—Why?

—If I can stimulate the pain and pleasure centers, I can motivate them to learn.

—What will you teach them?

—How to talk.

Her eyes flicked left, then right. She risked the question—English?

He nodded, proud of his plan.—Dolphins have big brains.

When the dolphins vocalized, unlike most other animals, they didn’t open their mouths. Underwater, it was hard to trace where the sound came from: which animal had made it, much less what part of the body. However, she’d begun to suspect the sounds they emitted didn’t come from their mouths or throats. Hearing the dolphins squeal and call above the surface, even with her reduced hearing, she was gradually able to determine that the noises came from their backs, not their mouths.

A few times, she’d seen the blowhole tighten or loosen while the sound was being made. Underneath the blowhole, whatever organs were creating the noise, there were no teeth or lips or tongue involved. Asking a dolphin to pronounce English words through a blowhole would be like asking a horse to sing.

She imagined wires trailing from the dolphins’ skulls to a car battery in Blum’s hands, him yelling nursery rhymes at them, shocking their brains each time they didn’t repeat his words.

She asked—How do you get the electrodes in the brain?

—Small holes in the skull.

—How do you make the holes?

—A knife.

—In the skull? You make those with a knife?

—Oh, no. To get through the skull, we have a hammer and a nail.

Her expression changed.

Blum added—The brain and skull have no pain neurons. The dolphin feels only the first cut.

* * *

Mother didn’t play, not since the operation on her. However, she also didn’t act like Bernie, lying near the bottom of the lagoon and coming to the surface only to exhale, slow and sad. Instead she cruised the lagoon, systematically examining every inch of its sides and bottom, beaming sound at it as though asking it to open. At times she tried digging her beak into the sand, determined, wiggling her beak between the rocks as far as she could. Then she’d pull back, a few scrapes on her beak, to move onto the next section.

After a while, she’d return to the chute to rest there, her mouth a little open to taste the water from the sea.

* * *

One early morning when Cora arrived, her hearing glasses on, she saw a crow in one of the trees cawing enraged at the lagoon. Kat had her head out of the water, watching the crow.

After each caw, there was a loud echo. Cora looked around, trying to figure out what the sound was echoing off. The building? The water? Wherever it came from, the echo seemed to make the crow angrier. It hopped forward on the branch, rocking with the strength of its open-mouthed call.

Even with Cora’s hearing, she could tell there was something wrong with the echo. It wasn’t a perfect mimic; instead it seemed a trifle high-pitched and muffled, the timing slightly off. This was when she noticed Kat was watching the crow with concentration, her head cocked. Each time there was an echo, her blowhole tightened.