Dolphins' Bell Read online

  Dolphins' Bell

  Anne McCaffrey

  The Wildside Press Newark, NJ

  Text copyright © 1993 by Anne McCaffrey

  Illustrations © 1993 by Pat Morrissey

  Book design by John Betancourt

  ISBN: 1-880448-34-3

  When Jim Tillek activated the red-alert-recall sequence on the Big Bell at Monaco Bay, Teresa's pod with Kibby and Amadeus leaping and diving right along with her was there within minutes. Within the hour, the ones led by Aphro, China and Captiva arrived; a total of seventy, counting the three youngest calved only that year. Young males and solitaries surged in from all directions, squee-eee-ing, clicking, chuffing loudly and performing incredible aquabatics as they came. Few dolphins had ever heard that particular sequence on the Big Bell so they were eager to learn why it had been rung.

  "Why ring the red?" Teresa demanded, bobbing her head up in front of Jim who stood, legs spread to balance his lean body to the rocking float anchored at the end of Monaco Wharf. Her nose bore the many scratches and scars of age as well as an aggressive personality. She tended to assume the role of Speaker for Dolphins.

  The float was broad and wide, nearly the length of the end of the Wharf and was traditionally where the dolphineers held conferences with pods or individuals. This was also where the dolphins came to report unusual occurrences to the Bay Watch or for rare instances when they required medical attention. The end timbers were smoother than the others due to the dolphins' habit of rubbing against them.

  Above the float hung the Big Bell, its belfry sturdily attached to a massive six by six molded plastic pylon well-footed on the seafloor below. The chain the dolphins yanked to summon humans now idly slapped against the pylon with the action of the light sea.

  "We landfolk have trouble and need dolphin help," Jim said and pointed inland where the clouds of white and grey smoke curled ominously into the sky from two of the three previously extinct volcanoes. "We must leave this place and take from here all that can be moved. Do the other pods come?"

  "Big trouble?" Teresa asked, leisurely swimming beyond the bulk of the Wharf to check the direction in which Jim had pointed. She raised herself high above the water, turning first one, then the other eye, to assess the situation. Her sides showed the rakings of many years' contact with amorous or angry males. "Big smoke. Worse than Young Mountain."

  "Biggest ever," Jim said, for a moment wishing that the eternal cheerful expression on dolphin faces did not seem so out of place right now.

  "Where you go?" Teresa reversed her direction and stopped in front of Jim, giving him her complete and seriously cheerful attention. "Back to sick ocean world?"

  "No," and Jim shook his head vigorously. Since the dolphins had passed the fifteen year journey on the colony ships in cold sleep, they had had no sense of the passage of time. From an installation in the Atlantic Ocean, they had entered their water-filled travel accommodations and had been awakened in the waters of Monaco Bay. "We go north."

  Teresa ducked her bottlenose, flinging a spray of water at him as if agreeing. Then, dropping her head in the water, she gave forth to the members of her pod a rapid series of word noises too fast for Jim to follow though, over the past eight years on Pern, he'd learned a good deal of their vocabulary.

  Kibby glided to one side of Teresa and Captiva bobbed up on the other, all earnestly regarding Jim.

  "Sandman, Oregon," Captiva said distinctly, "are in West Flow. They turn, return as fast as the flux allows."

  Then Aleta and Maxmillian abruptly arrived, adroitly avoiding a collision with the others. Pha pushed neatly in, too, as he was never one to be left out on the periphery.

  "Echo from Cass. They speed back. New sun see them here," Pha said and blew from his hole to emphasize the importance of his report.

  "Yes, they do have the furthest to come," Jim said, since that pod was based in the waters around Young Mountain, helping Patrice de Broglie's seismic team. But dolphins could swim all night and Cass was one of the original and most reliable of the females.

  The waters around the sea end of the Monaco Wharf facility were now so packed with dolphins that, when some of the dolphineers arrived, Theo Force remarked dryly to Helga Duff that they could probably have walked on dolphins across the wide mouth of Monaco Bay and never got their feet wet.

  Some of the nine dolphineers and seven apprentices actually took longer to arrive than their marine friends since the humans had to sled in from their Stake Holds. Luckily, both Jim Tillek's forty foot sloop, Southern Cross, and Per Pagnesjo's Perseus yawl were in port. Anders Sejby had radioed the Mayflower was under full sail and would be there by dusk while Pete Ver-anera thought he'd have the Maid in on the late night tide. The Pernese Venturer and Captain Kaarvan had not yet reported in. She was the largest, a two masted schooner, with a deep draught, and slower than the other four.

  Once all the humans reported in, Jim tersely explained that, with Mount Garben about to erupt, Landing had to be evacuated and everyone must help get as many supplies as possible to safety around Kahrain Head. The larger ships would be taking their loads as far as Paradise River Stake but that would be too far for the smaller craft but everything that floated was to be used to shift material as far as Kahrain.

  "We've got to transport all that?" Ben Byrne cried in an aggrieved tone as he flung an arm toward the wharfside where enormous piles of material were being deposited by sleds of all sizes. He was a small, compact man with crisp blond hair nearly white from sun bleach. His wife, Claire, who worked with him at Paradise River, stood at his side. "There aren't that many ships of any decent size and, if you think the dolphins can…"

  "We've only to get it to Kahrain, Ben," Jim said, laying a steadying hand on the younger man's shoulder.

  "Click! Click!" Teresa managed an ear-piercing shout for attention. "We do that, we do that!" Amadeus, Pha and Kibby agreed, nodding vigorously.

  "Ye daft finnies, you'd burst yer-selves," Ben cried, incensed, wagging his arms at the dolphins facing him to be quiet.

  "We can, we can, we can," and half the dolphins crowding the end of the wharf heaved themselves up out of the water to tailwalk in their enthusiasm. Somehow they managed not to crash into the seething mass of podmates who ducked out of the way under water with split second timing. Such antics were repeated by many, all across the waters of the bay.

  "Look what you started, Cap'n!" cried Ben in an extravagant show of despair. "Damned fool fin-faces! You wanna burst your guts?"

  Sometimes, Jim Tillek thought, Ben was as uninhibited as any of the whimsically impetuous dolphins he was supposed to 'manage'. The difference between their enthusiasm and the reality of their assistance lay in the fact that all adult dolphins had spent a period training with human partners, learning to come to the aid of stranded swimmers, sailors, and occasionally damaged sailing craft. They were delighted to have a chance to practice on such a scale.

  Harnesses from the training sessions were available — and more could be cobbled together— to 'hitch' dolphin teams to any of the smaller sailing craft. A big yoke already existed, contrapted for the ore barge which the dolphins had several times hauled from Drake's Lake. But never had the settlers had to call on all the dolphins.

  "We've known something big was up," Jan Regan said, her manner much calmer as befitted the senior dolphineer. She gave a snort that was half-laugh. "They've been squeeing like nutters about underwater changes around here," she added, flicking her hand at the crowded bay. "But you know how some of them exaggerate!"

  "Hah! With Picchu blowing smoke rings, of course they'd know something's going to happen," Ben said, having recovered his equilibrium. "Question is, how much time do we have before Picchu blows?"

  "It isn't Picchu that's g
oing to blow…" Jim began as gently as possible and allowed the startled reaction to subside before he continued. "It's Garben."

  "Knew we shouldn't have named a mountain for that old fart," Ben muttered.

  Jim continued. "More important, Patrice can't give us a time frame." That stunned even the solid and unflappable Bernard Shattuck. "All he can do is warn us when the eruption is imminent."

  "Like how imminent?" Bernard asked soberly.

  "An hour or two. The increasing sulphur-to-chlorine ratio means the magma is rising. We've two, maybe three days with just sulphur and ash…"

  "The ash I don't mind. It's the sulphur that's so appalling," and Helga Duff started coughing again.

  "The real problem is," Jim paused again, "Monaco is also within range of pyroclastic missile danger."

  "Range of what?" Jan screwed her face up at the technical term. She knew as much as any human could about dolphins but ignored technical jargon.

  "Range of what heavy stuff the volcano can throw out at us," Jim said, almost apologetically.

  "Worse than the ash and smoke already coming down?" Efram asked for, though they hadn't been standing on the wharf that long, their wet suits were now grey with volcanic ash.

  "The big stuff, boulders, all kinds of molten debris…"

  "But we have Threadfall at Maori Lake this afternoon…" young Gunnar Schultz said, looking totally confused by the conflict of imperatives.

  "We have to get all the material we can to Kahrain as soon as possible and that is the immediate priority, folks. Thread'll have to wait its turn," Jim said with his usual wry humor. "All available craft are to be used and the call's gone out to owners to either get here or appoint a surrogate. So all we have to do is explain to pod leaders what has to be done and the kind of cooperation we need from them." He began passing out copies of the Evacuation Plans Emily Boll had given him forty minutes before. He glanced anxiously overhead as three heavy sleds seemed about to collide. "Damn 'em. Look, read the overall plans while I go organize some air traffic control."

  The dolphineers dutifully read the evacuation plan, though Jan skimmed ahead to their responsibilities: the stuff building up on the beach. Loads were all color-coded. Red and orange were priority, and red was fragile, for immediate transfer to Kahrain. Yellow should go in a hull of some kind; green and blue were waterproofed and could be towed.

  Jim stuck his head out of the control room window. "Lilienkamp's sending us drums, wood, lines and whatever men he can spare to lash rafts together. At least the weather report's good. Decide which of the dolphins can be trusted to pull…"

  "Any one of 'em you ask," Ben said indignantly.

  "And we'll need some sensible dolphs to swim escort on the smaller sail craft. Keeerist, what's that driver doing?" Leaning his long frame as far out of the window as he could, Jim began waving both long arms shoreward to ward a heavy sled away from colliding with two smaller ones which were all trying to slide into the tight landing spaces on the strand. "Do the best you can!" he shouted at his team and pulled his head back in to restore some order to the traffic heading toward the bay.

  "Jan, you, Ef and me explain," Ben said. "Bernard, start organizing those red and orange loads for the Cross and the Perseus already tied up. Let's get some of the larger small craft in to load. By then the pod leaders'll know what's expected and can make assignments of escorts. Gunnar, Helga, you others, start checking with the sail craft, find out their load limits. Try to keep track of what went with whom…" He broke off, realizing the monumental task ahead of them. "We'll need some hand recorders… You guys get started. I'll see if I can liberate us a few 'corders. There have to be some…" His voice trailed off as he climbed up the ladder to the wharf office.

  "Right after we tell the fins what they're to do, we organize some sea police, huh?" Bernard said.

  "Right, man! Right!" Efram said with heart-felt agreement. "Now then, let's brief the pods…"

  As they were all suited up, they moved along the length of the float, spotting their own particular pod leaders. Then, gesturing to the dolphins to give them some space, they jumped in. It was the easiest way to impress on individual dolphins their particular tasks.

  There was a sudden swirling of water around the dolphineers as the dolphins chose their favorite swimming partners. Despite the crush of mammalian life in the waters, Teresa emerged right by Jan Regan, Kibby by Efram: Ben got splashed by a well-aimed sweep of Amadeus' right flipper.

  "Cut that out, Ammie. This is serious," Ben said.

  "No ruff stuff?" Amadeus asked and clicked in surprise.

  "Not today," Ben said, and gave Ammie an affectionate scratch between the pectorals to take the sting out of the reprimand. Then he put his whistle in his mouth and blew three sharp notes.

  Heads, human and dolphin, turned in his direction. Letting his legs dangle beside Amadeus and resting one hand lightly on his nose, Ben outlined the problem and what assistance was required of the dolphins.

  "Kahrain near," Teresa said, chuffing energetically from her blow hole.

  "You have to make many trips," Jan said and indicated the growing pile of crates, boxes, nets of every size and color.

  "So?" was Kibby's response. "We start."

  Efram grabbed Kibby by the closest pectoral. "We need aisles," and he demonstrated parallels with his arms, "incoming, outgoing. We need escorts for the smaller ships. We need teams for the bigger rafts and barges."

  "Two, three teams to change to keep speed," Dart said, nudging Theo Force. "I know who thinks who is strongest. I go get them. You get harness." With one of those incredible flips a dolphin body was capable of performing, Dart lived up to her name, arcing over several bodies and neatly re-entering the water. Her disappearing dorsal fin showed the speed she was travelling at.

  "I get harness," Theo echoed, making a foolish grimace at the others. "I get harness," she said again, as she swam with confident strokes to the nearest of the pier ladders. "Why is she always one step ahead of me?"

  "'Cos she swims faster," Toby Duff yelled.

  "We, Kibby me, police lanes," Oregon informed Toby. "Use flag bobbers?"

  Jan started to giggle. "Why do we bother telling them anything?" she said.

  "Flag buoys coming up," Toby said, swimming for the ladder nearest the storage sheds where the racing buoys were kept. "Green for incoming, red for outgoing."

  "There should be enough," Efram said, following him, "from the winter regattas."

  "These all the ships?" Teresa asked, swishing herself up high enough on her tail to look up and down the wharf.

  "There should be a dozen or more luggers and sloops coming in from the coastal and down river Stakeholds," Jan told her. "The bigger ones can sail right on down to Paradise River, but whatever we get around Kahrain Head'll be safe enough."

  "Busy, busy," Teresa said and looked happier than usual. "New thing to do. Good fun."

  Jan grabbed her left fin. "Not fun, Tessa. Not fun!" And she shook her finger in front of Teresa's left eye. "Dangerous. Hard. Long hours."

  If a dolphin could shrug diffidently, that's what Teresa did. "My fun not your fun. This my fun. You keep afloat. Hear me?"

  * * *

  By the time Jim Tillek had managed to organize air traffic and get some beach wardens into position, the two lanes had been established with red and green buoys: three teams of the biggest males had been harnessed to the big barge which had been filled with fragile red loads and was already underway. The first flotilla of smaller sail craft followed, dolphin-towed out of the congested harbor area to the point where they could safely hoist canvas on their way to Kahrain. Escort dolphins had been assigned.

  "We're never going to keep track of this stuff," Ben muttered to Claire. She had organized something to eat for the dol-phineers while her friend, Tory, was busy with his team, hauling blue and green cargo out to dinghies and other less sea-worthy craft.

  Even the big ceremonial canoe, smaller ones and kayaks were being pressed into s
ervice. These would have to be very closely watched as they were manned by relatively inexperienced sailors—many of them pre-teens — who had been assigned the unusual duty.

  Jim Tillek had seen that they all had emergency jackets, gear and knew exactly how to call a dolphin to their aid. The supply of whistles ran out which worried some of the less competent kids but Theo Force had Dart demonstrate how fast she could come to their aid if they merely slapped the water hard with both hands. Fortunately the sea remained gently rippling.

  "Those clodheaded landlubbers are more trouble than anyone else," Jim said, striding landward on the wharf, raising his bullhorn to chew out some Landing residents who were adding household goods to the stack of red priority cargo.

  That was when his patience foundered, and striding to the nearest sled, he hauled the driver out and ordered him to put back in what he had just unloaded. When that was done, Jim flew the sled to the 'space available' cargo at the far end of the strand. When the sled was once more unloaded, Jim took it up, despite its owner's voluble complaints, and used it for the rest of the day to be sure goods carted down from landing went into the appropriate areas. Actually, even from a moderate altitude, he could keep an eye on what was happening everywhere on the Bay.

  With a leeward breeze keeping most of the volcanic fumes wafting away from Monaco, Jim was sometimes startled to look inland and see how steadily the fuma-roles on Garben and Picchu emitted clouds of white and grey, and probably noxious gases. He also felt a pang of near terror as he saw the mass of things to be removed from 'pyroclastic' activity. They'd need a ruddy armada… Why couldn't they send more stuff by air?

  Yet he couldn't deny that a steady flow of sleds of all sizes gave proof that immense quantities were being flown out. Even the young dragons had panniers of some kind strapped behind their riders.

  Wiping his sooted brow with a kerchief nearly messier than his face, Jim watched the graceful creatures reach a high thermal and start the long glide down to the Kahrain cove. If they'd only more of them, more power packs, more ships, more…