He ate impatiently. “Jeb has spent years learning dolphin language. He has a whole library of tapes, and he can slow them down so you can hear most of the sounds they make, the supersonic ones. You mentioned birds the other day, and a lot of dolphin conversation sounds somewhat like birds chirping.” He paused. “Jeb figures they have a pretty sophisticated vocabulary. The real problem in audible conversation between dolphins and human beings, as I see it, is that we have vocal cords and they don’t. Our whole mechanism of vocalizing is completely different. To some extent they can make sounds which are recognizable as words, and it’s a game with them, but it doesn’t go all the way because they simply don’t have the vocal equipment. And to some extent we can imitate their clickings and chirpings and blowings, but only to some extent.”
“So what you’re really saying”—I leaned on my elbows in my eagerness—“is that talking with dolphins doesn’t really work, but maybe we should be trying to communicate with them in another way?”
“Exactly. Good girl. So—what way?”
I thought for a moment. “Two things come to my mind.”
“Okay. What?”
“Deaf people—people who are completely deaf—can feel vibrations. They can hear music by putting their hands against the wood of a violin, for instance. But—”
He leaned across the table toward me. “But what?”
“Dolphins aren’t deaf. But they do use sonar, don’t they?”
“In a most sophisticated way. Go on.”
“So vibrations, maybe a sort of Morse code, could take us a lot further than words.”
“Who said you weren’t a scientist?” he demanded.
“I’m not. Ask John or Suzy.”
“You’re a poet.” I thought of the sonnet in my jeans pocket. “And so are most great scientists. Okay, Jeb’s been working on the vibration question, and with numbers, because numbers cut across language barriers—though I’ve sometimes wondered about number concepts with creatures with no fingers or toes. But you’re thinking about something else, aren’t you?”
I was. “You won’t think I’m dumb?”
Adam sounded impatient. “Come on, Vicky. I know you’re not dumb.”
“It sounds way out—”
“Dolphins are way out. Come on.”
“Knowing,” I said slowly. “Knowing without having to speak. Sort of ESP, but more—knowing, maybe even across time and space. Basil knew you were upset about Ynid yesterday. You didn’t tell him. He knew. From way out at sea.”
“Yes …”
“Basil knew you were upset because Ynid lost her baby, so he brought a friend to comfort you and take your mind off things.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“And she—”
He interrupted me. “How’d you know it was a female? You’re right, but how’d you know?”
“I don’t know how I knew. It just came to me. As though Basil had told me, in the language of knowing, not the language of words.”
Adam sighed. “Yah, I’ll bet Basil probably did tell you. It’s a known fact that when a wild dolphin makes friends it’s usually with a child.”
“I’m not a child,” I said sharply. “I’m almost sixteen.”
He didn’t even notice that I objected to being referred to as a child. “Probably one reason that Basil and his pod were so slow in coming to me is that I’m too old.”
“You’re not that much older than I am.”
“I’m nearly nineteen and I’m in college. It makes a difference. The fact is that Basil was much easier with you than he was with John, or even with me at first. He came to you right away, without fear or hesitation. And I think you’re right. He did let you know that his companion is a female. I don’t know how he did it, but he did. What shall we call her?”
“What about Norberta?” I suggested. “We named Suzy’s science-project guppy that. It means brightness of Njord, and Njord was the Norse god of the sea, so it seems appropriate.”
“Appropriate indeed. Norberta she shall be. Okay, go on. Basil knew something I had no way of telling him. What else?”
“Ynid. She stopped beating herself against the side of the tank when Jeb got in with her.”
“Why?”
“Because she loves Jeb and Jeb loves her.” I felt slightly odd calling Dr. Nutteley Jeb, but since Adam did, I did, too.
“Go on.”
“You told me Jeb lost his wife and baby …”
“Yes.”
“Ynid knew. She knew Jeb was grieving and needed help even more than she did.” I did not look at Adam as I said this. I gazed down at the table and the unattractive remains of English muffin and pallid marmalade.
“Vicky.” His voice drew my eyes away from the plate, to meet his luminous sea-grey ones. “This summer project is very important to me.”
“Sure …”
“John thought you might be useful to me and he was right, more than right. You’ve hit on exactly my thesis. Communication between human being and dolphin is going to come about through the kind of intuitive flash of knowing we were talking about last night. I’m convinced of it. Maybe you’re a—a receiver, because you’re a poet, but also because you’re still a child.”
“I’m not—” I started.
He seemed determined to emphasize it. “Many children have this ability, which is, as you say, beyond ESP, but it usually gets lost with maturity.” He asked, “Want anything more to eat?”
“No, thanks.”
“Let’s walk off breakfast. Then we’ll swim out and see what happens.”
“What do you think’s going to happen?” I asked tentatively. He had made me feel unsure and insecure.
“I don’t know. I’m hoping Basil will come with Norberta, but we’ll just have to wait and see.” He took our trays out, and we left the cafeteria and went to the dolphin pens. During the night they’d been opened to each other, and the five dolphins, Una, Nini, Ynid, and her two midwives, were swimming from pen to pen. There was, I thought, something sad and subdued about Ynid’s swimming.
Jeb Nutteley was there with a bucket of fresh fish. He nodded at us, and tossed a fish to Ynid. “She’s eating. Not with much appetite, but she’s eating.”
“That’s a relief.” Adam watched Ynid swim to the end of the pen, holding the fish in her mouth.
“Eat it, Ynid, there’s a love,” Jeb pleaded.
Ynid smiled and swallowed the fish. She loved Jeb Nutteley and he certainly was not a child. I did not want Adam to think of me as a child. Not after last night.
“I’d hand the feeding over to you,” Jeb said, “but Ynid might not eat.”
“She needs you today,” Adam agreed.
“What’re you kids up to?” Jeb sounded calm, a little drained maybe, from his storm of grief the day before, but quiet now, relaxed.
“Off to work with Basil, if that’s okay.”
“Make sure you report to me as soon as you come in.” Jeb threw several fish rapidly, one after the other, into the pen, and the great grey bodies flashed toward their breakfast.
I’d forgotten to ask Adam what his boss had thought of his taking me to meet Basil. “Was Jeb cross when you told him about Basil and me?”
Adam made a wry face. “Cross is not the word. He was furious, even when I told him I’d checked with John first. Then he was furious with John, too.”
“But he’s okay about it now?”
“I’m supposed to check in with him before we leave the lab and after we get back. I didn’t check in yesterday because of Ynid’s baby. But I did, after, and I told him about it all, partly to get his mind off Ynid. He does see that you’re a valuable part of my experiment.”
Maybe up to the night before I’d have been satisfied with being a valuable part of Adam’s experiment.
He’d walked on and was heading toward the beach. I ran to catch up. “Why were the pens opened up?”
He paused, looking back at me and waiting. “They often are. Jeb wanted Ynid more
enclosed for her delivery. Then he thought she might recover better if she had all her friends with her.”
That made sense. “Jeb knows all about your theory?”
“Non-verbal communication? Yes. Jeb’s a great guy. He’s really encouraging me.”
“Why did you drag it out of me at breakfast instead of just telling me?”
“If I’d just told you, I wouldn’t have known how much you, yourself, understand. Having you tell me is a necessary part of my experiment, you must see that.”
“Oh. Sure.”
“And I had a hunch—maybe a knowing, as you called it—that your poet’s mind had already leaped to what it’s taken me all summer to arrive at.”
My poet’s mind. That sounded really nice. Then he ruined it.
“And you’re still young enough.”
I said, stiffly, “If you wanted a child, why didn’t you ask Suzy?”
“I told you, Vicky. I didn’t need another scientist, another pragmatist. Suzy’s about as pragmatic as anyone can be. I thought I’d made it clear: scientists need poets, mystics, people who can escape our logical, linear, thinking.”
At first he had sounded chiding, adult to child, and I hated it. Then he was talking to me, Adam to Vicky. I didn’t understand Adam at all this morning, one moment treating me like a child, the next like a reasonable human being, a peer. He was being as unpredictable as Zachary, and while I was prepared for it in Zachary, I wasn’t in Adam. “Grandfather says—” I started, and stopped in mid-sentence. I’d simply run off when Adam called, not thinking about Grandfather, or helping Mother, not thinking about anything except that Adam had called and I was going to him as quickly as I could get there. I’d left the note, but that wasn’t really enough. “Adam, is there any way I could phone home before we go to meet Basil? I went off before anybody else was up this morning.”
“Sure. There’re phone booths outside the lab.”
We retraced our steps.
Fortunately, Mother answered.
“Did you get my note?”
“Yes. What’s up?”
“It’s Adam’s experiment.”
“With starfish?”
“No, dolphins. Is it all right if I stay here this morning?” If I could tell her about Basil and non-verbal communication, it would be easier.
“Sure.”
“How’s Grandfather?”
“About the same. Nancy Rodney’s here to help him bathe and shave.” Mother’s voice was matter-of-fact, but I knew that Grandfather’s increasing weakness had to be getting to her even more than it did to me, and that Mrs. Rodney’s coming in the morning wasn’t just happenstance, for one day; it was going to be part of the slowly shifting pattern of our days.
“Are you sure you don’t need me?”
“Positive. Everything’s fine. You stay with Adam and have fun.”
I stopped myself from trying to explain that it wasn’t just fun, but what was the point? No one would take it seriously. I knew that my family would find it hard to believe that dreamy Vicky, full of cobwebs, could be involved in even the smallest way in any kind of scientific project.
People were still straggling into the cafeteria for breakfast as we headed for the beach. My damp towel and bathing suit felt chilly where I was clutching them against my shirt, but the mist had completely burned away and the sun was climbing high and hot in the sky. It was hard to realize that the night before I’d been huddled into a sweater.
The night before: Adam had certainly been talking to me as Adam to Vicky the night before, not as scientist to useful child.
I changed to my bathing suit behind the big rock. It felt clammy as I shimmied into it. I spread my damp towel over the rock to dry. As for my bathing suit, it would shortly be all the way wet.
“What I want you to do,” Adam said as I came up to him, “is to call Basil.”
“But I can’t—” I thought of Adam’s balloon and clucking noises.
“Not the way I’ve been calling to him. Call him the way you knew about Norberta.”
I paused, dabbling my toes in the wavelets tracing their delicate way into shore. “Do you want me to call Norberta, too?”
“It’s up to you.”
“Suppose they don’t come?”
“If they don’t come they don’t come and we try again. Stop worrying. All you have to do is try. You don’t have to succeed.”
I looked at his stern face and splashed into the water, which felt cool after the rain. When we got beyond the breakers, there were deep swells, topped with whitecaps. Adam swam swiftly and cleanly, soon passing me, and I followed, till I caught up with him treading water and looking not out to sea but at me.
I rolled over on my back and floated, my body rising and lowering gently in the swells. I closed my eyes, not so much against the radiant blue as against distractions, and imaged Basil. In my mind’s eye I saw him clearly, butting against me and asking me to scratch his chest.
Then I imaged Basil and Norberta leaping together, coming to swim one on each side of Adam. I concentrated on Basil and Norberta the way I concentrate when I’m deep in the world of a book, or when I’m caught up in writing a poem, the way I was earlier in the morning. I was concentrating so completely that at first I didn’t hear Adam.
“Vic. Vicky! Vicky!”
I opened my eyes and rolled over in the water.
There, coming toward us, were not two but three dolphins, Basil and Norberta and a baby, not as small as Ynid’s, but definitely a child, and alive, beautifully alive. It swam close to its mother, imitating her every flick of fluke, and making small chirruping noises.
It swam close to us, curious as to these two strange creatures who weren’t fish but certainly weren’t dolphins. It butted me with its little head and I reached out my hand, underwater, and very gently scratched its belly, and it wriggled with pleasure.
Norberta chirped at it, and then they swam around us, mother and baby, once, twice, thrice. It was obvious to me that Norberta was showing off her baby. Then she patted it briskly with her flipper, a sort of love spank, and turned and headed for the open sea, the baby beside her.
Basil stayed. Adam was staring after Norberta and the baby, and Basil nudged him to get his attention, gently at first, then roughly enough so that he went underwater.
He came up and grabbed Basil’s dorsal fin and the two of them went into one of their great splashing wrestling matches. Then it was my turn. Again Basil dove under me and came up so that I was sitting astride his back. I did my best to hold on while he swam swiftly after Norberta and the baby. For a moment I thought he might be making off with me forever, and then I could feel him telling me to trust him, and he turned in a great slow circle so I wouldn’t fall off, and swam back to where Adam was waiting. Then he leapt up into the air so that I slid off his back and into the water, and off he went, to vanish into the horizon.
“C’mon,” Adam ordered, and swam shoreward.
When we were standing on the beach, with me hopping on one foot to try to get water out of my ear, Adam took my hand and shook it heartily. “You did it. Thanks. Wait till I tell Jeb.”
I waited for him to turn a cartwheel or stand on his head, but he just stood there. “Did I? Maybe they’d have come anyhow.”
“They’ve never come for me that way. And I’ve tried to ride Basil and he’s never let me.”
“I didn’t try to—”
He said impatiently. “I know you didn’t. It was Basil’s idea. He’s teaching you how to play with him. Did you enjoy it?”
I flung out my arms to the sun and the wind and the golden day. Then I started to twirl like a whirling dervish, twirled until I fell onto the sand, and the world continued to circle round me.
Adam stood over me. “Did Norberta tell you anything? Was there anything she wanted you to know?”
“I think so. But maybe it’s just my imagination everybody tells me I have so much of.”
Adam rode over that. “What did Norberta tell y
ou?”
“That she’s sorry about Ynid’s baby. That she’s happy about hers. That he’s going to be my friend.”
“He?”
“Yes.”
“How’d you know?”
“I guess—I guess she told me.”
“Did she tell you how old he is?”
“About a year.”
He stared at me. “Yah, that’s just about right. What’re you going to call him?”
“Njord, the god of the sea.”
At this, Adam smiled. “Oh, you think he’s pretty terrific, don’t you?”
“I do. He is. Adam, would Jeb like to see him?”
Adam flopped down onto the sand. “I’ll write up everything that happened this morning and give the report to Jeb. But as to bringing him to see Njord—I’m not at all sure the dolphins would come for him, for one thing. For another, I haven’t taken anybody to see Basil except John and you. So, for my project’s sake, I’m not inviting him to meet my dolphins. Not yet.”
My dolphins. He sounded mighty possessive. My dolphins. My project. My child helper. I stood up, shaking sand off me. “I’d better go rinse.”
“Me, too.”
We splashed about in the shallow waves until the sand was off. Then Adam shook himself like a dog. “Good morning’s work, Vic.” His voice was brisk and impersonal. “I’d better get on back to the lab. I want to write it all up while it’s fresh. You’ll be okay?”
“Sure.” I thought of the cafeteria English muffins. “Would you like to come on over to the stable for dinner this evening?”
“Not tonight,” he replied shortly. “I don’t want to wear out my welcome, and I have a lot to do. I’ll be in touch.”
I was dismissed.
This wasn’t the Adam who’d turned cartwheels of joy along the beach, or who had talked to me the night before as though I was a real human being, not just John’s kid sister.
I’d gone to bed thinking that my growing friendship with Adam had to be part of that pattern Grandfather had talked about, and here he was throwing the pattern out as deliberately as though he’d thrown a partly finished jigsaw puzzle onto the floor.
A Ring of Endless Light: The Austin Family Chronicles, Book 4 Page 15
