Arthur C Clarke - Dolphin Island

by Dolphin Island(lit)

  Johnny stared at him in utter amazement, quite ignoring the insult to Susie and Sputnik.

  "And you said the Professor was mad!" he exclaimed, when he had got his breath back. "You aren't pulling my leg again, are you?" he added suspiciously. By now he could usually spot one of Mick's jokes, but this time he seemed to be serious.

  Mick shook his head.

  "If you don't believe me, come down to the pool. Oh, I know it sounds crazy, but it's really quite safe. The whole thing started by accident: I got careless one day when I was feeding Snowy, slipped on the edge of the pool, and fell in."

  "Phew!" whistled Johnny. "Bet you thought your last moment had come!"

  "I sure did. When I came up, I was looking straight into Snowy's mouth." He paused. "You know, it isn't true about recalling your past life at moments like this. All I thought about was those teeth. I wondered if I'd go down in one piece, or whether she'd bite me in two."

  "'And what happened?" asked Johnny breathlessly.

  "Well, she didn't bite me in two. She just gave me a gentle nudge with her nose, as if to say, 'Let's be friends.' And that's what we've been ever since. If I don't go swimming with her every day, she gets very upset. Sometimes it's not easy to manage, because if anyone sees me, they'll tell the Prof, and that'll be the end of it"

  He laughed at Johnny's expression, which was a mixture of alarm and disapproval.

  "It's a lot safer than lion-taming, and men have been doing that for years. I get quite a kick out of it, too. Maybe someday I'll work up to the big whales, like a hundred-and-fifty ton Blue."

  "Well, at least one of those couldn't swallow you," said Johnny, who had learned a good deal about whales since coming to the island. "Their throats are too small-they can eat only shrimps and little things like that."

  "All right then-what about a sperm whale-Moby Dick himself? He can swallow a thirty-foot squid in one gulp."

  As Mick warmed to his theme, Johnny slowly realized that he was motivated by straightforward envy. Even now, the dolphins merely tolerated him and never showed any of the affectionate delight they showered upon Johnny. He felt glad that Mick had at last found a cetacean friend, but wished it had been a more sensible one.

  As it happened, he never had a chance to see Mick and Snowy swimming together, for Professor Kazan was now ready for his next experiment. He had been working for days, splicing tapes and composing long sentences in Dolphin; even now he was not certain whether he could convey the exact meaning he wanted to. He hoped that in the parts where his translation fell down, the intelligence of the dolphins would bridge the gap.

  He often wondered what they thought of his conversation, built up of words from many different sources. Each sentence he broadcast into the water must sound as if there were a dozen or more dolphins, each taking his turn to speak a few words in a different accent. It must be very puzzling to his listeners, since they could hardly imagine such things as tape recording and sound-editing. The fact that they made any sense at all out of his noises was a tribute both to their intelligence and their patience.

  As the Flying Fish pulled away from her moorings, Professor Kazan was unusually nervous.

  "Do you know what I feel like?" he said to Dr. Keith as they stood on the foredeck together. "It's as if I'd invited my friends to a party, just to let loose a man-eating tiger among them."

  "It's not as bad as that," laughed Keith. "You've given them fair warning, and you do have the tiger under control."

  "I hope" said the Professor.

  Somewhere on board, a loud-speaker announced: "They're opening the pool gate now. She doesn't seem in a hurry to leave."

  Professor Kazan raised a pair of binoculars and stared back at the island.

  "I don't want Saha to control her until we have to," he said. "Ah, here she comes."

  Snowy was moving down the channel from the pool, swimming very slowly. When the channel came to an end and she found herself in open water, she seemed quite bewildered and turned around several times as if finding her bearings. It was a typical reaction of an animal-or a man-that had spent a long time in captivity and had now been turned loose into the great outside world.

  "Give her a call," said the Professor. The Dolphin "COME HERE!" signal went out through the water; even if the phrase was not the same in Snowy's own language, it was one of those that she understood. She began to swim toward the Flying Fish and kept up with the boat as it drew away from the island, heading out for the deeper water beyond the reef.

  "I want plenty of room to maneuver," said Professor Kazan. "And I'm sure Einar, Peggy, and Co., would prefer it that way-just in case they have to run."

  "If they come. Perhaps they'll have more sense," Dr. Keith answered doubtfully.

  "Well, we'll know in a few minutes. The broadcast has been going out all morning, so every dolphin for miles around must have heard it."

  "Look!" said Keith suddenly, pointing to the west Half a mile away, a small school of dolphins was swimming parallel to the ship's course. "There are your volunteers, and it doesn't look as if they're in a hurry to come closer."

  "This is where the fun begins," muttered the Professor. "Let's join Saha up on the bridge."

  The radio equipment that sent out the signals to the box on Snowy's head, and received her brain impulses in return, had been set up near the wheel. This made the Flying Fish's little bridge very crowded, but direct contact between skipper Stephen Nauru and Dr. Saha was essential. Both men knew exactly what to do, and Professor Kazan had no intention of interfering, except in case of emergency.

  "Snowy's spotted them," whispered Keith.

  There was no doubt of that. Gone now was the uncertainty she had shown when first released; she began to move like a speedboat, leaving a foaming wake behind her as she headed straight for the dolphins.

  Understandably, they scattered. With a guilty twinge, the Professor wondered just what they were thinking about him at this moment, that is, if they were thinking of anything except Snowy.

  She was only thirty feet from one sleek, plump dolphin when she shot into the air, landed with a crash in the water, and lay there motionless, shaking her head in an almost human manner.

  "Two volts, central punishment area," said Dr. Saha, taking his finger off the button. "Wonder if she'll try it again?"

  The dolphins, doubtless surprised and impressed by the demonstration, had re-formed a few hundred yards away. They, too, were motionless in the water, with their heads all turned watchfully toward their ancient enemy.

  Snowy was getting over her shock and beginning to move once more. This time she swam quite slowly and did not head toward the dolphins at all. It was some time before the watchers understood her tactics.

  She was swimming in a wide circle, with the still motionless dolphins at its center. One had to look closely to see that the circle was slowly contracting.

  "Thinks she can fool us, does she?" said Professor Kazan admiringly. "I expect she'll get as close as she dares, pretending she's not interested, and then make a dash for it."

  This was exactly what she did do. The fact that the dolphins stood their ground for so long was an impressive proof of their confidence in their human friends, and yet another demonstration of the amazing speed at which they learned. It was seldom necessary to tell a dolphin anything twice.

  The tension grew as Snowy spiraled inward, like an old-time phonograph pickup tracking in toward the spindle. She was only forty feet from the nearest, and bravest, dolphin when she made her bid.

  A killer whale can accelerate at an unbelievable speed. But Dr. Saha was ready, his finger only a fraction of an inch from the button. Snowy didn't have a chance.

  She was an intelligent animal-not quite as intelligent as her would-be victims, but almost in the same class. She knew that she was beaten. When she had recovered from the second shock, she turned her back on the dolphins and started to swim directly away from them. As she did so, Dr. Saha's finger darted toward his panel once more.

>   "Hey, what are you up to?" asked the Flying Fish's skipper, who had been watching all this with disapproval. Like his nephew Mick, he did not care to see Snowy pushed around. "Isn't she doing what you want?"

  "I'm not punishing her-I'm rewarding her," explained Dr. Saha. "As long as I keep this button down, she's having a perfectly wonderful time, because I'm putting a few volts into the pleasure centers of her brain."

  "I think that's enough for one day," Professor Kazan said. "Send her back to the pool-she's earned her lunch."

  "The same thing tomorrow, Professor?" asked the skipper as the Flying Fish headed for home.

  "Yes, Steve-the same every day. But I'll be surprised if we have to keep it up for more than a week."

  In fact, after only three days it was obvious that Snowy had learned her lesson. It was no longer necessary to punish her, only to reward her with short spells of electrical ecstasy. The dolphins lost their fears equally fast, and at the end of a week, they and Snowy were completely at ease with each other. They would hunt around the reef together, sometimes co-operating to trap a school of fish, sometimes foraging independently. A few of the younger dolphins even started their usual horseplay around Snowy, who showed neither annoyance nor uncontrollable hunger when they bumped against her.

  On the seventh day, Snowy was not steered back to her pool after her morning romp with the dolphins.

  "We've done all we can," said the Professor. "I'm going to turn her loose."

  "Isn't that taking a risk?" objected Dr. Keith.

  "Of course it is, but we've got to take it sooner or later. Unless we let her run wild again, we'll never know how well her conditioning will last."

  "And if she does make a snack of a few dolphins-what then?"

  "The rest of them will tell us, soon enough. Then we'll go out and round her up again. She'll be easy to locate with that radio pack she's carrying."

  Stephen Nauru, who had been listening to the conversation as he stood at Flying Fish's wheel, looked back over his shoulder and asked the question that was worrying everybody.

  "Even if you turned Snowy into a vegetarian, what about the other millions of the beasts?"

  "We mustn't be impatient, Steve," answered the Professor. "I'm still only collecting information, and none of this may ever be the slightest use to man or dolphin. But I'm certain of one thing-the whole talkative dolphin world must know of this experiment by now, and they'll realize that we're doing our best for them. A good bargaining point for your fishermen."

  "Hmm-I hadn't thought of that one."

  "Anyway, if this works with Snowy, I've a theory that we need condition only a few killers in any one area. And only females-they'll teach their mates and their offspring that if you eat a dolphin, you'll get the most horrible headache."

  Steve was not convinced. Had he realized the tremendous, irresistible power of electric brain stimulation, he might have been more impressed.

  "I still don't think one vegetarian could make a tribe of cannibals mend their ways," he said.

  "You may be quite right," answered the Professor. "That's what I want to find out. Even if the job's possible at all, it may not be worth doing. And even if it's worth doing, it may take several lifetimes. But one has to be an optimist; don't you remember the history of the twentieth century?"

  "Which bit of it?" asked Steve. "There was rather a lot."

  "The only bit that really matters. Fifty years ago, a great many people refused to believe that all the human nations could live in peace. Well, we know that they were wrong; if they'd been right, you and I wouldn't be here. So don't be too pessimistic about this project."

  Suddenly, Steve burst into laughter.

  "Now what's so funny?" asked the Professor.

  "I was just thinking," said Steve, "that it's been thirty years since they had an excuse for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize. If this plan of yours comes off, you'll be in the running."

  Chapter 18

  While Professor Kazan experimented and dreamed, forces were gathering in the Pacific that cared nothing for the hopes and fears either of men or of dolphins. Mick and Johnny were among the first to glimpse their power, one moonless night out on the reef.

  As usual, they were hunting for crayfish and rare shells, and this time Mick had acquired a new tool to help him. It was a watertight flashlight, somewhat larger than normal, and when Mick switched it on, it produced a very faint blue glow.

  But it also produced a powerful beam of ultraviolet light, invisible to the human eye. When this fell upon many varieties of corals and shells, they seemed to burst into fire, blazing with fluorescent blues and golds and greens in the darkness. The invisible beam was a magic wand, revealing objects that were otherwise hidden and that could not be seen even by ordinary light. Where the sand had been disturbed by a burrowing mollusk, for example, the ultraviolet beam betrayed the tiny furrow-and Mick had another victim.

  Underwater, the effect was astonishing. When the boys dived in the coral pools near the edge of the reef, the dim blue light sliced ahead for fantastic distances. They could see corals fluorescing a dozen yards away, like stars or nebulae in the deeps of space. The natural luminosity of the sea, beautiful and striking though it was, could not compare with this.

  Fascinated by their wonderful new toy, Mick and Johnny dived longer than they had intended. When they prepared to go home, they found that the weather had changed.

  Until now, the night had been calm and still, the only sound the murmur of the waves, lazily rolling against the reef. But in the last hour a wind had come up, blowing in fitful gusts, and the voice of the sea had acquired an angrier, more determined note.

  Johnny saw the thing first, as he was climbing out of the pool. Beyond the reef, at a distance that was quite impossible to judge, a faint light was moving slowly across the waters. For a moment he wondered if it could be a ship; then he realized that it was too blurred and formless, like a luminous fog.

  "Mick," he whispered urgently, "what's that, out there at sea?"

  Mick's answer was not reassuring. He gave a low whistle of astonishment and moved closer to Johnny, as if for protection.

  Almost unable to believe their eyes, they watched as the mist gathered itself together, became brighter and more sharp-edged, and climbed higher and higher in the sky. Within a few minutes, it was no longer a faint glow in the darkness: it was a pillar of fire walking upon the face of the sea.

  It filled them both with superstitious awe-with the fear of the unknown, which men will never lose, because the wonders of the universe are without end. Their minds were full of wild explanations, fantastic theories-and then Mick gave a relieved, though rather shaken, laugh.

  "I know what that is," he said. "It's only a water-spout I've seen them before, but never at night."

  Like many mysteries, the explanation was simple-once you knew it. But the wonder remained, and the boys stared in fascination at the spinning column of water as it sucked up billions of the sea's luminous creatures and scattered them into the sky. It must have been many miles away, for Johnny could not hear the roar of its passage over the waves; and presently it vanished in the direction of the mainland.

  When the boys had recovered from their astonishment, the incoming tide had risen to their knees.

  "If we don't get a move on, We'll have to swim for it," said Mick. Then he added thoughtfully, as he splashed off toward the island, "I don't like the look of that thing. It's a sign of bad weather-bet you ten to one we're in for a big blow."

  How true that was they began to realize by next morning. Even if one knew nothing about meteorology, the picture on the television screen was terrifying. A great whirlpool of cloud, a thousand miles across, covered all the western Pacific. As seen from the weather satellite's cameras, looking down upon it from far out in space, it appeared to be quite motionless. But that was only because of its size. If one watched carefully, one could see after a few minutes that the spiral bands of cloud were sweeping swiftly across the face of t
he globe. The winds that drove them were moving at speeds up to a hundred and fifty miles an hour, for this was the greatest hurricane to strike the Queensland coast in a generation.

  On Dolphin Island, no one wandered very far from a television screen. Every hour, revised forecasts came through from the computers that were predicting the progress of the storm, but there was little change during the day. Meteorology was now an exact science; the weathermen could state with confidence what was going to happen -though they could not, as yet, do much about it.

  The island had known many other storms, and the prevailing mood was excitement and alertness, rather than alarm. Luckily, the tide would be out when the hurricane reached its peak, so there was no danger of waves sweeping over the island-as had happened elsewhere in the Pacific. All through the day, Johnny was helping with the safety precautions. Nothing movable could be left in the open; windows had to be boarded over and boats drawn up as far as possible on the beach. The Flying Fish was secured to four heavy anchors, and to make doubly certain that she did not move, ropes were taken from her and secured to a group, of pandanus trees on the island. Most of the fishermen, however, were not much worried about their boats, for the harbor was on the sheltered side of the island. The forest would break the full force of the gale.