Exile-and Glory (20 page)

They'd listen to stories about the Outside for a while, then they'd get off onto something else going on at Dansworth. Minerals. Ecological farming, fish, and plants, pollution-free power, talking to dolphins. Hank was working on all of it, trying to keep track of the big picture, but there was so much going on he always had more to do than he had time for.

That's when I really hated Hank Shields. He was enthusiastic about his work. He had a wife and family. He had a job he really believed in. He slept nights, with none of those little doubts that grow and grow in the quiet darkness until you get up and turn on the lights. He had all the things I'd never have, and why should he?

He'd been one of us. He'd quit. We can't quit, but Hank Shields had tried it. Now he sat smugly in his living room, with his lovely wife, and thought about this Paradise he lived in. He thought he was safe.

He'd soon learn different.

For our first day's diving we used only masks and snorkels and fins. The water was clear, and there were fish everywhere. I was surprised to see Pacific barracuda swimming near us, and they made me nervous, but Hank said they wouldn't hurt anyone. They hardly ever did back in the States, of course, and here they were well fed and the vicious ones weeded out.

The dolphins did that. We'd no sooner gone off the platform into the water, Hank and me and Hose-nose, than five dolphins came around. Hank had a little box attached to his belt, and he played a tune on some keys sticking out of it. The dolphins arranged themselves in front of us, and I'd swear they were laughing at us.

"This is Jill," Hank said, pointing to the mother I'd seen the night before. "And the little one's Sarah. Jill, meet Gideon Starr." He also made clicks and wheezes on the box.

"You telling me she understands English?" I asked.

"Quite a lot. So does Jumbo, the big male there," Hank said. The dolphins laughed again. "But none of these can speak English, at least not so that you could understand them. We're teaching Sarah, but she's very young. Actually she doesn't speak dolphin very well either. She's learning both languages together."

Hose-nose was swimming around the big female dolphin, pushing Sarah away from her mother. Jill turned in a tight circle, Sarah following exactly, leaving Hose-nose behind and then coming up face-to-face with the boy. The dolphin chattered loudly.

"Stop it, Albert," Hank said wearily. "You know better." He turned to me. "Kids. He knows that dolphins don't like people messing with their children. Jill won't actually hurt him, and Hose-nose counts on it. Well, Gideon, you ready for a wild ride?"

Hank produced harness things, big rigid rings with trapeze bars hanging behind them. The dolphins stuck their bills into the rings, and we each grabbed a bar. Hose-nose had Jill, and I drew Jumbo, while another male called Fonso towed Hank. We moved through the kelp beds at about five knots, with a kaleidoscope of colors flashing below us. The other two dolphins ranged around us in tight circles, charging toward me and then diving under just as it seemed a collision was inevitable. It took me a while to get used to it, and I saw Hank watching me out of the corner of his eye, while Hose-nose was openly laughing.

I was damned if I'd give them anything to laugh about, but there were a couple of times I held my breath. A six-hundred-pound dolphin is
big,
and when he comes straight at you moving about twenty knots, it's scary.

It was also hard to manage my snorkel at those speeds. We made enough of a wake to swamp the thing quite often, so I was pretty busy keeping my mask clear of water and trying not to inhale too much brine. Eventually Hank made more clicks and wheezes on his box and the dolphins slowed down a bit. I was sure I'd been tested, and wondered if it were standard treatment for visitors. Dudes are fair game anywhere.

I saw how the barracuda-management program worked about an hour out. We were free swimming in kelp beds, the giant fronded stuff that grows off Catalina Island, diving down among the fish and watching sea otters collect the spiny sea-urchins to take them up to the surface and crack them. One of the barracuda got too interested in an otter, and the dolphins converged around it. The barracuda realized its mistake immediately and darted off, doing maybe thirty-five knots, much faster than a dolphin, but one of the dolphins had anticipated that. It had started on a converging course before the barracuda saw him, and snap!

I began to have a healthy respect for dolphin teeth. The barracuda made a nice meal for the five of them, a tidbit apiece, with Sarah getting most of the innards.

Well, people keep dogs, and they have big teeth. Families will trust their babies to the temper of an Alsatian that could take the kid apart in three bites, yet puts up with being sat on and ridden . . . but dogs have been bred for that behavior for thousands of years. The dolphins are only wild animals.

Or are they? They aren't really wild, and is it fair to call anything that smart an animal?

We went out again the next morning. The Shields had a lock system so you could go out from their home, twenty fathoms down; at that depth we were below most of the kelp, although there were some giant fronds growing up from platforms attached to the deep-layer corridors and labs. A couple of sailors brought over equipment for me and got it fitted properly, while Hank and Hose-nose put on their own gear. The kid was enjoying his respite from classes, and Judy Shields was mad because she couldn't come with us. She had to teach the school her son was playing hooky from . . . .

They used helmets with a faceplate that covered the whole face, mouth and all. I'd never used that system before. The advantage was you could talk with it, and I could understand Hank a few feet away, although it was tough; but there was also a plug-in system to connect to the underwater sled, and when we were all attached to that, everything was easy. There was a little garbling, but not much.

The sled was a four-man job with two pairs of seats protected by what I'd have called wind-screens except that of course these were water-screens. It was powered by batteries, and held air tanks so we didn't have to use the backpack air while we traveled around the station. When we got outside and Hank showed me how the system worked, he used the dolphin-talker box to play a tune. Jumbo, Jill, and Sarah showed up.

"We'll only need Jumbo," Hank explained. His voice sounded heavy and a little mushy in my helmet phones. "Jill's off duty anyway, of course, because raising Sarah's a full-time job. The others have work to do."

It took a little while for our eyes to get accustomed to the light down that far, and I was surprised to see just how much filtered through to twenty fathoms. There weren't many reds or yellows, of course; water absorbs that end of the spectrum so that down that deep everything seems to be different shades of blues and greens.

We took the sled out to the edges of the great colored patches of diatoms and plankton that surrounded the upwelling cold water with its nutrients. There weren't any structures out here, and it was officially not part of Dansworth at all, but Hank wanted to show me the color changes. We were up to about sixty feet now, but we'd been down a couple of hours. On the way the dolphins played their game with the sled, darting ahead and then racing back to do a couple of tight turns around us, urging Hank to get up more speed.

Finally I asked Hank about decompression.

"No problem," he said. "Judy'll have the whole apartment pressurized when we get back. We'll go in and let the system take care of gradual decompression—or leave it pressurized if you want to go out tomorrow. That's one of the big advantages at Dansworth, the deep-water boys can get saturated and stay at pressure as long as they want."

"What do you do if you want to get down really deep?" I asked. As we'd cruised through the last of the experimental kelp farms a couple of miles back, I'd seen the winking lights of the mining operations far below, down at the top of the Seamount itself.

"Have to use special gas mixtures," Hank said. "Expensive. Helium's gone out of sight. We use rebreather systems so we won't waste it."

"I want to try that. The editors insist on coverage of the deep mines."

"Better to use the crabs," Hank said. "Little subs. The outside gear takes a lot of training."

"I've been down with Navy gear," I told him. "And out into space for that matter. It can't be all that different."

"It is, though. Well, OK, maybe next week. Can't bring the boy."

Hose-nose mumbled disappointment. He'd seen all this before, although he said he hadn't been this far from the Station itself before, and he wanted to see the mines.

We swam around the edges of color patches. The cold water spreading out to here made distinct layered patches in the warm tropic waters, each layer edging downward away from the upwelling point. There were different critters in each layer, and the layers were separated by twenty or thirty feet of water. The scene was fascinating.

We were about ready to turn back when we heard a shrill whistle and loud scream. I looked around, scared stiff, then decided it was the dolphins playing games on us.

Hank had his box out and played a series of clucks and gobbles on it. One of the dolphins answered. "Quick!" Hank shouted. "Into the sled! Shark!"

Hose-nose moved toward the sled fast. I was confused, not knowing what to do for a second, and stayed with Hank. We swam toward the sled, and then, just beyond it, I saw the thing.

It was a big blue shark, over twenty feet anyway, and it was charging toward little Sarah while Jill tried to stay between the shark and her daughter. I didn't see Jumbo at all.

The shark was beautiful. It raced through the deep water, a blue deadly torpedo, straight toward the baby dolphin. Jill would have had no trouble keeping away from it if she hadn't been worried about Sarah, but now she was right in its path.

Even from forty feet away I could hear the underwater crunch as the shark hit the big dolphin. Jill whirled away, tumbling and twirling, and the shark headed for the baby.

It was like watching a bad movie, all in slow motion it seemed, although nothing was moving slowly at all. We were kicking hard to get to the sled, and the shark took another tight turn and came back at the little dolphin and Hose-nose was screaming something and we couldn't get to the sled in time and even if we could I didn't know what to do—

Jumbo came from nowhere and struck the shark just behind its gills. He had come on at full tilt, seven-hundred pounds of dolphin moving at twenty-five knots, and the impact was terrific.

It didn't seem to affect the shark at all. The deadly blue shape was knocked off course and missed Sarah but that was all. It started another tight turn, while Jumbo whirled with it, trying to get up speed and at the same time keep the shark off the baby.

Sarah was making screaming clicks and kept trying to get to her usual station behind and below her mother, but Jill was tumbling out of control and I was sure she was dead.

We reached the sled and Hank took a long lance with a slender ice-pick tip from a rack along the sides. There were other lances there and I grabbed one and followed.

"Stay with the sled!" Hank shouted. "Button her up!"

"Yeah, do that!" I told Hose-nose. I kept right with Hank. He looked back for just a glance to see I was with him, a twisted look of pain and rage and thanks all at the same time.

We got to the two dolphins and took up positions on each side, lances held out toward the shark. Once we were there, Jumbo streaked off to get up momentum.

The shark didn't like the situation now. I don't know just how conscious these things are, but it had three functional enemies, none as big as it was, but all acting aggressively.

On the other hand, there was a faint trail of blood from Jill and that attracted the shark. I saw that Jill wasn't dead, but she wasn't under control either. The impact had done something to her, knocked her unconscious perhaps.

The shark circled. Jumbo flashed at it, and the shark dodged in a tight turn above us, then when he was past made up its mind and started straight toward me. I kept the lance pointed out at it. It seemed that I had plenty of time, although the whole battle hadn't lasted more than a minute.

The shark was moving fast and I didn't know if I could hit it straight on. Just before it got into range of the lance, Jumbo was there again, wham!, striking the shark at the same place, just aft of the gills, and diverting it. As it passed overhead I rammed the lance deep into its belly.

It was a charged lance, and it should have injected a full bottle of CO
₂
into the shark. I cursed when nothing happened and realized I hadn't pulled the goddam safety pin out. All I'd done was give the shark a tiny puncture wound, nothing that would hurt it at all.

It did the job, though. The shark flinched in surprise and turned slightly. Hank was right there with his lance, and he hadn't forgotten. The needle went in and there was a loud whooshing sound. The shark wriggled for a second, then started floating upward, fast, its insides blown up and compressed and great bubbles of bloody gas coming from its mouth and gill slits. Jumbo came screaming around in another tight circle and rammed it amidships, forcing out more blood, but the monster was dead and headed topside, buoyed up by the gas injected into its innards.

Hank was still shouting. He was under the unconscious dolphin, pushing it upward toward the surface, kicking hard. Jill had neutral buoyancy; she wasn't heavy, but she was very massive, and it was slow work. I swam alongside and kicked upward, pushing at that great heavy body. She felt warm and hard, almost rigid. Sarah kept swimming around us, screaming plaintively. Then Jumbo was there pushing upward as well.

"Get back down!" Hank ordered. "You'll have the bends."

"So will you." I kept shoving upward. It seemed to take forever, but the light was getting brighter.

He didn't say anything else, and after a long time we broke surface. I had managed to keep the pressures equalized and breathe out steadily on the way up, only taking in a few breaths at intervals. It would be a while before we felt anything, I decided. We didn't have any embolism problems. Or if we did, I didn't feel anything. Yet.