Amador Green
Book One
Chapters 4-6
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Chapter Four
--Blue Boots

In order to kill some time till the rendez-vous at seven-thirty, the boys had taken a drive back over the Richmond bridge to Sausalito where they'd been staying. Ever since the late 60's, Burt and Josephine Stephenson had lived aboard their houseboat at Gate Five just some hundred yards from the ill-famed heliport where Bill Graham upon coming down from his last trip, crashed forever. Unlike some of the houseboat moorages at Larkspur, Gate Five was more atmospheric, perhaps than picturesque with its large unpaved dirt lot between Business 101 and the boats at their moorings on the quay. At the south end was a grimy old Mohawk gas station and to the north, just past Gate Six was the fateful site of that historic helicopter crash. Between the lot and the boardwalk leading to the boats at their docks was a sparsely treed windbreak of dust coated eucalyptus.

Burt, a man of six-two, spoke in tones so resonant that his voice was commonly audible from the wharf beside their boat, a World War II surplus LSM, the troop carrying plywood landing craft deployed in the storming of every beach from Iwo Jima to the Normandy coast. They had made an artwork of the conversion, finishing the inside with rare oiled woods from every part of the world. Seated in his captain's chair before the teak paneled French doors that ran floor to ceiling between the cabin and the afterdeck patio, Burt's long shock of hair hung free and unconstrained over his shoulders, a bright, sun and salt-air bleached silver mane.

Laughing, just as Alex had always remembered him, Burt shook his head in an unsuccessful attempt to turn off his mirth over what the boys had been telling of their plans; his eyes swept to his left, to lock with those of Josephine where she sat on a brocade davenport above the boys who lay stretched out on the floor at her feet, and she smiled, leaning forward, elbows to knees draped by an earth-toned print fabric right down to the scallop-stitched uppers of her sky-blue western boots. Burt laughed still. "If I hadn't been right there when Alex Junior here was born, I'd swear he was the spitting reincarnation of his daddy."

Wistfully, Josie smiled as she recrossed her legs. "You took the smoke right out of my toke, Papa."

"Same attitude, same . . . I don't know what to call it . . . "

Her blue boot bounced. "Not 'optimism' . . . "

"No, that would be far too low a description for what Toker MacPherd, senior had stoking his fires in this world."

"Don't know as you'd be apt to call it something like 'faith'." His wife's hand went to a smallish breast to toss a handful of long hair over a delicate, fine-boned shoulder and it was lustrous black hair with streaks of silver-white adorning it here and there. She turned to Burt.

"I'd be more minded to call it 'confidence'."

She shook her head. "Not visionary enough. Any damn asshole can be confident."

"Well, call it 'faith', if ya like, Babe, just so long as it doesn't get all blind and stuck-up with a lot of squareness about a monopoly on the truth. Toker sure wasn't like that."

Josephine raised a brow. "Right. But that doesn't mean his confidence didn't stand on a vision that went a damn sight beyond some crumby confidence in just himself." She shrugged. "That's why I think confidence is too small a word for Toker MacPherd, the First?"

Burt considered it. "Granted." He nodded. "Point made." He turned his glance back to Alex. "Whatever it was, you can see how it's passed from father to son." He smiled affectionately. "Still, I hate to tell ya, Alex but just like I often had to say to your Old Man, well, uh . . . put it this way . . . "

"Yeah?" Marty sat up a bit.

Alex propped his head on a fist.

Burt shared a smile with Josie. "Look: I don't want to rain on your rain forest picnic like this mates, but . . . C'mon. Harnessing a whale?" Burt looked directly from one to the other of the boys.

Alex produced a joint from his pocket; he held it up as he slapped the other hand against Marty's shirt pocket where his buddy usually kept his matches. "Maybe this will help you to see where we're coming from?"

Josephine narrowly eyed the joint. "Is this some of that infamous Amador Green sinsemilla of yours?"

Alex dubiously considered the question. "Yes?"

Burt sent a wink to Josephine. "Couple joints of that, and we'd be lobotomized plenty good enough to see right where they're coming from, wouldn't you say, Josie?"

Josephine's hand went beneath the coffee table and did something that caused a drawer to spring open.

"Wow!" Alex stared.

She reached in and produced a small, delicately carved wooden box. "Save it, Alex and try some of ours."

"Ooo!" Marty rolled a little closer. "That is so cool."

Alex pocketed the joint. "What you got?"

"Oh, just a little something from Panama."

"Dude!" Marty hit Alex on the arm. "Panama Red!"

Two joints the size of Camel cigarettes making the circuit, proved sufficient over the next fifteen minutes to produce from Burt a frame of mind that had him asking, "You really feel that you will be able to communicate mind to mind with a whale? Is that the idea?"

Josephine, now reclining on the sofa turned toward him. "So far as a human being getting some idea across to an animal? Oh, I don't see it should be any different with a whale than a horse, or maybe a cow."

"Or a goldfish," croaked Marty, holding back a toke.

Josie stared askance at him as she passed to Alex who was giggling nearly out of control, trying to repeat the word, "goldfish."

Marty scratched his head. "Well, how 'bout a camel or an elephant? I mean, how about one of them dog gone elephants now? What's a whale compared to a big ol' elephant?"

"Or a goldfish!" Josephine shot an eye from Marty to Alex who was already falling over as Marty looked on in awe.

"Well, c'mon now," said Burt, "Marty has a point about the elephant."

When Josie was almost done laughing she said. "I know . . . yes, he does."

"What about a porpoise?" Marty looked straight at her.

"Well sure!" Josephine leaned an elbow on a knee, and her chin in her hand. "Heck! Just look at all the animals that man is able to commuicate with, I mean, like, don't forget the chimps and the gorillas, lions and tigers. Sometimes they even get hip to a lion tamers words, man."

"Well, that's hip," said Burt. "So maybe those marine biologist friends of yours can . . . " He suddenly looked at his watch. "Did you say you had to meet those babes at 7:30?"

"Oh cripes!" Alex looked at his Super Diver. "It's a quarter to seven already."

"Best get a move on." Burt stretched. "We'll leave the bow light on for you."

Josephine came to her feet and followed the boys toward the ladder leading to the upper forward deck.
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Chapter Five
--Where There's A Whale, There's a Way

Wood paneling, big beams, the pub was a busy haunt with an atmosphere tainted by a scent of tuition money being pissed down the tubes behind a pair of constantly banging doors to the rest rooms. It was crowded, and laughter was everywhere, most of which was of a light and merry ambiance but some here and there of a more risible character . . .

"These guys are out of their everlovin' rain forest trees!" Valentina snorted a short chortle.

Her friend raised a hand to indicate a moment of grace. "We've come this far, it won't hurt to hear the rest." She smiled to watch the roll of her friend's eyes, how she folded her arms against her breast.

"Give it a chance and you'll see." Sitting on the outside next Zelda, Alex tried a big smile which was not met; he shot a 'help me out here, buddy' glance straight across the table. Marty nodded and turned to Valentina. She raised her eyes up to his, as she leaned with her back to the wall; a red-shaded lamp mounted over the table rendering an auburn cast to her hair; the tension around her mouth slackened only enough to speak. "First of all, you two goofballs have absolutely no authority to be doing anything with a whale, let alone rescue an endangered one that has beached itself."

"That's number one." Zelda looked from one man to the other. "But just setting that aside, here we have this hair-brained notion of yours that you can harness, actually put a harness on one of our sacred California Gray Whales and ride him down to Mexico, or wherever. I mean, that is utterly the most . . ."

Alex set down his beer mug. "People ride those killer whales all the time."

Valentina pinned him with a look. "Orcas."

Alex shrugged. "Okay, whatever, but look at the elephants; aren't they sacred to those people who ride 'em over in India?"

"That's cows," said Valentina.

"What a drag," said Alex.

Valentina fixed a look on him. "The elephants are slaves; they beat them terribly for the training procedure, mistreat them until they submit, and it's a truly pitiful thing to watch. They're regarded as little more than living bulldozers, hardly a sacred treatment."

"Well, I wouldn't do that to a whale." Alex shook his head with conviction.

"You damned well better not. " Valentina pushed the empty pitcher toward Marty. "Get us some more beer, if I have to sit here listening to this lunacy." He immediately grabbed the pitcher, pulled out of the booth, and turned to press into the crowd.

"Here's the thing," said Alex. "Didn't you say that in almost every case, a beached whale is going to die anyway?" Their silence affirmed the fact. "Okay then, what's the skinny with you chicks?"

"Oh, pu-leeeze." Valentina's eyes went in an arc, finally to land on Zelda. "Why did I ask for more beer?"

Zelda shifted to face Alex directly. "Okay, I'll give you this: it would be nice to be able to turn one of those whales around back to the ocean and see it live. I'll grant you that much, but . . ."

"Darn right," said Alex shooting a glance at Valentina who nipped her lip and let it go:

"Well? I never said it wouldn't be."

After a gesture of deference, Alex said, "Marty and I . . . well see, we're both vegetarians and pacifists, and animal rights activists and plant rights activists and we believe that healing is as much a matter of mind as body; so like . . ."

"Plant rights?" asked Zelda.

"Well . . . yeah, like we believe that all plants have a right to grow without being bugged by somebody coming along and spraying a lot of weed killer on 'em, or ripping 'em up out of the ground to burn 'em like witches or . . . "

"So, yeah," said Zelda. "I get it. Plant rights." She tossed a look to Valentina.

Her friend nodded. "Plant rights."

Alex shrugged. "So, like, plants heal us and feed us and everything is all part of a big, total thing, you dig, like, one mind, ya know and so we feel like all you need is the right attitude and you can do anything."

Marty set the pitcher down on the table. 'Where there's a Will, There's a Way,' that's our motto."

Zelda raised the pitcher. "If you will send your mugs my way, I will pour some more beer."

Valentina sighed. "Strange as it seems, science is still pretty much at a loss to explain the causes of this increased rate of beachings."

Marty turned to look at her, expectantly.

"No matter how many tests we perform, whether it's biopsy on the living cell tissue, entrails, organs or otherwise, we can't find any physical reason for it."

"You mean they're not really sick?" asked Marty.

"Not in any way we have been able to determine, but what do we know of whale epidemiology? Not a lot. Some are actually of the opinion that it's, like, psychological?"

"You got any head shrinkers for whales?" Alex smiled at his joke.

"Not." Zelda leaned toward him as if the pressure of her eyes coming closer might knock some sense into him. Her beer was working. "However, there are, some marine biologists who think it might have to do with sounds which draw them in toward the city."

Valentina set down her mug. "Still, for such intelligent beasts it is not so far fetched to entertain the view that some whales might be neurotic enough to do what so many humans have done, like, from the Golden Gate bridge?"

"Suicide?" said Alex.

Valentina tossed her head. "That's one possibility. But, the question remains as to
why. Would some whales come to be ostracized from the herd, the runts of the litter perhaps?"

Zelda looked into her mug after a sip. "Even a dog could get depressed due to being separated from its master, or a wolf from the rest of its pack, from the opposite sex, from its mother."

"And the higher the intelligence of the beast, the greater the capacity for depression." Valentina turned her mug on the table. "It could cause them to just give up."

"So!" Alex smiled after a secret wink to Marty. "Find a way to make that depressed whale happy again, and shoot--who can say?

Upon noting a certain suspicion in the women's eyes, Marty spoke up. "Say!How far do these California whales swim, anyway; I mean like . . . "

"A California Grey whale covers a range of over 3,000 miles in the course of one yearly cycle of migration." Valentina nabbed a pretzel from a bowl at the center of the table. "They move all the way from Skammon's Bay in Baja to the Bering Sea north of Nome Alaska."

"Damn!" said Marty. "That's some mighty fancy traveling."

"Baja." Alex drummed his fingers on the table. "Do they ever go farther, like down to Peru?"

"Not." Zelda snorted.

"Well, how far then?" Alex tilted his head.

Zelda relented. "Oh, well, some Grays, for reasons that may be climactic, perhaps having to do with La Nina, or that is a colder than ordinary ocean current, okay, a few have been sighted south of Cabo San Lucas, even so far as off the coast of mainland Mexico near Mazatlan."

"Hmmm." Alex considered that. "Okay. Look, there's probably a lot of places a horse or an elephant, or like, a crumby parrot wouldn't go if there wasn't a man there who had a mind to train that animal and take it someplace else, right?"

Valentina regarded him as if he had molested her knee under the table. "Alex? A whale is not a horse. A horse is not carrying tons of blubber that in a warm ocean will kill a whale from heat exposure."

"Okay," said Marty, "what if we coaxed the whale to swim out deeper, in colder water?"

Valentina took a bite of pretzel. "The California Gray is a bottom feeder that rarely if ever strays out beyond the continental shelf."

"Unlike the Blue and Sperm Whales," added Zelda.

Alex turned a worried glance to Marty. "So what they're saying is there's really no way that a California Gray is going to take us all the way to Peru."

Valentina laughed. "No way any kind of whale at all is going to take the two of you anywhere, let alone one that's dying on the beach."

"Besides," Valentina shook her head. "The animal has to eat and a Gray can't do that in deep water."

"Well, come to think, that all depends."

Valentina shot her a cross look. "What?"

"Oh you know, Val. Most of a Gray Whale's feeding is done up in the Bering Sea, at the northern extreme of their range, remember?"

She tilted her head. "Okay . . . all right. So?"

"Well, that's what they do up there is eat. But anyway, while they're in migration, they actually feed very little, relying on what they store in blubber, and to a minor extent what they get in the way of plankton, whatever they can gobble on the run near the surface."

"Eat and run," affirmed Marty.

"Get out." Valentina snorted. Marty shrugged. She turned to Zelda. "This is all well and good but even in deeper water, when you get down to about the latitude of Costa Rica you're back in the wrong temperature horizon."

Alex looked at her quizzically. "Temperature horizon?"

"Wait." Zelda raised a hand, turning back to Valentina. "The thing is that if they really were able to train that whale to do their bidding, by whatever arcane means they can think of, whether by fitting it with a bridle, or whatever they have in mind, the fact is that if they can get down there during the Garua, then, well maybe . . ."

"Oh . . . right!" Valentina's eyes widened.

"The what?" asked Marty.

Zelda after a sip, set her mug down. "The *Garua* or the 'misty season'. It runs from June through December. It's a time of year when the Eastern Trade Winds are blowing with the consequence that it forces the cooler waters of the Humboldt Current northward."

"Hoo boy. Slow down a little." Alex grabbed a pretzel and bit it. "What's that Humboldt Current?"

Zelda looked at him a while. "The Humboldt Current is going to save your ass, if you can get your ass across the equator during the Garua."

Valentina took it up. "The Humboldt Current is the cold river of water that washes up from the Antarctic to stream along the Chilean and Peruvian
coasts."

"It's like the Gulf Stream." Zelda looked down, turning her mug. "There's all kinds of Humpbacked whales that frequent those waters, and they are the Southern Hemisphere's coastal counterpart to the Grays. They migrate all the way from the Antarctic waters to the lagoons of the northern coast of Ecuador, their mating grounds."

"Hot tamales!" Alex banged the table. "So, once we get that far, we're pretty much home free!" He looked at Marty who raised a "Right On" fist salute.

Zelda shook her head. "You still have problems." The boys both turned eyes to her. "Whether a whale is feeding or not, they just don't stay on the surface all the time, not at all, in fact..."

Valentina cut in: "What are you going to do if your whale suddenly decides to dive after a school of passing anchovy? Where are you then?"

Zelda raised a brow.

"No, no!" said Alex. "Now, you're all missing the whole idea."

"Oh really," said Zelda, "Do tell. What is the idea?"

"The idea is training . . . and flotation. In other words . . ."

"Training?" Zelda held him in her gaze.

"Sure! I mean, don't you think an elephant has to be trained not to just go
charging through the Indian jungle wherever it wants to go when it's got a
man on its back?"

"That's an elephant!" Zelda tucked a corner of her mouth, flashed her eyes to Valentina.

"Not a whale," she affirmed.

"Okay," said Marty, "What about a camel?"

"Or a horse," offered Alex. "You don't just let him start grazing any time he wants to."

"This is a whale!" said Zelda.

Valentina snapped a pretzel in her teeth. "That's not a camel or a horse."

"I know it's not a camel. But look at a whale, it's probably got a brain ten times the size of any camel you can name."

"Let alone a elephant," said Marty.

"*An* elephant." Valentina, bit her pretzel. "Admittedly, a whale does have a large brain, even bigger than an elephant, largest damn brain in the animal kingdom, but that could make a whale even more difficult, if it wanted to be."

"How big of a brain does it really have?" Marty narrowed his eyes.

"Twenty pounds, for a Sperm whale," said Zelda.

Marty considered that. "How much does my brain weigh?"

"About one-tenth of an ounce," said Zelda, "from the looks of it."

"Well, that's quite a difference," said Marty.
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Chapter Six
--The Kon Liki

With the lights of Tiburon and Belvedere glistening through the mist over the waters to the north, the sixteen foot fiberglass runabout cut a curve over the swells past Fort Baker as it made way round Angel Island toward the mouth of Richardson Bay. Huddled under cover of canvas canopy, Marty, Alex, Zelda and Valentina all silently suffered the draft of night-fog saturated October air. His voice hoarse from yelling all day over the roar of Burt's 75 h.p. Evinrude, Marty leaned over from the helm toward the others. "Ten minutes and we're there!" Standing port-side, Alex cast a glance from Marty down to the seat where the women sat snuggled together, shivering in each other's arms; they nodded their sagging acknowledgment as Marty moved a hand to the throttle to try and coax a little more power out of the motor.

The loud drone dropped to a gurlging growl and then to a purr as Marty pulled into the slip just ahead of the Stephenson houseboat. Having leapt down to the wharf with a line, Alex secured a clove-hitch over a thick post as Marty cut off the engine. Zelda reached for the hand Alex was extending, then pulled back. "Keep your patronising mitt to yourself, if you please, Mr. MacPherd." She stepped to the gunwhale. "I'm sure I'm woman enough to manage by myself." Alex moved aside a little to make room, but when she started to slip on the wet fiberglass, he jumped to catch her. As he set her down to the dock, his eyes came to hers along with a big smile. Finding her gaze hardening as it began to bore into his, he pulled his hands from her waist and laughed. "What? Have I got seaweed on my teeth?"

"That would be an improvement over this . . . " her finger came up toward his face and made a flicking motion, "seedy little smile of male victory." She turned from him in time to catch sight of Valentina accepting Marty's hands to her waist. Zelda walked around Alex toward the houseboat. Pointing at the hull, she looked at him over her shoulder. "What's that 'con licky' supposed to mean?" Marty and Valentina approached as all eyes went to the title painted on the prow: *Kon Liki*.

"That's 'leaky' not 'licky'." Marty smiled. "Like the Kon Tiki that floated to Tahiti?"

"Come on!" Alex went ahead, flapping his arms about himself. "Let's go get warmed up." The women shrugged their assent following up the incline as Marty brought up the rear.

"So how is she?" Seated as before in his captain's chair, Burt smiled upon the three women on the sofa and then turned his eyes to the boys where they were once again stretched out on the throw rugs that graced the polished hardwood floor.

Alex smacked his lips after a sip from his steaming mug of cider. "She's a he!"

Marty sat up. "Couldn't really tell much just by looking, though." He shot a glance toward the women.

Valentina looked to Burt: "We know he's been beached there at least since the guys found him day before yesterday, but how long in all is hard to say."

Zelda sat forward. "Probably not more than a couple of days or he'd be in worse shape than he is."

Burt looked to Alex. "You guys been out in my boat searching the bay every day for two weeks; so, like, had you been past that spot before?"

"We went by there a couple of times." Alex scratched his red beard. "Coulda missed him though, even if he'd been in there, cause he's back in the tules of that lagoon, way down in the South Bay, so . . . "

Josephine turned to Valentina. "What's your opinion? Any hope?"

"Oh, well, of course the prognosis is always bad. Still, healthwise, we found no visible indication of disease, which is not unusual."

Her head tilted to the side, Zelda raked her fingers through her hair. "But with all that weight bearing down on the ribcage, exposure to the air, to parasites, you can be sure that his status will not be improving."

"When they decide to have done with themselves like this," Valentina shrugged a shoulder, "there is nothing that can be humanly done to stop them."

Zelda nodded toward the boys. "Including whatever it is that these two wild men think they can do to reverse the situation."

Valentina smirked. "They say they have the solution."

"But they won't tell us what." Zelda pulled the corner of her mouth inward as she cast an eye to Valentina.

Zelda's nose twitched as she turned to find a smoking joint in Burt's hand being urged upon her. She waved it off. "Er . . . no thank you."

Josephine reached out and pinched it between her nails. After a toke, she offered it to Valentina who hesitantly reached for it. She turned back to Zelda. "You won't tell on us, will you?"

"Val?" She looked right past her. "What are you doing?"

"Uh! I can try it if I like."

Zelda sat forward. "Just say 'no', Valentina!"

Marty laughed. "Hey, I like that. It's like one of those public service announcements on the Home Shopping Network."

Valentina sneezed most of the smoke back out, handing the joint to Alex. Marty looked at him. "Okay. Just say 'no', Toker."

Alex brought the joint toward his lips, then forced the hand that held it back down with his other hand. "No!" He shouted. But the hand came loose and flew with the joint to his lips. "No, no, no . . ." he whined until he was suddenly sucking a loud, whistling toke, rolling on the floor from the force of it.

"Oh, no!" shouted Marty. "It happened. He did it anyway."

"It's not funny," said Zelda. Alex sat back up to listen to her. "It could lead to heroin and prostitution and everything else!" She turned to Valentina. "I am really surprised at you Val."

She shrugged. "I never had a chance to try it before. I've always lived such a very sheltered existence as you well know."

"Yeah, right. Till now, that is."

Burt laughed. "I'm really glad you've warned us about it, though." He turned to Zelda. "Here, Josie and me have been smoking the sacred herb going on 40 years now, and would you believe that we haven't wound up in the whorehouse, yet?"

"Knock on wood." Josie reached down and rapped Marty on the head.

Zelda grimmaced. "Can we just change the subject and talk about the whale?"

Burt snapped his fingers. He pointed to Alex. "Right. Dig it: Marvin told me he figures he can trust you now with the tugboat, and so, like, any night you want it . . . okay."

Marty and Alex high-fived.

"Tugboat?" Valentina looked to Marty, just receiving from Josephine the joint. She took a hit, and made a brave effort to hold it, making little snorts as she strove to keep it in.

Marty grinned taking the offered item from her fingers. "The Vallejo Queen is the name of the worthy craft; it belongs to Burt's old buddy; the dude's gonna let us borrow it for, you know, a few green bricks of the . . . " Alex gave him a quick kick.

"Uh, bucks . . . for a few greenbacks . . . of the good old . . . "

"Legal tender," said Josie with a rasp as she let out a bit of smoke from a second joint now making the circuit.

Valentina looked at Marty with knit brow. "What will you do with a tugboat, of all things?"

Alex made an easy motion with his hand. "Obviously, for putting a good little ol' tug on that whale, get him back out in the water." He laughed. "What else?"

"Oh, obviously. Of course. What else?" Zelda's eyes continued to widen.

Alex tossed a thumb toward his chest. 'Been getting some tugboat navigation lessons from Marvin, the Tugboat Guy."

Zelda stared somewhat morosely at Valentina. "I feel like a criminal, not turning in a report to the Department of Fish and Game about this. That whale could be discovered any hour, you know."

"Not so easily as some," said Valentina, "the way he's beached way back in those tall rushes."

"Still," said Zelda, "it's just wrong not to report it."

Burt let the front two legs of his chair thud to the floor. "Reporting it will do nothing but bring that poor critter to the endless harrassment of the press and . . . " he shrugged, ". . . well, if you'll forgive me, academics like you who have failed in every effort to do any good for them anyway." Smiling, he shrugged and leaned back again.

Zelda snorted as she snatched a joint from Alex's fingers. "That's not the point." She looked at it studiously, took a sniff from the smoking end of the thing, wrinkled her nose and passed it to Josie. "It's against the correct and accepted procedure."

Josie turned to her. "According to humans."

Zelda shot a glance to Valentina. "Well, who else?"

"The whales!" Burt looked at her. "That's who else. Do you think that whale gives a whopping underwater volcano-sized fart about your correct and appropriate procedures?" He paused, and then: "Maybe he thinks it's strictly whale business and none of yours. Ever think of that?"

"To the whales," said Josie, "your correct procedures are just yours and none of theirs. Maybe to their way of looking at it, you're exceeding your authority to presume you have a say-so over their lives and habits, maybe this whale sees your buddies at Fish and Game as nothing but an aggravating imposition."

"Yep." Burt creaked back on his chair. "Just like those fellow biologists of yours who run around shoving radio transmitters up a critter's butt and down their throats, or firing biopsy syringes into their hides. Ever think that maybe you guys are giving far worse harrassment to these endangered species than the purely natural homo sapiens primates that just naturally and cleanly want to hunt 'em--ever think of that?"

"Not lately," said Valentina.

"Seems like some pretty serious endangerment to me, sometimes," said Burt, "the way you guys go preying on a poor dumb critter, rigging them with those damned gadgets and then wrecking their solitude, crowding in on them from the air, freaking 'em out with those choppers all the time."

Zelda was vehemently shaking her head. "We have to know the status of those populations, keep count and . . . '

"Uh huh," said Burt. "But I don't think you can really do that. You may think you can, but I don't think so. You can't cover enough of all this vast territory to get a proper idea of anything like that. You'll fly right over and not see them, the noise you make puts 'em on the run and into hiding. Then you come home and make your reports based on such flimsy samples as you do get, so you can go to Congress and have the name recognition you get by putting some critter on the endangered list that's probably nothing of the kind."

"Next thing you know," said Josie, "You've got mountain lions dining on defenseless hikers up here in the foothills, coyote dragging kids out of their backyards and bears driving around Yosemite in a damn Mercedes."

Rolling her eyes, Valentina said, "Oh! That is just sooooo not it."

"Uh!" Zelda looked at her friend. "What are we doing sitting here listening to this?"

Burt let his chair back down. "Oh! No, please. I didn't mean for this to get personal."

"Well it is personal with us," said Zelda. "Very personal. It's our whole lives and careers that you are sitting there so happily attacking."

"Sorry. Honest. Really. I didn't mean for it to come to that. Please."

Josie smiled. "Just chaulk it up to the musings of a couple of old First Growth Hippies who just haven't changed in one viewpoint or opinion since 1969."

"Truly," said Burt. "On this houseboat, you have found your way into a time warp. Here, you are in the company of people who still think that catch and release fishing is an insult to Nature, that hurricanes and ships should only, always and forever be named after women, and that Love is the only answer to all the problems expressed by feminism, Gay liberation, Animal Rights, and the growing crisis of Global Warming."

Zelda's eyes searched the upper regions of her consciousness. "Love, and Global warming?"

"Don't get him started," said Josie.

Valentina nodded. "Okay. So, like, *Kon Liki* is a woman's name?"

Burt considered that. "No." He shook his head. "It's definitely a man's name."

"That's why it leaks," said Josie. "So please, just consider the all too human hypocrisy of it, and forgive us. Will you?" She touched Val's knee. "In the name of Love?"

"Okay," said Valentina, touching, then squeezing Josie's hand. "I will."

"Right on!" shouted Marty. "God, we got everything all planned, you got your sleeping bags, and everything's ready for the morning."

"Right," said Alex. "Let's not screw up, here."

Marty stood. "Besides, me 'n Toker are on your side."

Zelda looked up at him without the vaguest trace of a smile, saying, "You just don't know how glad we are to know about that."

"It's a real comfort," said Valentina.
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Chapters 7-10