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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