules for purposes of getting rid of me. That seemed kind of far out, though, a little too paranoiac a reaction on my part. So I dismissed it.
An Exaltation of Stars (1973) Anthology Page 11
