Beyond the Ice Limit

32

DESPITE HERSELF, WONG was mightily impressed by Prothero’s library of whale sounds, which he claimed was the largest in the world. At his request, she had devised a small program that scanned that database of audio files, looking for any matches with the sounds emitted by the Baobab. She had come up with two solid hits and several partials. As she finished the final run, she heard a stomping in the hall outside the lab and knew it was Prothero returning. His ridiculous Doc Marten boots made an unmistakable sound on the steel plating of the ship.

“So,” he said, removing his hipster hat and flinging it down on a table piled with junk. “What’s taking you so long?”

“I just finished.”

Prothero pulled up a chair, swept some printouts onto the floor, and sat down. “What you got?”

“Two pretty close matches.”

“Let’s hear them.”

She played the Baobab sound first, as a control, and then the two similar sounds from Prothero’s whale database, all sped up ten times to put the pitch into the best range for human listening.

Prothero grunted. “Play those hits again, first the whale, then the Baobab.”

She ran through them again in reverse order.

“That’s close! So—did you look up the circumstances when the two whale calls were recorded?”

“I did. The first recording was made by a Greenpeace vessel a few years ago, about five hundred miles south of Tasmania. It had been shadowing a Japanese whaler. This was the sound the whale made as it was dying, after being hit by two penthrite grenade-armed harpoons by the Japanese.”

“Fucking barbarians. And the other one?”

“That was recorded by a Woods Hole oceanographic vessel from a blue whale stranded and dying on a sandbar on Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia. Some kind of virus had interfered with its internal navigation, apparently, and it beached itself. It died not long after.”

“Both dying sounds…” Prothero was silent for a long time, his brow furrowed. Finally he stirred, picked his nose. “What do you think?”

“I still think the creature was merely repeating, parrot-like, a whale sound it had heard.”

Prothero made a face. “Just tell me what you think it means. I mean, to the whales that made the sound. We’ll deal with the Baobab later.”

“My first thoughts were that it might have been a cry for help, or maybe a growl of warning or fear. Or the equivalent of a whale death-scream.”

“Did you find any other matches?”

“Only partials. Some matched the first part of the Baobab’s sound, some matched the second.”

“Play those.”

She played a few of them.

“Hmmm. Notice how all these whale utterances tend to fall into one of two categories. Two words. Some sound like one word; some like the other.” Prothero scratched himself. “So tell me under what circumstances those partials were made, starting with the first. What was going on when it was recorded?”

“That sound was made by a pod of three blue whales, all together, when one was attacked by a gang of orcas. The blue whales managed to drive off the killer whales through ramming and blows of their tail flukes. They made those sounds as they were doing it.”

Another grunt from Prothero.

Wong reached toward her equipment. “Let me replay the other, similar sounds.”

Prothero waved his hand. “You don’t have to. I already know what they mean.”

“You do?”

“Yeah,” said Prothero. “You hear it all the time in pods of whales as they’re traveling together. Lone whales never make the sound. It’s one of the first ‘words’ I was able to translate.”

Wong was surprised. “You’ve already translated some blue whale speech?”

“Yeah. Don’t tell anyone.” Prothero made a face. “I intend to publish someday.”

“So what does it mean?”

“That sound is the whale referring to itself. It means ‘me’ or ‘I.’”

“Wow. So what do you think the initial sound means?”

“It’s a verb. That much I’m sure of.”

“Whales have verbs?”

“Sure they do. All they do is move. Everything to a whale is movement or activity. I think the entire blue whale language is made up of verb-like sounds.”

“Okay.” This did not sound very scientific to Wong, but she was in no mood to argue with Prothero.

“It’s a verb, and it’s used by whales that are dying, or whales that are trying to drive off attacking orcas. I think it’s pretty obvious what it means.” He gave her a superior smirk. “You don’t get it?”

“No.”

“It means kill.”

“Kill?”

“Exactly. Think about it. What’s a whale’s going to say that’s dying in agony from a Japanese harpoon? Kill me. What are whales saying as they chase a gang of orcas? Kill, kill! That’s what the Baobab was saying over and over to us, that’s the Baobab’s message to us. Kill is the first word and me is the second.”

“That’s crazy,” said Wong.

Prothero shrugged. “It may be crazy, but that’s the message it’s sending. It’s telling us something, urgently. And that something is: Kill me.”