Margaret St. Clair (3 page)

What was it? Oh, yes, “Sailing, Sailing, Over the Bounding Main.” Yes, he thought that was it.

She began to speak. Her voice was considerably deeper than it had been earlier. “There’s a ship, an old, old ship with sails.

“There’s a mast in the middle. Now it’s beginning to sprout leaves. The vines are spreading out from it, there are leaves all over the ship. And the god —the god in the middle —the god —” Her voice faltered, and then strengthened. “The pirates threw him into the water. Bu t the sweet sea beasts bore him up. He played the lyre and rode safe on their backs to Corinth.” Mrs. Casson breathed deeply. Then, almost in a shriek, she said, “Madelaine!”

She was still sitting with her head resting on her fingers. Very softly the doc tor ventured a question. “Where did they take her? Is it far?”

“No, not far. Out—outside the Gate. To the Rock.” Mrs. Casson exhaled deeply. Her body slowly collapsed to the right. Her hands dropped to her sides. Her head lolled back.

Dr. Lawrence did not know whether he ought to try to revive her. But after a moment she sat up and yawned. “I went into trance then,” she said. “Did I say anything?” “Yes, quite a bit.”

“Was it what you wanted?”

“I think so. I can’t be sure.”

“Good. I think I told you what my fee is. If you want to sit with me again, I’ll be glad —”

“I’ll keep you in mind, indeed,” the doctor said. He put a bill in her hand. “Thank you very much for your help.”

Lawrence drove home slowly, pondering. The stuff about the ship sprou ting vines sounded like something from Greek mythology —Dionysus, he rather thought. Mrs. Casson seemed to have fused it with another story, that of Arion and the dolphin. Well. If Madelaine had been taken away from Drake’s Bay by a dolphin, or dolphins —we l l, where would she have gone?

Mrs. Casson had said, “Not far.”

“The Rock,” to anybody who lived near San Francisco bay, would mean Alcatraz, the former site of a Federal prison. But, apart from the fact that the Rock was under continual observation by bay shipping, and hence was an unsuitable place for anyone who wanted not to be seen, it was inside the Gate, since it was within San Francisco Bay. Was there any place that was “not far” from the bay area and outside the Golden Gate that was called “the Rock”?

When he got home, the doctor looked long and thoughtfully at a large-scale map of the central California coast.

Early next morning Lawrence called his secretary at the station and told her that he had been unexpectedly called to Los Angeles. An uncle of his was dying. He would be gone at least a week, perhaps more. He was sorry. He’d be back as soon as he could.

He drove to San Francisco, taking care never to exceed the legal speed limit. He didn’t want to be stopped by a highw ay patrolman. In the city, he left his car at a public garage in Union Square, and took the cable car to Fisherman’s Wharf.

Since it was almost the middle of the morning, almost all of the boats that took fishing parties out to fish had already gone. Onl y two were still at their moorings. Dr. Lawrence went up to the nearer of them.

“Could you take me out to the Farallons?” he said to the skipper.

“The Farallons? What do you want to go there for?”

“Sorry,” Lawrence said. He walked on to where the oth er boat was moored. Here he repeated his question.

“The Farallons? There are twelve of them, mister. There’s the Northwest Farallons, and —would you be wanting any special one of them?”

“I want to go to Noonday Rock. Do you know it?”

“Oh, yes, I know the Rock.” The man —his name was probably Ben, since the sign over his berth said “Ben’s Private Fishing Trips”—nodded slowly. “It’s nothing but a rock, though. Straight up and down, about a third of a mile across.”

“Yes, I know. Can your boat take me there?”

“I think so,” Ben answered a little doubtfully. “It’s a good deal farther out than I usually go. It would take about three hours. Be an expensive trip.”

“How much?” Lawrence asked.

Ben named a sum. The doctor shifted his polishe d briefcase to his left hand and got out his wallet. He took out two bills and handed them to the skipper. “Half now, the rest when we get there.”

“Would you be wanting to stay long, mister?” Ben asked, folding up the bills and putting them in his purse. He looked doubtfully at the doctor —a small, neatly dressed man holding a briefcase, while the wind flapped his sharply creased trousers around his legs. “I’d have to get back before dark.”

“You won’t have to wait for me at all,” Lawrence answered. “I wa nt you to leave me there.” And then, before the skipper could say anything, “I’m working for the government.”

“Oh!” Ben nodded, as if he had received a full and satisfying explanation. “Well, we’d better get started. I want to pick up an extra can of gas oline. Do you get sick?”

“Not usually.”

“Well, it’ll be a rough trip.”

They talked little on the way out. Once Lawrence said, “If anybody comes asking for me, it might be better to say you didn’t see me,” and Ben replied, “OK.” Then the water grew ro ugher, and Lawrence had to concentrate on keeping his breakfast in place.

They got to the Rock about noon. “This is it,” Ben said. “I can’t get in any nearer, but it’s only a couple of feet deep here.

“You sure you’ll be all right? Wait, I’ll give you a canteen. There’s no water here at all.” He handed Lawrence a canvas-wrapped canteen.

The doctor took it. He got out his wallet and paid the rest of his fare. “I think I’ll be OK, but come back for me i n the morning —oh —five days from now.” He gave Ben two more bills, and let himself over the side.

“All right. Good luck. I hope you know what you’re doing.” He started the engine, and the broad-beamed little boat moved off.

Lawrence watched him go. He felt an instant of panic. Had he marooned himself on this barren rock with only the water in a quart canteen? Five days in this wild spot because a clairvoyant had said something that might mean the girl he was hunting might be here? Then a patch of white moved round the edge of the rock, and his heart steadied.

“Hello,” he said when she was near enough. “I thought you’d be here.”

“Dr. Lawrence! How did you know where to look for me?”

“A clairvoyant told me,” he answered absently. “What do you do for water and food? There’s nothing at all here.”

“Oh, we go over to the big island —the one with the automatic lighthouse —at night and bring back water and canned food. There’s a cistern there for rainwater, and a shed with lots of surplus canned stuff.”

“Who’s ‘we’? Is there anybody here besides yourself?”

“One man.” She looked at him steadily. “Dr. Lawrence, will you help us? We can’t have anybody knowing about us who isn’t on our side.”

Lawrence bent over and began wringing water out of his pants cuf fs. “That’s something I can’t answer until I know what you’re trying to do,” he said, straightening up.

“We want to free the sea people who are in the research stations. That’s the first thing. Then we want to make sure that human beings will never moles t them again.”

“A large order,” Lawrence answered, unsmiling. “Yesss, I’ll help you. But I’d like to point out, young lady, that what you have said amounts to a declaration of war on the whole human race.”

“Does it? I’m sorry. But we can’t help that.”

-

Chapter 2

It was a gray day, with the sky lowering and dull and an oily swell on the slate-colored water. Sea gulls wheeled and banked endlessly over the heads of the three Splits who were sitting on the pebbly beach, as close as they could get to us in the water. We —at least a hundred sea people and the three who sat facing us —were h o lding a council of war.

It had been going on since early morning. There was no disagreement about what we wanted to accomplish; as Madelaine had told Dr. Lawrence, the first thing was to free the imprisoned sea people. But there was much argument as to h ow we could accomplish it.

The dolphin research and training project —DRAT—was top secret. From the land, only a handful of high-ranking navy officers had access to it, and even they had to pass check points and wait for the opening of locked doors. From the sea, a series of concrete walls and baffles cut our people off from contact with their free element. It was not going to be easy to break down those massive concrete walls.

Madelaine listened to the discussion, her head propped on her hand. Dr. Lawre nce sat on her left. His rolled-up trouser legs and sprouting beard gave him a raffish appearance, but he still carried the polished briefcase he had had when he came to the Rock.

Sven sat at Madelaine’s right. I was not as used to the faces of Splits th en as I afterwards became, but I thought he looked much happier than he had when I first saw him, though he frowned from time to time at what the speakers said. His eyes were often fixed on the girl.

Djuna had been speaking. She had been describing how a rmed guards were posted on the seaward parts of the walls. “Nobody could get close enough to the concrete to set off a bomb,” she told us positively. (The bomb had been a suggestion of Sven’s, made about half an hour earlier.) “There are searchligh ts, and the guards shoot at anything they see in the water. The navy has nets out, too, and an alarm rings if the mesh is broken. But the guards and the lights are the main trouble. They started stationing guards after a couple of us sea people got out of the pools at Capitola.”

Djuna’s high, rapid speech stopped. (When we sea people talk to Splits, we have to take pains to pitch our voices low and speak slowly; our communication with each other is out of human auditory range, and very rapid.) There was a silence. The gulls overhead gave their harsh cries. Then Dr. Lawrence, still holding his briefcase, got to his feet.

He cleared his throat and teetered on the balls of his feet for a moment. Then he said, “It’s obviously impossible to get the dolphins o ut by land. Transporting three hundred pygmy whales, each seven feet long, back to the water is something that couldn’t possibly be done secretly. We’d be stopped before we got more than a couple out. And Djuna has told us, pretty convincingly, that nobod y can get close enough to the sea walls to set off a bomb. But a severe earthquake would break down the walls and give the dolphins access to the sea. We must have an earthquake.”

“You mean that we must have a miracle?” Madelaine asked wonderingly.

“No, we must make it happen,” Dr. Lawrence answered.

Rain began to fall from the leaden sky, at first a soft pattering, and then bigger drops. “How?” Sven asked, over the growing noise of the rain. He glanced at Madelaine. “It seems to me it would be more di fficult to cause an earthquake to order than it would be to get through the guards with a bomb.”

Dr. Lawrence squatted down on his heels. He seemed to be uncomfortable standing upright in the increasing rain. “I’m no geologist,” he answered. “But sometim es a small initial cause can create great effects.

“The whole California coast is part of the Pacific ring of fire. The San Andreas Rift —a major fault —runs through the San Francisco Bay area, and can be traced along the coast for about six hundred miles. All the DRAT stations are located within this six-hundred-mile stretch.

“A big quake on this part of the coast is long overdue. Sooner or later there will be a major quake, and without human intervention. But we need not wait for that. A quake is, so to speak, waiting to happen. It is up to us to trigger it.”

Sven was frowning intently. “How?” he asked again.

Dr. Lawrence drew a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped at his streaming face. The rain was coming down steadily now. “With a bomb,” he s aid.

He coughed. “If a powerful bomb were placed at a suitable spot, a spot underwater, which would augment the force of the explosion, I think it might do the trick. Of course, we can’t be sure till we try it. But I think it would work.”

“What would b e a suitable spot?” Sven asked.

Dr. Lawrence rubbed the lower part of his face with his right hand. “Ask your sea people,” he said. “They must be familiar with the edges of the continental shelf. Ask them if they know a suitable spot.”

Through the blur ring rain, I could see that Sven and Madelaine were looking at me. “Amtor, do you know of a place like that?” asked Madelaine.

I would have liked to avoid answering. “Yes,” I replied reluctantly, “I think I do.”

“Where?” Madelaine asked.

“Perhaps—off the coast near Monterey. There’s a submarine canyon there.”

“Would one bomb do it?” Sven inquired. “I think so, if it were powerful.”

“How do you know that the submarine canyon would-be a good place to trigger an earthquake?” Sven asked, frowning. “Ho w can you know a thing like that?”

I was silent, baffled by the impossibility of communicating to him any of the grounds for my belief. Sven was an ally, and almost as close to us psychologically as Madelaine. Even so, our contacts were contacts between a “human” species and a nonhuman one. We communicated across a narrow bridge.

“Our senses are different from yours,” I said at last. “You would have to be one of us to know how we know. But we have been aware for a long time that in the canyon was a sens itive spot.”

“You didn’t mention this when we were discussing how to break down the sea walls on the pools,” Dr. Lawrence observed mildly.

“Of course not,” I answered. “To cause a quake deliberately would be a violation of the covenant”

Pettrus—a hal f-brother of mine, and the other dolphin who had escaped with Djuna from the pools at Capitola —came coasting through the water and stopped as close as he could get to where the Splits were sitting on the beach. “A violation of the covenant would be justi f ied in self-defense,” he said in his high-pitched voice. “But a quake would kill people, perhaps millions of them, who haven’t harmed us and whose deaths wouldn’t benefit us. We can’t do that.”

“But it—” said Dr. Lawrence, and then stopped. He got to his feet, peering through the blur of raindrops toward a commotion in the distant water, a hundred yards or so from the rocky shore. Madelaine had risen, too, and was pressing her hands to her head. She told me afterwards that she had had a sharp, sudden imp r ession of urgency and distress.