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