Killing Keiko (40 page)

“Damn it! Where the hell is he going?” I questioned as I kept my eyes glued on our
wake.

“I don’t see anything,” Jen confirmed the same.

But this time we held the pace longer, not by much, but enough. The long shallow swells
that day allowed Robin, who often took such chances, to stand on top of the aft engine
cowling, nothing to hold or steady himself. From here, he had the perfect view of
the
Draupnir’s
stern.

Moments later, he exclaimed, “Got him—he’s drafting the boat.”

“What?” Disbelieving, I scurried back to the stern, crowding the small space with
Tracy and Robin, who had now climbed down from his giant surfboard. We all three leaned
over the back of the
boat and looked straight down. There, only two, maybe three feet below, were Keiko’s
flukes, or rather, the trailing edges of his flukes, the bright white of each fluke
outlined by the black edges. He was upside down, practically plastered to the boat’s
hull, taking advantage of the liquid vortex beneath the boat that had pulled him along.

“Oh my, God! That’s hilarious!” Tracy blurted. “How the hell?”

“Look at that! I can’t believe that he can do that!” I was still in disbelief. “Robin
he’s not even moving his flukes!”

“He’s either got a bear hug on the hull, or he’s riding her slip-stream,” he theorized,
not knowing which was more likely, perhaps a little of both.

Robin turned and dragging the edge of his flattened palm against his neck, gestured
to Michael to cut the engines. Poor Michael, figuratively chained to the wheel, was
standing as far outside the cabin door as he dared, longingly stretching to get a
glimpse. By the time Michael dropped back to a leisurely trot and finally brought
us to a stop, the entire investigation had lasted less than two minutes.

In a repeat performance, Keiko popped up at our side the instant we dropped off plane.
Gazing at him now alongside my usual position, he looked almost triumphant. I didn’t
know how, but he appeared to gloat. His posture? Eyes? The way he tilted his head
ever-so-slightly, casting a glance in our direction at each breath? A little of each
and more I suppose. But this is exactly how it felt as I stared at Keiko. If I could
have placed a caption over his head it would read: “What else you got?”

“You sneaky sucker,” I said.

“And here we thought he was faster than the
Draupnir
.” Michael had left the helm and was rolling a cigarette, the trademark “knowing”
smile pasted on his face.

We drifted for a few minutes, gathering ourselves as the excitement dissipated. We
reveled at the ingenuity of the whale. Where had he learned such a thing? The closest
resemblance of this behavior had been on the first walk out of Klettsvik when
Keiko repeatedly attempted to draft beneath
Draupnir
. Back then we traveled at no more than four to five knots. More to the point, we
had never lost sight of him in those instances. He never got close enough to the hull
to plaster his belly into her slipstream. Following some debate, theories, and simple
amazed observations, we finally turned to task. We had left the platform in its down
position. The entire time Keiko sat patiently at the surface awaiting our next volley.

“Fine, Keiko three:
Draupnir
zero. But he’s going to get a workout either way.”

Robin answered my challenge. “Position him out with the target?” The question was
rhetorical.

“That’s what I’m thinking. Keep it short and a little slower until we’re sure he’s
staying out,” I said.

“Agreed. Michael, we’re going to do a few short approximations, probably only a couple
hundred meters and a little slower at first.”

“Okee-dokie,” Michael acknowledged.

The walk team stayed at sea with Keiko for a while longer, practicing a series of
short sprints. Each time we guided Keiko with the target pole ensuring that he would
remain to starboard, actually having to do the work on his own. Although these unassisted
sprints never matched the previous trials in which we were fooled, Keiko nonetheless
impressed us with his swift movement. I believed he could very well have matched the
Draupnir
if he had wanted; however, he could not hold the fast swim for long. At best, his
speed came in short bursts.

Our third walk found us eleven nautical miles from shore. We had stumbled onto a nice
“flat,” a calm convergence of currents that quieted the surface into that of a warm
summer lake hundreds of meters in every direction. Similar in ways to Klettsvik Bay
on her more forgiving days, birds kept us company both aloft and meandering on the
surface. We had started our walk that morning with little direction in mind, our only
mandate: the avoidance of other
killer whales. In the distance,
Heppin
circled slowly, holding guardianship position over the nucleus of the
Draupnir
and Keiko. Onboard the walk-boat, we waited and watched. Following our run out to
sea, and finding an expanse of vacant water (vacant of whales), we intended to rehearse
the neutral disposition, affording Keiko his opportunity to explore apart from the
dictates of the
Draupnir
.

Stephen Claussen had returned from a short stint at home in the states. Claiming his
favorite toy and pastime, he stood at-the-ready by the HDS funnel cannon mounted on
the bowsprit of the walk-boat. Stephen was preparing to acknowledge Keiko’s first
exploits moving away from the
Draupnir
with the now-familiar herring from heaven. Limited by the distance of the HDS, we
only wanted one, maybe two opportunities to catch Keiko in the act of moving away.
Anything more and we would only teach him to stay within the HDS’s range. For what
seemed the longest while, Keiko just loitered around the vicinity of the boat. At
last, either bored with our quiet boat or distracted in other ways, he slowly moved
off our stern. His departure from the
Draupnir
was not decisive; rather, he merely meandered away in a westerly direction, mostly
drifting at the surface.

It’s hard to say how long it had been. We had no way to influence Keiko’s willingness
to explore on his own. The best we could offer was the careful directive not to interfere.
In each case, the initial effort was to simply become invisible offering no attention,
nothing to impede his interests elsewhere, not even the purr of the
Draupnir’s
engines. In practicing our ghostly posture, we became somewhat adept at passing the
time during these blackouts of competing stimuli. Some of us conversed on a variety
of topics, from personal adventures home to how planes could fly. Others occupied
themselves with lunch or dinner or whatever excuse could be made to snack. At least
one of us would find the most comfortable spot on the pontoon-like sponson and pretend
to nap. Although a comfortable place to stretch out, the foam-filled sponson was a
precarious perch. One could easily end up jolted awake by tumbling to the wrong side
and into the frigid water.

Whatever it was that each of us found to pass the time, we all kept an ear or watchful
eye toward Keiko’s activity. Jen seldom engaged in the extracurricular activities
onboard. She was stubbornly addicted or committed to the gathering of research data.
Remaining at her post on the top of the cabin, we often listened to her voice as she
recorded the occasional notes into the ethogram microphone. This afforded us the luxury
of eating, napping or otherwise goofing off. In this way, some part of our attention
was always aware of where Keiko was and what he was doing. It was deep into a cloud
of drowsy waiting when finally the monotony was shattered.

“I’ve lost him,” Jen said to everyone and no one in particular.

No one replied, but each dropped what he was doing and started scanning the surface
around us.

“Draupnir—Heppin,”
Michael called casually over the radio, “You guys see Keiko?” Michael always said
“Keiko” with his own brand of pronunciation. Keiko sounding more like “Kee-ko,” the
second consonant as hard as the first.

“Heppin—Draupnir
. The last we saw he was off your six o’clock about 300 meters.”

“Copy that,
Heppin.”

“Anything on the hydrophone?” Robin asked.

Before Michael could relay the question, Steve Sinelli’s voice crackled over the radio.
Those of us on deck heard the report from the handheld marine radio placed on the
engine cowling.
“Sili—Draupnir
. I heard some vocals a little bit ago … not whales I don’t think but something else
maybe, like a pod of harbor porpoises. Not hearing anything now.”

“Would’ve been nice to know,” Jeff said quietly. Only Robin and I were within earshot
of the comment. He was wearing his usual comfortable smile, hands jammed in the pockets
of his Mustang survival suit.

“I think he’s off our nine,” Jen offered. By now she had set aside the ethogram equipment
and had the VHF tracking antenna out. The antenna was exactly the same as those found
on houses back when TV signals were predominantly analog. She held the receiver
out in front of her in a horizontal position, slowly sweeping it right to left and
back again as she scanned the quadrant from seven to eleven o’clock. The device was
very light, made of a larger aluminum post with smaller antennae crossing in a perpendicular
fashion. If Keiko surfaced, and if the tag’s transmitting antenna was free from the
water’s surface, and if Jen had the receiver aimed in the same direction at the same
moment, she would hear a faint beep through the large padded headphones she now wore.

“Yep, got a signal right off our nine once but seems to be moving east. Second signal
was closer to ten o’clock.”

“Anything?” I asked Jeff. He stood with both feet on the sponson pressing his back
into the pilothouse to steady himself while peering in the advised direction with
binoculars.

“No—nothing yet,” he drew out the “no” with a questioning tone.

“Sili—Draupnir,”
came the call over the radio. “We’ve got a small pod of harbor porpoises moving pretty
quick to the north—looks like they came from your area.”

“Copy that
Sili
. Any sign of Keiko?”

“Negative,
Draupnir
, not from here. Do you want us to move off and follow the pod?”

“No, tell them to stay put for now.” Robin responded without waiting for Michael to
relay the question. But Michael didn’t have to.

“Sili—Draupnir
. We’ve sighted Keiko. He’s about a thousand meters behind the pod of porpoises moving
in the same direction—seems like he’s following the pod.”

“Copy that
Sili
. Stand by.”

“That’s probably why
Sili
isn’t hearing the vocals. Betcha they saw Keiko or heard him and went silent trying
to sneak around,” Jeff suggested.

“Do you think we should call him back?” Stephen asked Robin.

“No, let’s see what he does. This is great. This is exactly what we’ve wanted to see.”
Thus far, Robin was the only one that didn’t show concern at losing visual contact
with Keiko.

“First time we’ve seen him show interest in anything. Pretty encouraging that he’s
curious enough to check them out.” I wanted
in on the optimism, although admittedly it was a little odd to let him off the proverbial
leash without knowing how far he’d go or if he’d return. This was a rehearsal, not
an introduction, and those were not killer whales that he was following.

“But what if he just keeps going?” Stephen continued, as if he had read my mind. “How
far do we let him go?”

“We should be careful not to call him back while he’s actively showing interest,”
I offered, mainly to Robin. His confidence became my own.

“Jeff, I think we should wait until
Sili
can confirm that the harbor porpoises have moved away before we try calling him back?”
Robin was looking for consensus.

“I agree. I don’t want to let him get too far, though. It’ll get dicey trying to track
him down with only the radio tag.”

We couldn’t gather satellite data but once every twenty-four hours, even then only
by downloading the data on a laptop back at base. At present, the only way to track
Keiko was via the intermittent signal of the VHF radio built into the tracking device
on Keiko’s dorsal.

“I can move us slowly in that direction?” Michael said.

“I don’t think we should even start the engines at this point,” I interjected, not
wanting to break the prime directive. Even though the prospect of Keiko following
a pod of harbor porpoise was a far cry from a sustainable release, we couldn’t dare
risk interfering with the very point of exploration and his display of interest in
something apart from us. After all, this was what it was all about. Keiko had found
something more appealing than the
Draupnir
in this infinitely foreign environment. We needed the confidence to let it play out.
“Freaking out” would be too strong a description of the atmosphere onboard the
Draupnir
, though trepidations abounded in that direction.

Moments turned to minutes, which clicked over into a quarter of an hour.

Robin picked up the handheld.
“Draupnir—Sili.”

“Go ahead,
Draupnir
.”

“Can you still see the pod of dolphins?”

“Negative. They’ve moved out of our sight. We had them two minutes ago moving in the
same direction, but they’re too far now.”

“What about Keiko?”

“He’s south of us about a thousand meters. They were moving too fast for him. He’s
just kinda hanging in the same area.”

“Copy. Thanks.”

“We can either recall him or see if he returns on his own,” Robin said to the crew.

Always a ready opinion to share, I was the first to offer my views, “I think I’d rather
recall him than wait for him to return voluntarily, that is, if we’re sure he’s not
on the porpoises.”

No explanation was needed. Robin understood the fine line that lay before us. If we
waited for his voluntary return, acknowledged him and continued on, we would encourage
future returns to the walk-boat versus that of interest in the new world. Although
recalling him now also interrupted in the delicate process, it was the lesser of two
evils. Jeff nodded and shrugged agreement. No one else seemed to have an opinion.