Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (69 page)

Jim faded to the back of the group to rejoin Spock.

“It’s perfect, Spock!” he whispered. “A male, a female, together in a contained space! We can beam them up together and consider ourselves damned lucky!”

Spock raised an eyebrow.

The whales swam to the edge of the tank nearest Gillian, rose, and spouted the mist of their breath. Gillian knelt on the deck, reached into the water, and stroked one of the whales.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” Gillian said. “And they’re extremely intelligent. Why shouldn’t they be? They’re swimming around with the largest brains on Earth.”

Jim moved to the front of the group again. All he could make out of the whales was two huge dark shapes beneath the bright water.

“How do you know one’s male and one’s female?” Jim asked. They looked the same to him. Gillian Taylor glanced at him. She blushed.

“Observational evidence,” she said, and quickly continued her lecture. “Despite all the things they’re teaching us, we have to return George and Gracie to the open sea.”

“Why’s that?” Jim asked, startled.

“For one thing, we don’t have the money to feed them a couple of tons of shrimp a day, and it takes the whole morning to open all those little cans.”

Everybody laughed except Jim, who had no idea what was so funny.

“How soon?” he asked.
A month,
he thought.
Even a week. By then we’ll be gone, and you won’t have to worry about feeding them anymore. I’ll take them to a good home, Doctor Gillian Taylor, I promise you that.

“Soon,” Gillian said. “As you can see, they’re very friendly. Wild humpbacks would never come this close to a person. Whales are meant to be free. But I’ve…grown quite attached to George and Gracie.” She strode across the deck. “This way.” Her voice sounded muffled.

She led the group down a set of spiral stairs, through an arched doorway, and into a blue-lit chamber with one curving wall of glass. At first Jim could see only the water beyond. The glass wall, a section of a sphere, arched overhead. Some meters above, the surface rippled smoothly.

Suddenly a great
slap!
thundered through the chamber. An enormous shape, obscured by bubbles, plunged through the surface toward them.

Gillian laughed. The bubbles rose in a swirling curtain, revealing the colossal shape of a humpback whale.

“This is a much better way to see George and Gracie,” Gillian said. “Underwater.”

None of the pictures, none of the films, even hinted at the sheer size and grace of the creature. It used its long white pectoral fins like wings, soaring, gliding, banking, turning. It rose surfaceward and with a powerful stroke of its tail it sailed through the surface and out of sight. Its entire majestic body left the water. A moment later, ten meters farther on, it plunged into the water upside-down, flipped around, and undulated toward the viewing bubble. At the limits of vision through the tank’s water, a second whale breached, then swam, trailing bubbles, to join its partner at the glass. They glided back and forth across the curve of the window. For a moment Jim felt as if he were enclosed and the whales were free.

Jim had expected the tremendous creatures to be clumsy and lumpish, but underwater their supple bodies moved easily, balancing on their flippers, muscles rippling. They looked as if they were flying, as if they were weightless. Speakers on the walls emitted an occasional whistle, or a groan, and the smooth, silky sound of the whales’ motion.

George and Gracie undulated past and away, now parting, now coming together to stroke each other with their long flippers.

Spock kept himself at the back of the crowd, but he too watched the humpback whales cavort and play. Their grace and elegance and power transfixed him. Vulcan possessed no creatures the size of whales. Though Spock knew he had observed enormous creatures in his earlier life, he could remember only pictures, recordings, descriptions.

Spock wondered if it was proper Vulcan behavior to be amazed by two creatures playing. He decided he did not care, for the moment, about proper Vulcan behavior. He merely wanted to watch the whales. Nevertheless, the object of the
Bounty
’s mission remained in his mind. Only now did he fully realize the magnitude of the task. If the two whales found themselves beamed into the storage tank without any knowledge or understanding of why they were being transported or where they were being taken, they might panic. Perhaps twenty-third-century materials could withstand the force of the powerful body of a terrified whale. But Spock had no doubt that the structural integrity of a tank jury-rigged from contemporary materials would be severely compromised by such stress.

Spock felt quite strange. He wondered if he was being affected by human emotions. T’Lar and the other Vulcan adepts had warned him against them. Yet his mother, also an adept, had urged him to experience them rather than shutting them out. Spock wondered if now might be the time to take her advice.

“Humpback whales are unique in a number of ways,” Doctor Taylor said. “One is their song.” She touched a control on a wall panel.

A rising cry soared from the speakers, surrounding the audience.

“This is whale song that you’re hearing,” Doctor Taylor said. “It isn’t the right season to hear it live; this is a tape. We know far too little about the song. We can’t translate it. We believe it’s only sung by male humpbacks. George will sing anywhere from six to thirty minutes, then start the song over again. Over time, the song evolves. In the ocean, before the era of engine-powered seagoing vessels, the song could be heard for thousands of miles. It’s possible—though it’s impossible to know for sure, because human beings make so much noise—that a single song could travel all the way around the world. But the song can still travel long distances, and other whales will pick it up and pass it on.”

Gracie glided past the viewing window again. As her eye passed Spock, he had the sensation of being watched. He wondered if she sensed the presence of him and Admiral Kirk; he wondered if the whales had some intimation of the intentions of the visitors from the future.

Will they believe they are being stolen?
Spock wondered.
No, not stolen. Stolen implies that someone owns them, and this is not the case. I doubt that Doctor Taylor believes she owns them. Perhaps some governmental body claims possession, but that could have no effect on what the whales perceive. The whales may believe they are being kidnapped or abducted. Suppose they do not wish to leave this time and place? In that case, do we have the right to take them against their will? If, in fact, we do take them against their will, would our actions not defeat our own purpose? If two beings who have been wronged answer the probe, it may respond with more and wider aggression.

Spock could imagine only one solution to the dilemma: communication. And since Doctor Taylor admitted that human beings could neither communicate with the whales nor translate their songs, Spock saw only a single way of achieving the solution.

He moved to the exit, turned, and swiftly climbed the spiral staircase to the surface level of the whale tank. One of the creatures slid past at his feet, curving its back so its dorsal fin cut the water. It dove again, and he could see only its shadowy form, its white pectoral fins, beneath the ripples. At the far end of the tank, the second whale surfaced and spouted with a blast of vapor and spume. Despite the impressive size of the tank, it was little more than a pond to a creature who could dive one hundred fathoms, and whose species regularly migrated a quarter of the circumference of Earth.

The hot sunlight poured down on Spock. He gazed across the surface of the pool, dropped his robe, and dove.

The cold salt water closed in around him and whale sounds—not a song, but curious creaks and squeaks and moans—engulfed him. The vibrations traveled through the water and through his body; he could both feel and hear them. The whales turned toward him, curious about the intruder, and the inquiring sounds became more intense, more penetrating. One whale swam beneath him and breathed out bubbles that rose around him and tickled his skin. She turned and ascended and hovered at Spock’s level. Her great eye peered directly into his face. The warmth of her body radiated through the frigid water.

He reached toward her, slowly enough that she could glide out of his reach if she chose. She hung motionless.

Spock touched the great creature, steeling his psyche for mind-melding’s assault.

Instead, a gentle touch soothed and questioned him. The peace of the whale’s thoughts surrounded him, incredibly powerful, yet as delicate as a wind-rider.

The touch questioned, and Spock answered.

Inside the observation chamber, Jim Kirk listened to Gillian Taylor talk about the whales. He was both fascinated by the information and impatient for the lecture to end so he could speak to her alone.

One of the whales glided past the observation window, drawing Spock along with it. Jim smothered a gasp of astonishment.

Damn!
he thought.
Of all the harebrained things to do, in front of fifty people! Maybe Bones is right—

A murmur of surprise rippled over the crowd as one person brought the odd sight to the notice of the next.

And if Spock’s headband slips off,
Jim thought,
we’re going to have a lot more to explain than why my crazy companion wants to take a dive in a whale tank.

At least Gillian Taylor had not noticed. Perhaps no one would say anything directly…

“The song of the humpback whale changes every year. But we still don’t know what purpose it serves. Is it navigational? Part of the mating ritual? Or pure communication, beyond our comprehension?”

“Maybe the whale is singing to the man,” said one of the spectators. Jim flinched.

Gillian turned. “What the hell—!” She stared at Spock, disbelieving, then spun and sprinted for the stairs. “Excuse me! Wait right here!”

Ignoring her order, Jim rushed after her. At the top of the spiral he burst out into the bright sunlight, blinking.

Spock raised himself from the tank with one smooth push. Water splashed and dripped around his feet. He straightened his headband and shrugged into his robe.

“Who the hell are you?” Gillian shouted. “What were you doing in there?”

Spock glanced toward Jim.

I can’t take the chance of us both getting arrested,
Jim thought.

“You heard the lady!” Jim said.

“Answer me!” Gillian said. “What the hell do you think you were doing in there?”

“I was attempting the hell to communicate,” Spock replied.

“Communicate? Communicate what?” She looked him up and down. “What do you think you are, some kind of Zen ethologist? Why does every bozo who comes down the damned pike think they have a direct line to whale-speak?”

“I have no interest in damned pikes,” Spock said. “Only in whales.”

“I’ve been studying whales for ten years and
I
can’t communicate with them! What makes you think you can come along and—never mind! You have no right to be here!”

In silence, Spock glanced at Jim. Jim tried once more to hint that they should pretend not to be acquainted.

“Come on, fella!” he snapped. “Speak up!” He realized too late that Spock would take him literally.

“Admiral, if we were to assume these whales are ours to do with as we please, we would be as guilty as those who caused their extinction.”

“Extinction…?” Gillian said. She glanced from Jim to Spock and back. “O-
kay,
” she said. “I don’t know what this is about, but I want you guys out of here, right now. Or I call the cops.”

“That isn’t necessary,” Jim said quickly. “I assure you. I think we can help—”

“The hell you can, buster! Your friend was messing up my tank and messing up my whales—”

“They like you very much,” Spock said. “But they are not the hell your whales.”

“I suppose they told you that!”

“The hell they did,” Spock said.

“Oh,
right,
” she said, completely out of patience.

In short order Jim and Spock found themselves escorted with politeness, firmness, and finality from the Cetacean Institute by an elderly unarmed security guard. They could have resisted him easily, but Jim did not even try to talk his way into staying. He thought he could do it, but he also thought that if he did he would attract more attention and cause himself more trouble than if he left quietly.

He trudged down the road, a few paces ahead of Spock. They had found out most of what they needed to know.

But
damn! Jim thought.
I’ll just
bet
I could have found out when they’re planning to release the whales if I’d had a few more minutes…

Spock lengthened his stride and caught up to him.

“I didn’t know you could swim, Spock,” Jim said with some asperity.

“I find it quite refreshing, though I wonder if it is proper Vulcan behavior,” Spock said, oblivious to Jim’s irritation. “It is not an ability that is common, or even useful, on my homeworld. Admiral, I do not understand why Doctor Taylor believed I wanted the hell to swim with damned pikes.”