He felt motion in the water beneath him. As he flipped himself perpendicular, his legs encountered something slithery, and he caught sight of the large body aiming at the surface. Then he became aware of the dolphin fins nearby. Abruptly a smiling dolphin face emerged in front of him.
“Save man? No storm. No good far from land?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Looking for Cal?” The dolphin squee’ed loudly in surprise and swam past Readis with one bright black eye never leaving his face. “Who you?”
“I’m Readis, Cal.”
Abruptly the dolphin came back, stopping in front of him. “Pods looking for Readisssss.”
“Are they?”
“All pods looking for Readis,” Cal repeated and then flipped into a dive.
Startled, because Readis didn’t want to be found, he ducked under the water and hauled hard on Cal’s near flipper to prevent her from sounding a message through the water.
“Don’t tell the other pods you’ve found me,” he said urgently, his face inches from Cal’s bottlenose.
“Don’t tell?” The dolphin turned her head so her bright eye was fixed on Readis and her whole expression conveyed an air of total surprise. “You lost You found.”
“I’m not lost. I don’t want to be found. By humans.”
“You are human. Humans stay together. Live in pods on the land. Only visit dolphins in sea. Not live in sea. Dolphins live in sea.” Cal’s response was long for a dolphin and, if the squeaky, pinched tones dolphins used for human speech also conveyed emotions, this time she spoke in shocked amazement.
“I want to live with dolphins, heal dolphins when they’re hurt, be a dolphineer!”
Cal’s loud squee broke off when she spouted an unusually high fountain of water from her blowhole. “You be dolphineer?” The pinched tone rose to a shrill note. “You be Cal’s dolphineer?”
“Well, we’ve just met. You don’t know much about me …”
“Dolphineer! Dolphineer!” Cal’s response was ecstatic! “Will more mans be dolphineers again? Swim with pods, hunt with pods, go see where coast has changed? New reefs, new channels, new stuff? Visit subsidence and meet the Tillek?”
Cal’s brief, earlier submergence must have been sufficient to send for the rest of the pod. Dolphins were homing in on her from all directions, leaping in and out of the water, squeeing and clicking so enthusiastically that Readis came very close to being drowned by their attentions. But he caught a dorsal fin as he was tumbled underwater and hung on until he and—it was Cal he’d got hold of—the dolphin surfaced again. Readis had got a noseful of seawater and had to cling to Cal while he snorted his nasal passages clear and got breathing properly again. Somehow Readis would have to get an aqua-lung. Without it, he was likely to be a liability to any pod, not the helping partner he hoped to be.
“Cal, listen to me,” he said, catching hold of both flippers and pulling at first one, then the other to get Cal’s attention. “I want to stay here. Don’t tell humans.”
“Why?” Cal was plainly puzzled, and others poked their heads up to listen to the conversation.
“I want to be alone with the pod. Learn to be a dolphineer.”
“No long-feets,” another dolphin said. “Dolphineers had long-feets.”
“Your name please?” Readis asked, catching one of the speaker’s flippers.
“I Delfi.”
Then others started squeeing out their names: Tursi, Loki, Sandi, Tini, Rena, Leta, Josi. They poked their faces at him, or walked toward him with flippers extended. He was splashed with the waters of their enthusiasm.
“Hey, hey!” He held up his arms and waved his hands to get them to calm down. “Take it easy. You’ll drown me.”
“No drown in middle of dolphins!” Delfi cried, and squee’ed as she dropped back into the water.
“Yes, you will. I’ve no blowhole!”
There was a good deal of clicking and squeeing over that. The dolphins evidently thought it was very funny. Readis began to feel as if his great idea of being a dolphineer might not be such a childish one. At least the dolphins approved. What did he care if every other human on the planet didn’t!
“I have found caves that lead to the sea and the pools that would be perfect places for dolphins to come to talk to me, where dolphins who were sick could come to be healed. I can take off bloodfish, too. And stitch wounds. D’you want to see?”
“See, see,” squee’ed the dolphins.
“Give me a ride in?” Readis asked, lifting his right hand in the position to grasp a fin.
“Me!” cried Cal, and squirmed her way through to take up Readis’s hand.
There was a bit of splashing and bodies trying to push him away from Cal.
“Hey, wait a bit! You can take turns, swimming me in,” Readis shouted, and got a mouthful of water. He couldn’t clear his air passage and if not for the vest would have been helpless to remain above the surface.
Almost instantly the scramble ended. Two dolphin bodies supported him until he got his lungs clear, though the seawater he had swallowed nauseated him.
“All right, now, pod, let’s take it easy on this poor human. You take turns so I don’t tire you out. Huh?”
“Tire? What tire?”
“Ummmm, get weary, lose strength, exhaust.” Readis made motions of difficulty in swimming. “Like men you rescue, all tired from ship going down.”
Scornful fountains rose from blowholes, and two rolled in contempt for the notion.
“Dolphins swim all around Pern and not weary,” Cal said, her smile deeper than ever. “Swim you to shore is easy. Easy, easy, easy,” Gal said, gently brushing the side of his face with her nose. “We go now. We change. You keep hand up.”
And so he was towed to shore, actually at a much reduced speed than he remembered them taking him and Unclemi into shore after the storm. He changed supports, and there was always a new one, waiting for him to switch. He realized that Cal had come back for a second turn by the time the shore loomed above them.
“To starboard …” Readis gestured right with his left hand. “To the right.”
“Know starboard. Know port. Cal is smart.”
“Cal certainly is. Have you been in these caves?”
“Yessss, been in pools here. Good place. Readisss smart to find good place.” Her voice echoed in the stone cave, and Delky whinnied in fear.
“It’s okay, Delky,” Readis called, worried lest she break his vine rope in her panic.
“You have horsss?” Cal asked, carefully raising herself far enough above the water to put an eye on the startled beast.
“Horss?” Readis laughed. “Delky’s a runnerbeast. And a weed at that. Easy there, girl. It’s all right.”
“Looks horsssish,” Cal insisted. “Name Delky? Delky, I Cal.”
“Runnerbeasts can’t talk, Cal.”
“Pity. We can talk better now we got you to talk to.”
“I think you speak pretty well already, Cal,” Readis said, hauling himself out of the water. The vest had held him up all right, but it had rubbed badly underarm and on his shoulders and neck. He’d have to find something to pad it there. Right now the abrasions stung. He also needed a drink. “Stay put, will you, Cal?”
He rose and had to grab at the wall to keep upright. He hadn’t realized how tired he was, and his bad leg was not in good working order at all. That was the first time he realized that the dolphins never commented on his wizened leg. At least they didn’t seem to care.
Grabbing the nearest of his homemade water bottles, he returned to the pool and found it stuffed full of dolphins.
“Is the entire pod inside?”
“Yes, want to see man’s land place,” Delfi said, raising her body out of the water to peer about her. “Nice place.” And she dropped back.