The Dolphins of Altair

Chapter 20

The old man held up the lamp and peered at them doubtfully. The scattering of white hairs on his scalp glistened in the light. “You’re refugees?” he asked.

“Yes,” Sven answered. “All we want is to get in out of the rain for a while and a place to cook. Here.” He produced the salmon Djuna had caught—it was still fresh enough to be desirable—and showed it to the old man. “We’d be glad to share with you. I can’t get a fire started outside. Everything’s so wet.”

The old man did not move away from the door. “I don’t need your food,” he said. “I’ve got a whole freezer full of stuff that’s spoiling since the power went off. I’m sorry, but I can’t take you in. You’ll have to be on your way.”

Madelaine stepped forward, so that the light of the lamp fell on her face. “Are you afraid of us?” she asked directly.

“Afraid?”

“Yes. You might be. You don’t know anything about us, or what we might do.”

The old man laughed. “I’m still strong enough to take care of myself,” he said. “I’m not afraid of you as people. But I heard on the radio that diseases are breaking out. They’re giving everybody in the refugee camps shots.”

“We haven’t been near anybody since before the flood started,” Madelaine said. “We were at sea all during it. That’s how we got the fish. But we did have to swim through water where bodies were floating. That was when we were coming ashore.”

“At sea? I guess that’s why none of the ’copters or planes picked you up. They’ve been trying to evacuate people. My neighbors wanted me to leave, but I told them I’d stay. I’ve been growing fruit on this land all my life. Well, I don’t suppose you’d have caught anything just from swimming through water where th ere were bodies.” The old man seemed to be weakening.

“I could cook,” Madelaine said. “I could get a nice meal for the three of us from the things you have in the freezer.”

The old man looked at th em a little longer. They could hear his shallow breathing. “All right,” he said at last. “You’ll have to cook on a wood stove, since the power is off. And you’re to go away after you eat, do you understand? I don’t want you staying here.”

“All right.”

Once Sven and Madelaine were over the threshold, they realized how wet they were. Puddles formed around them on the floor immediately. The fruit grower brought them towels, and they dried themselves as well as they could. Madelaine squeezed most of the water from her hair, and Sven took off his shirt and jacket, wrung them out in the sink, and hung them to dry on the back of a chair. The girl and the young man were both still wet enough to leave splotches on the linoleum floor when they walked.

Tired as she was, Madelaine found she was glad to be cooking again. Sven gutted the fish and cut it up for her, and she found fat in a cupboard. Since the food in the freezer, as their host had said, was on the edge of spoiling, she saw no reason to be economical with it. They sat down to a meal of fried salmon, six vegetables, and biscuits baked, scone fashion, on top of the wood stove.

“Maddy,” Sven said after they had eaten enough to take the first sharp edge off their hunger, “Mr. Fletcher was telling me he saw the flood sweep over New York.”

“Yes,” said the old man. He was growing more expansive. “I saw it on television. The waves were fifty feet high, coming up from the harbor, and they were full of bodies and pieces of wrecks. Nobody on the East Coast believed the warning, you see, and so nobody got out ahead of time.”

“There was a warning?” Sven asked.

“Yes, so I heard. The Secretary of Welfare went on the air and told everybody to get out of lowlying areas. But in the middle of a sentence he was cut off, and the announcer said a mistake had been made. It would have been better if people had believed him. I’ve heard that two-thirds of the people who lived in New York City are believed to be dead.”

“I don’t understand why so many died,” Sven said thoughtfully. “Even if the water was fifty feet deep in the streets, weren’t people safe in the upper stories of buildings? For a while, I mean.”

“I guess they would have been. But all the power was off, and none of the elevators was working. People clustered just above the water, on cornices and looking out of windows. When the earthquake came-“

“Earthquake?” Madelaine said. “In New York?”

“Yes. There’ve been earthquakes all over the world, not to mention cyclones and hurricanes. But as I was saying, when the earthquake came, the tall buildings shook like—like straws. Like the tines on a tuning fork. People began to fall out of the buildings. I saw them falling like ‘cots off the trees in a high wind. Then the picture went off. Now the only news I can get is fifteen minutes a day, just at noon, over my battery-powered radio.

“New York City is still under fifty feet of water. I guess it always will be. Mauna Loa, in Hawaii, is in eruption, and the whole state of Florida is submerged. So is a lot of Texas, and all the California coast. It’s like the end of the world.”

“It’s the end of something, certainly,” Sven said. “What about foreign countries? The United States wasn’t the only one to suffer, was it?”

“No, of course not. Well, they said the Netherlands was completely under—worse than Florida—and all the south part of England up to Scotland. Denmark is flooded, and parts of Germany and France—parts of Italy—Scandinavia—I don’t know what a ll. Southern India—the Chinese coast—most of Japan. They’ve had hurricanes everywhere, and terrible windstorms as well as the flood.

“It’s the biggest disaster in human history. It’s so big it’s paralyzed people. The survivors don’t know where to begin. There’s no power, no gasoline, no safe water. There isn’t even any way to bury the dead.”

“What caused the floods in the first place, do you know?” Sven asked.

“They said the ice at the North Pole melted, almost overnight. But what caused that—my own idea is that a bunch of H-bombs got lost, maybe on one of these atomic subs under the ice, and started melting it. No country would admit to having caused all this.”

“No, I suppose not,” Sven said. He looked at Madelaine, who, fed and warm for the first time in days, was dozing in her chair. “Come on, Maddy,” he said, starting to rise. “We’ll wash the dishes. And then we’ll be on our way, as Mr. Fletcher says.”

Drowsy but obedient, Madelaine struggled to get to her feet. Fletcher frowned. “Wait,” he said, though not very graciously. “You and your girl can stay here tonight. She can have my bed, and you can sleep on the floor. I’ll sleep in my chair. But you must leave tomorrow. I insist on it.”

Sven nodded. He. half-carried Madelaine into the tiny bedroom, and covered her up in the bed. Then he lay down on the floor with a blanket, near the stove, and was immediately asleep.

Once or twice during the night his eyes were jerked open by the raw brilliance of lightning; the flashes were very close, and the deafening roar of thunder was only a second behind the flash. But even a thunderstorm could not keep him awake for long. With his arm over his eyes, he plunged back into sleep.

Toward morning the storm retreated. Sven thought that once Fletcher rose from his chair and went to look out of the window. Then it was really daylight. The smell of coffee was in the air. Sven yawned and sat up. “Good morning,” he said to the old man.

“Good morning. I’ve made coffee. Your girl’s still asleep. There was a plane wreck during the night. Come and see.”

He led Sven over to the window and pointed. Seemingly four or five miles off, a column of heavy black smoke was still rising in the air. “I think it must have been caught in the storm,” Fletcher said. “I heard it going over, and went to the window to look. It was already on fire, burning all over, when it hit the ground.”

Sven nodded. There was obviously nothing to be done for the people in the plane, and hadn’t been before Fletcher had seen it crash.

Madelaine came out of the bedroom. She said, “Good morning,” washed her face at the sink, and then baked more biscuits on top of the stove.

“Good-bye, sir,” Sven said when they had eaten and washed the dishes. “Which way is it to the refugee camp?”

“It’s about fifteen miles from here, at a town called O’Brien. If you cut across the hills, toward the plane wreck, you can save yourself a good deal of walking. You should pick up the road about a quarter of a mile beyond the plane. Go northeast.”

He went with them to the door of the cabin. “Some of the biscuits your girl cooked,” he said, handing them a parcel. “And I put in a box of matches, in a plastic bag. You might want to make a fire.”

“Thank you,” Sven said. And then, on impulse, “Wouldn’t you like to come with us? If there’s another flood—”

The old man laughed. “I’ll take the chance. It would have to be considerably worse than the first one to bother me on such high ground. No, I’ll stay here.”

This was true, and Sven did not press him. “Good-bye, sir.”

“Good-bye. Good luck.”

As they walked along over the hills, orienting themselves by the smoke of the wrecked plane, Madelaine said, “Sven, do you notice a certain lack of—of buoyancy?”

“I’m still tired, if that’s what you mean,” he answered. “A night of sleeping on the floor isn’t very restful.”

“No, I don’t mean that. But when we were with the dolphins, I felt—more than myself. Lighter. There was a sort of inner buoyancy.”

“Um. Yes, I think I know what you mean. I miss them surprisingly. I feel as if I’d lost part of myself.”

“Yes. And then, while we were with them, anything could happen. We moved in a world of wonders. We talked to dolphins, trigger ed earthquakes, and communicated with distant stars. Now we’re back in the ordinary world, the world where, if remarkable things happen, they are usually unfortunate.”

Sven laughed. “But Maddy, I’ve been thinking, we’ve accomplished what we set out to do. The radioactivity of the world’s oceans is greatly diluted, and the sea people ought to be safe for, oh, the next fifty years. It ought to take that long, at least, for people to get back to where they were before the floods. They’ll be too busy for a long time to bother the dolphins, and if they become dangerous again, the sea people can use Udra in the new way to defend themselves.”

“The only danger now would be if somebody connected the dolphins with the melting of the ice,” Madelaine said thoughtfully. “If Splits get the idea the dolphins are responsible, they’ll start to hunt them down as soon as the worst part of the floods is over.”

“Why should anybody suspect a connection?” Sven asked. He slapped at a hovering insect. “Damn, that was a mosquito. There never used to be mosquitos here.”

“It’s warmer than it used to be, I think.”

“Yes. But as I was saying, nobody will connect them with the floods. Lawrence is dead, and you heard what Fletcher said. He thinks the ice cap was melted by some sort of atomic foul-up. It’s what most people will think. There’s nothing to worry about. The sea people are safe for the next fifty years.”

They passed the wreckage of the plane. It was still burning fiercely, and the air was full of ugly smells. Beyond it, their way led downhill. They could see the two-lane highway ahead.

They had almost reached the road when they heard the sound of a ’copter in the sky. They both looked up. The pilot leaned out and waved at them.

He came lower. “Hi!” he yelled through a megaphone. “Are you refugees?”

“Yes!” Sven shouted back through cupped hands.

“Good! I’ll come down for you.”

He set the ’copter down beside the road. “Get in,” he told them. “I was making a last search of the hills, to be sure we hadn’t missed anybody. I’ll take you to the camp.”

The ’copter had had the letters “U.S.N.” on the underside; Sven looked at the pilot thoughtfully. But he was sure he had never seen him before, and Madelaine, from her silence, didn’t know him either. (Dr. Lawrence would have recognized him, I think, but Lawrence was dead.) Sven and Madelaine got in. The ’copter rose up and then began to fly above the road. “How come I missed you before?” the pilot asked. “I thought I had everybody.”

“We were at sea in a small boat during the flood,” Sven replied. “We didn’t know anything was wrong until we tried to land.”

“At sea? You must have been through some terrible weather. It’s a wonder you’re alive. By the way, what did you say your names were?”

There seemed to be no reason for concealment. “My name is Erickson,” Sven answered, “and she’s Madelaine Paxton. It’s good of you to take us in. It would have been a long walk.”

“Think nothing of it,” the pilot answered. His tone was remote and preoccupied. After a moment the ’copter, which had been following the road, changed course and began to fly due east.

“Where are we going?” Sven asked after a moment. He was not so much suspicious as merely inquiring. “I heard the camp was at O’Brien.”

“That one’s—full,” the pilot said. “I’m taking you to another one.” He sent the ’copter higher. The speed increased.

Sven felt a thrill of alarm. He glanced at Madelaine and saw that her eyes had narrowed and her lips were tight. Still, he wanted to be sure. “What’s the name of this other camp?” he asked.

“Uhn, it’s at Agness.”

At Agness? But Agness, if Sven remembered his Oregon geography, was almost straight north. Why should the ’copter be flying east?

Madelaine nudged him. Carefully, turning her head slowly so the pilot would not notice the movement, she put her lips against Sven’s ear. “We must make him land the plane,” she breathed.

Sven gave a tiny nod. They would have to use Udra, new style, to get motor control of the pilot, and it wasn’t going to be easy. One of the drawbacks of Udra has always been that it is difficult to get into the Udra-state when one is excited or upset. But it had to be done. He and Maddy couldn’t risk having the pilot take them to some unknown destination, to be confronted with unknown inquisitors.

Madelaine’s mind was already reaching out to him. They could help each other get into Udra. The first thing to do was be calm and open his mind to hers.

This time, rather oddly, their minds merged before either of them was well into the Udra-state. It was a shock to both of them, I think, because always before in their closer psychic contacts with each other, a dolphin intelligence had been present. The dolphin mind, with all its strangeness, had acted as a mediator. But this immediate Split-to-Split contact had the advantage that there were no depths in each other that frightened them. It made possible a closer unity.

The pilot coughed. “Why are you so quiet back there?” he asked, half turning round.

Sven couldn’t have answered if his life had depended on it. His mind was bent on one thing only, focused on a single point: getting the pilot’s motor activity under his and Madelaine’s control.

“What—” the pilot said, and stopped. A look of amazement spread over his face as he found himself unable to spe ak. Madelaine and Sven had taken command of his conscious bodily acts.

So far, so good. The next thing was to get him to land the ’copter. Neither Sven nor the girl knew, of course, what motions the pilot should make to land; but he did. The command went out.

Slowly and reluctantly the pilot’s hands moved on the controls. The ’copter began to descend.

It was not a good landing, but it was a landing. The pilot shut the motor off. He sat motionless for an instant. Then, stiffly, he rose from his seat and jumped to the ground.

It was hard for the two to keep control of the pilot and yet be able to move freely themselves. To engage in bodily activity while one is in the Udra-state is self-contradictory. So it took Sven and Madelaine almost ten minutes to get out of the ’copter and walk to where the pilot stood.

The pilot’s hands kept twitching. Sven did not dare to relax his psychic grip on him. But there was a gun in the holster on the pilot’s hip. Slowly, with many hesitations and much watchfulness, Sven drew the gun from its place and covered the pilot with it.

“All right,” he said. “Put up your hands.”

The man’s arms went up. “What are you—” he said.

“Shut up,” Sven told him. “Now, Maddy, search him. Find his papers and look at them. I want to know who he is. Be careful, don’t put yourself in the way of the gun.”

The girl obeyed. In the breast pocket of the pilot’s whipcord jacket she found a wallet, a notebook, a pen, and a flat leather folder.

“His name is Nicholl Trott,” she said, looking in the wallet. “He’s thirty-four years old, and he lives in San Francisco. It’s an interstate driver’s license.”

“Look in the leather folder,” Sven said, still covering the pilot with the gun.

“Oh. These are his credentials, Sven. They identify him as a naval intelligence agent.”

“So that’s it,” Sven said. “No wonder he recognized our names.”

The pilot found his tongue. “Why do you assume I’m hostile to you?” he asked. “Yes, I recognized your names. Yes, I was taking you to Agness. But—”

“But what?” Sven asked.

“You wouldn’t have been hurt. Or your dolphin friends, for that matter.” Trott’s hands were still raised. “I’m one of the Splits, as you call them, who remember what you talked about so much when they had you under the influence of the truth serum.”

“What do you know about that?” Sven asked. “You weren’t there when they were questioning me.”

“No, but I’ve studied the case. Don’t you see, Erickson? I’m sympathetic to you. I—remember the covenant.”

It is painful to feel one’s self always surrounded by enemies. Even Splits, with their chronic hostility toward each other, find hostility ultimately painful. Trott’s story was not absolutely unbelievable; but Sven tended to believe him because he wanted to believe.

“I helped you get away,” Trott went on. “Why do you think there weren’t any guards where the dolphin was waiting for you?”

“But if—”

“Watch out!” Madelaine yelled. “He’s got another gun!”

It was too late. The gun from the shoulder holster, small but wicked, was trained on Madelaine.

“It’s a stand-off,” Trott said with grinning satisfaction, “If you shoot me, she goes, too. I won’t hesitate. Drop your gun.”

Slowly and reluctantly, Sven obeyed. The chance that Trott meant what he said was too great to risk Madelaine’s life on it.

“Now,” said Trott, “get back in the ’copter. No, wait. I’m not going to have you repeat what you did to me before, whatever it was. I’d better tie you up and knock you out.”

Trott backed toward the ’copter, still keeping the gun on Madelaine. She was standing quite still, her hands, with Trott’s wallet in them, clasped in front of her, but her lips were moving. “Help me, Amtor! Djuna, help me!” she said under her breath. It must have been about this time that Djuna and I, swimming with our frien ds in the now cool South Pacific, had the sensation of being desperately drawn upon.

Still keeping the gun on Madelaine, Trott groped behind him on the floor of the ’copter and came out with a length of rope. He seemed uncertain what to do. Then his face cleared. He tossed the rope along the grass to Madelaine.

“Tie him up,” he ordered. “Make good knots—I’ll be watching. Don’t try anything. I’ve no real objection to killing both of you. I consider you traitors to the human race.”

Slowly Madelaine bent to pick up the rope. Her mind was clamoring to us. “Hurry up,” Trott said impatiently. “Can’t you move faster than that? You, Erickson, turn your back and put your hands behind you. Yes. Now, Paxton, tie his hands together.”

Reluctantly, Madelaine did as she was told. As the knots were made, Trott seemed to relax. “You know, this is going to change a lot of people’s minds,” he said conversationally. “After that fink Lawrence killed himself, everybody thought I was a nut and that we’d killed a lot of dolphins for nothing. The most they’d admit was that some human beings had been riding around with dolphins, and they thought the sub had killed the people, and the dolphins with them, before it sank.

“Even the floods didn’t convince them. They said it was just coincidence that Lawrence had predicted trouble before he died. Yes, they thought I was a sort of nut to blame a bunch of fish for the floods. A nut! I was the one sane man.”

Sven’s hands were tied. Trott had Madelaine bring the ends of the rope around his ankles and tie them, too. “And now,” he said, “I guess the best thing would be to shoot you and Erickson in the shoulder. That ought to keep you from any more tricks.”

He raised the gun to sight accurately. The gun moved to eye level, and then on up. “What—” he said, and then was silent. An amazed and exasperated look came over his face. The struggle for control of his nervous system had begun.

Madelaine turned to face him, dropping the ends of the rope. The gun moved toward Trott’s head inch by inch, in a series of jerks. His mouth was open, and he was breathing hard.

The muzzle of the gun came to rest against his right temple. Trott’s eyes were wild. Twice his finger jerked on the trigger, and he managed to pull it away. Madelaine had her doubts about what the four of us were trying to make him do, and this helped him to resist for a while. But the third time his finger drew the trigger all the way back. The bullet went into his head.

He stood upright for a moment, swaying on his feet, and th en fell forward. He was dead, I think, before he hit the ground.

The girl put her hands over her face. Sven hopped around so he faced her. “Don’t fold up,” he said. “There isn’t time. Help me get untied.”

Together they loosed the knots. It was raining again, with thunder not too far off. “We’ve got to do something with the body,” Sven said.

“Have we?” Madelaine answered. Her tone was calm, but she was panting for breath. “The gun’s in his hand, and there must be powder stains on his hand and his head. For all anybody could tell, he committed suicide.”

Sven considered. “Why would he suddenly bring the ’copter down and kill himself?”

“Why do people kill themselves? There’s not going to be an inquest at a time like this.”

There was a silence. The rain had stopped momentarily, and lightning leaped in the sky. At last Sven said, “We don’t dare risk it. It might just make somebody suspicious. Help me put his body back in the ’copter, Maddy—I’m going to set it on fire.”

“You mean, they’ll think the ’copter had engine trouble and caught fire?”

“Or was struck by lightning, like the bigger plane. We’ll be destroying the evidence.”

Sven put the guns Trott had carried back in their holsters, and they dragged the body over to the ’copter and put it in the pilot’s seat. Sven found the gas tank, uncapped it, and got out the matches Fletcher had given him. He split a stick, stuck a match in the cleft, and lit it. Then at arm’s length, standing as far back as he could get, he poked the stick at the gas tank.

It caught. There was a low roar. Sven had run back the instant he knew the gas had caught. He grabbed Madelaine by the wrist and pulled her back with him.

From a safe distance, they watched the tank explode. The ’copter was burning furiously. Through the haze of smoke, they saw its metal frame buckle and warp.

“That’s that,” Sven said at last. “Even if they tried to do an autopsy on him, there wouldn’t be anything left to inspect We’re safe.”

“Are we? Sven! There’s blood on my skirt, from where we carried him.”

“The rain will wash it away. But Maddy, you don’t seem to realize, the sea people are safe, too. The only man who suspected that they might have any connection with the floods is gone. They’re really safe now. Aren’t you glad?”

She drew a long breath. “Yes, I’m glad. And now, let’s get started on our way to the refuge camp.”

They were accepted at O’Brien without question. They gave false names, but it probably wasn’t necessary. Madelaine, who was a good typist, was put to work in the office immediately, and Sven became a mechanic in the camp garage.

Life at the camp was chiefly remarkable for the poor quality of the food, and the very high death rate. Everyone who came in was given shots by the harried doctors; but diseases were epidemic for which no shots had ever been devised. Disposing of the bodies of the dead was a more serious problem than getting food for those who remained alive.

And yet, O’Brien was one of the more successful camps. On the East Coast there were camps in which, week after week, two-thirds of the current refugee population died. This was partly because the eastern camps were more crowded, but also because several strains of viruses from the biological-warfare people got loose. Microorganisms do not distinguish between friend and foe.

(I may say here that Split demographers think that, of the one and a half or two billion Splits who died as a result of the floods, at least sixty percent died of hunger, exposure or disease. Simple drowning played a lesser part in the toll. Some demographers have called the floods a blessing in. disguise, since they brought the world population down to a point where it was more compatible with world resources. Myself, I find it difficult to think of anything that kills so many as a blessing, though it certainly has been one for us people of the sea.) Sven and Madelaine had been at O’Brien only a few hours when news came that new floods were sweeping up from the south. This meant that new areas were inundated, more people were drowned, and new epidemics and earthquakes occurred. For the people in the camp, it was more of the same thing. The increase in the scale of the catastrophe had not changed its quality.

Sven and Madelaine were kept too busy to see much of each other. They were not precisely unhappy, despite the distress around them, and they managed to keep in good health while so many others, older and younger, died. When they could, they sat beside each other in the dining hall. They both say they dreamed of us sea people almost every night.

The camp came under U.N. auspices (there were at that time two men who claimed to be president of the United States, one with army support, the other favored by the air force), and conditions improved somewhat.

Time passed. One night, about six weeks after she and Sven had arrived at the camp, Madelaine woke on her sagging cot with a message ringing in her ears. She got up and dressed quietly, not wanting to wake the other women in the tent. Moonlight coming through the canvas walls made objects within palely visible. When she got to the muddy walk that marked the division between the men’s and women’s quarters, she found Sven waiting for her.

“They want us,” she said. “Yes. Which way do we go? You’re better at things like that than I am, Madelaine.”

“Straight over the hills and toward the coast. I know exactly where they are.”

They began to walk. As soon as they were out of the camp, which was kept constantly sprayed with insecticide, mosquitoes began to buzz around them. Frog voices boomed and croaked on every side. The flooding moonlight made the grassy hills look flat. But the man and the girl climbed and descended, descended and climbed. It was not until they were going through a long level valley that Madelaine had breath enough to say, “I’ve been thinking about Dr. Lawrence lately. I’ve been wondering if he was right.”

“Right? What about?”

“He used to say that I was too high-minded to do what had to be done, and that he always had to take the onus of necessary action on himself.”

“Well?”

“Did I—when he dispatched the ahln devices to the poles, wasn’t he, after all, doing what I really wanted him to do? Doing what you and I both wanted him to do?”

“I don’t think it matters,” Sven said. “You might have wanted it to happen—in a way, we both wanted it to happen. But we’d never have acted on our wishes. One doesn’t have to take guilt for wishes one would never carry out.”

The moon had set. The sun was beginning to come up in the east when they got to the ocean. And there, waiting for them as close as we could get, were the four of us.

“I’ve missed you so!” Sosa said when the first joy of reunion was over. “Tell me, what’s been happening with you? How has the flood affected the sea people?”

“Some of us have been sick,” I told her. “The water’s so much less salty most places than it used to be that we get infections. I think a good many sea people have died.

“But we have lots more water to swim in. And if it’s less salty, it’s also less radioactive. We’re sure of being able to survive. We’re much better off than we used to be, Moonlight.”

“What’s the world like now?” Sven asked curiously. “I mean, the seas of the world. We don’t get much news at the camp.”

“The water’s about a hundred feet deeper everywhere than it used to be,” I said. “There’s a lot less land than there used to be. There are places where we can swim in for fifty miles beyond the old coastline. I think there will be more changes in the shape of the land masses. There are more earthquakes coming, for one thing.”

Moonlight sighed. Then she said, “Could you take us for one last ride on your backs?”

“Of course. I was going to suggest it.”

She got on my back, and Sven on Djuna’s. We did not take them far. The air was too heavy with the sorrow of parting for any of us to enjoy it very much.

“We’d better be getting back to the camp,” Sven said when they were standing on the shore again.

“Yes,” Madelaine agreed sadly. “Good-bye Amtor and Djuna, good-bye, Ivry and Pettrus. Oh, I’ll, miss you so! Will we see each other again?”

“Of course, dear Sosa. Don’t doubt it. The days will come when you will be with us again.”

We began to swim away. The two Splits stood watching us, Sven’s arm around the girl’s waist. As we moved through the water, I heard him say to her, “There they go, Maddy. The new lords of the earth. The gentle new lords of the earth.”

But I knew then, and I know now, that there is a task yet unaccomplished. The final fusion of the human and dolphin natures is yet to come. Then we sea people will walk on land, and you Splits will be free of the sweet depths of the ocean. The covenant looks forward. The best is yet to come.”