[note: I don't know if any of the figures stated about orcas in this fic
are accurate. Corrections appreciated. (I know that orcas are more
closely related to dolphins than whales, but it's convenient shorthand
to refer to one as "whale".) If anyone knows the Japanese word for
"keyboard", please let me know. I'm also pretty sure I got the hiragana
for "re" wrong.]

*****

SKIPPY

A Ranma 1/2 fanfic by Jonathan S. Haas

*****

It made the newspapers, that day, when the giant orca swam into San
Francisco Harbor. Usually orcas, or killer whales, prefer deeper water.
But this one just swam under the Golden Gate Bridge and right up to
shore, almost. She was beautiful, over 30 feet long, and glowing with a
healthy shine. She also refused to leave. She just stayed in that
shallow water, thrashing about playfully. It was almost as though she
was trying to get our attention.

As the head of the San Francisco Oceanic Institute, I was called in to
investigate. In the meantime, people kept coming down to see her. It's a
sight one doesn't see very often. The orca, who we'd nicknamed Skippy,
continued to put on her show. As open-mouthed viewers looked on, she
thrashed her tail, throwing up huge splashes of water, then spun around
doing rapid 360s, and then actually did a backflip! 

But she wouldn't leave, and there was no food for her in San Francisco
Harbor. An orca eats several tons of fish a day, and that kind of volume
can only be found in the open sea. We'd grown to almost love her by that
point, and we couldn't let her die. So we built a tank for her, with an
outlet to the sea, and an underground glass window where people could
watch her.

Amazingly, once we opened the tank to her, she stopped completely her
show on the surface. Instead, she dove beneath the surface and performed
right in front of the window. Little children and grown adults alike
pressed against the glass to look at a giant orca just a few inches from
them. She waved her head from side to side, rapidly opened and closed
her mouth, stuck out her tongue, blew bursts from her spout. You'd
almost think she *knew* she was being entertaining.

We still had trouble with Skippy's diet, though. We dumped tons and tons
of fish, farm-grown, into her tank. She looked at them swimming around
her, and turned away from them. After that, she ignored them.

It was a serious problem. We didn't know where she'd come from, and wild
orcas eat all sorts of different things. Apparently, Skippy'd acquired a
distasted for our particular variety of fish. We tried another. Same
reaction. There are hundreds of different animals orcas feed upon, and
in growing desperation, we tried dozens of them. Nothing worked.

The city was getting almost frantic. By this time, Skippy had become
almost a mascot, and we didn't want her to die. There was a massive
"Save Skippy" campaign. People contributed money to help us import
different types of orca food from all over the country.

Just when things seemed hopeless, the problem solved itself. We dumped
our latest try, North Atlantic salmon, into the tank, not with much
hope. Skippy looked at them with the same bored, indifferent look that
had greeted all the others. Then, slowly, without any appearance of
excitement, she swam forward and took them into her mouth. We all let
out a sigh of relief. From then on, that's all we've ever fed her, and
she's always eaten it the same way.

But something seemed to die inside her that day. It can be misleading to
apply human emotions to animal reactions, but Skippy seemed to be:
dejected. She never again did her frantic dance before the window. And
though she was eating, her health was clearly deteriorating, until it
was obvious she was dying.

The focus of "Save Skippy" now became a search for what was depressing
the whale, and how to cheer her up again. Easier said than done. How do
you comfort a 30-foot whale? We tried lots of ideas, most stupid, none
worked. And Skippy was getting worse. She now lay motionless on the tank
floor most of the time, stirring only to scoop up her food and to take
breaths, never with any enthusiasm, always returning to her still perch
on the floor.

Finally, someone got the bright idea of playing whalesong to her. A
speaker system was promptly rigged up, and a whalesong tape plugged into
it. She perked up briefly when the music started, turning towards the
speaker. Then, after hovering for awhile, she sank back down to the
floor. Another idea had failed, and we were all disappointed.

I remained after everyone had left. As a marine biologist, I gave Skippy
12 hours. After then, she would surely be dead.

That must be why I stayed, I guess. I wanted to watch the end.

I'm not sure why I did what I did next. But a bonechilling tragedy would
have happened if I didn't.

I got up from my chair, and walked over to the observation window. The
tape recorder with the whalesong lay at my feet, a cord connecting it to
an input jack. Nearby, a box with a bunch of electrical equipment that
had been raided for the parts to make the speaker system. I noticed a
microphone was among the jumble of parts. I reached in and took it,
shaking its cord loose from the tangle of others. I unplugged the tape
recorder, plugged in the microphone. Like I said, I'm not sure why.
Maybe I wanted to say goodbye.

I rested my forearm against the glass, and pressed my head up against
it. "Oh, Skippy," I said into the microphone. "What's wrong with you?"

I was stunned when she responded. She raised her head up, an obvious
effort, then laboriously swam over to me. Incredibly, she started
banging her head on the glass. Over and over, a slow rhythmic *thump*.
And then, she started swimming in a remarkable pattern, one I'd never
seen in *any* sea mammal. She hovered in the water in front of me, about
two thirds of the way up the glass, and suddenly jerked her body about
ten feet to my right. She paused there for a second, then swam up to the
top of the glass, at the midpoint of the line segment she'd just traced.
And then with a terrific flip, she dove her body to the bottom of the
glass. She paused there, too, then swam a few feet up and to my right.
And with a movement that would be hard for most *healthy* orcas, let
alone a dying one like her, she executed a twirling flip to my left.

Finally, after pausing for a rest, she swam back near the top, and swam
one more pattern, one that was almost hook-shaped, curving down and to
my left. While I wondered what could be meant like this, she surfaced
for a breath. And then did it *again*. The whole *thing*, I mean. All
four motions. Almost exactly the same. What on earth was she *doing*?
Was this some sort of mating dance?

When she began a third repetition, I decided that someone else needed to
see this. Two of my associates, Dr. Brown and Dr. Fujisata, lived
nearby. I telephoned them both and told them to get over here as quickly
as possible.

Brown arrived first. He was as mystified by the patterns as I. And so
was Fujisata. At least for awhile. He watched for three repetitions, and
then his eyes widened with shock. "Good God."

He staggered backwards, watching Skippy's next repetition. His hand
grappled behind him, clutching my desk as he stumbled into it. His other
hand clutched at his chest. His lips were dry as he managed to stammer,
"That's... that's Japanese. Hiragana."

His legs gave way beneath him, a trembling hand pointing at the window.
"Ah. Re."

"Help."

*****

Nobody moved for awhile. We all stared at Skippy, absolutely stunned.
Never, never had we seen an orca so intelligent. Where could she have
learned to write Japanese? Did she really know what it meant, or was she
just blindly tracing a pattern?

It was definitely the hiragana. I dredged my memory for my
long-forgotten college Japanese, and what she was tracing looked
familiar. I scratched out her pattern on  piece of note paper, and it
was definitely a passable "are". A Japanese cry for help.

Then, Fujisata slowly got to his feet and walked over to the microphone.
He said something into it, Japanese that I couldn't follow, and
immediately Skippy thrashed her body up and down. As if she were
nodding. Fujisata turned to us, and said, "I asked her if she needed
help."

I took a step closer. "Ask her if she understands you." Fujisata spoke
more Japanese into the microphone, and Skippy again thrashed in a "nod".

"Does... does she know Japanese?" Once more, Fujisata said something
into the mike, and Skippy "nodded" yet again.

"Maybe she's just thrashing in response to anything you say," Brown
said. "She could just be lonely for company."

"There's one way to test that," Fujisata said, then asked the same
question he had before, with the word "Nihongo" changed to "Eigo." This
time, Skippy's response was to sway her head from side to side. Shaking
her head. No.

*****

What do you do with a talking whale? Well, she couldn't exactly talk,
but she could definitely listen. We asked her all kinds of question, and
always she answered yes or no. We tried to pinpoint where she had come
from. Was she from Japan? Yes. Had she been raised in captivity? No. Did
she live in the Sea of Japan? No. Did any other orcas know Japanese? No.
Did she want us to fly her back to Japan? No.

This was getting us nowhere, and we could see Skippy was getting
frustrated. Finally, she went back to tracing patterns. Different
patterns than before.

"<Keyboard>", Fujisawa translated. "Keyboard." 

She wanted a keyboard. Why didn't we think of that? Fortunately, these
developments seemed to have perked up Skippy considerably. In fact, in
the space of the few hours we'd spent with her, the healthy sheen had
started to return to her complexion, although still nowhere near the
glow she'd had when she first came to San Francisco. While she
frolicked, we rounded up a set of tiles, one for each character in the
hiragana alphabet. We inscribed each with a letter, then dumped them
into the tank. Skippy used her nose to arrange them.

Then, as she watched, she started touching them, one by one. Fujisawa
was scribbling furiously. As he did, he translated aloud:

"My name is... Akane Tendo. I am not a whale. I am a girl." Skippy
surfaced to breathe at this point, giving us all time to wonder what
that enigmatic message meant. A whale that thought it wasn't a whale?
"She has shown remarkable intelligence," murmured Brown.

Skippy returned, and spelled out this nonsensical message: "Months ago�
an old woman named Cologne splashed me with..." Here she paused, then
gathered up her strength and started again. "Never mind. Just somebody,
please... please... please... please... please..."

She paused between each "please", the pauses getting longer, and if I
hadn't known better, I would have sworn she was crying. The expression
on her face was a very human picture of despair and anguish as she
spelled out the last of her message: "...heat up this water?"

*****

Author's note: I was inspired to write this while watching Mystery
Science Theater 3000.

Thanks to everybody. You know who you are.

I have no idea whether I'm a good writer or a bad writer, because I
hardly get any feedback. If you read this story, please let me know what
you thought. My email address is jhaas@microsoft.com.

(C) 1997 Jonathan S. Haas, but do anything what you want with it. Except
put your name on it or anything stupid like that. "Akane Tendo" and
"Cologne" (C) some Japanese concerns, whom I respectfully request not to
sue.