“English will be fine,” Westfall said.
“Just slip the mask over your head,” Corvus said, gesturing.
“But how does it work?” she insisted. “I mean, how can you translate the noises those fish make into meaningful human words?”
Corvus glanced at Archer, then focused again on Mrs. Westfall. “In the first place, ma’am, they’re not fish. They’re mammals, just like you and me. They breathe air. They have brains that are just as complex as our own; a little bigger than ours, actually.”
Archer stepped in. “Over many years we’ve built up a dictionary of dolphin vocalizations and correlated them with human words. It’s been very slow work. The two species live in very different environments.”
“But we’re able to talk back and forth,” Corvus said. “At least, a little bit.” With a little chuckle, he explained, “We don’t discuss philosophy or any abstract subjects. But we can talk about fish, heat and cold, solid objective things.”
Archer added, “This work goes all the way back to when Dr. Wo was running this station, more than twenty years ago. He believed that learning to communicate with the dolphins would help us learn how to communicate with a completely alien species, such as the Jovian leviathans.”
Westfall looked down at the breathing mask she held in her hands. It was still slightly wet, Corvus saw, but he decided not to take it back and wipe it off.
“Do you really believe that you can have a meaningful dialogue with dolphins?” she asked.
“They’re pretty darned smart,” Corvus said. “Of course, we’re dealing with tame ones, dolphins that have been raised in captivity. I’ll bet the wild ones are even smarter. I mean, they’ve got to deal with sharks and all, they have to navigate across whole oceans. Lots more problems for them to handle. And they live in bigger family groups, too.”
Westfall seemed to be trying to digest these new ideas. Corvus thought she looked like a kid facing a plate of spinach.
“You don’t have to try it if you don’t want to,” he said.
That moved her. Without another word Westfall slipped the mask over her tawny hair. Very carefully, Corvus noted. She doesn’t want to mess her ’do.
The mask was loose on her face, but Andy thought that it didn’t matter as long as she wasn’t actually going into the water.
“Now what?” she asked, her voice muffled somewhat by the mask.
Corvus beckoned her to the glassteel wall of the tank, where the fish were swimming by and the dolphins gliding sleekly among them.
“It’ll work best if you press the mask against the tank,” he said to Westfall. “That’ll conduct the sound better.”
Still looking uncertain, Westfall leaned forward until the mask was firmly against the glassteel. Corvus saw one of the adult dolphins swim toward her, curious. Then he caught sight of Baby, a dozen meters or so deeper.
“Say hello to Baby,” he prompted.
“Hello, Baby,” said Westfall.
The young dolphin chattered and Westfall flinched away from the tank.
“He answered me!” she exclaimed.
“She.”
“Yes. She’s a female, isn’t she?” Westfall pressed against the glassteel again and asked, “How old are you, Baby?”
Corvus knew that dolphins didn’t keep time the way humans did. Baby clicked and chattered.
Westfall said, “She asked me if I’ve eaten today.”
“Feeding’s important to them,” Andy said.
“Ask her where her mother is,” Archer suggested.
“Where’s your mother?”
More chattering, and an adult dolphin swam up beside Baby, clicking and whistling.
“That’s her mother,” said Westfall.
Corvus watched happily as Baby and Westfall exchanged a few more words. At last the woman stepped back from the tank and pulled the mask off.
“That was…” She seemed to search for a word. “… fascinating.”
Taking the mask from her hands, Andy said, “We’re trying to enlarge our vocabulary of dolphin speech. I wish we could get back to Earth and start talking to some of them in their natural habitat.”
“We?” Westfall asked.
With a self-deprecating little smile, Corvus said, “I’m just the tip of the iceberg in this. There’s a whole slew of people back at the University of Rome and a half-dozen other research institutions.”
Archer said, “Scripps, Woods Hole, several others.”
Westfall’s expression hardened slightly. “But how do you know you’re really communicating with them? Mightn’t your so-called vocabulary simply be words you’ve placed as definitions of their noises? Mightn’t you be fooling yourselves?”
Shaking his head, Andy countered, “We’ve done some pretty strict tests. Not just gabbing at each other, but asking the dolphins to find specific objects in the water, asking them to perform some acrobatics. It’s a real language and we’re getting the hang of it. It’s pretty slow, I admit, but we’re learning.”
Before Westfall could reply, Archer said, “This work goes back more than twenty years, as I said. Dr. O’Hara was really the pioneer in this area.”
“Elaine O’Hara.” Westfall’s expression suddenly turned glacial.
“Lane O’Hara,” Archer said. “She was a fine, wonderful person. Do you know her?”
“I never had the chance to meet her,” Westfall said, her tone dripping acid.
GRANT ARCHER’S OFFICE
Max Yeager felt nervous.
“I appreciate your coming with me,” he said as he and Dorn headed along the passageway toward Dr. Archer’s office.
The cyborg replied gravely, “I have nothing to do this afternoon. The medics are reviewing the data on the pressure tests they ran on me.”
Yeager had his pocketphone in one hand and every few steps glanced at the colored map it displayed to make sure they were on the right path. They passed a solitary woman in drab coveralls walking in the other direction. Up ahead a pair of men in virtually identical dark blue tunics and slacks were heading in the same direction as they. Yeager guessed that they too were looking for Archer’s office.
The doors along the passageway bore small nameplates next to their keypads. This whole section of the station looked obviously older than the third wheel, worn, almost shabby. A quarter century of hard use, Yeager said to himself. It shows.
“May I ask why you want me to accompany you?”
Yeager was on Dorn’s mechanical side. There was no discernable expression on the etched metal of his face, but the engineer heard the curiosity in his tone.
Feeling more fidgety as they got closer to Archer’s office, Yeager admitted, “I … uh … I get kinda jumpy when a big shot like Archer calls me into a meeting. I’m a lot happier down in the labs, or getting my hands dirty on the hardware.”
“You want moral support,” Dorn said emotionlessly.
Yeager bobbed his head up and down. “Yeah. Something like that.”
Sure enough, the two suits ahead of them stopped at a door and tapped on it for entrance.
As the two of them stepped in, Yeager and Dorn got close enough to see Grant Archer standing inside, welcoming them.
