Chapter 15 Section fifteen

Professor Kazan was delighted to hear about Johnny's new invention.This was exactly what he had planned to do.These plans are not mature yet, but are gradually taking shape.In a few weeks, he'll be presenting a fully-fledged plan to an advisory committee. Professor Kazan is not like some scientists, such as those mathematicians who engage in pure theory; this kind of scientists are not willing to see their research results applied in practice, thinking that doing so will belittle the theoretical significance of their research.Although Professor Kazan is willing to study dolphin language for a lifetime, he realized that the white stone when applying his research results is a bit like an egg, but only the size of a bean.

"What is this?" Johnny dismissively asked casually. "Don't you know?" Mick replied. "This is a pearl, and a fine pearl!" Johnny wasn't too interested in this, but he didn't want to spoil Mick -- and certainly didn't want to expose his ignorance. "Where did you get that?" he asked. "I didn't get it. Peggy found it at 80 fathoms. No diver would go that deep. It's too dangerous, even with modern equipment. But Uncle Henry found it on a shallow dive." After showing the silverlipped oysters to Peggy, Suzie, and Eina, they caught several hundred at once. These alone, the professor said, would have paid for the voyage."

"What—this pearl?" "No, don't be silly--the shells. Shells are still the best material for making buttons and knife handles. Although there are oyster farms now, it is impossible to supply all raw materials. The professor believes that as long as a few hundred trained dolphins, you can start a decent small pearl oyster factory.” "Have you found the sunken ship?" "We found about 20, most of which were charted. But out of Gladstone Harbour, we worked with trawlers and did a fishing experiment. We drove two schools of tuna into the nets. " "I think the fishermen must be very happy."

"No, not as happy as you think. They don't believe the dolphins are helping them - they say it's due to their own electric field and sound induction. But we know very well that it's Su If we can train a few more dolphins, we can prove it. By then, we can drive the fish wherever we want." Johnny suddenly remembered what Professor Kazan had said when he first met him. "The freedoms they enjoy are much wider than those of us on land. They belong to no one. And I hope, even in the future, they don't belong to anyone." So, do the dolphins know they will lose their freedom?Does the professor himself know that, although his actions are well-intentioned, his work deprives them of a wide range of freedoms?

Only time will be able to answer these questions.But dolphins don't necessarily enjoy as wide a range of freedoms as people think.Johnny didn't forget the fact that there were 20 dolphins in the belly of a killer whale. What is gained must be lost.Freedom requires sacrifice.Perhaps, for their own safety, dolphins would rather trade with humans and sacrifice part of their freedom.Such transactions have precedents in many countries around the world.Of course, such transactions tend to be unequal at times. Of course, Professor Kazan had thought of this a long time ago, and perhaps even more far-reaching.For now, he doesn't have to worry about it, because everything is still in the experimental stage.Such decisions will have to be made in the future.He vaguely realized that a treaty should be signed between humans and dolphins in the future, but this was in the distant future.If a dolphin does sign a contract with a human, it's impossible to see such a thing, at least in his lifetime.But why is it impossible?Their mouths are very dexterous, and they collect hundreds of silver-lipped shellfish with their mouths and bring them up.Teaching dolphins to write, or at least teach them to draw, is the next step in the professor's long-term plan.

Another project that may take longer, even hundreds of years, is to write a history of the ocean.The professor has always believed that dolphins have an amazing memory, and now he is convinced of this.In the history of mankind, before the invention of writing and writing, the history was passed down through the memory of the brain.Bards keep thousands of lines of verse in their heads and pass them down from generation to generation.The songs they sang were prehistoric tales of gods, heroes, and battles, in which fact and imagination were mixed.But in any case, some facts have been preserved, and these facts require us to dig them out, just like the 19th century German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) excavated the Troy site in Greece and confirmed Like the story about Troy in Homer's epic.

Dolphins also have their own "bard," although Professor Kazan has yet to find one.Aina can tell the general plot of some of these stories, which he heard from his ancestors when he was young.After translating these stories, Professor Kazan is convinced that the information conveyed in these dolphin legends is not only very rich, but also impossible to obtain anywhere else.It dates back as far as human myths and legends, some of which are clearly tales of ice ages - the last of which occurred 17,000 years ago. One of the stories was so unusual that even Professor Kazan doubted his own translation.So he gave the tapes to Dr. Keith and asked him to analyze the translation independently.

Dr. Keith was of course far worse than Professor Kazan in translating dolphin language, so it took him almost a month to figure out the general idea of ​​the story.He was very reluctant to check the translation with Professor Kazan, but under the repeated urging of Professor Kazan, he told the dolphin story he translated. "This is an old legend." Professor Keith began to narrate. "Aina retold the story several times. The legend seemed to have made a particularly strong impression on the dolphins because of the fact that the story told was unprecedented. "As I understand it, the story goes like this: One night, a pod of dolphins was swimming around the periphery of a large island. Suddenly, the sky became as bright as day. 'The sun fell from the sky.' I believe I translated it completely Correct. The Sun fell into the water and came up again. Finally, the sky turned into night again. But a huge thing floated in the sea - 128 dolphin lengths. Am I right?"

Professor Kazan nodded. "I agree with everything you said except the numbers. The number I translated was 256, which means 256 dolphins are long. But it doesn't matter. Anyway, it's wooden, there's no doubt about that." . The professor discovered that dolphin mathematics is binary.This is also easy to understand, because they only have two "fingers", that is, two flippers.Their 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000 are equivalent to 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 in human decimal mathematics.So, for them, 128 and 256 are just integers, which only represent an approximation, not an exact measurement.

"The dolphins were so terrified that they didn't dare approach the monster," Dr. Keith continued. "The big monster was lying on the water and made a strange sound. Ainar also imitated this sound. I heard it sounded like an electric motor or an air press." Professor Kazan nodded in agreement, but did not interrupt Dr. Keith's narrative. "Then there was a big explosion and the sea boiled. Everything within a radius of 1024 meters or even 2048 meters was burned to death. The thing sank quickly and never exploded again. "Those dolphins who escaped by chance and were not injured soon died inexplicably. Many years passed, and no one dared to swim close to that area. But because nothing happened afterwards, some dolphins with strong curiosity swam back. After some investigation, they found 'there are many rock caves in that place' lying on the bottom of the sea, and they drilled into the caves to look for fish. Later, these dolphins also died inexplicably. Since then, no dolphin dared to go there. I think this story is A kind of warning, its metaphorical meaning is to warn the world."

"This warning has been repeated for thousands of years," agreed the professor. "But what's the warning?" Dr. Keith shifted restlessly in his chair. "I can't think of a reason," he said. "If there is any basis for this legend - and it seems unlikely that the dolphins themselves could have imagined such a story - then, thousands of years ago, a spaceship landed somewhere in the ocean. Later, its nuclear The engine exploded, and the surrounding sea was polluted with radiation. It's a wild theory, but I can't think of a better explanation." "Why is it absurd?" asked Professor Kazan. "Now, we are sure that there are many intelligent beings in the universe. Therefore, it is completely understandable that other intelligent beings may also build spaceships. In fact, it would be incomprehensible to say that they have never been to Earth before up. "Some scientists believe that there were aliens in the past. But they visited millions of years ago, so we cannot find traces of their visit today. But this time, we may be able to find some evidence. " "What do we do about this?" "There's nothing we can do at the moment. I've asked Ainar, and he doesn't know where all this is happening. We need to find the 'bard' among the dolphins and record the entire epic. We hope they can tell in more detail. As long as We know a rough area where we can detect the remains of the spacecraft with a Geiger counter—even after 10,000 years. Right now I'm only worried about one thing." "What's up?" "The killer whale may have swallowed this important information. We will never get the truth."]