So she stapled three metal shapes onto the dock (a black circle, a white square and a striped triangle), at the water line where the dolphins could easily tap them. There was 3 feet of space between the shapes so it would be easy to tell which answer-shape a dolphin tapped.

She broke the training down into stages, starting with the simple. For the first day, she prompted them by blowing a whistle and holding up one of the matching shapes. She threw a fish to any dolphin who then swam closer to the dock. Within a few days she could blow a whistle and hold up a shape and they would all swim to the dock. Next, she began to reward them only if they touched the dock, then only if they touched one of the shapes stapled to the end of the dock. Finally, she only rewarded them if they tapped the shape that matched the question-shape she held.

The different steps of this took time because she kept getting called away to check on different details of the homearium’s construction. By the second week, Tibbet got frustrated with the slow pace. He tried to train the dolphins himself. Standing on the dock, he would blow a whistle to get their attention and hold up one of the shapes.

From the half-constructed homearium, Cora could glance down to see what was happening. The dolphins stuck their heads out of the water and examined Tibbet. They were close to the dock, but none of them moved closer or touched the dock or the answer-shapes stapled there. Tibbet would blow the whistle again, impatient. He was holding up the question-shape, in this case the striped triangle, with a fish in his other hand as the potential reward. Kat watched him, her eyes at the surface like she was trying to imitate an alligator.

He could not always tell the difference between the individual dolphins, had not built a relationship with any of them. He didn’t ask for cooperation. He acted as though they ought to cooperate, like dogs or robots.

He shook the striped triangle now, impatient, and they just stared at him. For him, they would not perform.

After a while he gave up, and Cora was the one who continued to train them.

* * *

Blum’s isolation tank, the bathtub with a lid lying on the lawn, was ready to use. The idea was for him to float in the tank in the dark, nothing but warm water touching his body, the lack of physical sensation letting him explore the dimensions of his mind. However the first time he tried lying down in the tank, to keep his face above water, he had to paddle with his hands. Working like this to keep his head high enough to breathe meant his heels gradually sank until they rested on the bottom.

This combination of half-swimming and his feet touching the bottom of the tank didn’t allow for the meditative state he wanted, so he connected a hose and air pump to one of his children’s oversized punch balloons to create a homemade rubber diving helmet. He systematically stretched out the neck of the balloon until he could pull it on, over his head (rolling it down over his face the way a woman rolled on nylons). When he let go, it snapped into place around his neck. The air pump wheezed, inflating the balloon, creating a featureless swollen head with an umbilical breathing hose emerging from where the left ear should be. Cora, Tibbet and Eh watched, eyes wide. Blum stood there in his swim trunks, calm, apparently breathing.