The Prince Of Whales (2)
Shmuel Yacobi

 

Dr. Chad tried to say some thing to her but Joan went out of reach and out of sight to enjoy the fabulous sight of the night lit Hawaiian ocean from the bayside guesthouse. He ran and shouted, ‘but I want to talk to you’. She shouted back, ‘seven o’clock in the Famous Thai restaurant’. Dr. Chad tried to write the address on his palm.

She took a taxicab and came to her granny’s beach guesthouse. The guesthouse attendants welcomed her and led her to the porch. She greeted her granny. But she does not seem to recognize Dr. Joan.

Joan said, ‘Granny! It’s me Joan. I came to Hawaii to show grandpa’s talking machine to the scientists’. Eliza did not seem to hear this conversation at all, but said, ‘tell your grandpa to immediately come and take me to the dreamland’. Dr. Joan held her hand and said, ‘grandma! We can find it with the help of the whales and we will go to your dreamland’.

The guesthouse attendants tried to prepare dinner but Joan wanted to go to the Thai restaurant with her cousin Sam. She asked Robert the head cook to call her cousin Sam. She did not want Sam to know about her visit. She wanted to surprise him. Besides that she does not want Sam’s parents to know about her presence at all.

Robert called Sam and Sam’s father Shea answered. Robert told him that Eliza wanted to see Sam immediately. Robert knows how to handle the situation for they all knew about the family strife and the past agonies. They also hopefully knew that Joan and Sam are the only channels for the family reunion.

Lillian’s husband Michael died in an accident. Her brother’s son Sam lost his speech in the same accident. Joan’s grandfather Boris Jacobson died in the ocean. Lillian did not remarry after Michael’s death. She moved to New York and is now living with the New Mexican guy Rodrigo the real househusband.

Shea asked Sam, ‘go to the guesthouse and see your grandma. Tell me how she is doing’. Sam understood what his daddy was trying to tell him through the sign language. Sam can hear the words through the lip movements but he cannot speak.

He came to the guesthouse. He suddenly saw Joan and immediately asked Robert to tell his daddy that every thing was fine. Robert smiled and waved his hand. Seeing Sam Joan called the Thai restaurant and reserved two seats for them. Sam was over gladdened to see Joan. He tried to express his entire excitement through his body language. Joan understood him right away and hugged him as acknowledgement and said, ‘Sam let’s go to the Thai restaurant’.

She looked at him and recalled their childhood days. Sam had an accident and lost his speech but he can hear the words okay. That was long time ago. It was her stepfather Rodrigo who made this terrible accident in which Joan’s real father Michael died and Sam had lost his speech. He still hears and understands every thing by reading the lips.

Dr. Joan quickly kissed her granny goodbye saying, ‘granny I will see you tomorrow’. Sam and Joan walked to the Thai restaurant in the Hawaiian moonlight. They were holding hands and talking through their hands without saying any thing.

They remembered the 20-year history flashback. Sam’s father Shea is the elder brother of Joan’s mother Lillian. They were the royal kids of Boris and Eliza Jacobsons. Joan’s father Michael suddenly died when she was six months old. Boris their grandfather died when she was one year old. Their families fell apart with lot of suspicions and misunderstandings. Shea does not like his sister Lillian to live in New York. Shea thinks that Rodrigo had murdered Lillian’s husband Michael through the accident. The two families did not see each other for twenty years. Eliza lives separately at the beach guesthouse. Lillian, Rodrigo and Joan came to see Eliza last year.

All these things appeared before them as flashback. Sam and Joan were friends from their childhood. They do understand the family grudges but that did not affect their friendship at all.

They soon reached the Famous Thai Restaurant. They sat at the usual table and watched the night lit ocean while their hot dinner is still being prepared. They exchanged their thoughts enjoying the evening. They understood each other quite well without saying any words aloud.

It’s a beautiful human relationship between two innocent human beings. They seemed like two little children trying to understand the philosophy of human life and still split families. Finally the dinner was served and they started enjoying the 3-star hot hushaby Thai dinner with tears of joy.

Joan was telling that Dr. Chad would soon come and invite her to go on the research vessel and Sam should also come with her on board. Joan knew that Sam was the best swimmer. She would feel safe if he is around. She personally did not like to go into the water at all. She has hydrophobia. Sam agreed and signaled her to tell Robert to call his father and tell him that he wanted to spend a night on the research boat along with other swimmers.

Shea Okayed his wish and asked him to return soon. Sam immediately called his teacher friend Matthew and buzzed him the message by pressing buttons in his special waterproof watch like device saying, ‘hi, Matthew! I am going for a swim and please open your computer and keep watching my emergency messages’.

Matthew acknowledged the message right away. Now every thing is set. At seven Dr. Chad would come to the Thai restaurant and invite Joan to go to the ocean. Joan looked at her watch and looked for Dr. Chad.

She is excited to study the whales from the research vessel. She heard many stories about the famous Russian vessel Vityaz. It was a large handsome research vessel of 5600-ton displacement with a powerful engine and first-rate laboratories.

It had many devices for catching marine animals from powerful 22-ton winches, capable of winding 14 kilometer of steel cable, to various plankton nets for catching seaweeds, tiny crustaceans and larvae and huge nets for deep-water fish. There were trawls and dredges for collecting from ocean bed fauna. The trawls net sacks on heavy frame and the dredges also sack with even heavier metal frames equipped with sharp knives, which dig into ocean floor.

Dr. Chad’s research vessel is quite small in every respect and it cannot be compared with Vityaz. But for Dr. Joan it is even more than Vityaz because her cousin Sam would be with her.

Dr. Chad’s vessel was a gift from the Tokyo Cruise Company. They had sent their new vessel Himeji. This 2000-ton silver metallic waterbus was designed by the popular artists with hopes to appeal to the younger generations. Dr. Joan liked the vessel and the new glass equipment. There are small and huge motor whaleboats on the vessel to be used as lifeboats.

It looked very nice from the out side. But in the users’ view it is some thing else. These pseudo-scientists and fishermen wanted to use this gift for their ulterior purposes. Some practical thinkers rightly said that scientists followed no plan. Science developed at random. Its progress depended on fortuitous conditions such as birth of men of genius, the form of their mind and the direction taken by their curiosity. It was not at all actuated by a desire to improve the state of human beings. Men of science did not know where they were heading. They were guided by chance, by subtle reasoning and by a sort of clairvoyance. Each one of them is a world apart, governed by self-laws. Their discoveries were developed without any prevision of their consequences. Material science is a mess.

According to some radical scientists, concepts dealing with things situated out side the experimental field were meaningless. They willingly believed that facts that cannot be explained by their theories do not exist.

In the view of the practical scientists like Dr. Alexis Carrel - if Galileo, Newton or Lavoisier had applied their intellectual powers to the study of body and consciousness our world probably might have been different today.

The sciences of inert matter had made immense progress while those of living beings remained in a rudimentary state. Joan knew all these good, bad and the uglies of the modern material sciences.

She wanted to change the course of sciences towards the life of humans. Joan liked these scientists and the vessel for her own reasons not knowing the real motives of those cruel fishermen. Now she convinced Sam to go with her. They began to talk about marine life and the whales with excitement. They began to laugh like babies. Theirs souls felt that they were somewhere in the Garden of Eden

Sam said, ‘I will take you into the ocean’. Joan first said, ‘no way’ and then said, ‘if you take my hand I will go with you anywhere you take. I know that you will never let me drown’.

Sam laughed and said, ‘the oceanic piranhas will kill me. They don’t kill the girls. Then you will see the big sei whales, mosasaurs and leopard seals and scream. Then the huge 600-kilo leatherback turtle will come. You will sit on the turtle and fight with the earless monitor lizards. They like to kill the girls. Then you have to change sex like the sea bass. The giant mouth brooder will come and put you in its mouth and hatch you. You will come out exactly like Dr. Chad. Then all the nekton will run away from you’.

They both laughed and laughed and finally saw Dr. Chad getting down from the taxicab. He is coming towards the restaurant in a slow motion like Nergal the underworld god of hunger and talking to the waitress like a hill myna. The waitress is pointing her finger towards them.

Chapter three

Where the hell is the CD?

The bad guys who took Dr. Joan’s carry bag by mistake in Hawaii came to Sanfrisco. They met the mafia leader in Sanfrisco. They gave the CD.

The boss was very upset to find Dr. Joan’s CD with all kinds of scientific equations and data. It’s a big hall with all kinds of smuggled goods. The bad guys are standing around. They are torturing the three Singapore guys. Those three guys were supposed to bring the special CD from the leader of Hawaiian mafia. That CD was about the clear description of the Goldhill Island.

In stead they brought Dr. Joan’s carry bag and her CD with all kinds of scientific data. This was their mistake and they had no idea how and where it happened.

They began to back remember their hypnotic flashback scenes. They recognized a beautiful young girl that is Dr. Joan in the crowd waiting for her baggage at the Hawaii International airport and her carry bag on the floor by her side. The recollected that it was her carry bag they took. They begged the boss and said, ‘this bag belongs to that girl. We don’t remember why we went that side and got into the mob. We don’t remember how we came out of that mob with this carry bag. But now we are sure that this bag belongs to her. We will find her and get the other CD within 24 hours. We know how to find her’.

The boss is finally convinced that they were telling the truth. He coolly patted them in his style for their renewed commitment by signaling his medic to geld them.

However he called his mafia partner in Hawaii and explained the situation and gave all the descriptions of the young girl Dr. Joan. The mafia guys deployed the ninja guys and put them on the job to find the girl and the bag.

The Hawaiian mafia boss made further phone calls and learned about the science conference in the city and the target was identified as Dr. Joan. The mafia gang sent the ninja guys into Dr. Joan’s room and they searched for the bag and the CD. They found the bag but no CD therein. They kept every thing as usual.

They patiently waited for Dr. Joan to return for her night session in the Palace Hotel conference hall. They were looking at their watches and still asking the desk about the details of the night session. The bellhop showed them the conference hall.

They sat there and came out and enquired again about Dr. Joan. The desk told them the same old details about the conference and about Dr. Joan again. They are not supposed to tell the outsiders about the personal matters of the hotel customers or their whereabouts.

But Dr. Joan is in the Thai restaurant with her cousin Sam enjoying their evening dinner. Dr. Chad had searched like the nocturnal hunter mink and finally found the Famous Thai restaurant like a bloodhound. He asked the waitress if Dr. Joan was waiting for him. He suddenly saw Dr. Joan with her cousin Sam. He came to Joan and Sam.

They welcomed him with big smile trying to control their laughter. Joan introduced Sam to Dr. Chad. He tried to understand that Sam had an accident and lost his speech. He showed his fore teeth to Sam and smiled like the howler monkey and introduced himself to Sam.

He started talking to Dr. Joan about Captain Roger Felix and his exciting whaling lab vessel. Dr. Joan and Sam were still enjoying her 3-star hot Thai dinner and not paying attention to his speech. They knew that he would eventually ask her to go the ocean.

She is just waiting for him to say that. But Dr. Chad was struggling hard to convince her to go into the ocean with the special research group. He has been explaining to her how modern was the lab inside the big vessel with all scientific equipment to study the whales.

Dr. Joan told him that she has been hydrophobic from her childhood. He rehearsed the whole thing again and told her how sophisticated the boat was with all its modern equipment. He convinced her at last that there was absolutely no need for her to go into the water. She could stay in the boat all the time and make her observations from the see-through glass lab.

She knew in her heart that it was her best opportunity to go with the internationally famous research group. But her abnormal domineering fear of water was dominating her enthusiasm of achieving the academic accreditations and awards.

It seemed to Dr. Chad that he had finally won her confidence. She agreed to go into the ocean with the research group. She said, ‘my cousin Sam is coming with me’.

Dr. Chad looked at Sam for a minute like a suspicious monocled crow. And he called Captain Roger Felix and explained about the situation and got his permission to bring Sam along with Dr. Joan to the whaling vessel. Every thing is peacefully set. Dr. Chad paid the restaurant bill and the tip with his normal constipated smile and came out and called the taxicab. He grunted the address to the driver, ‘dockyard behind Palace hotel’.

On their way to the dockyard Dr. Chad made some phone calls and cancelled the night session at Palace Hotel. He asked the hotel management to direct the scientists to meet him at the dockyard.

The management took care of that end and delivered the message to all the scientists by intercom. The scientists met Dr. Joan and Dr. Chad at the dockyard where a big seaplane is waiting for them.

The mafia guys are still waiting in the conference hall at Palace hotel for Dr. Joan when the seaplane took off and flew her towards the big vessel in front of their eyes. The bad guys were impatiently waiting and overwatching the whole scene from the conference hall through the glass wall and chatting about the sophisticated mechanism of the seaplanes and the scientific advancement.

The bellhop came to close the doors of the conference hall and told the mafia guys that the night session was cancelled. They rushed to the desk and came to know about the recorded information of the cancellation of the session again. It was the policy of the hotel not to disclose the whereabouts of the inmates under any circumstances.

The management humbly explained their policy to the bad guys again. The mafia guys called their boss. The Hawaiian mafia boss called his partner in Sanfrisco and explained the situation. These regional bosses finally called their Big Boss and explained the whole story. He believed that the CD was still with Dr. Joan. He asked them to find out if Captain Roger Felix was in Hawaii. He suspected that Dr. Joan would involuntarily give the secret CD to Captain Roger Felix. He told the regional bosses to gather the news about the scientific research vessels in Hawaii.

He strictly ordered them to get the girl and the CD from her by all kinds of ninja methods and means. He further made some calls to the concerned government officials of that region.

Everybody seemed to accept his orders. It seemed as if he is running the government within the government. It seemed as if he is the prince of this age. It seemed as if there are two simultaneously run governments in the same area. It is the great individual liberty.

 

 

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Copyright © 2001 Shmuel Yacobi
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"