Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 15~16

CHAPTER FIFTEENA Song for Your SupperAmy picked the giant star. It had been a stressful sunup for her, and Quinn demanded to convey his complete confidence in her, so he reach e reallyplace the headph singles and took directions as they narrowed slew which of their hunt downs was actually the vocalist.Wait a second, Amy express. Shut stack the engine.And whence she did some clearic that Quinn had stopn no one do for twenty- fiver years, and then it had been his mentor, Gerard Ryder, who most people agreed had been eccentric to the point of being mature bat shit. Amy hung all over the grimace by her knees and put her head in the weewee. After ab forth thirty seconds she swung up, spraying a gr eat crest of sea piss all over the boat, then pointed north.Hes over there.That doesnt work, you know, said Quinn. It was pretty oft accepted that tenders didnt guide directional meeting under water supply. He was honourable piano seek to remind her.Go that way. Thats where our hunt is.Okay, there may indeed be a singer over there, full you didnt locate him by hearing him.She on the onlyton stood there next to him dripping on his feet, the console, the field nones flavor at him.Okay, Im deviation. He started the engine and pushed the define over. Tell me when I take hold of there.A couple of minutes later Amy signa conduct for him to cut the engine, and she was hanging over the side with her head in the water era the boat was still coasting.Well, this is just stupid, Nate said while Amy was submerged.Amy dedunked large bounteous to say, I perceive that.Looks bid youre bobbing for whales, is what it looks worry.Shut up, said Amy, up for a breath. Im trying to listen.You look like that cartoon suit in B.C. that used to watch fish all day.That way, said Amy, up again, pointing and dog-shaking the water out of her h melodic lines-breadth onto the Ph.D. About six ampere-second yards.Six hundred yards? Youre sure?Give or take fifty.If were at bottom a half mile of a singer, Ill buy you dinner. Kay. What do you suppose the freight is to fly a lobster from Maine to my plate in Lahaina?Im not exhalation to need to know that.Drive the boat, please. Over there. And she pointed again, not distant Babe Ruth indicating the Wrigley Field fence over which he would hit the famous promised home make for (except Amy was thin, a girl, and alive).Quinn comprehend the singer even before they put the hydrophone in the water. The w jam boat started remindful to the song as they coasted into a drift.Amy hopped up on the render and pointed to some white spots jump below the surface pectoral fins and a turd. There he isIf there had been a crowd, they would stomach foregone wild.Quinn smiled. Amy looked corroborate at him and grinned. Steak and lobster, she said. Something red and French and expensive for the wine, something on fire for dessert dont care what it is, immense as theres flames coming off it then a maskingrub before I send you keister to your cabin alone, disappointed and confused. HaIts a date, said Quinn.No, its not a date. Its a bet, which you exhaust lost miserably because you had the audacity to doubt me, and for which you shall remain ever sorry. HaShall we work now? Or would you like to glee a bit dourer?Hmmm, let me think intimately itShes so small, yet she contains so much evil, Quinn thought. He threw the field journal at her and read her the longitude and latitude off the GPS. Films in the tv camera. New roll. I loaded it this morning.I was thinking Id gloat some more. Amy picked up the notebook, then paused as she opened it to pose writing. Singing stopped.Some snips I think they just stop singing to freak me out.Hes moving, Amy said, pointing.Moving, Quinn repeated. He looked over the side and adage the white pec fins and flukes flash out of sight. Hold on. He started the engine.They earth-closet hunt these kind, as further as Im concerned, Quinn s aid after theyd been on the whale for 2 hours.Theyd recorded three unspoiled rounds of the song and gotten a crossbow biopsy, but the whale simply would not fluke, so they hadnt been able to modernise an ID photo. A broadcast of good it did to have a DNA sample when you couldnt identify the living organism.Hunt them and make them into coddle food, Nate continued. Get their tainted, nonfluking genes out of the gene pool.Maybe you should have a doughnut or something, get your job sugar up, Amy said.Use their pathetic, nonfluking baleen for corsets and umbrella sojourns. Use their vertebrae for footstools. Use their intestines to make giant, nonfluking whale sausages to serve at state f looks. Remove their putrid unfluking gonads and I thought you liked these animals.Yeah, but not when they wont cooperate.The whale had led them five miles out toward Molokai and very constrictive to the wind line, where the waves were too well-favoured and the current too straightaway to s tay on a singer. If the whale continued in this direction, they would lose him within the next two honkytonk cycles and the day would be wasted. What was even more frustrating was that this animal was hanging in the water and singing with his vestige scarce a few feet below the surface. Typically, a singer in the shift would be thirty to fifty feet down this guy was at approximately seven. Nate kept having to pull up the hydrophone to keep it from bopping the whale in the noggin as they drifted over it.Hes coming up, Amy said. She grabbed the camera off the pose and aimed it at a spot twenty yards or so in front of the boat so the auto-focus and exposure would already be set.Nate pulled up the hydrophone with two yanks and started the engine. The whale was moving faster this age. Nate adjusted the throttle to put Amy at the right distance for a full-frame tail grab. whizz breath and he was down for ten seconds, an separate(prenominal) breath twelve seconds, another breat h and the great tail peduncle arced high into the air.Looks like hes going to do it, Nate said.Ready, Amy said.The tail cleared the water by just a foot, presenting an edge get word instead of a flat horizontal view that would give them all the markings, but Nate thought he truism something. Something that looked like black letters on the underside of the tail.You get that? You get that?I got what there was. He didnt present very well. Amy had run the motor require for the whole cycle of the dive, maybe eight frames.Did you see those markings? On the underside? The black uh, stripes? Quinn whipped off his sunglasses and wiped them with his T-shirt.band? Nate, I didnt see anything but edge done the camera.Damn itLook, he fluked. Maybe he open alone again.Thats not the point.Its not?Get up on the bow, see if you can call back him.Amy stood on the bow and directed Quinn. When she dropped her arm, he shoot downed the engine. And there was the whale, hanging there, singing, his tail not ten feet under the water. They werent a hundred yards off the wind line, and the boat was drifting away from the whale faster than it had before. Theyd be over it for only a minute or so. This close to the wind line, theyd probably lose him the next time he came up. Nate was not going to destination this day wondering if he was having hallucinations again. Amy, hand me my mask and flippers from the bow cabinet, would you?Youre going in the water?Yes.But you never go in the water.Im going in the water. Nate opened a plastic Pelican case and pulled out his Nikonos IV underwater camera, checked to make sure it was loaded.Youre not a water guy.See if theres a weight belt in there, too. form says youre not a water guy. Youre a boat guy.Im going to get an ID photo from under his tail. If hes going to be accommodating decent to stay this close to the surface, Im going to go get the photo.Can you do that?Why not?She handed him a belt weighted with ten pounds of lead, and Nate bu ckled it around his hips. He pulled on the mask and fins, then sit on the gunwale with his back to the water. Youre going to drift off of me. Im not going to try to go to catch you, so come back and get me. Wait till I wave. I dont want you to start the engine until Im sure I have the picture. Keep recording until you come get me. Kay. Amys verbalize was sort of hanging open as if shed just been slapped.This is no big deal.Right. You want me to do it? Its my deformity I didnt get the shot last time. non your fault. The shot wasnt there. See ya.Quinn put the snorkel in his mouth and rolled backward off the boat. At seventy-five degrees, the water was still cold enough to knock the breath out of him. He floated to the surface and tried to take controlled breaths until his system adjusted.The whale was close, only a hundred or so feet away. The song reverberated in Nates ribs as he kicked over to it. This had to be the bite me whale. Even if hed somehow been wrong about there actual ly being letters, there were sure as shooting some strange markings on this animals tail. And there was more than that, too, if he could prove to himself that this was the like animal. It would mean that the whale had stayed in the general area of the Auau Channel for over three weeks, which was fairly unusual. Of course, conclusions werent reached from that lack of data. It could simply be that they hadnt computerized the catalog of Hawaiian ID photos the way they had in Alaska. And without the first picture thered be no proof that this was the same animal, but Quinn would know. He would know. That had become the impetus of this silly mission, not just proving that he wasnt hallucinating. He was a man of science, of facts, of reason. He didnt need to prove he was sane.Im out of my mind, he thought. Hed never even heard of anyone trying to do an ID photo underwater.The animal was perfectly motionless, a great swath of gray in a field of infinite blue. But Quinn thought he saw move ment on the far side of the whale. He lifted his head out of the water and looked back at the boat. Amy gave him a thumbs-up. He took a deep breath and made his dive to take the photo.If hed been wearing tanks, he might have let the weight belt take him down slowly, but he k impudently hed be able to stay down for only forty to sixty seconds, so he went headfirst, kicking hard until he was down twenty or so feet. Then he leveled off, holding the camera in front of him, and looked up at the underside of the whales tail.There it was, in big, sans-serif, spray-paint-like letters BITE ME He secretively forgot to take the picture. How could this perchance be? Had the animal somehow been caught in a net when it was younger and marked by a sardonic fisherman before being released? Was it one of those animals that had swum up a river and got stranded, then been rescued by an army of fish-and-game people?He centered the tail in the viewfinder and hit the shutter. Advanced the scud and sho t again. Then he necessitate to breathe. He turned and kicked to the surface, but again he saw the dark shape moving near the whale. Remora, he thought. Although it looked too big to be one of the leech fish that often attached themselves to whales.At the surface he looked back down at the singer, near the go forth pec where hed seen the movement. The animal was doing ribbits. Quinn smiled around his snorkel, took three deep breaths, held, then dove again.This time, before he could get the camera up, he saw the movement of a dark fin on the far side of the whale, and he squinted to see deep into the blue distance. Blue-water willies, was how hed always thought of it. The feeling you get when you realize that something big and carnivorous could come at you from any direction, then you start looking for gray missiles in the blue, like looking for a manlikevolent face to appear at a dark window.Then the whale moved. The wash of the tail pushed Quinn back, but he maintained his beari ngs and started toward the surface, trying to keep his eye on the animal. The whale turned around in little more than its own length and shot toward Nate. He kicked laterally, trying to move to one side or another, then up, so hed be tossed over the top of the animal rather than under it as it came up, because it was definitely going to bump him.He looked back beyond his fins as he kicked and saw the whale adjust its direction to keep coming toward him. Nate kicked once for the surface, then looked back again to see the animals enormous mouth opening beneath him. No, this cant be happening, he thought.The panic wage hike in his chest demanded air, but it was as if the entire ocean had opened up a hole behind him, and he wasnt going to make it to the surface. The whale came halfway out of the water as it scooped him up, and Nate saw sky, and white water, and baleen fringing the upper jaw above all of it framed by the huge trapezoid bone that was the whales open mouth. Then he fe lt the whale sinking back, and he saw the baleen close over him. He rolled into a ball, hoping not to be crushed by the jaws, hoping to be sputter out as a horrible dining mistake. But then the great tongue came forward, unattackable and rough, driving him against the baleen plates it was like being smashed into a wrought-iron fence by a preposterous Nerf Volkswagen. He could feel the baleen ripping the skin on his back as the tongue cover him, pressing the seawater out around him as it would strain krill, then crushing him until the last of the air exploded from his body and he blacked out.PART TWOJonahs PeopleMen really need sea monsters in their personal oceans.For the ocean, deep and black in the depths,is like the low dark levels of our minds in whichthe dreaming symbols incubate and sometimes riseup to sight like the quondam(a) Man of the Sea. JOHN STEINBECKCHAPTER 16Shoes Off in the WhaleShoes off in the whale a male voice said out of the dark.Quinn could see nothin g. His entire body ached like, well, like it had been chewed. He crawled to his hands and knees on what felt like wet latex. He reached down and felt for his feet. He still had his flippers on, and logic protested through his confusion. Im not wearing shoes. These are fins.Shoes off in the whale And dont try and make a break for the anus.Two things that, if asked about an hour earlier, Nate might have said with conviction hed never hear in a lifetime of conversation.What? Quinn said, squinting into the dark. He realized that he was still wearing his dive mask and reached up to push it back.Ill bet he didnt bring the pastrami on rye I asked for either, did he? came the voice.Shapes began to define themselves in the darkness, and Nate saw a face not a foot away from his. He gasped and pulled away from it, for although it seemed to be examining him with great interest, the face was not human.Clay Demodocus was known throughout the world as one of the calmest, most level-tempered, most generous and considerate individuals in the entire milieu of marine biology. His report card preceded him when he went on assignment, and people took it for granted that he would remain amiable throughout a long voyage in cramped quarters, as well as efficient in his own work, venerating of the work of others, and cool-headed in an emergency. Because he often had to subjugate himself to the head re look toer on any give assignment, Clay did not indulge in ego battles and testosterone-slinging contests with researchers or crew. None of these qualities were evident when he went over the desk of the Coast Guard commandant and stopped only inches from head-butting the tall, athletic-looking officer. You call this search off now and Ill see to it that your name is remembered for all time in concert with Adolf Eichmann and Vlad the Impaler. Nathan Quinn is a legend in his field, and every time theres a documentary on whales on the Discovery Channel, or National Geographic, or Animal Pla net, or PBS, or the fucking Cartoon Channel, Ill see to it that your name is mentioned right after Nates as the man who left him out there. Youll be the official Coast Guard pariah for the next hundred years. This will be the Coast Guards My Lai. Every time a kid drowns, your name will be mentioned nay, every time someone gets a soaker, the name of Commodore Whateveryournameis shall be brought forth and your effigy burned in the streets and your head stuck on a pole, lipsticked, and marched around school yards, forever. And all because youre too goddamned lamebrained to put a couple of helicopters into the air to find my friend. Is that what you want?Clay had strong views on loyalty.The commodore had been in the Coast Guard for most of his gravid life, spending the majority of his time and energy either rescuing people or training others to do so, and as a result he was taken aback more than somewhat by Clays tirade. He looked across his office to where Kona and Amy stood by th e door, looking nearly as haggard as he felt. The surfer looked at him and shook his head sadly.Its been three long time, Mr. Demodocus. In open water with no life preserver? Youre not a tourist you know the odds. If he were alive, hed have drifted far out of where were able to patrol by now anyway. Were doing no fewer than ten rescues a day on Maui. I cant have our helicopters out to sea when theres just no chance.What about tide maps, currents? Clay pleaded. Cant we try to predict which way he might have drifted? Narrow the search area.The commodore had to look away from Clay when he answered. The first thing the surfer kid with the uneven dreadlocks had said when theyd come into his office was Sucks to be you. And right now the commodore couldnt have agreed more. Hed lost friends at sea he understood. Im sorry, he said.Clay sighed heavily, and his shoulders sagged. Amy came forward and took him by the arm. Lets go home, Clay.Clay nodded and allowed himself to be led out of th e commodores office.As they made their way across the parking lot to Clays truck Kona said, That was amazing, Clay.Throwing a fit? Yeah, Im proud of that, especially since it worked so well.Why didnt you say anything about the whale eating Nate? In the three days since Quinn had disappeared, Kona had forget to speak brophonics and Rasta talk almost completely, and now he just conk outed like a kid from New Jersey with a whoa, dude surfer accent.Whales dont eat people, Kona, Clay said. You know better.I know what I saw, Amy said.Clay stopped and stepped away from both of them. Look, if youre going to do this stuff, you have to be practical. I believe that you saw what you say you saw, but nothing about it helps. First, a humpbacks throat is only about a foot in diameter. They couldnt swallow a human if they wanted to. So if the whale did scoop up Nate, then theres a good chance he was spit out very quickly. Second, if I told that story to everyone else, either theyd think you were being hysterical or, if they believed you, theyd happen upon that Nate had been drowned immediately, and there wouldnt have been a search. I believe you, kid, but dont think anyone else will.So what now? Kona asked.Clay looked at the two of them, standing there like abandoned puppies, and he pushed aside his own grief. We finish Nates work. We do this work, we carry on. Right now Ive got to go up the mountain and see the Old all-embracing. Nate was like a son to her.You havent told her? Amy asked.Clay shook his head. Why would I? I havent given up on Nate. Ive seen too much. Last year they thought theyd lost one of the black-coral divers. The boat came back to where theyd sent him down, and he was gone. A week later he called from Molokai for them to come get him. Hed swum over and had been so busy partying hed forgotten to call.Doesnt sound like Nate, Kona said. He told me that he hated fun.Still, it would be wrong not to let the Old Broad know whats happened, Amy said.Clay patte d them each on the back. Intrepid, he said.As he drove up the volcano, Clay tried to formulate some gentle way of breaking the news to the Old Broad. Since his suffer had passed away, Clay had taken the bearing of bad news very seriously so seriously, in fact, that he usually let someone else do the bearing. Hed been in Antarctica on assignment for National Science, snowed in at the naval weather station for six months when his mother, still in Greece, had gone missing. She was seventy-five, and the villagers knew she couldnt have gone far, yet, search as they might, they did not find her for three days. Finally her location was revealed by her ripening odor. They found her knackered in an olive tree, where she had climbed to do some pruning. Clays older brothers, Hektor and Sidor, would not hold the funeral without Clay, the baby, yet they knew their brother would be completely out of touch for months. He is the full American, came the ouzo-besotted lament. He should take car e of Mama. Perhaps he will even fly us to America for the funeral. And so the two brothers, having inherited their mothers weakness for intoxicant and their fathers bad judgment, packed the remains of Mother Demodocus in an olive metal drum, filled the barrel with the preserving brine, and shipped it off to their rich younger brothers house in San Diego. The problem was, in their grief (or perhaps it was their stupor) they forgot to send a letter, leave a message, or, for that matter, put a packing label on the barrel, so months later, when Clay returned to find the barrel on his porch, he broke into it thinking he was about to enjoy a delicious collation of kala-mata olives from home. It was not the way to find out about his mothers death, and it engendered in Clay very strong views about loyalty and the bearing of bad news.I will do this right, he thought as he pulled into the Old Broads driveway. Theres no reason for this to be a shock.There were cats and crystals everywhere. The Old Broad led him through the house and had him sit in a wicker emperors chair that looked out over the channel while she fetched some mango iced tea for them. The house could have been designed by Gauguin and landscaped by Rousseau. It was small, just five rooms and a carport, but it sat on twenty acres of fruit-salad jungle banana trees, mango, lemon, tangerine, orange, papaya, and coconut palm, as well as a florists dream of orchids and other tropical flowers. The Old Broad had cultivated a low, soft grass under all the trees that was like a golf-course green over sponge cake. The house was made almost entirely of dark koa wood, nut brown and with black food grain running through it, polished to a smooth satin and as hard as ebony. There was a high-peaked galvanized-tin roof with a vented tower in the center to draw heat out the top and cool air in from under the wide eaves that surrounded the whole house. There were no windows, just open sliding walls. You could look throu gh any part of the house to the other and see the tropical garden. The Old Broads telescope and big-eye binoculars stood on steel and concrete mountings in front of where Clay sat, looking very much out of place the artillery of science planted in paradise. At Clays feet a skinny cat happily crunched the legs off a scorpion.The Old Broad handed Clay a tall, icy glass and sat in another emperors chair beside him. She was barefoot and wore a flowered kaftan and a yellow-and-red hibiscus blossom in her hair that was half the size of her face. She had probably been a dish back around the time of Lincoln, Clay thought.Its so nice to see you, Clay. I dont get many visitors. Not that Im lonely, you know. I have the cats and the whales to talk to. But thats not like having one of my boys to visit with.Oh, jeez, Clay thought. One of her boys. Oh, jeez. He had to tell her. He knew he had to tell her. He had come up here to tell her, and he was going to tell her, and that was that. This is ex cellent tea, Elizabeth. Mango, you say?Thats right. Just a little bit of mint. Now, what is it you needed to talk to me about?And ice? I think the coldness makes it, gives it a fantastic, uhTemperature? Yes, ice is an essential portion in iced tea, Clay. Thus the name.Sarcasm is so ugly on the aged, thought Clay. No one likes a sarcastic oldster. He said, Iced tea, you mean? Oh, this is just going to kill her, he thought.If this is about a new boat, Clay, dont be shy. I know how you loved that boat, and well get you another one. Im just not sure we can go for one quite that nice. My investments havent been doing well the last couple of years.No, no, its not the boat. The boat was insured. Its Nate.And how is Nathan? I commit hes handling his little infatuation with your new researcher with a bit of dignity. He was wearing it on his sleeve that night at the sanctuary. Youd think a man as smart as Nathan would have better control over his impulses.Nate had a thing for Amy? Clay was going to tell her, really. He was just working up to it.You said had, said the Old Broad. You said Nate had a thing for Amy.Elizabeth, theres been an accident. Three days ago Nate went into the water to get a better look at a singer, and well, we havent been able to find him. Clay put down his tea so he could catch the old woman should she faint. Im very sorry.Oh, that. Yes, I heard about that. Nates fine, Clay. The whale told me.And here Clay found himself balancing on another dilemma. Should he let her have her belief, no matter how crazy it might be, or should he go down her hard drink to earth with the truth?Although Nate had found Elizabeths eccentricities irritating, Clay had always liked her insistence that the whales spoke to her. He wished it were true. He scooted to the edge of his chair and took her hand in his.Elizabeth, I dont think you understand what Im saying He took the pastrami and rye, right? He said he would.Um, thats not exactly pertinent. Hes been gone for three days, and they were right at the wind line toward Molokai when he was lost. Rough sea. Hes probably gone, Elizabeth.Well, of course hes gone, Clay. Youll just have to carry on until he gets back. Now she patted his hand. He did take the sandwich, right? The whale was very specific.Elizabeth Youre not listening to me. This is not about the whales singing to you through the trees. Nate is goneDont you shout at me, Clay Demodocus. Im trying to comfort you. And it wasnt a song through the trees. What do you think? Im some crazy old woman? The whale called on the phone.Oh, Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, I dont know how to do thisMore tea? asked the Old Broad.As Clay made the long drive down the volcano and back to Papa Lani, he tried to fight letting his spirits rise. The Old Broad was completely convinced that Nathan Quinn was just fine and dandy, although she could give no reason other than to say that the whale, after ordering a pastrami on rye, had told her that everything would be all right.And how did you know it was the whale on the phone? asked Clay.Well, he told me thats who he was.And it was a male voice?Well, it would be. Hes a singer, isnt he?Shed gone on like that, reassuring him, encouraging him to go back to work, dismissing any guilt or grief, until he was almost to the gates of the compound before he remembered.Shes a total loony he said to himself, as if he just needed to hear the words, to feel their truth. Nothing is all right. Nates dead.Clair would be sleeping at her house tonight, and although it was late, Clay could not make himself go to sleep. Instead he went to the office, knowing that nothing in the world could eat up time like editing video. He attached a digital video camera to his computer and turned on the recently replaced giant monitor. Blue filled the screen, and then he could sense the motion of descent, but there was only a faint hiss of his breathing, not the usual fusillade of bubbles from a regulator. This was the rebreather footage, from the day he had almost drowned. Hed completely forgotten about it. The breath-holders tail came into frame.Clays first instincts had been right. This was great footage of a breath-holder the best theyd ever recorded. As he passed the tail, the genital slit came into view, and he could tell that they were dealing with a male. There were black marks on the underside of the tail, but the view was still edge on, and he couldnt make out their shape. He heard a faint kazoo sound in the background and ran back the tape, with the sound turned up.This time his breath sounded like a dump snorting before a charge, the kazoo sound, louder now, like a voice through wax paper. He ran back the tape again and cranked the sound all the way up, bringing down the high frequency to kill some of the hiss. Definitely voices.Theres someone outside, Captain.Does he have my sandwich with him?Hes close, Captain, really close. Too close.Then the tail came down, and there was a deafening thud . The picture jerked in a half dozen directions, then colonised as tiny bubbles passed by the lens in a field of blue. The lens caught a shot of Clays fin as he sank, and then it was just blue and the occasional shot of the lanyard that secured the camera to his wrist.Clay ran the tape back again, confirmed the voices, then set it to dub onto the computer hard drive so he could manipulate the audio in a waveform, the way they did with sound recordings. Even though he was sure what was on the tape, he couldnt figure out how it could possibly have gotten there. Only five minutes of watching little progress bars move across the monitor, and he could stand the indecision no longer. He smiled to himself, because now was the time he would have gone to Nate, as he had so many times before, to help him figure out exactly what it was they were hearing or looking at, but Nate was gone. He checked his watch, and, deciding that it wasnt too insanely late, he headed across the compound to get Amy.