The Dolphins of Altair

by Margaret St. Clair

  That this fear was not groundless was shown about half an hour later. The waves had been getting bigger, and when an extraordinarily large one came, Ivry made the mistake of taking it broadside, instead of meeting it obliquely. Moonlight, who had perhaps not had her hands as tightly under his flukes as she might have, was swept straight off his back, clutching desperately at his sleek sides.

  Ivry was after her like a flash, and I followed him. We bore her up strongly, my back under her legs, and got he r to the surface quickly. All the same, she was gasping and weak when she clambered on Ivry’s back again, and vomited salt water for a while. If the sea had been rougher, we knew we could never have saved her.

  “This won’t do,” Sven said, looking at the girl. “Night’s coming on, and we’re bound to doze occasionally. We’d better try to tie our legs together under the dolphins’ bellies.”

  “What can we use for ropes?” Moonlight answered faintly.

  “The straps from the canteens,” Sven replied. “They’re fairly strong, and if it keeps raining we’re not going to have any lack of fresh water. We’ll empty one canteen and throw it away, and I’ll take the strap off the other and stash the canteen away in my jacket with the food. That will give us two straps.”

  Moonlight nodded. She drank from the canteen she was carrying, and then passed it over to Sven. He finished the water in it, took the strap off, and tossed the empty canteen into the sea. Then he took the strap from the second canteen, and put the canteen in his jacket.

  Now began a complicated maneuver. For a Split to tie his feet together under the belly of a full-grown dolphin, and with a rather short strap, is no simple thing. Once Madelaine dropped her strap, and I had to dive for it. But they managed it at last, with a good deal of bending and twisting, and I went under to check the soundness of their knots and pull them as tight as I could with my rudimentary hand. Whether Sven and Madelaine would be safe through the night depended on how strong the leather of the straps was.

  The sun sank. The moon was already up in the eastern sky. It gave a certain lurid glow, but it was only occasionally visible through the wind-driven clouds. We kept swimming northwest steadily.

  The night wore on. It was a long night. Ivry said that Madelaine was shivering with cold, but when the clouds would part for a moment, we saw that she was smiling. Once she bent over and caressed his cheek. “Dear Ivry—and Amtor, of course, and the others—I’m glad you called me to you at Drake’s Bay,” she said. “I’ve been happy with you sea people. However much longer my life may be, it’s something I’ll never regret.”

  Her words had been muffled by the driving rain, but Ivry got their sense clearly enough. “We’re glad too, Sosa,” he said.

  Two or three hours after that, when the moon had begun to sink in the west, The Wave came at us unexpectedly. Even now I dislike thinking about it. I had been having a dolphin nap as I swam, and I woke only an instant before the wave slammed into me. It turned me end over end for I don’t know how many times, and for the first time in my life, I was afraid of drowning. It was a behemoth of a wave.

  The others were more fortunate. They saw the wave moving on them like a mountain, and they dived under it—though not, as Pettrus said, without “worrying a little” about the safety of the two Splits. But the leather straps held, and when they surfaced, everybody was still there, except me. I was about a quarter of a mile behind, still being whirled about by that abominable wave. It was full of wreckage. It must have represented half the volume of the water in the North Polar ice cap.

  Eventually I got some of my wits back, and dived through it. The others had missed me and were beginning to be anxious. When I came swimming up, battered and breathing hard, they were so glad to see me it almost made the wave seem worthwhile. Not quite, though. It had been too big a wave for that.

  From then on, the sea slowly improved. It kept on raining, but the wind was less strong. The sun rose, pale in the clouds that scudded across it. We were still swimming northwest.

  As the air grew warmer, Sven and Madelaine roused themselves to eat and drink. They were sagging with fatigue. Djuna and I went fishing and had very good luck. The change in the salinity of the water and the disturbance of the ocean currents apparently had thoroughly confused the salmon. Djuna and I satisfied our first sharp hunger, took ample fish back to Pettrus and Ivry, and then caught more for ourselves. We felt much better after our meal.

  “Maddy,” Sven said about midday, “do you think the water is getting warmer?” He sounded a little hoarse.

  Moonlight had been bent over, rubbing her legs with her hands to help circulation. “Yes, I’d noticed it,” she said, straightening.

  “Will it keep on—“he said, and stopped. There was no need to complete the sentence. The prospect was a disconcerting one.

  “I don’t think so,” the girl answered. “The quartz crystals in the ahln devices are conduits for the power, of course. But they are eroded and finally used up by conducting it. When the crystals are consumed, the production of heat will stop. The water won’t keep heating up indefinitely.”

  So at least we didn’t have that to worry about. The day passed. In late afternoon Djuna called my attention to something odd in the sea a mile or so to the east. We leaped up out of the water, for a better view, and saw a surface current, thirty or forty feet broad, running in great loops like a river and sharply marked out by the freight it bore.

  We swam closer. The ocean river—it must once have been the California current, but it was running very differently now—was alive with sharks, and no wonder. Among the floating timbers, sides of houses, sheets of plastic and uprooted trees were many bodies of Splits. The sharks slashed and tore at the fresh dead, greedily delighted, and when one body was stripped as clean of flesh as its clothing would allow, there was always another body to take its place at the sharks’ feast. There was no danger for us or our passengers—the sharks were too absorbed in their gluttonous enjoyment.

  We swam back to the others. We did not tell Sven or Sosa what we had seen. There was no use in distressing them. But Ivry and Pettrus knew, of course.

  In late afternoon we all saw a ship, a dot on the horizon, with lifeboats around it. Nobody said anything. There was nothing we could do.

  We dolphins had begun to swim more slowly—we were far enough out at sea so that additional distance from shore would do us no good, and we weren’t swimming with any definite goal. But we had to keep swimming, of course. To have stopped would have left us with (no way with which to meet the force of the waves.

  It kept on raining. It was still raining at sunset and it rained most of the night. The sea was somewhat calmer than it had been, and there were no more big waves, but we were all much more tired than we had been on the night before. Our relative lack of buoyancy in the fresher water weighed on us constantly. It was strange for us sea people, in our own element, to be so heavy and slow.

  Morning came at last. It was still raining. The two Splits had not said anything for hours. Now Sven addressed me. “Amtor, do you know where we are?” He was so hoarse that I could hardly understand him. His voice was almost a croak.

  “More or less,” I said after a minute. “I saw the navigational stars once during the night. Why?”

  “Because we’ve got to rest. We’re all exhausted. Maddy and I have been sitting in the same position for thirty-six hours now, and you sea people are worn out, too. I can tell from the way Pettrus swims.

  “Is there any place you can put us ashore for a while? We’ve got to rest.”

  “We’re a long way from a real shore,” I said. “But there used to be a rock not too far from here. It goes straight up from deep water, so the currents around it oughtn’t to be dangerous even now. We might be able to put you ashore there.”

  “Good. Let’s try it,” he croaked. “How far is it?”

  “I’m not sure. About a couple of hours.”

  Now that we had a definite goal, we swam faster. We got to the rock—a ti
ny thing, only a few yards across—by mid-morning.

  I was astonished at how deeply the rock was submerged. The triangular vertical face, streaked with bird droppings, which had always been a good twenty feet above sea level, was almost under the water. It occurred to me that if the water rose much more our Split friends might be drowned while they slept. But Sven was right, they must rest. It had to be risked.

  Ivry and Pettrus swam beside each other, and Sven managed to undo the knots at Sosa’s ankles. The leather had swelled from the water, and it took him some time. Then he released his own feet.

  Pettrus swam in close to the rock with him. Sven, as he said afterwards, was paralyzed from the waist down, but he caught a protrusion with his fingers and dragged himself up on a small horizontal shelf.

  He sat there for some minutes, rubbing his legs and trying to get command of his body again, while Sosa waited below on Ivry’s back, he r head sunk on her breast. At last he was strong enough to put his hand out to the girl and pull her up beside him on the narrow shelf.

  They both rested here a while. Then they turned and crawled painfully up to the top of the rock. Their legs were still quite unreliable, and we dolphins watched their progress anxiously.

  At last they reached the crest. Here, Sven said, they found a little sea grass growing in a hollow at the very peak. They lay down on the coarse stuff, clasped in each other’s arms for warmth, and were immediately asleep.

  They slept for nearly twenty hours. During the rest of the day, the water rose slightly, and we watched its movement up the triangular rock face nervously. We were afraid we would have to call our Split friends and have them get on our backs again. But about sunset the level began to fall slightly, and by the next morning the water was four or five feet below the triangular face.

  While Sven and Moonlight slept, we dozed, caught fish and talked to each other. We felt we were beginning to make some bodily adjustments to our lessened buoyancy, though it was still irksome to us, and would be so for a long time. Once we smelled a shark, but it was a long way off and seemed to be in distress. It did not bother us.

  Toward dawn the skies cleared and the rain died away. By the time our friends woke up, it was a reasonably good day, with the sun visible from time to time.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Sven said after we had exchanged greetings with our friends. “The water’s fallen a good deal.

  That means that the flood from the North Polar ice melt has begun to equalize itself, and the South Polar flood hasn’t yet begun.”

  “Or hasn’t got here yet,” I said.

  “Yes. Well, when it does come, this rock is probably going to be submerged. Maddy and I can’t ride out another flood, a longer-lasting flood than the one we just went through, on your backs at sea. Amtor, is there any place where you dolphins could put us down on the mainland? Some place with mountains behind it? If we have time, we can try to get to high ground.”

  I blew water. “I don’t know. I mean, I know about how far we are from where the coast used to be, but I can’t possibly tell what it’s like now. There will be a lot of new currents, for one thing. But we can try it. There’s not much else we can do.”

  “Where are we now?” Madelaine asked.

  “We’re opposite a place about a hundred miles below that big river that doesn’t have any bay.”

  “The Klamath River?”

  “I guess so. We don’t always know the names you Splits have for things.”

  “Never mind that,” Sven said. “Let’s get going. If he means the Klamath River, there’s high ground not too far from it. We’ve eaten all our food.”

  He began helping Moonlight down toward the water. They both moved stiffly and awkwardly. Rain and salt spray had washed most of the dye from the girl’s hair. I was glad to see it its usual color again.

  With a good deal of difficulty, the Splits got on Pettrus’ and Ivry’s backs. “Northeast, I think,” Sven said. “The farther we can get from the South Polar flood, the better. And east, of course, because we want to get back to the American coast.”

  “All right,” Ivry said.

  As the day grew brighter, all our spirits rose. The sea was smooth, and we made very good time, particularly since there was a current flowing east. It hadn’t been there before.

  Late in the afternoon, Djuna and I went fishing. We fed Ivry and Pettrus, and then, since we knew the two Splits hadn’t had anything to eat, offered part of our catch to them.

  “It’s not alive, you know,” I said as Djuna held the salmon out to Sven in her mouth. “She bit it in the head.”

  “I—thank you. Madelaine, are you hungry enough to try raw fish?”

  “Not yet. But put it in your jacket, Sven, and keep it. We may be short of food after we get ashore.”

  At sunset, the Splits tied their legs together under the two dolphins’ bellies. The sea continued calm. The moon rose. It was hardly well up in the sky when we saw land ahead.

  It was very different from how I had remembered it— Buildings rose straight out of the surface of the water, and the mass of land lay far behind them. There were no lights anywhere.

  “Be careful,” Madelaine said as we swam in slowly. “We don’t know how deep the water is, or what’s under it.”

  “Of course,” I answered. “Djuna and I will go ahead and act as pilots, since we can dive to see if there’s danger.”

  Cautiously we swam in beside the drowned city. The water was quite deep, thirty or forty feet, and it occurred to me that we were following the streets of the submerged city. There were many bodies of Splits floating among the buildings. We avoided them as much as we could. The moonlight robbed them of color and made them look unreal.

  Madelaine stirred uneasily on Pettrus’ back. “I wonder what city this was,” she said. I noticed how softly she and Sven were speaking. “Amtor, are we near the river you spoke of?”

  “We’re somewhat north of it.”

  “Then this is probably Crescent City,” Sven replied.

  Neither of them said anything more as we left the city behind and approached a range of low hills. The water grew shallower. I dived and found land, still covered with grass, only two or three feet below me.

  “We’ll have to let you off here,” I said.

  “Yes.” Sven undid the straps from his ankles, and slid into the water. He help ed Madelaine untie herself. Then they both waded toward the hills.

  “Good-bye,” Madelaine said. She turned toward us, holding out her hands. “When the waters start to go down,” she said quickly, “call us to you. Use Udra. We’ll come. We will meet again, my darlings! I know it. I am sure of it.”

  “So are we, Sosa,” I answered. This was true. And yet, our good-byes made, we were all heavy-hearted as we started back to deeper water. It was the first time since Sosa had come to us at Drake’s Bay, months before, that we had been parted from her.

  Chapter 20

  The old man held up the lamp and peered at them doubtfully. The scattering of white hairs on his scalp glistened in the light. “You’re refugees?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Sven answered. “All we want is to get in out of the rain for a while and a place to cook. Here.” He produced the salmon Djuna had caught—it was still fresh enough to be desirable—and showed it to the old man. “We’d be glad to share with you. I can’t get a fire started outside. Everything’s so wet.”

  The old man did not move away from the door. “I don’t need your food,” he said. “I’ve got a whole freezer full of stuff that’s spoiling since the power went off. I’m sorry, but I can’t take you in. You’ll have to be on your way.”

  Madelaine stepped forward, so that the light of the lamp fell on her face. “Are you afraid of us?” she asked directly.

  “Afraid?”

  “Yes. You might be. You don’t know anything about us, or what we might do.”

  The old man laughed. “I’m still strong enough to take care of myself,” he said. “I’m not afraid of you as peo
ple. But I heard on the radio that diseases are breaking out. They’re giving everybody in the refugee camps shots.”

  “We haven’t been near anybody since before the flood started,” Madelaine said. “We were at sea all during it. That’s how we got the fish. But we did have to swim through water where bodies were floating. That was when we were coming ashore.”

  “At sea? I guess that’s why none of the ’copters or planes picked you up. They’ve been trying to evacuate people. My neighbors wanted me to leave, but I told them I’d stay. I’ve been growing fruit on this land all my life. Well, I don’t suppose you’d have caught anything just from swimming through water where th ere were bodies.” The old man seemed to be weakening.

  “I could cook,” Madelaine said. “I could get a nice meal for the three of us from the things you have in the freezer.”

  The old man looked at th em a little longer. They could hear his shallow breathing. “All right,” he said at last. “You’ll have to cook on a wood stove, since the power is off. And you’re to go away after you eat, do you understand? I don’t want you staying here.”

  “All right.”

  Once Sven and Madelaine were over the threshold, they realized how wet they were. Puddles formed around them on the floor immediately. The fruit grower brought them towels, and they dried themselves as well as they could. Madelaine squeezed most of the water from her hair, and Sven took off his shirt and jacket, wrung them out in the sink, and hung them to dry on the back of a chair. The girl and the young man were both still wet enough to leave splotches on the linoleum floor when they walked.

  Tired as she was, Madelaine found she was glad to be cooking again. Sven gutted the fish and cut it up for her, and she found fat in a cupboard. Since the food in the freezer, as their host had said, was on the edge of spoiling, she saw no reason to be economical with it. They sat down to a meal of fried salmon, six vegetables, and biscuits baked, scone fashion, on top of the wood stove.

  “Maddy,” Sven said after they had eaten enough to take the first sharp edge off their hunger, “Mr. Fletcher was telling me he saw the flood sweep over New York.”