Eye of the Whale (17 page)

“Let’s get you out of here,” Connie said to Elizabeth, helping her friend up over the edge of the levee.

“World famous?” Elizabeth said with a smile.

“Almost.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Now let’s get you home and dry.”

“I can’t. I’ve got to get to the office.”

“Now?”

“I heard something in the recordings that I need to compare to the sound files I recorded in Bequia three weeks ago.”

“What did you hear?”

“There’s a distress call in the song. I need to find out why.”

“Of course it’s distressed,” Connie said. “It’s trapped.”

“I don’t think so…” Elizabeth said, remembering what she had heard on the television news broadcast. “The whale was making the distress call as it swam into the delta and all the way up the river.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

12:30
A.M.
Sunday
Davis

N
ILSEN TOOK
a long draw on the unfiltered cigarette he was smoking, his only companion during the night. As the smoke filled his lungs and the nicotine reached his blood, his whole body started to relax, and for a moment he forgot where he was and the intense boredom of waiting.

Whaling required endless patience as one awaited some small disturbance on the surface of the water, hours upon endless hours of nothing, until finally, there was a frenzy of activity.

When was that damn island whaler going to arrive? It’d been two weeks since he’d left the island, and there was still no sign of him. Kazumi, the bastard, was hell-bent on recovering that worthless piece of whale. Easy for him. He didn’t have to stand for hours in the dark, legs aching. Nilsen would finish this job and then go back home to the land and sea that he loved. He leaned against one of the pines in the small cluster of trees and looked up at the windows of the researcher’s town house. Still dark.

TWENTY-NINE

2:00
A.M
.

D
ESPITE THE OFFICE KEY
in her hand, Elizabeth felt like she was breaking in. She had often worked late into the night and was not easily spooked by empty buildings. But something had changed in her relationship to the department. She did not quite know what. Was it their decision to cut off her funding? Was it the mysterious call from one of the university’s donors? Or was it the pressure to finish her dissertation on an impossible schedule?

The hallway was dark, lit only by an ethereal blue glow from the circular tank in which white ghostlike jellies pulsed and undulated through the water. Elizabeth was grateful for their rhythmic motion, which reminded her of the sea and the sway of the tides even in this landlocked region. The fluorescent lights sputtered before coming to life. Although she had changed into dry clothes, her hair was still wet, and she was shivering.

At the wooden door to her department, Elizabeth paused. The glass window had been pasted over with flyers, and it was impossible to see who was inside. She swung it open quickly and then sighed. Maybe she was just spooked from her brush with the law. No, there was something else, something about her department. It felt hostile and unwelcoming.

Elizabeth downloaded the photos she had taken at the slough earlier and compared them to the fluke identification registry that had pictures of all known whales migrating along the West Coast.
There were fresh bite marks on one fluke, which supported Skilling’s theory that the whale might have been chased into the bay by killer whales. She zoomed into the image and saw several white lines that crossed like a triangle or an abstract “A.” They reminded her of a fluke ID she had seen several years ago, when she had worked on maintaining the registry. She found that image and compared it with the one she had taken. Aside from the killer whale teeth marks, the flukes were identical. The whale was a male in the Socorro Island population that migrated to several feeding grounds, often passing close to Vancouver. His name was Apollo.

“Well, Apollo, what are you and your friends saying?” Elizabeth whispered to herself.

She settled into the familiar work of analyzing the song and began to look for recurring patterns: subphrases, phrases, and themes. Whale song was generally between the length of a ballad and a movement in a symphony. And it was structured in many ways like human songs: similar rhythms, similar-length phrases, even rhyme. As Elizabeth listened to sounds that resembled a trumpet, she marveled at how the whales even balanced percussive sounds with pure tones in roughly the same proportions that people do.

Ordinarily, Elizabeth would have focused on the overall structure, but today she was more interested in the dozens of occurrences of what she and other researchers had long identified as “social sounds”—sounds used in everyday whale behavior and interactions. There were two such sounds, one of which was repeated, and they seemed to be inserted into the song almost like a chorus or a refrain.

It was just after dawn when Connie arrived. Apparently, she had been delayed by bailing out several of her fellow activists from jail.

“Listen to this sound from the slough,” Elizabeth said, and played the sound that was always repeated in pairs in the whale’s
song. It was a low-pitched sound, but it was often very soft:
w-OP w-OP
“Now listen to this.” She played an identical phrase. “I recorded this sound on several occasions when calves had strayed from their mothers. I think it’s a contact call between mother and calf.”

“Is the whale in the slough a female?”

“No, I got a good fluke ID, and it’s a male. His name is Apollo.”

“But why would this whale…I mean, there’s no calf with it…and it’s not even a mother.”

“I know. It’s strange, but this is the second male that I’ve heard use this sound in its song. What if the contact call from a mother to a baby actually meant ‘baby’?”

“I’m not sure I follow. Are you saying they have a word for ‘baby’?”

“Well, whales don’t have words, but what if that vocalization meant ‘baby’?”

“What does this have to do with distress? You said there was a distress call.”

“There is—or at least I think there is.” Elizabeth wished she had the tape from Teo in which Sliver’s distress call had changed to the one she was hearing in the new song.

“So…you’re saying that this whale’s baby is in distress?”

Elizabeth shook her head and said, “I don’t know. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?”

“Maybe the whale started making the distress sound when it entered the bay,” Connie offered.

“That would make sense, except for the fact that whales all around the world are singing this same song—and there’s a distress call in all of them.” Elizabeth knew she could do no more. She needed to get home and finish her dissertation. Someday she would sleep again, but not today.

“Elizabeth…”

She had not seen Dr. Skilling come in. “Yes.”

“Tomorrow is the deadline.”

“I know, but I need more time. I’m still working on my conclusions.”

“We’re out of time, Elizabeth. I won’t be able to reverse the decision of the committee.”

THIRTY

8:00
A.M.

E
LIZABETH WALKED UP
to her home with a feeling of dread. It was not just that she had under twenty-four hours to finish her dissertation, or her worry for Apollo, both of which were very much on her mind. It was also returning to an empty house and her increasing sense of hopelessness about saving her marriage.

She stepped inside her small walled courtyard and saw the un-pruned rosebush. The fragrance reminded her of the bubble bath her mother used to buy. She leaned over, and her nose touched the soft pink petals. Her mother would sit in her piping-hot bath by candlelight, and when she was done, Elizabeth would slip in, the glowing light filling the room like a holy sanctuary. The warm bath was like her mother’s arms enveloping her. When her mother got sick, Elizabeth would run the bath for her and wash her soft skin.

The front door was ajar.

“Frank?”
Has he come home?
“Frank?” She pushed the door open.

“No, is your Teo.” He was sitting on her couch, grinning like the cat that ate the canary.

“Teo! What are you doing here?” Elizabeth tried to get over the shock of seeing Teo in her living room. “And what are you doing letting yourself into my house?”

“Now, is that island hospitality?”

“You’re not on the island.”

“I know. I just take a bus through every state between Alabama and California.”

“How did you get in?”

Teo held up a fishing knife with a long, thin blade that tapered to a point. “Good for filleting fish and picking locks.”

Elizabeth felt a shiver at the sight of the blade. “Why are you here?”

“You leave this in my boat. Don’t you remember?” He held up the silver DAT machine, which was slightly larger than his hand.

“You could have mailed it to me.”

“But then I have to wait a whole year to see you.” Teo smiled a big island smile, and his eyes—one green and one blue—stared at her.

“I’m married, Teo.”

“Then why aren’t you wearing your ring?”

Covering her left hand protectively with her right, Elizabeth walked into the kitchen and let out a small gasp as she saw the empty dish. “It was right in here,” she said, looking all around the kitchen counter.

“I heard Frank’s gone and run off. Like I told you, some people understand the sea, and others, they don’t.” Teo followed her into the kitchen. His face must have registered his surprise at seeing her down on all fours.

“I can’t find my ring.”

“Maybe it’s not the right one.”

Elizabeth got up and shot him an annoyed glance. “Frank is coming back.”

“But what if he don’t?”

“I know you have come a long way, and I thank you, but you really need to go. My research is due tomorrow.” Elizabeth moved closer to usher Teo to the door, but he held firm, bringing them within a foot of each other. “I’m afraid—” she started.

“I listen to that tape, Liza. You think the whale is saying something, don’t you?”

“It’s using a distress call,” she said with a sigh. She was grateful for the change of subject but did not have time to explain.

“Yeah, I hear that sound on the tape.”

“You did? You know the sound for distress?”

“I’m a whaler, Liza. I am the distress. But there’s more than one kind of distress, you know.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There some things I never get around to telling you.”

“Why wouldn’t you have told me?”

“Island people don’t give away all their secrets to those…who just passing through.”

“I told you it was a mistake.”

Her words had stung. She could see it on his face, but he ignored them. “Can I play it for you? Then I’ll go.”

“Promise?”

“I promise,” he said, his voice low.

They sat on the couch and listened to the recording. The sound was the one Elizabeth had heard before:
eeee-eeee-eeee.
“You hear that cry—is a long, steady moan. They only use that cry if they think there’s a chance for them. You can hear the sadness in it, is almost pitiful. Now listen to it change.” The second sound was the unfamiliar distress call that she had heard in Echo’s and Apollo’s new song. It was also the sound that Sliver made after the whalers had killed her calf:
EEh-EEh-EEh.
“This one sound desperate. You can hear the hurry in it. They only use that one when they held fast and all hope is lost.”

Elizabeth’s mind was spinning with possibilities. She realized that Teo might be useful in helping her to decipher the song, and she could tell he knew it, too.

“Well, I guess I should be going now,” Teo said.

“Do you have a place to go?”

“I guess I’ll just take the bus back.”

“Have you eaten? At least let me feed you.”

“That would be nice. I eat last in Utah. I think it was Utah.”

Elizabeth laughed, imagining Teo in a truck stop or a convenience store. In the fridge she found a pizza, but there was mold growing on it. She dumped it in the trash. Prying open the cardboard box of leftover Chinese food produced a rancid odor that made her wince. It followed the pizza box. In the freezer, she found some fish sticks. “Now that’s my kind of meal,” he said when he saw that it was the only thing in the freezer. “That and some coffee, and I’m satisfied.” He was tilting his head to the pot of coffee she had made the previous morning. They ate and laughed—it was good, being around someone who knew her so well. “Maybe I take a day or two to look around. Never been to California before.”

Elizabeth hesitated. She knew she was being reeled in so slowly she could hardly feel the pull of the line. Her mind came up with four or five quick rationalizations that echoed the mix of gratitude and pity and curiosity that she was feeling.

“One night—on the couch,” she said.

His smile was grateful. “It’ll be a king’s four-poster after my trip from the island.”

“You sailed from Bequia?”

“I’d have sailed around the world if you were waiting.”

“I’m not waiting, Teo, and you shouldn’t be, either.”

“You never gave me a real chance.”

“I made my choice,” Elizabeth said.

“And I made mine.”

Elizabeth turned away from Teo. She prayed that Frank would come back to her, so she would never have to choose again.

E
LIZABETH WORKED
all afternoon at the dining room table as Teo went for a long walk. When he came back, he had a couple of burritos for dinner. Her stomach grumbled. She was surprised by her appetite, as she devoured her burrito.

Around midnight, Elizabeth wrote the concluding lines of her dissertation, which included all the maybes and possiblies that science required. Proving anything scientifically was difficult, especially something as elusive and intangible as the linguistic intelligence of whales. “The complex vocalizations of humpbacks and other baleen and toothed whales require further study and analysis. Although current research is inconclusive, it is possible that humpback social sounds may form the basis of a meaningful social language.” This seemed reasonable and prudently cautious, and the fact of the matter was she did not have the evidence yet to argue for something stronger.