Quickly, he stoked up the fire, gutted and filleted the second yellowtail, and put it on the cooking rock. Then he picked up the bell and the clapper. His fingers were slightly swollen from the previous day’s exertions, and it took him quite a time—he nearly lost his temper twice—to get the grass around the hanging bar and secure the clapper arm. And then the bell pull.
He made himself eat the fish—it was tastier hot than cold—before he rose, hand on the clapper, and carried the bell to the water ledge. There was a protrusion near the entrance to the cavern. He put the bell down and returned to his supplies for more of the rope he had twisted. At last he hung the bell, wincing every time it issued a small complaint in the process. Delky kept one wide, white eye on him, not quite sure what he was doing. He hoped she wouldn’t panic when he rang the bell.
The sun was only just up in the east, he noted, so the pod would have finished its morning feed. He couldn’t have timed it better if he’d tried.
Taking a deep breath, he grabbed the pull rope and listened critically to the sound that reverberated through the cave.
“Not bad,” he said as the still slightly sour bong echoed in his ears. Then he rang the Come-in sequence. Not that a Report to celebrate the hanging of the bell wouldn’t be appropriate, but Report was urgent: Come-in gave them an option.
As if they’d been waiting just outside the cave for the slightest bell sound, sleek gray bodies glistened under the pool water and heads lifted right under him.
“Bell ring! Ring bell!” “We come!” “We come!” “Reporrit!” “Reporrit!”
“No report, you silly fish faces,” Readis said, laughing with relief and delight. “I only rang Come in.”
“We come in!” “We come in!”
Then the bell rope was yanked out of his grasp and enthusiastically pulled as a dolphin discovered it hanging down in the water.
“Hey, hey,” Readis cried, grabbing for the clapper. The ringing was like thunder all around him in the confines of the cavern. He should probably place it outside or he’d be deafened. Delky was rearing and kicking, screaming with panic. “Easy, there, now. Easy!” He meant the advice for both runner and dolphin. He was also none too sure that the grasses would hold under such ardent manipulations.
Then he knelt down at the side and delivered scratches on all the chins that were presented. “Where did you find that bell? I couldn’t believe it when I saw it yesterday morning. It took all day to clean it up.”
“Bell long lost,” Cal said. “Long, long, long.”
Readis grinned at the delphinic repetitions. He really must teach them “good, better, best,” though Cal’s pod spoke very welclass="underline" much better than even the Paradise River ones.
“Did you find it on the sea bottom?”
“We find. We bring. You fix. You ring.” Loki said. He identified her by the splotch on the side of her melon.
“Loki! You’re a poet! Did you know that?” Readis exclaimed.
“Yes. I poet, I know it. See?”
Readis howled so with laughter that he lost his balance and sprawled on the ledge, repeating her words while dolphins faces regarded him in their constant amusement and clicked and squee’ed.
“You have bell now. Need long-feet, mask, tank so you can swim far with pod!”
That sobered Readis almost instantly. “That would cost more marks than I have …” And Readis suddenly realized that such marks as he did have were back in his dormitory room. Or, if Master Samvel had taken his long absence as a withdrawal from the school, maybe his belongings had been returned home. Either way, the marks were out of his reach, as was the aqua-lung. “And I don’t have any to buy an aqua-lung, even if one could be made.”
“No thing left over?” Cal asked.
“If you mean diving stuff from the Ancients’ time, no, they didn’t last the way the bell did. Where did you find it?”
“Where storm sink Dunkirk ships,” Cal said as if the event had taken place recently and not nearly twenty-five hundred Turns before.
“And you know where that was?”
“Still find man things when bad storm turn over,” Cal said, and Readis was astonished.
“How could you remember something that happened so long, long, long ago?” he asked, absently scratching her chin again.
“The Tillek. She holds history in her head.”
“Now, don’t tell me there’s a dolphin who’s twenty-five hundred Turns old.”
“No, not tell what isn’t true. But she knows from her Tillek.”
“Oh, you’ve sort of a Harper Hall?”
“We have the Tillek,” Cal repeated firmly. “You must have lung to go see the Tillek. You must go see the Tillek.”
“I’d love to. When I’m able.” Readis sighed. “If I ever am.”
“If you be dolphineer, you meet the Tillek.” Once again Cal spoke so definitively that Readis gave a wistful chuckle.
“I be dolphineer, already. I have bell, I have cave, I have you! Did you eat well yesterday on Thread?”
“Eat good, good, good,” squee’ed some of the other pod members. “Too bad, bad, bad, men don’t eat.”
“Well, that’s the way it is, fellas,” Readis said. “And I’d better eat,” he added as his stomach rumbled.
A large rainbow fish was flipped to the ledge, and instinctively he grabbed it by the gills before it could wriggle off. A second one followed the first, and then a large leaf, two beautiful shell fragments, and a barnacle-encrusted object.
“You eat, then we swim. Much to show you.”
“I’ve no long-feet, no lung. And my …” He had started to mention the abrasions the vest had made and how loath he was to put it back on and risk opening those barely healed scrapes.
“You dolphineer. Your pod swim you safe,” Tursi said with such authority that Readis could only laugh.
He took care of Delky while the rainbow cooked. After his breakfast, he collected more wood for his fire, and banked the coals with wet seaweed. He also lavished scratches and pattings on the waiting pod. Occasionally one of them would pull the bell, just to hear it ring. Finally, Delky had become so accustomed to the sound that she didn’t so much as twitch an ear when it rang.
The “much” the dolphins had to show him had to do with the coastline up to the mouth of the deep gorge of what the Ancients had called the Rubicon River. It required him to swim with the pod long but thrilling hours. When he needed to drink they seemed to know where little brooks and freshettes drained into the sea. They provided him with fish whenever he needed, they also kept up their gifts of items that attracted them. Almost every morning there were offerings. He’d removed only four bloodfish, so he felt he hadn’t earned any special gifts, but he remained grateful for anything. Once they brought him a “man thing,” a plastic crate with one side knocked in, but the color was as bright, when he cleaned off the clinging mud, as the day it had been made. They told him there were more where that came from. Over the next few weeks, he acquired seven, three of which were filled now with “treasures.”
Winter storms had set in, so he also had days when it was inadvisable for him to swim with the pod. The sea would lash waves into floods over the ledge and he’d have to bring Delky inside with him. The wind found all kinds of crevices to howl into, so that he often had to stuff his ears with plugs he made from fibrous plants. Invariably, if he went to the ledge at low tide, there’d be a fish left high and relatively dry, for him to eat. Occasionally branches with the tougher-stemmed fruits clinging to them would be added as special treats. It amazed him that the dolphins knew what humans could eat.