He summarized the description he’d heard during the whale watch and was delighted to see Melanie’s eyes, sparkling with the reflected light of the candle flame, open even wider. “That is so cool.”
“That was my initial reaction too. Then I thought about it and realized it might be more than just cool. One could conjecture it’s a fantastic innovation of a mind that weaves the principles of math together with physics.”
“Okay, but what’s the difference between a wolf pack that stalks and herds its prey and the bubble net social behavior?”
“Excellent question. Although there are similarities, there’s a dramatic difference in the mechanism for achieving the intended result. Since the prey move in response to their fear of the predator, the stalking by the wolf pack is instinctual. The wolves react in a stimulus-response fashion as they observe that their movements are correlated to the prey’s movements.”
“I can tell you’re a college professor. Sometimes you speak like you’re lecturing to me.”
“Mea culpa. It’s a bad habit. Please stop me if it happens again.”
Melanie patted Dmitri affectionately on the hand. “Good answer. There’s hope for you yet. Okay, so you were saying the wolves act instinctively. What about the bubble net?”
“The generation of the bubble net could be one level of mental abstraction removed from purely conditioned behavior. Think of it as a tool that has been fashioned, like the club or the spear, for the express purpose of capturing food.”
“But like the wolves, the whales could have instinctually observed that the fish became scared whenever they released their bubbles.”
“Yes, but that’s only the first step in the process. Are you familiar with the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey?”
“Yeah, I saw it with my parents long ago.”
“Do you remember the opening scene? One of the protohumans observed that he could use an animal’s femur bone to crack other bones. Then he abstracted the concept into his internal thought process to make the conceptual leap to the bone as a killing tool.”
She nodded. “Ah, I see. The humpbacks fashioned a tool, a net of bubbles, after making the conceptual leap from their initial observation. QED: toolmaking and high-level intelligence are synonymous.”
“And not just any old tool, such as discovering a bone lying on the ground,” he said, his voice animated. “The protohumans improved the bone tool concept using simple geometric reasoning. They sharpened the end of the bone or tree branch to create the more lethal spear. Likewise, the team of Megapterans organized a precise, geometrically shaped structure from the rudimentary bubble concept.”
“Who are the Megapterans?”
“Oh, sorry, Melanie. It’s just my personal tribute to the humpback species Megaptera novaeangliae.”
“That’s brilliant,” Melanie merrily intoned in a faux-British accent.
“Jolly good,” Dmitri replied in kind.
“You know what?” she said. “I just thought of one more reason why the bubble nets could be linked to purely instinctual rather than to toolbuilding behavior. I read in a recent Scientific American article that the complex flight patterns of large flocks of birds are governed by the response of any one bird to its two nearest neighbors. Likewise, a single whale’s movement is possibly influenced by the reaction of the fish and by the motions of its two nearest whale companions.”
“Hmmm.” He thought about the analogy. “You’re proposing that the whole process was perfected after many generations of refinement and repetition?”
“Possibly. We humans think of toolbuilding as the exclusive province of the opposable thumb. This gives us permission to maximize our own importance and to downplay other species, maybe even the significance of the bubble nets. Look no further than religious doctrine, which places mankind at the apex of the pyramid with dominion over the planet.”
“You’re right!” Dmitri said it so resoundingly that Melanie leaned away from the table as if blown backward by a blast of wind.
“Thanks for the approval, professor.” She gave him a mischievous smile. “So you were saying?”
“I’ve encountered this prejudice in academia,” he told her. “Remarkable discoveries about ourselves blind us to other possibilities. It’s the reason I support McPinsky’s trans-species theory about the ‘continuum of intelligence.’ I suspect the humpbacks’ inventiveness and cooperative behavior are clues of a higher-order intelligence that utilizes communications. It’s all conjecture, of course, unless someone can find concrete evidence of language in their songs.”
“I’ll toast again to that.” They tapped their flutes together and took another sip.
“You’re remarkable, Melanie. Outside of the university, this has been the most engaging discussion I’ve had in ages.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere, Dr. Dmitri.”
“If this bubbly has had the same uplifting effect on your cognitive centers as mine, would you indulge me in yet another bubble-net-inspired flight of fancy?”
Melanie hiccupped and laughed. “You could characterize that hiccup as an upliftingly inspired phoneme. Go ahead. I’m all ears.”
“Are you familiar with Frank Herbert’s Dune?”
“Sure. We math and science geeks consider Dune one of the top sci-fi books of all time.”
Dmitri suppressed a chuckle at the preposterous notion of Melanie as a geek. “Do you remember the Guild Navigators?” Melanie nodded. “They mutated over countless generations by ingesting the spice melange. The mutation gave them the ability to fold space so that spacecraft could travel instantaneously to anywhere in the Galactic Empire. I’m visualizing an image of the Guild Navigators, the Gatekeepers of the galaxy who, by the way, bear a faint resemblance to small whales floating inside of the ship. They hypnotically weave their holographic web, which eventually causes the space surrounding the craft to fold. They suddenly disappear and reappear at Arakis.”
“I remember that scene in the movie. It just blew me away. I think I might have been stoned at the time.”
Dmitri arched his right eyebrow, and Melanie appeared delighted. “That’s a very good imitation of Mr. Spock.”
He lifted his left eyebrow. “Now I have this vision of a pod of Megapterans collectively weaving their geometrically structured bubble net, folding their own aqueous domain of space, to herd their meal. And I’m thinking, wow—”
Melanie completed his thought. “A gang of highly evolved, big-brained creatures folding space by weaving a bubble cloud and their favorite sushi suddenly materializes at a single point in space, where their buddies are waiting with open mouths.”
They both paused to reflect on the possibilities.
“Speaking of sushi,” said Dmitri, “I just realized I’m ravenous. Where’s our food?”
“I have a suggestion. Let’s close our eyes and try to visualize the steaming plates of fish appearing inside of a bubble net.”
“What an ingenious suggestion.” Dmitri shut his eyes and imagined himself kissing Melanie inside a cloud of bubbles.
TOP SECRET
United States Satellite Imaging Agency—Maryland
Lieutenant Nina Davis’s manager, Glen Welch, had requested an immediate status update after her interrogation of Mission Specialists Tamara Roberts and Noel Harrison. Now Nina sat in her USSIA headquarters office, listening to Welch’s husky voice on the secure speakerphone.
“How did you get them to admit it?”
“I threatened them with violation of the National Security Act with a chance for leniency if they made a full disclosure. Then Harrison caved and admitted the breach after Roberts had sent him the photo.”
“How’d he dare think he could get away with it?” asked Welch.
“In the first place,” she replied, “no one’s to know, not even our mission specialists, that every satellite image has a unique identification code embedded in the digitized photo.”
“Like a watermark?”
“Something li
ke that. Our geniuses have devised an algorithm to recover that code even if the image has been photocopied.”
“That’s amazing, Lieutenant.”
“Even more amazing are the recent advances in continuous monitoring technology in the RH-12 satellites. We could never have detected the anomaly without them.”
“What’s going to happen to your mission specialists?”
“Just a slap on the wrist for Roberts. A temporary transfer to another facility.”
“And Harrision?”
“Harrison’s a cocky dude, but he said he needed the ten grand for his kids, and I believe him. He thought if he sold the photo to an anonymous middleman, he couldn’t be directly implicated. Unfortunately for him, justice will have to play itself out.”
“Tell me Lieutenant, what else are we going to do about this? We caught them red-handed.”
“Deny it, of course.”
“But Harrison’s on the record. You say he’s admitted the breach, got ten thousand for it. What I’m actually saying is, beyond strategizing, we can’t deny it to ourselves. This artifact has been captured in living color by the most sensitive camera ever invented and rendered picture-perfect by the world’s best image enhancement software. It’s real, but what is it?”
“We’re still working on it, Glen, but based on some late-breaking developments from my analysis team, something very peculiar is occurring in the sea near Hawaii.”
“Which means?”
“Like I said, the results are preliminary. I’ll keep you informed.”
Davis stared at the folder stamped TOP SECRET resting on the desk, knowing she dare not disclose the startling nature of its contents. There was one more person to contact before she could bury the incident. Though she’d never met the Navy officer in charge of the maneuvers in Hawaii, she’d love to see his expression when he read her report.
OCCUPY PEARL HARBOR
Pearl Harbor, Oahu—mid-January
“Save the whales! Save the whales! Save the whales!”
Christopher Gorman’s eardrums throbbed as he gazed out at the massive turnout, a veritable sea of humanity by Maui standards. Three thousand ardent citizens chanted the nonstop refrain. Behind him, OCCUPY PEARL HARBOR screamed loudly from the hand-painted banner attached to two poles rising above the speaker’s platform.
As he waited at the edge of the stage, their roar buffeted him like a gale-force wind. He heard the crowd’s grief and anger, mirroring his own emotions on the day, two weeks ago, when he had endured the forty-eight-hour deathwatch of the juvenile humpback in Ka’anapali. The PICES director was deeply moved by the presence of so many kindred spirits. When a surge of tears filmed both eyes, he closed them, briefly, and concentrated as his mind raced through a dry run of his prepared talk.
The mounting cetacean death toll during the past month had provoked pervasive public outrage, spawning numerous protest rallies throughout the Islands. Oahu was at the epicenter of the eco-fervor, and this was the biggest rally yet. They had assembled in an open field about a mile down the road from the main entrance to Pearl Harbor Naval Station. As an expression of civic support for freedom of speech and for the event’s publicized goals, city officials had promptly approved the requisite permits for the mass rally. From his offstage perch, Chris was relieved to see a minimal presence of law enforcement officers.
Although many in the crowd brandished VIVA THE BLOCKADE protest signs, the politically charged atmosphere scintillated with vintage Hawaiian zest—“the spirit of Aloha.” Interspersed amongst the scheduled guest speakers, local rap and rock bands performed on the temporary wooden stage. The air suddenly quaked and the crowd came alive when a featured group’s popular recording began to blast through the portable public address system donated by a Green do-gooder. Youthful guys in tank tops grooved with svelte, halter-topped gals in front of the makeshift stage. Frisbees were as ubiquitous as sandwich board slogans. Scarlet-scarved Labradors scurried after lei-bedecked youngsters kick-stepping their Razor scooters around in figure-eight patterns. Some of the locals had dug a pit in the open earth, much to the consternation of the local authorities. The aroma of roast suckling pig permeated the air, intermingling with the sweet scent of weed.
The profusion of protestors spanned the Green spectrum from mainstream to extreme activist. Advocates for agenda-driven groups as diverse as the NRDC, Greenpeace, RUSH, and the Sierra Club congregated with hundreds of others to express their unique brands of marine mammal protectionism. Chris was normally turned off by partisans fulminating about their just causes, but this felt different. They’d now allied with his cause. He’d come here to remind every one of them about the scourge of juvenile humpbacks still washing ashore. Feeling itchy beads of perspiration dripping down his forehead, he envied the happy campers who had erected colorful canopy and dome tents, Edens of shade strewn across the field.
When the music stopped, the amplified, histrionic voice of Chris’s friend Joe reverberated in the air. “The next speaker on the Occupy Pearl Harbor program, from our neighbor island of Maui, is none other than the Director of PICES, Christopher Gorman.” Joe, the president of the Oahu chapter of Greenpeace and the event’s master of ceremonies, extended his arms in a welcoming gesture.
Wearing a white PICES T-shirt, his head shaded by a billed cap, Chris stepped up the risers and onto the platform. Upon his arrival at the guest speaker’s rostrum, he waved a paperback book aloft to acknowledge the thunderous applause. He would express his gratitude the way he knew best.
He leaned into the microphone mounted on the speaker’s table. “Aloha, everybody.” He doffed the cap and forced himself to smile. “I want to thank you all for being here today. It’s very important, because your presence and your energy can help save lives.” Drowned out by the raucous rejoinder of three thousand sympathizers, he waited until the group’s temperature had cooled. “I’m not gonna belabor the obvious. You’ve heard it all before. The Navy has undeniably resumed sonar testing, and now, suddenly, we have the deaths of many young humpbacks. I’ve seen the results in Maui, and it’s not a pretty sight.”
Vociferous outbursts of anti-military obscenities and a menacing display of protest-sign saber-rattling forced Chris to pause. He waved his arms to no avail, waiting for the audience to discharge its frustration. Despite the uproar, the sight of so many engaged young people brought back memories of his globe-trotting childhood as a military brat.
Once the seething spectators had settled down, Chris continued. “Now I’ll tell you all a little secret.” He reconfigured his sober visage into a tantalizing grin. The crowd grew hushed. “I spent some time in the Navy—” he heard the booing, “—and I want to thank the Navy for giving me the opportunity to discover the amazing mammals thriving in our oceans. The first time I experienced a humpback’s underwater song, it felt like a baptism in a font of liquid vibration and sound. In that very moment, I knew I’d devote my life to their study and to marine mammal education.”
Taking a deep breath, he said, “I’m simply hooked on humpbacks.” Wisps of laughter stirred the air. “I’d like to read an excerpt from an essay I co-authored in a recent PICES publication. It’s written in rather formal language, so please bear with me.” He thumbed to a bookmarked page in the paperback he grasped. “By the way, these books are informative and the proceeds pay for PICES research.”
“Go, Brother!” The husky, Island-accented voice emerged from the background buzz.
Chris replied with his hand raised in the shape of the shaka sign. In a calm and measured cadence, he began to read. “‘Of the thousands of mammalian species that ever existed, only a handful has completed the evolutionary round-trip from the watery womb, to the world of land and sky, then back. About fifty million years ago, the land-dwelling ancestors of modern whales perplexingly reversed course and boldly returned to their ancestral home. Although today’s hydrodynamically sculpted whales are able to cruise the oceans with elegant efficiency, the lineage of these giants is more
closely related to the camel and the hippo, and their anatomies retain vestiges of their four-legged forebears. By their irrevocable action, their descendants are compelled to surface every fifteen minutes of their waking lives to sustain the oxygen of life. They must have achieved an enormous selective advantage to justify a plight akin to the emphysema patient forever tethered to the oxygen cylinder.’”
As he paused to let his remarks register with the listeners, Chris sensed a barometric shift in the mood of the crowd. The aura of a tranquil hum had enveloped the multitude. Many of the children had stopped playing and were nestled into their parents’ laps.
“‘Evolution continued upon its merry course, and the limbs so useful on land transitioned into fins and flukes better suited to propulsion in the water. The fin of the humpback whale is the largest pectoral appendage in the animal kingdom.’” He branched both arms. “‘Biologists, inspired by its remarkable proportions, named the humpback species, in the lingua franca of the Linnaean classification system, Megaptera novaeangliae, the giant-winged New Englander.’”
Since he was about to embark upon more sophisticated concepts, he shifted to a more leisurely pace. “‘On land, creatures of this immensity would be mired in a gravitational well. Their act of repatriation, back to their pelagic origins, was a masterstroke, since their massive bodies could literally defy gravity. The synergies of buoyancy and a bountiful food supply enabled an evolutionary positive feedback loop of burgeoning body size, a bigger skull, and an ever-expanding brain. Humankind is conditioned to view the culture of the sea from our anthropocentric fishing-for-primitive-creatures perspective. The big-brained humpbacks, however, have behaviors similar to their sapient terrestrial counterparts: children to raise, food to catch, and songs to sing.’”
Chris paused again as the song of the humpback whale streamed from the speakers and resonated in his ears. Many in the audience closed their eyes, their faces expressing rapture. Some of the children bounced up and down, spread their arms, and whirled like dervishes.
The Whale Song Translation: A Voyage of Discovery To Neptune and Beyond Page 9
