The Whale Song Translation: A Voyage of Discovery To Neptune and Beyond

by Howard Steven Pines

  “Damn!” replied Dmitri. “We might not have enough time before the Coast Guard confiscates the ship. Unless we transmit the evidence to McPinsky, this ‘Crack in the Cosmic Egg’ event could be all for naught.”

  Andrew spoke quickly. “For my undergrad thesis, I developed some data compression routines that exploit fractional bit redundancies in non-ASCII datasets. They’re still on my laptop and ready to go. It’ll cut the time in half to compress and transmit the video files. Seven minutes tops.”

  “That’s fantastic, Andrew,” replied Dmitri. “We’ll keep the sea dogs at bay until you’re done. Are you ready, Professor?”

  “This is really crucial, son,” replied McPinsky. “I need to deliver that Speakeasy data into the hands of our Ivy Tech mathematicians.”

  “Professor,” added Andrew. “I’m also sending a file to do the decompression. You’ll need it to expand the data file to its original format.”

  “After I receive the data,” said McPinsky, “I highly recommend you erase the files on your workstations so they don’t fall into the wrong hands.”

  Dmitri directed an anguished expression at Greg. Then, with a slashing motion across the side of his throat, he nodded his assent to Andrew.

  “And no matter how demoralizing these next few days seem,” added McPinsky, his voice getting louder, “don’t tell a soul about the data until I go public. We’re dealing with ruthless foes, hell-bent on seizing our data to preserve their status quo existence.”

  Mark clung to his mother’s waist. “Mom, what’s he saying? Why is he so angry?”

  Melanie hugged him. “It’ll be okay, sweetie. I might have to go away for a short time, but Chris will take care of you until we sort things out.”

  “Absolutely,” replied Gorman. “Don’t fret, Mark. You’ll see your mom again real soon.”

  Melanie flashed her son a tenuous smile, and the boy relaxed his grip.

  “Lila,” said Gorman, “why don’t you, Melanie, and Seema stay inside and figure out a hiding place for the cameras’ memory cards.”

  “No problem, Chris.”

  “If the file transfers aren’t done by the time we return,” he continued, “we’ll need to buy more time.”

  Seema stepped forward. “I have acting experience. I’ll create a diversion.”

  “Thank you, Seema,” replied Gorman. “Hopefully, it won’t be necessary.”

  As Andrew assailed his keyboard, Chris, Greg, and Dmitri shuffled outside to greet the boarding party. The Coast Guard was very efficient in the execution of their duties. They’d already cleated their lines to secure the Research in Paradise to their cutter. A group of five had transferred across and stood at attention on the lower deck.

  An impressively appointed officer, wearing a sopping-wet dress white uniform and a smug expression, stepped forward. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Richard Fulton of the U.S. Coast Guard.”

  “Why do you all look like you drove through a carwash with your top down?” asked Greg.

  Fulton’s authoritative air vanished. “One of those goddamned whales breached over the prow of our vessel. Drenched us all.”

  Greg clapped his hands and turned to Dmitri. “Add one more item to the list of today’s discoveries: humpbacks have a highly evolved sense of humor.” He doubled over with laughter.

  “Hey, wise guy,” replied Fulton, punching an index finger into Greg’s midsection. “You think that’s so funny. Well, guess what. I’m about to have the last laugh. You’ve been charged with assault and battery and flight from the scene of a crime.” Fulton’s rigid posture made it evident he was accustomed to giving, rather than receiving, orders. With a contemptuous flick of his wrist, he extracted a sheet of paper from his pocket and read from the page. “We’re here to take the following individuals into custody: David Dmitri, Gregory Bono, Andrew Chu, Seema Roy, Melanie Mari, Lila Lawson, and whoever is piloting this vessel.” His voice suddenly sounded more collegial. “By the way, those were very unusual circumstances that prevented us from approaching you earlier. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Gorman stepped forward. “I’m the director of the Pacific Institute for Cetacean Educational Studies. I chartered this vessel for the purpose of researching the unique behavior you’ve just described. Since I spoke with the boat’s owner as recently as this morning, I’ve no reason to believe he would file those charges. Why don’t you give me a few minutes to contact him and resolve the situation?”

  “The charges against these individuals were filed by three injured parties in Maui, not by the owner of the boat.”

  “What the heck?” replied Dmitri. “We were defending ourselves. They attacked us first. Look at this.” He tapped an index finger to his black eye.

  “That’s a nasty shiner,” replied Fulton, “but I have my orders. You can sort this out back on shore. Now please follow us so we can detain the remaining suspects on our list.”

  They filed inside to the Speakeasy control center. Less than five minutes had elapsed since Andrew had been left to his devices. The file transfer process was still in progress.

  The Coast Guard commander emerged from his pack of men. He looked disapprovingly from one person to another, and said, “You’re all under arrest. Please follow me outside.”

  Mark marched up to Fulton and glared at him. “Stay away from my mom!”

  “I’m sorry, son, but I have my orders,” said Fulton. “What are you doing here?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Gorman. “I’m not on your arrest list, and I’m the boy’s guardian.” He grasped Mark’s hand and brought him back to Melanie.

  “Oh no, I’m going to be deported!” Seema declared, sounding truly aghast. “My family will be ashamed of me!” She burst into tears.

  “Calm down, ma’am. Just compose yourself.” Fulton reached into his pocket and offered a handkerchief.

  But Seema unleashed a torrent of sobs. To the commander’s chagrin, the hanky was soon soaked in the residue of her apparent grief. She milked her performance until Andrew flashed a signal to indicate that the all-important file transfers to McPinsky had been completed. He stood directly in front of the workstation, facing the Coast Guard team. With the keyboard shielded behind him, he furtively curled his right hand behind his back. He took a deep breath and, with a delicate stroke of his pinky finger, pressed the ENTER key to initiate the program that erased the precious files.

  LAST GASP

  U.S.S San Fernando, Leeward Waters, Maui

  What exactly the heck was happening? wondered Captain Pierce Bogan on the command deck of the U.S.S. San Fernando. He’d executed his orders to the letter. The ship had advanced to the designated coordinates. The crew had initiated the five-minute test sequence program at half of maximum power. Ping duration was six seconds, repeated every thirty seconds. Whoever had organized this operation must have known what they were looking for, he thought. Immediately after the first ping, the display had lit up like a Christmas tree. At least forty large sub-targets, each approximately ten to fifteen meters in length, appeared as a constellation of bright amber blips against the sonar display’s dark background.

  Bogan turned toward his executive officer. “What do you think we’re looking at?”

  The XO hesitated. “The signatures indicate they’re probably whales, sir.”

  “So many? Come on. Forty whales swimming in circles?”

  Bogan stared at the screen. He’d never seen anything like it. The targets appeared to be arrayed in a circular formation. Sixty seconds later, after the transmission of the third active sonar pulse, the brightly lit targets had vanished. In all the years of testing the ultra-tech, billion-dollar tracking system, this had never happened. Once the sonar had locked onto a target, the tracking process was one hundred percent reliable.

  “Emergency systems check!” bellowed Bogan.

  “Aye, sir,” answered the XO.

  The engineers barked out the sequence of commands and responses corresponding to the reliability
tests for each of the software and hardware subsystems. Flashing digital displays at multiple workstations churned out colorful plots and pulsed with tables of numbers. Despite the razzle-dazzle, Bogan neither saw nor heard any evidence of a component failure. He waved at the display. “What the hell are we looking at now?” He observed the faint smudge of a spherical object pulsating in the center of the screen.

  “Unidentified bogey, sir,” the XO sighed, “maybe just a false positive echo?”

  “This new-fangled sonar is supposed to be foolproof. How am I going to explain this malfunction to headquarters?”

  For one of the few times in his career, Bogan was befuddled, yet his superiors expected a summary report ASAP. The damned bogey had persisted for the duration of the test. It couldn’t be dismissed. He sat down at the nearest workstation and opened a new report-template file. He stared up at the ceiling and scratched his head. Five minutes later, the file was still devoid of text.

  * * *

  Six time zones to the East of the Straits of Lahaina, Ned Perry, still ensconced in his Pentagon office, monitored the events transpiring in Hawaiian waters. Cupping a hand to his face and muttering to himself, he heard the klaxon ringtone of an incoming phone call.

  “I was afraid it might be you, Richard,” answered Perry, seeing the “SoCalSci” caller-ID tag on the phone’s display. “I have both good news and bad news to report. Fortunately for you, the good news is that the occupants of the PICES vessel have been taken into custody and the vessel has been impounded.”

  “That’s splendid news, Ned, splendid indeed. So whatever happened out there will never see the light of day. You’ll see to it, of course, that their computer disk drives are wiped clean?”

  “Of course, Richard.” But not, he thought, until the files have been subjected to the intense scrutiny of my own staff of experts. “And their entire team, except for Gorman, has been transferred to a local jail, charged with assault and battery. Since it’s the weekend, I estimate we can keep them incarcerated for a couple of days, until bail is set.”

  “Excellent,” replied Prescott. “I’ll notify the chair of the academic senate.”

  “Huh?”

  “The arrest of any university employee automatically triggers sanctions levied by a jury of peers. Based upon the severity of their charges, I’d say our SoCalSci professors face, at best, a vote of censure and revocation of research funds.”

  “And the worst?”

  “Their positions at SoCalSci could be in jeopardy.”

  “Ouch.”

  “I wouldn’t worry. Once this blows over and the experiment is forgotten, I’ll do my best to have them reinstated.”

  “That’s civil of you, Richard.”

  “I hear your sarcasm, Ned, but I do have a conscience. So what’s the bad news?”

  “Well, according to the report I just received from the commander of my sonar test vessel, there’s a new problem with my system. Since you’ve decided to bug me at such a late hour, I’m not letting you off the hook. I’m going to read you every frigging detail of his dispatch.”

  After Perry’s tedious recounting of the U.S.S. San Fernando’s status report, Prescott sounded exasperated. “I’m sorry, Ned, but why don’t you translate the technobabble into something I can get a grip on.”

  “Well, the ‘sub-targets’ he refers too are the humpbacks, and the ‘bogey’ is probably the whole pod. So far, so good. But then, apparently, the entire pod disappeared from our screens after a couple of minutes.”

  “And?”

  “Richard!” snapped Perry. “No bogey has ever ‘winked out’ in the middle of a test. It’s beyond comprehension that so many large whales could have suddenly vanished without a trace. There should at least have been evidence of their individual signatures as the formation dispersed. There’s either a new glitch in my very expensive system or worse yet, some unknown force has compromised the functionality of our new secret weapon. I need to get to the bottom of this.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “Something peculiar happened beneath the PICES vessel, and the only souls who can shed light on the matter are currently in a Maui prison. The one thing I’m certain of is that Dr. Dmitri’s obligatory first phone call was directed to a Professor McPinsky.”

  “No surprise there,” replied Prescott. “McPinsky is the mastermind behind all of Dmitri’s shenanigans. In fact, if I were you, I’d focus your investigation on the distinguished professor at Ivy Tech University. If anyone knows why your system failed, he’s your man.”

  “Thanks, Richard. You’ve been very helpful. Sorry to run, but I need to make another phone call.”

  Perry depressed the security-mode button on his wired phone. When the party answered, he asked, “So what did you discover?”

  “A Skype voice and data connection between the boat and a fellow named McPinsky in New York.”

  Perry heard the robotic voice and wondered whom he was conversing with. In secure mode, these phones invoked real-time, voice-changing firmware to preserve the anonymity of both speakers.

  “How about the data files?” replied Perry.

  “The disk was wiped clean. Someone knew what they were doing. The files aren’t recoverable.”

  “Damnation,” replied Perry, ending the call. He stabbed the handset back into its docking port.

  Perry checked his watch. No wonder he felt so tired. It was already past midnight. He dragged a hand across his chin stubble, sighed, and came to a decision. He grabbed the secure mobile phone on the desk and punched the speed-dial key. Two rings later, Perry delivered his terse message. “Cancel all previous orders and proceed to the next objective, Professor Theodosius McPinsky of Ivy Tech University. No need to remind you. This conversation didn’t happen.”

  “Bloody Hell!” With a loud thump, Perry slammed his expensive phone onto the desk.

  JAIL HOUSE BLUES

  Maui Police Department, Wailuku—March 1

  “Seema, watch out!”

  Andrew’s voice cracked like a gunshot, breaking into Dmitri’s fitful predawn slumber. He lurched upright to a sitting position and saw Andrew writhing on the cot, eyes still shut. Dmitri felt mentally and physically spent, yet restful sleep in this Hawaiian prison cell seemed as elusive as his hope of freedom. He lay back down and stared straight up, searching for answers in the recesses of the rough-hewn ceiling and listening to the restless murmurs of his cellmates.

  Only twenty-four hours had elapsed since yesterday morning’s commando mission had launched the voyage of astonishing discoveries. In the wake of their adventure, the Coast Guard had confiscated all of their equipment, and the telltale data files had been obliterated. Dmitri prayed McPinsky had received the climactic Speakeasy data before the communication lines had been shut down. The revelations of a lifetime might be a passing dream if he had not.

  Dmitri tussled with the institutional bed, yearning for his memory foam mattress back home as he replayed the calamitous concluding events in an otherwise spectacular yesterday. Tony’s jazzy blues harmonica tunes were the only pleasant memories of their Coast-Guard-chaperoned, jail-boat ride. Immediately after docking in Kihei, they’d been transferred into the custody of the local police, who paid no heed to their protests. During the recital of their Miranda rights, Dmitri had watched the inauspicious arrival of a Maui police van. The short drive to Wailuku had passed in sullen, hand-cuffed silence. It was late evening by the time they’d been hustled inside the local jail and, since Dmitri’s internal fuel gauge was pinned on empty, the subsequent booking and incarceration gauntlet had happened in an anti-climactic blur. At the conclusion of the fingerprinting and mug-shot sessions, the four men and three women had been herded into separate group holding cells. Dmitri’s quartet shared theirs with a local teen sleeping off a DUI.

  In this hot, dank cell, the vapors wafting up from the open toilet seeped into his awareness and then leached back out on a wave of self-recrimination. It had been his decision to launch
the experiment that resulted in everyone’s imprisonment. How were the women faring in their wing of the prison? Melanie would be frantic about Mark. Could Gorman arrange a timely bail? Dmitri agonized over the precarious situation faced by Greg and his grad students, as well. His worst fear was that their fate at SoCalSci was a fait accompli, since Prescott now had free reign to smear their jailbird reputations all over the campus.

  Since his brain and body were starved for rest, he knew he’d better stop obsessing. As Greg had often counseled, the best way to squelch vexing mental chatter was to think about favorite people, places, and things. What could be better than to focus on a pleasant reminiscence of Melanie? He closed his eyes and meditated on the indelible image of her sleek figure graced by a jade green cheongsam, and her radiant smile reflecting that brilliant, sunny day in the park. In his mind’s ear, he imagined floating on the cloud of her velvety voice, to the accompaniment of the mynah bird chorus. He yawned.

  * * *

  Jolted awake by a hideous screech, Dmitri soon realized he’d heard the fork-scraping-the-frying-pan squeal of the opening of an iron-barred cell door. Squinting into the light, he saw a uniformed guard slide trays of food into their cell through a slot near the floor. “Good morning. I heard a rumor about you guys having a visitor today.” After he’d brought two more trays of their morning meal, bowls of mush soaking in Hawaiian brown sugar, he left without sharing any more details.

  “Hooray,” said Andrew, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “This could be our lucky day, right?”

  “Or it could be one of Prescott’s lackeys and the beginning of the end for us,” said Dmitri, still lying on his back.

  “Don’t give up hope, pal,” said Greg. “After what we experienced yesterday, we have every right to believe something extraordinary is still possible.”