At that word, the dog’s head came up, but she noticed too late, was already throwing the ball.

The dog vaulted out of the wife’s arms, a surprisingly athletic move, a small meaty rocket splashing into the water. The wife and mayor screamed, terrified that Junior would eat their pet.

Surfacing, the dog looked quite surprised. It appeared to have limited experience with swimming. It kept throwing its front legs up on top of the water, as though the surface might be a ledge on which it could climb. Flailing this way, it began to sink. Cora waded toward it, but Junior got there faster.

He rose underneath the dog, so it lay on his head, a four-legged toupee. The dog rested there long enough to inhale one big breath, then kicked off, paddling more effectively now to the edge of the pool where the wife scooped it out.

Floating at the surface, Junior considered this next moment with great intensity. He watched the wife and her husband hustle out of the building. Carrying the dog, cooing at it protectively, they exited out the door through which he himself had been carried in three long months ago.

* * *

For the last few days, Tibbet had been analyzing the results of his experiment with Mother and Kat and the matched shapes. He and Cora had been testing them for weeks, Cora showing Kat a geometric shape on one side of the lagoon, and Mother, on the far side of the lagoon, unable to see the shape, asked to tap the matching shape. Watching Mother, Tibbet would snort at each wrong answer, so satisfied, and Mother rolled her face through the water, studying him. Normally the dolphins figured out what was wanted over time, improving gradually. Instead, as the weeks passed, Mother answered correctly less and less often.

Tibbet stepped into the homearium to show Cora the final analysis of his experiment with Mother and Kat in the lagoon. He was waving the graph in his hand and smiling. Seeing him happy was unusual, so Cora grabbed her hearing glasses and walked with Tibbet onto the lawn to be able to talk without Junior splashing water at them and squawking.

He handed her the graph and announced—I’ve proved it. They can’t do it. They can’t communicate.

How do you know?—she asked.

—They answer correctly only 20 percent of the time.

—Sorry. Can you elaborate?

He sighed and said—They have to choose between three objects, right? A square, a triangle and a circle. By random chance, they should have picked the correct object a third of the time: 33 percent. Instead they got just 20 percent right. A coin flip would be more accurate.

Considering this, her eyes glanced up and to the right. She was hesitant.—The results are statistically significant?

—Very.

She spoke slowly, working through the thought.—If the results are significant and not the same as random chance, doesn’t that mean something non-random is happening?

He looked so disappointed in her. A math teacher whose pupil had made a simple mistake.—Further research will determine why they are so bad at this. Whatever the reason, it’s clear they can’t communicate.