The Dolphins of Pern

Again I wish to acknowledge the help of Dr. Jack Cohen in keeping me on the straight and not so narrow path of Newtonian physics and common Terran biology, plus inventing whatever Pernese biology has been required.

I would also like to thank Rick Hobson of the Whale Conservation Institute in Lincoln, Mass., for his review of the material dealing with dolphins and del-phinic behavior. It was through Rick Hobson that my daughter and I met and swam with Aphrodite and her son, AJ, at the Dolphin Research Center at Grassy Key, Florida. It was an experience that I shall treasure as I will the “visit” we made, to sit on the float and watch Dart, Little Bit, and other dolphins playing in sunset waters and “talking” to us.

Those who have had the privilege of swimming at the Dolphin Research Center will recognize many of the names I have used. Well, why not? I met and valued their acknowledgment of me, a human. They meet many of us, and forget. But I do not forget
them!

K
IBBE GAVE
the bell rope one last pull. He and Corey had been taking turns all morning, but now the sun was descending over the high ground and still no one answered them. Usually someone came out of Man’s place on the dock, even if only one of the boat people. But the boats rocked at anchor under the high wharf, and it was obvious that no one had gone out in them, even to bring in fish, for some time.

Corey clicked at him
in
disgust. The others of their pod had long gone fishing on their own, too bored to see if there might be humans to feed them when there were plenty of small fish to be gleaned at this time of year from the rich northern waters. She “blew” her hunger at him, so annoyed with the lack of human attention that she refused to Speak.

“There has been illness. Ben told us that,” Kibbe reminded her.

“He was not well,” Corey replied, reluctantly employing Speech to impart the concept. “Humans can die.”

“They do. It is true.” Pod Leader, and one of the
oldest in their pod, Kibbe had had two dolphineers as partners. He still fondly remembered Amy, his first one, She had been as much fish as he, even if she had to wear the long-feet and had no fins. She had given the best chin scratches and knew exactly where she had to slough off old skin. When he had been injured, she had stayed in the water by his cradle through the days and nights until she knew that he would recover. He would never have survived that long gash if she hadn’t sewn it up and given him the human medicines that prevented infection.

Corey had had only one person, and she hadn’t seen him in a long time. That accounted for why she was so skeptical. She hadn’t had the long association with humans that Kibbe had enjoyed. He missed it. They had worked well together; and there were still many long stretches of coastline to be mapped, and the locations of fishing schools to be determined. The work had seemed more like fun, and there had always been time for games. Lately all he had been able to do to keep the Dolphin Contract with men was to follow the ships, to be sure no one fell overboard without a dolphin to assist his rescue. He wasn’t even sure if his warnings about imminent storms were heeded: humans sometimes disregarded advice, especially if the fish were running well.

Kibbe was one of those who had been chosen to serve time up near the northwestern subsidence, where lived the Tillek, chosen of all the pods for her wisdom. The name given the pod leader was also traditional. He had been taught, as had other dolphin instructors, why dolphins had followed humans to this world, far from the waters of Earth, where they had
evolved: the chance to inhabit clean waters of an unpolluted world and live as dolphins had before technology (he had learned to pronounce that word very carefully) had spoiled the Old Oceans of humankind. He knew, and taught this despite the astonishment it caused, that dolphins had once walked on land. That was why they were air breathers and were required by Nature to surface to inhale oxygen. He listened to tales so old not even those who had taught the Tillek knew their origins: that dolphins had been special messengers of the gods, escorting those buried at sea to their special “underworld” place. As dolphins considered the seas to be underworld, this caused some confusion. The humankind underworld was where “souls” went—whatever “souls” were.

One of Kibbe’s favorite tales was the one the Tillek recounted with great pride: how dolphinkind had once honored those who had died when one of the spaceships had been wrecked in the sea-sky. Since then, the dolphins of Pern had honored those burial rites with their escort. It was a ceremony the humans had not asked the dolphins to include in their traditions, but they always seemed grateful for it.

Learning the names of the dolphins who had slept the Great Sleep and accompanied humankind to these clean new seas of Pern was an important lesson. From these names came the ones chosen for the new calves, to celebrate those first dolphins and those that were born in the Years Before Thread. The names had been set to dolphin music and could be sung on longer journeys in the Great Currents; the name song was always sung before the young dolphins attempted to cross the great whirlpool at the northwestern
subsidence, or even the smaller one in the Eastern Sea.

There were some matters taught by the Tillek that had to be learned simply because they mattered as details to the whole story. The Great Sleep, for instance, puzzled even the cleverest calf, male or female, because dolphins did not require sleep. To have slept for fifteen years was an incredible thing. Although they knew to call the sparkling light points in the skies “stars,” there seemed to be a very great many of them, and the Tillek could not tell them which had been Old Earth. Humans had had a device that allowed them to see longer, but because stars were in the air, dolphins could not sound them. There were three points of light, at dawn, and again at twilight, which were constant. The Tillek said those points were the spaceships that had brought humankind and dolphinkind to Pern. They must take this on faith, she said, for she had had to learn these facts from the Tillek who had taught
her.
This was fact as well as faith and must be believed, though never experienced. It was History.

And History was another of the Great Gifts humankind had given dolphinkind. History was memory of things past For the sake of History, dolphinkind had been given the Greatest Gift: the ability to speak. For with the Greatest Gift they could repeat the words of History: words that were sounded as humankind sounded speech, not as dolphins did. And they could speak to humans and to themselves the things that were made of words and not sea sounds.

Kibbe had been very good at learning all the words
that humans had used with dolphins, and all their special underwater signals. He was good at singing the words, too, so that the young ones of his pod were familiar with them should they be chosen to go to the waters of the Tillek and complete their training. Kibbe knew the traditions by which humans and dolphins lived in a special relationship: Dolphins would protect humans on or in the water to the best of their abilities, in whatever weather and unsafe conditions, even to the giving up of dolphin life to save the frailer humans; they would apprise humans of bad weather conditions, show them where the schools of preferred fish were running, and warn them off sea hazards. The humans promised, in return for these services, to remove any bloodfish that might attach themselves to dolphin bodies, to float any stranded dolphin, to heal the sick and treat the wounded, to talk to them and to be partners if the dolphin was willing.

In the early days on Pern, humans and dolphins had taken great pleasure in exploring the new seas, and those had been momentous years: the years of the life of the human Tillek whom all had revered. A dolphins’ bell had been sited at Monaco Bay, and land and sea beings had promised to answer the bell whenever it was rung. In those days the young dolphins had each had a human partner, to help with the exploration, to explore the seas and the deep abysses and the Great Currents, the Two Subsidences, Greater and Smaller, and the Four Upwellings. There had been courtesy, each to the other, land-and seafaring humans.

The Tillek always spoke respectfully of humans,
and severely disciplined any calf who used the term “long-foot” or “finless.” When the silly fins complained that humans no longer kept their end of the ancient agreement, the Tillek would tell them, at her sternest, that that did not absolve dolphinkind from practicing theirs. Humankind had had to stop exploring Pern in order to guard the lands against the Thread.

This would set the silliest to clicking nonsense noises of amusement. Why didn’t humans eat Thread the way dolphins did?

The Tillek’s reply was that humans had to live on land, where Thread did not drown but attacked human flesh like bloodfish, sucking the life out of it. And not over a long period of time but immediately, so that all life was gone from the body in the course of several breaths—indeed, the flesh of the human body was completely consumed.