The Whale Song Translation: A Voyage of Discovery To Neptune and Beyond (9 page)

Dmitri held his breath. Melanie’s face was inscrutable as she paused for a few seconds. “Tell me more, Dr. Dmitri.”

“I propose we meet for a drink to discuss the details.”

She did not hesitate. “It’s a deal. Why not meet me for a late lunch, about an hour from now. I’ll treat both of you at the local bar and grill.” She scribbled on a Post-it and handed it to him. “Here’s the address. Just wait for me at the bar in case I’m running behind.”

As Javier smiled and Dmitri placed a congratulatory pat on the boy’s shoulder, Greg leveled his friend with an unsettling stare. Thinking about the TV show
Whale Wars
, Dmitri braced himself for yet another cetacean conversation with his best buddy.

T
ABLOID
M
YSTERY

United States Satellite Imaging Agency, Maryland—early afternoon

It was not unusual for USSIA Mission Specialist Tamara Roberts to be summoned to her supervisor’s office to discuss the status of her latest assignment. What was startling, however, was Lieutenant Nina Davis’s syrupy tone and abrupt exit once Tamara had taken her customary seat. During the nerve-wracking wait until her supervisor’s return, Roberts admired the Davis family photos perched on the Spartan desktop. She had always been beguiled by the images of her superior’s attractiveness at an earlier age, before life’s cumulative stresses had stamped their imprint on her face and grayed her hair.

Despite the lieutenant’s no-nonsense approach to her job, she was highly respected by the members of her staff. In a world of gender-biased glass ceilings, Tamara totally understood the reason Davis had encapsulated her private life inside a persona of hard-core professionalism. That’s why Davis’s sympathetic demeanor, before she’d excused herself, had unnerved Tamara.

When Noel Harrison opened the door and glided into the room, Tamara’s nagging unease flared up into full-blown fear. “Any idea what this is about?”

“Not a clue.” Harrison sounded as cavalier as ever.

“Where’s Lieutenant Davis?”

Harrison sat in the chair next to her and pointed toward the door. Davis entered the office holding an oversized manila envelope. With her grim-faced supervisor staring directly at her, Tamara felt a sickening sensation in her gut. She shifted her gaze to her colleague, but his face exuded its usual nothing-fazes-me expression.

Still standing, Davis faced her subordinates from behind the desk. She reached inside the envelope to extract what looked like a news magazine and, with a dramatic flourish, slapped the copy of a popular supermarket tabloid onto the table. The two-inch headline screamed:
OCEAN CROP CIRCLE MYSTERY
.

“Have either of you mission specialists seen this photo?” Davis pointed to the image below the headline. Like a scolding school principal, Davis leaned across the desk, appearing to hover directly above Harrison and Roberts.

As soon as Tamara recognized the picture, her heart palpitated with an electric chill. Neither she nor Harrison uttered a sound.

“No?” Davis stared accusingly first at Noel Harrison, then at Tamara. “Well, the encryption codes embedded in the photo indicate it could only have been taken from one of our birds, exactly two days ago. I think you two might have some explaining to do.”

Tamara turned, shocked to see Harrison’s deer-in-the-headlights expression. Two days too late, she realized she’d made a huge mistake to follow his advice. A single thought throbbed like a migraine in the center of her skull. What has Harrison done?

C
HANGE OF
P
LAN

Island Fish Restaurant, Kahului, Maui—early afternoon

“Everything will be fine,” said Greg. “She’s definitely taken a shine to you.”

Amidst the laughter, the chatter, and the mouth-watering aromas of grilled fish, roasted garlic, and draft beer, Greg had been waiting along with Dmitri at the bar inside of Kahului’s most popular watering hole. Greg had agreed to keep him company until Melanie’s arrival.

“I really hope so, pal.” Dmitri channeled his jitters into preening the curly edges of his sideburns. “She’s cast her spell upon me, for sure.”

“I haven’t seen you so smitten since the Swedish particle physicist two years ago in Vienna.”

“I’m definitely attracted to brainy women, and I guess I’m more receptive to romantic interludes on foreign shores.”

“Maybe the risk of rejection is less brutal when it’s just a vacation fling.”

Dmitri frowned. “It’s not that.”

“Well anyway, it doesn’t hurt that Melanie’s a knockout babe. By the way, I’m assuming you aren’t serious about analyzing whale songs. It’s just your clever way to connect with her. After your fling, you can forget all about the whales.”

Dmitri wasn’t in the mood to start another argument with his friend, especially since Melanie could appear at any moment.

“Dude, what’ll it be?” asked the brawny bartender, sizing Dmitri up as an outlier. “You look like you could use the house special.”

“Which is?”

“A tribute to James Bond. Mango martini, shaken not stirred,” he replied with a dab of the local accent. “Since you’re wound up pretty tight,” he grinned, “just hold the drink a minute and save me the trouble of mixing it.”

“I’ll pass on the drink.”

“By the way, who is she?”

“Is it that obvious? Well, maybe you know her, Melanie. She’s a speech therapist at the community college.”

“Wow, everybody knows Melanie. You might need some of them Agent 007 moves to get to first base. She’s made it perfectly clear to us local guys we’re not in her league.” He left to attend to another customer.

The bartender’s comments stoked Dmitri’s anxiety. He was an engineer, a professor, and a stickler for scientific rigor, yet he felt like a nervous school boy waiting to meet a blind date. Over the years, he’d endured teasing from friends and colleagues about his techno-geeky tendencies, and even he had to admit he was no Casanova. He’d dated occasionally. He’d even enjoyed a couple of year-long, live-in relationships, but after a while, his partners had realized he wasn’t attuned to a lifestyle of domesticity. During his college days, he’d buried himself in his studies and sports activities, and now he was married to the intricacies of work. Yet here he was, waiting in a Hawaiian bar, pursuing an impossible dream.

Many of the women drifting by were as attractive as Melanie, but probably none of them were as intelligent, motivated, and articulate as she. Dmitri practically tipped over in the barstool when a hand tapping his shoulder rocked him from his musings.

“Aloha.” Melanie waved a hand in front of his face. “Sorry I startled you, but you didn’t see me standing here.”

Greg just laughed. “Don’t know how my mate could not see such a dazzling vision approaching from miles away.”

Melanie smiled and waved him off.

Dmitri was crimson-faced. “M-many apologies,” he stammered through a nervous grin. “Greg’s right. I must have been daydreaming about the whale songs.”

“Totally understandable,” she said, “which is why there’s been a change of plan. How’d you guys like to do some community service? Maui style?”

“What’s up?” queried Greg.

The bartender’s frantic arm waving stilled all nearby conversation. He cranked up the volume on the TV, and everyone seated at the bar focused their attention on the sixty-inch flatscreen mounted on the wall. After a chain reaction of shushing, the merriment throughout the restaurant evaporated into silence. The voice of the female news correspondent shouted from the set. Dmitri saw her standing on a beach, dwarfed by the body of a beached humpback whale.

Melanie pointed up at the TV. “That’s where we’re going—to help rescue that whale. Let’s get some food for the road.” She signaled to the bartender. “Hi, Jimmy. We’d like three mahi-burger specials to go. Pronto, please.”

While waiting for their order, the trio focused their attention on the compelling images and words streaming from the TV broadcast.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is unprecedented,” bellowed the Eyewitness News correspondent. “Yesterday began as another blissful, tropical winter day in West Maui. It’s the reason that tourists from around the globe flock to the mega-resorts fronting the beaches of Ka’anapali. Now the specter of death stalks our shores. A juvenile humpback whale has mysteriously washed ashore. The incident has shocked the beachgoers at one the island’s most pristine stretches of sand, Black Rock Beach at the Sheraton Resort.

“The pattern of the strandings is unmistakable to marine biologist Christopher Gorman, founder of the PICES organization. This week alone, Gorman’s witnessed a second seemingly healthy juvenile humpback stranded upon a shore fringing the Auau Channel. Right behind me you see the frantic rescue effort he’s organized, now entering its second day.”

“Gorman must be going crazy.” Greg spoke directly into Dmitri’s ear, startling him.

“He was already grim the day before yesterday,” said Dmitri. “No doubt about it. It’s as if the black plague has been unleashed on Hawaii’s whales.”

The broadcaster’s voice echoed from the multiple TVs throughout the bar. “Is this unfortunate marine mammal doomed to a lingering death? Its labored breaths sound like a mournful dirge to the hundreds of gawking seaside vacationers. Let me point the microphone back toward the humpback so that you can all listen.”

The restaurant patrons within earshot of the TV heard the desperate gasps and hisses of a very large marine mammal trying to squeeze the oxygen from the air. Many squirmed in their barstools and grimaced in reaction to the unsettling sounds.

Melanie pointed up at the television. “So now’s your chance to help Gorman and the whales.” The bartender handed her a large brown paper bag. “It’s time to go, guys. We’ll hook up with the other PICES volunteers in Ka’anapali.”

T
HE
K
ILLING
S
OUND

Ka’anapali, Maui—midafternoon

The sweeping arc of Maui’s northwest coastline was shaped long ago, when two mighty volcanoes rose from the ancient seabed and merged to form the island. Maui’s main population center and the University’s speech lab were nestled in the northern section of the lowland valley where the two mountains joined flanks. After a whirlwind drive south through the lush valley, then arcing northwest along the breathtaking coastal road encircling the island, they arrived at their leeward Ka’anapali destination in under an hour. Dmitri parked in the Sheraton’s overflow lot.

“Wow,” said Melanie. “I’ve never, ever had to park so far away.” At her prompting, the trio rushed along the flagstone path skirting the tennis courts and leading down to the beach.

“What a coincidence.” Dmitri panted like someone not used to talking and jogging at the same time. “We’re close to our hotel.”

“I can already hear the crowd noise,” Melanie replied. “The beach must be a zoo.”

When they had reached the serpentine promenade demarcating the boundary between the beach and the resorts, Dmitri stared in disbelief.

“This is unreal,” said Greg. “I went for a peaceful swim on this beach two nights ago. Now look at it.”

Instead of the usual tranquil setting of sunbathers and body surfers, the beach swarmed with tourists and locals. At the shoreline, the inert body of the giant cetacean loomed above the frenetic crowd. From his distant perspective, the scene evoked Dmitri’s childhood memory of a drawing of Gulliver and the Lilliputians. Just a couple hundred feet up the shoreline, however, he observed the ever-present, young daredevils cliff diving from the thirty-foot-tall, lava-sculpted promontory called Black Rock. It was a risky business, since the water below was a favorite snorkeling spot for close encounters with giant turtles, rays, and schools of tropical fish.

Melanie pointed toward the beached behemoth. “The sand’s blazing hot, so keep your sandals on and follow me.”

They threaded a path through shifting currents of beachcombers to approach the huge body, ringed by a surging crowd held at bay by hotel employees. Dmitri’s first sensory impression of the beast was its fishy odor. The whale rested on its belly, its head facing inland with its fluke partially submerged in the surf. An unending procession of waves lapped against the rear portion of the body.

“Hi, Kirby.” Melanie addressed a pony-tailed security guard, his name stenciled across the front of his T-shirt. “My partners and I are here to help.”

“Okay, Mel. Thanks for coming.” The sun-scorched Hawaiian waved them through.

Melanie spearheaded the trio through a momentary gap in the human chain. With his view unencumbered, Dmitri observed the skillfully coordinated teamwork of dozens of volunteers supervised by Chris Gorman. One energetic team culled bed sheets from a mound stacked upon the sand. They’d draped the linen onto the creature’s back in a patchwork quilt pattern. Another group comprised a bucket brigade. As some dipped children’s sand pails and hotel ice buckets into the water, their mates passed them on down to the end of the line, where they were emptied onto the sheets. Other volunteers circulated, dispensing granola bars and bottled water.