him in her enormous hands and began to tear him apart.
The only touch of gratification in Grant’s life was the dolphins. Sleekly streamlined, they glided effortlessly through the big aquarium tanks, permanent grins on their faces, clicking and squeaking to one another like a group of chattering schoolkids.
There were six of them, plus a nursing pup that grew noticeably larger every day. They seemed to watch Grant as he stood outside their tanks and looked at them. He thought he could see their eyes focus on him. Grant would wave to them and get a burst of clicking from them.
“They’re saying hello to you.”
Startled, Grant whirled around to see Lane O’Hara standing a few paces away. Her turtleneck shirt was a warm sunshine yellow, a good complement to her light-brown hair.
“Wave to them again,” she said.
Grant did, and got another burst of chatter from the dolphins.
“Did you hear? The same response, don’t you know.”
“All I heard was a bunch of clicks,” Grant said.
“Aye, but it was the
“I know they seem to communicate with each other.”
“And we’re trying to communicate with them.”
Grant said, “I’ve read about attempts to speak with dolphins. They go back more than a hundred years.”
“They do,” she said.
“With no success,” Grant added.
“No success, d’you say? Are you certain about that?”
Thrown on the defensive, Grant replied, “I haven’t heard of any.”
“Well, then, listen to this.” Lane walked to a phone built into a metal partition between transparent glassteel sections of the tanks.
With a knowing look toward Grant, she pressed the phone’s ON button and said into its speaker, “Top o’ the morning, Lancelot. And to you, Guinevere.”
Two of the dolphins swam toward O’Hara, bobbing up and down in the water as they emitted a series of rapid clicks and a squealing whistle.
“And how is little Galahad this morning?”
More chatter from the dolphins. The pup came up toward the window, followed by another adult. Grant stood and watched, trying to suppress a growing feeling of annoyance. Either she’s joking with me or she’s fooling herself, he thought.
O’Hara said, “I’ve got to be going now. And it’ll be your feeding time in a few minutes. I’ll be seeing you all again later.”
She jabbed the phone’s off key and turned away from the window. The dolphins chatted for a few moments, then swam away.
O’Hara was smiling impishly, as if she’d won a major debate. “You see?” she said.
Grant tried to be noncommittal. “Well, you spoke and they chattered, but I don’t think you can call that communication. ”
“Can’t you now? Then come with me to the lab.”
She started off down the corridor. There was barely room for the two of them to walk side by side in the narrow corridor of the aquarium. As Grant followed her, he noticed that she was limping slightly.
“Did you hurt your leg?” he asked, coming up beside her.
“Hurt it, yes,” O’Hara replied. “You might say that.”
“How?” he asked. “When?”
“It’s not important.”
That shut off the conversation. Grant trudged along beside her, noticing that she was still wearing the studded black leggings that Muzorawa and a few others always seemed to wear. He wanted to ask about it, but O’Hara’s abrupt cutoff of his questions kept him from speaking.
They ducked through the hatch at the end of the aquarium section and went down the broader main corridor of the station, right past all the biology labs. Grant began to wonder where she was leading him when she stopped and slid open a door marked COMMUNICATIONS LAB AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Grant followed her into a compartment that looked like the back room of an electronics shop. Computers lined the walls, most of them blank and unattended, but a few technicians were sitting at desks, earphones clamped over their heads and pin microphones almost touching their lips.
O’Hara directed Grant to an unoccupied computer and told him to sit down and boot it up. Once he’d done that, she leaned over his shoulder and picked up the headset resting on the desktop. She was wearing some kind of scent, Grant realized: something herbal that smelled of flowers from a faraway world.
“Well, put it on,” she said, thrusting the headset into his hands.
Grant slipped the set on; the padded earphones blotted out the hum of the machines and the drone of the other subdued voices. As he swung the pin mike close to his mouth, O’Hara doggedly pecked at the keyboard with one extended finger. Her nails were polished a delicate rose pink, he saw.
Then she lifted one of his earphones slightly and said, “There’s no visual. You’ll just be getting the audio recording.”
Grant nodded as she let the earphone snap itself back in place. The computer screen showed the day’s date and a time; Grant realized it was just a few minutes ago. This must be a recording of her talking to the dolphins, he thought.
Sure enough, he heard O’Hara’s voice: “Top o’ the morning, Lancelot. And to you, Guinevere.”
Then he heard the clicks and whistles of the dolphins. The computer screen printed: GREETINGS O’HARA.
“And how is little Galahad this morning?”
BABY IS GROWING.
O’Hara said, “I’ve got to be going now. And it’ll be your feeding time in a few minutes. I’ll be seeing you all again later.”
GOOD-BYE O’HARA. GOOD FEEDING.
The screen went blank.
Grant pulled off the headset and looked up at O’Hara. She had an expectant grin on her face. He noticed for the first time that her mouth had just a trace of an overbite; it looked strangely sensuous.
“Well now,” O’Hara said. “What do you think of that?”
Grant knew he should be diplomatic, but he heard himself say, “I think the computer could have printed out those responses no matter what kinds of noises the dolphins made.”
Her eyes flashed for a moment, but then she nodded thoughtfully. “All right, then. You’ll make a fine scientist someday. Skeptical. That’s good.”
“I mean—”
“Oh, I know what you mean, Mr. Archer. And you’d be right, except for the fact that the computer has stored thousands of the dolphins’ responses and categorized them and cross-indexed them very thoroughly.”
“That still doesn’t mean it’s translating what those noises actually mean to the dolphins.”
“Doesn’t it now? Then how do you explain the fact that every time I say ‘good morning’ to them they respond with exactly the same expression?”
“How do you know their expression means that they understood what you said and returned your greeting?”
“The phone translates my words into their language, of course.”
“Still…”
She seemed delighted with Grant’s disbelief. Eagerly O’Hara snatched a headset from the computer next to the one Grant was using, slipped it over her chestnut hair, and said into the microphone, “Language demonstration one seventeen, please”
Grant didn’t realize he was staring at her until she unceremoniously took him by the chin and pointed his
