“Come, swim with me, Readis,” Theresa said in the very gentlest tone he had ever heard a dolphin use.
“I’m sorry, Theresa, I don’t feel much like swimming right now.” For all he was nearly eighteen now and thus considered a man, a sob caught in his throat and he turned his face from the dolphin’s knowing eye.
He was knocked off his perch by a deft swipe of her rostrum. He was coughing as he bobbed up, and she was facing the cavern entrance.
“Come, Readis, swim with me.”
“I need my vest.” He extended one arm toward the ledge, meaning to climb back up.
“No vest is needed if you swim with Theresa,” he was told, and he was nudged away from the side of the pool.
“I didn’t mean to offend you …”
“None taken,” she replied.
He caught her dorsal fin with his right hand. Her tow was deceptively smooth, but the speed with which he passed out of the cavern told him she was fast. Just outside the cave, they were joined by others, and Cal poked her head up on the other side of him, grinning.
“You help her?” Cal asked.
“She had a wicked bloodfish, yes, and I removed it.”
He was being pulled with such speed that he had more water in his mouth than words and gestured that he couldn’t speak. Then he saw that the entire pod was there, ranged on either side of Theresa. Some were in advance, leaping and diving as if they escorted a ship. Behind him, others were dipping in and out, but more sedately than usual, not displaying the more athletic maneuvers. He spotted Loki and she rolled her head at him before dipping her nose under again.
Theresa just kept swimming, heading directly toward the Great Western Current. He’d been out to it several times with the pod, and been caught up in the incredible current, fearless only because he had been in the company of dolphins.
They were nearly upon the ships before he realized that her bulk had kept him from seeing them bearing down on them.
Two ships, one of them Master Idarolan’s Dawn Sisters, and the other, Alemi’s Fair Winds.
“Oh, no, Theresa.” He dropped his hand and was immediately upheld by Cal on his left.
“Take hold, Readis,” Theresa said, screwing her head around so that he could not deny hearing her words. “You will come with me.”
“She speak, you obey!” Cal said, squeeing emphatically.
That was when Readis had the first suspicion. Later he realized how stupid he had been. Just then more pods could be seen, leaping and diving, plunging and cavorting, all heading toward the ships, which had furled their sails and seemed to be standing still. Sea anchors out, he thought in his bemuse-ment. As they neared, and Theresa was closing the distance with incredible speed, he could see that each ship had a longboat in the water beside it, and that there were dolphins clustered all around. He’d never heard that dolphins had Gathers, but that’s the word that came to mind. According to what Kib and Afo had suggested, the only time dolphin pods met was in the Northwest at the Great Subsidence for …
“You’re the Tillek, Theresa!” he shouted. He lost his grip, and swallowed a mouthful of water that had him gasping for breath and grasping for the nearest solid form. Which happened to be the Tillek, Theresa, and that made him reach for any other form, for to grab at her seemed tantamount to sacrilege.
“Hold me, Dolphineer,” he was commanded, and his hand was flung up and landed against the dorsal fin, which he obediently clutched.
“I shouldn’t—” he gasped. “It’s not right. You’re the Tillek.”
Loud squees and clickings of approval answered him, and then they were so close to the longboats that he could hear the welcoming shouts. The Tillek swam him up to Master Idarolan’s ship, and slowed to come to a complete stop, her flippers holding her steady with deft subtle movements, by the Dawn Sisters’ longboat. Looking up, he saw his father, smiling, his mother, unsmiling but somehow looking proud, Alemi, and Kami, of all people, and she looked as if she was about to weep. Beyond her were T’gellan, the Benden Weyrleader, D’ram, T’lion, looking excessively pleased, a dour-looking man he didn’t know, Master Samvel, Master Menolly, and Master Sebell. His father and Alemi held out their hands to him.
“Grab hold, Readis,” Jayge called. Too surprised to disobey, he held up his arms and was hauled aboard. His mother herself handed him a big towel, even as she ran critical eyes up and down his tanned body as if she hadn’t expected to find him in such good and healthy condition.
“Thanks, Mother,” he mumbled, and didn’t know what else to do because there was the Tillek herself raised up from the water to be part of whatever was about to transpire in the boat. For this had the feeling of more than the recapture of a recalcitrant truant,
“Well, Readis, lad,” Master Idarolan said, planting his hands on his hips and grinning at him. “Led us a fine and merry chase you have, lad.”
“I just wanted to help the dolphins,” Readis said, speaking to his father despite the press of other important people around him, “No one else was.”
Jayge took Readis’s arm and pressed it affectionately, his expression wistful. “We know that now, son. And I honor you for what you did that day, despite what I said, and felt, at the time.”
“I should never have said what I did,” Aramina murmured right beside him, and there were tears in her eyes when he looked around at her.
“Ahem, we can’t keep the Tillek waiting, friends,” Master Idarolan said. “We are come at her request, Readis,” he added.
“At her …” Readis looked from the Fishmaster to the looming shape of the Tillek.
“She wishes you to be the Dolphineer,” Master Idarolan said. “We’ve never had a Dolphin Hall on Pern … never realized we should have had one all these years. But, well, she’s been very understanding.”
“The Thread caused many problems for humans,” the Tillek said in a tone that suggested she really couldn’t understand quite why. Beyond her, Readis could see the masses and masses of dolphin bodies. Why, every pod on Pern must be here! “We are grateful to men for many things. For history, for knowing what we are, and for giving us the tongue to speak. For speech is what raises the human—and us—above the animals and fish of land and sea.”
“And you, Theresa the Tillek,” Masterharper Se-bell said, “are obviously my counterpart among dolphins.”
“I do not play music makers. But I sing the songs of old so that the young do not forget the past and the old Earth and how men and women swim with us in these new seas.”
“Close your mouth, Readis,” his father murmured softly.
“But he said—she said—a Dolphin Hall?”
“A Dolphin Hall,” Master Idarolan repeated.
“A Dolphincrafthall,” said F’lar of Benden, “and I speak for all the Weyrleaders …”
“And I, Oterel of Tillek Hold, speak for the Lord Holders …” said the gaunt man Readis didn’t know, and then he smiled and didn’t look half as forbidding.
“And I for the Harper Hall,” Sebell said, “that the new Hall is needed and is herewith situated at the sea caverns of … what will you call your place, Readis?”