Eye of the Whale (14 page)

Skilling watched Mother retreat into the jagged streaks of sunlight as the crushed yellow housing of the IMAX camera fell out of sight. He climbed through the hatch and back onto the deck of the
Sailfish.

“Are you all right?” Fenster said anxiously, and then noticed that Skilling had not passed the pig up. “Where’s the camera?”

Skilling stared down at the deck, his whole body shaking from shock. He clenched his fists to stop his numb hands from trembling, but he could not stop the nausea and dizziness.

“Where’s the camera!”

“The shark decided it didn’t want to have its picture taken after all,” Skilling said, his voice chillingly calm and lacking any humor.

Fenster opened his mouth to speak and then closed it.

Skilling wasn’t looking at him anymore. He was scanning the water for the shark. It hadn’t come back for the small piece of sealskin that was left. All Skilling could see on the surface were the distant dorsal fins of several transient killer whales. They cut through the water like tall black filleting knives. On another day, this would have been a source of interest, but now he longed only to see Mother again. Despite the fact that she had just tried to devour him, he felt heartsick. His respect for her was as close to worshipful awe as he had ever experienced.

TWENTY-ONE

A
POLLO LISTENED
—he could hear the clicking and sonar blasts of a pod of killer whales hunting nearby—six or seven perhaps—from their sounds—

A dangerous number if they were hungry—and killers were always hungry—

His eyes strained to see black and white skin in the shadowy gray water
—

He began to swim away—trying to get as far from the sounds as possible—then all at once he stopped—hearing the cause of the killers’ excitement—

The distress call was clearly from a calf—not his kind—but certainly a whale—migrating with its mother back to the northern feeding grounds—like Apollo’s own young would be doing shortly—

The piercing screech of a newborn’s terror is understandable by all—

Apollo tilted the white expanse of his large pectoral fins—gracefully—like the changing wind—

He pivoted the forty tons of his body and began to swim toward the menacing sounds
—

He drew closer and could see that the large male killers were deliberately colliding with the mother whale—separating her from her calf—

The female killers and their young were drowning the newborn—holding its head and blowhole underwater—

Suddenly they noticed Apollo and shifted their attack to the intruder—

Several of the largest killer males left the mother that they were corralling—one sank its sharp teeth into Apollo’s tail—

He tried to shake it off as others bit into his flippers—dragging him down—

More seemed to join the pack—now there were twice as many—

Several buzzed him with their sonar—the pulsed shots rattling his sensitive hearing—

The water was filled with their barking and trumpeting—

He let out a bellowing roar in defense—then whipped his flukes from side to side—

One of the big males sped toward him in a bluff charge—another was not bluffing and slammed the hard top of its rostrum into the sensitive portion of Apollo’s side where his lungs were—

Another tried to bite his back where it narrowed behind his dorsal
—

The calf and mother had fled—his sacrifice would save the life of the calf and possibly that of the mother as well—

He surfaced to breathe as a killer launched its body onto his head, cutting off his breath by covering his blowhole with its bulk—others piled on and pushed him underwater—

One tore into his back with its teeth—he flinched from the pain—air escaping from his mouth—

His tongue—the part they prized most—raked against his baleen combs—

He knew they often devoured the tongue and left the rest uneaten—

Apollo made one final attempt to flee—

TWENTY-TWO

8:05
A.M.
Davis

O
N THE WALL
hung a whale calendar. March’s picture was of a humpback breaching, as if it were escaping the water and flying through the air. The first few days of the month had a red line struck through them, and the fifth of March was boxed in overlapping red squares that framed the word
DUE.
Elizabeth had been working on her dissertation for almost two weeks but only had two days left to finish.

She sat at the round kitchen table next to a half-empty pot of coffee. The soundless television was playing in the background, keeping her company. Somehow, having other people in the house, even if they were only on the television screen, made her less lonely. The screen flashed an image of a beautiful stand of redwood trees. It soothed her. Over the trees appeared the green logo for the Environmental Stewardship Consortium and the words
OUR RESOURCES, OUR FUTURE.
It was a welcome relief from the car and detergent advertisements.

She turned back to her computer and continued typing on her silver laptop in a white heat, trying feverishly to meet the deadline. Professor Maddings’s call had sparked her into action. Nothing was going to stop her from finishing her dissertation and getting her Ph.D. It was no longer just her career that was at stake, it was also her marriage—she would prove to Frank that she could finish and
that they could start a family together. Next to her was a printout of what was already done: her introduction, literature review, methods, and results chapters. The cover sheet presented the unassuming but potentially explosive title: “Social Sounds in Whale Song: Evidence That Whale Communication Is Language?”

To argue that whales communicated with a few discrete calls was one thing, but to say that they actually had a language, as humans did, was extremely controversial. Languages had
words
with symbolic meaning and syntax, allowing humans to form sentences and communicate extremely complex ideas. If whales had language, it meant that their social sounds were not just vocalizations, like a mother calling to her baby, but had independent, symbolic meaning and could communicate far more information. A whale could refer to a baby that was not actually even there. Perhaps most controversial, if whale communication was a language, then there was the possibility of translation—of communicating between our two species.

Elizabeth knew she would need to address all of this in the chapter she was about to write: her discussion and conclusions. She glanced nervously at the calendar. And then there was the small problem of not knowing what her conclusions were. She did not know if the data justified going so far as to claim that whales might have language, not to mention that such a conclusion would almost certainly jeopardize her career. But she did not honestly know how to account for what she had observed. The rapid song change suggested that the song itself had meaning, and the refrain of social sounds that appeared in the song led her to believe that they were being used in some kind of symbolic semantic way.

To distract herself from writing something that might bury her career, Elizabeth tried to call her husband for the fifth time. The image of him and Kim came to mind, and she hung up before the call connected. The minute she hung up, the handset rang.

“Frank?” she said, thinking for a moment that the call had gone through after all or that he had called her back.

“No, Liza, is me.”

“Teo?
How did you get my number?”

“Milton gave it to me. He tell me about your husband, too.”

“That’s not your concern.”

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t…I got a present for you.”

“My DAT recorder?”

“I got that, too.”

“I’m happy to pay for the postage.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Elizabeth was distracted by a news report that flashed across her TV screen. In amazement, she read the words in the headline:
HUMPBACK WHALE SPOTTED IN SAN FRANCISCO BAY.

“Teo, I’ll have to call you back.”

Elizabeth hung up and knelt in front of the television, turning up the volume.

“This morning a humpback whale showed up off of San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. It was quite a crowd pleaser. We’re going to go live to Jenny Cho, who’s got a whale of a story for us.”

“This whale-watching tour didn’t have to go very far today to see a whale. All they had to do was escort this humpback whale as it swam through the bay. It seems to be heading inland toward the estuary. You may remember other humpback whales taking a similar course—our old friend Humphrey in 1985, and then a mother-and-calf pair named Delta and Dawn in 2007. But what’s unusual about this whale is it seems to be singing. Thanks to the hydrophone built into this boat, we are able to hear the whale’s song.”

Elizabeth’s spine started to tingle—it was identical to the song sung by Echo thousands of miles away, in an entirely different ocean. It was obviously not Echo. There was no way he had swum around the tip of South America in three weeks, but sound could travel
much faster than any whale. The song could be propagated across the entire distance over a matter of days. Maddings had said the song was spreading around the world and migrating from ocean to ocean. And here was the proof.

“Oh my God,” Elizabeth whispered to herself. “It’s really true.”

“What makes the whale sing?” the television reporter asked. “Is it love? Or is it joy?”

The hairs on the back of Elizabeth’s neck were standing on end. Right in the middle of the song, she heard them: the social sounds she had recorded in Bequia.

She grabbed her digital SLR and her video camera in its gray housing. Without her DAT recorder, it was all she had. The door slammed behind her as she ran to find the wayward whale. Something deep in the pit of her stomach told her that this was not a song of love or joy.

TWENTY-THREE

8:30
A.M.
Downtown San Francisco

R
EGINALD
G
ATES
stepped into one of the two elevators that reached the forty-sixth floor of the Transamerica building. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, and straightened his yellow tie in the reflective metal doors. Looking the part was important, and his tie complemented his gray suit nicely. Gates blinked his tired eyes and tried to suppress a yawn. He had been up most of the night staring at the spreadsheet, trying to will the quarterly numbers to change, but no matter what he did, they were still not coming out as he needed.

The doors of the elevator opened, and he walked over to his longtime secretary. Wilma—or Willie, as she was called—was like a surrogate mother and had moved with him up the corporate ladder. She was even willing to work on a Saturday, like today, when it was required.

“Mr. Heizer is waiting for you,” she said, rolling her eyes nervously in the direction of the CEO’s office. “Your jelly donut and double pick-you-up are on your desk. There’s also some fresh fruit, which it wouldn’t kill you to eat every now and then.”

“Thanks, tell him I’ll be right there…Oh, and will you copy these papers from the ESC for the
file.”
Willie looked up at him, transformed into his accomplice. “I want to take it home with me tonight for safekeeping,” he added.

Through the large windows, he could see the entire Bay Area and arching Bay Bridge. Despite its grandeur, he had already become indifferent to the view. Most of his time was spent with his back to the window, poring over spreadsheets and other financial documents. Growing up in North Richmond, California, Gates had seen the famous four-sided pyramid for as long as he could remember, and a view like this would have made his jaw drop in wide-eyed amazement. Even as a poor African American kid from the ghetto, he had known that someday he would work in an office on the top floor.

Gates had spent the last ten years working his way up to chief financial officer at Heizer Chemical Industries International. He was looking forward to taking his wife and baby away for a much delayed vacation. Maybe this summer, as soon as all the remodeling was done on the new house.

Gates’s cell phone rang, and a picture on the screen showed his beautiful wife holding their six-month-old girl in her arms. He did not have time to answer it, so he hit “ignore.” He’d call her back later.

The phone rang again.

“Baby, I can’t talk now. I’ve got to meet with Jim.”

“Reggie, something’s wrong with Justine. She’s not playing, and she won’t eat. She doesn’t seem like herself, and I’m worried.”

“She’s going to be fine. I’ll call you back when I’m done giving the bad news.”

“I’m going to take her in to see Dr. Lombardi.”

“Can’t this wait until Monday?”

“No, it can’t.”

“I’m sure there are good doctors near Blackhawk. You don’t need to take her all the way back up there.”

“I trust him.”

“I’ll call you later.” Gates gathered up his spreadsheets and walked over to report the numbers to Heizer.

W
HY THE HELL
do CEOs always do this power-play crap and look out the window when they’re unhappy?
Gates felt like a schoolboy at the principal’s office, but the problem had nothing to do with his performance. It had to do with that of the company.

“Reggie, I think you know that your bonus is pegged to making our numbers this quarter.”

“Jim, I realize that, and I tried everything I could to make them different, but I can’t invent numbers that don’t exist.”

Jim Heizer, the son of the company’s founder, turned away from the window to face Gates. He looked overstuffed in his green suit, and when he spoke, his double chin jiggled like the pale throat of a toad. “I didn’t say invent numbers. I just said to be creative with the numbers. I’m sure you’ll do what needs to be done.” Gates knew what he was being asked to do, and his body felt hot and uncomfortable. “I promoted you because I knew I could count on you, Reggie. Don’t let me down.”