by Des Hunt
‘Just like eating an ice cream you’ve dropped in a pool,’ added Stephanie, smiling.
‘Precisely!’ agreed Colin. He leant over the whale and began to feel underneath with both hands. ‘Ah, here we are!’ After a few seconds’ massaging, he stood up with his left hand cupped. ‘That’s all she’s got.’
We gathered around to look. There was about a teaspoon of milky stuff that was more like puss than ice cream. ‘This isn’t milk,’ explained Colin. ‘It’s what you get between lactations. She’d stopped feeding her calf.’
‘Could that be why it was starving?’ Milt asked.
Colin shrugged. ‘Who knows? The thing now is to make sure that the next one survives.’ He fished around in his pocket for a moment before removing a flat plastic object the size of his hand. ‘And to help us I’m going to tag her, so we can keep track of where she goes.’
He held out the device for us to see. ‘This is a tag I’ve designed. Up until now, tracking devices have been hooked onto the whale using a small harpoon. This one fits tight on the whale and gets taped on.’ He pulled out a roll of what looked like sticking plaster. ‘This has little steel hooks that dig into the top layer of dead skin. They’ll hold it on for months, if not years, and the whale doesn’t feel a thing.’
He chose a spot halfway along her back, between her breathing hole and the dorsal fin. It took only a moment to fix it in place. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Next we have to put in the ID number that will allow the satellite and us to identify her.’ He pulled out a thing that looked like a TV remote and began pushing buttons. ‘There we are. Now, whenever she’s on the surface anywhere in the world we’ll be able to track her.’
After that we began the difficult job of getting her back into deep water. First, we had to fit a canvas sling under her body, which required rolling her on to one side and then the other. After that, four of us took a hold of a corner each and tried to move her. Fortunately, the tide was coming back in and that helped a lot. Each time a wave came by, we would heave for the short time that she was supported by the water. Sometimes she didn’t move at all, and at others we’d move twenty centimetres or so.
All the time Stephanie talked to her, telling her she was brave; how special she was, because now she was tagged we would know where she was; and how important it was for her to go off and get a decent feed to look after her baby. The words seemed to pacify the whale, for at no stage did she struggle against what we were doing. Perhaps she could pick up on the caring tone in Stephanie’s voice, or maybe she could feel our concern in some other way.
Bit by bit we moved her until she was afloat all the time. Then she tried to swim, but that just made her more difficult to hold, and the water wasn’t really deep enough for swimming. Yet we persisted, and after almost an hour we had her back at the depth she had patrolled the previous day.
We left her and waded part-way towards the shore. For a while she lay in the water with only small movements to stay afloat. Then she turned towards the beach and seemed to be weighing up her options. Finally she made up her mind, and turned her back on us. Slowly at first, and then with increasing confidence, she headed for the mouth of the bay and the open sea.
‘Bye, Pimi,’ said Stephanie, waving her hand. ‘I’d like to see you again, but I know it’s best if I don’t.’
‘Pimi?’ I asked.
‘Yes, Pimi. That’s her name.’
‘You mean it’s the name you made up for her.’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head in a serious way. ‘She told me.’
‘What else did she tell you?’
‘Oh, lots of things. You’d be surprised.’
‘Yeah,’ I chuckled. ‘I bet she’s a real big blubber-mouth. ’
She pulled a face, but behind it I could see a smile. Maybe Hauruanui humour wasn’t too deep for her after all—I’d just have to keep working on it.
Chapter 11
With an invitation to meet at Milt’s place for brunch, Stephanie and I headed home for some dry clothes. Vicky and Dad were still in bed, and showing no signs of stirring, so after getting changed we left again.
There seemed to be no one around Tarquins when we arrived. However, Milt’s butler appeared and guided us into a part of the house we hadn’t seen before. We were let into a dimmed room where the others were watching an image of the earth on a big screen.
‘Ah, you’re just in time,’ said Milt. ‘Help yourself to some food.’
As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that we were in a small theatre. There were twenty or so plush armchairs in a semicircle around a couple of low tables which were covered with food. I dished up a huge helping, and lowered myself into a chair, thinking that I could quickly get used to living like this.
‘OK,’ began Colin, ‘I think I’ve got it right.’ He clicked a tab and the website of strandtrack.co.nz opened. ‘This is our website,’ he explained. ‘We’re working only with animals that have stranded on the New Zealand coast and have been rescued. Not just whales; we also deal with turtles, albatrosses, and sea elephants. The idea is that if we track animals that have a history of stranding, we’re more likely to get useful information. Mostly we’re interested in seeing if human activity is responsible for what’s happening.’
He clicked again and a list of animals appeared. ‘These are the ones we’re currently tracking. Each is given a unique name and ID number.’ He scrolled down the screen. ‘And here at the bottom you can see our latest addition.’ He highlighted the entry:
Pimi Hauruanui; Kogia breviceps (pygmy
sperm whale); stranded 18/12; tagged 19/12
Stephanie clapped her hands happily. ‘You used my name.’
‘You mean the name she told you,’ I corrected.
She grinned at me. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘While anyone can get to this page,’ continued Colin, ‘they can’t track an animal unless they have its ID number. In the beginning we didn’t have that protection, and boaties started tracking our animals and visiting them. The human contact was bad for the animals and was stuffing up our research. And then a couple of turtles disappeared—we think someone killed them for their shells. After that we’ve kept the ID codes secret.’
He typed a seven-digit number. ‘OK, I’ve written the details on these bits of paper if you want to take one. But don’t—I repeat, don’t—give it to anybody else.’
‘I won’t,’ said Stephanie, taking one of the sheets.
‘All right,’ continued Colin, ‘after you’ve entered the ID, just double-click it and—hey presto—the program will find that animal.’
The globe, which had been showing the whole of the Pacific, began to turn and zoom in at the same time. A moment later, the shape of New Zealand was centre-screen. The zoom-in continued as the virtual camera slid down the east coast towards Wairarapa. It stopped when a small yellow dot came into view.
‘There she is!’ declared Colin excitedly. ‘She’s well out to sea.’
He clicked an icon and other yellow dots appeared. ‘That’s the path she’s followed,’ he said. ‘The dots are where she’s breathing.’ Next he zoomed in on the start of the track, until we were looking down on Whale Pot Bay.
‘It doesn’t look at all like a whale pot,’ said Melanie.
‘I don’t think it’s named that because it looks like one,’ explained Milt. ‘I think there is a whale pot in there somewhere.’
‘Is there?’ asked Melanie, excitedly. ‘This, I must see.’
‘Mel’s an archaeologist,’ laughed Colin. ‘She goes mad over any relic.’
‘If there’s a whale pot, there must have been whaling out of here. There could be all sorts of things.’
I judged it was time to have my say. ‘There is a whale pot. I’ll show—’
‘Oh look!’ interrupted Stephanie. ‘She’s moved.’
I looked back to the screen to see that a new yellow dot had been added. She was now further out to sea.
Colin pulled the view back so that more of the
ocean was visible. ‘She’s heading for that deep bit,’ he said. ‘The Hikurangi Trench. She’ll be after squid.’
‘That’s good,’ said Stephanie.
‘Only if the trawlers have left any.’
‘Are there fishing boats out there now?’ asked Stephanie.
‘That’s what we’ll find out,’ said Colin. ‘We’ll go to the fisheries website and try to monitor all boat movement in the area to see if any of it affects where she goes.’
I asked, ‘Have any of the animals that you’ve tracked ever been caught in a net?’
‘We think one was. A Hector’s dolphin disappeared off the Canterbury coast where a trawler was working. We think it got caught and the fishermen destroyed the transmitter so that people wouldn’t know they’d killed it.’
Stephanie shivered beside me. ‘That would be so horrible. For her to be caught and killed after we’ve saved her. Especially with her baby…
Colin looked at her sympathetically. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘but it’s the sort of thing that’s happening all the time. People eat squid, and it’s hard to catch squid without also catching the other animals that feed on them.’
‘I’m never going to eat squid again,’ declared Stephanie.
Colin smiled. ‘Well, that’s you convinced. Now all we’ve got to do is work on the other seven billion people in the world.’
Only Melanie and Stephanie wanted to see the whale pot. I led them to the place where Dad had taken me when I was a kid. As I remembered it, the thing was on a mound beside the boats, close to the cliffs.
It was, but we took half an hour to find it hidden in the toetoe. It was in remarkable condition, considering it must have been two hundred years old. Some of the stuff in our yard rusts away after a few years, but this pot looked like it could last another hundred years or so.
With some effort we managed to roll it out of the toetoe and down to the sand where we could stand it up. It looked a bit like a giant’s potty. The rim sloped out as if designed to stop the baby cutting his bottom. Instead of having a splashguard as a normal potty would have, the edge was folded down to form a pouring lip.
Melanie said that the whalers would fill the pot with blubber, and then light a fire underneath. The hot blubber produced an oil that was poured into barrels, ready to be shipped back to Europe where it was used for candles and lamps.
She took several photos of the pot, with us posing alongside to give an idea of scale. Then we lifted Stephanie in and she acted like a missionary being cooked in a giant pot.
‘Hey!’ I sniggered. ‘We’ll be able to have Frew stew for dinner.’
Stephanie glowered for a moment, before saying, ‘That’ll be much tastier than having Jake steak.’
I burst out laughing. It was a good comeback—there was hope for this girl yet.
While the others explored further, I climbed up our track, and moved around to the gulley in the cliff where I’d seen Scatworm the day before. Immediately I saw his footprints in the soil leading down a sheep track. The stink of dead cigarettes confirmed that he’d been that way.
After exploring for a time, I found his camp in the shelter of an ancient gorse bush. There was a folding campstool and a sleeping mat for the times when nothing was happening. Tucked away near the trunk was a chilly bin containing a couple of bottles of beer. The surrounding grass was trampled down and littered with cigarette butts. He’d plainly been there for a long time. It was equally plain that he planned to come back.
I turned towards the bay to see what sort of view he’d had. It was pretty good. He could have photographed us by the stranded calf, in the water with the mother, and even at the grave that we’d dug. The place was the perfect peephole down to the bay.
I wandered around the site, thinking and worrying. Now that he had all his gear here, he didn’t need to use our track to bring in his vehicle. He could easily walk in at any time without being seen.
At first I considered taking his gear, but finally decided to leave it where it was. Now that I knew about his hideout, it didn’t pose such a threat. In fact, knowing it was there gave me an advantage, because now I could start spying on him.
After some thought, I decided that Milt should know about the hideout. I found him in the main room of the house, talking on a cordless phone.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ he said into the mouthpiece as soon as he saw me. ‘I want someone else to hear this.’ He pressed a button on the phone before laying it on the coffee table. ‘OK, we’re on speaker-phone now. Could you go back to the beginning?’ He turned to me, and said. ‘This is the owner of the sports shop where I got that surf gear.’
‘Yeah, OK,’ came a voice through the speakers. ‘As I was saying, my usual firearms expert was away overseas for a month. I took on this temporary guy. Right from the start I found him a bit weird.’
Milt broke in, ‘Was that the fellow with the shaven head?’
‘Yeah, that’s the one.’
Milt nodded to himself. ‘Yes, I thought it might be him. He stared at me all the time I was in the shop.’
‘He did that with some customers, especially if they weren’t buying shooting gear. He was hopeless selling general sports stuff, but he sure could sell munitions and firearms. He seemed to know everything about them, much more than my regular guy. Yet all the time I felt there was something creepy about him: as if his fascination with guns was a little dangerous.’
‘How did you find out that he’d leaked the information about my visit?’ Milt asked.
‘It was the other morning, after that magazine came out. He brought it into the shop and showed me that photo of you. He said I should use it as an advertisement for our surfboards. Straight away I told him that I didn’t want anything to do with that sort of thing. He said, “Why not, if you can make money out of it?” The way he said it made me suspicious, so I asked him straight out, did he tell the magazine. “No!” he said. “But I told the photographer.” Then he pointed at the magazine and said, “I got two grand for that.” He was proud of it. By that stage, I was pretty angry. I told him in no uncertain terms that people who worked in my shop didn’t blab about the customers. After that I gave him his marching orders.
‘Well, that’s when he turned ugly. He ranted on about pop stars who make huge fortunes from doing nothing; claimed there was nothing wrong with making money at their expense. Next, he started making threats. He told me I should watch out because something might just happen to me. There were also a couple of vague threats aimed at you, but nothing specific. I think they were just the usual sort of empty talk you get from thugs with a chip on their shoulder. Anyway, I paid him his money and he left; I haven’t seen him since, and I don’t really expect to. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.’
The expression on Milt’s face indicated he didn’t agree. ‘What’s his name?’ he asked.
There was a shuffling of papers for a moment before the shopkeeper answered, ‘Scott Grey. I’ve got an address here, if you’d like that?’
‘Yes, please,’ replied Milt, picking up a pad and pen.
After reading out the address, the shopkeeper said, ‘Look, Mr Summer, I’m real sorry about what’s happened, but I doubt you’ll come across him again. He’s just a loud-mouth who thinks he’s tough. He’ll have moved on to some other get-rich-quick scheme. You can forget about him.’
Milt gave a non-committal answer before reaching forward and disconnecting. He sat for a while staring at the telephone, breathing deeply, before turning to me with a grim face. ‘I owe you an apology, Jake. The day we saw that photographer I said some things I shouldn’t have. I accused you without thinking. I’m sorry.’
I nodded my acceptance. ‘What are you going to do about Scott Grey?’
He picked up the pad. ‘Pass these details on to my lawyer. He can decide what to do. I suspect the best thing is to let it die. I doubt that C’leb Investigate will publish anything more. With Christmas and New Year coming, everyone will have lost intere
st before the next edition comes out. Let’s all have a decent Christmas and forget about it.’
I mumbled my agreement. That’s when I should have told him about Scatworm’s hideout, but he plainly wanted shot of the whole thing, so I let the moment pass.
‘Speaking of Christmas,’ he said, standing and moving to a cupboard near the television. ‘I’ve got a present for you. He pulled out a box tied with a red bow. ‘It’s a combination present,’ he said as he handed it over. ‘A Christmas gift, an apology, and a big thank-you for teaching me how to surf.’
A moment later, the box was open and I was holding a digital camera, staring at it in surprise.
Milt laughed at my reaction. ‘Your father said you didn’t have one, and I thought it was about time you did. I expect you to be an expert by the time I get back, and I’ll make you prove it by taking some photos of me surfing.’ He looked at me, sternly. ‘The only photos I’ve got so far are when I’m falling off—I’ll be expecting better than that from you.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘I’ll do that. I’ll practise every day.’ And I meant it. I knew just how I would practise: I would stalk and photograph Scatworm in his hideout. The time had come for me to go on the attack. I would spy on the spy, and find out how much he liked it when he was the one being photographed.
Chapter 12
That evening the four of us went to the pub for dinner. Dad said it was a celebration, but what we were celebrating wasn’t stated, although I suspected it was because Vicky and Steph had arrived for the summer—and maybe forever.
So much had happened that I hadn’t given a lot of thought to their return. While Dad gave the guided tour of the photos around the bar, I sat and watched, trying to get my thoughts into order. My feelings had changed since the first visit. Back then I’d hated them, even before they’d arrived. Now, it was different. I was beginning to like them, which in a way was worrying: if they stayed, my life was going to change, and that was scary.
We had an enjoyable meal. Steph dominated the conversation, which suited me fine. She was in high spirits, telling Vicky and Dad all the things that had happened during the day, including some things that I didn’t know. Apparently, Melanie had decided that the place where the whale pot had been was a suitable place for an archaeological dig. She suspected that some time in the past the cliff had collapsed, burying buildings and other relics from the whaling era. Over Christmas she would research whaling in the area, before returning to begin the excavations.
