Margaret St. Clair (12 page)

People began to walk along the jetty and get aboard the bigger houseboat. We heard the sound of laughter and talking. Somebody started to play the guitar and sing, and other voices joined in the mus ic.

About ten-thirty Dr. Lawrence came out on deck and whistled softly.

“Are you there?” he said in a low voice. “I think it’s all right for us to talk now. They’re having a party on board the Diamond Lil, and won’t notice anything.

“The
Diamond Lil?”
I asked. “Is that the name of the other houseboat?”

“Yes. Can’t you read?”

“Only a little,” I answered, feeling rather ashamed. “Books go to pieces in the water, you see, and we haven’t any way of turning the pages.”

“You needn’t apologize,” Dr. Lawrence answered. “That a dolphin can read at all is so extraordinary that —well, never mind. I came out to tell you the news.

“In the first place, Madelaine is better. Her shoulder is healing nicely, and her temperature is a lmost normal. But she is still comatose most of the time. She rouses a little when I feed and bathe her and so on, but she goes back again into her coma, if that’s what it is.

“If she isn’t better soon, I’m going to call another doctor. I’m a psychiatris t, not a general practitioner.

“The other piece of news is that, though I listened a good deal to the radio today, I didn’t hear anything about the navy making a disclosure about the cause of the earthquake. There was still plenty about the quake, of cou rse, but it was the ordinary stuff one would expect —statistics about losses and damages.”

“That’s good,” Ivry said.

“Yes-s-s. Actually, I’m not so sure. This feels like the lull before the storm. I don’t think my rear admiral would give up so easily.”

“We went down to Point Sur today,” Ivry said. He went on to tell Lawrence what he and Pettrus had seen.

“H’um,” the doctor said when he had finished. “Let’s hope they don’t find anything. A piece of the casing of the mine that was dropped would be pret ty good evidence, but they’re not very likely to find such a piece.”

We dolphins were silent. We saw no point in telling Lawrence about the radioactivity the explosion of the mine had released into the water. It was always possible Lawrence might defect from us again, and he knew too much already.

“By the way, Doctor,” I said, “what happened after you got past the marine who was stationed in front of your office? You didn’t tell us about that.”

Lawrence laughed a little wryly. “You still don’t trust m e, do you?” he said. “Well, I have no objection to telling you.

“After I left my office, I drove to the house of a friend of mine, an astrologer, and spent the night with him. Next morning I went to the bank and drew out all the money that was in my acco unt. I was afraid the navy might be watching for a withdrawal, but I don’t think they were.

“Then I drove my car to a used-ca r dealer and sold it. I telephoned the clairvoyant I told you about, made an appointment with her, and took the bus to her house. After she and I made contact with you dolphins, I used public transportation to get to Sausalito. Is that all clear? I hope y o u’re satisfied.”

Before we could answer, there were footsteps coming along the jetty from the Diamond Lil. We swam under the planking of the jetty and floated quietly.

“Good evening,” a male voice said. “Nice weather for this time of year.”

“Yes, it is,” Lawrence agreed. He stood up, yawning. “Makes me sleepy. I think I’ll turn in.”

“Oh. Good night.”

“Good night.”

-

Next morning Lawrence went ashore again for food. While he was gone, a man walked out on the jetty to the Akbar, jumped down on he r deck, and knocked on the door of the deckhouse.

Neither Pettrus nor I was on guard. We had gone north together, still trying to pick up a trace of Djuna, and Ivry had been left behind to watch over Madelaine. When Ivry tried to tell us what happened, h e got excited and was difficult to understand.

The man knocked again on the deckhouse. Ivry, who was listening intently, thought he heard somebody (it could only have been Madelaine) moving about inside the cabin. The visitor waited for a while, and then knocked for the third time.

There was another wait, and Ivry wondered if the man was going away. But the door opened, and Ivry, though he could not hear very well, heard the man introduce himself, say he was from (mumble) intelligence agency, and that h e was making inquiries in regard to a Dr. Edward Lawrence (Ivry got the name clearly enough).

Madelaine answered something. She seemed to be asking the visitor inside. At any rate, they both went into the deck house. Here, for some reason, Ivry could hea r them rather more plainly.

“No, I don’t know any Dr. Lawrence,” Madelaine was saying. “We’ve only just bought this boat and come here. We don’t know many people in Sausalito anyway.”

“We?” the visitor asked.

“My brother and I. I’ve had the flu, and he’s been taking care of me.”

“I see. Do you mind telling me your brother’s name, Miss —?”

“Oh, no, not at all. It’s Gordon. My brother’s first name is Bill.”

“Thank you. Is he employed locally?”

“Not exactly. He’s an artist —I mean, he wants to be an artist. He does odd jobs, and I work as a part-time secretary. You know, I fill in when somebody’s sick or they need extra help. I haven’t been working lately. We get by.”

“I see. Well, thank you very much, Miss Gordon. I’m s orry to have bothered you.”

“Oh, that’s all right.”

The visitor left the
Akbar.
Ivry heard him walking on down the jetty and going aboard the Diamond Lil, where he presumably asked the same questions. A few minutes later he left the jetty, and didn’t c ome back. He missed encountering Lawrence, returning from his shopping, by about half an hour.

Ivry had plenty of time to think about the meaning of what he had heard. Obviously the navy was still looking for Lawrence, but whether they had actually trace d him to Sausalito or were merely checking through all the coastal communities was impossible to say. When Pettrus and I got back from our trip up north —we had been as far as Point Arena, but had not learned anything of Djuna —Ivry gave us an excited accou n t of what had occurred.

We didn’t like it. The intelligence man hadn’t seemed suspicious, but that didn’t mean he was satisfied with what Madelaine had said. One thing was certain, that it had been exceedingly fortunate Madelaine had answered his knock. Otherwise he would have waited until Lawrence came back, and the ambiguous doctor would by now be in naval custody again.

The
Diamond Lil’s owners went to bed early that night. As soon as the bigger houseboat’s lights were out, Lawrence came out on the A kbar’s deck and whistled to us.

“What’s been happening?” he asked without preamble. “Has Madelaine been out of bed? I found my medical bag under her bunk, and the dressing gown I bought her has been worn.”

“Yes,” Ivry said. He related the incident.

“Madelaine did all that?” Lawrence said when he had finished. “She couldn’t have. She’s not only comatose most of the time, she’s far too weak to stand up for more than a minute.”

“She did, though,” Ivry answered. “But I don’t know whether or not the man believed her.”

“Um. The navy may have traced me here, or they may just have been making a routine check, as you said. In either case, there’s no use worrying about it.”

“You’re taking it very calmly,” Ivry said.

Lawrence shrugged. “What else can I do ? The Akbar’s no ocean-going craft. I can’t sail her away from Sausalito. We’ll have to stay here and see what happens. Incidentally, Gordon is the name I used when I was buying her.”

“How is Moonlight now?” I asked.

“Semiconscious. She spoke to me whe n I was changing the dressing on her arm just now.”

“What did she say?” I wanted to know.

“She said, ‘Something has happened about Sven’,”. Lawrence answered slowly. “She didn’t even open her eyes when she said it.

“There is something very peculiar about this semiconsciousness of hers.”

-

Chapter 9

“Who was Sosa?” Dr. Lawrence asked.

“She was a heroine of the sea people who lived a very long time ago,” I ans wered. “We call Madelaine by her name because Madelaine came to give us help.”

It was a little after midnight; the Diamond Lil had left her mooring during the day, and the Akbar was currently the only craft tied up at the little jetty. We could talk more freely than we usually could.

“You’ve mentioned the covenant several times,” Lawrence said. “Did the first Sosa have something to do with it?”

“With which covenant?”

Lawrence ran his hand over his hair. “I didn’t know there was more than one covenan t. Tell me about the covenants, then, and what Sosa had to do with them.”

Ivry wriggled impatiently. He and I had gone looking for Djuna during the day, with the usual negative result, and he was in an impatient, irritable mood. “Why are you asking us so many questions, Dr. Lawrence? If you don’t remember the covenant yourself, there is not much use in trying to tell you about it. Why do you want to know?”

“I’m asking because I’m not satisfied with our position or our prospects,” Lawrence replied. “We’r e unarmed, Sven’s gone, and if the navy decides I was telling the truth, they’ll try to hunt down every dolphin in the ocean. I’m trying to get a line on what we should do next.”

It sounded reasonable enough to me, and, I suppose, to Pettrus, but Ivry was not convinced. “How do we know what use you’ll make of what we tell you? You say our position’s bad. Yes, it is, but it could be worse.”

“Um. Madelaine —”

“Madelaine! Why is she unconscious so much of the time, Dr. Lawrence?”

“I wish I knew,” Lawrence answered ruefully.

“I think you do know,” Ivry honked excitedly. “I think you’re drugging her.”

Lawrence sighed. “I don’t blame you for being suspicious of me. But why the devil should I be drugging Madelaine? This is silly. What would my motive be?”

“To make a—a cat’s-paw out of her. When you finally let her come back to consciousness, you’ll have weakened her so she’ll do whatever you say. Then you can use her —our poor Moonlight —to lead us all into a trap.”

There was a slight pause. “Well, I’m not drugging her,” Lawrence answered finally. “You don’t know much about drugs. You were here yourself yesterday when she was talking to the naval intelligence man. There isn’t a drug in the pharmacopoeia that would affect a woman like that.”

If we had not been so intent on what Lawrence was saying, I think we would have heard the noises within the cabin. As it was, we were all taken by surprise when the deckh ouse door opened and Madelaine came out on deck.

She was indefinably changed. For a moment I did not recognize her at all, and then I wondered whether Ivry were right in his suspicions that Lawrence was drugging her.

She came over to the boat’s railing and looked down at us. “You waited for me,” she said smilingly, “Dear Amtor, dear Ivry and Pettrus. There were dreams I had to have; it took time. But I think I’m done dreaming now.”

“What were you dreaming of?” Ivry asked, still sus picious. “Did he mak e you dream?”

“No. My dreams were like your dreams, Ivry, very strange for a Split.

“But never mind about my dreams. The doctor is right to want to know about the covenant. Tell him what he wants to know. It might help.”

I was still not ready to trust Lawrence completely. “You mean about how the covenant was drawn up and signed?” I asked. This was a trap; I thought that if Madelaine had been drugged, she would fall into it.

“Drawn up and signed!” She laughed. “You know a s well as I do that the covenant was something lived.”

“It will be hard to make him understand,” I answered.

“Why?” Lawrence asked practically.

“The minds of Splits are very different from ours.”

“I don’t doubt that,” replied the doctor. “But a basic communication should be possible. After all, both species are mammals.”

“Yes. But by now the gulf between us is exceedingly wide and deep.”

“Try anyhow,” Lawrence said.

“Very well,” I answered. “What do you want to know?” He sighed with exasperation. “Tell me what the covenant is.”

“It is a poem,” I said. “What!”

“Yes, a poem. Do you not understand, Dr. Lawrence? We are the people of the word. We have enormous verbal memories. Our culture is based on speech. I can recite the genealogies straight back to the beginning, almost a million years.”

“You mean that you can recite the pedigrees of —of dolphins, I suppose —going back a million years?” Lawrence still sounded jarred. “That’s impossible.”

“No, it is not. I can do it. Of course, it takes a very long time for me to say them all.”

“Well, go on. You say the covenant is a poem. Maddy said it was something lived. The ideas seem a little incompatible, to me.”

“No, not really,” Madelaine answered. “In a sense there were three covenants, Dr. Lawrence. All of them could be said to be lived. The first one, the one Amtor called a poem, was made nearly a million years ago.”

“Between dolphins and human beings?” the doctor said keenly. “There weren’t any human beings —Homo sapiens —on earth a million years ago.”

“No, not between Splits and the sea people. Mankind is older than Splits think. But it did not originate on earth.”

Before the doctor could comment on what I had said, we heard the sound of a b oat’s engine. It was coming nearer.

“We can’t talk any more tonight,” Sosa said softly. “It’s the Diamond Lil. Good night, my sea darlings.”

“Good night, Sosa, good night.”

-

Next day Ivry and Pettrus went looking for Djuna, and I stayed behind. I c ould hear the sound of voices in the deckhouse now and then, and the noise of the radio playing. About noon Lawrence went ashore and came back with a newspaper and groceries. Madelaine —I could tell from her lighter footsteps —cooked the lunch.

In the afte rnoon she came out on deck and sat in the sunlight for a little while. Her tan had faded, and she was as fair as she had been when we first nicknamed her Moonlight. Yet there was a change in her, and I couldn’t define it. I was glad when, before she went b ack into the deckhouse, she leaned over the railing and dabbled her hands in. the water. I nuzzled her fingers and knew that she was still Madelaine.