The Sensory Deception (11 page)

The paper revised the antiquated migraine treatment called cafergot, a mixture of ergot alkaloids and caffeine. Ergot alkaloids are compounds found in rare fungi and flowers in the morning glory family. They affect the vascular system and can be targeted to change the chemical makeup of synapses, the part of neurons that generate, transmit, and receive electrical signals to and from other neurons. The ergot alkaloid in morning glory seeds includes the hallucinogen lysergic acid amide, LSA. The most famous synthetic alkaloid is lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD. The paper showed the chemical structure for a hypothetical alkaloid that the authors claimed should be capable of targeting specific synapses. In other words, this drug could target specific senses. The reason the paper hadn’t been published in a prestigious journal, like the
Journal of the American Medical Association
, was that the authors had no data; they hadn’t been able to synthesize these particular ergot alkaloids and knew of no naturally occurring sources.

Chopper laughed out loud. There are thousands of variations of morning glory, from the invasive vines that strangle Louisiana’s bayous to a delicate Hawaiian flower called the baby woodrose. He knew of many plants that produced similar chemicals. One
in particular had had a profound effect on his childhood. He’d poisoned himself with it the first time he ventured into the desert at eight years old. In fact, the chemical structure he was staring at was strikingly similar to the first such structure he had ever studied.

Chopper rotated his desk chair to face his bookcase. In the light cast by the monitor behind him, he found the first academic textbook he’d ever read:
Botanical Encyclopedia of Desert Life
. Grains of sand were still embedded in the binding. The book fell open to a picture of a small white flower in the shape of an inverted cone. The description covered five pages and included a diagram of the chemical structure of its particular hallucinogen. Back when he was eight, he didn’t know what
hallucinogen
meant and had assumed it was a synonym for poison.

He compared the compound on the book page to that on the web page and understood the problem the researchers had encountered. The similarity in the two structures was striking, but synthesizing them boiled down to thermodynamics. When you combine the ingredients, adding chemicals at precise temperatures, blending catalysts at different stages to attach subcompounds to specific molecular vertices, you can make these compounds. The problem was that everything seeks the lowest available energy state and so, as with a ball sitting at the top of a hill, it was nearly impossible to prevent the compounds from rolling downhill, shedding one component, then another, falling to a more stable configuration. In nature, on the other hand, with photosynthesis, sunlight, water, and the right temperature variations and humidity, in a soup of complex organic buffers that took a billion years to evolve, these compounds were produced every spring.

Chopper stared into the dim light, letting the wave of pain caused by swiveling the chair break behind his left temple. He
set the book on the desk. All the lights in his room were on dimmers, including his desk lamp. With his eyes closed, he raised the light level until a dim orange glow lit his eyelids. He opened them and the jackhammer let him have it.

He knew this book. He’d read, if not understood, every passage before he turned twelve. He loved this book. As his eyes adjusted to the light, the pain relented enough for him to think.

He smiled. The desert was too dry. If a plant existed that produced the sensory deception compound, it grew somewhere humid—as hot as the desert, but wet.

Ten minutes later, he discovered the family of plants he needed to study. Their taxonomy didn’t relate them to the morning glory, but Chopper could see that this was a historic mistake. When plants are named, botanists group varieties together that are similar, but “similar” is vague. A rare plant that lives in the jungle is unlikely to be grouped with plants from the desert simply because the categorization is done by people of different research backgrounds. If it’s later discovered that the plants are closely related cousins they can be reclassified, but there are a lot of plants to study. The blooms of the jungle variety were inverted cones, too, and bright white, but ten times the size of the desert variety.

Chopper switched to a more advanced database. Just one observation of these peculiar jungle morning glories had been recorded, on the upper slope of the Amazon River. This didn’t come as a surprise. Over half of Earth’s flora have never been recorded, and as the rain forest burns, most of these plants never will be recorded.

In the vision of a long walk in a hot, wet forest with nothing to do but look at flowers, no humanity, no arrogant monsters to bother him, Chopper sensed relief from the pain and the pressure.

S
perm whales are the most common large whale. They swim fast and stay below the surface except when breathing. Their behavior makes them difficult to find, and that makes them difficult to kill. The cows and calves live in pods of ten to twenty. Females are much smaller than males and incapable of the dynamic feats required for the Moby-Dick VR experience. Bulls travel the high seas like lonely seamen and, like lonely seamen, seek out the warmth and pleasure of a pod a few times each year.

With everything else ready, recording Moby-Dick data was becoming, in business-speak, a point of failure. To attach data acquisition equipment to Moby, Farley would have to track a pod for a few weeks, maybe months, until a mature bull appeared.

The Pacific Whale Foundation said that the project was out of its scope unless a pod of sperm whales started hanging around Maui, where the foundation’s ships would have immediate access.

Farley had sent his Greenpeace proposal to Walt Howard, the man who had been his supervisor back in his days steering Zodiacs between whales and whalers while volunteering on the
Rainbow Warrior
. It had been almost a year, and Walt still hadn’t replied to e-mail or returned calls. Farley finally called Walt at home, violating proposal etiquette, to find out what was going
on. Walt hedged on the phone, saying that the project was still under review and that aspects of it weren’t consistent with the Greenpeace mission.

“Studying sperm whale behavior and providing the public a firsthand experience of a bull?” Farley said. “That’s exactly Greenpeace’s mission.”

Farley could hear Walt sigh.

“Walt, what’s going on?”

“Maybe I don’t understand the proposal. Can you call me tomorrow at the office and walk me through it?”

So far, calling Walt’s office had been futile, so Farley said, “I’ll do better than that. I’ll be there at ten.”

“I don’t have my schedule in front of me, so I’m not sure—”

“Look, I have to be in San Francisco tomorrow anyway. I’ll stop by your office. We can crank it out in a few minutes. See you then.” He hung up before Walt could respond.

He put the phone in his pocket and took a seat on the couch. Ringo was puttering between the lab and kitchen and Chopper was upstairs. He took his laptop from the table and sent e-mail to oceanography colleagues around the world asking for updated locations of known sperm whale pods.

The next morning, he had e-mails confirming the approximate locations of four pods, one each off the coast of Argentina, near the Great Barrier Reef, near Bermuda, and off the east coast of Africa. Three came from Greenpeace, and he didn’t recognize the name of the organization tracking the fourth.

He drove up the coast to avoid both Silicon Valley and San Francisco commuter traffic, and then cut across San Francisco from the Great Highway to the Greenpeace offices in a neighborhood south of Market Street. The door opened to a large work area packed with volunteers. Farley signed in and asked
a volunteer to tell Walt that he was here. Then he watched the activity, enjoying a nostalgic buzz until half an hour had passed and he realized that Walt was ignoring him.

Farley did what came naturally: he took over. By lunchtime, he had coordinated a telephone fund-raising campaign, assembled a team to design posters, and put three techies together to code up a new Greenpeace smartphone app. When Walt emerged from his office, he found Farley at the whiteboard.

Walt walked up from behind and said, “It figures. I try to blow you off and you reorganize my team.”

“Good to see you, Walt. Let me take you to lunch.”

Walt stared at the poster designs and then said, “All right, I owe you that.”

As they walked across Seventeenth Street to Chez Maman, Farley described the Moby-Dick project. “Picture it, Walt, a firsthand experience of life as a sperm whale.”

The host seated them, and Farley set a copy of his proposal on the table. Walt looked at his watch.

“How can recording the experience of a whale be outside of Greenpeace’s mission?”

Walt sighed. A waiter set down glasses of water. Walt sipped his. Farley waited.

“Farley, I like what you’re doing. I sent your proposal to Canada and France, and every time someone else saw what you’re trying to do, they raised the same objection that I have.” He looked across the restaurant and then back at Farley. “What if something goes wrong? Do you have any idea what would happen to Greenpeace if you hurt a bull sperm whale? What if you killed it?”

“Walt, please. You know better than that. I’ve got Chopper Vittori designing the tranquilizer. Lots of things can go wrong, but the animals are safe.”

“Look, if it were a land mammal or a bird, even a seal or a dolphin, we could manage the risk. But a bull sperm whale? We can’t do that.”

“You remember Chopper? You know who I’m talking about, right?”

“Oh, yeah.” Walt nodded. “Chopper used to face down harpoons like they were slingshots—but Chopper was reckless. Has he changed?”

“Hold on. Chopper is dedicated. He—”

“I’m not questioning anyone’s dedication. It’s risk assessment. A mistake could shut us down. The answer is no.”

The waiter asked if they were ready to order. Farley didn’t hear what Walt ordered but said, “I’ll have that, too.”

Farley felt deflated. He’d always respected Walt. Farley asked, “What if I stepped aside? You could lead the whole endeavor. I don’t even have to be there.”

“What?” Walt started to laugh. “What have you done with my friend Farley Rutherford?” He leaned across the table and pretended to shake Farley by the shoulders. “Farley, are you in there?”

“Seriously,” Farley said, “you can manage the risk yourself.”

“No way. It’s one thing for
you
to violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act, but Greenpeace?”

“It would be in international waters.”

Walt held out his hands. “It was long before your time, but I was there in 1972 when we pushed that through Congress. We’re not going to violate the spirit of that law.”

Farley said, “Greenpeace has locations for three different sperm whale pods. What if we hire your ship and crew?”

“You did your homework.”

“What do you think?”

“No, that won’t work either. But hang on. I checked, too. Locations of four pods are known. What about the fourth?”

“You mean the one off the Horn of Africa?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s monitoring it?”

Walt said, “Apparently I did more homework than you did.”

The waiter brought plates heaped with mushroom crepes and salad.

“Well?”

“You remember Randy Gaynes?”

“Gaynes is not the kind of guy you forget.” Randy Gaynes had been on the
Rainbow Warrior
at the same time Farley had. After their two-year stint, Farley went to graduate school and lost track of him. “What’s he doing now?”

“After he left Greenpeace, Gaynes formed his own organization. He’s the captain of the
Cetacean Avenger
,” Walt said. Farley recognized the name of the ship. The
Cetacean Avenger
was an antiwhaling vessel that took its name from the order of marine mammals that included whales, porpoises, and dolphins. “I bet he’d help you.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Farley said. Randy Gaynes had always been a radical, the type of environmentalist that gave others a bad name. “We’re trying to make environmentalism mainstream, not further marginalize it.”

“It’s the only suggestion I have. Greenpeace can’t help.”

“Walt, we don’t want anything to go wrong either.” Farley picked at his food. “Randy Gaynes? Trouble follows that guy.”

“I’ve got it,” Walt said, chewing a crepe. He swallowed and then continued. “You’re an entrepreneur. Rent a ship and hire your own crew. I’ll give you a list of experienced Greenpeace sailors.”

“If we did,” Farley said, “would Greenpeace interfere with us?”

“No, I can take care of that.”

“Would we get any logistical support at all?”

“Interesting question. There’s a tradition of ships helping each other on the high seas. I can’t commit Greenpeace to helping you, but if I could, I’d say yes.”