Read Online The Dolphins of Pern by Anne McCaffrey - Free Book Online

and knocked off his feet by the many bodies that roiled the waters about him. Then he was uplifted by one dolphin body, nose-prodded by half a dozen more, and seemed to be flipped from one to another of the exultant creatures.
    “Easy! Take it easy! You’ll drown me,” Alemi yelled, half laughing, half sputtering at these exuberant antics.
    A huge shadow compressed the air above him, and he saw bronze Gadareth hovering, his claws extended as if he intended to pluck Alemi bodily from the attentions of the dolphins.
    “I’m all right, T’lion, I’m all right. Call Gadareth off!”
    “They’ll drown you,” T’lion shrieked, jumping up and down on the beach in his concern.
    Simultaneously, Alemi tried to reassure the dolphins, fend off Gadareth, who still saw the human endangered, and reassure the young rider.
    “Belay this!”
Alemi roared.
    Abruptly the commotion about him ceased and bottle-nosed faces were turned up at him in a tight circle, an even larger ring just beyond them and more dorsal fins and leaping bodies homing in on him from farther out in the bay.
    “I am Alemi, fishman. Who are you?” He pointed to a dolphin whose nose brushed his thigh.
    “Naym Dar.” The dolphin squeed happily.
    Two words, then, Alemi realized, hearing the first word as a distorted “name.” He was delighted that his question had been understood. “Who leads this pod?”
    A second dolphin did a wiggle and came closer. “Naym Flo. Long … “And the creature used a word that Alemi didn’t recognize.
    “I do not speak good dolphin,” Alemi said. “Say again, please?”
    A ripple of squeeing and clicking greeted that admission.
    “We titch. You listen,” Flo said, turning one eye on him so that he could see the happy curve of its mouth. “Bellill ring? Trub-bul? Do blufisss?”
    “No, no trub-bul,” Alemi said with a laugh. “I didn’t mean to ring the bell to
call
you,” he added. And then shrugged because he didn’t understand their last question.
    “Good call. Long listen. No call. We … [a word Alemi didn’t catch] … bell. Pul-lease?” She cocked her head—Alemi didn’t know why, all at once, he decided she was a female, but something about her seemed to give that clue to her gender. He was also peripherally aware of how much he had actually absorbed from the pictures that Aivas had shown and the explanations of these … mammals. That was going to shock the conservative fishmen. His father especially. “Fish” had no right to be intelligent, much less answer humans.
    “That bell”—Alemi pointed back to the shore—“is … not working. I will get a bell that works. I will put it at Paradise River Hold. I will call you from there. Can you hear me anywhere?”
    There were squeeings and clickings and noisy blowings out of their airholes as they seemed to be trying to understand him.
    Suddenly Flo reared up out of the water, holding herself aloft by what Alemi decided could only be sheer determination. She tilted her head, her left eye regarding him. “Lemi ring bellill. Flo come. You oo-ait? ’Mis you oo-ait? Flo come!” She emphasized the last word with a flick of her tail before she sank into the water.
    “’Mis you wait?” Alemi repeated.
    “I tell you I come. I come,” Flo said with a burble and a whoosh from her blowhole. Everyone about her clicked and squee’ed in tones so emphatic that Alemi grinned broadly at their insistence. “Ooo skraaaabb blufiss?” Flo sounded hopeful.
    The last thing he had expected was the eager participation of the dolphins in reestablishing contact with humans. He tried repeating her last query just as he’d heard it. “Ooo” meant “you” but what “skraaaabb” or “blufiss” were sounds for, he couldn’t even guess. Beside him, Flo turned over and over in the water. He had to laugh at her antics: they were childlike, almost. Then he became aware of being uncomfortably hot, in water now up to his chest, and weighed down by the sodden heavy