In which one was the accident? I asked. He turned and studied my face, then pointed, indicating our own.
It was farther in, over there, he said. Toward the northeast end of the park. What have you heard about it?
Just the news report, I said. Has anything new been discovered?
No. Nothing.
With my fingertip, I traced the reversed L of lights that outlined the area.
No holes in the 'wall'? I asked.
There haven't been any equipment failures for a long while.
Do you think it was a dolphin?
He shrugged. Then, I'm a chemist, he said, not a dolphin specialist. But it strikes me, from everything I've read, that there are dolphins and there are dolphins. The average dolphin seems to be quite pacific, with an intelligence possibly equivalent to our own. Also, they should follow the same old normal distribution curve, the bulk of them in the middle, a few morons on one end, a few geniuses on the other. Perhaps a feebleminded dolphin who was not responsible for his actions did it. Or a Raskolnikov dolphin. Most of what is known about them comes from a study of average specimens. Statistically, in the relatively brief while such investigations have been going on, this has to be so. What do we know of their psychiatric abnormalities? Nothing, really. He shrugged again. So yes, I think it is possible, he finished.
I was thinking then of a bubble city and some people I had never met, and I wondered whether dolphins ever felt rotten, guilty, and miserable as hell over anything they had done. I sent that thought back where it had come from, just as he said, I hope you are not worried ... ?
Curious, I said. But concerned, too. Naturally.
He turned and, as I followed him to the door, said, Well, you have to remember first that it was a good distance to the northeast, in the park proper. We have nothing operating over there, so your duties should not take you anywhere near the place where it occurred. Second, a team from the Institute of Delphinological Studies is searching the entire area, including our annex here, with underwater detection equipment. Third, until further notice there will be a continuing sonar scan about any area where one of our people has to submerge himself, and a shark cage and submersible decompression chamber will go along on all deep dives, just in case. The locks have all been closed until this is settled. And you will be given a weapon, a long metal tube carrying a charge and a shell, that should be capable of dispatching an angry dolphin or a shark.
I nodded.
Okay, I said, as we headed toward the next cluster of buildings. That makes me feel a lot better.
I was going to get around to that in a little while anyway, he said. I was looking for the best way to get into it, though. I feel better, too, this part is offices. Should be empty now.
He pulled open the door and I followed him through: desks, partitions, filing cabinets, office machines, water cooler, nothing unusual, and, as he had said, quite deserted. We passed along its center aisle and out the door at its far end, where we crossed the narrow breezeway that separated it from the adjacent building. We entered there.
This is our museum, he said. Sam Beltrane thought it would be nice to have a small one to show visitors. Full of sea things as well as a few models of our equipment.
Nodding, I looked about. At least the model equipment did not dominate, as I would have expected. The floor was covered with green indoor-outdoor carpeting, and a miniature version of the station itself occupied a tablelike frame near the front door, all of its underside equipment exposed. Shelves on the wall behind it held larger-scale versions of some of the more important components, placarded with a paragraph or two of explanation and history. There were an antique cannon, two lantern frames, several belt buckles, a few corns, and some corroded utensils displayed nearby, salvaged from a centuries-old vessel that still lay on the bottom not very far from the station, according to the plaque. On the opposite wall, with several of the larger ones set up on frames before it, was a display of marine skeletons accompanied by colored sketches of the fully fleshed and finned versions, ranging from tiny spinefish to a dolphin, along with a full-sized mock-up of a shark, which I determined to come back and compare a little more carefully on my own time. There was a large section containing Frank Cashel's mineral display, neatly mounted and labeled, separated from the fish by a window and overlooked by a slightly awkward but still attractive watercolor titled Miami Skyline, with the name Cashel scrawled in its lower comer. Oh, Frank paints, I said. Not bad.
No, that's his wife, Linda's, he replied. You will meet her in just a minute. She should be next door. She runs the library and takes care of all our clerical work.
So we passed through the door that led to the library and I saw Linda Cashel. She was seated at a desk, writing, and she looked up as we entered. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties. Her hair was long, sun-bleached, pulled back, held with a jeweled clip. Blue eyes, in a longish face with a cleft chin, a slightly upturned nose, a sprinkling of freckles, and some very even, very white teeth were displayed as Barthelme greeted her and introduced us.
... Anytime you want a book, she said.
I looked around at the shelves, the cases, the machines.
We keep good copies of the standard reference works we use a lot, she said. I can get facsimile copies of anything else on a day's notice. There are some shelves of general fiction and light stun over there. She indicated a rack beside the front window. Then there are those banks of cassettes to your right, mostly undersea noises, fish sounds and such, for part of a continuing study we do for the National Science Foundation, and the last bank is music, for our own enjoyment. Everything is catalogued here. She rose and slapped a file unit, indicated an index key taped to its side. If you want to take something out and nobody's around, I would appreciate it if you would record its number, your name, and the date in this book. She glanced at a ledger on the comer of her desk. And if you want to keep anything longer than a week, please mention it to me. There is also a tool chest in the bottom drawer, in case you ever need a pair of pliers. Remember to put them back. That covers everything I can think of, she said. Any questions?
Doing much painting these days? I asked.
Oh, she said, reseating herself, you saw my skyline. I'm afraid next door is the only museum I'll ever get into. I've pretty much quit. I know I'm not that good.
I rather liked it.
She twisted her mouth.
When I'm older and wiser and somewhere else, maybe I'll try again. I've done everything I care to with water and shorelines.
I smiled because I couldn't think of anything else to say, and she did the same. Then we left, and Barthelme gave me the rest of the morning off to get settled in my cottage, which had been Michael Thomley's quarters. I went and did that.
After lunch, I went to work with Deems and Carter in the equipment shed. As a result, we finished early. Since it was still too soon to think of dinner, they offered to take me for a swim, to see the sunken ship.
It was about a quarter mile to the south, outside the wall, perhaps twenty fathoms down, what was left of it, and eerie, as such things always are, in the wavering beams we extended. A broken mast, a snapped bowsprit, a section of deck planking and smashed gunwale visible above the mud, an agitated horde of little fish we had disturbed at whatever they were about within and near the hulk, a partial curtain of weeds drawn and redrawn by the currents, and that was all that remained of someone's hopes for a successful voyage, some shipbuilders' labors, and possibly a number of people whose last impressions were of storm or sword, and then the gray, blue, green, sudden springs uncoiling, cold.
Or maybe they made it over to Andros and dinner, as we did later. We ate in a red-and-white-checked-tablecloth sort of place near to the shore, where just about everything man-made clung, the interior of Andros being packed with mangrove swamps, mahogany and pine forests, doves, ducks, quail, pigeons, and chickcharnies. The food was good; I was hungry.