DOLFIN TAYLE

A novel by

PIERS ANTHONY

J.R. RAIN

Acclaim for J.R. Rain and Piers Anthony:

“Anthony’s most ambitious project to date. Well conceived and written from the heart.”

—Library Journal on Piers Anthony’s Isle of Woman

“Be prepared to lose sleep!”

—James Rollins, international bestselling author of The Doomsday Key on J.R. Rain’s The Lost Ark

“Piers Anthony is a writer of passion. Volk is a masterpiece.”

—Brad Linaweaver, author of Moon of Ice

“Dark Horse is the best book I’ve read in a long time!”

—Gemma Halliday, award-winning author of Spying in High Heels

“Piers Anthony is one of the more colorful personalities in the SF world.”

—Science Fiction Chronicle on Piers Anthony’s Bio of an Ogre

“Moon Dance is a must read. If you like Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter, be prepared to love J.R. Rain’s Samantha Moon, vampire private investigator.”

—Eve Paludan, author of Letters from David

OTHER BOOKS BY

PIERS ANTHONY AND J.R. RAIN

STANDALONE NOVELS

Dragon Assassin

Dolfin Tayle

Jack and the Giants

THE ALADDIN TRILOGY

Aladdin Relighted

Aladdin Sins Bad

Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman

Dolfin Tayle

Published by J.R. Rain Press

Copyright © 2013 by J.R. Rain and Piers Anthony

All rights reserved.

Ebook Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dolfin Tayle

Chapter One

The killer is all around us, and I am afraid.

Around me, the sea is foaming and churning, and the dead are everywhere. Among the dead is my mother. I am confused and lost and hurt.

Earlier, something swept through the waters, something unseen, but felt by all. This unseen force gathered many of us up, along with other creatures of the deep. This thing, this sweeping thing, prevented us from surfacing, to breathe air.

I also got swept up into the force, got tangled into the invisible web. My mother was there, too, by my side. She fought frantically for me, tearing at the unseen material that kept us from surfacing. She used her great beak and teeth, and finally tore through what she called the netting.

But she could only tear a small opening, for this netting is nearly indestructible, and she was losing her strength. She needed to surface. All of us needed to surface. We needed to breathe. We were dying.

But there was only room for the smallest of us to escape.

My mother urged me through, and I listened to her, because I always listened to her, for my mother was known as the Seeker of Truth, and in her words was the truth, and I always listened to the Mother Seeker. Always, even when I did not want to. Always, even if I was tired or wanted to play with my friends.

Now my mother, the Seeker, urged me through the opening, holding this netting open with her strong jaws, speaking to me rapidly through clicks and chirps, our language of the deep. I did as I was told, and squeezed through the opening. She helped me through by nudging me with her bony beak. Our beaks aren’t like bird beaks. No, they are long, bony protrusions that jut from our faces and allow us to snap at rapidly fleeing bass and mackerel, our favorite food.

Finally on the other side of this net, terrified, I listened as others began singing their death songs, and the ocean was filled with dying words and memories and voices and cries. I cried, too, and watched as others of our pod began floating silently up toward the surface, although they did not get very far. The netting held them in place, suspended in the water. Those whom I had once called uncle and aunt, those whom I had called friend and teacher, those who were kind and patient with me, those who were so wise to the ways of the deep, had finally quit fighting the net. And now they were floating.

The water, once alive with their fighting, filled with their haunting singing, slowly quieted and stilled.

“Hurry, ma,” I said, zigzagging back and forth on the other side of the net. Above me, a human boat—a massive human boat, trawled slowly over the ocean, bouncing slightly on mild currents, its sleek and narrow shape a dark shadow above.

I saw that my mother was badly tangled. Her flukes and fens were bleeding as she struggled. She needed air. I needed air, too.

“I am stuck,” she said. And as she spoke, I saw that she was fighting less and less. Blood wafted up from her many wounds as the net cut deep into her smooth hide. The more she fought, the more the net seemed to be holding her tighter and tighter, like a living thing. A great, evil thing. My mother, amazingly, smiled at me, although her face was growing a frightening shade of purple. She needed to breathe. She was dying. I needed to breathe, too. I would die unless I surfaced immediately.

“Please come with me, ma. Please.”

“Live bravely, Azael,” she said, calling me by my nickname.

“But I cannot live without you.”

“You can do more than you ever dreamed. Go breathe. Go live.”

“But—” But my breath was faltering. Darkness encroaches from the corners of my vision.

My mother spasmed violently; her blowhole quivered as it failed.

“I will not be far, my daughter. None of us will be. The sea is alive in you. Go now, girl. Now!”

And I did, turning up, thrusting with my tail and flukes, for I needed to breathe so very bad. From below my mother’s death song reached me, and it was the most beautiful and horrible thing I had ever heard. I looked down once just as my mother’s blowhole exploded open and she sucked in a great quantity of water. She shuddered convulsively...and then began floating.

I screamed and kicked hard and burst from the ocean like a flying beast. I released my air in a spray of water and inhaled deeply and landed with a massive splash.

But before I landed I saw clearly the markings on the ship. It was a white vessel with a large blue circle on its side, its hull, as my mother had taught me. The circle had the picture of a fish in it. Artwork, my mother had taught me. Humans were adept at art.

They were also adept at killing.

I would never forget that ship or the blue circle with the fish inside.

Chapter Two

I watched in horror as the net was brought up to the surface, and with it the tangled bodies of those in my pod. I watched as my mother’s lifeless form was pulled haltingly to the surface, for she was still very much entangled in the wicked webbing.

I followed her up, touching her, nuzzling her, drifting through the blood that surrounded her badly wounded body.

At the surface, as the sun shone high in the sky and seagulls circled, her body floated serenely in the wake of the ship, bouncing and bobbing. I floated with her, always careful of being ensnared in the webbing again. Others of our pod were there at the surface. All were dead. All floated lifeless, and the scene was too much for me to bear. I cried out and sang a song of deep sorrow. And as I sang, those humans on the ship turned and looked at me. Many watched me, holding their hands to shield their eyes. I saw one or two shake their heads, and then they went back to work, moving quickly, calling loudly to each other, doing whatever it is that they do on these ships.

Actually, I knew quite well what they did on this ship. They killed. And their netting was the instrument of death. Those creatures who did not need to breathe air were still alive, flopping wildly within the net, desperate and helpless, and even though only moments earlier my pod had been hunting them, I felt sorry for them, trapped as they were.

I continued to sing. I continued to nuzzle against my dead mother. The mackerel fought the netting furiously, twisting and angling their muscular bodies, damaging themselves. Great swaths of blood now drifted away from the netting, and I knew the sharks would be here soon, attracted by the blood. No doubt they were already on their way.

My mother was a beautiful creature. Long and elegant and sleek. Her eyes stared at me now, unseeing and lifeless, and I sang harder, my voice traveling far and wide.

Above, the humans worked quickly, hauling the net out of the water. I drifted on the currents, lifting and bobbing, staying close to my mother, but far enough away from the hateful netting.

And now my mother was moving, but not with life. No, she was being dragged over the surface of the ocean as the humans on board the ship gathered up the black net. As they took it in, I saw, they hauled great amounts of flopping mackerel from the ocean. They also hauled the bodies of my uncles and friends and those I had loved with all my heart.

My mother shifted on the currents, and then she was moving steadily toward the ship. She moved sideways. So unnatural. So painful to see. I did not want her to go up on that ship. I did not want her to leave the ocean. But I did not want to watch the sharks from the deep consume her, either.

I was torn and lost and full of pain. Still, I turned and dove under her lifeless body. I tore at the netting that held her in place, that cut into her body. But I could not tear it. How my mother had managed to do so, I did not know.

Still, she moved steadily toward the ship. And still I fought the netting, helpless.

“Leave her be, little one,” said a voice from below. “You do not want to risk being caught yourself, correct?”

I did not know who spoke, but indeed the voice was right. Once or twice, as the net shifted and moved toward the floating ship, I had nearly become entangled myself. Through my tears and confusion, I looked down below and saw a very old seal.

“I do not want her to leave me,” I said.

“Of course not, little one. But she would not want you to perish foolishly, either. Is your mother not the Seeker?”

I nodded.

“Then she has taught you that she will live on, yes? In spirit?”

I nodded again, and as I did so, I saw that I had drifted very close to the great ship. Men reached over the railing, hauling the netting up, using also what appeared to be a metal machine to aid them. My mother shifted. She was, I saw, slowly rising up out of the water.

“No!”

I was about to dash for her. I was about to plunge through the netting and tear her free. I was about to sink that whole blasted ship when the old seal reached out a fluke and wrapped it around me gently. “No, little one.”

“But what will they do with her?”

He did not answer immediately, and together we watched as my mother, along with others from my pod, rose slowly out of the water, and flopped over the wall of the great ship...and disappeared from view.

“I do not know,” said the old seal, and now he patted my back gently. “Come,” he said. “The sharks will be here soon.”

Chapter Three

My pod was gone, and I was alone.

Well, not really alone. I was with the old seal, whose name was Kasmar. The ship had hauled its great net, bringing with it everyone and everything I had known and loved. Kasmar said it was better that we did not stay around, and I believed him, although I wanted to follow the ship. I wanted to follow it until they gave me back my mother.

“No, child,” said Kasmar, as he gently nudged me away from the ship again, out toward the setting sun. “It is best we leave it be.”

But we didn’t leave, not yet. I had drifted up to the surface and lifted my head above the rolling waves, the wake left behind by the ship. As water gently splashed over me, as the sun shone down behind me, I watched the ship slip away over the ocean, hauling with it my pod.

My dead pod.

In a blink, in a span of moments, in a span shorter than it would take for me to consume milk from my mother, I was left alone in the ocean.

I sensed them coming from below. Actually, I heard them whispering, their low, guttural voices. Voices carry exceptionally well through water. I did not need to be close to them to hear them. The voices whispered of blood and hunger. The voices whispered of killing and destroying.

“Come,” said Kasmar, he nudged me again, but this time harder. “We need to go.”

I looked down, and far below I saw the white, torpedo shapes rising. Sharks, and not just any sharks. White sharks. Their whisperings grew louder.

A natural fear gripped me, and this time I heeded Kasmar’s advice. He had already kicked off, and was looking back. I thrust my tail hard, and together Kasmar and I shot just beneath the ocean surface. I had been taught, long ago by my mother, to avoid splashing on the surface when the sharks were near, to keep from surfacing for air as long as possible, and so the two of us glided rapidly away from the scene of death, in the opposite direction. Far, far away from where they were taking my mother.

And when I couldn’t last another moment without air, Kasmar and I surfaced together. He lifted his mouth and sucked in air, but I burst high above the waves, far higher than I had ever risen before, and as I twisted briefly in the air, the sunlight straight in my eyes, I let out a great, tormented cry.

I landed hard and not very smooth. Air burst from my blowhole, and together the old seal and I sped away. I knew one or two of the sharks had briefly given chase, but they let us go. After all, there was blood in the water to investigate.

Once or twice I waited for Kasmar to catch up to me, as the older seal could not swim quite as fast. But he was an excellent swimmer for his kind, and I was still young, and thus not as fast or swift as the older dolphins.

When we were many miles from the death scene and from the sharks, Kasmar and I finally slowed; it was then that I broke down and wept, my cries filling the ocean.

The old seal swam over to me and lay a flipper on my side, and we floated on the surface like that for a long, long time.

Chapter Four

At last growing hunger distracted me from my grief. I had to eat, or I would die, and that would waste the effort my mother had made to save me. She was gone, but I remained, and I had to do what I knew she wanted, and survive.

Kasmar understood, maybe before I did. “Let’s go find some mackerel,” he said.

We sniffed the water, orienting on that type of fish, and picked up the faint scent. I was glad for the seal’s continued company; he was now my only link to my former life. Why he was helping me I was not sure, but I was not ready to question it.

Soon we located a small school of mackerel and dived in, as it were, catching the fish in our mouths, chewing them into bits, and swallowing the delicious fragments. Then, sated, we returned to the surface.

“What will you do now?” Kasmar inquired.

The question stumped me; I had no idea. My grief for my lost pod surged back overwhelmingly.

“Come visit with us,” the seal suggested.

That surprised me, because seals and dolphins were only nodding acquaintances, foraging in similar places. But the notion appealed; I did not want to be alone. Now I had to ask: “Why are you helping me?”

“That’s a bit complicated,” he said. “Mainly it’s because you’re a child alone and you need some help, at least until you learn to manage on your own. But it is also that we seals have our own issues with the killer humans.”

“Tell me,” I said as we swam where he led. Maybe it would distract me from my misery.

“We seals, unlike dolphins, do some things on land. We have favored beaches for birthing and nurturing our babies, for one thing. We have cousins who make their families in very limited regions. And the humans come with clubs and bash the skulls of their babies, brutally killing them for their delicate fur. The carnage is awful, and the mothers mourn for weeks. We hate that, but can’t stop the slaughter. I thought of that when I saw your pod about to get caught with the mackerel in the deadly net. I would have tried to warn you, but I could not catch up to you, and it was too late by the time I got close enough. All I could do was watch, and try to help if I could. You were the only survivor, so I came to you.”

That made sense. “You seals suffer as we do,” I said.

“We do.”

Then I experienced a new emotion: the desire for vengeance. “I wish I could fling a big net over their cursed boat and haul it down into the sea until they all drowned, too.”

Kasmar sighed. “I know I ought to tell you to avoid thoughts of revenge, to focus on positive things like lovely corals, the majesty of the mighty ocean, and personal survival. But I can’t, because I feel as you do. I’d like to abolish the killer humans. The urge is pointless, because they have machines and weapons we can’t touch, and just approaching them is dangerous. But still I wish for some retribution.”

His confession was immensely reassuring. I was not alone in my feeling. And it gave me a mission: “I will find a way.”

“Don’t be foolish, little one. All you are likely to do is get yourself killed. You must learn to accept what you can’t change, as I do. You don’t have to like it; I don’t. But you have to be realistic, or you won’t survive.”

“I’m too young to be realistic,” I said rebelliously. “At least I must search for a way. That may give my life meaning.”

“Maybe that will do,” the seal agreed. “Just make sure that you don’t convince yourself that you have the answer when you don’t. Be realistic at least in your quest, so that if you ever do discover the way, you will know it is real and not foolish fancy.”

That struck me as excellent advice, the kind my mother would have given me. “I will,” I agreed. And the pain of my grief lessened somewhat, becoming slightly more manageable.

Kasmar took me to the seals, and they welcomed me. They were not my kind, but it was a comfort to be with them. Whether it was because I was so young, or that they shared Kasmar’s outrage at what the humans did to their cousins, or some other reason I did not know. Maybe it was that Kasmar, as an elder seal, had influence to sway the others. But for now it sufficed.

Chapter Five

I played and hunted with the seal colony, enjoying the companionship of the young cubs and the protection of the mature members. I explored the ailing coral reef with them; there was still some good hunting there, though much of the coral was whitening and dying and the fish were leaving. We swam in the shallow waters of the great land that bordered the sea, digging out edible tidbits. I discovered that there were many tasty fish, not just mackerel, each type with its own habitat and ways. I learned the little tricks of hunting and foraging, and did not go hungry as might have been the case had I done it alone. Life with the seals was good enough.

I grew and filled out as time passed, becoming less a child than a young female. But several things prevented me from accepting, or being accepted, completely. I was not a seal, but a dolphin, a different species. I saw the males and females beginning to appreciate each other in new ways, but I could not relate in that manner. The seals could not swim at my pace, and I could not join them to bask on the beach. And though they feared and hated the human killers in their dreaded boats, they generally accepted that they could not do anything except avoid those boats. I, in contrast, was attracted to the boats, not from any pleasure; I wanted to discover how to sink them and wipe out their killer men. I was serious about my mission, and that determination grew as I matured, rather than fading.

Kasmar picked up on this as swiftly as I did. “You are not like us, Azael,” he said. “Even if you were a seal, you would not be the same. We hate the boats and men on general principle and caution; you hate them seriously, from your immediate experience. I don’t blame you; in fact I wish you success in abolishing them, if it is remotely possible. But you can’t hope to accomplish your purpose by associating with us. You must strike out on your own. Maybe there are others in the sea who are closer to your passion, like the whales who are being destroyed by the men, or the squid who get eaten by them. You must search them out, if there are any of your frame of mind. I fear there are not, but you must find out for yourself.”

His words confirmed my own thoughts. “Then I think I must leave you,” I said with regret. “To search out others of my emotional persuasion, if they exist.”

“I fear you must,” he agreed. “You are now a healthy dolphin and strong swimmer; you are ready to quest alone. But if you seek and fail, you will still be welcome to return and swim with us.”

I was not sure of that. “I think the others are growing tired of me.”

“Perhaps. But I am not. I thought to rescue you as an orphaned child, but you are my closest associate in terms of attitude, of intellect, of mission in life, and I enjoy your company. You have become my friend. I can’t even aspire to abolish the human kind; I am simply too old and weak. But you will be coming into your prime, and maybe you have a chance. I urge you to go for it, though I will be lonely without you.”

That support, again, uplifted me. “Oh Kasmar, I love you,” I said, and kissed him on the snout.

“Go, girl, before I become embarrassingly maudlin.”

I went, appreciating the sentiment, because it applied to me as well.

First I did what I should have before: I sought a pod of dolphins we knew were in the area. Maybe I could join them, and enlist them in my mission. They surely were suffering losses too, as the predatory boats and nets plied their dreadful trade. Only my joy of association with Kasmar had restrained me before.

It did not take long to locate them, for they were moving into the territory my original pod had occupied. I whistled a greeting.

And got a rude reaction. “Go away!” the elder member of the pod whistled in return.

“But I came in friendship, to—”

Two young males detached from the pod and swam toward me, whistling hostility. I did not know what they intended, but feared it would not be pleasant. I fled, swimming with my utmost velocity. The males were larger than I, and swam well, but they did not know this territory the way I did. I looped around the coral reef, ducked under an overhang, and shot through an odd current that would carry my scent trail in the wrong direction. So I lost them, and escaped.

Then I paused to consider, chagrined. What had just happened? I had approached the pod in friendship, but they had never given me a chance. They had driven me away without even trying to get to know me. How could that be?

How could my own kind be less welcoming than the seals? This was shocking and appalling. I had never even imagined such a reaction.

Slowly I realized that they were a foreign pod, moving into an unfamiliar place, and they distrusted all strangers. Maybe they had brushed with the humans, so were on edge because of the danger. They trusted only their own, and did not want to share. Probably the elders in my original pod had known of them, and known to stay clear. I, in my innocence, had not. But now I did.

Oh yes, I did.

Chapter Six

Disheartened by this betrayal, I swam immediately to my next prospect. There was a small whale foraging in the region, an orca. That species was distantly related to the dolphins, but we seldom associated. Even the smallest whales were far more massive than our kind was. I approached him cautiously.

“I have a mission,” I said.

He glanced at me. “If you were older and larger, I’d be interested.”

There it was again: the hint of something the two male dolphins had indicated, that I did not understand. “Interested in what?”

“In mating. What else?”

Mating! This was completely beyond my experience, so I ignored it. “I want to destroy the humans and their boats.”

“Don’t we all! But there’s no chance, so get out of my way and let me forage in peace.”

And that, it seemed, was that. The orca was not interested in my mission, and though I sensed he was not overtly hostile to me, neither did he respect me, and it seemed safer to stay clear of him. I retreated, and he did not pursue, to my relief.

What was I going to do? I knew I could not destroy the humans alone; I needed help. But help was proving hard to come by.

Disappointed and distressed, again, I dived down into the trench. This was a section of impossibly deep water where the pressure was intolerable. I could not stay there long; it was too uncomfortable. My dive was symbolic anyway: depressed spirits, descending body. I leveled off, ready to return to the surface.

“Azael!”

I whipped around, surprised. Who was calling me? This was too deep for the seals, and it wasn’t the orca. I didn’t know anyone down here. Yet I had plainly heard my name. “Who are you?” I whistled.

There was a kind of chuckle. “Here.” And a figure appeared where there seemed to have been none before, faintly glowing. “Levy.”

“You’re a squid!” I exclaimed, astonished. “Using your colors for camouflage so I didn’t see you.”

“True,” Levy agreed, waving three tentacles nonchalantly. “I sense you have a mission. Maybe you’re the one.”

“How can I talk to you?” I asked. “I don’t even know your language.”

“Yes, I think you are the one.”

“The one for what?” I asked warily. Squid were dangerous, and this was the largest one I had ever seen, a true monster of the deep. Was he trying to lure me to within range of his tentacles so he could catch and consume me? Certainly his interest was not of the type the dolphins and orca had evinced.

“No, my dear. Dolphins are not on my diet, and certainly not mating. It is that I have a mission for you, if you choose to accept it.”

“If it involves destroying humans, then I’m interested.”

That set him back; I could feel it in his mind. “Not exactly.”

Feel it in his mind? That did not make sense. But I was curious. Curiosity had always been a bad habit of mine. “What, exactly?”

“First there are things to explain. Can you come lower? This elevation is painful for me. In fact I risk the bends.”

“The whats?”

“I am a creature of the deepest depths. Coming up to the lesser pressure of the heights stresses me. It’s a blood thing, I think too complicated to explain briefly. Please, descend a bit with me so we can converse.”

The heights? “This is already too much pressure for me,” I protested. “I need to get higher.”

He sighed. “Then we must converse here, briefly. You asked how we can talk, when we have no common language. We are not really talking; we are in telepathic contact.”

This utterly bewildered me. “In what?”

“Mind talk. My mind is reaching out to touch yours, sending my thoughts and receiving yours. Language is no barrier; this bypasses that. You hear it as your kind of speech, but it is really straight understanding.”

“But I don’t understand!”

“This.” Then suddenly I grasped the concept of telepathy, mind talk. He had sent it without the filter of language. The very fact that I now understood it confirmed its authenticity.

“What is it you want of me?” I asked. I was not being negative; I really wanted to know.

He told me, buttressing it by a broader background understanding fed directly to my mind. I absorbed it, amazed.

Alien visitors from another planet—suddenly I understood what “aliens” and “planet” were, along with other remarkable concepts—had settled in the deepest trench, where conditions mimicked their home environment. They had discovered that there was sapient life on Earth, but incredibly it was on hot dry land, not in the comfortable sea. They needed to make contact, but that was awkward because they could not go to land—they would explode, literally—and the land creatures could not come to the depths. So they needed to establish a chain of intermediaries to make the connection. Levy was the first, and Azael could be the second. She could contact the humans.

“Contact the humans!” she exclaimed. “I want to destroy them!”

“This is a problem,” Levy agreed. “I don’t much like them myself; they eat my cousins, and chop them up for bait. But this contact is necessary. Will you do it?”

“No! Never will I—” I paused as more thoughts packed in, impressing on me the vital importance of this mission. It truly was essential that the contact be established; I believed that completely. It wasn’t that my mind had been overridden; it was that there was a huge amount I hadn’t known before. “—decline such an opportunity,” I concluded.

“That’s good. You will need a communicator.” Levy extended a soft packet. “The aliens made it with their technology. It will operate as long as it remains in contact with your body. Swallow it.”

I swam close and took it from his tentacle with my mouth. I swallowed it as instructed. Now I had the power of telepathy, and would be able to converse with the humans. “I must go, before I suffocate.”

“Yes. I will sink to a more comfortable depth. When you return here, send me a mental signal and I will rise to meet you for a more intimate dialogue.” Then Levy jetted forward and down, his glow disappearing into the darkness below.

I was left with the communicator and the mind ability it provided me, and a new mission. I had to get in touch with the horrible humans. The ones I wanted to destroy. I still hated them, but now had a far broader perspective. This was bound to be a challenge, direct mental talk notwithstanding.

I launched my body toward the surface. There was a good deal more than air on my mind.

Chapter Seven

It was late and I was alone.

The water was calm and the sky above was clear. I floated idly on the gently rolling waves, rising and falling, and thinking of my mother, and of my friends in my pod, who were all gone now. I had watched many of them suffocate or bleed to death.

Above, a lone seagull circled, idly chattering to himself, his words just barely reaching me, “I’m circling, I’m circling, I’m circling.”

That I could understand the cries of a seagull was a wonder to me. That I heard even now the whispered, frenetic thoughts of the many hundreds of fish below me, was amazing as well.

Even now, I heard a school of tuna in the near distance chattering among themselves. “Turn right, right, left, left, right, left. Go up, now down, down, too far down, up, up, up.”

Yes, this alien technology was something to behold, and something to listen to. As I had learned at a young age, various sea creatures of the same general ilk can mostly communicate with each other, as I had done with the orca, although he wasn’t a dolphin. I shouldn’t have been able to understand the giant squid, nor the seagull or the tuna.

But I could, and, I have to admit, it was threatening to drive me crazy. The ocean sounds that I had once been used to were long gone, replaced now with mindless thoughts, idle chatter, and conversation I really didn’t want any part of.

Sardines were for eating. I really didn’t want to hear about their day, or nights, or of their own quest for food and safety. It made eating them that much harder.

But I had committed to this mission and for good reason. The deep-water aliens, it appeared, were here to thwart a looming global disaster. The image that had been impressed upon me by Levy was nothing short of horrific. All of life, including that in the deepest oceans, could face extinction.

I couldn’t have that. Although I missed my mother and my pod, and although I often felt lonely and sad, I could not pass up the chance to save the earth. To save my friends like Kasmar and even Levy.

Earlier in the evening, as the sun was setting on the far horizon, sending a streak of shimmering gold radiating across the ocean surface, another dolphin pod had come and gone, rejecting my request to join them. Once again, I had to dash off, just barely evading the aggressive males.

Had my own pod been so rude, so cold, so angry? So heartless to those in need?

I didn’t know. I had been too young to know the mechanics of the pod. My own mother had been so loving, nurturing, and others had been full of spirit and doing a great job. I couldn’t imagine my own mother turning away a young dolphin in need, as others had done to me. But my mother hadn’t been the pod leader, had she?

No, that had been Grayback, to date the biggest dolphin I had ever seen. Grayback was always very serious, even around the young dolphins. We soon learned to give a wide berth to our pod leader. Yes, I could definitely see Grayback running an eager, lost dolphin away.

But not my mother. She would have helped. I believed that with all my heart. And as I lay there on the ocean surface, swishing my tail and flukes, thinking of the mother I lost, I saw something amazing in the sky. It was a flash of light, moving rapidly and growing brighter before it flamed out of existence. As it did so, I heard a soft whisper from seemingly nearby. A whisper that sounded like my mother.

“Beneath you, Azael.”

“Mother?” I asked, but whatever I heard must surely have been my imagination. My mother was dead of course, and the shooting star had surely just been a natural phenomenon.

Yes, my imagination. I was missing her so much, I had imagined I heard her speak to me.

I was just about to close my eyes, to drift off to sleep on the rocking currents of the ocean, when I heard the whisperings rise up from below me. Three voices.

“Hunger, hunt, prey,” the voices said, seemingly in unison. “Hunger, hunt, prey,”

The voices were faint, and I might have missed them if not for the strange warning I’d received just moments earlier. The warning that sounded very much like my mother. I might have, in fact, slept through the harsh whisperings.

The whisperings of sharks. I was sure of it.

And they were directly below me.

Chapter Eight

What to do? If I suddenly swam away, they could tune in on the motion and pursue, and surely catch me. But if I didn’t, they would probably spy me anyway.

“Prey, above.”

They already had. I was in trouble. Already they were cruising smoothly higher, orienting on me.

Desperation gave me an idea. If it failed, I was lost.

“Flee north!” I thought loudly, as I fled south.

The sharks reacted as one, swerving north. And in moments I was out of their range. I had used my new telepathy to save my life. It had been a lie, but it seemed that what counted was not the truth, but the thought. That was a useful discovery.

But as my fear and excitement subsided, I realized that I could not afford to delay long. There were too many dangers. I had to contact the humans, because only they could act to avert the looming disaster. I hated them, and would have been glad to leave them to their fate, except that the creatures of the sea would suffer the same fate. The day was late, but I had better see what it might offer.

I swam toward the fishing village by the shore. There were always boats coming and going there, as they ranged out to slaughter more innocent fish. I detested this, but had to try to contact a human.

I saw a boat anchored off-shore. What was it doing here? Normally they remained tied up at their docks overnight, not parked on the sea.

As I came close I picked up the thoughts of the humans aboard. One was the usual kind of brute fisherman. He was mending his tackle, a tedious chore, his mind largely blank. The other—

The other was a young female, wearing an almost skintight sheath of cloth that covered her torso. A swimsuit. The man’s child. A girl, not yet of age to mate, with an outlook surprisingly similar to mine. She had prevailed on him to take her out fishing. Catching fish on a hook, rather than in a net. She was at the front—the prow, in their language, which I could now grasp—dangling a line into the water. It had a baited hook. She didn’t really care if she caught a fish; she just liked being out here on the sea.

This was the one. She had never slain a dolphin; in fact she loved dolphins and was distressed when they got caught in the fish nets and died. I read the sorrow for that in her mind. She wished she could be friends with a dolphin.

That might happen.

“Girl!” I called mentally.

She looked up, startled. “What?”

“I called you with my mind. It is mind talk. Telepathy.”

She looked around, amazed. “I hear you but I don’t see you. Who are you?”

“I am Azael. Who are you?”

“I am Tayle. It’s short for Tallulah, but I don’t like it, so I go by Tayle.” She continued too look around. “Are you invisible?”

“Not exactly. I’m in the water.”

“All I see are waves.”

I swam to the surface and lifted my beak. “Here. I am a dolphin.”

“A dolfin!” she exclaimed, delighted. There was something faintly off about her thought, but I couldn’t place it. “Oh, let me hug you!” She jumped into the water beside me.

Now I was the amazed one. “But you’re not safe off the boat! There are sharks!”

“Oh, they don’t bother people. Pa would spear any who came close.” She splashed toward me. “You really, really are a dolfin! And you’re talking to me! This is some daydream!”

Daydream? I picked up the concept from her mind: a pleasant mental excursion, not a real happening. “I’m not a dream,” I protested.

“You have to be. Or maybe I have fallen asleep and am dreaming. Either way, I could never talk to a real dolfin. Now I’ll hug you. I couldn’t do that to a real one either.” She spread her arms wide, then wrapped them around me.

I had no idea how to react to this contact, so I just stayed still. I picked up from her mind that it was a friendly gesture. Indeed, the pleasure of the act in her mind spread across to me, and I liked it too.

“Tayle!” It was her father, who’d discovered her in the water.

“Over here, dad!” she called physically; I heard the sound coordinating with the meaning. “With Azael!”

He peered across the water. “A dolphin! Get away from it, girl! That’s no tame captive creature. That’s a wild one.”

“Azael’s my friend,” Tayle protested. “She wouldn’t hurt me.”

He was genuinely concerned. That was a side of the human I had not seen before. “That thing could catch you by the arm and drag you down to drown! Get over here!”

“Oh, dad,” Tayle said, disgusted.

It was time for me to clarify things. “I will not hurt her,” I projected to the man. “We are friends.” As though it were possible for a human and a dolphin ever to be friends! Yet at this moment, immersed in the genuine innocence and good spirit of the girl, I could almost believe it. And I needed the human contact.

“It talked!” he exclaimed, shaking his head. “Now I know I’m crazy!”

“You are not crazy,” I sent. “I am telepathic. It is essential that I get in touch with the human species.”

But he was locked in to his confusion. “Tayle, get back into the boat! We’re going home before anything worse happens.”

Reluctantly, the girl obeyed. “Gotta go now,” she said apologetically. “But can we meet again tomorrow? This is too good a dream to lose.”

He thought he was crazy; she thought she was dreaming. This was not a perfect start. It was better to back off and try again on the morrow. “Come out here again, and I will meet you,” I told her.

“Great!” She hugged me again, then splashed back to the boat and heaved herself over its railing. Its motor sounded, and it forged rapidly away.

Would tomorrow be better? I hoped so.

Chapter Nine

That night, while floating alone with a heavy heart, I dreamed of my pod and my mother. In my dream I swam safe and free and happy. So happy! My mother’s love poured over me, her watchful eye ever on me.

I awoke to the sound of distant thunder and the sizzling sound of raindrops hitting the ocean’s surface. I also awoke weeping, wondering if I would be forever alone. Finally, as I rose and fell gently with the undulating ocean, as the rain was heavy on my thick skin, I thought of the girl Tayle, and her warm hug. No, her loving hug. I nearly smiled as I fell back to sleep.

*  *  *

When morning finally came, the sun was out and the storm had passed. Mercifully, I dreamed only of catching and eating fish, which wasn’t so heavy on my heart.

And catching fish is exactly what I did.

As I hunted among the dying coral, flushing out the tasty morsels, I did all I could to block out their fear and cries of anguish. I could see that the thought communicator was both beneficial and annoying.

Never before had I heard the cries of the mackerel or sardines or the other colorful fish that I eat. Now I do, and it was almost driving me to become one of those pitiful creatures who chews on kelp. Perhaps there was a way I could block out or drown out, or perhaps even turn off the device when I didn’t want to use it. If I ever met the giant squid again, I would ask.

For now, though, I heard each of their frightful pleas and their death cries as I bit into them.

Now, that was enough to make me lose my appetite!

When I was done feeding, wondering if I was any better than the human who preyed upon the oceans themselves, I swam back to the seaside village feeling guilty for the first time in my life.

I was, after all, a killer too.

Tayle was there, waiting for me, sitting on the prow of her small boat, scanning the ocean eagerly. She was eating something small and square and seemed to be enjoying it. It didn’t seem to look like a fish, which surprised me. Surely all humans, like dolphins ate fish? Perhaps not. There was much I needed to know.

To get her attention, I first dove down, skimming the shallow, silt-covered sand just off shore, then kicked my tail hard and aimed for the surface—and exploded out of the water.

I breached as high as I could, arching, as water sparkled all around me, and for a brief moment I was airborne, and it was wonderful.

As I reached the apex of my arch, I sent out a shout to Tayle, who clapped her hands and stood and waved, rocking her boat dangerously.

Fully exposed and free of the sea, I had a taste for what it might be like to be out of water...a small taste of what it would be like to be a true land dweller.

After all, I knew that was part of my mission, too.

I had to convince a land dweller to change places with me, albeit briefly, but giving me enough time to complete my mission. Would young Tayle be that land dweller?

I didn’t know, but I sure liked her.

I splashed down none too gracefully, hitting the surface hard enough to cause a massive splash. I laughed and heard Tayle laughing, too, and hers was a sound I was growing to love.

I kicked my tail and aimed my fins to her little boat. It was time to see if Tayle could aid me in my mission.

Chapter Ten

“I’m so glad you came!” Tayle exclaimed mentally and physically. “I was afraid you wouldn’t.”

This was curious. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You’re a dolfin. My people have been killing your people. Oh, they’re not supposed to, but they do, because the nets catch everything. Once a dolfin is dead, there’s nothing to do but process the meat. No sense giving it to the sharks. But if your people were killing my people, I’d want nothing to do with you.”

And this was an interesting perspective. So the humans weren’t really trying to kill dolphins, they were just sloppy with the nets. But the effect was the same. “I don’t want anything to do with you,” I agreed. “Or I didn’t, before I met you. But I have a very important mission, and I have to talk with the human pod leader. Can you bring him here?”

Tayle laughed. “I’m just a wee girl. I’m not even sure how to spell ‘doll-fin.’ Not that I’m stupid; there’s no correlation between spelling and smarts, at least that’s what my teachers all say. I’m still not really sure what ‘correlation’ means, but I like that word. It kinda rolls off the tongue funny. Anyway, children don’t count. I couldn’t even bring my father here, if he wasn’t curious about my meeting a talking dolfin. I can’t help you.”

“But I have to meet with the pod leader! Or the world will end.”

She thought about that, as her little boat rose and fell on the gentle swells. Her long hair fluttered about her face. I’m glad dolphins don’t have hair. What an annoyance!

She said, “Well, I guess that’s pretty serious.”

“It is! But it’s complicated to explain.”

“Maybe you better try explaining it to pa. He knows more about government. He’s always complaining about our mayor, but he’s a nice enough guy. The mayor, I mean.”

I remembered her pa. He was loud. Plus, he was a fisherman. A professional hunter. “But I’d rather talk with you. You’re nice. You’re not killing dolphins.”

“Azael, I’d have to know a lot more about dolfins, and I think you’d need to know a lot more about humans. I don’t think it can work, with just the two of us. I don’t even know how we can mind talk together. My father says there’s no such thing as telepathy; it’s just junk movie stuff.”

I got an idea. “Maybe we could switch places, and I could explain it to your father with your voice.”

“You mean, put your mind in my body, and mine in yours? I wouldn’t even know how to swim in yours, and I’m not sure you could even walk in mine. We don’t have the same reflexes.”

I realized that she was right. We couldn’t make it in each other’s bodies. Not without a great deal more preparation. Yet the need to reach a human leader, and do it without much delay, was urgent. What could we do? I had no idea, yet knew I had to find one. “What do you suggest?”

Tayle focused. “What’s this about the world ending?”

“It’s complicated,” I repeated. “I don’t properly understand the concept, but I know it’s authentic.”

“Try me.”

“It’s a big magnetic bubble in space, heading for Earth. It’s been traveling between stars for a billion years, but now it will strike this region. When it hits, it will disrupt Earth’s magnetic field and let the sun’s rays through to scorch the surface. All surface life will end. We can’t see it because it’s invisible, and it has no mass. It’s just a flux in space. But it will wipe us out.”

“Like a sci-fi movie! Instead of a big meteor, an invisible menace. So how do we stop it?”

“We have to build a super magnetic repulser to fend it off. The aliens know the technology and will share it, once they have a responsive contact with machine-building humans. It can be done, if it is started in time.”

“Wow. I never even imagined such things before.”

“It’s the telepathy. It can do amazing things. I’m still finding them out. It put this big mass of technical knowledge in my mind, and I can put it in another mind. But it really needs a trained recipient.”

“I guess so. I know it’s true, because that’s part of what you’re sending me. But I also know that I’m understanding only a little part of it, because I don’t have the science or the math or the training. I could tell someone that there’s a big threat, but that’s about all, and they wouldn’t believe a child.”

“If I could get close to a machine-proficient human, I could send him the technical details. But first I have to reach him, then convince him. I’m not sure how to do that.”

“Neither am I. But maybe if we get to know each other better we can figure something out. I don’t think we can safely switch minds, but maybe we could piggy-back minds and get somewhere.”

Piggy-back. I did not know what a pig was, exactly, but got the meaning: one mind carrying the other. Tayle might be able to carry my mind to the right human person, and then I could dump the key information on him. It might work.

But first we had to get experience doing it. I thought the telepathy could accomplish it, but wasn’t sure. “Maybe we could take turns piggy-backing,” I said. “I could carry you down into the sea, so you’d know how it works, then you could carry me onto the land.”

Tayle clapped. “Great! Let’s do it!”

“But if we do, the one who is riding won’t be conscious of her own body during that time. That would not be safe.”

“I’ll lie down. We can try it for like, ten minutes and see how it works.”

“That may be feasible.”

Tayle went under the cover of the ship’s cabin where her father was working. “I gotta lie down a while, dad,” she said. “Okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed. “But if you’re not feeling well, we should go home.”

“I’m well. Just got some heavy thinking to do.” She lay on the narrow bunk. Ready, she thought, closing her eyes.

Then I extended my mind in the way the telepathy allowed. I took hold of Tayle’s mind and gently drew it in to mine. The girl, I sensed, now occupied what she thought of as a mental passenger seat. She could see, hear, and feel what I did, but did not control the body. This would be interesting.

“Wow!” Tayle repeated. “I’m a dolfin!”

I flipped my flukes and forged down below the surface. This was a guided tour. Would it accomplish its purpose?

Chapter Eleven

I gave her the ride of her life.

We dove deep, swimming rapidly over the ocean floor, skimming over barnacle-encrusted sunken vessels, and bursting through kelp that waved much like Tayle’s long hair.

Tayle’s laughter was infectious, and I was reminded of when I was a pup, and swimming with reckless abandon with my mother nearby. I remembered, in particular, diving deep for the first time. I had trailed behind my mother, as worry and concern quickly turned to awe and wonder. We went deeper and deeper, and despite the pressure I had felt inside my head, and despite the fact that I knew I must breathe soon, I knew that something magical had happened that day. Other than the deepest depths of the ocean, surely where no dolphin belonged, I realized at a young age that I could venture far and wide. I realized then that the ocean was my home, my playground. Even my thick hide kept out the icy water.

And so I gave Tayle that same experience. I breached the ocean, sucked a great lungful of air through my blowhole, and then dove down rapidly, kicking my tail furiously, as deeper I went. Deeper and deeper while Tayle squealed with delight inside my head, which was a very unusual experience, albeit one I was rapidly getting used to.

Before us was a slow moving shadow, one that I immediately recognized. Its wingspan looked similar to that of the sails atop the many boats docked near Tayle’s seaside home. The great creature paid us no mind as it literally glided through the depths, at peace and unconcerned.

It was a great manta ray, and he was, to my surprise, humming a gentle song: “The southern seas sing to me, the northern swells call to me, the eastern storms follow me, the western depths are my home.”

“He has a very nice voice,” said Tayle in my ear.

“I suppose he does,” I said.

The great manta ray’s sweeping wing strokes faltered a bit, and it ducked its flat head down to peer behind it. I could see its curved mouth quiver with what I thought might be confusion. “Who said that?”

“I did, sir,” I said. I hadn’t realized that my conversation with Tayle could be heard by anyone nearby as well. I had thought falsely the conversation had been only going on in my head. The giant squid, Levy, short for Leviathan, had also taught me how to focus my thoughts so others could not hear. I would have to be more careful.

“Well, how is it that a dolphin can speak to me?” asked the great manta ray.

“It is an alien communication device,” I said.

“Sounds alien to me,” said the manta ray. “Now where was I?”

“You were singing about the western depths,” I said.

“Yes, yes, right, right...the western depths are home to me...” sang the great flying beast as it sailed off into the ocean.

I banked hard right, and returned to the ship, knowing that I had pushed the length of our agreed time limit. Time was still something I was getting used to, as dolphins had no use for it. But it seemed important to Tayle, and I could feel her awareness of it. In this deeply connected state, what concerned her, seemed to concern me. And I suspected vice versa.

“You suspect correct,” giggled Tayle in my ear. “For some reason, I’m hungry for fish—raw fish! Eew!”

We both laughed as I cruised up below her ship. There, I paused and, as I had earlier drawn her mind toward mine, this time I withdrew it just as gently. This was all new to me, and surely to Tayle, and I suspected the more careful we were about it, the less problems we would have. Turns out we were both naturals. I sensed Tayle waking up in bed and sitting forward.

“Okay, Azael,” she said. “Your turn!”

Chapter Twelve

Tayle came to the side of the boat and looked down at me. “Come on in.”

Suddenly it seemed more complicated. She had ridden along with me; I had been in control. Now I would be leaving my body, something I had never really thought seriously of until now, let alone actually done. “First I need a safe place to wait, because I think my body will be unconscious,” I said. “I have not done this before.”

“Can you split your attention? When I’m walking to the dock I’m on auto-pilot. My feet do the work while I’m thinking of other things, but I’d know if I was about to bump into something.”

I considered. “Maybe I can do that,” I agreed. It was similar when I was cruising the sea; my body handled the swimming while my mind ranged elsewhere.

“Then you can stay right beside the boat. The sharks won’t come close to it; they know they’re not welcome. It should be safe enough.”

“It should be,” I agreed. I swam right up against the side of the boat. “Open your mind to mine, so I can enter and settle.”

Tayle did, and I leaped in a fashion, out of my body, out of the water, and into her head. It felt like landing in a thick bed of seaweed, only it wasn’t physical.

“Oh, I feel you!” Tayle exclaimed. “Like hugging you, only with my mind.”

“Yes, you are holding me now,” I agreed. “Piggy-back.”

“Can you see out of my eyes, the way I did with yours?”

I tried. “Yes. I see the deck.”

“I’ll walk around the boat.” Tayle did so, and I saw the view of it shifting as she walked, as if she were swimming. Swimming with no water.

“This is weird,” I said, using a term she liked.

“Maybe it’s like riding a horse, only closer.”

I picked up the image and feeling from her mind. “Close enough,” I agreed.

“Sorry I can’t do much, here on the boat. I wonder how you would like a roller coaster?”

I picked up that giddy concept too. “Not right now, please.”

She laughed. “So what else is there? I can’t give you the kind of tour you gave me.”

“This is enough. We can talk to your father. I am going to need his support, if I am to get in touch with a human leader.” Because I understood that she had no legal standing in her culture, while her father did. That was one of the differences between humans and dolphins: not just anyone could do some things.

Tayle nodded. “I guess so. I don’t know how well he has adjusted to your earlier contact. He’s been doing a lot of thinking.”

“Tell him I’m with you.”

“Okay,” she said doubtfully. “But you may have to jump back into the water in a hurry.”

Return to my body. I was peripherally aware of it, floating beside the boat, quietly breathing. “I can do that.”

She walked to the cabin, where the man sat with his tools. “Hey, dad, can we talk? I’ve got something big to tell you.”

“About the strange dolphin?”

“Yes. She’s with me now. In my head, I mean.”

He studied her. “So I wasn’t imagining things yesterday.”

“You weren’t,” Tayle agreed. “She’s a telepathic dolfin, and she needs to talk with you.”

He smiled. “And I think I need to talk with her. It’s that, or question my own sanity, after that voice I heard yesterday. I pondered overnight, and concluded that I’d rather verify a telepathic dolphin.”

He was coming to terms with it! But I did not try to contact him directly, after the way he had reacted yesterday. It was better going though Tayle. “She wants to tell you her story,” she said, responding to my thought.

“You’re sure she’s friendly? Not trying to lure you into some alien mind trap, like one of your junk movies?”

Tayle smiled. “Pretty sure, dad. We’re sharing minds. She just took me on a deep sea tour. We met a manta ray.”

“So if it’s insanity, we’re both suffering it.”

“A talking dolfin’s easier,” Tayle said, smiling.

“So what’s her story?”

“Well, it’s complicated to explain, dad. She—”

“Can she talk through you?”

“I guess.” Tayle turned to me, inwardly. “Can you?”

I tried. I activated her vocal chords. “Hello, Tayle’s sire.” I said slowly. I was not doing a perfect job, and the voice was significantly different from her natural one. I had to translate my thoughts into the human language, which was not a song or whistle. It was awkward. I couldn’t think in human.

“Er, hello dolphin,” he answered. “Who are you? I am Johnson Davis. Jon for short.”

“I am Azael, a dolphin.”

“So you say. And you are in, ah, my daughter’s mind but you are not pure imagination,” he said.

Did he believe it, or was he humoring his daughter? I touched his mind without interfering, and discovered extreme tension. The idea of insanity truly appalled him, but it was difficult to believe in a telepathic dolphin. He did value his sanity more, but was not at all sure he wasn’t going crazy.

That gave me the key. “I know how you feel, Jon,” I said carefully. “I felt that way when a giant squid spoke to me telepathically. I was afraid it wanted to eat me. But instead it gave me telepathy. Then I knew it was not hostile. I can share that telepathy with you, and then you will know that you’re not crazy.”

“A giant squid,” he repeated.

“It was surprised too. It had been contacted by aliens.”

“Aliens.”

“They are deep sea creatures. They can’t come to land themselves. So they sent the squid to me, with the telepathy, and it sent me to you. We have to reach your pod leader, because there is great danger to all of Earth.”

“That does it,” Jon said. “This is a grade Z movie, testing me to see how much bilge I’ll believe. We’re getting out of here.” And he jumped up and went to the motor controls.

I had thought we were making progress! Was it all about to be lost? What could I do to save the situation?

Chapter Thirteen

The engine rumbled to life.

I knew of such engines, as I’ve heard them throughout my life. My mother had taught me to be wary of the sound of approaching engines. For good reason! Their great nets had spread far and wide, catching anything and everything, including our fleeing pod. Hearing the sound now, and being so close to it, awakened old fears and anger...and hate.

Be calm, cautioned Tayle. He’s just my father. He would never hurt a dolfin. We are not commercial fisherman. He is just confused and, true to his nature, tends to run away from problems. He ran away from my mother years ago when things got rough.

Where is your mother now? I silently asked.

She’s passed, Azael.

This was a strange term, but accompanied with images of seeing her mother dying in a strange white room, surrounded by more man-made machines, I understood the concept.

We have that in common, I thought.

Tayle merely nodded, and I sensed within her that the loss of her mother was as fresh as the loss of my own. I gave her a mental squeeze and she returned it.

Meanwhile, the boat was moving, and I reached out to my idly floating dolphin self and kicked once, twice and moved away from the sharp propellers.

I considered our dilemma. Her father truly feared he was going insane, which I understood as losing one’s ability to think rationally. We didn’t worry about such things in the ocean. We worried about food. We worried about sharks. We worried about man. We didn’t worry about our minds.

My father likes to worry, thought Tayle to me now. He’s always worrying and pacing and seeing his doctors and taking medicine.

All of these were, of course, foreign concepts to me, but I quickly grasped their meaning—or tried to—based on the images and feelings and memories Tayle had of each word.

Apparently, there were other humans who treated other sick humans with something called medicine, something that appeared magical, at least in Tayle’s mind. Perhaps one of these medicine men, or doctors, was who I should seek.

But first things first, how to convince her father—one who was already prone to worry—that he wasn’t going insane? That a dolphin really was speaking through his daughter, and that he should not only trust us, but help us. Or help me to deliver the message I needed to deliver.

I pondered as the boat began moving toward the shore. I permitted my dolphin-self to follow safely a few lengths behind.

I saw the crux of the problem. Any attempt to prove that I was who I claimed that I was, would only further convince him that he was going crazy.

As the ship bounced over the choppy waves, wind whipped Tayle’s long hair, which fluttered around her face like so much seaweed. I still could not see the appeal of having such a long mane.

Tayle giggled. Hair is fun, silly. I can put a bow in it or make pig tails out of it. But my favorite is a ponytail. Anything that has to do with ponies are my favorite.

Point taken, I thought, although I was glad that dolphins did not have to deal with the mess.

I considered my options. We were heading toward shore, and somewhere on shore would be the pod leader, who would have the answer. Or, rather, who would have the ability to make the necessary decision. It was a big decision. Humanity was in for a surprise. We all were. There was not much time to waste. In fact, we were fast approaching a small wooden dock.

Yes, that’s our dock, thought Tayle. Our private dock. You would be safe there, perhaps even under it. No one would mess with you there or even see you.

I thought about that, and realized that now, better than later, would be ideal to forward this mission. I needed her father to come around.

I considered the idea of his medicine, and asked Tayle to explain them further.

They’re supposed help him relax, thought Tayle. At least, that’s what he always says.

And then it hit me. I could help him relax. In fact, I had direct access to his mind, much like the medicine.

Let’s go talk to your father again, I projected to Tayle.

Please don’t hurt him. He’s kind of messed up, but he’s all I have.

I won’t hurt him, I reassured her. I’m going to work with him much the same way his medicine works for him.

Dolphin medicine!

Something like that, I thought.

We soon stood next to him on the bridge, as Tayle thought of it. This was a strange room with many sparkling blinking machines. Why humans make everything so complicated, I would never know. As Tayle stood next to her father, he jumped a little, and then gave her a small smile and patted her head lovingly. He loved her, I sensed it from her and him. He was just, perhaps, a little frightened.

As we stood there, I reached gently toward his mind. Yes, good, he was calming down. He was telling himself over and over again that his daughter just had an overactive imagination. This seemed to be working for him, but it was not accurate. His daughter, of course, was not imagining me.

I reached deeper, beyond this first layer of thought, and reached a deeper layer within his mind. Here, I suggested to him that all was okay with him, that he was not going crazy, that there really were aliens in the deep, and there really was a looming threat to the earth.

When I had done all I could, I retreated out of his mind and back into Tayle’s own, and when the boat finally docked and after her father had properly secured it, and as my own gently swimming dolphin self glided safely under our feet to rest near some wooden pylon, her father turned to us and said, “So, you would like for me to take you to our pod leader?”

I spoke through Tayle. “Yes, sir.”

“Then let’s go.”

Chapter Fourteen

What did you do? Tayle asked me internally. He’s completely different.

I went deeper into his mind, I answered. I reassured his—I think you call it subconscious—his subconscious mind that this is legitimate and he’s not crazy.

But if you can do that, couldn’t you also convince him that purple fairies rule the world? That the Flying Spaghetti Monster is God?

I don’t think so, because the truth works better than a lie.

That’s good. She was reassured. She didn’t much like lies, necessary as they might be on occasion.

We got off the boat and walked along the dock to their house. Then to what I learned from her mind was their car: a kind of boat that moved on land. “Where are we going?” Tayle asked her father.

“Bill Norris’s office. He has the connections we need.”

“Gee.”

He smiled. “Don’t be impressed, kid. He’s just a two-bit politician like the rest of them, hungry for votes, money, and notoriety, in that order. But he has the connections we need, being a congressman. If Azael can persuade him the way she persuaded me, he’ll be a useful link.” He glanced at her. “But stay out of his reach, girl, you understand me?”

“He grabs girls?”

“Parts of them. Don’t say anything, just stay clear.”

“I will,” Tayle promised.

I understood more of that warning than she did. So human males could go after girl children, just as rogue dolphins or orcas did. Indeed, she should stay out of reach.

We got in the car, which was a sort of house with turning wheels, a thing I had never encountered before, but understood from Tayle’s mind. Tayle fastened what she knew to be a seat belt in the passenger seat, while her father took the driver’s seat. Then he did something, and the motor came to life.

I cringed, but handled it. It was no worse than the boat motor, and Tayle had no fear of it at all. The car moved out, maneuvered to reach the street, then went faster along it. In fact the trees and houses fairly zipped by on either side; this thing was zooming! Yet it left no wake in the road behind. It was a different kind of craft.

There was a red boat light ahead, and the car stopped. Then there was a green light, and the car moved forward again. It obeyed the commands of the lights! Was a colored light the ruler of the land?

No, silly! Tayle thought, laughing. The lights just direct traffic so cars don’t crash into each other at intersections.

I learned to do what she did: tune out the things outside the car. They were her father’s concern, not ours. I could not afford to get lost in incidental details. I needed to make the necessary connection, then return gratefully to the sea.

“Now Azael,” Jon said.

I used Tayle’s mouth to answer. “Yes.”

“First we need to get in to see Rep Norris. His secretary will block us. It’s her job to keep un-wealthy constituents away from him. Will you be able to persuade her to let us in?”

“I think so.”

“And once we’re in his presence, you can persuade him to listen? Because he’s going to be ten times as balky as I was, and he doesn’t much care about the health of the world the way we do. He’ll never believe about dolphins, aliens, or global threats just from the telling. Not unless there’s money in it. You’ll have to tweak his mind.”

So Jon understood what I had done with him, and accepted it. He was on our side. “I will try,” I agreed.

“Good girl.”

Once dad gets convinced, he stays convinced, Tayle thought.

But I knew that the representative would not have a daughter he loved to help persuade him. This could be a difficult case to make.

In due course we reached the office complex. Tayle and her father got out of the car and entered the building. Sure enough, there was a desk with a secretary, a forbidding woman, physically and mentally. She assessed his rough clothing and humble demeanor at a glance and knew he was not worth the representative’s time. “May I help you, sir?” she inquired, with no intention of helping him do anything but get quickly out of the office.

I didn’t fool with her. I reached into her mind and thought THIS GUY’S IMPORTANT. HE HAS MONEY. This was a concept I had picked up from Tayle: there were layers of importance in the human culture, and they all had to be properly navigated. Money was completely foreign to my experience, but magical here. Jon didn’t have much of it, so this was a lie that needed to be replaced with the truth as soon as possible.

Jon opened his mouth. But the secretary, subtly persuaded, was already buzzing the inner office. “Go right in,” she said, smiling superficially.

“Thank you.” Privately Jon was smiling, enjoying this. You’re good, dolphin, he thought to me.

I am drawing on Tayle’s mind for power, since my own host body is distant, I replied. I don’t know how far it will stretch.

Draw on my mind too, he suggested.

Thank you. I may have to.

Representative Bill Norris stood up from his chair behind his desk as we entered. “Always glad to meet a campaign contributor,” he said, shaking Jon’s hand. This was a sort of touching of flippers, a formal greeting humans did.

“Well, it’s not exactly that,” Jon said. “It’s more important.”

The man frowned. “Oh?” As if anything could be more important than votes and money, two aspects of the same currency.

“The world is in great danger.”

The frown deepened. This threat did not make the politician’s top ten. “Global warming, if it exists at all, is not my bailiwick.”

“Not that. This is more immediate.” Azael, he thought. Your turn.

I plunged in to the man’s mind, bypassing the first three layers, as votes, money and notoriety were not my concerns. Down under global warming and pollution, which he did not believe in, was something he did: a threat to his frequent yacht vacations with his very young and adoring mistress. He did not want bad weather on those dates; sea sickness was hell on sex. But would this tie in with the larger threat to the world? Because I needed to find an avenue in his mind from yacht weather to the deadly magnetic bubble, and I needed to do it fast, before I lost his attention. My powers of persuasion were weakening with distance and the involvement of other minds, so it had to make sense on his terms. Could I manage it?

Chapter Fifteen

I used all my focus to project an image of the earth’s destruction. It was, in fact, the same image that had been projected into my mind from Levy who, I suspected, received his image from the aliens themselves.

As I delivered the image, Norris blinked and sat up straight. He shook his head a few times, and then rubbed his eyes.

I sent him an image of the earth’s destruction, I told Jon.

Tayle father’s nodded, and said, “Are you okay, sir?”

“I’m, ah, not entirely sure.” The representative rubbed his head some more, as I sent further details of the earth’s destruction: human cities collapsing, mountains crumbling, oceans burning.

Now Norris turned pale and reached for a steaming mug of something liquid—coffee, according to Tayle. He drank, and set it down a little too hard. Brown liquid splashed up and scalded his hand. Apparently coffee was hot. He yelped and shook his hand.

“Is everything okay, sir?” asked Jon again.

“I...I need to lie down, I think.”

The representative was thinking he’d had too much of what he called alcohol last night, that he might have partied for a little too long with one of his female friends who was not his life mate. I wasn’t sure what partied was, but it certainly wasn’t what Tayle considered a party. The man’s idea of partying involved a lot of this alcohol consumption, and frolicking with his female friend. He thought these images were hallucinations, which, I gathered, was a sort of daydream inspired by artificial means.

“You are not hallucinating, Mr. Norris,” I said through Tayle. “You were shown images of the earth’s destruction. These images are the same images that were shown to me. The threat is real, and we need your help. The earth, in fact, needs your help.”

Norris stared at Tayle/me. His face, I noted, had gone from clownfish red to coral white.

“What I need,” he said, “is a drink.”

His idea of “drink” was more of this alcohol. He reached inside his desk and pulled open a drawer. As he did so, I noted with some interest that human words were coming faster to me, as my mind-link with Tayle grew more comfortable. I was able to quickly summon words and meanings from her mind. And it was more than just terms and definitions; I was able, through Tayle’s observation, to grasp what he was doing.

Within his “desk” there were several “drawers”. Such desks and drawers were there for convenience sake, to store things of value or out of necessity. I also understood from Tayle that the bigger the desk, the more important the man. The representative’s desk was quite large and polished. This denoted he was an important man. Tayle was familiar with desks, as she used them in her school learning, which I grasped immediately from her mind. But she was unaware of what was in the man’s drawers.

I, however, was aware. As Norris reached inside his desk, I knew he was looking for more of this alcohol, something that he considered a quick fix to his hallucination problem.

I said through Tayle, “Alcohol is not your answer, Mr. Norris. I would suggest you leave the flask in the drawer and listen to what I have to say.”

The representative stared at Tayle, and what color remained in his face seemed to have left it completely.

“How did you know about that, young lady?” he asked.

“Because I’m not a young lady. Or, rather, I’m not a young human lady.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Amazingly, some of the color was returning to his face. Pink appeared in his cheeks. Boy, human faces were so expressive!

I thought it would be better to show him, then try to explain through Tayle. After all, I was almost at the far limit of my telepathic reach.

I impressed upon Norris the image of the giant squid, and relayed to him the leviathan’s message to me. I next sent him a mental picture of Tayle and myself coming together and sharing bodies.

When I was done, wondering just how much of my message had been transmitted and received, Norris looked at Tayle and her father, nodded once, and said, “You’re telepathic.”

“Yes.”

“A telepathic dolphin?”

“In a way. I’m telepathic only with the help of alien technology.”

“Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

“I do,” I said. “Do you doubt your sanity?”

“No. At least, not yet.”

I reached into his mind again. No, he didn’t doubt his sanity, but he was still wondering if this might be all an alcohol-induced dream. A part of his mind suspected he was out on his ship somewhere, dreaming all of this.

Again, how could I convince him that wasn’t a dream?

I had an idea, and asked Tayle to accommodate. She shrugged, walked around the desk. The representative watched her, perplexed, until she reached out and took some of the skin along his hairy forearms, and pinched hard.

“Ouch!”

Tayle gave him a sweet smile, and said in her own voice, “You see, Mr. Norris. You’re not dreaming.”

She came back around and stood next to her father while Norris rubbed his arm. He turned his confused eyes onto me. “And you’re really a telepathic dolphin?”

“Yes,” I said through Tayle.

“What am I thinking now?”

“About your yacht. You wish you were there now.”

His mouth dropped open. “And the earth is in great danger?”

“Yes,” I said. “You will lose more than just your precious yacht. But there is hope. We need your help, and others like you.”

“I see,” he said. “Hold on.”

Norris got up and crossed the room. As he did so, I reached into his mind, but it was a chaotic mess of confusion. And soon, he was out of my range.

Tayle’s father looked down at her, patted her shoulder, and said, “We did the right thing. He’s a good man, at heart. He’ll find us help.”

Behind us, the office door banged open, and I heard Norris shout, “There they are, officer. Arrest them!”

Chapter Sixteen

And there was what the humans called a policeman, a minion of their law. What had Norris told him, to make him think that Tayle and her father should be arrested? It couldn’t be the truth.

But Tayle’s father, Jon Davis, was ahead of Tayle and me in this respect. He had evidently encountered the police before. “Officer, what is the charge?” he demanded as the policeman approached.

“Trespassing and threatening the Representative, in his own office,” the policeman said. “You and the child both. I’ll have to take you in.”

“We came as constituents, and he agreed to see us,” Davis said evenly. “Suddenly that’s trespassing? You have to do better than that.”

The policeman hesitated. I took advantage of the opportunity to read his mind. It was the secretary who had called him, when she realized that we had somehow gotten past her, and Norris saw him arriving and made the wild charge.

“Well, you two come on down to the station and we’ll sort it out,” the policeman said, slightly flustered.

“Coming to meet our representative is an arresting offense?” Jon demanded.

“No. Barging in and threatening him is.”

I reached into the policeman’s mind and touched a lower layer. THAT’S A LIE.

The policeman thought it was his own thought. He turned to Norris. “Are you sure about this, sir? It doesn’t make much sense to me.”

Meanwhile I checked the mind of the secretary, who had really started this. She had gotten suspicious when my imperative to her faded, and realized that she had been somehow duped. Her mindset was similar to that of her employer, so she had called the police. It was easier to make a wild charge than to acknowledge possible error on her own part. These humans were more complicated and more devious than dolphins!

“Of course I’m sure!” Norris blustered. “The girl physically attacked me!”

He meant that pinch. Tayle put on her most innocent little-girl look. “Me?”

Now the policeman was thoroughly uncertain. Norris did have a certain reputation. So he did what came naturally in that situation. “I don’t think there’s a case here, so I’m letting you all off with a warning. The two of you get out of here.” He turned and departed.

Jon and Tayle followed him out, realizing that nothing remained here for them.

But I was still exploring the mind of the secretary. There was something in that complex tapestry of personal threads that related to the sea. I traced it down, and discovered that there was a top government official, someone who really could investigate a threat to the world, without having to face any voters. He was in the secretary’s mind because he was vacationing in the area, and the Representative’s office tracked everyone who was anyone who came within range. He was going scuba diving. Diving! I fished around and caught his name: Brad Beamis.

But the secretary was also reacting to the departure of the policeman and fugitives, as she saw them. “You have to arrest them!” she said angrily. “They barged in here with this weird story and threatened Rep Norris! They can’t just disappear!”

The two of them left the office, but the policeman was caught. “Now ma’am—” he was saying as the door closed between them.

“We’d better get away from here,” Jon said. “That bitch’s going to trump up more charges. Good thing we never gave our names.”

We went quickly to the car and drove away, becoming like a fish in the river of cars that flowed along the street. But I was watching the minds of Norris and the secretary, and they were ganging up on the policeman, persuading him to pursue us and arrest us after all. He was wavering, as the Representative had political clout. He was a kind of piranha among prey fish.

“They will follow us,” I said through Tayle’s mouth.

“And get our license tag number,” Jon said grimly. “Damn!”

Indeed, the policeman’s car was starting up. There were now several other cars between it and us, but it turned on a wailing siren and cleared them back. It was like a whale stunning its deep-sea prey with sonics, something I understood. “Take evasive action!” I said tersely.

Jon did, but there was only so much he could do in traffic, locked in the midst of tightly packed fish-like cars, and the predatory police car was bearing down on us. In a moment the policeman would be able to see our tag. “Can you divert him?” he asked. “Make him chase the wrong car?”

Ah. The car beside us was of a similar color and size. It was just turning off onto an intersecting street river. THAT ONE I projected to the policeman’s mind.

The police car turned off, pursuing the other car, siren sounding, getting its tag number.

“We make a good team!” Tayle said as we turned off onto a different street, becoming lost amidst its own school of cars. The police car would never find us. But what a disaster that visit to the Representative had been!

Then I shared the information I had gleaned from the secretary’s mind. “Brad Beamis,” I told Jon via Tayle’s voice. “High official, scuba diving near an offshore island with his girlfriend, Heidi Green. I can swim to them directly when they’re in the water, and talk to them with far more authority at close range.”

Jon smiled. “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody some good. We can sail to that island. I will do some spot research on the internet and get the address.”

“Thanks, dad,” Tayle said.

He reached across to tousle her hair, and I felt the good feeling between them. “Anything for you, kid. And I don’t mind if we save the world on the side.”

We reached their home, and I returned to my own host body at last, under the dock. I needed to rest a while in my own more comfortable environment; this out-of-water excursion had been mentally wearing. I knew that Tayle and Jon needed time for themselves also; they did have lives of their own. But we agreed to connect again in the morning.

Chapter Seventeen

I was alone again.

Clouds filled the night sky, blotting out the moon and stars, as I swam absently, flicking my tail and flukes. I was hungry but not in the mood for seeking out food. I was troubled by the cries of the creatures I ate. When hunger grew to be too great, I would feed on them again, and do my best to block out their panicked chatter.

As hunger gnawed at me, and as I listened to the distant hum of countless plankton—a hum that sounded more like a long, continuous, sad song, a song that I could hear now thanks to the alien device within me—I heard something else. Something much closer.

It was another voice singing, a voice that wasn’t being translated through the alien device. No, I could understand the voice clearly.

It was another dolphin.

I held my breath, closing my blowhole tightly, and remained motionless, floating on the surface. Was it another pod? Was I about to be chased off again by the aggressive males?

I didn’t know, but one thing was certain: the voice wasn’t female.

It drew closer, and the words reached me now, clearly:

“’Tis a vast sea, that calls to me,

To distant shores and cold harbors.

’Tis a vast sea, that swallows me.

Into its depths with sunken ships.”

I remained motionless on the surface, and soon saw the spray of what appeared to be a lone dolphin. The spray glowed briefly white, then dispersed, as the dolphin dove below the silent sea. He was, I noted, on a direct path to me. I also suspected, he wasn’t paying much attention to where he was going.

“I always pay attention to where I’m going and I spotted you a mile away.”

Oops, I had forgotten he could hear my thoughts. Evidently, he had been unaware that I had “thought” those words and not actually spoken them.

He was bigger than myself. Long, white scars crisscrossed his back. He saw me looking at his scars, and heard my questioning thoughts, although I had yet to speak a word.

“A fisherman’s net. I was able to bite my way free. The others in my pod were not so lucky.”

“Those nets are strong,” I said, recalling my own attempt to free my mother.

“I was lucky, I guess,” he said, “There was a tear near me, and I was able to work it free, cutting myself badly in the process. One other escaped with me, a childhood friend. He died of blood loss from his own wounds.”

I noted the deep bite wounds along his back.

“I got lucky again,” he said, hearing my thoughts again. “The sharks came in droves. I was able to fight them off me and my friend, but one of them got a lucky bite in. He paid for it later, though. I drove my nose hard enough into his belly for him to cough blood. They finally went away, and my friend died in peace.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and looked again at the young dolphin before me, impressed. He was surely no older than me, but I couldn’t help but be amazed by his story. He fought off sharks?

“They are not so tough,” he said, reading my mind again. “You just have to stay away from their teeth. They’re kind of dumb, actually. What’s your name?”

“Azael.”

“That’s a nice name. I’m Hrump.”

“Your name is hard to say,” I said.

“That’s okay,” said Hrump. “Once you learn it, you’ll never forget it. Say, are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s your pod?”

For an answer, I gave him a peek at my own mother dying in similar nets, and as I did so, Hrump began circling me slowly.

“You didn’t say a word,” he said.

“No.”

“But I saw the images. In my mind. But they were not my images. They were your images.”

“Yes,” I said, and showed him more. I showed him Levy. I showed him the pictures of the earth’s demise. I showed him of our adventures the day before, driving in the metal boxes.

Hrump stopped swimming and looked at me long and hard. “That is some wild story.”

“I’m afraid it’s only going to get wilder.”

“You need help,” he said. “And I need a pod.”

“I’m hardly a pod. It’s just me.”

Hrump gave me a look and slapped me lightly with his tail. “It’s a start,” he said. “Say, are you hungry?”

Boy was I.

He read my mind, and kicked his tail, diving down fast. “Then follow me,” he called up to me. “I happen to be an expert hunter.”

I circled the surface, once, twice, grinned to myself, then dove down after him.

Chapter Eighteen

We found a school of sardines and eagerly snapped them up. But I did not gorge; I ate only what I needed to sustain me.

“You lack appetite?” Hrump inquired as we glided back toward the surface.

“I hear their anguish,” I explained. “I don’t like inflicting such pain on them.”

“That’s another side of this telepathy you acquired?”

“Yes. It changes me.”

“Maybe you can learn to turn it off.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. “But I’d still know how prey species can feel and hurt.”

“Your life is more complicated than I realized.”

“It became complicated two days ago. If you don’t want your life complicated similarly, you should swim on now, because I’m committed.”

He considered as we reached the surface and breathed fresh air. “It wasn’t coincidence that I found you, Azael. I got news of another lone dolphin in this area, an immature female, somehow escaping sharks and an orca without fighting them, and I was curious. I don’t like being alone, but no pod will take me. A lone dolphin is better than none. So I looked for you, and finally found you. In time we might mature and begin to form our own pod. But I did not know about the telepathy.”

“I don’t like being alone either,” I agreed. “But when I met the giant squid, and got the telepathy, I just had to try to do what I can to save the world. So I can’t play with you, or even swim with you very long, because when daylight comes I must meet with my human girl and try to persuade a human diver of the danger. If you want to associate with me, I would like that, but you will have to help me.”

“And if I swim away, and you fail in your mission, and the world ends, what then of me?”

I almost laughed. “If the world ends, you will have more to worry about than one girl dolphin.”

“I mean if I knew the world might have been saved, had I helped. So my choice may be between helping and maybe not succeeding, and dying anyway if I don’t try.”

“It may be,” I agreed. “Not that anyone is forcing you. You surely have other things to do, sharks to fight, entertainments to pursue, fish to eat.”

He washed that off. “How may I help?”

“You’re serious? I think you would have to get a communicator similar to mine. Then you’d have trouble eating fish, and would have to associate with humans, and maybe share your body with one, or join a human to go on land. That might not be fun.”

“I understand. How do I get a communicator?”

“We’d have to go see Levy, the giant squid.”

“Big squids are dangerous! Let one get a sucker on you, and you’re in a fight for your life. You have to bite off the tentacle if you can, before others latch on and it eats you.”

“This one’s not hungry for dolphin meat.”

“It’s still a huge act of trust.”

I had little patience with his doubt. “So maybe you’d better swim away now.”

“Let’s go,” he said, and dived again, this time swimming toward the deep trench.

I followed, pleased. I had rather feared he would balk.

We entered the trench and I broadcast a mental call. The huge squid came up to meet us. “I brought someone to help,” I said. “He needs a communicator. Then we’ll try again to contact the humans.” I flashed the disaster of yesterday.

“Here,” the squid thought, holding out another packet.

Hrump swam up to take it. He knew about swallowing it, from my mind.

“Time is short,” Levy warned us.

“We’ll do our best,” Hrump replied.

Levy sank back into more comfortable depth, and we swam up to a more comfortable depth. “See, he didn’t eat you,” I said somewhat smugly.

“This is amazing!” Hrump said. “I hear mental voices all around.”

“It’s constant,” I agreed. “You have to learn to tune out most of them, so as to be able to focus on the ones you want.”

“This is a challenge.”

“It is.”

“Can you help me?”

“Like this,” I said, projecting the damping mood I had worked out. “It doesn’t do the whole job, but it helps.”

“It does,” he agreed, trying it. “But I suspect I will go hungry for a while, until I am inured to the pain of the prey.”

We shared the mental experience, so that he could gain proficiency. He picked up on it quickly, but there was a lot of detail to work out. The time seemed brief, and then I saw it was light, and knew that dawn had come while we communed.

And there were the mental traces of Tayle and Jon coming out to the boat. It was time for introductions. “Tayle!” I thought. “I have another dolphin to help.”

“Another dolfin! Great!”

The two of them stood on the dock and gazed down at the two of us in the water. “I am Hrump, a young male. I have a communicator too. I want to help save the world.”

“We can use all the help we can get,” Jon said. “Tag along as we boat out to the island.”

They got in the boat and Jon started the motor. The craft nosed out, then picked up speed. We swam on either side, pacing it, staying in mental touch. Jon talked with Hrump, updating him further; it seemed they were more comfortable male to male.

In due course we reached the island. Jon cut the motor, in effect parking the boat a polite distance away. Time to get ready for action.

“Now how do we do this?” Tayle asked. “Do we swim out with you?”

“We can’t begin to match the pace of the dolphins,” Jon said.

“You can ride mentally with us, while leaving your bodies safe on the boat,” I said. “Tayle, you can ride with me, and Jon can ride with Hrump if he wants to.”

“Sure,” Jon said. “I want to find out what it’s like, after what Tayle told me.”

I reached forth and took in Tayle’s mind. Hrump picked up my technique, and did the same with Jon’s mind. Then Hrump and I swam on toward the beach of the house whose address Jon had researched, talking with our passengers.

Then we picked up the minds of two people scuba diving. Brad Beamis and Heidi Green! Now we could make our case. Assuming they would listen to two “talking” dolphins better than the politician Norris had.

Suddenly I was very glad to have telepathic company of my own kind, as well as the presence of the two humans. Maybe they could help me avoid the pitfalls of such a dialogue.

There they were, exploring for shells on the sea floor: two humans with goggles, mouthpieces, air tanks, and fins on their feet, trailing bursts of bubbles. The two we’d come to contact, a healthy man and a slender woman. They looked up alertly as we approached, wondering why dolphins were swimming toward them. They would wonder even more when we projected our thoughts to them.

Chapter Nineteen

The next few hours were a blur of miscommunication, confusion, fear, anger, hostility and, ultimately, understanding and acceptance.

The two divers now sat across from us on their large vessel as the sun shone directly overhead. It was mid-day, and we had spent the better part of it trying desperately to communicate the gravity of the situation. We had ultimately succeeded in doing so, which left most of us spent and hungry.

The two divers were scientists. They also had frozen fish on hand, which they tossed to Hrump and me. My new dolphin friend and I briefly inhabited our bodies long enough to gulp down the cold morsels, relishing the fact that we did not have to listen to their cries. Once done, we sat with the others again, in the tiny cabin, inhabiting our respective hosts.

There was a lot to discuss.

Now, as the others ate what they call “sandwiches,” and drank soda, the broad-shouldered male scientist, whose name was Brad, said, “My fiance and I work together at Cal Tech.” I didn’t know what Cal Tech was, but I needed only to reach inside Brad’s mind to quickly understand that this was an institution for advanced science. Yes, we surely stumbled upon the correct people. Turned out, we didn’t stumble upon them at all. Brad explained further. “We were both due a vacation and had been trying to decide where to scuba dive.”

“And you chose here? We’re hardly known as a diving destination, what, with our mostly-dead coral reefs,” said Jon, munching his sandwich hungrily. I would have munched it, too. It looked very tasty.

I’ll make you one, silly, thought Tayle, who, of course, sensed my every thought, especially now that we were linked.

That sounded very nice to me, but I impressed on her later. I needed to hear this.

“True,” said Brad, oblivious to the minor exchange I’d been having with Tayle. “I wouldn’t have normally chosen this site, except that I’d been dreaming of it.”

Jon choked on his sandwich and Tayle quickly handed him more of the bubbly soda. Jon gulped it quickly, cleared his throat, recovered his speech, and said, “You dreamed of coming here?”

“Yes.”

“And you acted on this dream?”

Brad might have reddened a little with his expressive human face. As he did so, his “fiance” laughed lightly. Fiance, I’d come to learn, was a designation used for one who intended to mate for life with another. I couldn’t help but to think of Hrump and his suggestion to form our own pod. Had he intended to mate with me for life?

Heidi, Brad’s fiance, said, “I was against the idea. I thought it was foolishness. We are scientists after all. We work with numbers and hard evidence. We do not base decisions on dreams.”

“But you came anyway.”

Heidi shrugged, sipped her own soda. “He was adamant.”

“The dreams were persistent,” said Brad.

“And what were these dreams?” asked Tayle.

The scientist turned and looked at the girl. “A good question. I dreamed of deep trenches. I dreamed of giant squids...and of dolphins. Mostly, I dreamed that I should be here for an important reason.”

Jon looked at me, and as he spoke, I knew it was Hrump speaking through him, as Jon’s voice was monotone and slightly awkward. “Do you think the aliens reached out to him?”

“Maybe,” I said through Tayle. My own words sounded much more natural through Tayle, as the young girl and I had grown accustomed to this manner of communication. “Something had reached out to him.”

“I have a hard time believing that an alien intelligence sought me out, found me, and then invaded my dreams.”

“But you have an easier time believing that dolphins are speaking to you through humans?” Earlier, through much demonstration, we had shown Brad and Heidi that, yes, they were indeed speaking to dolphins and that, yes, this was really happening and they weren’t dreaming.

Brad shrugged. “Honestly, at this point, anything could be possible.”

Now Jon spoke up, the real Jon. “Accepting the possibility that the aliens perhaps sought and found the correct scientists to help us, why would they not impress upon him all the information he needed?”

I had an answer to that, as I myself had recently reached the limits to my own telepathic ability. “They can only reach so far. And, I suspect, the kind of information they can give is limited. Rather then detailed information, the best they could have hoped for was a subtle approach through dreams.”

“But how did they find them?” asked Hrump through Jon.

“I suspect I know how,” said Brad. He stood and walked over to the window and looked at the glittering sea. He spoke with his back to us. “Heidi and I are part of a team of scientists who have been tracking this pulse from space.”

“So you know about it!” This was Tayle, not me.

Brad and Heidi, I suspected, probably didn’t know when I was speaking or when Tayle was speaking. Ultimately, it didn’t matter.

“Yes,” said Heidi. “But we couldn’t calculate when it would arrive or what danger it would pose. Now we understand the magnitude of the situation.”

“Perhaps they tried to reach other scientists, but could only get through to Brad,” I suggested.

“I think so,” said Brad, turning to us. “Well, we’re here, and we’ve seen, thanks to your telepathy, the impact this pulse will have. I’ve also seen, through your telepathy, what we need to build to save our planet. Except there’s one problem.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

He looked directly at me. “The information you’ve given us is incomplete.”

“How can that be?” asked Jon.

“Perhaps something was lost,” suggested Heidi. “From the alien mind, to the giant squid, to Azael, and then finally us...something got lost in translation.”

Brad nodded. “I understand what they want us to build, and we even have the technology at Cal Tech, but there’s something missing.”

“What?” I asked.

But Heidi answered for me. “The power source.”

“Yes,” said Brad. “We don’t have anything near strong enough to power want they want us to build.”

“What do we do?” asked Jon. His own sandwich was now forgotten in front of him.

“Well, I think the answer is obvious,” said Brad, giving us a half smile. “We need to speak to the aliens directly.”

“But we can’t swim that far down,” said Hrump through Jon. “I tried. My head nearly imploded.”

“Well, we don’t want your head to implode,” said Heidi. “I think what Brad is alluding to is that we need to go down, too.”

“Humans?” I said. “Into the trench? But how?”

“We have a friend,” said Brad. “A famous movie director who has his own deep sea manned sub. We can fit three in there comfortably. And, as luck would have it, he’s filming an undersea documentary nearby.”

“Perhaps it’s not luck at all,” suggested Jon. “Perhaps the aliens had something to do with that, too.”

“Perhaps,” said Brad. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

Chapter Twenty

I wasn’t satisfied. Something was bothering me, and finally it came to the surface. “I don’t think we can do it.”

The three other human bodies looked at ours, and Tayle herself was confused. “Why, Azael?” Heidi asked, showing that she knew which of us was speaking.

“Because in the mass of information they gave me there was something I only picked up on now, when we realized we would have to meet the aliens more directly. They’re not here, exactly. They’re in a deep trench.”

“Off the Patton Escarpment, west of the California coast,” Brad said. He knew about the undersea landscape.

“No. That’s just a—a life-ship, sent to get closer to you at Tech Cal,” I said. “Specially engineered to withstand the lesser pressure of the surface water. All it contains is a—a metal device.”

“A robot mechanism,” Brad said.

“Yes. A Row Bot.” But that wasn’t it. The concept was of an intelligent machine, like a boat or car, but more sophisticated. Robot. “With the telepathy to reach out and project to the nearest sapient or near-sapient creatures. That’s how the squid was contacted; it swam close to investigate, and got the message and the telepathy packs. The aliens see through the—the robot’s eyes, and receive its thoughts, but they aren’t here.”

Brad nodded. “They’re in one of the really deep trenches. The Mariana or Puerto Rico. Neither of which is close by here.”

“Yes, the Mariana Trench,” I agreed, relieved that he understood what I barely grasped. “This little local trench is just for the robot.”

“But they are in touch with the robot,” Brad said. “So if we descend to it, bypassing the squid, we’ll have contact that much more direct. That may suffice.”

“Maybe,” I agreed uncertainly.

“The alternative is to commission a mission to fly the six of us—four humans and two dolphins—plus my friend’s deep sea sub—to the alien mother ship. More than six thousand miles west, near the Philippines. That would be cumbersome and expensive at best.”

“But if it’s really the end of the world we face,” Heidi said, “expense is no object, is it?”

“We’d have to wrestle with the government bureaucracy. I’m a consultant rather than an official; it would be a months-long hassle.”

“Unless we cut out the middleman and go directly to the president. With the telepathy.”

“Can’t do it,” Brad said. “Azael and Jon had the right idea, trying to use the political chain of command, and look where it got them.”

“Well, Norris is a turd,” she said.

“The political scene is lined with turds.”

“So it is,” she agreed with resignation.

“Anyway, the nature of the threat is too complicated for any politician to comprehend. Even with direct telepathic access to the president, it would be a tough sell.”

“The end of the world can’t be that complicated,” she protested. “if we can understand it, the president can.”

“We don’t understand it. That’s part of the problem. We need to get closer contact with the aliens for that, and we’re still wrestling with that aspect.”

“What do you mean, we don’t understand it? It’s a magnetic storm.”

“Which few if any Earth scientists really understand. We need a far clearer picture before we take it further.”

“What is so damned difficult about it?” Jon asked.

Brad sighed. “Very well, I’ll try. If we here can’t get it, we aren’t going to be able to sell anyone else on it, regardless of urgency or alien contact. But I’ll have to provide some background.”

“Sure,” Jon said, and Heidi nodded.

“Historically, there are precedents,” Brad said, sounding like a college professor, according to Tayle’s thought. “Back in AD 775, the European dark age, the skies lit up with seeming glowing serpents. Nothing else seemed to happen, and there’s no direct trace of it today except in things like the tree rings record. That showed that a supremely powerful blast of radiation struck our atmosphere from space; there was a remarkable spike in carbon-14 levels. So it did no real harm to the world then, but it’s a warning, because if something similar happened today, with our highly developed technology, satellites would fry, power stations would melt, the internet would shut down, and we’d lose power and communications for years. In fact we might never bounce back from the resulting chaos. And we do face this today, perhaps not from the same source.”

“But what was it?” Heidi asked.

“That’s what we don’t know. There’s no earthly source strong enough, by a hundredfold; it had to come from space. Only something like a nova next door could generate such intense radiation, and there was none. Our best guess is that it resulted from a coronal mass ejection—we abbreviate it CME—wherein a billion tons of the sun’s atmosphere got hurled into space, and Earth happened to be in its path. What caused the CME? Maybe a meteor grazing the surface of the sun; we don’t know, and we can’t reliably predict such an event. It’s hard enough to track meteors that might impact the Earth, and the sun is a far more likely target. In addition, no two CMEs are the same; they vary widely in nature. Now this threat the aliens warn of isn’t even exactly that, but the effect would be similar.”

Heidi nodded. “I think I could comprehend that if I worked on it. You?” She looked at Jon and Tayle.

Both shook their heads, and Hrump and I agreed. Nova? A billion tons of solar atmosphere? A hundredfold intense radiation? I did not know what those were, but I felt their menace. This was mind-stretching stuff that surely made sense to a scientist, but was beyond us.

So I focused on the problem I could understand. “So let’s go talk to the squid, and maybe the robot will know how to get enough power to build the machine that will keep that deadly radiation bubble away. Then at least we’ll have the answer, even if we don’t properly understand the question.”

Brad nodded. “Let’s hope so.”

Chapter Twenty-one

The film director just might have been insane. His name was Kevin Dupree.

After our arrival to his vast research ship, a ship that Kevin’s film company had chartered (yes, so many new terms and ideas for a simple dolphin...yet concepts I could understand well enough thanks to the aid of those humans around me), I reached out to the director’s brain—and was surprised by what I discovered there.

It was incredibly fast, bouncing around from idea to idea. The director, I saw quickly enough, was a different kind of genius, far removed from the analytical brains of the scientists, whose brains I had more closely identified with. The director was a different story; thoughts coursed through his mind rapidly, wildly, imaginatively. He was an artist, I soon learned, an artist who used movie pictures to tell his story.

Yes, so many wonderful new concepts.

Most importantly, his was an open mind.

He, too, had been contacted in his dreams. He, too, had dreamed of trenches and aliens and the end of the world. Yes, he, too, felt compelled to be here now, in this remote sea, to film his next movie.

The aliens, I was discovering, were serious about getting help. As they should be. The whole world needed to take this seriously, if what was coming was really coming.

The ship itself seemed like a floating world, complete with rooms and hallways and a food preparation room, and so many electronic devices. The ship, I understood, was generally designed for deep sea research and salvage. That is, investigating the shipwrecks that I’d often come across on my lone journeys. The director had a full crew to help film a science fiction movie about, of all things, deep sea aliens.

Yes, this threw us all for a loop (which was, of course, a saying Tayle often used).

After a surprisingly short time informing the eccentric director (that was a word the scientists used to refer to their friend), we soon came upon a plan.

As a storm approached, and as the ship rocked and heaved—and as some crew members vomited over the sides—we decided that the three deep-sea divers would be the director and the two scientists.

Tayle didn’t like it, although I sensed Jon’s relief. He didn’t like the idea of being inside a cramped submarine deep beneath the ocean.

Heidi didn’t much like the idea of me riding piggy-back alongside her own mind, as we journeyed to the alien craft deep beneath the ocean surface, but knew she would need my telepathic guidance to help communicate with not only Levy, the giant squid, but the alien craft itself.

“It’ll be okay,” I said to her as we prepared for the journey. “I’m not so bad.”

“You have picked up American idiom rather well, Azael. I am most impressed.”

“Dolphins, as many of you scientists know, are not so far behind you humans. We use our intelligence to enjoy the freedom of the open sea, and explore our world, rather than wage war and hurt others.”

“A good use of intelligence, Azael.”

“Also,” I added, “I suspect the alien device within me goes a bit further than just helping me to communicate through telepathy. It also helps me quickly understand foreign words and concepts.”

“It helps you think like a human,” said Heidi. We were standing in a bay that housed the narrow submarine, which swung above us gently from cables.

“Yes,” I said, “Or to communicate quickly and efficiently with whatever creature I’m engaging, be it human or sea creature.”

“These aliens are advanced indeed,” she said. “I would like to speak with them.”

“We can satisfy our scientific curiosity later,” said Brad, coming over to us. “For now, we have a world to save.”

“I want to come, too,” said Tayle, frowning. I felt her frown, because I was inside her.

“Our job is done, Tayle,” said Jon, reaching out and gripping her shoulder. “We did what we could. It’s time to pass the baton to the others.”

“What’s a baton?” asked Tayle. But the moment she said the word, I sensed what it was, a small stick used to pass along in running games. How did I know this? Tayle surely didn’t know it. I suspected I was picking up latent information from Jon, as well, and perhaps the others.

Behind us, the director, Kevin, was quickly going over the submarine, inspecting it with his mechanics and engineers, prepping it for the long dive. It had already been decided that Hrump and I would go down, too, piggy-backing alongside Heidi and Brad. Brad, for his part, seemed excited by the prospect of entertaining a dolphin intelligence.

“I will be back soon,” I thought to Tayle.

“And we can play in the lagoon by my house?” she asked.

“Always,” I thought, and considered the fact that she, and her father, were a kind of pod to me.

“We call it family,” said Tayle, and she gave me a mental squeeze, one of her deep hugs.

“Okay, folks,” said Kevin, clapping his hands and looking at us each in turn, wildly, I might add. “The sub is ready. We’ve got an alien to meet—and a world to save!”

Yes, he was definitely crazy!

But I liked him.

Chapter Twenty-two

I leaped out of Tayle’s mind and into Heidi’s.

The female scientist jerked a little, gasped, stumbled a little, and then righted herself.

“Okay, that feels weird,” she said.

Are you okay? I telepathically asked her.

I think so, she thought back to me.

It’s not so bad is it?

I feel a little dizzy, Azael.

I reached out with my own mind and put hers at ease. Soon, she was calming down and feeling less dizzy. That was a good thing. When she was dizzy—I was dizzy! Also, I was getting very good at connecting and working with humans. Yes, this alien device was something special. I could not imagine what awaited us beneath the deep.

When Hrump was comfortably connected with Brad, we all watched in fascination as the experienced crew used cranes and cables and a lot of careful handling to guide the Triton submersible from the hangar and then over the ship’s side and down into the water. Nearby, both mine and Hrump’s inert dolphin forms would be watched carefully by the crew...and by Tayle herself.

Once the submersible splashed down, the center latch on top was opened and the three of us slipped inside. Kevin and Brad sat in the front, and I sat in the back with Heidi. Or rather, she sat in the back and I tagged along inside her.

Above, the crew carefully sealed us in, and the submersible powered on. Kevin the director, who was also an expert submersible pilot, scanned the dashboard in front of him, checking on this and that, twisting knobs and flicking switches.

The lengths that humans must go to, to do what dolphins do naturally must amuse you, thought Heidi.

It would, perhaps, if the world’s fate wasn’t on the line.

Heidi nodded and gripped the arm rest next to her as the submersible lurched forward...and angled down.

“And away we go,” said the director excitedly, clapping his hands for emphasis. I noted that the submersible was equipped with deep sea cameras, cameras he would use to document this trip, and to document our contact with the alien craft. I wondered how wise that was, and suspected the aliens would not appreciate being documented. We would see how that played out.

Now the vessel dipped below the lapping waves and down a few feet. Heidi gasped a little. She was nervous about going so deep in a man-made vessel. A part of her worried that the machine might not hold up, especially when confronting the alien craft. The truth was, no one knew that answer. In this regard, we were explorers together. Either way, I touched her mind again, easing her fears.

The submersible went deeper and deeper.

I was used to the sights surrounding us: the schools of mackerel and smaller squid, the lone blue shark looking like trouble (I hoped he stayed far away from the research vessel), and curious and colorful fish who approached the vessel, whispering to themselves, wondering what we were. Yes, I heard all of their thoughts.

Deeper still.

Sunlight from above disappeared. Not a problem. Kevin the director reached over and flicked on his own light, illuminating the sea before us.

Yes, man was a clever—and dangerous—animal!

Ahead, through the darkness, was a dark rift in the ocean floor. I knew down into the rift lived Levy the great squid. Fearlessly, Kevin aimed the vessel toward the rift, using my own instruction as his guidance, and soon we were over the lip and heading down, down, down into the darkness.

There, a great, many-tentacled creature rose up to meet us.

Levy was here, to guide us to the alien craft.

Chapter Twenty-three

Oh my god! Heidi thought/felt. A real live giant squid! I’ve never seen a live one before. What lovely colors!

That’s Levy, my contact, I agreed. Then I projected my thought to the squid: Hello Levy! This is Azael, inside the metal submarine.

I recognize your trace, the squid agreed. I felt you coming.

I am with Heidi, a human scientist and diver. She likes your colors.

The skin of the squid erupted with flowing bands of color.

“Wow! What a show!” Brad said.

“No animal on land can match it,” Kevin agreed. “Bless my cameras!”

“This is Levy, our contact,” Heidi said. “He’s showing off.”

Kevin laughed. “He can be the star of my movie! After we settle our business with the aliens.”

They all like your colors, I thought to Levy. But we are here to meet the alien machine.

I know. Follow me. I felt the squid’s gratification. Squid don’t much care about audiences other than prey, or about human beings, but this one understood from the telepathy that impressing us was good. He literally glowed as he swam down into the rift.

We followed, but could not keep the mollusk’s pace. Our sub was simply too clumsy. Levy had to loop back, then lead at a relative snail’s pace. And of course he was a distant relative of the snails. He did not swim as I did, by moving flukes; instead he swallowed water and jetted it out his mouth, propelling himself backward, his tentacles trailing. That might seem clumsy, but it was nothing of the kind; he swam beautifully.

“This is already worth the investment,” Kevin said. “The footage I’m getting is priceless.”

“The mission is priceless, apart from your footage,” Brad reminded him.

“Sure thing! I’ll take it all.”

And if the mission failed, I thought, that footage, which meant the pictures he was taking, would be worthless for an ugly reason: humans and other creatures would be gone from the world.

True, Heidi agreed.

In the depth of the rift we found the alien life-craft. It looked nothing like any of our expectations. It resembled a huge dark green millipede with hairlike legs on either side, eyes along the top, and a pig-like snout at one end. That description was from Heidi’s memory of creatures I had not encountered.

But it can swim at 30 knots, Levy thought. I trailed it when it arrived.

“Amazing!” Brad said. “It must have propulsion we don’t understand.”

Levy, dwarfed by the machine, swam to that snout. Be eaten, he thought.

“What?” Kevin asked, startled.

“Go inside,” I clarified via Heidi’s mouth. “To meet the aliens.”

Ahead of us the snout irised open. The aperture was big enough to take in the entire sub.

“That is what we came for,” Brad said. “We have to trust them.”

Kevin steered the Triton into the maw. The snout closed behind it. Then the water drained out of the compartment. The sub settled into a channel in the floor, until it was propped in air.

“It’s an airlock!” Brad exclaimed.

“Trust,” Kevin said. He pushed the button to open the port.

The air was pure and sweet, smelling faintly of a country garden. Heidi released her breath, which she had been holding. “They do know our environment,” she remarked. I was relieved too, because she would have suffocated if the air was wrong.

We exited the sub and stood in the lighted airlock. A green line went from the sub to another portal. We followed it, and another gate irised open. We stepped into...a contemporary living room.

“Our environment,” Kevin echoed in wonder.

“They read it from my mind,” I said, using Heidi’s mouth again. “When I went to land in Tayle’s body, then came back for another communicator for Hrump. They want us to be comfortable.”

“Comfortable!” Brad said with irony. That was another human concept I was coming to understand: it meant that he meant the opposite of what he said. He was not comfortable despite the physical amenities. That was not surprising; neither was I.

Be unfooted. That was an alien thought.

I translated again, with Heidi’s help. “Be seated.”

We sat in the human-comfortable chairs, which faced the center of the chamber. We were guests of the aliens. I knew this was as strange to the humans as it was to Hrump and me.

There was a swirling of vapor in the center of the room. It thickened, and coalesced into—a smaller image of the life-craft. The green pig-snouted millipede.

The hairlike limbs moved, clicking against each other. They changed color, and glowed. The clicks increased, sounding like a sandstorm striking a tin roof. Not that I had any experience with either.

Kevin was the first to catch on. “Damn—it’s an alien! A holograph! The ship’s built in their own image.”

“Correct, Kevin,” the creature said.

“And we’re not really understanding your speech,” Kevin continued. “Your speech is the clicks, way beyond Morse code, but the telepathy is now translating it for us so it feels like verbal dialogue. For our comfort, as we are visual and verbal creatures. We like to see and hear what we’re talking to.”

“Continued correct,” the alien agreed. “I am—my technical name identity is unintelligible in your language—Joe.”

“Hello Joe!” the three humans said almost together, as if this were, in Heidi’s image, a mental health meeting with a new member.

“Would you prefer that I emulate one of your kind in appearance? I can do this if it would make you more comfortable with my simulated presence among you.”

“Like a sexy blonde?” Kevin asked.

The millipede dissolved and swirled, and the classic image of actress Marilyn Monroe formed in its place. Her decolletage was quite low, and her skirt quite short, and her smile quite teasing. Indeed, she seemed about to burst joyfully out of her clothes. Both men stared appreciatively, not at all alarmed by the prospect.

“He was joking!” Heidi snapped.

The image flowed back to the alien form. “I apologize. I misunderstood. Humor.”

“Jealousy does not become you, dear,” Brad murmured.

“We’re here on serious business,” Heidi said, not much mollified.

“Business. Of course,” Joe said. “We shall proceed to it now.”

Chapter Twenty-four

“We appreciate the problem,” Brad said. “An invisible but intense magnetic bubble is headed for Earth that will obliterate Earth’s magnetic field and thus destroy most life on Earth. We’re not keen on letting that happen, so we need to shield ourselves against it or divert it. But to make a generator strong enough to accomplish that is likely to take more power than any earth facility can generate.”

“That is correct,” Joe said. “That flux is about a light month in diameter and will take about a year to pass this region of space, two years hence. You can’t shield against it; it will be as pervasive as Earth’s magnetic field itself. So you will have to divert it so that it misses this sector and goes on harmlessly between the stars. A sufficient sustained counter magnetic field can accomplish that, as magnetic fields repulse each other.”

“So how do we get a power source capable of generating and maintaining such a field?”

“We have assessed this problem,” Joe said, “and concluded that for your situation Dark Energy is required.”

Brad nodded. “You are speaking of the unknown power that is driving the universe apart at ever-greater velocity?”

“Yes. It is not unknown to us, merely obscure. It is so extensive that you should be able to tap it to have all the energy you require, without perceptibly diminishing the source.” There came a clicking flash across the alien’s body that telepathy translated as a smile. “Since you are not currently using it for your machines, there is no conflict there; it will not disrupt your normal activities.”

“Great!” Brad said. “I presume you will share the secret of safely harnessing this energy with us?”

“Yes, this is what we came here to do.”

“At what price?”

There of course was the kicker, as Heidi’s mind assessed it. The aliens would want something phenomenal in return for the favor of their technology. Something Earth would not want to give, short of complete destruction. They had not gone to the enormous effort of coming to Earth and contacting the inhabitants to share their formidable technology out of pure altruism. What was it?

“There is something we would like,” Joe agreed.

Uh-huh, Heidi thought cynically.

“We have a certain problem with our home world. We were caught by the magnetic bubble before we were able to mount a deflection, and it wiped us out. Only our distant space satellites and installations survived. A few of us were able to evacuate to our space fleet, but we are now without a home base.”

“And you want to come here,” Kevin said. “Because you need a suitable world, and the depths of our seas are ideal for you.”

“This is true. We are a deep water culture. The so-called gas giant planets have no bottom, as it were, and dry rocky planets are completely unsuitable. Very few have the conditions we require, and Earth is one of them. But the code of sapience requires us to get permission of the dominant species before we colonize, even if our environment does not impact theirs.”

“And if we don’t give you that permission,” Brad said, “you will depart and leave us to fry in the bubble.”

“We would not care to put it so unkindly,” Joe protested.

“But that is the reality,” Brad said. “You need Earth, and to have it you need to save it, so you will certainly help us deflect the bubble if we agree to let you settle. But if we don’t, then you will have no practical reason to expend your limited resources on our behalf, and will focus your attention elsewhere. You may survive on another planet, but Earth will not. These are the cold equations.”

Again Heidi’s mind clarified it for me. The cold equations: extremely unyielding reality, painful regardless of the manner handled.

“Yes,” Joe agreed reluctantly.

“Brutal,” Heidi said, and I agreed.

“We are not unmindful of your situation,” Joe said. “But our resources are severely depleted by the loss of our home planet. We can’t afford to waste them, or to expend them in a manner that will not materially benefit our own kind. Our survival as a species is at stake.”

“It makes sense,” Kevin said. “We’d do the same.”

“I am gratified that you understand.”

“As I see it, we need three things,” Kevin said. “Science, politics, and money. You folk—what do you call yourselves, Joe?”

“We are the Millennia.”

“The Millennia,” Kevin agreed. “For your vision and your legs, no? You Millennia will provide the science, and we humans will provide the local labor. The challenge will be the politics; without political approval we’ll never get the money to start work. I think our best approach is to persuade a leading science establishment, the kind that Brad and Heidi belong to, which will then help us persuade our political leaders, who will in turn set the wheels or whatever in motion. Straightforward, no?”

“I sense that you are being ironic.”

“Oh, yes! Scientists can be prejudiced, and politicians are necessary evils. We’d get farther faster if we simply bribed them.”

“Bribe,” Joe repeated, fathoming the unfamiliar concept. “To make an illicit payment to a key official, to facilitate necessary progress.”

Kevin smiled. “You got it. But even if we had to go that route, we don’t have that kind of money. We’re going to the politicians to get money, not to spend it.”

“Money,” Joe said, doing more fathoming. “Your system of resource distribution. We are in a position to facilitate the recovery of some of the wealth of the seas. Would this be worthwhile?”

Kevin nodded. So did Brad and Heidi. I explored the concept: minerals, shipwrecks, crystallized energy—the wealth of the seas was fabulous.

“Oh, it would,” Kevin said. “But using it for bribes would be dishonest. Let’s see if we can save the world honestly, before having to save it dishonestly. Let’s at least try to persuade a leading science organization and leading politicians of the truth. The problem there is, how? When the dolphin tried to persuade a local politician, he freaked out.”

Azael, Hrump, and Joe fathomed further, assimilating “freaking out.” It was accurate.

“Part of the problem was trying it indirectly,” Joe said. “Dolphins and ordinary humans are not equipped for this sort of thing. We need to establish a more immediate connection. I must contact the key human minds directly. I could persuade them logically and telepathically.”

“But you can’t leave the deepest depths,” Kevin said. “That’s why you established the chain.”

“That chain was necessary to bring you here. Now it can become significantly closer.”

“Joe, are you thinking what I am thinking?”

“Yes. My mind needs to ride your mind, as the dolphins are riding your two companions’ minds. This is not possession, merely piggy backing with the informed consent of the host body. If you are amenable.”

“True,” Heidi said. “It is sharing, not dominating.”

Kevin laughed. “Joe, I thought you’d never ask! I’d love to have immediate access to a sapient alien mind. I’ll be honored to take you to my leaders.”

“I appreciate that. However, I can’t just join you now, as my host body is a quarter of the way around your planet. This is not incidental telepathy or holography, it is a temporary personality transfer. To accomplish it, our two bodies need to be physically adjacent, at least within a few hundred feet. I must travel to join you, or you must travel to join me.”

“Consider it a challenge,” Kevin said, smiling.

I realized that this adventure was about to become considerably more interesting.

Chapter Twenty-five

We were back in the submarine, in the alien craft’s airlock, while the massive room began filling with water.

As the water rose around us, Brad was speaking, “Joe has quite the challenge on his—or its—hands. How will he convince the world’s governments to agree to his help?”

“And do we have enough time?” added Heidi.

“The Pulse is still two years away,” said Kevin. “If I understood correctly.”

“True,” said Brad, “which is why Joe gave us enough information to begin building the shield.”

“And what if he and Kevin cannot convince the world leaders to help?” asked Heidi.

“Then the shield won’t be completed. Undoubtedly they will depart to greener pastures, or deeper waters, leaving the earth to fry.” Brad looked at her, and his face was grim. “His hands are tied, as he said. The technology cannot be given without consent.”

“Consent by whom? A few random, elected officials. Royal families who are oblivious to the plight of their own people? Who determined when and how the consent is given?”

“My guess,” said Kevin the director, as he reached over and turned on the electric motors once the water levels had risen high enough, “is the United Nations. There, the world governments can be properly represented, and Joe can plead his case. Let’s hope the world listens, and consents. We’ll see.”

“So, our plan is clear then?” said Brad. “Heidi and I and our team will begin building the shield...”

“And my team will head out to meet Joe and the mother ship.”

It looks like your job is done, Azael, thought Heidi. Thank you for leading us to Levy. Cross your fingers—or flippers—that we succeed.

Indeed, the thought of resuming my mundane life, swimming in the open seas, perhaps now with Hrump, was appealing, although I doubted I could relax and enjoy my time with my new friend until after the month was over.

I think I’ll stick around, I thought. With Tayle and her father.

Bonding with the human girl was also a sweet thought. She and her father were a pod of a very different type, but the feelings of warmth were still there, not dissimilar to the warmth I’d felt with my own pod. More important, I did not relish the thought of leaving Tayle so quickly, especially with the future of our world still uncertain.

“And we have blast off,” said Kevin.

Indeed, the floor beneath us irised open and we dropped down beneath the long, undulating alien ship. Kevin worked the controls and soon we were moving forward and upward at a good clip.

As the giant squid swam a great circle around us, his long legs trailing behind him for many dozens of feet, I was looking forward again to being within my body. Watching Levy swim majestically reminded me of the freedom of the open water...freedom I could experience with Hrump.

You like him, don’t you? asked Heidi, giving me a mental wink.

I was about to answer, shyly no doubt, when frantic words erupted in my head. It was Tayle. Hurry Azael! They have Hrump! And they’re coming for you next!

I don’t understand—

They have guns, but some of them are scientists too. Daddy says they were sent by that mean councilman. They want to study you and Hrump and the alien ship.

Tayle screamed, and Brad, who’d been hosting Hrump, jerked violently and gasped. “He’s gone. Hrump left me. He’s back with his body.”

I shifted my attention to my dolphin self on the surface above, where I had been gliding idly next to the director’s research vessel. There was my inert body, existing simply as it waited for me to join it again. But something was happening on the choppy seas around me, something I was not fully aware of until Tayle’s shout of alarm.

There was another boat nearby, a bigger boat—and they had just cast a net around Hrump.

My brave friend fought wildly, fiercely, thrashing his tail and slapping his flukes, but his efforts were futile. The netting only cut deep into his hide as he was finally lifted from the water.

“Go to him!” shouted Heidi, who could see and hear what I could see and hear. “Hurry!”

And I did, leaping from her body and back fully into my own dolphin self. What I would do, I didn’t know, but I had to do something, and fast.

Chapter Twenty-six

It was chaos.

Tayle was on the deck of the research ship, screaming. Beside it was the attacking vessel, with the sailors hauling on the net. The net that had caught Hrump. But there was one notable difference between this netting and the ones the fishermen used: it was being consciously used to catch the dolphin, not drown him. The upper section extended above the water, so that Hrump could surface and breathe. It was connected to the ship by an extended boom. They were lowering the net to dip the dolphin in the water while they organized a tank on the ship. So Hrump was scraped but not in danger of death.

Still, this was formidable mischief. We couldn’t let them capture Hrump or me, because they surely had no interest in saving the world, just in getting profitable information. But how could we save the dolphin from the net?

I needed the direct help of a human mind. So I jumped to Tayle.

“Azael!” she exclaimed aloud. “You’re back!”

How can we stop them? I thought.

“I don’t know!” she wailed hysterically.

Jon came to join her. “Is that Azael?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered though Tayle’s mouth. “What can we do?”

“That’s Norris’s yacht, the Naughty Girl! It’s way too big and fast for the research vessel to stop. But maybe with your telepathy, you know, touch the mind of the captain, make him let the dolphin go...”

Great idea! “I’ll try,” I said. I vacated Tayle, returned to my own body, and swam vigorously toward the yacht.

I hugged the hull where the sailors couldn’t see me unless they really looked. I reached out with my mind, trying to sort through a jumble of unfamiliar minds, seeking the captain. But there were so many minds, so many thoughts, all overlapping each other, that I couldn’t make sense of it. This wasn’t working.

Then I thought of another tack. Heidi, back in the returning submersible, might have a better notion. She was more mature and educated than Tayle, less likely to go hysteric. I’d ask her.

I swam away from the yacht a safe distance, then returned to Heidi’s mind, which I could do at this distance because it was familiar.

“Azael!” she said aloud, just as Tayle had.

I rapidly updated her on the scene on the surface. So I can’t find the captain’s mind, I concluded.

“And if you did, his second in command would simply take over,” she said, grasping the situation with scientific precision. “We’re going to need more than that.” Then she updated Brad and Kevin.

“I’ve got a wicked idea,” Kevin said. “Straight out of a wildly improbable movie. Let’s see if I can work with Joe on this. I’m still in touch with him.”

“But Joe’s seven thousand miles away!” she protested. “You’re going to sail there to meet him.”

“But there may be something I can do now, with his telepathic support.”

“But if Azael couldn’t touch the captain’s mind from up close, how could Joe do it from around the world?” Now she was sounding a bit hysterical herself.

“There are ways and ways,” Kevin said mysteriously. “Shut up and let me focus.” He closed his eyes, concentrating.

Nettled, Heidi shut up.

Brad touched her hand. “Oh ye of little faith,” he murmured.

Her anger flared. “You can just take that faith and shove it—”

I intercepted her mouth and shut it for her. We have to trust them.

“We do,” she muttered grimly. But there was a tide of mayhem in her mind. She didn’t like being patronized.

Kevin opened his eyes. “It’s feasible,” he announced. “Levy will guide the craft, at least as far as he can. We can’t keep the pace in the sub.” He glanced at Heidi. “Azael, tell them help is coming.”

“I will,” I agreed via Heidi’s mouth, and reverted to my own body. I knew that Kevin would explain to the others what was happening, but I couldn’t wait on that.

I swam close to the dreaded net, knowing it couldn’t be deployed to catch me without letting Hrump go. “Help is coming!” I sang to him.

“That’s a relief,” he sang back.

Then I swam to the research vessel and rejoined Tayle. Help is coming.

She grasped at that as if drowning. “I hope it’s fast!”

I hoped so too. What did Kevin and the alien, Joe, have in mind?

We waited interminable minutes as the hoist brought Hrump close to the yacht and hauled him back into the air, swinging him to the tank. They dropped him in with a splash. They knew what they were doing. Did we?

Now the net, emptied, was ready to be deployed again. And the sailors knew where I was. I had either to flee the vicinity immediately, or run the risk of capture. I did not like either alternative.

Then something weird happened. The yacht seemed to jump in the water. Sailors cried out with alarm, grabbing the railing to keep from falling.

“Look at that!” Jon called from the other ship. Tayle stood beside him, open-mouthed.

Then I saw it: huge green jaws projected from the water, clamping onto the stern of the yacht.

Green?

I ducked down and saw the rest of it, under the water. It was the alien life craft! The pig snout had been replaced by a toothed mouth, and it was biting the yacht.

The mouth twisted, and the yacht tilted sharply. The dolphin tank slid across the deck, crashed through the rail, and dropped into the sea. Hrump vaulted out with a mighty heave of his flukes, and splashed into the water. He was free!

But not the yacht. The jaws still held it fast.

Then the hairlike legs vibrated, and the craft accelerated backward, hauling the yacht helplessly along. The aliens were taking it out to sea.

I watched with mixed emotions. I had had no idea the aliens were capable of such a thing. This was the rescue that Kevin and Joe had worked out: to use the life craft itself. It could travel where neither Levy nor Joe could go. No telepathy, no magic, just an ocean predator biting its prey.

They won’t hurt the yacht, Heidi’s thought came. Just take it out to sea and leave it, as a warning, Kevin told me.

But what if they tell what happened? I thought back.

Who will believe them?

That seemed like an excellent question. Meanwhile Hrump was swimming toward me. “You told me help was coming,” he sang. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome,” I sang back, as if I’d known all along.

Chapter Twenty-seven

The next few months went by in a blur.

Kevin and Joe and a very advanced submarine journeyed deep into the Mariana Trench, far enough down that even the giant squids were uncomfortable. There, the director and his small team photographed an amazing site...a structure that spanned many human miles and camouflaged perfectly with its surroundings. Indeed, the surface of the spaceship even mimicked the smoke stacks and vents that covered the surface of the deep trench.

The whole scene was filmed for the world’s benefit—after all, Joe and Kevin were even now pleading their case to the human representatives. A shame that dolphins didn’t have a say in this. We would have quickly seen the benefit of such technology. But from the reports provided by Jon, and as I watched the humans’ fascinating TV through Tayle’s eyes, I saw the many conflicting reports on their various news channels. Yes, all of this was a lot to take in for a dolphin, but I was, at this point, firmly embedded in the human culture. Indeed, Jon had even built a pond for me, complete with a protective fence and covered roof. I could venture into it at any time, lock it behind me with a flick of my bony beak, and then mind-link instantly with Tayle.

Once the initial images of the UFO had been confirmed as real and not a hoax, panic gripped the earth. There were riots and skirmishes. Whole cities shut down as the humans fled to and fro. Water and food quickly became scarce.

This lasted for many weeks, although the shortages did not affect Jon and Tayle. He fished from the sea, and had his own well. He was also handy with a rifle, and kept looters at bay.

Weeks later, when the humans realized they were not under attack, the world picked up its pieces and resumed again, albeit at a cautious pace.

Still, there was much suspicion and negativity surrounding the aliens. Whole groups formed to protest them and demand their removal from earth. Other groups formed to protect them. And still others didn’t seem to care at all. Many questioned the validity of the reports of the Pulse, until scientist after scientist came forward to assure the world that the threat was real.

It wasn’t until Levy and his fellow giant squid began hauling vast riches upon the ocean shores did people really begin to perk up. Especially the big businesses, as Jon put it. Apparently, money spoke loudly—louder than even common sense. As the money flowed and the ocean was mined, those who could help came forward, providing materials necessary to build the Deflector, as it came to be known. A machine of gigantic proportions that could only be built at the bottom of the sea. Already, many humans had lost their lives in its construction, furthering the outcry against the aliens.

I would have gladly watched most humans perish in a fiery blaze—humans were, after all, the reason I was motherless and podless—but their demise meant my demise, too. And Tayle and Jon’s. Some humans weren’t so bad, but most left a bad taste in my mouth, which was a common human idiom, one that was quite accurate in this situation.

At times, I wondered if I was becoming more human than dolphin, but then I needed only to slip back into my body and find Hrump, and would spend the evenings hunting and feeding, and doing our best to block out the cries of prey.

Yes, our lives were weird, but it was our reality.

Hrump and I were growing closer, and often we didn’t swim or hunt at all. Often we nuzzled next to each other, flicking our tails idly, and enjoying each others’ company. I didn’t mind his scars. His scars were a testament to his heart and courage.

As the months elapsed, as the Deflector grew in scope and size, as the opposition against the alien presence seemed to grow, too, Jon finally could sit still no longer. He and Tayle packed up their belongings, and headed out to the fleet of ships that sat high above the construction of Deflector.

Jon was determined to help, one way or another. He wasn’t the only such human. Many had made a similar choice, offering their services.

Hrump and I made the decision as well to do our part. One way or another.

And just after the sixth month, as Kevin and Joe still lobbied the world’s leaders for consent, as the Deflector was constructed deep beneath the surface of the ocean, and as the Pulse grew steadily closer, Hrump and I headed into deeper waters, driving our tails hard, leaping high into the air and splashing down again, over and over...and ever closer to the Deflector.

Yes, we would do our part.

Whatever that meant.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Hrump and I paused, amazed. It was a clump of ships on the water, rather than a fleet; the vessels were linked together by ropes and crosswalks so that the humans could go from one to another without having to use smaller boats. Small powered carts zipped across like cars on highways, going from ship to ship. What was going on?

I quested for Tayle’s mind, and found it. The girl thought: We’ve been expecting you. There’s lots to explain. Come on into our minds.

I consulted with Hrump. “This is a strange sea,” I sang. “We can’t risk leaving our bodies unattended.”

“You go; I’ll watch your body,” he sang.

I didn’t argue. I jumped into Tayle’s mind. The girl was standing on the deck of one of the ships, facing out toward the dolphins, but they could not be seen under the waves. Then Hrump leaped through the air. “There!” Tayle cried, nudging her father.

“And here,” I said via her mouth. “Hrump’s watching my body.”

“There’s a safe pen here,” Tayle said. “We had them make it for you.” She grimaced. “It’s made of net, but I promise you, not to trap you. To keep sharks out.”

“I’ll tell Hrump,” I  said. “We’ll come in.” I returned to my own body.

We swam in and found the pen. The netting had flaps we could open to pass through it, that sharks would not know how to operate. We could relax here. That was just as well, because we had come a long way and were physically tired.

We jumped to the human hosts. Now we could catch up on other things. “Why are the ships tied together?” I asked.

“It’s a city on the sea,” Tayle explained. “There’s a mess ship—that means it’s where we eat—and a laundry ship, a tenement ship, a waste processing ship—we call it the poop deck—and a whole lot of work ships. We’ve got golf carts to take us around quickly on the various ships, as well. It’s all sort of slipshod, but it works, because there’s a whole bunch of landlubbers here doing all sorts of things and they can’t be bothered to learn seamanship. Mainly they focus on the giant cable in the center going down to the Deflector. It guides the supply capsules down and up.” She continued describing it all, and I had to agree: this was a human city, with all the city functions.

“But look,” Tayle said. “There’s stuff coming up, but you must be tired. You should sleep tonight, and we’ll tackle it in the morning. They’ve got a barrel of fresh fish for you to eat.”

“Thanks,” I said. Then Hrump and I reverted to our bodies. The fish were good, though their squeals of pain still bothered me . Then the two of us went to sleep in swimming mode, within the enclosure. We really did need the rest.

In the morning we rejoined Tayle and Jon. “Two things,” Tayle said. “One good, one bad.”

“What is good?” I asked.

“They’ve verified the bubble. The Millennia said that it’s pretty much invisible, but can be detected by things like the index of refraction of a laser beam passing through it, and its effect on the existing area magnetic fields. That doesn’t mean much to me, but the scientists are satisfied that there’s a fierce magnetic storm on its way here, just as the Millennia said, and that it will wipe us out if it gets here. So the governments of the world are agreeing to cooperate to keep it away. This is a multinational effort. Some of the people still think it’s a cruel hoax, but they don’t count.”

I was ironically relieved to know that the threat was real, since my whole reason to contact the humans had been to alert them to it. “What’s the other?”

“They’re having trouble emplacing one of the units below. It has to be anchored to the sea floor, but there’s stirred-up muck so they can’t see, and it won’t attach. It’s too deep for the humans outside their subs, and the remote controlled equipment is clumsy. We thought that maybe if you dolphins could go down and take a look, maybe you could figure it out. They say it’s at your depth. They can’t complete the Deflector and get it running without that unit in place.”

“We came to help,” I said. “We’ll check it.”

“Okay!”

“But there is one thing,” Hrump said via Jon’s mouth. “This is far from our usual haunts, and we don’t know all the dangers. Such as the local sharks.”

Jon answered him with his own mouth. “We humans are wary of sharks too. They’ve got effective shark repellants. In fact they repel everything.”

“We’ll take that,” Azael agreed.

“It’s a tag they can put on your tail. An electronic repellant. And another to help you orient on the unit. It pings as you get close.” Hrump and I returned to our bodies. Soon a human man came to the net and fastened the tags to our flukes. Then the two of us dived deep. We followed the big cable down, and sure enough, no swimming creature of any kind came close, not even edible fish. That could have been a problem in another circumstance.

Then we oriented on the pinging. It led us to the unit, which was a big metal box with six stick-like legs and big splayed feet with spikes. The muck had been stirred up, so the unit was in a cloud, but we were able to check it sonically.

The feet weren’t sticking because the rock here was flaking off when anything tried to drill into it, so the metal plugs were ineffective. This device would need a different kind of anchorage.

We returned to the surface, joined the minds of the humans, and explained. Maybe they could weight down the feet with bags of stones.

“We’ll consider that,” the human supervisor said. “We’ll come up with something, now that we know what the problem is.”

I knew that there would be more useful work for us to do here. I was satisfied.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Work continued, and the months piled up.

Hrump and I were employed almost daily, from using our echo location to “see” through the silt, to hauling lines and equipment and supplies from the surface to the ocean floor, and back again. Often we assisted in rescue situations, removing fallen equipment from divers, or recovering the bodies of those we could not reach in time. Indeed, it was a challenge for the humans to work so deep under the sea. Most made it, but a few did not. The humans, as questionable as they were, did sing beautiful songs for their dead, and Hrump and I sang with them.

As the seasons passed, and the day of the Pulse drew near, as most of the world had finally come around to understanding the gravity of the situation, Hrump and I often slipped away from the city of ships to be alone, to enjoy our time together, the freedom of the open seas. After all, should the deflector fail to work, or should Joe and Kevin fail to get the last of the balky government to consent to the aliens’ help, Hrump and I knew that these might be our last days together.

Sometimes Jon and Tayle piggy-backed with us via mind link, exploring the undersea world with us. But mostly Hrump and I ventured out alone.

We were alone now, under a full moon, racing through the cold water and leaping high in the air. We did this game often, a chasing game. Usually Hrump chased me, but usually I slowed and let him catch me. I liked when he caught me. We would touch flukes and tails and roll together, twisting through the water, spiraling down, down. And then we would chase each other again, doing this over and over again, the chasing and the catching and the spiraling. We did this until we were exhausted and finally swam idly on the surface, touching flukes, and speaking quietly to each other.

At the moment, Hrump was close behind me and gaining. I drove my tail into the ocean hard, surging froward powerfully. At such moments I felt like I could do anything, and heart sang, and I wanted to sing, too. But I couldn’t sing now. No. Hrump, after all, was closing in fast.

I banked hard to the right, using my right fluke to cut through the water, and Hrump sailed past me wildly and I giggled.

He cursed and looped down, then rocketed up through the water. He was a powerful creature, and he truly did look like one of the human torpedoes. Never had I seen a dolphin move so quickly, and I paused in awe, watching him, my heart swelling with something I was sure was more than awe.

It was love.

He was showing off for me, I was sure of it, as he approached the surface with lightning speed, I surfaced in time to see him shoot out into the night sky, where he arched high, moonlight reflecting off his shiny and scarred back, as water droplets sparkled like so many stars in the night sky. He cleared the surface higher than even the most athletic orcas, and, had I been in Tayle’s body, I would have clapped with her hands. Instead, I slapped the surface of the water with one of my flukes as he landed perfectly, gracefully.

“You are a show off, Hrump,” I said, after he had circled back toward me.

“Maybe,” he said, sliding next to me. “Mostly my heart sings with joy.”

“Joy?” I asked, although I suspected what he might be alluding to. “But we are close to possible destruction.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” he said, nuzzling me slightly with his scarred beak.

“And what’s another way to look at it?” I asked.

“We are close to success.”

Now we were rolling just under the surface, spinning slowly together, his flukes on me. I shivered at his touch.

“I like the way you think, Hrump,” I sang in a soft whisper. “So why does your heart sing for joy?”

“Because I am in love.”

“Love?”

“Yes, Azael,” he said, and nudged me with his beak. “With you.”

Hearing him say those words for the first time, and feeling his tender touch, nearly brought me to tears. “But I am podless. I don’t have much to offer.”

He laughed. “The only thing I want, Azael, is your heart.”I shivered at his touch as we continued rolling, our flukes touching, our beaks nuzzling. We surfaced only long enough to catch our breaths, and then we were below again, together, rolling, my heart singing, the Pulse all but forgotten.

Chapter Thirty

Along the way, almost incidentally, we spied and recruited stray individual dolphins, those without pods for whatever reason. Most were extremely wary of humans, having lost friends or relatives to the dreaded nets, but we begged them to meet with Tayle and Jon, mind to mind, and when they did they started to thaw. When they agreed to swallow the translation packs and become telepathic, they came to appreciate the full nature of the threat, and became willing members of our artificial pod. I was the senior female, and Hrump the senior male, not in age but in association with the Millennia and the project, so we were like pod leaders. Not only did the other dolphins accept that, they did not want to change it.

There was one thing that unified us, apart from the threat to the world: we wanted the killing of dolphins to stop. Tayle and Jon pursued it among the humans, campaigning to outlaw this murder however it occurred: nets, spears, bullets, pollution. That last was the most difficult, because the seas were already contaminated with the wastes of centuries, but none of it was easy.

“I hate to put it this way,” Tayle said, who was growing older and smarter. “But the human special interests don’t do what’s right, they do what entertains them or increases their safety or wealth. They don’t care about dolfins. You need to have something to trade, something the humans really desperately need. Otherwise nothing much will change.”

“We’re helping build the Deflector!” I reminded her.

“Yes, and that helps. But there are a lot of countries, and more factions, and whole slews of ignorant folk that resist any change in anything. More is needed.”

And there it stood. We could not budge ignorance. We were saving the world, but not our species. That rankled.

Then at last the Deflector was ready. That was just as well, because the magnetic bubble was looming close, and we couldn’t let it reach this section of space.

With great fanfare they cranked it up, with humans manning the stations that controlled the individual beams needed to magnetically push away the magnetism of the bubble. They had shown us how one magnet repelled another, if it was of the same type; this was one magnetic beam repelling a magnetic flux. I did not understand the whole of it, even with telepathy, but I accepted its validity.

And it didn’t work.

They tried again. And failed again. Something was wrong.

The Millennia finally figured it out. The beams needed to be very specifically targeted to particular points in the bubble, or they glanced off and passed through harmlessly. The bubble was not just a single formless blob; it was a complex of swirling forces, like whirlpools in tidal shallows. It was a bit like catching a fish: my teeth had to snap cleanly on it, or it slipped out and got away. The human controllers could not see the gyres well enough, or track their seemingly random motions accurately enough, to score on them.

Had all this effort been for nothing?

Tayle visited as I swam alone, delving for fish, and we discussed it mind to mind, as if we were two dolphins. “You know, you dolfins can see and hear in ways we humans don’t,” she said. “I wonder if you could do it?”

“Swim in space with magnetic beams to push the bubble?” I asked. “We can’t even leave the sea to go on land, let alone space.” I nabbed a fish, crunching it quickly so as not to hear its scream.

“I couldn’t catch a fish like that. They dodge so quickly I’d be grabbing at nothing.”

“It’s a matter of tracking them closely, and anticipating where they will go, and getting there when they do. It was hard at first, but I’ve had a lifetime of practice. And my mother was a great teacher.”

“Suppose the gyres of the bubble are like that?”

“Like fish? I wouldn’t want to eat one.”

“But maybe you could catch it, by thinking of it as a fish.”

“Maybe,” I agreed dubiously. “But what’s the point? We don’t want to catch the gyres, we want to drive them away.”

“Yes, but you have to catch them first. To lock on, so that then you can push them away. That’s what we humans aren’t doing.”

We pondered it, and it seemed to make some sense. So we went to Heidi, in Tayle’s body.

“Different reflexes,” Heidi agreed thoughtfully. “Magnetic gyres aren’t fish, so it’s farfetched, but we’re desperate. We should give it a try.”

There was resistance in the human hierarchy, but Heidi enlisted Brad, and Brad enlisted Joe the Millennial, who had finally succeeded in getting the world’s vote, and soon an experiment was in process. They constructed a tank suitable for a dolphin, in the shape of a sphere, with pictures projected on its surface so that it looked transparent, as if the ocean were right there. It also handled sound, so that a song to a distant dolphin seemed to reach it, and the answering song came back realistically. Hrump and I zeroed it in, working in adjacent spheres, enabling them to get the effects just right. When we turned, so did the scene, matching our attitude, as they put it. We were able to swim in any sea of the world, including arctic with icebergs. It was fun.

Then they switched it to deep space. Suddenly I was swimming among stars. That was weird, and I quickly got seasick, in my fashion, which was a distinctly new experience. But I tried again in a few hours, and lasted longer, until I was able to handle it. While I was recovering, Hrump tried it, with a similar reaction, and other dolphins. But we all made progress.

Then I sang, and they translated my song into a beam, or at least it controlled a beam. I learned to orient that beam on a swirling likeness of a gyre. The thing eluded me, dodging randomly to the side; I had to chase it down. But soon I learned its nature, and began to outsmart it, anticipating its motions. Before long I could push that gyre anywhere I wanted. So could the other dolphins. We all liked it, and so did Tayle, riding along with me. “It’s like shooting targets from a roller coaster,” she said. “Tricky but fun.”

But this was only simulation. Could we do it for real? The fate of the world might depend on that.

Chapter Thirty-one

Our makeshift pod was growing.

Not to mention, I was showing signs of being with child. Yes, indeed, one way or another, Hrump and I would have our pod. For now, though, we had perhaps the biggest pod I had ever seen. A ragtag collections of young and old dolphins, some wounded and maimed, most alone or having traveled with just two or three others. We all had one thing in common: we had all been decimated by man. Our growing pod had become a beacon for the lost and abandoned.

At the request of Hrump, our group was gathered just outside the city of boats and ships that have now collected here in this Pacific region of the oceans. Dozens, if not hundreds of additional ships had found their way here, most to film what could be the earth’s final days. This had become, as Tayle had put it, a ‘media circus.’ If humans could figure out a way to make money at the end of the world, then what would stop them from making money off the blood of my brother and sister dolphins?

In short, nothing.

Except, of course, we dolphins had the upper flipper. The humans needed us to save them, and the world.

This fact had not escaped me, or Hrump, or any of my fellow dolphins. Despite what humans might think, dolphins are smart. Perhaps smarter than many humans. Either way, we saw an opportunity here, and we were discussing our options now.

The human scientists were impatient. In fact, the whole world was impatient. They were all ready for the “Big Event” as the media had come to call it. Through Tayle’s eyes, I had seen much of this media circus, as had Hrump. All programming was now focused on the Pulse. Mostly, it now centered on us dolphins. Word had gotten out that we could control the deflector beam and the humans were putting their hope in us.

“They put their hope in the very creatures they slaughter,” said Papi, an old dolphin missing one eye. “I am willing to bet they regret doing so now!” He slapped his tale for emphasis, and swam in a short tight circle, which was what Papi was best at.

It was late evening, and the arching sky above was afire. Indeed, the color of the night sky had begun to turn with the coming of the Pulse. Its approach, although unseen by physical eyes, could be witnessed in the heavens. It would have been beautiful if it hadn’t been so deadly. With the beautiful, iridescent light, came death.

“I have no doubt the humans regret their actions now,” I said. I could feel the little one within me move ever-so-slightly. Would my babe see the light of day? As of yet, I did not know, and this saddened me beyond words.

“And so we are expected to help them?” asked Rory, a young dolphin of exceptional size, so big that had someone painted him black and added white spots, he might have been confused for our orca cousins.

“We help ourselves, Rory,” said Hrump, keeping close to me. He kept closer than usual once he realized I was with child. Sometimes he kept a little too close! My life was a far cry different from those early days when I wandered the oceans alone, my songs of sadness going unanswered.

“And once we save them, Hrump, then they will thank us by killing us again, rounding us up in coves and slaughtering us by the dozens,” said Dart, a fast little guy that could catch anything in the sea. His pod had vanished when he was very young, too young to even remember his own name. Dart suited him, and we all accepted it, and him.

“Perhaps not,” said Hrump.

I glanced at my scarred mate, battle tested and fierce, who held the respect of all in attendance. “What do you mean?”

“I called you here for a reason,” said Hrump, winking at me, then glancing at my slightly rotund belly. I sensed his deep love for me, and for his babe. “I have a proposal.”

The churning sea of dolphins, many of whom had become my friends over the past few weeks and months, quieted and listened.

Hrump eased away from me, and swam before them. “We demand that the humans stop the slaughter of dolphins, and our brothers and sisters, the whales.”

“They will never agree,” said a voice from the crowd.

“They must,” said Hrump, “or it will be the last decision they will make.”

“But that would mean the death of us all,” said Papi.

“Death by the Pulse,” said Hrump. “Or death by their nets? Which would you prefer?”

That silenced everyone. They were all thinking, and hard. Hrump and I had already discussed this approach, and I had approved wholeheartedly. Yes, I would rather die by the Pulse, than suffer what I had seen my pod suffer through.

“But how do we make the humans keep their word?” asked a young female who’d just recently lost her pod. Apparently, the human fishermen were continuing their dastardly efforts even as the final days approached. I had spent some time comforting her just the night before.

“That is our challenge,” answered Hrump. “But we have most of humanity on our side, not to mention Joe and the Millenia, who are now quite proficient in the handling of the various human governments. I am confident mankind will concede and new laws will be put into place. But before I approach the humans, I must have your consent. We must all be in agreement, and we must band together.”

A great amount of discussion ensued. Many were concerned with the other creatures of the seas, the beautiful tuna and marlin, who were hunted for sport. The sharks who were hunted for their fins. Hrump addressed their concerns. “First things first, my friends,” he said, coming back to me and slipping a fluke under my belly. “We will first demand the protection of dolphins and whales everywhere. Once done, and once we have the assurance of the world’s government that they will do all they can to protects us, we will next seek protection for our friends.”

And so we had a vote, which seemed a very human thing to do, but was effective. To a dolphin, we all voted to stand together, united.

The humans must meet our demands.

Or we would all die.

Chapter Thirty-two

“Wait,” Hrump sang. “The human Jon has asked to join with me. He is on our side, as most humans actually are. He has been silent until this, but now he speaks. He says no agreement is binding without enforcement. He says that we can make the humans agree, but we can’t stop them from reneging once the threat has been abated. Even if they make it against their law to kill dolphins, and enforce it, there will still be criminals who do it anyway, as they do in killing elephants for their ivory tusks.” He paused. “Elephants are big land creatures with very long noses and huge projecting teeth that form into tusks. They are becoming extinct because of poaching: the illicit killing by criminals. We need a law, yes, but we also need enforcement, or we are lost anyway.”

He’s right, Tayle thought. She was now riding with me. Humans are like that.

“And how to we get enforcement?” Dart demanded. “That has been my concern all along.” There was a singing murmur of agreement among the dolphins.

“I have an idea,” I sang, to my surprise. Tayle was with me, and she was as concerned about this as her father was. “I think.”

The pod oriented on me respectfully. “What is it?” Dart asked.

“It’s the telepathy,” I said. “You know how we feel the pain of the fish we eat? I hate that, and I try to dull it down, but I still have to eat.”

“We all feel that pain,” Papi said. “I would be happy to be rid of the telepathy, and after this mission has been accomplished I hope to shit out the pack and be done with it.” There was another murmur of agreement.

“But that’s the key,” I said. “Suppose the telepathy were so strong that when you killed a fish, you died too? Because of the linkage?”

Oooh, wow! Tayle knew what was in my mind.

“We’d all shit out our packs,” Rory said. “And go on eating.”

“Suppose I kept my pack and swam near you when you fed,” I argued. “Suppose I linked your mind to that of the fish, so that you both died together?”

“We’d swim away from you,” Dart said. “You couldn’t stay that near all of us all the time.”

“Suppose I swam in the school of fish, so that you couldn’t feed without entering my telepathic field? And other dolphins swam in other schools, protecting them similarly?”

“We’d drive you off,” Rory said. “We have to eat.”

“Suppose you couldn’t drive me off?” I persisted. “So you couldn’t eat without dying yourself?”

“Where are you going with this?” Papi asked.

“Suppose a telepathic dolphin swam under a human boat, where they couldn’t see her, and linked the human minds to the dolphin minds? So that when they killed a dolphin, they’d all die? And the boat would be left floating with a dead crew?”

“They’d get the message pretty fast,” Hrump said. “The killing would stop. There wouldn’t even need to be a law.”

“Let’s get the law anyway,” Papi said. “So they are warned. But can we do it?”

“I think we need to talk with the Millennia,” I said. “To see if they can do it.”

The pod agreed. We would make our demand to the humans for a law, but we would also go to the Millennia for the enforcement.

Hrump and Jon went with Kevin to present the ultimatum to the legal humans: outlaw the killing of dolphins. Meanwhile Tayle and I went with Heidi to talk with the Millennia. It was odd having two human minds with me, but feasible; the telepathy allowed it. We swam down to meet Levy the giant squid, and he dived deeper than we could go to contact Joe. But Levy had one stipulation: include big squid in the ban on killing. We had to agree, both because it was the right thing, and because we needed him to reach Joe.

In due course the alien life craft swam up to join us, and for the first time I entered it in my own body. I swam into the lock, and it set the water pressure for my physical comfort. Then I remained in the water as the Joe image entered the chamber.

Wow! Tayle thought. She had not been here before, and was in a state of wonder.

“Hello, Tayle,” Joe thought in a simulation of speech. Then he assumed the likeness of a human boy about her own age, so as to communicate with her more comfortably. “You are a pretty girl.”

Tayle was mute for the moment, unable to formulate a quick response. She knew Joe was an alien creature like a centipede, and that she was at the moment in the mind of a pregnant “dolfin” but she was still flattered by the compliment. Heidi smiled mentally; the change in appearance did make a difference. Joe was good at getting along with people.

We presented our case, which was accomplished efficiently because of the telepathy we already had. It was my idea, but Heidi had a better mind for the details. Would the Millennia agree with it, and if they did, could they provide the enhanced telepathy?

“We do agree, and we can do it,” Joe said. “We will provide you with more powerful communication units for this purpose. But a caution: you will have to turn them to a low setting when you feed, lest you kill yourself.”

That was a good point. We promised to be careful.

Joe tossed a pack into the water, and I swallowed it. I felt its power immediately. What I had before was like a minnow; this was more like a tuna. Then he had me practice with it, making sure I could properly tune it with my mind. I would have to train other dolphins with similar units, because they were dangerous. The trickiest thing was to link two other minds together without tying my own mind in, lest I die when they did. Only when he was sure I had it mastered did he relax.

“Levy will bring up a hundred of these,” Joe said. “Do not give them out carelessly.”

“Never!” I agreed. “Just to trained dolphins, and our allies, such as the whales, the squid, and the seals. The slaughter will stop.”

Then Joe reverted to centipede form, and we swam into the lock, and were processed out. Our mission had been accomplished.

I wish I had a boyfriend like that, Tayle thought wistfully. I mean, mentally. The boys I know are so immature.

You could get a human boyfriend your age, and have Joe ride in his mind, Heidi suggested.

That notion intrigued all three of us, perhaps for different reasons.

Chapter Thirty-three

Two days before the arrival of the Pulse, Tayle and I were swimming together.

“I miss you, Azael,” said Tayle. “You’ve been so busy.”

“A dolphin’s job is never done,” I thought, having, at this point, nearly fully assimilated her English language and idioms and common phrases, even the jokes. Tayle and I had, of course, been mind-linked now for a few years. I had watched her grow from a curious girl who loved dolphins—or dolfins, as she still preferred to call us—to a young lady who was facing an uncertain future.

We were, of course, all facing an uncertain future.

Now, we were just a girl and her dolphin, swimming the mostly-open seas. We weren’t far from the circle of ships, now known as the Floating City. After all, I couldn’t venture too far, or Tayle and I would lose our connection.

“Do you think we’ll make it?” asked Tayle, as I sped through the water as fast as I could, although certainly not as fast as I was capable. Being burdened with a child slowed me down.

“The dolphins will do our part,” I said. Sometimes I forgot when I thought the words, or when I sang them. Sometimes I did both. With Tayle and I mind-linked, either method worked, as the communication device translated thoughts and words equally.

“I guess we can’t ask much more than that. I hope we make it, Azael. I want to get married like you and Hrump.”

“We are not married,” I said. “We are life mates.”

Tayle giggled in my head. “Then I can’t wait to find my own life mate! I just want to grow up, go to college, meet my dream man, and have children of my own. Is that too much to ask for?”

I knew all of these concepts by now, although I could see, via Tayle’s own projected image, her version of each thought. She was not asking for much, no. Just what humans considered the happy basics.

“I hope you can someday have everything you want, Tayle,” I said.

“And I hope to someday swim with you, Hrump and your little one.”

I gave her a mental smile, since that was the best dolphins could do. Next, I dove deep, swimming in and out of a long-forgotten shipwreck, while Tayle clapped and squealed in my thoughts. She loved exploring the deep sea with me.

Shortly, I shot up through the water again, and launched as high as I dared to launch. I arched gracefully enough and splashed down cleanly.

“I love you, Azael,” said Tayle.

“I love you, too,” I said, and as I thought those words another thought reached out to me. It was from Hrump. With our enhanced communications units, the dolphins were able to communicate with each other across great distances.

“It’s time, Azael. We need you here.”

And with that, I banked hard to starboard, and turned my beak to the Floating City.

As the humans say, it was showtime.

Chapter Thirty-four

Everything was ready, and we couldn’t wait any longer to tackle the Pulse. But there was one not inconsequential detail. “Have they outlawed the slaughter?” I asked. Because that was an essential part of the deal.

Jon answered. “They have not officially done that, yet, but they have agreed in the principle, and will make a good-faith effort to make it law.”

Was that good enough? “I don’t trust that,” Tayle said. She remained with me, by her choice, just as Jon was with Hrump. “There’s always a bad faith joker to mess it up.”

“The units are in place,” Hrump said.

The special high-power telepathy units the Millennia had provided, with dolphin proctors to use them. That meant that enforcement was ready, though unofficial. That would have to do, as we were out of time. Only a portion of the pod was engaged in this aspect; others were on other business, such as tracking fishing boats.

I entered my sphere. As I did so the wall surrounding me became a picture of the region of space between Earth and the Pulse. Spaced out all around me were other spheres, containing other dolphins, for this was a joint effort.

Hrump took charge from his sphere. “Are we ready?” he sang. “Signify by blinking your sphere.”

All around us, in three dimensions, the spheres flashed, briefly illuminating their operators. Most were dolphins we had trained for this. But two—

“We had two late recruits, for whom we made special larger control spheres,” Jon explained. “There may be aspects that will benefit from a slightly different perspective.”

“Greeting, dolphin tidbit,” the orca I had encountered long ago said from his larger sphere. “This time you have something that interests me.”

“Thank you,” I said, discovering that I really appreciated this support from the whales, whom we had included in the killing ban.

“And I am along as host to Joe Millennium,” Levy the giant squid said from his sphere. “We are observing, and will not interfere unless requested.”

“Thank you, too,” I said, taken aback but reassured, because Joe knew more about the equipment than any dolphin did. If there were a problem, he would best know how to handle it. Neither Joe nor Levy could handle shallow water, but their sphere was in deep water, only seeming to be close to the others. The magic of communication put us all into deep space as a fleet of spheres.

“Move out,” Hrump directed. We surged forward at light speed, as we could do in simulation while our spheres remained where they were. It was the beams we controlled that counted, not our physical presence.

And there was the Pulse, highlighted by simulation, but all too real in its onslaught. It resembled a monster purple jellyfish with a thousand burning red eyes cruising through it, each looking small but actually larger than a star.

“Orient on your targets,” Hrump said. “We must repel together, so that it maintains cohesion.” We had been over this in training: you could not repulse a jellyfish with a needle, for it would just poke harmlessly through. But several score dull needles poking together could be a different matter.

We oriented, singing our songs. I fixed on the eye closest to me. It almost seemed to be staring at me, though I knew this was imagination; the Pulse was not alive, and in any event, could not see us in our far-away sea spheres. My song surrounded it, so that I knew exactly where it was. It was not exactly echolocation, but was allied; neither was it exactly sight.

“Fire!”

The green beams lanced out together, each striking a different eye. And the eyes seemed to blink and retreat. They were magnetic, and the magnetic beams were disrupting them. They drifted to the sides, but the beams followed them, still painfully poking. It was tricky staying oriented on mine, but I had the reflexes to do it, as humans did not.

“The Pulse is moving!” Levy cried. “Deflecting!”

We were doing it! All we needed was to angle it a little bit so that it missed our solar system.

Then my beam slipped and the eye got loose. It charged at me like a malignant brand. I could not reorient fast enough to catch it again. If its magnetic storm got too close to me it would blind me and destroy my system. Tayle screamed.

A blue beam from the side caught the eye and hurled it back. That gave me the chance to reorient my own beam and catch the eye again. “Thank you!” I said.

“Welcome, tidbit,” the orca said, and moved on to look for other dolphins in trouble. That was his job.

We stayed at it for hours, magnetically deflecting the Pulse. I was tiring, but could not rest; I had already seen how any mistake could be disastrous.

And finally it was done. The Pulse continued, for it was virtually indestructible, but now it would miss the solar system. That was all that was required.

“Return,” Hrump said. “Congratulations on our success.”

There was a cheer from the space-borne spheres.

I set my sphere for home, and was back in the ocean. It turned off and I swam out into the real sea. “That was awesome!” Tayle said.

I just wanted to get with Hrump and relax and sleep. I did.

Next day we held a dolphin meeting to review the situation, and the orca was allowed to join. The trackers had verified that the Pulse had been slightly deflected, just enough to miss us. Our mission was indeed a success.

But there was another thing. Jon reported it. “While we were busy in space, a mystery developed here in the sea,” he said. “Three fishing boats turned up drifting, their crews mysteriously dead. One had a blue circle with a fish inscribed. They appear to have been poachers going after illegitimate harvesting. Of course we have no idea what happened, but illicit fishing has abruptly diminished. Meanwhile the human effort to outlaw the killing of dolphins, whales, and large squid continues, and will surely succeed in due course.”

Tayle giggled, and there was a murmur-song among the dolphins, who somehow did not seem to be unduly dismayed by the ugly mystery. Neither was I. I remembered that blue circle on the craft that had killed my mother and my pod. Now they, too, were dead.

The future of the world, human, dolphin, and Millennial, was opening out before us.

The End

~~~~~

Also available from

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Aladdin Relighted

The Aladdin Trilogy #1

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Dragon Assassin

by Piers Anthony

and J.R. Rain

(read on for a sample)

Chapter One

It was another unproductive day.

I don’t like unproductive days, especially as a self-employed private investigator living and working in the city of Los Angeles. Unproductive days meant I don’t eat, pay my rent or pay my alimony. Hell, I hadn’t had a haircut in months. I made it a new manly style, but the truth was I couldn’t afford regular cuts. Unproductive days meant creditors would come knocking, and I hated when creditors came knocking.

Most important, unproductive days meant I didn’t get to drink myself into oblivion, which is exactly what I’d been doing these past few months.

I was in my office, alone, my feet up on my old desk.

It wasn’t much of an office—or a desk, for that matter. The office was just a small room with stained carpet, a couch on the far wall, where I had napped one too many times. The often-broken ceiling fan did little to disperse the hot air. A water cooler occasionally gurgled by a sink and faucet, where I kept my booze. An old TV sat on a bookshelf that was filled with novels I’d always meant to get to, but haven’t found the time yet.

Not much of an office...and not much of a life, either. When I was working, I was usually tailing cheating wives, one or two of which I ended up cheating with myself.

Now, as the ceiling fan wobbled above, as the drone of traffic reached me from nearby Sunset Boulevard, I idly wondered how I could drum up more business. Perhaps start a Facebook account? Or even Twitter? Maybe both? Maybe now was a good time to see what, exactly, a Twitter was.

I hadn’t a clue.

Truth was, I could barely use those new-fangled cell phones. You know, the ones that are practically a computer. Hell, I had a hard enough time with my laptop, let alone a computer the size of my palm.

I shook my head, and absently longed for the days when people actually used a land line. When a phone sounded like a phone, and not the latest Lady Gaga song.

I’d always suspected I was a man born out of time. As a kid, I often wore a cowboy hat and toy six-shooters to school—back when they allowed kids to bring toy guns to school. I longed to be a cowboy—hell, I still did. Now that was the life. No computers, no smart phones, no Twitter. Just me, my horse and the open range...

I awoke with a start.

How long I had been asleep, I didn’t know. I’d been dreaming of the Wild West, of the Great Plains, of beautiful showgirls, and of whiskey. Mostly, I had dreamed briefly of long rides on my trusted horse, of its hooves pounding hard through the hot desert sand, kicking up dust a mile long behind me.

Oddly enough, as I sat up and rubbed my eyes, I was hearing just that: the sound of hooves.

“What the hell?” I mumbled.

I knew the sound of horse hooves well. Although I didn’t have much, I always made a point of keeping a horse at a nearby stable, just outside of LA. Whenever I could, I took this horse out—and longed for simpler times.

The sound came again. Yes, hooves. In fact, many hooves.

“What the hell?” I said again, a little louder.

And just as I slid my cowboy boots off the desk and stood, I heard another strange sound: heavy boots approaching my office door. I’ll admit, I briefly considered going for my gun located in the top right drawer, a gun I now kept nearby since an incident with a client’s husband. Long story.

And so I stood there, undecided. I mean, was there really a horse just outside my door? Or had I imagined that? After all, wasn’t I just dreaming of horses?

I nearly laughed. Of course, that was it.

I’d dreamed of the horses.

Maybe. I certainly wasn’t dreaming of the approaching boots, which grew louder and louder. I considered again the gun in my drawer, and was just reaching for it when my office door opened.

All thoughts of my gun disappeared when I got a load of the man standing there in my office.

A man out of time, indeed.

*  *  *

The stranger was short, no more than an inch or two over five feet, and was wearing clothing that I was certain I’d never seen outside of the Renaissance fair. And even then, the clothes still seemed off. Just damn unusual. The man’s shirt had a ruffled collar and wide stitching down the front. It appeared hand-stitched, and of a rough material that I was certain I’d never seen before.

Oh, and he wore a cape. Yes, a cape. As in Superman, minus the giant “S”. It hung from his shoulder and nearly touched the ground and was embroidered with a material that looked, to my eye at least, like actual gold.

“What the hell?” I whispered yet again. Admittedly, my day had taken a dramatic turn to the weird.

Strangest of all, was the sword that hung from a scabbard at the man’s right hip. Strange because it was an actual sword. A sword. Here in my office. And a highly unusual one at that. A bejeweled pommel poked up from the scabbard, a jewel unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Mostly because it seemed to be...

Glowing?

I shook my head. Surely, I was dreaming.

I was about to ask what the devil was going on when the stranger opened his mouth and...began to sing? And beautifully too...except he sang in a language I was certain I had never heard before.

And then it hit me—a singing telegram!

An old-fashioned special message. I nearly clapped, and was briefly relieved. After all, I’d been about to question my sanity. Yes, times have been rough of late. I was beginning to suspect too rough, that I’d finally lost it.

But, yes. A singing telegram.

And the guy sang beautifully...albeit in another language. Hungarian maybe?

I laughed and clapped and sat on the corner of my desk and enjoyed the show. One of my buddies had obviously set me up. Granted, I didn’t have many buddies these days—and most were fellow private investigators. And, as I knew all too well, private investigators often had a lot of free time on their hands.

The man sang and sweated, and when he was done, I clapped again and offered him some water.

The little man frowned, scratched his head, then finally nodded. He next removed something from his pants pocket. It was a small pouch, held together with strips of colorful leather. The little man pulled open the pouch and proceeded to tap out something onto his open palm.

A white powder. Cocaine?

Next, the man did something highly unexpected. He raised his open palm to his face—and blew hard. The dust exploded out and quickly filled my small office.

“Hey,” I said. “Why the hell did you do that?”

“I did it,” said the man after a moment, “so that we might communicate. Can you understand me now?”

“Of course I can understand you,” I muttered, coughing.

“The spell worked, I see. Very good. It’s one of my own creations, in fact. The princess will be pleased.”

“Spell? Princess?” I said, admittedly confused as hell. “Oh, I see, you’re still in character. So, what are you, like a magician or something?”

“A wizard, in fact.”

“Like Harry Potter and all that?”

“Harry Potter—” the man paused, cocked his head slightly. “Ah, you are referencing something in your popular culture. Yes, I suppose I am a little like Harry Potter and his gang of adventurers. There is, of course, one big difference.”

“And what’s that?”

“I’m a real wizard.”

I grinned. “Of course you are.”

“I see by your smile and easy agreement that you are using sarcasm. You are humoring me. You don’t really believe me.”

“I believe that you’re quite a showman.”

“In more ways than one, my good man.”

“Now that I believe.”

The man frowned slightly. It was almost as if he was, in fact, trying to understand me, or the intentions of my words. This day, certainly, could not have gotten any weirder.

He said, “Well, kind sir. My name is DubiGadlumthakathi—but you may call me Dubi—and I have no doubt that you will believe soon enough. You are Roan Quigley?”

I nodded, still grinning through all this madness.

He continued. “You are something called a private investigator?”

“Yes.”

“And we are presently in the city of Los Angeles in the third dimensional physical realm of the planet Earth?”

I was about to grin again, but something suddenly stood out: the man sounded so...sincere. And so odd. I still could not place his accent. And had he really ridden up on an actual horse?

“Very good, then,” said the man and reached inside another pocket. He extracted another pouch, this one clearly heavier than the first. I was certain I’d heard the clink of metal. And not just any metal. Gold? “We are here to hire you, Mr. Quigley.”

I was momentarily caught off guard. “Hire me?”

“Of course. You do assist those in need, correct?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, knowing that my grin was faltering a little.

“Well, Mr. Quigley, the Realm is very much in need of your expert services.”

“The Realm?”

“Yes, Mr. Quigley. The Realm, from which we hail.”

“Of course, right. And who’s we?”

“Myself and the princess.”

“Princess?”

“Yes, she’s right outside your door. Would you care to meet her?”

“Er, I’m really quite busy—”

“I understand, which is why I’ve brought this.”

And with that, the little man emptied onto his palm a dozen or so golden nuggets that looked, at least to my untrained eye, very real. Dubi said, “I trust this will be enough to retain your expert services?”

“Is that...?”

“Gold? Yes, Mr. Quigley, and there’s more where that came from.”

My mouth, inexplicably went dry, because I was certain—dead certain—that it was real gold. Real, honest-to-God gold. And tens of thousands of dollars worth of it.

“Sweet Jesus,” I muttered.

“Your realm’s deity, I assume?” asked Dubi.

“You assume correctly,” I said, and did my best to get a handle on the situation. I sat back and crossed my arms over my chest. “So who set you up? Rick? My brother maybe?”

“Neither ‘set me up,’ or directed me to be here. I am here by the princess’s directive only.”

“Princess,” I said. “Who’s right outside the door?”

“Yes, with the others.”

I stared at Dubi. He stared at me, smiling politely. I stared at the gold in his open palm. Then I pushed myself off the desk, and marched past the little man, who turned and followed me.

I stepped outside...and was not entirely prepared for what I saw...

*  *  *

The summer sun was high in the sky, baking the mostly empty parking lot. Mostly empty, since it was presently filled with six massive horses and four riders. Three men and one woman. Three heavily armed men, with broadswords that reached well below their boots. Even more weapons hung from various scabbards along the saddles.

They all regarded me curiously, especially the woman. I blinked in the bright light, trying my damnedest to comprehend what I was seeing, but I couldn’t. For the life of me, I couldn’t get a handle on what I was seeing: six horses, three warriors and a woman. Here in the middle of LA. On horseback.

And not just any woman, either. A stunning beauty who took my breath away—and who regarded me shyly.

I realized my mouth had dropped open, but I didn’t care.

I was dreaming, of course. Or this was a seriously elaborate joke. Or I had lost my mind.

“I can see you’re confused, my good man,” said Dubi, coming up behind me. “I do not doubt that you are. Truth be known, this is a new experience for us all, too.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, still staring at the horses, at the weapons, at the stunningly beautiful woman sitting high above me.

“We’re here to hire you, Mr. Quigley.”

A very troubling thought suddenly occurred to me, one that made me doubt my sanity and to immediately swear off another drink: this is real.

“What, exactly, do you need me to do?” I heard myself ask.

“We need you to help us find a killer. An assassin, actually.”

“An assassin?”

“Yes.”

“And who did he assassinate?”

“The king, of course.”

“Of course,” I said. “The king. That makes perfect sense. And the young lady...?”

“Is his daughter.”

I nodded, trying my damnedest to wrap my brain around what was happening to me...and couldn’t.

“So why me?” I asked.

“We can explain that on the way,” said the little man. “Really, we don’t have much time to lose. The killer is getting away as we speak.”

I felt dizzy. “I need to sit.”

“We have provided you a horse, Mr. Quigley. We understand you are an expert rider.”

“I...I feel sick.”

“I am an expert at curing ailments, my good man. Please. We must hurry. We have a killer to catch. Will you help us?”

I looked at him, and looked at the horses—the beautiful horses. I longed to be astride such a beautiful creature. And then I looked at the princess. I sensed her sadness, her grief. Had her father actually been murdered? Assassinated?

And then she did something that warmed my heart and caused all doubt and confusion to melt away. She smiled at me.

“Yes,” I said, barely able to believe the words that were coming from my mouth. “I will help you. I think.”

“Very good!” said Dubi, clapping me on the shoulder and striding past me. “Then we must hurry. We haven’t a moment to lose. Your mount awaits.”

Dragon Assassin

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About the Authors:

Piers Anthony is one of the world’s most prolific and popular authors. His fantasy Xanth novels have been read and loved by millions of readers around the world, and have been on the New York Times Best Seller list twenty-one times. Although Piers is mostly known for fantasy and science fiction, he has written several novels in other genres as well, including historical fiction, martial arts, and horror. Piers lives with his wife in a secluded woods hidden deep in Central Florida. Please visit him at www.hipiers.com for a complete list of his fiction and non-fiction and to read his monthly newsletter.

J.R. Rain is an ex-private investigator who now writes full-time. He lives in a small house on a small island with his small dog, Sadie, who has more energy than Robin Williams. Please visit him at www.jrrain.com.