The Dolphins of Altair

Chapter 17

“He must have taken the ahln devices in his medical bag,” Sven said. He was speaking partly to us and partly to Madelaine, who was standing beside him on the beach. “The drawing Kendry had Madelaine make is gone too. I noticed that Maddy, how long ago do you think he left?”

“I’m not sure. It seems to me that I spent four or five hours dreaming that I was awake, and then realizing I was still asleep on the couch. What time is it now?”

“A little after eight. I was gone a lot longer than I meant to be. The clerk at the grocery store and I got into a conversation about North Americans.”

“Then—I think he left about six-thirty. It may have been earlier.”

“Um. I don’t think there’s much use trying to catch up with him if he has an hour and a half head start. He’s probably well on his way to his rendezvous with the navy by now. But we might be able to contact his mind and use Udra in the new way to make him come back. We can try it, anyhow.”

“All right. Amtor, you and Djuna will help us, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

Sven and Madelaine sat down on the beach, and after a moment Madelaine put her head in Sven’s lap. Djuna was used to working with Sven, and I with Madelaine; in no time at all we had reached a close enough psychic union with each other to start our search for Dr. Lawrence’s mind.

We couldn’t pick him up at all. The four of us working together should have had considerable “resolving power,” but, as far as finding him went, he might never have existed.

I may say here that Dr. Lawrence had as little psychic endowment as any Split I have ever encountered. He was subnormal. Perhaps this lack in his makeup accounts for the fascination psychic phenomena had for him.

At any rate, we failed. About nine-thirty it became plain there was no use in trying any more. Sven got up, dusting sand from his trouser legs. “That’s that,” he said. “About all we can do now is wait for the navy to attack us.” He put his hands under Madelaine’s armpits and swung her to her feet.

“You think they will attack?” the girl said.

“Yes. Probably within the next few hours. It was odd they let us alone before. Of course, we can separate. You and I can go on down the Mexican coast, or inland, and the dolphins can head for deep water. We don’t have to stay here in Descanso, waiting, like targets in a shooting gallery.”

“I’d rather stay here with the dolphins,” she answered slowly. “I’m tired of running and trying to save myself. Amtor, what do you and the others say?”

I consulted with them briefly, in our high-pitched speech. “We feel the way you do, Sosa,” I said. “We’d rather stay with our Split friends. So many of the sea people have already been killed that it doesn’t seem worthwhile for us to try to save our own lives.”

So the decision was made. If our passivity in the face of coming attack seems strange, it should be considered that we were all in a state of emotional shock. We had overcome so many difficulties, we had succeeded, incredibly, in actually building thermal devices to melt the ice at the earth’s poles, that to be thrown back into a state of helplessness, a position worse than when Madelaine had first come to Noonday Rock, numbed us. If the danger had been immediate, we might have roused ourselves to meet it. But we did not know when the attack would come.

Sven and Moonlight slept on the beach that night, to be near us. When morning came and we were all still safe, an intoxicating light-heartedness took possession of us. Madelaine and Sven spent the day in the water with us, playing with us or riding on our backs; and if every noise in the sky made us start with alarm, the fear was soon gone. When I look back on that time, an interval of forty hours or so, it seems to have a magical quality. It was an enchanted space of happiness in the midst of struggle and distress.

By noon on the second day, Sven had begun to grow thoughtful. “It’s almost two days now since Lawrence went off with the ahln things,” he said, wiping his fingers on a paper napkin (he and Madelaine were eating a picnic lunch on the beach, about a mile from the cottage). “Nothing has happened. It looks as if he hadn’t gone to the navy with his prize, after all.”

“Yes. I can’t explain their leaving us in peace otherwise.”

“If he hasn’t gone to the navy, he must be holed up somewhere, trying to decide what to do.” (This was partly correct.) “He might even be considering coming back to us.”

“Not that,” Madelaine said dryly.

“I suppose not,” Sven said laughing. “But if he hasn’t gone to them yet, it might be possible for us to find him and make him give what he stole back to us.”

“Find him?” Madelaine repeated. “We’re not detectives. And I don’t suppose he wants to be found. There are so many places where he could have gone!”

“Well, if the navy didn’t pick him up, say with a plane or a sub, he must have got out of Descanso somehow. Let’s go check at the bus station.”

“That’s a good idea,” Madelaine answered. She was packing the remains of the lunch back in the box. “The dolphins can take us back to the cottage, and we can walk into town from there.”

Sven did not speak much Spanish, and the clerk at the ticket window did not speak much English. Nevertheless, after ten minutes or so, the clerk assured Sven positively that no such “North American gentlemen” had taken the bus out of Descanso in the last two days. He hadn’t, he said, had any North American passengers at all.

“No dice,” Sven reported to Madelaine, who was standing beside the pinball machine. “Let’s try the taxi company.”

Here they had better luck. The manager, an elderly man with gallant manners, said he had himself driven just such a gentleman as Sven described over the border and up to San Diego two nights before. The gentleman had been carrying a black medical bag.

“Do you know where he went after you left him in San Diego?” Sven asked.

“No, señor. He said nothing about his plans. I let him out downtown.”

“So we know he’s back in the United States,” Sven said as they walked along the rutted road in the direction of the cottage. “That’s something.”

“It’s a large area,” Madelaine answered. “He could be anywhere in it.”

A plane passed overhead and Sven, who was holding her hand, felt her fingers tremble within his. He glanced at her quickly, but she was smiling. “We were talking about Lawrence, Sven,” she said.

“Yes. Well, actually, his range of action is pretty limited. For one thing, he hasn’t much money, and for another, he’ll want to be near his contacts in the navy, the people he already knows. He’s probably somewhere along the California coast.”

Before she could answer, the postman turned out of the yard of the beach cottage and spoke to them. “Buenas diass señor, señorita. Postal card for you. In box.”

The card was a picture postcard, with a view of the Gate Bridge, and in the message space “Take care of yourselves,” had been neatly printed. The message was signed “E.L.”

“‘Take care of yourselves’,” Madelaine repeated slowly. “I wonder what he means by that.”

“It’s not what he means that’s important,” Sven said. “Look at the postmark, Maddy. The card was mailed from San Francisco.”

“You think that’s where he’s gone?”

“Yes. He’s probably staying in some cheap hotel there.”

“There are a lot of cheap hotels just in San Francisco,” the girl said thoughtfully. “And he may not have gone there. He might be in Oakland, or Emeryville, or even someplace down the peninsula.”

“I know. But we’ve got to try to find him. Perhaps he wants us to find him. There’s really no reason why he should have sent the card otherwise.”

She sighed heavily. “Oh, you’re right. But I hate being separated from you again. I couldn’t go with you, could I?”

He was counting the money in his wallet. “Two hundred and thirty bucks. I stole the doctor’s wallet when I knocked him out. He was carrying a lot of the stuff. And I got his credit cards.—Come with me? It would cost twice as much, and you couldn’t really help.”

He handed her five twenty-dollar bills. “The rent on the cottage is paid for a week. I’ll write or telegraph as soon as I find anything, or even if I don’t.”

While he was packing a few things in a cloth bag, she came down to the beach to tell us what they had decided to do.

“We don’t much like it, Maddy,” I said when she had finished.

“Neither do I, but I think he’s right. We might be able to get back what Lawrence stole.”

“I could take Sven on my back,” Djuna said. “Pettrus could go along to spell me. I could take him on my back.”

“It’s quicker this way,” Moonlight answered. “Sven will fly up from San Diego. Be patient, darlings. It’s only for a little while.”

We were silent. We knew that we would probably be able to keep in mental contact with Sven, and that reassured us. Sven called. “Good—bye, friends!” from the porch of the cottage and waved his hand to us. Then he and Madelaine set out at a fast walk for town again.

The bus station was crowded now; Sven had to stand in line for his ticket to San Diego. While she was waiting, Madelaine went to the newstand and bought a San Francisco paper. What she saw in the news summary on page one made her turn quickly to page two.

Her mouth came open. She ran to where Sven was standing, and thrust the paper at him. “Look, Sven, look!”

“Quake ‘Guilt’ Drives Navy Psychiatrist to Death Jump,” read the headline. “Claiming responsibility for the disastrous March earthquake and predicting worldwide catastrophe to come, Dr. Edward Lawrence, a former navy psychiatrist, committed suicide today by jumping from the window ledge of a Market Street hotel. Dr. Lawrence apparently stayed on the ledge outside his fifth-floor room until he attracted a crowd. To those who attempted to dissuade him from his death jump he insisted that he had been ‘solely responsible’ for the earthquake that shook the California coast last March, and that ‘millions would die’ in a coming catastrophe. When he was asked if he considered himself responsible for the predicted disaster, he answered, ‘I certainly do.’

“Police cleared the street below the ledge, and the fire department spread safety nets, while two psychiatrists and a minister attempted to persuade Dr. Lawrence to reenter his rooms. All persuasion failed, and Dr. Lawrence jumped from the ledge at 3:20 P.M. HE MISSED THE SAFETY NETS AND WAS INSTANTLY KILLED.

“Dr. Lawrence, a graduate of the Stanford University Medical School, was formerly employed…”

Sven’s eyes met Madelaine’s. She was deathly pale. “He’s done it,” she said. “Sven, Sven! How long will it take for the ahln devices to get to the poles?”