Fluke, Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings (12 page)

"Shoes off in the whale!" a male voice said out of the dark.

Quinn could see nothing. 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. "I'm not wearing shoes. These are fins."

"Shoes off in the whale! And don't try and make a break for the anus."

Two things that, if asked about an hour earlier, Nate might have said with conviction he'd 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.

"I'll bet he didn't 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 reputation 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, respectful of the work of others, and cool-headed in an emergency. Because he often had to subjugate himself to the head researcher on any given 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 I'll 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 there's a documentary on whales on the Discovery Channel, or National Geographic, or Animal Planet, or PBS, or the fucking Cartoon Channel, I'll see to it that your name is mentioned right after Nate's as the man who left him out there. You'll be the official Coast Guard pariah for the next hundred years. This will be the Coast Guard's 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 you're 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 adult 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 Clay's tirade. He looked across his office to where Kona and Amy stood by the door, looking nearly as haggard as he felt. The surfer looked at him and shook his head sadly.

"It's been three days, Mr. Demodocus. In open water with no life preserver? You're not a tourist — you know the odds. If he were alive, he'd have drifted far out of where we're able to patrol by now anyway. We're doing no fewer than ten rescues a day on Maui. I can't have our helicopters out to sea when there's just no chance."

"What about tide maps, currents?" Clay pleaded. "Can't 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 they'd come into his office was "Sucks to be you." And right now the commodore couldn't have agreed more. He'd lost friends at sea; he understood. "I'm sorry," he said.

Clay sighed heavily, and his shoulders sagged. Amy came forward and took him by the arm. "Let's go home, Clay."

Clay nodded and allowed himself to be led out of the commodore's office.

As they made their way across the parking lot to Clay's truck Kona said, "That was amazing, Clay."

"Throwing a fit? Yeah, I'm proud of that, especially since it worked so well."

"Why didn't you say anything about the whale eating Nate?" In the three days since Quinn had disappeared, Kona had forgotten to speak brophonics and Rasta talk almost completely, and now he just sounded like a kid from New Jersey with a "whoa, dude" surfer accent.

"Whales don't 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 you're 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 humpback's throat is only about a foot in diameter. They couldn't swallow a human if they wanted to. So if the whale did scoop up Nate, then there's a good chance he was spit out very quickly. Second, if I told that story to everyone else, either they'd think you were being hysterical or, if they believed you, they'd assume that Nate had been drowned immediately, and there wouldn't have been a search. I believe you, kid, but don't 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 Nate's work. We do this work, we carry on. Right now I've got to go up the mountain and see the Old Broad. Nate was like a son to her."

"You haven't told her?" Amy asked.

Clay shook his head. "Why would I? I haven't given up on Nate. I've seen too much. Last year they thought they'd lost one of the black-coral divers. The boat came back to where they'd sent him down, and he was gone. A week later he called from Molokai for them to come get him. He'd swum over and had been so busy partying he'd forgotten to call.

"Doesn't sound like Nate," Kona said. "He told me that he hated fun."

"Still, it would be wrong not to let the Old Broad know what's happened," Amy said.

Clay patted 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 mother 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. He'd 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 couldn't 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 dead in an olive tree, where she had climbed to do some pruning. Clay's 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 rich American," came the ouzo-besotted lament. "He should take care of Mama. Perhaps he will even fly us to America for the funeral." And so the two brothers, having inherited their mother's weakness for alcohol and their father's bad judgment, packed the remains of Mother Demodocus in an olive barrel, filled the barrel with the preserving brine, and shipped it off to their rich younger brother's 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 snack of kala-mata olives from home. It was not the way to find out about his mother's 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 Broad's driveway.
There's 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 emperor's 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 florist's 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 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 through any part of the house to the other and see the tropical garden. The Old Broad's 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 Clay's feet a skinny cat happily crunched the legs off a scorpion.

The Old Broad handed Clay a tall, icy glass and sat in another emperor's chair beside him. She was barefoot and wore a flowered caftan 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.

"It's so nice to see you, Clay. I don't get many visitors. Not that I'm lonely, you know. I have the cats and the whales to talk to. But that's 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 excellent tea, Elizabeth. Mango, you say?"

"That's 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, uh…"

"Temperature? Yes, ice is an essential ingredient 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, don't be shy. I know how you loved that boat, and we'll get you another one. I'm just not sure we can go for one quite that nice. My investments haven't been doing well the last couple of years."

"No, no, it's not the boat. The boat was insured. It's Nate."

"And how is Nathan? I hope he's 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. You'd 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, there's been an accident. Three days ago Nate went into the water to get a better look at a singer, and… well, we haven't been able to find him." Clay put down his tea so he could catch the old woman should she faint. "I'm very sorry."

"Oh, that. Yes, I heard about that. Nate's 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 dash her spirits to earth with the truth?

Although Nate had found Elizabeth's 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 don't think you understand what I'm saying —»

"He took the pastrami and rye, right? He said he would."

"Um, that's not exactly pertinent. He's been gone for three days, and they were right at the wind line toward Molokai when he was lost. Rough sea. He's probably gone, Elizabeth."

"Well, of course he's gone, Clay. You'll 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! You're not listening to me. This is not about the whales singing to you through the trees. Nate is gone!"

"Don't you shout at me, Clay Demodocus. I'm trying to comfort you. And it wasn't a song through the trees. What do you think? I'm some crazy old woman? The whale called on the phone."

"Oh, Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, I don't know how to do this»

"More 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 that's who he was."

"And it was a male voice?"

"Well, it would be. He's a singer, isn't he?"

She'd 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.

"She's a total loony!" he said to himself, as if he just needed to hear the words, to feel their truth.
Nothing is all right. Nate's 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. He'd completely forgotten about it. The breath-holder's tail came into frame.