Dolphin Island

Johnny began his skin-diving lessons at the edge of the jetty, among the anchored fishing boats. The water was crystal clear, and as it was only four or five feet deep, he could make all his beginner’s mistakes in perfect safety while he learned the use of flippers and face mask.

Mick was not a very good teacher. He had been able to swim and dive all his life, and could no longer remember his early troubles. To him it seemed incredible that anyone could fail to go effortlessly down to the sea bed, or could not remain there in complete comfort for two or three minutes. So he grew quite impatient when his pupil remained bobbing about on the surface like a cork, with his legs kicking up in the air, unable to submerge more than a few inches.

Before long, however, Johnny got the right idea. He learned not to fill his lungs before a dive; that turned him into a balloon and gave him so much buoyancy that he simply couldn’t go under. Next, he found that if he threw his legs clear out of the water, their unsupported weight drove him straight down. Then, once his feet were well below the surface, he could start kicking with his flippers, and they would drive him easily in any direction.

After a few hours of practice, he lost his initial clumsiness. He discovered the delights of swooping and gliding in a weightless world, like a spaceman in orbit. He could do loops and rolls, or hover motionless at any depth. But he could not stay under for even half as long as Mick; like everything that was worth doing, that would take time and practice.

He knew now that he had the time. Professor Kazan, although mild-mannered, was a person who wielded a great deal of influence, and he had seen to that. Wires had been pulled, forms had been filled in, and Johnny was now officially on the island establishment. His aunt had been only too eager to agree and had gladly forwarded the few belongings he valued. Now that he was on the other side of the world and could look back at his past life with more detachment, Johnny wondered if some of the fault might have been his. Had he really tried to fit into the household that had adopted him? He knew that his widowed aunt had not had an easy time. When he was older, he might understand her problems better, and perhaps they could be friends. But whatever happened, he did not for one moment regret that he had run away.

It was as if a new chapter had opened in his life—one that had no connection with anything that had gone before. He realized that until now he had merely existed; he had not really lived. Having lost those he loved while he was so young, he had been scared of making fresh attachments; worse than that, he had become suspicious and self-centered. But now he was changing as the warm communal life of the island swept away the barriers of his reserve.

The fisherfolk were friendly, good-natured, and not too hard-working. There was no need for hard work, in a place where it was never cold and one had only to reach into the sea to draw out food. Every night, it seemed, there would be a dance or a movie show or a barbecue on the beach. And when it rained—as it sometimes did, at the rate of several inches an hour—there was always television. Thanks to the relay satellites, Dolphin Island was less than half a second from any city on Earth. The islanders could see everything that the rest of the world had to offer, while still being comfortably detached from it. They had most of the advantages of civilization and few of its defects.

But it was not all play for Johnny by any means. Like every other islander under twenty (and many of them over that age), he had to spend several hours a day at school.

Professor Kazan was keen on education, and the island had twelve teachers—two human, ten electronic. This was about the usual proportion, since the invention of teaching machines in the middle of the twentieth century had at last put education on a scientific basis.

All the machines were coupled to OSCAR, the big computer which did the Professor’s translating, handled most of the island’s administration and bookkeeping, and could play championship chess on demand. Soon after Johnny’s arrival, OSCAR had given him a thorough quiz to discover his level of education, then had prepared suitable instruction tapes and printed a training program for him. Now he spent at least three hours a day at the keyboard of a teaching machine, typing out his responses to the information and questions flashed on the screen. He could choose his own time for his classes, but he knew better than to skip them. If he did so, OSCAR reported it at once to the Professor—or, worse still, to Dr. Keith.