I noticed he said nothing more about dolphins and Splits separating. “Getting the heat off is a good idea,” Madelaine said, a little dryly. “Do you have any idea how it can be done?”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot It would take the heat off the sea people and their human allies—if the polar ice caps were to melt.”
Chapter 11
I think we would have laughed at him, except that, after all, he had already engineered an earthquake. As it was, the idea of melting the polar ice caps reduced us to a flabbergasted silence. Finally Madelaine said, “Well, if the level of the oceans were to rise even a few feet, it would certainly give human beings something more immediate to worry about than the existence of the dolphins. And more water in the oceans would dilute the radioactivity of the water that’s already there. The radioactivity must be reduced if the dolphins are to survive.
“But what makes you think we can do it, Ted?” (This was one of the very few times Madelaine called Dr. Lawrence by his first name.) “Melting the polar ice caps—it’s a grandiose idea.”
“Grandiose?” he repeated thoughtfully. He laughed. “I suppose it does sound a little like the CIA. But when I’m with the dolphins, I have a fee ling of limitlessness, of space and freedom and power.”
“They don’t feel like that about themselves,” Sosa answered.
“Perhaps they have more powers than they know,” Lawrence replied. “Human beings have more psychic abilities than those they usually exercise. It could be the same with the sea people.”
“Maybe so. But you still haven’t told me how you think two human beings and a varying number of dolphins are going to be able to melt the polar ice.”
“When Amtor told us about the covenant,” Lawrence said, “he implied that the Old Ones had an advanced scientific technology. Those of the colonists who stayed on land went downhill rapidly, and lost their scientific culture; and those that adapted to life in the water had to give up material culture entirely. But Amtor says he knows dolphin genealogies reaching back for a million years. Does he know anything—has he heard of any dolphin tradition—about a technique, a device, I don’t know exactly what it would be—but something that would help us melt the polar ice?”
I said, “It’s an interesting idea. Before I try to do anything with it, I want to go fishing. I’m hungry. It’s been a lot longer than I usually go without food.”
“Very well.” Lawrence was obviously annoyed, but he tried to be polite. “Get back as quick as you can, though—it will be getting light in a little while.”
I got three large, nourishing fish in a little more than twenty minutes. When I got back to the Akbar, the radio had been turned on and the four were listening to it.
“Another quake shook the San Francisco Bay area at 1:17 this morning,” the radio was saying. “Property damage was negligible, but a welder, making repairs on the damaged Gate Bridge, was shaken from his perch on the span and fell 370 feet to the water below. Death was instantaneous.
“A mysterious foam that blanketed Bay waters for several hours very early this morning disappeared as abruptly as it came. It is thought that several drums of concentrated detergent, stored in a waterfront warehouse, may have been responsible.
“The U.S. Department of Commerce weather bureau predicts…”
Dr. Lawrence switched off the radio. “That’s that,” he said. “The foam is neatly, if not convincingly, accounted for.—Amtor, Pettrus says you once told him about a thermal device the Old Ones had—something called ahln.”
I puffed a few fish scales from my lips. “Oh, the ahln. Yes, there is said to have been such a thing. I’d forgotten about it.”
“How much do you know a bout it?” the doctor asked. “How do you know that such a thing ever existed?”
“I don’t know much about it,” I said. “It’s a tradition among the sea people that the Old Ones had the ahln. A dolphin called Kendry told me the little I know.”
“Kendry?”
“Kendry is a female, a sort of great-great-great aunt of mine. She’s the oldest dolphin I’ve ever known. All her ancestors lived to be very old. I learned a lot of the genealogies from her.”
“Does Kendry know how to make this ahln thing?” The doctor was getting excited. He lit a cigarette, drew on it twice, and then tossed it over the Akbar’s side.
I considered. “I suppose it’s possible. Knowing how to make the ahln wouldn’t be of any use to the sea people; you can’t make a mechanism unless you have hands. But it’s possible that a bit of useless information like that might have been handed down, if only as a curiosity. Kendry knows a lot of things.”
“Can you contact her telepathically and find out what she knows?” Lawrence asked.
“No. I mean, yes, we probably could contact her telepathically if she was open to being contacted. But as far as finding out anything precise goes, it would be a waste of time. Telepathic impressions are more emotional than accurate. If we really want to find out what she knows about the ahln, we’ll have to go to see her. There is no real substitute for articulate speech.”
“But wouldn’t Udra—”
“No. Udra is more motor. If we were trying to get her to come to see us it might work. But she’s old. It would take her a long time to come here.”
The doctor sighed. “Well, where does she live?—I don’t know whether a dolphin can be said to ‘live’ anywhere. But where would we have to go to have a meeting with her?”
“She used to spend most of her time in the Indian Ocean, near the—I think you call them—the Maldive Islands.” I heard Lawrence give a grunt of dismay.
“She’s not there any more, Amtor,” Pettrus put in. “I talked to one of her great-great nephews while we were in the DRAT pens. He said she was staying near some rocks off the Baja California coast. The water near the Maldives got too hot—radioactive—after the U.S. Navy lost an H-bomb off the Seychelles. Kendry had to move.”
“Could you find the rocks?” Lawrence asked.
“Yes, I think so,” Pettrus answered.
“And she’s still there?”
“I think so,” Pettrus said. “We’d have heard if she’d been killed or captured. And since she’s old, she doesn’t go far from where the fish are.”
“Some rocks off Baja California,” the doctor repeated thoughtfully. “Well, it could be worse.” He yawned and stretched.
“I’ll get some gas into the Akbar,” he said, “and then take her into the Marina Boat Exchange and see if I can turn her in on something a little more seaworthy. We can’t make it down to Baja California in a houseboat.
“It’s too bad I’m not more of a sailor, but I imagine I can set a course that will get us near where we want to go, particularly with the dolphins to help if I make any bad mistakes.—Maddy, what do you think of all this? You haven’t said anything.”
“What? Oh, I think we’d better go. I was thinking about Sven.”
In the next few hours, the doctor traded the Akbar in on a small electric-powered cruiser, stocked the Naomi (the new boat) with canned goods and water, and bought charts, a marine compass and so many power packs that the dealer asked him whether he was planning a trip around the world. He also got life jackets for himself and Madelaine. By ten o’clock, we were ready to leave Sausalito.
We dolphins were relieved to be getting out of the bay. The restricted waters had always made us feel as if we were in a trap, and the dirtiness and atomic pollution of the bay water was a constant irritation to us. Also, though our trip to find Kendry might be a fool’s errand, it was action. We were no longer waiting passively for the navy to make the next move. We swam sedately beside the Naomi, however, trying to keep within the boat’s small shadow.