Hrump and I were growing closer, and often we didn’t swim or hunt at all. Often we nuzzled next to each other, flicking our tails idly, and enjoying each others’ company. I didn’t mind his scars. His scars were a testament to his heart and courage.
As the months elapsed, as the Deflector grew in scope and size, as the opposition against the alien presence seemed to grow, too, Jon finally could sit still no longer. He and Tayle packed up their belongings, and headed out to the fleet of ships that sat high above the construction of Deflector.
Jon was determined to help, one way or another. He wasn’t the only such human. Many had made a similar choice, offering their services.
Hrump and I made the decision as well to do our part. One way or another.
And just after the sixth month, as Kevin and Joe still lobbied the world’s leaders for consent, as the Deflector was constructed deep beneath the surface of the ocean, and as the Pulse grew steadily closer, Hrump and I headed into deeper waters, driving our tails hard, leaping high into the air and splashing down again, over and over...and ever closer to the Deflector.
Yes, we would do our part.
Whatever that meant.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Hrump and I paused, amazed. It was a clump of ships on the water, rather than a fleet; the vessels were linked together by ropes and crosswalks so that the humans could go from one to another without having to use smaller boats. Small powered carts zipped across like cars on highways, going from ship to ship. What was going on?
I quested for Tayle’s mind, and found it. The girl thought: We’ve been expecting you. There’s lots to explain. Come on into our minds.
I consulted with Hrump. “This is a strange sea,” I sang. “We can’t risk leaving our bodies unattended.”
“You go; I’ll watch your body,” he sang.
I didn’t argue. I jumped into Tayle’s mind. The girl was standing on the deck of one of the ships, facing out toward the dolphins, but they could not be seen under the waves. Then Hrump leaped through the air. “There!” Tayle cried, nudging her father.
“And here,” I said via her mouth. “Hrump’s watching my body.”
“There’s a safe pen here,” Tayle said. “We had them make it for you.” She grimaced. “It’s made of net, but I promise you, not to trap you. To keep sharks out.”
“I’ll tell Hrump,” I said. “We’ll come in.” I returned to my own body.
We swam in and found the pen. The netting had flaps we could open to pass through it, that sharks would not know how to operate. We could relax here. That was just as well, because we had come a long way and were physically tired.
We jumped to the human hosts. Now we could catch up on other things. “Why are the ships tied together?” I asked.
“It’s a city on the sea,” Tayle explained. “There’s a mess ship—that means it’s where we eat—and a laundry ship, a tenement ship, a waste processing ship—we call it the poop deck—and a whole lot of work ships. We’ve got golf carts to take us around quickly on the various ships, as well. It’s all sort of slipshod, but it works, because there’s a whole bunch of landlubbers here doing all sorts of things and they can’t be bothered to learn seamanship. Mainly they focus on the giant cable in the center going down to the Deflector. It guides the supply capsules down and up.” She continued describing it all, and I had to agree: this was a human city, with all the city functions.
“But look,” Tayle said. “There’s stuff coming up, but you must be tired. You should sleep tonight, and we’ll tackle it in the morning. They’ve got a barrel of fresh fish for you to eat.”
“Thanks,” I said. Then Hrump and I reverted to our bodies. The fish were good, though their squeals of pain still bothered me . Then the two of us went to sleep in swimming mode, within the enclosure. We really did need the rest.
In the morning we rejoined Tayle and Jon. “Two things,” Tayle said. “One good, one bad.”
“What is good?” I asked.
“They’ve verified the bubble. The Millennia said that it’s pretty much invisible, but can be detected by things like the index of refraction of a laser beam passing through it, and its effect on the existing area magnetic fields. That doesn’t mean much to me, but the scientists are satisfied that there’s a fierce magnetic storm on its way here, just as the Millennia said, and that it will wipe us out if it gets here. So the governments of the world are agreeing to cooperate to keep it away. This is a multinational effort. Some of the people still think it’s a cruel hoax, but they don’t count.”
I was ironically relieved to know that the threat was real, since my whole reason to contact the humans had been to alert them to it. “What’s the other?”
“They’re having trouble emplacing one of the units below. It has to be anchored to the sea floor, but there’s stirred-up muck so they can’t see, and it won’t attach. It’s too deep for the humans outside their subs, and the remote controlled equipment is clumsy. We thought that maybe if you dolphins could go down and take a look, maybe you could figure it out. They say it’s at your depth. They can’t complete the Deflector and get it running without that unit in place.”
“We came to help,” I said. “We’ll check it.”
“Okay!”
“But there is one thing,” Hrump said via Jon’s mouth. “This is far from our usual haunts, and we don’t know all the dangers. Such as the local sharks.”
Jon answered him with his own mouth. “We humans are wary of sharks too. They’ve got effective shark repellants. In fact they repel everything.”
“We’ll take that,” Azael agreed.
“It’s a tag they can put on your tail. An electronic repellant. And another to help you orient on the unit. It pings as you get close.” Hrump and I returned to our bodies. Soon a human man came to the net and fastened the tags to our flukes. Then the two of us dived deep. We followed the big cable down, and sure enough, no swimming creature of any kind came close, not even edible fish. That could have been a problem in another circumstance.
Then we oriented on the pinging. It led us to the unit, which was a big metal box with six stick-like legs and big splayed feet with spikes. The muck had been stirred up, so the unit was in a cloud, but we were able to check it sonically.
The feet weren’t sticking because the rock here was flaking off when anything tried to drill into it, so the metal plugs were ineffective. This device would need a different kind of anchorage.
We returned to the surface, joined the minds of the humans, and explained. Maybe they could weight down the feet with bags of stones.
“We’ll consider that,” the human supervisor said. “We’ll come up with something, now that we know what the problem is.”
I knew that there would be more useful work for us to do here. I was satisfied.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Work continued, and the months piled up.
Hrump and I were employed almost daily, from using our echo location to “see” through the silt, to hauling lines and equipment and supplies from the surface to the ocean floor, and back again. Often we assisted in rescue situations, removing fallen equipment from divers, or recovering the bodies of those we could not reach in time. Indeed, it was a challenge for the humans to work so deep under the sea. Most made it, but a few did not. The humans, as questionable as they were, did sing beautiful songs for their dead, and Hrump and I sang with them.
As the seasons passed, and the day of the Pulse drew near, as most of the world had finally come around to understanding the gravity of the situation, Hrump and I often slipped away from the city of ships to be alone, to enjoy our time together, the freedom of the open seas. After all, should the deflector fail to work, or should Joe and Kevin fail to get the last of the balky government to consent to the aliens’ help, Hrump and I knew that these might be our last days together.
Sometimes Jon and Tayle piggy-backed with us via mind link, exploring the undersea world with us. But mostly Hrump and I ven
tured out alone.
We were alone now, under a full moon, racing through the cold water and leaping high in the air. We did this game often, a chasing game. Usually Hrump chased me, but usually I slowed and let him catch me. I liked when he caught me. We would touch flukes and tails and roll together, twisting through the water, spiraling down, down. And then we would chase each other again, doing this over and over again, the chasing and the catching and the spiraling. We did this until we were exhausted and finally swam idly on the surface, touching flukes, and speaking quietly to each other.
At the moment, Hrump was close behind me and gaining. I drove my tail into the ocean hard, surging froward powerfully. At such moments I felt like I could do anything, and heart sang, and I wanted to sing, too. But I couldn’t sing now. No. Hrump, after all, was closing in fast.
I banked hard to the right, using my right fluke to cut through the water, and Hrump sailed past me wildly and I giggled.
He cursed and looped down, then rocketed up through the water. He was a powerful creature, and he truly did look like one of the human torpedoes. Never had I seen a dolphin move so quickly, and I paused in awe, watching him, my heart swelling with something I was sure was more than awe.
It was love.
He was showing off for me, I was sure of it, as he approached the surface with lightning speed, I surfaced in time to see him shoot out into the night sky, where he arched high, moonlight reflecting off his shiny and scarred back, as water droplets sparkled like so many stars in the night sky. He cleared the surface higher than even the most athletic orcas, and, had I been in Tayle’s body, I would have clapped with her hands. Instead, I slapped the surface of the water with one of my flukes as he landed perfectly, gracefully.
“You are a show off, Hrump,” I said, after he had circled back toward me.
“Maybe,” he said, sliding next to me. “Mostly my heart sings with joy.”
“Joy?” I asked, although I suspected what he might be alluding to. “But we are close to possible destruction.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” he said, nuzzling me slightly with his scarred beak.
“And what’s another way to look at it?” I asked.
“We are close to success.”
Now we were rolling just under the surface, spinning slowly together, his flukes on me. I shivered at his touch.
“I like the way you think, Hrump,” I sang in a soft whisper. “So why does your heart sing for joy?”
“Because I am in love.”
“Love?”
“Yes, Azael,” he said, and nudged me with his beak. “With you.”
Hearing him say those words for the first time, and feeling his tender touch, nearly brought me to tears. “But I am podless. I don’t have much to offer.”
He laughed. “The only thing I want, Azael, is your heart.”I shivered at his touch as we continued rolling, our flukes touching, our beaks nuzzling. We surfaced only long enough to catch our breaths, and then we were below again, together, rolling, my heart singing, the Pulse all but forgotten.
Chapter Thirty
Along the way, almost incidentally, we spied and recruited stray individual dolphins, those without pods for whatever reason. Most were extremely wary of humans, having lost friends or relatives to the dreaded nets, but we begged them to meet with Tayle and Jon, mind to mind, and when they did they started to thaw. When they agreed to swallow the translation packs and become telepathic, they came to appreciate the full nature of the threat, and became willing members of our artificial pod. I was the senior female, and Hrump the senior male, not in age but in association with the Millennia and the project, so we were like pod leaders. Not only did the other dolphins accept that, they did not want to change it.
There was one thing that unified us, apart from the threat to the world: we wanted the killing of dolphins to stop. Tayle and Jon pursued it among the humans, campaigning to outlaw this murder however it occurred: nets, spears, bullets, pollution. That last was the most difficult, because the seas were already contaminated with the wastes of centuries, but none of it was easy.
“I hate to put it this way,” Tayle said, who was growing older and smarter. “But the human special interests don’t do what’s right, they do what entertains them or increases their safety or wealth. They don’t care about dolfins. You need to have something to trade, something the humans really desperately need. Otherwise nothing much will change.”
“We’re helping build the Deflector!” I reminded her.
“Yes, and that helps. But there are a lot of countries, and more factions, and whole slews of ignorant folk that resist any change in anything. More is needed.”
And there it stood. We could not budge ignorance. We were saving the world, but not our species. That rankled.
Then at last the Deflector was ready. That was just as well, because the magnetic bubble was looming close, and we couldn’t let it reach this section of space.
With great fanfare they cranked it up, with humans manning the stations that controlled the individual beams needed to magnetically push away the magnetism of the bubble. They had shown us how one magnet repelled another, if it was of the same type; this was one magnetic beam repelling a magnetic flux. I did not understand the whole of it, even with telepathy, but I accepted its validity.
And it didn’t work.
They tried again. And failed again. Something was wrong.
The Millennia finally figured it out. The beams needed to be very specifically targeted to particular points in the bubble, or they glanced off and passed through harmlessly. The bubble was not just a single formless blob; it was a complex of swirling forces, like whirlpools in tidal shallows. It was a bit like catching a fish: my teeth had to snap cleanly on it, or it slipped out and got away. The human controllers could not see the gyres well enough, or track their seemingly random motions accurately enough, to score on them.
Had all this effort been for nothing?
Tayle visited as I swam alone, delving for fish, and we discussed it mind to mind, as if we were two dolphins. “You know, you dolfins can see and hear in ways we humans don’t,” she said. “I wonder if you could do it?”
“Swim in space with magnetic beams to push the bubble?” I asked. “We can’t even leave the sea to go on land, let alone space.” I nabbed a fish, crunching it quickly so as not to hear its scream.
“I couldn’t catch a fish like that. They dodge so quickly I’d be grabbing at nothing.”
“It’s a matter of tracking them closely, and anticipating where they will go, and getting there when they do. It was hard at first, but I’ve had a lifetime of practice. And my mother was a great teacher.”
“Suppose the gyres of the bubble are like that?”
“Like fish? I wouldn’t want to eat one.”
“But maybe you could catch it, by thinking of it as a fish.”
“Maybe,” I agreed dubiously. “But what’s the point? We don’t want to catch the gyres, we want to drive them away.”
“Yes, but you have to catch them first. To lock on, so that then you can push them away. That’s what we humans aren’t doing.”
We pondered it, and it seemed to make some sense. So we went to Heidi, in Tayle’s body.
“Different reflexes,” Heidi agreed thoughtfully. “Magnetic gyres aren’t fish, so it’s farfetched, but we’re desperate. We should give it a try.”
There was resistance in the human hierarchy, but Heidi enlisted Brad, and Brad enlisted Joe the Millennial, who had finally succeeded in getting the world’s vote, and soon an experiment was in process. They constructed a tank suitable for a dolphin, in the shape of a sphere, with pictures projected on its surface so that it looked transparent, as if the ocean were right there. It also handled sound, so that a song to a distant dolphin seemed to reach it, and the answering song came back realistically. Hrump and I zeroed it in, working in adjacent spheres, enabling them to get the effects just right. When we turned, so did the scene, match
ing our attitude, as they put it. We were able to swim in any sea of the world, including arctic with icebergs. It was fun.
Then they switched it to deep space. Suddenly I was swimming among stars. That was weird, and I quickly got seasick, in my fashion, which was a distinctly new experience. But I tried again in a few hours, and lasted longer, until I was able to handle it. While I was recovering, Hrump tried it, with a similar reaction, and other dolphins. But we all made progress.
Then I sang, and they translated my song into a beam, or at least it controlled a beam. I learned to orient that beam on a swirling likeness of a gyre. The thing eluded me, dodging randomly to the side; I had to chase it down. But soon I learned its nature, and began to outsmart it, anticipating its motions. Before long I could push that gyre anywhere I wanted. So could the other dolphins. We all liked it, and so did Tayle, riding along with me. “It’s like shooting targets from a roller coaster,” she said. “Tricky but fun.”
But this was only simulation. Could we do it for real? The fate of the world might depend on that.
Chapter Thirty-one
Our makeshift pod was growing.
Not to mention, I was showing signs of being with child. Yes, indeed, one way or another, Hrump and I would have our pod. For now, though, we had perhaps the biggest pod I had ever seen. A ragtag collections of young and old dolphins, some wounded and maimed, most alone or having traveled with just two or three others. We all had one thing in common: we had all been decimated by man. Our growing pod had become a beacon for the lost and abandoned.
At the request of Hrump, our group was gathered just outside the city of boats and ships that have now collected here in this Pacific region of the oceans. Dozens, if not hundreds of additional ships had found their way here, most to film what could be the earth’s final days. This had become, as Tayle had put it, a ‘media circus.’ If humans could figure out a way to make money at the end of the world, then what would stop them from making money off the blood of my brother and sister dolphins?