with a complex vocabulary, or whether it's all-I mean, do they think, or is it all instinct, the way it is with ants?" I looked across the blinding glare of ocean disappearing into the horizon. "Ants never seem to me to be particularly happy." "Yah, you have a point there. Dolphins undeniably have a great sense of fun. And humor is a sign of intelligence. You're quite a girl, Vicky. Before I-" He stopped and looked at me, probingly, and I waited for him to say something, and when he did, it wasn't at all what I had expected. "This Leo: are you his girlfriend?" Why did Zachary and now Adam care about Leo and me? Me, Leo's girlfriend? Day before yesterday, I'd have been outraged. "Are you?" Adam prodded. "He's my friend," I said carefully. "But not my boyfriend. I don't know him that well." "Don't you? Last night he surely looked at you the way someone looks at his girlfriend." "Adam, I never even really talked to Leo till yesterday. We see the Rodneys when we come to visit Grandfather, the way we see lots of other people on the Island. Leo and 96 I never had a conversation till he talked about his father dying, when we walked on the beach yesterday. I think maybe we can really be friends. But I'm not anybody's girlfriend." "And what about Zachary?" Adam bent down and started unlacing his sneakers. His hair fell across his eyes. "Zachary-I guess what I think I have to do with Zachary is give him a chance, the way we said last night." About Zachary, I wasn't ready to say anything more than that. Adam looked up at me and grinned as he unlaced his other sneaker. "Friends. Friends are what make the world go round for me." He stood up, tying his already knotted laces together and hanging his sneakers about his neck. "John says you're a pretty good swimmer." "I won't win any races, but I'm good at long distance. I mean, I can swim on and on forever as long as there isn't any rush." "Long distance is what I want from you, not speed. When I asked you to come to the lab this morning, I wasn't sure how much I was-but now I think you-" And then he stopped. He stopped for so long, and stood there on the beach, sneakers dangling about his neck, hands dropped by his sides, not moving, that finally I spoke to break the silence. "Another thing about dolphins not having hands-they can't take a gun or a harpoon and kill." "Yah." A brief silence. "And here's another mystery: the dolphin's brain is forty percent larger than ours and just as complex." I figured we were going to go swimming, so I kicked off my sandals. "How much of the brain does the dolphin use? We use only a tiny portion of ours." 97 "Vicky." I waited. "Would you like to meet a dolphin?" "You mean like Una and Nini?" "I mean out at sea. Like the one you saw yesterday." "Well-sure." "You wouldn't be afraid?" He was looking at me, hard. "I don't know." I couldn't pretend with him. "I don't think so-but-well, meeting a dolphin except in a pen never occurred to me." "Will you swim out with me and try? If you're afraid, you can swim back. And he may not come, anyhow. I mean, this is something entirely new in my experiment with Basil." "Basil?" Suddenly his voice was brisk and business-like. He pointed to a large rock behind us, bigger than my rock in Grandfather's cove. "Basil's the dolphin who's my chief project this summer. There's your dressing room. Go behind the rock and put on your bathing suit. Then swim out and join me, but stay a few yards behind. I'm going to call Basil. He's a little bigger than Una and Nini, but don't let that worry you." He started to run toward the surf, then turned and called back, "The tide's coming in now and, anyhow, this is the safest bay on the Island." Then he splashed into the water. It didn't take me long to change. I stood for a moment behind the shelter of the rock, feeling the fierce strength of the sun, and at the same time feeling cold because of what Adam had told me we were going to do. To calm myself I turned around slowly, looking,
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