"Follow The Whales"

FOLLOW THE WHALES

by Carl L. Biemiller

Published by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York.

The sun blazing through the broad west window, which formed most of one wall of Commander Torrance’s headquarters office at Baja Base, added little heat compared with that already in the room. Not surprisingly, most of that heat was generated by the ice in the glacial tones of Commander Brent’s measured speech.

“I don’t have enough trouble with this forlorn-hope operation. Oh no, not near enough. The Council members who have to know about it are divided between those seeing nothing and those seeing ghosts of old wars or worse.

“By order of the Council Controller the members who don’t know about the search are to be kept from knowing it for the duration—and thank goodness we loaded it with survey work of all types which had to be done sooner or later anyhow—so security is fairly tricky all around.

“Then there’s the little matter of establishing a trusted network from the Kuril Islands to Unameit and equipping and staffing. But that’s not enough trouble. No trouble at all. That’s my job.

“But then what? Or what then? Why, practically nothing. Just sailing along through regular channels and open to every little security null at a desk comes a report of two senior Service officers and four rebel wardens about to find and ask some strange sea creatures for help in taking over the social system. And how could this be? Have the genetic controls failed? Have all the psychological sciences gone daft? Have all the rules by which we live become empty? Is discipline and pride in the Service gone?

“You can just see it. Up through the regular channels of Service administration and management comes this report. It is copied. It is marked and recorded. All the clerks in the offices waggle their tongues, but fortunately only to each other. Then, in due time, the report reaches me, and back down all the channels it goes with the word that the matter is fully processed and action taken.

“But that’s what I need more of, trouble. Nothing small. Just treason, rebellion, high crime against the society’s survival.

“Who is Warden Second Class Petrie Putnam, Hive Number 11100, Lab Lot XYY2, Nursery Number 42859, Service Number 44456, Grade Training 6, assigned to Baja Base Shark Pens?”

The purple flush on Commander Tod Torrance’s cheeks had faded.

“He is a nice, efficient young man, perfectly conditioned for his social function, nicely trained for his work, beautifully disciplined enough even to please you. He should be commended for the courage it took to submit such a report,” said Torrance.

“He is a lad with big ears,” growled Jiggs Jensen, “who accidentally overheard talk which startled him coming from fellow wardens and senior officers. He slams doors.”

“That doesn’t excuse either of you,” snapped Commander Brent. “I’ve known you two for thirty years or more, so tell me about such talk in detail.”

“We’ll let you hear it,” said Commander Tod Torrance. “And just among us, which includes you, Brent, it might remind you of talk I heard from us that thirty or more years ago you were recalling.”

“Don’t look surprised,” said Jiggs Jensen. “We keep records after our fashion, particularly on people who are going to replace our sort as custodians of the Service.”

He thumbed a desk button, and Commander Brent, listened, nodded, and finally shook his head as though he’d heard voices whistling down the corridors of time from some very personal past.

“Shocking,” he said, pursing his lips.

“What?” asked Commander Torrance.

Commander Brent rubbed a hand over his face and, with the gesture, seemingly discarded a mask long cultivated with care and patience. He grinned like a small child.

“That they should be so smart so young,” he said. “I think the world’s going to make it. I also notice that you old hard-shells gave them reading matter.”

“Which reminds me, speaking of reading matter where is young Warden Putnam’s report at present?” asked Tod Torrance directly.

“Where it won’t give us trouble at the present,” answered Commander Brent. He stiffened into his usual high-authority presence. “I shall commend young Putnam for his high sense of duty, as you suggested. But the fact remains that the matter is on the official record. It could mean serious trouble for Rockwell, Lee, Selsor, and Barnes any time if it were revived for almost any cause, although your so-called records of the session would be helpful to all of you. It could be trouble for both of you as well. But from what I’ve seen of them and my own judgment of them, those youngsters are always on the thin edge of disciplinary problems. Comes from thinking and imagination.

“From their check-in reports they ought to be somewhere off your coasts right about now. Should they think well enough of you to call despite orders to contact only specified stations, you may tell them anything you see fit to tell them about, except me. And need I remind you that other ears are always listening.”

He rose.

Approximately eighty-odd miles west under a flawless sky on a breezeless day, with a sea so calm it looked painted in place, rose Tube Steak. He was not and then he was, so quietly did he ease his bulk to the surface. He had fed, and perhaps not too long ago, from some hospitable area of the ocean floor. Festoons of weed hung from his jaws like rejected salad. There was a blotch of some claylike sediment under his chin. He was not alone, for, as he snorted a languid sigh aloft in a barely visible jet of vapor, another bull eased from the water beside him. He too breathed a limp, completely unworthy fountain, and silently lined himself at Tube Steak’s side.

“Well, well, well,” said Genright, “old T. Steak with Tube Two, and right on time as expected by our leader, if not me.”

“Never mind the theories. You might have known he’d be back to have his afternoon massage,” said Toby Lee.

“If he thinks I’m going to start a cleaning station for him and his kooky buddies, he needs two more holes in the top of his skull,” said Genright, burbling grimly into his face piece.

“Adam One, you got us under close scan?” interrupted Tuktu. “All I see from here is a cliff of whale.”

“Scanned, and prepared for possible naughtiness.” Kim’s voice from Adam I was cheerful.

“He’s pleased with himself,” muttered Toby. “Adam One, what do we do now?”

“Swim around them. Let ‘em get familiar with you.”

“Nobody gets familiar with me,” snapped Toby Lee.

“Tube Steak’s friend has a spaghetti batch of remora on his belly. I think he’d like ‘em off,” said Kim.

Many cetaceans and other larger forms of life in the oceans are beset by parasites like the remora, a small fish with a sucker-like mouth that attaches itself to some host and lives on its bounty of flesh and blood. Temperature changes remove most of them from migrating animals like the grays, and they wiggle off weakly in warmer waters to be eaten by cruising predators. But they are tenacious, and hold fast in most instances until the whale itself scrapes them off against the bottom or rocks.

The three hydronauts in the sea vanished from the placid surface. The bull grays sent a barely noticeable quiver along their stabilizing pectoral fins, which were about fourteen feet long and roughly four or five wide, and floated blissfully.

“You’re right, Kim,” said Genright’s voice on the com hookup, “Tube Two needs a tummy shave.”

“I’m going up on T. Steak’s back,” said Toby Lee. “He likes me. He’s winked at me twice.”

“He’s measuring you,” said Tuktu. “Wants to know if you’ll strain down nice between all those hairies hanging from his baleen plates before he puts those jaws around you.”

Anyhow, I’m getting a shell and going up.”

“Tuktu,” ordered Kim. “Sort of mess around with that pair. Touch ‘em even where you think it might be sensitive. Try and get a feel of whether or not they’ve been…well, sort of accustomed to something like you. Know what I mean?”

“I choose not to know what you mean,” said Tuktu pompously. “What kind of an order is that? Mess and poke and see what happens. I notice you’re safe and comfortable in the boat.”

“I’m scanning and recording both audio and visual for your accident reports,” laughed Kim.

There was a whooshing churn of ripples, and Tube Two disappeared.

“Yep,” said Genright. “He’s sensitive right there. Come back Tube. Here Tutu, Tutu, Tutu…I’m not going to chase you.”

“What d’y’know? He’s coming back too,” said Tuktu.

“Wow!” cried Genright underwater. “That click of his is enough to deafen a person.”

“He’s coming, all right,” barked Tuktu, “and he’s going too. Mighty fast.”

Tube Steak vanished, dunking Toby, and boiled off behind Tube Two.

“They’ve picked up trouble,” Kim’s voice said steadily. “Shark. Looks like a white. Face south and expect him at eleven o’clock. Fan out a bit. Genright and Tuktu, be ready with hand lasers. Toby, use the pulsar set high. Sound alone may be enough to stop him. But be alert. If I tell you to jet out of there on your mantles, you scatter. I can always use the boat weapons, and they’re ready now.”

“When do we get a look at him?” asked Toby Lee calmly.

“Any minute now,” said Kim. “He’s three hundred feet away from you, now two, one, and ought to be in sight in this water—right now!”

The white shark, one of the great predators, moved like a shadow, easily, gracefully, and swiftly. The early years of radiation-steeped seas had caused drastic size mutations among most of the selachians.

This one, not excessively large among his peers, might have measured some forty feet, but like all of his clan he came hungry and dangerous to anything that might make an item on his all-embracing menu. He would have taken fifty-pound bites out of the whale, which could defend themselves only by lashing about with their flukes or by breaching in the vain hope that their crashing weight might land upon an unwary foe.

The great white paused as it neared the swimmers as though choosing a target.

Toby Lee thumbed the pulsar tube.

Scent may be the keenest of senses within the many species of shark, but it is followed closely by sound, which sharks almost literally “hear” with their nerve ends.

Toby, a veteran of work in the shark pens, as were all the other hydronauts, had set the pulsar beam to a most unpleasant frequency, which, magnified by the water medium through which it passed, turned the white into a circle.

For a moment its pea brain restrained the killer instinct generated by forever hunger and weighed it against acute discomfort. The latter would have meant nothing to any shark in a feeding frenzy. But this one apparently sought an easier meal. It flicked an immense caudal fin, veered off, and slipped away swiftly westward to deeper waters. Had it not, the lasers held by Tuktu and Genright would have sliced it into a mess of food for smaller fishes.

Killing is not a casual matter in the Service. It is waste if it does not produce raw materials for the survival of the cities. Or survival of the Service staff members.

“Well done,” rapped Kim’s voice.

“Hark at the cozy leader,” said Genright. “Did you log that incident?”

“Everything is logged. Comment?”

“Just wanted to make sure you had how bravely and resolutely I faced the enemy.”

“Jet mantle set to full power for instant flight,” said Tuktu.

“It is true that I am a man who thinks,” muttered Genright.

“Let’s think about the big tubes,” said Toby Lee. “Any sign of them, Kim?”

“Not only sign, but sight and sound presence,” said Adam I. “They are coming back, and I don’t care who disagrees, that’s proof enough for me that Tube Steak and Tube Two are not strangers to…all I can think of is handling, but I could mean guidance or even protection. And by swimmers, not Service people, just swimmers, your size maybe.

“If you want to know, I’m thinking about the biological attacks on our people during Hawaii Search, and that crazy whale that tried to ram the Polaris on the same mission. Something or somebody or some built-in signal turned just plain fish into weapons then to protect the hatch of sea babies. And I’m saying that Steak and Two are suspect, at least in my mind.”

“Talk later,” said Tuktu’s voice. “Arrivals have arrived.”

“Well, hello, Tube Steak, did you have a nice run?” asked Genright, cooing. “And you, old Tutu, back for belly cleaning?”

The pair of bull grays surfaced and indicated a slight surface zephyr by exhaling noisily. The baby breeze blew their own spray over their glistening backs. They bobbed as though there were never a shark in the oceans.

The hydronauts worked on them for more than a half-hour. Tube Steak was scraped of more barnacles. Tube Two was shorn of many parasites.

A wind freshened and splintered the mirror sea. Small swells began to hump from the southwest.

“Let’s bring us all home,” said Kim. “Weather’s making. I don’t want our Adams on anchor buoys. Return now and we’ll move west to deeper water and then talk some more about Genright’s pals.”

Kim thought a moment. He thumbed at the console before him. “Calling Herd Base Area C,” he said softly.

“Have you, Adam One,” replied the syrupy voice, “been swimming again?”

“One great white shark has,” said Kim evenly. “He tried for a snack off two old bull grays here and was discouraged. He moved away due west of this position. I suppose your people know he’s around, but then I thought I’d report it anyhow.”

“Thank you, Rockwell,” said the remote voice. “That particular shark is now part of the day’s haul. Assume the grays are fine?”

“Well and docile. They seem to be old-timers and remarkably friendly. Would you know them?”

“Offhand I’d say we do. That’s without seeing them, of course. But if they’ve survived to be old-timers, they sound like retired pod leaders that we’ve allowed to survive for one good reason or other. But your term ‘docile’ doesn’t sound quite right. Those bulls get to be eighty years old or so, they get a mite feisty too. Personally, I doubt if any of our people have been near them for years.

“Tell you what you can do if they seem to be part of your project—whatever that is. Pump a sleep pill into them and see if they carry a tattoo number along the trailing edge of their pectorals, that is, if its visible by now. Give me the numbers and I’ll give you a history.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Kim. “But it’s no big thing right now.”

“Call any time, Adam One.”

“I’m home,” said Toby Lee.

“Missed you,” said Kim.

“Slipped our line and brought in the buoy too.”

“Tuktu and Genright home too?”

“Probably all buttoned up and ready by now.”

“Out of your clothes, little one…”

“Sir?”

“And into your work garb. We’re moving right now.”

The two work subs headed out of the shallows westward scant miles to where the shelf ended with a drop into two thousand feet of ocean, scattering a wide variety of life with their easy movement: tuna, anchovies, schools of small squid, solitary sharks, and smaller fishes. The water was warm, light struck to some hundred and fifty feet, and murky in patches with a variety of plankters, many of them sown as old earth farmers once scattered seed, by the pelagic whale herders as food for their baleen charges.

The work sub sensing equipment recorded oceanic data, as the boats moved, to be analyzed and reported by the hydronauts as part of the daily work schedules.

They huddled Adams I and II over deep ocean some fifty feet from the surface, adjusting keel trim and boat buoyancy below the wave turbulence beginning to make with the rising winds of the surface.

And they talked on their own private com systems.

“I’m convinced those bulls are familiar with friends that are not members of the Service,” said Kim. “Herd Base admits that its people might know them, even claims that they might be tagged and numbered. But the fella I talked with doubts if any of his herdsmen have been near them for years or, at least, since they were judged to be not meat. He gave me the impression that they were retired, sort of kept around to maintain migration confidence like old uncles. But what do you think? Tuktu?”

“They’re used to being handled, I’d say. Other wise they’d be nasty. As a pretty general rule, old animals just don’t like being annoyed—”

“But handled by what?” interrupted Genright. “You remember Commander Brent said that the experts thought the second hatch, the whatevers we’re looking for, were assumed to be delphine, more like big dolphins or porpoise variations. We don’t look like that in the water. Not with four appendages—two arms, two legs—not counting gear.”

“Well, suppose the new sea people don’t look like what the experts think they might look like?” asked Toby Lee.

“Nobody’s seen them. Only the last hatch, our sea babies.”

“I could be plain wrong, too,” said Kim. “Those old whales just might be cozy to get the gunk off their hides. Just enjoying some instinct for a symbiotic relationship like cleansing fish cleaning up other fish on a reef.”

“Should we follow them around the herds and see what catches up to them?” asked Toby.

“I say ignore them,” said Genright. “If they want to be buddies, let them look us up.”

“Agree,” snapped Tuktu. “We’ve plenty work to do, according to our manual of instructions, besides swabbing down gray whales.”

“How would you feel about checking in with Baja Base and asking for some advice?” asked Kim.

“That’s open communications,” said Toby Lee. “And after all, theories are theories, and no sense in sounding sillier than we are.”

“How do we know that Commanders Torrance and Jensen want to hear from us anyhow?” asked Genright.

“I know,” said Kim firmly, and he could feel Toby’s warm agreement in that curious interplay of minds they shared.

“So do I,” said Tuktu slowly. “And what’s more, I think it might be a good idea if we gave them our private com call.”

“I knew you were going to say that,” said Genright.

“How?”

“I received a sudden message. It said Tuktu is a big blabber that can’t keep a secret.”

“Okay, we call Baja Base. But how do we give the skippers our com frequency?” demanded Kim. “Without giving it to any other listening monitor, if any?”

Toby Lee laughed. “I know,” she said. And rose from her seat at the console, padded across the cabin, and took a book from a shelf atop her bunk.

“That’s the Bible,” said Kim.

“We heard that,” came the voices of Tuktu and Genright simultaneously.

“Calling Baja Base, Baja Base,” said Kim clearly. “This is Rockwell in Adam One, repeat Adam One, for Commander Torrance.”

There was a hum and a short breath of waiting in both work subs, and then Commander Torrance’s voice eased into the boats.

“Hello, Rockwell, and I assume associates. Commander Jensen is with me. We had a feeling you might be checking in. How is it with the whales?”

“We’ll tell you, sirs, but first Toby Lee has a message for you.”

Toby’s voice was serene.

“Job forty-one, sirs,” she said, “and the number of the verse which reads, ‘He maketh the deep to boil like a pot; he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment’ Add two zeros for our private frequency.”

“Stand by, wardens,” said Commander Jensen’s soft tones, a chuckle hidden in them.

The open com network went dead, and then the private speakers that Genright and his friends had played with at Olympia Base, and which the hydronauts had been using before Kim went to open net, became activated again.

“Very good,” said Commander Jensen, “thirty-one hundred kilocycles, eh? Not likely anyone would be playing around except some lonely kayak driver on that band. Well out with the report, young wardens.”

Chapter One	Chapter Two	Chapter Three	Chapter Four	Chapter Six
Chapter Seven	Chapter Eight	Chapter Nine	Chapter Ten

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