Margaret St. Clair (11 page)

“I don’t expect you to believe me. I ‘ve forfeited your confidence. I’ll have to try to earn it back. But I am on your side.”

Pettrus made a blowing noise. I don’t know how it would have sounded to a Split, but a dolphin would have translated it as the acoustical equivalent of, “Well, well! You don’t say !”

“How did you get away from the navy?” I asked the doctor. “You said you thought you had covered your tracks.”

Lawrence looked at his watch. “It’s time to give Madelaine more penicillin,” he said. “I’ll tell you about my escape —evasion is a better word —after I take care of her.”

He went back to where she was lying. After he had made the injection, he took her temperature and then gave her another drink. He turned the flask upside down to get the last few drops.

“How is she?” I asked when he came back to the water.

“A little better. Not as much better as I would have liked. Even finding out how much fever she has is difficult, she’s in such an awkward place.”

“You were going to tell us about how you got away,” I prompted him.

“Yes. It was easy, actually. They kept me on the flag ship until dark, asking me questions and making me go through my story several times. I gathered my admiral had got into a certain amount of trouble with his superiors for having sent out bombers before he consulted them.

“Then they took me back to my office in the DRAT station and left me there, with a marine on guard in front of the door. I’d already decided that I wanted to get away.

“My private lavatory had a door that communicated with the main corridor. The door was always kept bolted, so I suppose they forgot it was there. All I did was go in the lavatory, unbolt the door, and walk out. It was simple. I left a note on my desk.”

“What did you say in the note?” I asked.

“I told them that I’d been feeling disturbed for a long time, and tha t I was going to consult a professional colleague and have him examine me. Do you understand? I wanted them to think I was doubtful about my own sanity.

“I underlined everything, and ended all my sentences with exclamation marks. I finished by saying tha t I hated to leave in such a sneaky way, but that my voices had told me to. It was a very disturbed-sounding note.”

“You were trying to convince them that everything you’d said about the earthquake was imagination?”

“Yes. I wanted them to think my whol e story was delusional. It might work. The idea of dolphins causing an earthquake is pretty wild.”

“What about Sven?” Pettrus asked. “The fact that they’ve picked him up would tend to bear out your story.”

“Yes,” Lawrence agreed, rather uncomfortably, “but Sven’s intelligent. He won’t admit anything if he can help it.”

He stood up. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“I’m going to fill my flask and give Madelaine more water. Then I’m going to hunt a decent place to sleep tonight.”

“You’re not staying here?” Ivry asked. He was becoming agitated.

“No; why should I? It won’t do Maddy any good to have me sleep on damp sand. I can’t give her another shot until morning anyhow.”

He clambered up on the dock. We waited. In about five minutes he came back a nd gave the girl more water.

“What if she gets thirsty during the night?” Ivry asked. “We can’t give her a drink.”

Lawrence may have shrugged. “I’ll be able to do more for per tomorrow if I get some sleep tonight. You ought to let me take her out from under the dock. I promise —” “No.”

Lawrence sighed. “I’ll be back tomorrow about seven,” he said. “Good night.” “Good night.”

He was gone, taking his little black satchel with him. But oddly enough, his refusal to stay with Sosa had increased o ur co nfidence in him. We felt that if he were planning to betray us again, he would make a greater show of devotion to her.

We were hungry; we had had nothing to eat all day. One at a time we went out to get f ood for ourselves, leaving two o f us always on gu ard near Sosa. We thought that if a Split tried to molest her, we might be able to scare him off.

There are plenty of fish in San Francisco Bay, though not all of them are considered fit to eat by Splits. None of us had any difficulty getting a good meal . When I came back from my fishing, Ivry and Pettrus told me that Madelaine had asked for water once, but not urgently. “After she asked for water, she laughed,” Pettrus said. “And then she said, ‘It’s lovely here.’ ” “Lovely?” I was puzzled. “What do y o u think she meant b y that? Is she delirious?”

“I don’t think so. She sounded as if she were having pleasant dreams.”

Though we were no longer really hungry, we did a good deal of fishing during the night. This was partly for exercise and diversion, an d partly because the dirty water around the dock was a constant vexation to us. It was wonderfully refreshing to swim in clean water again.

The two men came down to the boat quite early, while it was still dark, and cast off. About two hours later Dr. Lawrence appeared.

He was wearing inconspicuous informal clothing —slacks, beach shirt and sandals —and he carried a large paper bag with his doctor’s satchel and street clothing inside. He said, “Good morning” to us curtly, and then went to where Sosa was.

He gave her water from his flask and then, taking advantage of the improved light, examined her with some thoroughness. He finished by giving her another injection of penicillin.

“How is she?” I asked when he came to where we were waiting.

“Some better. Her fever’s down. She’s not as much better as she should be —I’ve given her a lot of penicillin. What I don’t understand is why she’s so comatose. I don’t find anything to account for it. Did she get a blow on the head?”

“Not as far as we know,” I answered.

He was silent. “You’ve
got to let me get her out from under there,” he said finally. “It’s not only that I can’t take proper care of her —if I keep going under the dock, I’m sure to be noticed eventually, and then the fat will be in the fire. The y’ll put Madelaine in the hospital, and the navy will pick me up again. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”

“We don’t care much about what happens to you,” I told him frankly, “but we don’t want to be separated from her.”

“Fair enough,” he replied. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve come up with an idea I think is pretty good.” He began to clamber up on the dock.

“Where are you going?” Ivry quacked anxiously.

Dr. Lawrence grinned, and for the first time since I had seen him, I felt a liking for him. “I ‘m going to buy a boat,” he said.

He came back about noon, at the helm of an odd flat-bottomed craft. He made his purchase fast to the dock and then came down in the water where we were.

“What do you think of the boat?” he asked. He sounded pleased with himself. “It’s called the Akbar. I can take care of Madelaine on board, and you won’t be separated from her.”

“Fine,” Pettrus said. “What kind of a boat is it? I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“You could call it a scaled-down houseboat . A doll’s houseboat. I’ve rented mooring space for it about a mile from here. You won’t object to my putting Maddy on board?”

“No,” I said. “But you’re going to have trouble getting her on it.”

This proved to be correct. It was obviously impossible fo r Lawrence, standing in the water, to lift Moonlight at arm’s length above his head and lower her over the side of the Akbar; and carrying her up on the dock and then putting her down on the Akbar’s deck was going to be almost as difficult. Madelaine was n either a tall nor heavy woman, put she was only semiconscious, and Lawrence was a smallish man.

After some thought he dragged her down to the edge of the water, where he could stand upright, and picked her up in his arms. When he got around to the side of the dock, he shifted her so that she was lying across his shoulders, and he was holding her in place by her ankles and wrists, He wriggled her about until he could hold her opposite wrist and ankle in one hand, and then started up. He wob bled alarming ly. He was almost at the top when Madelaine Began to stir, and he had to use both hands to keep her from falling off his back.

That left him badly unbalanced, with no point of contact width the dock timbers except his feet. We were sure he was going ove r backward into the water. But he took a long step upward with his right foot, into the next crotch in the dock timbering, and at the same time threw himself forward onto the surface of the dock. He landed on the planking on both knees, with two bruised sh ins.

“Made it,” he said, looking down at us. He got to his feet, moved Moonlight around in front of him, and carried her over, limping, to the Akbar. It was easy enough to put per down on the boat’s small deck.

We waited. He carried her into the dec khouse. About an hour later he came out. “I undressed her, gave her a bath, and put her to bed,” he told us. “She ought to do better, now she’s comfortable and dry. Her fever’s down.”

“How is her shoulder?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Healing. Not much use in sewing it up now. But it’s going to leave a scar. What I don’t understand is that she’s unconscious so much.

“Well, I’d better be moving the Akbar to her new location. I hope nobody saw me climbing about with Madela ine, If they did, I’ll get a visit from the police.”

He cast off the
Akbar’s moorings, started up her engine, and was soon putt-putting over the turbid water to the new anchorage. We followed discreetly. We were all relieved that Madelaine was better. He r unconsciousness did not seem so odd to us as it did to Lawrence, since we were not familiar with the physiology of Splits.

The
Akbar’s new location was a pleasant place. Trees were growing in a sort of park behind the little jetty that ran out into the water, and the only sign of damage from the quake was some floating planks from what might have been a rowboat. Another craft, also a houseboat, but at least twice as big as the Akbar, was tied up at the jetty. Except for that, no other boats were anchore d there.

The girl on the deck of the bigger craft looked up and waved as Lawrence brought the Akbar in. Lawrence nodded unsmilingly. It was plain he did not want to encourage a potentially inquisitive friendliness.

He tied the
Akbar up at the landward end of the jetty, as far away from the other houseboat as he could get. Then he went ashore. He couldn’t, of course, tell us where he was going, while the woman on the other craft was watching, but we supposed he was going after food.

Floating side by side in the shadow of the Akbar, under the jetty, we held a consultation. I think I have said before that we sea people ordinarily communicate with each other in frequencies that are outside the range of human hearing. It seemed to us both unnecessary and undesirable that all three of us should remain near the houseboat during the day. One dolphin can usually escape notice, especially in turbid water, but three is a different matter. We decided that one of us should stay near the Akbar duri ng the daylight hours, while the other two tried to pick up some trace of Djuna.

Djuna might, of course, have been so severely wounded as to be dead, but we thought not. Our “telepathic” communication with each other (this is not Udra, though somewhat re lated to it) is somewhat more reliable than the ESP of Splits and, even though it is far from perfect, we thought we would have been aware of such a serious psychic event as her death.

Ivry and Pettrus then went off on their scouting trip and I was left behind, on watch near the Akbar. I was restless and bored. It seemed to me that Dr. Lawrence might have chosen a better anchorage for the Akbar than this one, where we were constantly under scrutiny from another boat and it would be difficult for him to co mmunicate with us. He obviously couldn’t sit on the railing of the Akbar during the daytime, talking to a dolphin; and at night, even if he waited until the people on the bigger houseboat were in bed, we would all have to speak softly, since sound carries so well over water. I wondered whether he had done it on purpose, with the ultimate aim of detaching us from Madelaine.

I may say here that our anger for the attack on Noonday Rock was directed not so much toward the navy as toward Lawrence. If one decla res war on the human race, one may expect the human race to retaliate. But we had trusted Dr. Lawrence, despite my doubts about him —he had instigated us to try to trigger an earthquake —and this lent a particular bitterness to our feelings toward him.

Lawrence came back after a while, carrying a bag of groceries, a bag from a department store, and another, smaller parcel that I couldn’t identify. He went into the Akbar’s deckhouse, and in a little while I smelled food cooking.

I listened, but couldn’t tell whether or not he was feeding Madelaine. Neither of them said anything. Once or twice I heard her moving in her bunk.

He washed a few dishes. Then I heard a click, and the squawk of a radio. A radio —that must have been what was in the smalle r parcel he had brought back.

He seemed to be listening to the news. After a while he shut the radio off, and seemed to be doing something near Madelaine. Then he came on deck with a bag of scraps and trash, which he took on shore and dropped in a big tr ash can.

I noticed all these details so sharply because I really had not much else to notice. I did not want to start thinking about Blitta again. Once or twice, as the afternoon drew on, I tried to use Udra, but I was too restless to have any success wi th it.

Darkness fell. The doctor cooked some sort of meal. It sounded as if he took something to Madelaine. At last, about three hours after dark, Ivry and Pettrus came back.

They had been a long way, down the coast to Point Sur and back, but they had found no sign of Djuna. They had talked to two or three other sea people, too. But when they were near Benthis Canyon, the spot off Monterey where I dropped Sven’s stolen mine, they had seen a number of navy ships at anchor.

“They had men out in boats,” Ivry said agitatedly. “They seemed to be taking samples of the water. They had two men in diving suits, too.”

None of us said anything. It was perfectly plain that the navy was trying to get some objective corroboration of Dr. Lawrence’s story. The water over Benthis Canyon was probably still abnormally radioactive, but they might not draw the proper conclusion from this. Dr. Lawrence couldn’t have told them about Sven’s mine breaking the drums of radioactive wastes, since he hadn’t known about it. He ha d left Noonday Rock before we returned from our mission.