the top of his head, gently patting, then stroking. As I stroked, the eyes, one on each side of his beaming mouth, closed. He wriggled closer to me, and I kept on stroking. Adam dove down, almost like a dolphin, and came up on the other side of Basil and me, shaking water from his head and wearing an expression of delight, and, I thought, of surprise. "He likes you. I thought he might." I nearly asked, 'What would you have done if he hadn't?' But Basil gave a wriggle that seemed to say, Go on stroking me,so I decided to save all questions till later. "Tell me what he feels like to you," Adam urged. How can anybody describe the feel of a dolphin? "Something strange, alien," I murmured, "like touching a creature from a different planet-and yet completely familiar, too, as though I've always known what a dolphin feels like. Do you suppose there are planets which are all water, and no land, and only dolphins and fish and no people?" "Very likely." Adam was leaning back in the water, comfortably, almost as though he were sitting in a rocking chair. "Go on. What else does he feel like?" 101 I kept on stroking. "Like-like a balloon, but a balloon filled with something much heavier than air." "What else? Anything familiar?" "Like-like a wet inner tube, the kind kids use when they're learning to swim. And-and-what he feels most like is polished pewter, only pewter is rigid. Like resilientpewter." "Terrif!" Adam applauded. "Resilient pewter. I like that. Jeb will appreciate that." And he added, "When I tell him." The dolphin rolled over. "He likes to have his chest scratched." But I already knew why Basil had rolled over. I didn't know how I knew, but I knew. And I was no longer in the least afraid. I scratched under Basil's great jaws, and then a little farther down toward his chest, scratched gently, and something a little gritty, like dolphin dandruff-no, that's not right; dolphin pollen-came off on my fingers, but when I raised my hand out of the water there was nothing there, and no odor, either. Basil bumped me, the way Ned butts his hard little head against you when he wants you to go on scratching, so I began again, asking, "What keeps coming off on my fingernails?" "His skin. As I said, dolphins continually shed skin, and that's likely another reason they can swim faster than we think they ought to be able to, because they don't have the skin resistance to water that we do." Again I lifted my hand from the water, but I couldn't see anything, and this time when I stopped scratching, Basil dove down, his great fluke nicking so that again I was drenched in spray, and appeared far beyond us, leap- 102 ing up in a great and glorious arc before diving down again. "He's gone to join his pod," Adam said. "Pod?" I was still treading water and feeling more exhilarated than I have ever felt in my life. "His-community, you might call it. Hey, Vicky, you were terrific. You were so terrific I can hardly believe it. You exceeded my wildest expectations. Let's swim in. I want to talk." And he turned and headed for shore. Leo was a strong swimmer, but Adam's crawl was tidier. There was almost no splash as he cleaved through the water nearly as cleanly as Basil. I followed, not trying to keep up, but doing the Australian crawl because I like the respite of the scissors kick. And I was happy. Sometimes when you're happy you don't realize it till later. But swimming into shore after my meeting with Basil, I was shiningly aware that I was happy. Adam was doing cartwheels along the edge of the water. My cartwheels are floppy and inelegant, but his were perfect, as tidy as his swimming, and full of joie de vivre.When I splashed out of the water, he landed on his feet, beaming. He led the way to a low dune in the shelter of a scrubby kind of tree. He spread his towel out in the shade, and we sat. He looked at me with his probing look. "Maybe I was taking a risk in having you meet Basil. I didn't tell Jeb I was going to do it, because I was positive
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