“I can do that,” replied Andrew.
“Let’s try it, Lila,” said Dmitri. “I mean what have we got to lose?”
After Lila left to fetch the recording, Dmitri turned to Andrew and Seema. “Could we be missing something?” he asked. “There’s got to be a ton of noise in the Speakeasy input interface that might interfere with your symbol detection software. As we discussed earlier, let’s enable the band-pass filters we matched to the frequencies of the game symbols.”
“I’m on your side, boss,” replied Andrew, “but I really don’t think that’s the problem. We’ve already enabled the high- and low-pass filters to eliminate the extreme frequencies.”
“Those band-pass filters might erase the very game symbols we’re trying to detect,” Seema added.
“You’re right,” muttered Dmitri. “My desperation is affecting my judgment.”
“Anyway,” replied Andrew, “I’m listening to the underwater sounds through my headphones. I’m just not hearing the types of vocalizations, like the barking sounds of seals, corresponding to the symbols on the original whale recording. After all, we’re broadcasting those symbols every thirty seconds, so I’d recognize a similar sound.”
“Seema, are you certain the broadcast level is amped up?”
“I’m transmitting at ninety decibels, which is the maximum intensity allowed by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Since we’re in the middle of nowhere, it wouldn’t hurt to crank it up another five or ten decibels.”
“Why don’t you do that,” replied Dmitri. “I’ll take responsibility for any adverse consequences.”
“You mean like if hundreds of dead fish suddenly float to the surface?” replied Seema, perking up.
“Anything that we catch, we eat,” Dmitri answered.
“That’s a good one, boss. I’m glad to hear you’re chill with this.”
Lila approached them, handing the feeding vocalization CD to Andrew. He popped it into his laptop, and the sounds of a humpback feeding frenzy filled the control room.
“Whoa,” said Melanie, “that’s definitely a change of pace from the sounds of the game symbols.”
Andrew licked his lips. “It’s making me hungry for shrimp tempura.”
“Keep your fingers crossed, folks,” said Lila.
“This may take a while,” said Melanie. “Let’s go topside for some fresh air.”
“Good idea,” replied Dmitri. “I’ve been staring at the Speakeasy display for so long I’m starting to feel queasy.”
Melanie and Dmitri trailed Lila up the stairs. Lila joined Tony up front in the pilot house leaving the couple all alone at the aft portion of the spacious sun deck. Once outside and focused on the horizon, Dmitri felt much better. The remnants of the storm lingered on, and a brisk west wind washed his still-sore face. He craned his head back and peered up at the fleet of puffy white and gray clouds sailing across the sky. “It’s glorious out here. Maybe I need a change of scene in my life. You’re living here with Mark and dedicated to your students, so what would you say if I applied for a teaching position at the local community college?”
“I’m flattered,” said Melanie, “but first things first. Let’s not give up on this experiment just yet.”
She took his hand and led him over to the starboard railing. When he’d begun to speak, she gently pressed a finger to his lips. In silence, they shared the tranquility of the ocean and sky panorama. With the engines shut down, they just drifted along with the lazy current. She rested her head onto the cushion of his shoulder. Strands of her long, black hair wafted in the gentle breeze, tickling his cheek. He realized his somber mood was all but extinguished. This marvelous woman had a magical effect upon him. Yesterday, at the koi pond, she’d harnessed the therapeutic powers of nature’s music. Today, she’d done it with the sounds of silence.
Lila’s urgent chattering from the pilothouse interrupted their serenity. “Tony just received a short-wave radio message from Chris Gorman. He’s somehow located our vessel and is about ten minutes away.”
The glow on Dmitri’s face faded to a gloomy pallor. He looked up at the sky, inwardly cursing the gods of fate. “Thanks, Lila. Melanie, why don’t you keep Lila company and alert me when you see Chris. I’m going back down to be with Andrew and Seema.”
Dmitri’s shoulders sagged as he descended the stairs on leaden legs. After he’d apprised his SoCalSci associates about Gorman’s impending arrival, they talked shop while waiting for whale-sign.
Melanie’s shuffling footsteps announced her return from above. “Tony says Chris is just a couple of minutes away. Any luck here?”
“Same old, same old,” Dmitri replied, his tone sullen. Why should he bother to sugarcoat his true feelings? He was too tired to play the role of the never-say-die leader. “We’ll just take our dose of medicine when Chris comes aboard. Greg, please be brutally honest with me. Did I make the right decision?”
Greg did not hesitate. “Absolutely, yes, and I’ll let you in on a little secret. If you’d decided otherwise, I was ready to convince you to side with the whales. I still think Gorman will forgive and forget.”
Dmitri stood. Just as he placed an appreciative hand on Greg’s shoulder, Lila rushed through the door.
“Hey,” she boomed, “I just saw some spouts about a mile away and maybe getting closer!”
Everyone cheered wildly. They turned as one to face Andrew. He pressed his hands against the headphones and concentrated. “Sorry folks,” he finally said, “but still nothing to report.”
“They’re too far away,” said Lila. “Let’s just hope they’re really heading our way. Oh, Chris has arrived. Let’s go outside and get this over with.”
Dmitri trudged outside with Greg and Lila. He sighted the PICES vessel heading back to shore while two hundred feet off the starboard bow, Gorman rowed a dinghy. He was accompanied by a person of much shorter stature, too distant to be recognizable. Wracked by a combination of guilt and nerves, Dmitri suddenly felt panic-stricken by thoughts of the impending confrontation with the PICES director. What could he possibly say to the man whose boat he had literally stolen?
As the dinghy bobbed in the choppy sea, Dmitri recognized the familiar face and ponytail of Gorman’s young companion. To his amazement, the youth was none other than Melanie’s son, Mark. When the dinghy pulled alongside, Lila tossed a rope down to Gorman. Once he’d secured the tie line, Gorman helped the child gain a foothold at the bottom of the stainless steel ladder. Carefully, he assisted Mark up the steps, bracing him from behind. Near the top, he let go of the boy’s hand, as Dmitri and Greg hoisted him aboard.
The youngster looked up at the men he now stood beside. “Aloha, Dmitri.”
Though stunned by the boy’s presence, Dmitri smiled and shook his hand. The members of the team inched forward, gathering in a circle around the two newcomers on the stern’s open-air mini-deck.
Dmitri felt it best to get the inevitable trip to the woodshed behind him. “Chris, I—”
“Mark!” Melanie cried. “What the bejesus are you doing here?”
Dmitri’s mind seized up at the sound of Melanie’s shrill outburst. Temporarily tongue-tied, he watched as she wrapped her arms around her son.
Gorman’s attention shifted to Melanie, who continued to caress Mark. “Sorry, Mel, but I couldn’t find anyone else to watch him. And, anyway, this is as good a time as any for a young lad to experience his first high-seas adventure. Besides, he was very insistent about it, crocodile tears and all.”
“Mom,” said Mark, “it’s only for one day. I begged Chris to bring me.”
Dmitri had interacted with Melanie’s son on two previous occasions. They’d chatted at Melanie’s apartment while he had waited for her to get ready for dinner dates. He was impressed by the nine-year-old’s curiosity, undoubtedly acquired from his mother. Mark had been particularly fascinated by Dmitri’s description of the similarities and differences between human and whale voices.
Mark was a ha
ndsome boy, inheriting both his mom’s Asian beauty and his long-gone father’s Caucasian features. Mark’s face had a shape-shifting quality. One moment he looked Asian, the next like an intriguing mix of nationalities. Dmitri was mystified, however, by the sides that formed this unlikely triangle of Gorman, Melanie, and her son.
“Okay, Mark, you’re right. We’ll be back in Kihei in a few hours. Chris and I will have a talk later on.” Melanie saw Dmitri’s confused look and said, “I was going to explain things after today’s experiment.”
Before Dmitri could react, Lila stepped forward. “Chris, I want you to know it was all my idea. I practically shamed Dr. Dmitri into agreeing to go along with my scheme. I’ll take all the heat. Fire me if you must, but please don’t press charges.”
Gorman’s tense expression did not appear encouraging. The veins in his neck bulged. “You all had me scared sick, but I’m here to save your butts.” Dmitri felt Gorman’s anger as a sharp pain beneath his sternum. “I had to call the boat’s owner and give him my personal assurance it would be returned safely. And as far as the Maui police are concerned, I didn’t report the incident as a theft.”
“Thank you, Chris.” Dmitri sounded both relieved and contrite. “Don’t blame Lila. This happened under my leadership. Let’s leave now and return the vessel.”
“Not a bad idea.” Gorman’s sullen visage gradually cleared.
“How did you find us?”
“Oh, didn’t you realize? Since this is a licensed commercial passenger vessel, it’s required to have an AIS transponder. I asked the Coast Guard to perform a radio sweep, and there you were. So tell me, any luck so far?”
“I’m sorry to tell you we’ve struck out with the whales.” Dmitri tried not to sound glum.
“Maybe not,” replied Gorman. He pointed to starboard. “Those spouts are only a few hundred yards—”
Two shrieking voices interrupted him—Seema’s and Andrew’s cries from inside. Everyone hastened through the door into the control room and stared, wide-eyed, at the forty-six-inch LCD display. The much anticipated cetacean circular game symbols hovered like halos upon the Speakeasy-formatted display.
“They’re just like the squiggly circular shapes from the recording!” Andrew exulted. “We’ve received two so far. Seema is broadcasting our version of the symbols at random locations on the plot. I’ve erased all of the previous symbols we transmitted except for the one preceding our opponent’s first symbol, so you’re observing a clean board.”
“Did you initiate the data recording system?”
“No sweat, boss,” he replied. “The hydrophone inputs are being logged to a file on the hard drive. We can replay all of the acoustic signals back into our Speakeasy program and reproduce everything. I’m also recording a high-def video of the word grams on the screen. We can replay those too.”
“Oh, God,” moaned Seema. “I’m really nervous! Until now my automatic program has been broadcasting random symbols. Now that I have to respond according to the rules of the game, I’m getting a brain cramp. Can you please help me, Dr. Dmitri?”
Dmitri hastened over to Seema’s workstation. “How about if I point at the location on the screen where I’d like you to image the next symbol as I announce the x,y coordinates for that location?”
“That’ll work.”
“I’ve counted three separate spouts a couple hundred feet away and getting closer.” Tony addressed them from above through the ship’s PA system.
“I can’t believe it,” said Lila. “It’s like a dream come true.”
“We owe you big time, Lila,” said Dmitri. “I’ll bet your feeding vocalization CD was responsible for this.”
Everyone gasped when the next cetacean game symbol appeared on the screen. “If this is what we think it is, then we’re the first to see these as they were intended to be understood,” said Gorman. “This could be an historic moment. I have to admit I’m both elated and terrified.”
“Okay, okay.” Dmitri tried to steady himself. “Andrew, be certain you’ve disabled the auto-refresh mode. We don’t want anything erased.” He touched the display. “Seema, the next symbol to broadcast is here at coordinates 171 dash 322.”
Seema keyed-in the coordinates, and an X appeared on the screen at the precise location where Dmitri had tapped his finger.
“Way to go, Seema.” Greg’s chortle seemed to relax her. “You’ve just successfully demonstrated the world’s first cetacean game symbol synthesizer.”
Mark walked up to Seema’s workstation. “Mom, what’s happening?”
“Dr. Dmitri and his team are playing a game with the humpback whales,” replied Melanie. “We think they’re playing Dots and Boxes.”
“How is that possible?” Mark asked.
Dmitri traced a straight line across the display with his index finger. “When humans play, the game board starts with an empty grid of dots. Then we draw lines to connect the dots and to form the boxes, right? But in the whale’s version of the game, they don’t draw any lines.” He pointed to the circular shapes. “Do you remember our chat at your mom’s house, when I told you how both humans and whales use their voices to draw shapes?” The boy nodded. “So the whales use their voices to draw these circular shapes onto this game board of sound. The shapes represent the corners of the boxes. A rectangular pattern of four circular squiggles forms one box.”
“That’s awesome!” the boy yelled. “Can I play?”
Dmitri couldn’t help but smile. “Sure, Mark,” he replied. “Come over here and stand next to me.” As Mark joined him, it didn’t escape Dmitri’s attention that Melanie sent an appreciative glance in his direction. “Andrew, increase the volume on the public address system.”
Dmitri was in control, guiding the flow of the experiment like a director on a high-tech movie set. Now, in addition to visualizing the symbols, they could all clearly hear the familiar sound of the whale vocalizations associated with each symbol. They didn’t have to wait long to hear the next brief cetacean utterance, like a seal’s bark, as the next O symbol was painted on the screen by the mind of the humpback—human versus whale—X versus O.
“Okay,” uttered Dmitri, like a command. “Let’s transmit the randomized data for a few more rounds and then decide who’s going to be first to commit to a strategy.”
“This is unbelievable,” said Seema. “We’re the first humans to interact with another species in a high-level, abstract communication.”
“Let me remind you,” said Greg, “that nothing is proved until Joel Spelvin’s correlation coefficients begin to converge to determinacy. These random opening moves aren’t definitive.”
The graphical update of Spelvin’s numbers appeared on the Speakeasy screen just below the plot of the symbols. Both of the correlation plots were still flat lines.
“Lila, come over here,” said Melanie, waving from the glass-bottom viewing area at the front of the cabin. “One of the whales just cruised by.”
Dmitri turned and saw Melanie ensconced on an upholstered bench. Leaning over a raised, thirty-inch-high, wooden safety barrier, she stared down into the recessed, rectangular well area for underwater viewing.
“Wait a sec, Mel.” Lila turned to Chris. “As scintillating as this is,” Lila pointed up at the display, “I’m crazy curious to observe the body language of our opponents. By the way, Chris, a penny for your thoughts?”
“Truthfully, I didn’t come out here just to chew you out. I came to pay my respects and to thank all of you for acting so courageously. When I’d realized you’d all taken such a huge risk for the sake of the humpbacks, I decided to join you.”
“God,” uttered Lila. “What a relief. In my heart, I believed you’d react like this, but I couldn’t know for certain.”
“I wouldn’t have missed this for the whole world,” replied Gorman. “Thanks again, Lila, for making the decision for me. PICES is indebted to you.”
“Only PICES?” interrupted Melanie. Dmitri detected a hint of annoy
ance in her voice. “How about the entire cetacean research community?”
“Thanks, Mel.” Lila joined her friend, up front, on the bench.
As the game unfolded, the fist of tension that gripped the room squeezed even tighter. After four additional rounds of symbols, the results were still indeterminate. Now is the time to strike, thought Dmitri. This was the moment to test all of their hypotheses and hopes. Mathematics and the scientific method would determine if humanity was a lonely star in a galaxy of organisms or one of many suns in the constellation of sapient beings.
“It’s your move, Dmitri,” said Greg.
Dmitri paused as his thoughts shifted. He was overcome by a surge of emotion, a sudden longing for his parents. They had infused him with their life force and the life-long gift of their love and support. They’d scrimped and sacrificed so he and his brother could fulfill their academic potential. He thought of the many years of study and training, the lathe that had shaped and prepared him for this pivotal moment. His mentor had kindled the fuse of his inspiration. Greg’s steady voice now reminded him he was surrounded by colleagues and friends. They were more than just a team. They were a family of scientists, bonded together by a sense of wonder and the passion to penetrate nature’s mysteries, which waited behind doors of discovery.
“Time’s a-wastin’,” said Greg. “If our opponents are as smart as I think they are, they’re probably growing impatient.”
“Okay, Seema, let’s take the plunge,” Dmitri mumbled, tongue-tied by cotton mouth. He lubricated his vocal tract with a swig of bottled water. “This is it. Let’s try to complete the third corner of a box and see if he blocks.” He grabbed Mark’s hand and placed it on the display. “Put the next symbol here, where Mark is pointing, at coordinates 102 dash 182 and hold your breath.”
Seema entered the keystrokes and the X symbol appeared at the precise location beneath the boy’s index finger.
“Cool,” exclaimed Mark.
Dmitri heard the fleeting synthesized tones corresponding to the tone-pair frequencies. As he imagined them racing through the water like a magic communications bullet, the wait was agonizing, the silence overwhelming. When the whale’s next symbol appeared on the screen at the same time as the creature’s grunt spilled out of the speakers, Dmitri heard groans instead of climactic cheers from the audience. Instead of blocking, the latest game symbol had materialized adjacent to the whale’s previously transmitted symbol.
The Whale Song Translation: A Voyage of Discovery To Neptune and Beyond Page 24
