Tibbet watched and noted each answer down. His neat row of tallies, his irrefutable proof. When he left the blind, he would whistle as he grabbed his equipment, his every movement satisfied. Although he was not sure why the correct response rate was so low, he was proving his point, proving Blum wrong. They could not communicate. They really really really could not communicate. The dolphins would bob at the surface, studying him as he walked away.

For several days now, Kat and Mother had been earning a fraction of their normal amount of food. However they didn’t seem weak yet, both still played and jumped during the day.

He had not yet said how long his experiment would run, how far he would push this.

* * *

With the photographers, Cora would explain what the research was, so they would know what the photographs should show. One day, a photographer interrupted the point she was making, asking her to pout her lips a bit. She got angry and responded in the cop’s voice, with vocabulary she’d learned from the science books. She used the terms affricates and Tursiops in the same sentence.

The man looked at her confused, wondering if he’d misheard or if she was making words up.

Blum happened to be nearby. He stepped in front, redirecting the men’s attention to himself. He had started wearing a pair of sunglasses with large round lenses and white plastic frames. They made him look a little like an owl, wide-eyed and surprised at the world. The visitors would examine this Harvard professor with the sunglasses and wooden necklace. He’d smile, enjoying their reaction as he explained his experiment, rattling off the scientific jargon they expected from him.

At times, however, he’d drop in a different word or two, the kind of words that had been sneaking into his speech over the last few weeks. Groovy, copasetic. Righteous.

The reporters would look from him, to her, to Junior. They were not sure how to make sense of any of this.

* * *

She was sitting near the dock, with her hearing glasses, watching Tibbet getting ready to work with Mother and Kat.

She asked him—How long will you continue this experiment?

He said—However long it takes.

She said they needed more food.

Tibbet put another Tums in his mouth, rubbing the side of his gut. He said—They are the ones deciding how much they are fed, not me.

She asked—Have you seen a doctor about your stomachaches?

He turned to her, abruptly furious. Perhaps he was worried and her question scared him, that she had figured out his stomach hurt. Or maybe it was something else: that the reporters were not paying attention to him and his research. Or perhaps it was that his wife had not visited the center in at least two weeks (it was possible she wasn’t even on the island anymore). Or maybe it was the tension between the three men who no longer made or ate meals together. Instead, each ate at his desk or in his bedroom with the door closed. These days, the few times Blum and Tibbet addressed each other, they stood far apart, their arms carefully loose at their sides. Their stance reminded her of gunslingers. The conversations were short.