The music and the narrative that whispered in his head made him feel a part of the sea, a part of the cascading chain of life that surrounded him here. He turned to and fro, like a shark swaying its head, searching the depths for prey. The music and narration faded, and then all around him was solitude and tranquility, silent and gloomy spaces, the sea's emptiness.
He became aware of a thin, droning sound at extreme range, the propeller whine of a distant ship enveloping him in the sea's cathedral-like acoustics. Overhead, he caught sight of a moving shadow—a cluster of pelagic fish, darting and swerving. A beam of light stabbed upward, illuminating the iridescent undersides of the fish; then they flashed one way, and another, and were gone.
Emptiness . . . and then a new sound, a familiar low moan that ended with a sharp rise in pitch. The cry was repeated, followed by a sighing stream of bubbles, and then a mournful keening, ending in a downward wail. Payne recognized the humpback whales' songs; he had heard their recordings many times before, and now, as always, reacted to them with a feeling of wistfulness and longing. Was it a whale's cry for companionship, or something else entirely? He didn't know; but in the whales' songs there was always a feeling of space, and distance, and loneliness.
He squinted upward toward the sunlight. A whale's shadow moved high overhead, but was growing as it descended, diving lazily toward him. It swelled, blocking the light until it filled the world over his head; and then it banked and wheeled around to peer sideways at him with a single large, unblinking eye. The encounter lasted for a heartbeat, as Payne stared back into the creature's eye, sensing the imponderability of its gaze. Its mouth was turned downward in a sour grin. Did it wonder at this strange creature in its realm? The whale slid by him, its rounded belly and roughened, grey-white flukes so close that Payne instinctively drew back. An enormous tail fluke swung past his face, and then the whale was a dark shape growing darker in the depths.
Silence. Then the mournful song began again.
The humpback whale songs were a worldwide choir, whales sharing musical themes with their siblings around the globe. As the seasons changed, so too did the songs, evolving in one part of the world as in another, by some orchestration not yet known to human science. Another Payne, a Dr. Roger Payne, had studied cetacean songs in the late twentieth century; despite much work since, human analysis had yet to achieve an understanding of the songs. As Joe Payne sat now and listened to the songs and the narration, something in his heart dissociated itself from his mind. The sounds filled him with images of a timeless space through which life passed like an endless series of ripples.
He felt a rushing sensation and realized that his point of view was moving, turning. Three whales emerged from the mist—a calf and two adult females. Accompanied by the distant song, the whales circled around him in a slow ballet. The calf orbited its mother twice, and then spiraled down into a dive. The adults descended, moving in lazy curves bracketing the young one. The song echoing out of the mist sighed and melted into a downward glissando that ended in a throaty gurgle. They were now shadows moving in the depths below. A breath of bubbles erupted and rose in a graceful cluster. The bubbles rumbled musically as they raced upward, breaking toward the surface. The three whales reappeared from the depths, spiraled past, and breached the surface overhead with a burst of silver.
The scene shifted then, and turned into a moving collage. A boisterous humpback dropped past, doing barrel rolls. A school of flashing silver fish twisted and danced in the sunlight that broke, dazzling, through shallow waters. A shark cruised by, hunting and sweeping. A whale emerged from the mist, hanging vertically, its tail pointed to the surface, its head toward the abyss. It was singing.
Payne, mesmerized, plummeted with a sperm whale into the gloomy abyss and then rose back into the world of light like a missile, bursting out of the water and falling back with a boom and a rush and swirl. He exploded his breath into the air with a gasp, and dived again.
Eventually twilight closed in, and the whales dispersed, leaving only the haunting bass rumble of an invisible blue whale. The blue's call gave way to the thrumming of a ship's propeller. The thrumming gave way to silence, and the sea dissolved to darkness.
* * *
The lights rose around him, revealing an audience stirring beneath the theater dome. Payne's head still echoed with the sounds and movements of the sea. He could hardly imagine getting up and walking now, on dry land.
What a stunning accomplishment, this
Theater of the Sea!
Two hundred and sixty seats rotated on individual gimbals, each with a headrest equipped for quadraphonic sound. Holographic projectors lined the enormous silver dome overhead, and the somewhat smaller bowl in the center. If this preview performance was any indication, the theater would be a sensation.
Payne rose, thinking, it would be easy to produce a straightforward, glowing review; but how much better it would be if he could develop an angle, and produce a short feature for syndication. What could he do that dozens of other newscopers wouldn't? he wondered, as he made his way to the aisle.
He followed the crowd out into the lobby, where a reception was getting underway. He ordered a drink and surveyed the crowd. There weren't many familiar faces—probably mostly local media people and print journalists. He strolled around the edge of the room, listening to the chatter, and studying the lobby critically. The walls and ceiling were done in square, concave blue and green tiles, shaded in certain places with reds and maroons. It bordered on tackiness, and yet succeeded in evoking a sense of the depths, with flares of odd color suggesting marine organisms. Large, recessed holoprints of underwater scenes were spaced around the lobby.
"Joseph?" A woman's voice penetrated his reverie.
He turned—and broke into a broad smile. "Teri!"
"How are you, Joe?" said a slender, chestnut-haired woman of thirty-three or thirty-four. It was Teri Renshaw, a newscoper friend from the days of his first freelance assignments. They hugged briefly and stood apart, grinning at each other. Teri was several years his senior, and looked just the way he'd always thought a newscoper should look—competent, alert, and attractive, without excessive stylishness. "I haven't seen you in what—over a year?" Teri said.
Payne thought back. "Summer of thirty-three, in New York."
"It
has
been that long, hasn't it?" Teri murmured. She turned to introduce a portly gentleman standing to one side of her. "Joe, this is Peter Armunson, director of the theater. Peter, Joe Payne, a colleague of mine. I'm sure you've seen his work."
Armunson smiled in polite nonrecognition as they shook hands. "Whom are you with, Mr. Payne?"
"Freelance," Payne answered. "Like Teri."
"He's an up-and-comer," Teri said, touching Payne's arm. "If you haven't heard of him yet, you will soon."
"Is that right? I'll be looking for your name," Armunson said, nodding and beaming to someone else in the crowd. He turned back to Payne and Teri, and they chatted for a few minutes about the theater, before Armunson excused himself to greet other guests.
Payne was left standing alone with Teri. "You look great," he said.
"And you. Have you been working? I haven't seen your name, but then I don't always—"
He interrupted. "Things have been—slow," he said.
"Hm." She nodded with a sympathetic scowl. "I know what it's like. Are you having trouble getting assignments—or are they not buying your work?"
Shrugging, he said, "Right now I'm having trouble just coming up with material. I'd say that I'm in a slump, except that I'm not sure my career has gotten far enough off the ground for the word to apply. That's why I'm here—to see if I can pick up some ideas."
"You and a few other people," Teri said, chuckling. "How are you doing otherwise? Where are you living? Who are you with? What's new?"
Payne laughed. "Still with Denine. Still in the Boston area. Not too much new, really."
"In a year and a half? Life can't be
that
dull."
"Well, you know—" Payne shrugged self-consciously. He always felt a little odd talking to Teri about Denine. The first couple of years they had known each other, Teri and he had flirted occasionally at the boundary between platonic friendship and romance, crossing over the line only briefly. That little spark had never totally disappeared, even after they both had settled into relationships with other people. Teri, the last he'd heard, was living with a man in New Washington in what she'd once described as a "semi-open relationship."
"I'm still with Ed," Teri said, anticipating his question. "We keep changing things—and always wind up going back to our original arrangement. Never can make up our minds." She smiled. "Hey, it's good to see you."
Bobbing his head in agreement, he was interrupted before he could speak again. A gangly-looking man with large spectacles and intense blue eyes suddenly turned to them, apparently rebounding from another conversation. "Interesting show, wasn't it?" he said loudly.
Payne nodded, not wishing to appear rude. Who was this intrusive jerk? he wondered. "Are you a reviewer?" he said.
"Me? No—no." The man shifted an empty glass to his left hand and stuck out his right. "Stanley Gerschak. I'm an astronomer."
"Oh," said Payne, shaking hands. "I'm—"
"Joseph Payne. I recognized you from your news shows."
"Why—yes," Payne said, pleasantly startled. He gestured. "I'm sure you must recognize Teri Renshaw."
Gerschak frowned, peering at her over his spectacles. "I confess I don't. I don't actually watch that much TV."
In the uncomfortable silence that followed, Payne changed the subject. "What's an astronomer doing here for a press showing?" he asked.
"I asked for a ticket," Gerschak said casually. "You might say I work in a related field."
"And what's that?" Teri said innocently.
The astronomer seemed pleased by the question. "SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Communications from space."
"Oh?" Payne said. "Are you connected with Moonbase?"
Gerschak shook his head. "Nope. And if I were you, I wouldn't believe any of their press releases, either, by the way. They've been searching for years, and they claim to have detected nothing." He shrugged disdainfully and glanced about as if he didn't want to talk about it. Clearly he was waiting to be prompted.
Against his better judgment, Payne said, "Is there something you know about, that they're not telling us?"
Gerschak shrugged again. "Depends on who you believe."
Payne and Teri exchanged impatient glances.
"We've found
something
, anyway," Gerschak said finally. "I work up at the Berkshires Observatory. You know it?"
"In western Massachusetts? I've heard of it. It's a small university observatory, isn't it?"
Gerschak nodded. "We've been getting some unusual stuff for a while now." He looked into his empty glass. "Our methods are a little different there. But anyway, that's why I wanted to come down to see this. We've observed something quite reminiscent of their sounds."
Payne shook his head in confusion. "
Whose
sounds?"
"The whales'. Something or someone is sending signals—which, when processed in a certain way, sound astonishingly like humpback whale songs." Gerschak shook his glass, spinning a last bit of melting ice around the bottom rim. He tipped the glass to his lips and tapped the bottom.
"Really," Payne murmured tolerantly.
Gerschak gazed at Teri with an expression verging on being a leer. "You wouldn't have heard about it," he said. "Nothing's been published yet." He paused, pushing his glasses back up on his face. "My colleagues are . . . skeptical. Many of them don't believe it. Some of them think it's a load of bull. But my procedures—" He broke off suddenly at the sight of someone moving through the crowd.
A short woman with black braided hair made her way to his side. Gerschak turned to her nervously. "Ronnie, would you be a dear and get me another—?"
"Stanley—"
"Just one more?"
"You've had two already," the woman said severely. "You promised you'd have just one and then we'd go."
"I'm having an interesting talk with these people," Gerschak said defensively.
Ronnie yanked him down to speak into his ear. His expression turned to annoyance. For several seconds, Payne and Teri looked at one another in bemusement, as the two carried on a muttered argument. Finally Ronnie began tugging at his arm, pulling him away from Payne and Teri. Gerschak glanced back once, as though to say something more—and finally stumbled away after Ronnie.
Payne looked at Teri, and they both began laughing silently and convulsively. It was several moments before either of them could speak. Teri was still trying to hide her laughter as she said, "Joe, you could be missing a tremendous scoop. Are you sure you don't want to chase after him?"
"I'm sure," Payne said. "The last time I did a story on an 'unconventional scientist,' the guy turned out to be a notorious flako. I'm not going to step into that again soon."
"Oh, I think he was just insecure," Teri said.
"That's what someone told me about the flako."
She laughed. "Hey, how about going someplace
quiet
for a drink? Unless you're going to trek back up home tonight—"
"Nope, I'm staying. I probably
should
go start writing this thing up, while it's still fresh in my mind."
"Well, I don't want to interfere with your work—"
He shrugged. "I can do that tomorrow, I guess. Where do you want to go?"
"There's a nice lounge at the Conrad, where I'm staying," Teri said.
"Uh-oh. That's where I'm staying, too. We'll have to be careful, or we'll give people the wrong idea."
"What's the matter—afraid of me?" she teased.
"Maybe."
Laughing, Teri led the way to the coat room. They thanked their host at the door and walked out together into a gusty Connecticut night.