Had he been alone, Franklin would have been scared stiff, but Don seemed the complete master of the situation. He leaned out of the hatch and yelled in the direction of the whale’s invisible ear: “Move over momma! We’re not your baby!”
The great mouth with its hanging draperies of bone snapped shut, the beady little eye—strangely like a cow’s and seemingly not much larger—looked at them with what might have been a hurt expression. Then the sub rocked once more, and the whale was gone.
“It’s quite safe, you see,” Don explained. “They’re peaceful, good-natured beasts, except when they have their calves with them. Just like any other cattle.”
“But would you get this close to any of the toothed whales —the sperm whale, for instance?”
“That depends. If it was an old rogue male—a real Moby Dick—I wouldn’t care to try it. Same with killer whales; they might think I was good eating, though I could scare them off easily enough by turning on the hooter. I once got into a harem of about a dozen sperm whales, and the ladies didn’t seem to mind, even though some of them had calves with them. Nor did the old man, oddly enough. I suppose he knew I wasn’t a rival.” He paused thoughtfully, then continued. “That was the only time I’ve actually seen whales mating. It was pretty awe-inspiring—gave me such an inferiority complex it put me off my stroke for a week.”
“How many would you say there are in this school?” asked Franklin.
“Oh, about a hundred. The recorders at the gate will give the exact figure. So you can say there are at least five thousand tons of the best meal and oil swimming around us—a couple of million dollars, if it’s worth a penny. Doesn’t all that cash make you feel good?”
“No,” said Franklin. “And I’m damn sure it doesn’t make any difference to you. Now I know why you like this job, and there’s no need to put on an act about it.”
Don made no attempt to answer. They stood together in the cramped hatchway, not feeling the spray upon their faces, sharing the same thoughts and emotions, as the mightiest animals the world had ever seen drove purposefully past them to the north. It was then that Franklin knew, with a final certainty, that his life was firmly set upon its new course. Though much had been taken from him which he would never cease to regret, he had passed the stage of futile grief and solitary brooding. He had lost the freedom of space, but he had won the freedom of the seas. That was enough for any man.
Eleven
CONFIDENTIAL—-TO BE KEPT IN SEALED ENVELOPE
ATTACHED IS THE medical report on Walter Franklin, who has now successfully completed his training and has qualified as third warden with the highest rating ever recorded. In view of certain complaints from senior members of Establishment and Personnel Branch that earlier reports were too technical for comprehension, I am giving this summary in language understandable even to administrative officers.
Despite a number of personality defects, W.F.’s capability rating places him in that small group from which future heads of technical departments must be drawn—a group so desperately small that, as I have frequently pointed out, the very existence of the state is threatened unless we can enlarge it. The accident which eliminated W.F. from the Space Service, in which he would have undoubtedly had a distinguished career, left him in full possession of all his talents and presented us with an opportunity which it would have been criminal to waste. Not only did it give us a chance of studying what has since become the classic textbook case of astrophobia, but it offered us a striking challenge in rehabilitation. The analogies between sea and space have often been pointed out, and a man used to one can readily adapt to the other. In this case, however, the differences between the two media were equally important; at the simplest level, the fact that the sea is a continuous and sustaining fluid, in which vision is always limited to no more than a few yards, gave W.F. the sense of security he had lost in space.
The fact that, toward the end of his training, he attempted suicide may at first appear to argue against the correctness of our treatment. This is not the case; the attempt was due to a combination of quite unforeseeable factors (Paragraphs 57-86 of attached report), and its outcome, as often happens, was an improvement in the stability of the subject. The method chosen for the attempt is also highly significant in itself and proves that we had made a correct choice of W.F.’s new vocation. The seriousness of the attempt may also be questioned; had W.F. been really determined to kill himself, he would have chosen a simpler and less fallible method of doing so.
Now that the subject has re-established—apparently successfully—his emotional life and has shown only trivial symptoms of disturbance, I am confident that we need expect no more trouble. Above all, it is important that we interfere with him as little as possible. His independence and originality of mind, though no longer as exaggerated as they were, are a fundamental part of his personality and will largely determine his future progress.
Only time will show whether all the skill and effort lavished on this case will be repaid in cents and dollars. Even if it is not, those engaged upon it have already received their reward in the rebuilding of a life, which will certainly be useful and may be invaluable.
Ian K. Stevens
Director, Division of Applied Psychiatry, World Health Organization
PART TWO
THE WARDEN
Twelve
SECOND WARDEN WALTER Franklin was having his monthly shave when the emergency call came through. It had always seemed a little surprising to him that, after so many years of research, the biochemists had not yet found an inhibitor that would put one’s bristles permanently out of action. Still, one should not be ungrateful; only a couple of generations ago, incredible though it seemed, men had been forced to shave themselves every day, using a variety of complicated, expensive, and sometimes lethal instruments.
Franklin did not stop to wipe the layer of cream from his face when he heard the shrill whining of the communicator alarm. He was out of the bathroom, through the kitchen, and into the hall before the sound had died away and the instrument had been able to get its second breath. As he punched the Receive button, the screen lighted up and he was looking into the familiar but now harassed face of the Headquarters operator.
“You’re to report for duty at once, Mr. Franklin,” she said breathlessly.
“What’s the trouble?”
“It’s Farms, sir. The fence is down somewhere and one of the herds has broken through. It’s eating the spring crop, and we’ve got to get it out as quickly as we can.”
“Oh, is that all?” said Franklin. “I’ll be over at the dock in ten minutes.”
It was an emergency all right, but not one about which he could feel very excited. Of course, Farms would be yelling its head off as its production quota was being whittled down by thousands of half-ton nibbles. But he was secretly on the side of the whales; if they’d managed to break into the great plankton prairies, then good luck to them.
“What’s all the fuss about?” said Indra as she came out of the bedroom, her long, dark hair looking attractive even at this time of the morning as it hung in lustrous tresses over her shoulders. When Franklin told her, she appeared worried.
“It’s a bigger emergency than you seem to think,” she said. “Unless you act quickly, you may have some very sick whales on your hands. The spring overturn was only two weeks ago, and it’s the biggest one we’ve ever had. So your greedy pets will be gorging themselves silly.”
Franklin realized that she was perfectly right. The plankton farms were no affair of his, and formed a completely independent section of the Marine Division. But he knew a great deal about them, since they were an alternative and to some extent rival method of getting food from the sea. The plankton enthusiasts claimed, with a good deal of justice, that crop growing was more efficient than herding, since the whales themselves fed on the plankton and were therefore farther down the food chain. Why waste ten pounds of plankton, they argued, to produce one pound of whale, when you could harvest it directly?
The debate had been in progress for at least twenty years, and so far neither side could claim to have won. Sometimes the argument had been quite acrimonious and had echoed, on an infinitely larger and more sophisticated scale, the rivalry between homesteaders and cattle barons in the days when the American Midwest was being settled. But unfortunately for latter-day mythmakers, competing departments of the Marine Division of the World Food Organization fought each other purely with official minutes and the efficient but unspectacular weapons of bureaucracy. There were no gun fighters prowling the range, and if the fence had gone down it would be due to purely technical troubles, not midnight sabotage…