Dolphin Island - Arthur C. Clarke [41]
Despite his natural prejudice, Johnny had to admit that she was a handsome creature.
Her piebald coloring—white underneath, black above, and with a large white patch behind each eye—gave her a most striking appearance. These patches were responsible for the nickname she soon acquired—Snowy.
Now that she had finished inspecting the pool, she started to survey the world around it.
She reared her massive head out of the water, looked at the crowd with keen, intelligent eyes, and lazily opened her mouth.
At the sight of those terrible, peg-shaped teeth, there was a respectful murmur from the audience. Perhaps Snowy knew the impression she had created, for she yawned again, even more widely, giving a still better view of her formidable dentures. Dolphins have small, pinlike teeth, intended merely for grasping fish before they are swallowed whole, but these teeth were designed to do the same job as a shark's. They could bite clean through a seal or a dolphin—or a man.
Now that the island had acquired a killer whale, everyone wanted to see what the Professor would do with her. For the first three days, he left her alone, until she had become used to her new surroundings and had recovered from the excitement of the trip.
Since she had already been in captivity for several months, and was quite used to human beings, she quickly settled down and accepted both live and dead fish when they were given to her.
The task of feeding the whale was undertaken by Mick's family, usually by his father Jo Nauru or his uncle Stephen, skipper of the Flying Fish. Though they took on the job merely to earn some extra money, they soon became quite fond of their charge. She was intelligent, which everyone had expected, but she was also good-natured—which hardly seemed right for a killer whale. Mick grew particularly attached to her, and she showed obvious pleasure when he came near the pool—and disappointment if he left without giving her anything.
When he was quite sure that Snowy had settled down and was taking a healthy interest in life, the Professor began his first tests. He played some simple phrases of Dolphin to her through the underwater hydrophones, and studied her reactions.
At first, they were quite violent. She charged around the pool in all directions, looking for the source of the noise. There was no doubt that she associated dolphin voices with food, and thought that dinner had been served.
It took her only a few minutes to realize that she had been fooled and that there weren't any dolphins in the pool. After that, she listened attentively to the sounds that were played to her, but refused to go chasing after them. Professor Kazan's hope that she would reply to some of the Dolphin talk in her own language was not fulfilled; she remained stubbornly dumb.
Nevertheless, he was making a little progress in "Orcan," using tape recordings of killer-whale sounds. He used OSCAR's infallible computer memory to hunt through the mass of material for Dolphin words. He found many. The names of several fish, for example, were almost the same in Orcan as in Dolphin. Probably both languages—like English and German, or French and Italian—sprang from some common ancient origin.
Professor Kazan hoped so, for it would greatly simplify his work.
He was not too disappointed by Snowy's lack of cooperation, for he had other plans for her, which could be carried out whether she co-operated or not. After she had been on the island for two weeks, a team of medical technicians arrived from India and began to install electronic equipment at the edge of the pool. When they were ready, the water was drained off, and the indignant whale was stranded helplessly in the shallows.
The next step involved ten men, some strong ropes, and a massive wooden framework that had been designed to hold the whale's head clamped in a fixed position. She was not at all pleased with this, nor was Mick, who had to assist