The Breath of Suspension (44 page)

“Soviet law is not very sophisticated, I’m afraid.”

A Japanese guard brought them tea in graceful earthenware cups. With calm deliberation, Stasov poured the tea on the ground and let the cup fall on the pavement, where it cracked into pieces. The guard bowed expressionlessly, cleaned up the shards, and walked slowly away.

“What did they want from you?” Morgenstern asked. “What did they want to know?”

“They were curious about my work, my methods. My secrets.”

“What did they learn?”

Stasov grimaced. “I learned more from them than they did from me. The Japanese have little sympathy for cetaceans. They murder them with less concern than even Russians. Their curiosity was purely practical. I told them little, and that little took them a long time to discover. I know what that’s like. I’ve been on the other side of it. But they showed me that my life is not yet closed. I will continue living. That’s no small thing to learn, and I should be grateful.” The rustle of a rat in a palm tree made him jump. It took a moment for his heart to slow. “Are you a dolphin researcher, Ms. Morgenstern?”

“No. My interest is planetary exploration. Little enough use for that now, I’m afraid. After the Pacific War, the world’s too poor to afford it.”

He stared at her for a long time, long enough for her to worry that he was having some sort of traumatic stress attack. “That’s an interesting point,” he said finally, his voice betraying no particular emotion. “Interesting indeed. No, we can’t afford it. But others might be able to.”

❖

Two days later they crossed Manila Bay to Cavite, where the Soviet delegation waited. Sea gulls spun in the hot, wet air. The water was glass smooth, with a long sickening swell. Suddenly, all around them, the ocean was filled with the flashing forms of dolphins. They leaped out of the water, occasionally clearing the boat itself. Stasov sat at the stern underneath the flapping Rising Sun and looked out at them.

The white-jacketed Japanese pilot accelerated and began to slew back and forth, though whether to avoid the dolphins or to hit them was not clear.

“Are they glad to see you alive?” Morgenstern shouted over the roar of the motor.

Stasov looked thoughtful. “Glad isn’t the word. They know that something has been left undone. They will see me do it.”

“Isn’t something always left undone, Ilya? I don’t understand.”

“If something is always left undone, then no one would ever be allowed to die.”

Morgenstern turned away from her incomprehensible charge and looked back out at the dolphins. Most of them were dark blue-gray, their smooth skins gleaming in the sun, but some of them had rough attachments on their sides, the cyborg modifications that made them machines of war.

“Those are Soviet military dolphins,” Morgenstern said. “What are they doing in Manila Bay?”

Stasov shook his head. “None of my concern, now. Something for the Japanese and Americans to worry about.”

“Why? Soviet forces have demobilized.”

“They have. The Pacific Fleet is gone, the Japanese occupy Vladivostok, and there isn’t a Red Army unit existing east of the Lena. But the dolphins aren’t Soviet citizens, are they? And they have not signed any instrument of surrender.” He sat back in his seat and straightened the knot on his tie.

They had talked little about dolphins over the past two days. They had, instead, spoken mostly of space exploration, of Morgen-stern’s hopes and dreams, as if Stasov had come into her life to rescue her. As if he and his dolphins could somehow get her into space.

She looked out at the dolphins sliding in and out of the water and remembered the images from the TV: the flat burning shape of the Japanese aircraft carrier
Hiryu
at the Battle of La Perouse Strait and the vanishing prow of the
Aegis
cruiser
Jonathan Wainwright
as it failed to defend Kagalaska, both ships sunk by dolphins. The Soviets had been defeated, but the dolphins were still out there, and no one knew what they would do.

She looked at Colonel Ilya Sergeiivich Stasov, the Shark of Uglegorsk, and noticed that, for the first time since she had met him at Homma, he was smiling.

Stasov clambered down over the slippery seaweed-covered rocks to take a look at the octopus trapped in the tide pool. It had come too near shore at high tide, probably in pursuit of crabs to eat, and been imprisoned when the water receded. Snails and sea urchins tumbled helplessly as the octopus whirled its tentacles. The red starfish and the sea anemones clinging to the rocks on the side of the pool went calmly about their business, ignoring the frantic interloper. Stasov reached in and prodded the octopus with his finger. It flushed dark with fear and irritation and huddled down between two rocks. The overturned sea urchins waggled their spines and slowly began to right themselves.

The waves slapped louder as the tide rose over the rocks, gleaming eye-hurtingly in the glaring sunlight. Here and there the water met momentary resistance from a ridge or a seaweed pile, but it rose inexorably over all obstacles, finally pouring into the tide pool and reuniting it with the sea. The octopus jetted and vanished in the direction of deeper, safer waters.

Stasov climbed back up from the water, away from the heavy iodine smell of the dark seaweed. Isopods, those marine pill bugs, scuttled madly under his feet amid the barnacles and black lichens at the upper reach of the tidal zone. Above was the rough, bare rock where the sperm whale lay baking in the morning sun.

Its smooth black bulk loomed above the rough rock like a dream of a living mountain, sharply outlined against the cloudless sky. It had leaped from the sea sometime during the night and smashed itself on the land. Without help it would be dead by noon. Staring up at it, mesmerized, Stasov tripped over a stretch of the limp tubing that now crisscrossed the island. A firm hand grabbed his elbow and held him.

“We’re ready to pump,” Habib Williams’s wheezy voice said. “Tubes are soft now, but under pressure they’re like tree trunks. Get one of them wrapped around your leg and you got some trouble. Not to mention one leg fewer.” Williams was a short, skinny man with a bald brown head. His white suit was cut with precise jauntiness, and he carried a flowered Japanese parasol. He peered at Stasov with narrow, obvious suspicion. “Now tell me. Why are we here?” He reached down with the parasol’s crook and flipped the switch that was the only external feature of a satiny ovoid the size of a desk. It hummed, and seawater filled the tubing. Water sprayed out of hundreds of nozzles, played rainbows in the sun, and ran down the whale’s sides.

Stasov gazed at him, pale blue eyes as featureless as robin’s eggs. “We’re saving a whale,” he said. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”

Williams scowled. “It is. Cetacean rescue for the Indian Ocean. Fine, a respectable occupation, pleases my mother, though it means I can’t get home much. I know my profession. What I don’t know is why I, and Marta and Jolie and Ahmed, are
here
, on this tiny rock in the Maldives. The water is as clear and calm as I’ve ever seen it. There hasn’t been even the hint of a storm in a month. Halcyon weather. This time of year we sit in a garden in Colombo and play cards. Marta usually wins. She claims it’s skill.”

He walked around the perimeter of the spray, stepping over the streams that now flowed in the cracks down to the sea. Stasov followed. On the other side of the whale were the two heavy-lift helicopters that had brought the rescue team from Sri Lanka. Next to them was Stasov’s own aircraft, a tiny military surplus helicopter, its red star dimmed by sun and salt. Stasov thought of the red starfish in the tide pool. That helicopter had fought in the Aleutians, but its star now seemed to have an aquatic rather than a military character. Things did manage to change, sometimes. Ahmed and Jolie had set up a crane that curled over the sperm whale like a scorpion’s tail.

“Then, this morning, the sun comes up, and the Indian Ocean sea-search satellite tells me there’s a giant parmacety lying on the rocks in the middle of the ocean like a toy some god’s child forgot. It happens. I’ve seen gams of whales beach themselves and pods of dolphins bash themselves against cliffs until the water is red. Sperm whales do reverse brodies and drop themselves on islands to die. I don’t know why they do it, but I’m used to it. What I’m not used to is getting to the scene at top speed and finding Colonel Ilya Sergeiivich Stasov lying next to the whale, wrapped in a blanket, listening to the whale die.”

“I hold no such rank,” Stasov said sharply. His large hands tightened on each other. “The research vessel
Andrei Sakharov
has been in the Maldives for the past two weeks, not half an hour’s flight from here, at Ihavandiffulu Atoll.” Stasov had trouble pronouncing the outlandish word. “And she has been my station for two years.”

“Oh, has she?” Williams said with heavy sarcasm. “And aren’t you afraid you’ll be sunk if you venture into the open sea? The sea has become a dangerous place, these days. I would assume for Soviet ships more than anyone.”

“We’ve had no trouble.” Stasov took a breath. “I heard a call on one of our hydrophone buoys. Two weeks ago. A deep call, out in the Arabian Basin. If you play back your recordings, you’ll hear it. Three humpbacks, in close chorus. A simple call. It said, The Bubble Is Rising.’ It was a call to prayer. So I am here.” Williams stared at him, incredulous. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely.” Stasov lifted his suntanned high-cheekboned face to the sky. “The Bubble Has Risen.”

“Bullshit.” Williams restrained his temper with a visible effort and turned away.

Stasov shook his head, knelt, and folded up his blanket. “The whale is dying. You want to play militia officer, interrogate me and throw me off your island. Understandable. But while we argue theology, the whale’s mass is slowly crushing its lungs. Don’t your people have the respirator ready yet?”

The cetacean rescuer jerked his parasol shut, snapping several of its delicate wooden ribs. Stasov followed him to the crane. Williams carefully removed his white suit and finally stood, in paunchy dignity, wearing only a pair of red bikini shorts. Stasov also stripped.

The two men stepped onto the crane and were lifted up to the whale’s back, which was warm and smooth under their bare feet. They were immediately soaked by the spray that played over the whale.

Williams pulled the crane’s respirator nozzle over to the whale’s blowhole, located asymmetrically on the top left side of the snout. He stimulated the proper acupressure points with an ultrasonic probe, anesthetizing the sensitive blowhole. He then inserted the nozzle and adjusted the suction cups that held it firm. A signal to Ahmed, and a rush of air inflated the whale’s lungs.

“We can give him a breath of air, but we’re going to lose him,” Williams said. “A lot of damage down below where you can’t see it. He must have done a world record jump, from the looks of it. Cracked ribs, organ ruptures, internal hemorrhaging. A mess. Is this poor dying thing your Bubble, Stasov?” He snorted in disgust. “Dolphin superstition. Another of their mass of stupid lies.” From the whale’s back the two men could see the whole stretch of sea surrounding the island. Countless white splashes broke the otherwise calm water. Dolphins, hundreds of dolphins, were dancing in the sea. They surrounded the island out to the horizon. Williams stared at them, his face twisted with disgust.

“We’ve heard many lies over the past few years,” Stasov said, sweeping his arms at the dolphins. “The nature of dolphin Revelation isn’t one of them.”

“Are you asking me to accept the religion of those thugs?” Williams said. “Are they here to kill us? You.” A sudden look of realization swept across his face. “They want to kill you. For what you did to them at Uglegorsk, and after.”

Stasov shook his head slowly. “They know that I’m to live, for now. And when it is time for me to die, they’ll let me handle it myself. Dolphins are capable of an elementary politeness. No, Mr. Williams, they are here to witness the rising of the Bubble. The Great Whale swims beneath the surface of reality, and the buffetings of Her flukes are the swirls and eddies of our lives. A sweep of Her fluke has thrown this sperm whale out of the sea. God rises to breathe. When She does, all will change.”

“No, Stasov, I don’t buy it.” Williams looked as if he wanted to pace, but there wasn’t room enough on the whale’s slick back. “You pretend not to believe it, officially, but you know that the dolphins have been at war with the human race since the end of the Pacific War. They sank the cruise ship
Sagittarius
off Martinique. They’ve cut through the hulls of fishing vessels. They’ve killed swimmers in the open water. It’s been random murder.”

“Murder?” Stasov asked. “War? The actions of insane beasts? Which is it?”

“You’ve played your legal games all the way along. That’s how you escaped punishment, and the way they will, too.”

“The evidence that they’ve actually killed anyone is ambiguous.”

“Ambiguous!” Williams’s face turned red. “Colonel Stasov, pain and death are not ambiguous.”

“That’s quite true,” Stasov said seriously. “I know. But whatever has happened, the Americans and the Japanese have been forced to negotiate at Santa Barbara, recognizing dolphin rights. As they should have done years ago, at the end of the Pacific War.”

“This is your doing, damn you! You tortured them. Your cetacean research station at Uglegorsk ranks with Dachau and Auschwitz. I watched them die at Kagalaska. I was there.”

Stasov breathed slowly. “It was a war. A war for survival.” His voice was calm, almost dreamy. “But next time you give your diatribe, use some of our own Soviet concentration camps, such as Vorkuta and Kolyma, instead of those German ones. My grandfather died at Vorkuta. It lends a nice symmetry.” So Williams had been at Kagalaska. Had he watched his comrades’ blood crystallize on the blue rime ice and felt despair when the
Wainwright
sank?

“You tortured them and now you accept their faith?” Williams asked.

“I didn’t know I was torturing them,” Stasov said softly. “I didn’t know. But without understanding their faith, we would never have been able to communicate with them at all.”