Chapter 72 chapter Five

Sealy once took me to talk to dolphins when we first met again, in the archipelago. We got up early to enjoy the dawn scenery.The treetop level is the perfect place to watch the gray sky in the east gradually turning into morning.The high-altitude cirrus clouds gradually began to ripple, and when the sun rose from the flat horizon, the sea seemed to melt. "Let's go swimming," Sealy said.The light from the distant surface covered her skin, casting her four-meter-long shadow across the platform. "I'm so tired," I said. "Wait a minute." We didn't sleep last night and lay talking, making love, chatting, making love again.Under the harsh morning sun, I felt a little empty and faintly sick.I felt the island move slightly under my feet, which made me dizzy, like the weightlessness of an alcoholic.

"No, let's go now." Shirley said, grabbing my hand and pulling me forward.I was full of irritability, but I was too lazy to reason with her.Sealy was twenty-six, seven years older than I was when we first met, but her impulsive demeanor always reminded me of the young girl I had brought home from a holiday party just ten months earlier.Her innocent and intelligent smile is still the same as before.When she was impatient, her green eyes always shone like swords.Her auburn hair, also unchanged, was long and thick.But her body has matured, and she has fully developed the perfect figure that a woman should have.Her breasts are still tall and plump, almost the same as those of adolescent girls, with a few freckles on the upper edge, and her fair skin is so transparent that the intertwined blue veins can be vaguely seen.But somehow, I think they are very different from before.She is very different.

"Would you like to come with me, or do you want to sit here and stare blankly?" Siri asked.By the time we reached the bottom deck, she had taken off her long-sleeved jacket.My paratrooper boat is still tethered to the pier.Above us, the island's tree sails have been unfurled, ready to catch the morning breeze.For the past few days, Siri has insisted on wearing a bathing suit whenever we go in the water.But now she is not wearing anything, her breasts stand up slightly in the cool breeze. "We're not going to miss the island, are we?" I asked her, squinting up at the whirring sails.In the early days, we would wait until noon, when the equator was calm, when the island would stand still in the water and the sea would become a shining mirror.And now, the spinnaker vines have begun to strain, and the thick leaves are full of wind.

"Don't be silly," Sealy said, "we can grab a keel root any time and watch it come back. Or grab a predator vine. Come on." She threw me a breath mask , and then put his own on.The sheer film makes her face look oily.She took out a large thick metal plate from the long-sleeved coat she had taken off, and tied it firmly around her neck.The piece of metal looked extremely dull against her complexion, making it uncomfortable to watch. "What's that?" I asked. Siri answered me without removing her breath mask.She tied the cord around her neck and handed me the earbuds.Her voice sounded husky. "Translation chip," she said. "I thought you knew everything about this kind of gadget, Mei Run. Whoever gets into the water slowly is the sea cucumber." Holding the chip on her chest with one hand, she walked down the island step by step.She kicked the water on her toes and dived deep, and I saw the pale and smooth curve of her buttocks.Within seconds she was a small white speck in the deep water.I put on my mask, pressed the communication line tightly, and stepped into the water.

Looking down at the base of the isle, it appears as a dull blot in a sky that casts crystal light.I was very careful to avoid the thick predatory vines, although Shirley had fully demonstrated to the sunflower that what they devoured was only the plankton, which was the size of the dust that scattered sunlight in the abandoned dance hall.Except for a few places, they have no interest in anything slightly larger.The keel root is like a stalactite hundreds of meters long and full of knots, straight into the purple deep sea. The island is moving.I could see the faint fibrillation of the tendrils trailing behind.Ten meters above my head, a wake reflected sunlight.Suddenly, the gel of the mask wrapped me tightly like the sea water around me, and I felt like I was suffocating, then I relaxed a little, and the air flowed freely into my lungs again.

"Dive a little deeper, Meiren," came Siri's voice.I blinked my eyes—a slow motion blink, the mask automatically corrected its position with my eyes—and then I saw Shirley twenty meters below, holding a keel root, effortlessly turning the colder Drift above deeper currents through which not even light can penetrate.I think of the sea thousands of meters deep below me, where there may be things, unknown boundaries, places that human colonists have not yet explored.Thinking of the darkness and the deep sea, my body tightened involuntarily. "Come down." Siri's voice sounded like insects to me.I turned around and kicked the water.The buoyancy here is not as strong as that of the old ocean, but it still takes a lot of effort to dive to such a depth.The mask relieved me from the stress of the depth and nitrogen on my brain, but I could still feel the pressure on my skin and ears.Finally I stopped kicking, grabbed a keel root, and pulled myself lumberingly toward the depth where Sealy was.

We drift side by side in the dim light.Here, Sealy looks like a ghost, her long hair swirling like a dark burgundy cloud, her pale streaks gleaming in the turquoise light.The surface of the water seemed out of reach.The V-shape of the wake expanded further, and dozens of vines floated up together, which meant that the small island was speeding up now, wandering aimlessly to other predation areas, and sailing to distant waters. "We're going to..." I said quietly. "Shhh," said Shirley.She fiddled with a large metal plate.Then I heard sounds: squeals, trills, whistles, cat purrs, and echoing cries.The deep sea is suddenly filled with strange music.

"Jesus," I said, and Siri had hooked up our comms line to the translator, and the word, reduced to meaningless whistling and beeping, was let out. "Hello!" she called, and the translated greeting echoed from the transmitter; a high-frequency bird call gradually became ultrasonic. "Hello!" she called again. A few minutes later, a pod of dolphins swam up to see what was going on.They roll around us, monstrously large, staggeringly large, their smooth skin looking remarkably muscular in their flickering brilliance.A large dolphin swam towards us, less than a meter away from us, and finally turned around, with its white belly curving around us, like a wall.As he swam by, I saw the dark eyes swivel and look at me.His broad caudal fin curled into a powerful vortex, and I was overwhelmed by the animal's strength.

"Hello," Siri said, but the fast-swimming thing had disappeared into the blurry distance, and there was sudden silence now.With a little finger, Siri turned off the translator. "Want to talk to them?" she asked me. "Of course." Actually, I hesitated.After more than three centuries of trying, it's still impossible to have a truly decent conversation between humans and marine mammals.Mike once told me that there were considerable differences in the patterns of thought between the different groups of orphans in the Old Lands, and that there were very few things they knew in common.An expert before the exile once wrote that trying to talk to a dolphin or a calf would be like talking to a one-year-old human baby.Both parties seem to enjoy the exchange, and the content seems to be a dialogue, but neither party can get to know the other better.Shirley turned on the translation chip again. "Hello." I said.

After a minute of silence, our earbuds buzzed and the sea echoed with a trembling cry. Distant/no caudal fin/greeting tone? /Current pulses/Around me/Fun? "What the hell is this?" I asked Siri, and the translator chattered out my question again.Ciri hid behind her breath mask, giggling. I tried again. "Hello! Greetings from the...um... surface. How are you?" The big male dolphin...I think it's a male...turned a corner and came towards us like a torpedo.He came swaying and slapping the water, and even though I remembered wearing fins that morning, he was still ten times as fast as I was.For a moment, I thought Chuang was going to knock us down, so I curled my legs and grabbed the keel.Then he swam past us and came to the surface to breathe while Sealy and I were disturbed by his rough wake and high-pitched calls.

No caudal fin/can't eat/swim/play/not fun. Siri switched off the translator and swam a little closer.She holds my shoulder lightly while I hold the keel root in my right hand.I'm tired of drifting in the warm current with my legs next to hers.A school of tiny crimson bettas bobbed above our heads, and the dark silhouettes of dolphins swam farther and farther in circles. "Is that enough?" she asked.Her palm was flat against my chest. "Try again," I said.Shirley nodded, and twisted the chip away again.The current brushes past and pushes us together again.She slid her arms around my body. "Why do you herd the archipelago?" I asked the pod of bottlenose dolphins circling in the shimmering light. "What benefits do you get from being with Kojima?" Now with Sounds/Old Songs/Deep Water/Not Loud Sounds/Not Sharks/Old Songs/New Songs. Siri's body was completely attached to mine.Her left arm hugged me tightly. "The loud voice means the whale," she said softly.Her hair was fanned out in strands.Her right hand moved down, as if wondering what she was touching. "Do you miss the big voice?" I asked the shadows.No reply.Siri's legs slid past and clamped around my hips.The surface of the water is like a big bowl, buckled forty meters above our heads, and the light is stirring in it. "What do you miss most about the Old Earth Ocean?" I asked.My left hand pulled Shirley closer, sliding down the curve of her back, her hips curling up to meet the touch of my palm, and I hugged her tightly.To those circling dolphins, we must have looked like a single creature.Shirley floated up a little and was close to me, and we became one. The wires of the translation chip got tangled and drifted and rolled over Siri's shoulder.I reached out to turn it off, but stopped because suddenly the answer to my question was buzzing in my ears. Missing the Sharks / Missing the Sharks / Missing the Sharks / Missing the Sharks / Sharks / Sharks / Sharks I turned off the chip and shook my head.I did not get it.There are so many things I don't understand.I closed my eyes and moved gently with Sealy, following the rhythm of the ocean current and our bodies.The dolphins swam near us, and the rhythm of their calls had the mournful, slow trill of old dirges.