They both shook their heads, again slowly, again dumbly.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you should.”
=================================================================
Chapter 32
The deep roar of the ocean.
The break of waves on further shores than thought can find.
The silent thunders of the deep.
And from among it, voices calling, and yet not voices, humming trillings, wordlings, the half-articulated songs of thought.
Greetings, waves of greetings, sliding back down into the inarticulate, words breaking together.
A crash of sorrow on the shores of Earth.
Waves of joy on – where? A world indescribably found, indescribably arrived at, indescribably wet, a song of water.
A fugue of voices now, clamouring explanations, of a disaster unavertable, a world to be destroyed, a surge of helplessness, a spasm of despair, a dying fall, again the break of words.
And then the fling of hope, the finding of a shadow Earth in the implications of enfolded time, submerged dimensions, the pull of parallels, the deep pull, the spin of will, the hurl and split of it, the flight. A new Earth pulled into replacement, the dolphins gone.
Then stunningly a single voice, quite clear.
“This bowl was brought to you by the Campaign to Save the Humans. We bid you farewell.”
And then the sound of long, heavy, perfectly grey bodies rolling away into an unknown fathomless deep, quietly giggling.