Dolphin Island

by Arthur C. Clarke

  Then something seemed to happen to his legs, and as the sand came up to hit him, dolphins, island, and everything else vanished from his consciousness.

  Chapter 5

  When Johnny awoke, he was lying on a low bed inside a very clean, white-walled room.

  A fan was spinning above his head, and light filtered in through a curtain-covered window. A cane chair, a small table, a chest of drawers, and a washbasin completed the furniture. Even without the faint smell of disinfectant, he would have known that he was in a hospital.

  He sat up in bed, and immediately yelped with pain. From head to foot, he seemed to be on fire. When he looked down at his body, it was an angry red, and patches of skin were peeling off in large flakes. He had already received some medical attention, for the worst places had been liberally covered with white ointment.

  Johnny gave up the idea of moving, at least for the time being, and collapsed back into bed with another involuntary cry. At that moment the door opened, and an enormous woman came into the room. Her arms were like bolsters, and the rest of her was built on the same scale. She must have weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds, yet she was not unhealthily fat—she was simply huge.

  "Well, young man," she said. "What's all the noise? I never heard such a fuss about a little sunburn."

  A broad smile spread across her flat, chocolate-brown face, just in time to check Johnny's indignant answer. He managed a feeble grin in reply, and submitted while she took his pulse and temperature.

  "Now," she said, as she put away the thermometer, "I'm going to send you to sleep, and when you wake up, all the pain will be gone. But before I do that, you'd better give me your address so we can telephone your family."

  Johnny stiffened, despite his burns. After going through all this, he was determined not to be sent home by the next boat.

  "I haven't any family," he said. "There's no one I want to send a message to."

  The nurse's eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch.

  "H'mm," she said, in a skeptical tone of voice. "Well, in that case, we'll give you your nightcap right away."

  "Just a minute," pleaded Johnny. "Please tell me where I am. Is this Australia?"

  The nurse took her time in answering as she slowly poured a colorless fluid into a measuring glass.

  "Yes and no," she said. "This is Australian territory, though it's a hundred miles from the mainland. You're on an island in the Great Barrier Reef, and very lucky to have reached it. Here, swallow this—it doesn't taste too bad."

  Johnny made a face, but the nurse was speaking the truth. As the medicine went down, he asked one more question.

  "What's this place called?"

  The huge nurse gave a chuckle that sounded like a small thunderstorm going by.

  " You should know," she said. The drug must have been very quick acting because Johnny barely caught her next words before he was unconscious again.

  "We call it Dolphin Island."

  The next time he woke up he felt a slight stiffness, but all the burning had gone. So had half his skin, and for the next few days he was molting like a snake.

  Nurse, who had informed him that her name was Tessie and that she came from the island of Tonga, watched approvingly while he ate a hearty meal of eggs, canned meat, and tropical fruits. After that, he felt ready for anything and was anxious to start exploring at once.

  "Don't be so impatient," said Nurse Tessie, "there's plenty of time." She was going through a bundle of clothing, hunting for shorts and shirt that would fit Johnny. "Here, try these for size. And take this hat, too. Keep out of the sun until you've worked up a proper tan. If you don't, you'll be back here again, and that would make me very angry."

  "I'll be careful," promised Johnny. He decided that it would be an extremely bad idea to make Nurse angry.

  She put two fingers in her mouth and blew a piercing whistle, whereupon a tiny girl appeared almost instantly.

  "Here's your dolphin-boy, Annie," said Nurse. "Take him to the office—Doctor's waiting."

  Johnny followed the child along paths of crushed coral fragments, blindingly white in the fierce sun. They wandered between large shady trees, which looked rather like oaks, except that their leaves were several sizes too big. Johnny was a little disappointed by this; he had always believed that tropical islands were covered with palms.

  Presently the narrow road opened into a large clearing, and Johnny found himself looking at a group of single-storied concrete buildings, linked together with covered walks. Some had large windows behind which people could be seen at work; others had no windows at all and looked as if they contained machines, for pipes and cables led into them.

  Johnny followed his little guide up the steps into the main building. As he walked past the windows, he could see the people inside staring at him curiously. That was not surprising, in view of the way he had arrived here. Sometimes he wondered if that strange ride was all imagination—it seemed too fantastic to be true. And was this place really called Dolphin Island, as Nurse Tessie had said? That would be an altogether outrageous coincidence. His guide, who had apparently been too shy or too overawed to utter a word, disappeared as soon as she had led Johnny to a door marked "Dr. Keith—

  Assistant Director." He knocked, waited until a voice said "Come in," and pushed his way into a large air-conditioned office, refreshingly cool after the heat outside.

  Dr. Keith was a man in his forties, and looked like a college professor. Even though he was sitting behind his desk, Johnny could see that he was unusually tall and gangling; he was also the first white person he had seen on the island.

  The doctor waved Johnny to a chair, saying in a slightly nasal voice as he did so, "Sit down, sonny."

  Johnny didn't like being called "sonny," nor did he like the doctor's Australian accent, which he had never before encountered at close quarters. But he said, "Thank you," very politely, sat down, and waited for the next move.

  It was completely unexpected. "Perhaps you'd better begin by telling us," said Dr. Keith,

  "just what happened to you—after the Santa Anna went down."

  Johnny stared at him openmouthed, all his plans in ruins. They had been only half-formed plans, but he had at least hoped that he could pose for a little while as a shipwrecked sailor suffering from loss of memory. But if they knew how he had traveled, they also knew where he had come from, and he would undoubtedly be sent home at once.

  He decided not to give up without a fight.

  "I've never heard of the Santa—whatever her name is," he replied innocently.

  "Give us credit for a little intelligence, sonny. When you came ashore in such a novel manner, we naturally radioed the coast guard to find if any ships had been lost. They told us that the crew of the hoverfreighter Santa Anna had put in at Brisbane, reporting that their ship had sunk about a hundred miles east of us. However, they also reported that everyone had been saved, even the ship's cat.

  "So that seemed to rule out the Santa Anna, until we had the bright idea that you might be a stowaway. After that, it was just a matter of checking with the police along the Santa Anna's route." The doctor paused for a moment, picked up a briar pipe from his desk, and examined it as if he'd never seen such an object before. It was at this point that Johnny decided that Dr. Keith was just playing with him, and his initial dislike went up a few more degrees.

  "You'd be surprised how many boys still run away from home," continued that annoying voice. "It took several hours to find out who you were—and I must say that when we called your Aunt Martha, she didn't sound particularly grateful. I don't really blame you for clearing out."

  Perhaps Dr. Keith wasn't so bad after all. "What are you going to do with me, now I'm here?" asked Johnny. He realized, to his alarm, that there was a slight quiver in his voice and that tears of disappointment and frustration were not far away.

  "There's not much that we can do at the moment," said the doctor, raising Johnny's hopes at once. "Our boat's over at the ma
inland and won't be back until tomorrow. It will be a week after that before it sails again, so you have eight days here that you can count on."

  Eight days! His luck was still holding out Many things could happen in that time—and he would make sure that they did.

  In the next half hour, Johnny described his ride back from the wreck while Dr. Keith made notes and asked questions. Nothing about the story seemed to surprise him, and when Johnny had finished, he pulled a sheaf of, photographs out of his desk drawer.

  They were pictures of dolphins; Johnny had no idea that there were so many different varieties.

  "Could you identify your friends?" the doctor asked.

  "I'll try," said Johnny, riffling through the prints. He quickly eliminated all but three probables and two possibles.

  Dr. Keith looked quite satisfied with his choice of dolphins.

  "Yes," he said, "it would have to be one of those." Then he asked Johnny a very odd question.

  "Did any of them speak to you?"

  At first Johnny thought he was joking; then he saw that Dr. Keith was perfectly serious.

  "They made all sorts of noises—squeaks and whistles and barks—but nothing that I could understand."

  "Nothing like this?" asked the doctor. He pressed a button on his desk, and from a loud-speaker at the side of the office came a sound like a rusty gate creaking on its hinges.

  Then there was a string of noises that reminded Johnny of an old-fashioned gas engine starting up, and, after that, clearly and unmistakably, "Good morning, Doctor Keith."

  The words were spoken more quickly than a man could utter them, but they were perfectly distinct. And even then, on that first hearing, Johnny knew that he was not listening to a mere echo or a parrotlike repetition. The animal that said, "Good morning, Doctor Keith," had known exactly what it was doing.

  "You seem surprised," chuckled the doctor. "Hadn't you heard that dolphins could speak?"

  Johnny shook his head.

  "Well, it's been known for half a century that they have an elaborate language of their own. We've been trying to learn it—and, at the same time, trying to teach them Basic English. We've made a good deal of progress, thanks to the techniques worked out by Professor Kazan. You'll meet him when he comes back from the mainland; he's very anxious to hear your story. Meanwhile I'd better find someone to look after you."

  Dr. Keith pressed a switch, and a reply came at once from an intercom speaker.

  "School here. Yes, Doctor?"

  "Any of the older boys free at the moment?"

  "You can have Mick—and welcome to him."

  "Good—send him around to the office."

  Johnny sighed. Even on an island as small and remote as this, it seemed that one couldn't escape from school.

  Chapter 6

  As a guide to the island, Mick Nauru had just one drawback—he would exaggerate.

  Most of his tall stories were so outrageous that there was no danger of taking them seriously, but sometimes Johnny was left in doubt. Was it really true, for instance, that Nurse Tessie (or Two-Ton Tessie as the islanders called her) had left home because the big girls on Tonga poked fun at her for being so small? Johnny didn't think so, but Mick assured him that it was perfectly true. "Ask her if you don't believe me," he said, his face completely solemn beneath his huge mop of black, frizzy hair.

  Luckily, his other information was more easily checked, and on matters that were really important, he was quite serious. As soon as Dr. Keith had handed Johnny over to him, Mick took him on a quick tour of the island and introduced him to its geography.

  There was quite a lot in a small area, and it was several days before Johnny knew his way around. The first thing he learned was that Dolphin Island had two populations—

  the scientists and technicians of the research station, and the fisherfolk who operated the boats and made a living from the sea. The fishing community also provided the workers who ran the power station, water supply, and other essential services, such as the cookhouse, laundry, and the tiny farm of ten pampered cows.

  "We brought in the cows," explained Mick, "after the Professor tried to process dolphin milk. That's the only time we've ever had a mutiny on the island."

  "How long have you been here," asked Johnny. "Were you born here?"

  "Oh, no, my people come from Darnley Island, up in the Torres Strait. They moved here five years ago, when I was twelve. The pay was good, and it sounded interesting."

  "And is it interesting?"

  "You bet! I wouldn't go back to Darnley, or the mainland either. Wait until you see the reef, and you'll understand why."

  They had left the cleared paths and were taking a short cut through the small forest which covered most of the island. Though the trees were closely packed, it was not hard to push a way through them, for there were none of the thorns and creepers that Johnny had expected in a tropical forest. The plant life of the island was wild, but well behaved.

  Some of the trees appeared to have small piles of sticks propped around their bases, and it was some time before Johnny realized that the props were actually part of the trees. It seemed that they did not trust the soft soil in which they were growing, and had sent out extra roots above ground as buttresses.

  "They're pandanus," explained Mick. "Some people call them breadfruit trees, because you can make a kind of bread from them. I ate some once; it tasted horrible. Look out!"

  He was too late. Johnny's right leg had sunk into the ground up to his knee, and as he floundered to extricate himself, the left leg plunged even deeper.

  "Sorry," said Mick, who didn't look at all sorry. "I should have warned you. There's a muttonbird colony here—they make their nests in the ground, like rabbits, and in some places you can't walk a foot without falling into them."

  "Thank you for telling me," said Johnny sarcastically, as he clambered out and dusted himself off. There were a great many things to learn, it seemed, on Dolphin Island.

  He came to grief several times in the burrows of the muttonbirds—or wedge-tailed shearwaters, to give them their proper name—before they emerged from the trees and walked down onto the beach on the eastern side of the island, facing the great emptiness of the open Pacific. It was hard to believe that he had come from far beyond that distant horizon, brought here by a miracle he still did not understand.

  There was no sign of human life; they might have been the only inhabitants. This coast was exposed to the seasonal gales, so all the buildings and dock installations were on the opposite side of the island. A huge tree trunk, cast up on the sand and bleached white by months and years of sun, was a silent monument to some past hurricane. There were even great boulders of dead coral, weighing many tons, which could only have been hurled up onto the beach by wave action. And yet it all looked so peaceful now.

  The boys started to walk along the sand dunes between the edge of the forest and the coral-covered beach. Mick was searching, and presently he found what he was looking for.

  Something large had crawled up out of the sea, leaving what looked like tank tracks in the sand. At the end of the tracks, high above the water level, there was an area of flattened sand in which Mick commenced to dig with his hands.

  Johnny helped him, and about a foot down they came across dozens of eggs the size and shape of table-tennis balls. They were not hard shelled, however, but leathery and flexible. Mick took off his shirt, made a bag out of it, and packed in all the eggs he could.

  "D'ya know what they are?" he asked.

  "Yes," said Johnny promptly, to Mick's obvious disappointment. "Turtle eggs. I saw a movie on television once, showing how the baby turtles hatch and then dig themselves out of the sand. What are you going to do with these?"

  "Eat them, of course. They're fine, fried with rice."

  "Ugh!" said Johnny. "You won't catch me trying it."

  "You won't know," answered Mick. "We've got a very clever cook."

  They followed the curve of the beach around the nor
th of the island, then the west, before coming back to the settlement. Just before they reached it, they encountered a large pool, or tank, connected to the sea by a canal. As the tide was now out, the canal was closed by a lock gate, which trapped water in the pool until the sea returned.

  "There you are," said Mick. "That's what the island is all about."

  Swimming slowly around in the pool, just as he had seen them out in the Pacific, were two dolphins. Johnny wished he could have examined them more closely, but a wire-mesh fence made it impossible to get near the pool. On the fence, in large red letters, was a message which read: QUIET PLEASE—HYDROPHONES IN ACTION.

  They tiptoed dutifully past, then Mick explained: "The Prof doesn't like anyone talking near the dolphins, says it's liable to confuse them. One night some crazy fisherman got drunk, and came and shouted a lot of bad language at them. There was an awful row—

  he was chucked out on the next boat."

  "What sort of man is the Prof?" asked Johnny.

  "Oh, he's fine—except on Sunday afternoons."

  "What happens then?"

  "Every Sunday morning his old lady calls and tries to talk him into coming home. He won't go, says he hates Moscow—it's too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.

  So they have terrific fights, but every few months they compromise and meet at somewhere like Yalta."

  Johnny thought this over. He was anxious to learn all that he could about Professor Kazan, in the hope of improving his chances of staying on the island. Mick's description sounded a little alarming; still, as Sunday had just passed, the Professor should be in a good temper for several days.

  "Can he really talk dolphin language?" asked Johnny. "I didn't think anyone could imitate those weird noises."

  "He can't speak more than a few words, but he can translate tape recordings, with the help of computers. And then he can make new tapes and talk back to them. It's a complicated business, but it works."

  Johnny was impressed, and his curiosity was aroused. He had always liked to know how things worked, and he couldn't imagine how one would even begin to learn dolphin language.

  "Well," said Mick, when he put the question to him, "have you ever stopped to think how you learned to speak?"