The camp came under U.N. auspices (there were at that time two men who claimed to be president of the United States, one with army support, the other favored by the air force), and conditions improved somewhat.
Time passed. One night, about six weeks after she and Sven had arrived at the camp, Madelaine woke on her sagging cot with a message ringing in her ears. She got up and dressed quietly, not wanting to wake the other women in the tent. Moonlight coming through the canvas walls made objects within palely visible. When she got to the muddy walk that marked the division between the men’s and women’s quarters, she found Sven waiting for her.
“They want us,” she said. “Yes. Which way do we go? You’re better at things like that than I am, Madelaine.”
“Straight over the hills and toward the coast. I know exactly where they are.”
They began to walk. As soon as they were out of the camp, which was kept constantly sprayed with insecticide, mosquitoes began to buzz around them. Frog voices boomed and croaked on every side. The flooding moonlight made the grassy hills look flat. But the man and the girl climbed and descended, descended and climbed. It was not until they were going through a long level valley that Madelaine had breath enough to say, “I’ve been thinking about Dr. Lawrence lately. I’ve been wondering if he was right.”
“Right? What about?”
“He used to say that I was too high-minded to do what had to be done, and that he always had to take the onus of necessary action on himself.”
“Well?”
“Did I—when he dispatched the ahln devices to the poles, wasn’t he, after all, doing what I really wanted him to do? Doing what you and I both wanted him to do?”
“I don’t think it matters,” Sven said. “You might have wanted it to happen—in a way, we both wanted it to happen. But we’d never have acted on our wishes. One doesn’t have to take guilt for wishes one would never carry out.”
The moon had set. The sun was beginning to come up in the east when they got to the ocean. And there, waiting for them as close as we could get, were the four of us.
“I’ve missed you so!” Sosa said when the first joy of reunion was over. “Tell me, what’s been happening with you? How has the flood affected the sea people?”
“Some of us have been sick,” I told her. “The water’s so much less salty most places than it used to be that we get infections. I think a good many sea people have died.
“But we have lots more water to swim in. And if it’s less salty, it’s also less radioactive. We’re sure of being able to survive. We’re much better off than we used to be, Moonlight.”
“What’s the world like now?” Sven asked curiously. “I mean, the seas of the world. We don’t get much news at the camp.”
“The water’s about a hundred feet deeper everywhere than it used to be,” I said. “There’s a lot less land than there used to be. There are places where we can swim in for fifty miles beyond the old coastline. I think there will be more changes in the shape of the land masses. There are more earthquakes coming, for one thing.”
Moonlight sighed. Then she said, “Could you take us for one last ride on your backs?”
“Of course. I was going to suggest it.”
She got on my back, and Sven on Djuna’s. We did not take them far. The air was too heavy with the sorrow of parting for any of us to enjoy it very much.
“We’d better be getting back to the camp,” Sven said when they were standing on the shore again.
“Yes,” Madelaine agreed sadly. “Good-bye Amtor and Djuna, good-bye, Ivry and Pettrus. Oh, I’ll, miss you so! Will we see each other again?”
“Of course, dear Sosa. Don’t doubt it. The days will come when you will be with us again.”
We began to swim away. The two Splits stood watching us, Sven’s arm around the girl’s waist. As we moved through the water, I heard him say to her, “There they go, Maddy. The new lords of the earth. The gentle new lords of the earth.”
But I knew then, and I know now, that there is a task yet unaccomplished. The final fusion of the human and dolphin natures is yet to come. Then we sea people will walk on land, and you Splits will be free of the sweet depths of the ocean. The covenant looks forward. The best is yet to come.”
Book information
The Dolphins of Altair
by MARGARET ST. CLAIR
A DELL BOOK/AN ORIGINAL NOVEL
Published by DELL PUBLISHING CO., INC.
750 Third Avenue New York, N.Y. 10017
Copyright © 1967 by Margaret St Clair Dell ® TM 681510, De ll Publishing Co., Inc.
All rights reserved First Dell Printing - May 1967
COVER ILLUSTRATION: LEHR
Printed in U.S.A.