Far From The Sea We Know (10 page)

“It’s more than just fascinating. Look at
them! Look how close together they are, look at the rhythmic way
they’re swimming! No one has ever reported anything like this in
grays. This is the cetological event of the century, and that’s a
verifiable fact, even if you don’t take the unexplained
displacement into account. How could someone have known about this
behavior enough in advance to set up some kind of hoax?”

“I can think of several explanations. One is
that they took on this seeming pod aspect at some time well before
you saw them. The hoaxers used it simply by planning around
it.”

“Why would anyone go to all that
trouble?”

“Listen. For you, this pod behavior alone
might be the ‘event of the century,’ but not for most. Not even for
the people who control the purse strings at the Point these days.
Some new faces on the Board in particular are far more interested
in the future of the fishing industry and the allocation of
resources, than in the pursuit of pure knowledge.”

“It would still get plenty of
attention.”

“Don’t count on it. Maybe a mention on page
five of the
Seattle Times
. It just doesn’t have the
sizzle.”

“I don’t agree.”

“The people whose decisions we rely on could
be here looking, and they’d be yawning in five minutes. They don’t
care. Have you heard about the cuts?”

“What cuts?”

“Next year, our budget is being reduced by
thirty percent. Do you have any idea how much it costs just to keep
the
Valentina
in the water?”

Matthew did not know what to say. Ripler
pushed on.

“Think about it. Whale behavior that
wouldn’t look all that strange to most people is not really news.
Not juicy enough, but transmigrating whales would be page one.
Especially with some reputable names behind the report. Big money
would soon follow, or so they hope. Stupid, of course. When the
truth comes out, it will certainly have the opposite effect.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Some old fools saw what they imagined to be
an opportunity in the admittedly strange behavior of these grays,
and they concocted this ridiculous scheme to get funding. Attention
equals funding. Sizzle equals funding. That’s how the game is
played, but they must be entering their dotage, if they thought
this lunacy could fool anyone.”

“That’s slander.”

“It’s been done before, you know.”

“When?”

“I was speaking of the world of research as
a whole. You take a real truth and connect it with a falsehood.
People can verify the first part and then they swallow the other
half. The baited hook. It’s the oldest trick in the world. If you
insist, I can find you dozens of examples, more than a few as
incredible in their own way as this one.”

Matthew tried to think, but the buzz of
confusion in the back of his mind was getting louder. Ripler,
however, was completely on top of his arguments and was thoroughly
enjoying himself.

“Matthew,” he said, “just follow it through.
You’ll find plenty of places where they could fiddle things. My
explanation, or something very close to it, being rational and
consistent with the basic laws of physics, is the right one.”

“You don’t have any real proof of what
you’re saying.”

“Don’t worry. I will. There is already
strong circumstantial evidence.”

“Like what?”

“It’s not the right time, but actions have
been set in motion that will prove me right. For now, I simply want
to let you know that you have been misled. You are the fall guy.
Whatever future you might have had is now at risk, yet it’s not too
late. If you’re willing to let the scales fall from your eyes,
there will be a place for you somewhere. I’ll even help. Listen to
me, please. I’m doing you a favor.”

Matthew did not know what to say. Ripler was
good at presenting his case, even if he could not resist being
patronizing. Matthew felt bricked in, but the hope of finding a
chink in Ripler’s logic kept him going.

“Thanks for your concern for my welfare, but
how about a plausible scenario that would explain how anyone could
have possibly managed this.”

“Sure. They changed the signature of the
original transceiver so it would temporarily not be tracked. By
anyone else but them, of course. Minutes later, they switched on a
second transceiver, reprogrammed to have the first transceiver’s
signature. The thing is, the second transceiver was not attached to
a whale. It was in a boat, ‘a hundred kilometers further north,’ as
you pointed out. The tags can be turned on and off and even
reprogrammed, remotely.”

“Go on.”

“With pleasure,” Ripler said. “After
switching transceiver signals, they waited for the whales to catch
up, secretly tracking them with the
new
code from the
original transceiver. The equipment needed isn’t that hard to come
by, and there are plenty of places along this coast where a small
boat can slip in and out. All the tracking equipment they would
need can be carried in a briefcase. It would then be easy for
whoever did this to be at the right place, waiting for the whales
to arrive. Then they just reprogrammed the original transceiver
with the old code, creating the illusion that the whales were
already there.”

“How could they have switched signals the
second time without being noticed?”

“As I mentioned, the transceivers can be
switched on and off remotely if you have the right equipment and
the codes. That’s how they did it the first time, that was the
‘anomaly’ that Harold Conlan picked up.”

“You’re forgetting about the second switch?
I doubt if anyone could manage that without being detected.”

“Ah, but they were!” Ripler smiled as he
slowly shook his head. “Oh, didn’t they tell you? There was another
‘displacement,’ or I’d rather say at this point, a loss of contact,
just before we found the whales. Just before you arrived.”

Ripler shrugged his shoulders almost as if
he were apologizing for making his case so effectively.

“And of course,” he went on, “that’s when
they were making the switch. It would be hard to do it without some
time lag, you’re absolutely right. I happened to be standing behind
Emory, who was sitting at the tracking station down below when it
occurred. The dropout lasted about a minute, and then—just like
magic—the signal comes back on. A couple of hours later, we make
our first sighting of the same whales we’re trailing now. You can
check it easily enough. It’s in the log.”

Matthew was shocked.

Why hadn’t Thorssen mentioned this?

He didn’t want to let Ripler know about his
recent conversation with Thorssen, but he had to counter with
something.

“The Captain told me he had an experience
this morning with the lead whale that was in some ways similar to
the one I had on my fishing boat. The point is, there’s more to
this incident than just the displacement, and I know that because I
experienced it firsthand.”

“Oh, and what was that, exactly?”

“I’m going to wait until I have the
opportunity to talk to everyone together.”

“Fine,” Ripler said, as he smiled
indulgently. “Except whatever your ‘experience’ was, Thorssen could
have just fed your account back to you, thereby adding weight to
this charade and keeping you hooked.” Then Ripler laughed. “Those
poor old fools!”

Matthew took a step toward him, but Ripler
just leaned back on the railing, his contempt barely disguised.

“At least what I am suggesting is possible,”
Ripler said, “supported by the facts, and in accordance with the
known laws of science. This magic whale with a warp drive is
completely ridiculous, and you know it. If it were up to me,
Thorssen would be out of a job already. I’m convinced that he has a
hand in this fraud, and we’ll find Bell’s in there as well.”

“To say something like that about a captain
while at sea is close to mutiny, you know.”

Ripler laughed again. “Excuse me, but this
is not the
Bounty
. I will still do my job and do it
impeccably, but ‘no thanks’ to
The Twilight Zone
. When all
this unravels—and it will—they’ll take you down with them. I
thought you might have some sense. Now it looks like the only work
you might ever get at the Point would be janitorial. No, that’s too
harsh, sorry. Maintenance, as I heard you’re good with a
screwdriver.”

Ripler walked away, then turned on his heel.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to hear your ‘Moby Pink’ story. Oh that’s
right, it was purple. Which reminds me. I had a friend check up on
something I remembered reading about. Heard back from him last
night. There’s an immersion compound used in the undersea mining
industry to keep clouds of silt down. Stick to anything it settles
on even underwater. Or anything that swims through it. One kind
happens to be florescent pink so they can layout areas clearly. A
gray whale covered partly in this stuff might well seem purple.
That’s how they did it, Matthew, only it wore off.”

Without a smile, he turned and disappeared
around the bulkhead.

Matthew stood frozen for a moment, utterly
frustrated. Then he yanked off his hat and threw it spinning away
into the air. A breeze caught it and whirled it back toward him
like a boomerang, but gave out too soon. The hat settled into the
receding wake of the
Valentina
, and was now, like them all,
at the mercy of an unfathomable sea.

Matthew wandered around the passageways
searching for Penny. He found her in a small lab viewing files on a
laptop. She looked up and smiled as he entered.

“Penny, I’m sorry about what happened at the
harbor. I’m more stressed out than I realized.”

“Dad’s a great seducer, you know. Following
him, sometimes people get in over their heads. You’ve been there
before, I’d guess.”

“Which is why I’ve been trying to play
straight this time. You get tired of winning a little and losing a
lot.”

They were silent for a while, then he said,
“Have you been in the lab all afternoon? I thought you liked to be
‘out there.’”

“I came in here a half hour ago. I took a
nap before.” She shifted some papers and closed the lid on her
laptop.

“There was another incident just before they
found the whales,” he said.

“Sort of. Andrew told me about it after you
left. They’re not really sure what happened. They lost contact for
about a minute, then it came on again, but the whales hadn’t moved
in any unusual way. The techs thought it was probably a glitch with
the equipment.”

If so, it was an awfully convenient glitch,
but he wasn’t ready for another argument.

“So, what are you up to in here?” he
asked.

“Studying the way crew entered their
observations in a common log they keep on their network, especially
the last two days. It’s a line I’ve been following in my work
lately. The
way
we look at something becomes
what
we
find.”

“Biases influencing interpretation?”

“Yes, but I’m starting to even wonder if we
influence the facts themselves by the way we observe them. We do
not even come close to understanding just how limited and distorted
our perceptions are. And it’s likely that the things we are most
sure about are the ones we are most wrong about.”

“And you think that’s going on here?”

“If that’s not a rhetorical question,” she
said smiling, “yes.”

“Okay, could this be an example?” he asked.
“A few years ago, I spent some time with Eskimos near Point Barrow.
They showed me some carved ivory. I remember one carving in
particular, several animals carved out of this single walrus tusk,
and they were all still linked, but in almost every orientation.
Up, down, sideways. I assumed it was simply to get the most out of
the ivory, and it probably was. An old man was showing the carving
to me and talking about one of the figures, a wolf. The whole time,
he held it so the wolf was upside down. I finally realized it
wasn’t an issue for him at all. He could see it just as coherently
no matter which way he held it.”

“And many similar cases, all well
documented,” she said.

“Anyway, I spent some time there, and he
often did this. Once, I gave him a photograph of him standing with
his grandson. I had taken it myself, with his permission, and I was
pleased with the way it had come out. When he took it from me, he
didn’t bother to turn it right side up. It made such an impression
on me that I can close my eyes now, and he’s still there looking at
this picture, upside-down. Looked at it for almost three minutes
that way. Simply wasn’t necessary for him to see it the way it
would be for most people. We always turn things right side up. His
way of perceiving is hard for us to grasp, although his people seem
to be losing this facility.”

“Exactly,” she said, and got up from the
stool she had been perching on. She stretched back and up, her
hands touching the steel ceiling panels above, and yawned like a
cat.

“Perfect example,” she said. “We lose it,
maybe to make room for something else, and then assume we never had
it.”

“Fine,” he said nodding, “but you were
implying that this influences reality in some way.”

“What we take as the real world is simply
how our perceptions are assembled for us.”

“‘Assembled’ by who?”

“Well, no one outside ourselves. I mean our
conditioning.”

“But you implied that facts themselves can
be changed.”

“Why not?” Penny asked. “Maybe the world was
flat once, and we made it round, by believing it round. Now we just
go in circles, winding up back where we began, thinking we know it
all. Hey, relax, just kidding.”

She had seemed so down to earth before, and
now she was talking about it being flat. Out through the porthole,
the sun was getting lower.