The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel (17 page)

“Humpbacks?” she murmured. “How far?”

“No telling. There’s a sound channel that takes it hundreds of miles.”

They listened as the eerie music echoed from the deep. Each vocalization began with a trill, then meandered through several phrases before ending on an upward flourish. After several minutes he murmured, “The males come up with a new routine, a new song, every spring. It originates east of New Guinea and gets passed from one pod to another. The North Pacific. The North Atlantic. Antarctica.”

She’d read that in the literature, but it was different hearing it. He eased a dial around and the tones became sharper, more piercing. Again, each utterance ended with that upward pitch. She murmured, “It’s like a human being asking a question. Can it be they’re talking? Rather than singing?”

“Anything’s possible. They could be debating their version of Aristotle.” His face was entranced, shut off. He seemed to be gazing through the side of the boat, into the chill lightless sea hundreds of fathoms down. The whales gave bubbling trills and gulps that sounded like birdsong processed through an upset stomach. “They use tools—those bubble nets we saw them weave, to fish. I read a paper by some Scottish researchers, about sperm whales. It said they have individual names.”

“Actual
names
…?”

“They analyzed a five-click call they make at the beginning of their vocalizations. It’s called 5R. Everybody always thought it was the same for every whale. Like every blue jay’s call is the same as every other. But when these guys looked at the click timing, they could tell which whale was transmitting. And so, obviously, could the other whales. Which makes sense, when you think about it. We don’t typically open our conversations with our names. When we make a radio call, though, we start ‘This is
Anemone.’”
His gaze met hers. “Or am I getting too … anthropocentric?”

“They don’t need to be smart to communicate. Or as smart as we are.”

He half smiled. “You consider
us
intelligent?”

“Have to have a benchmark. But I know what you’re saying.”

“What am I saying?”

She grimaced. Spread her hands. “Individually, we do all right. But as a species, we don’t act intelligently. Crime. Greed. War.”

“Overpopulation. Destroying the environment we have to live in.”

“Apes defecate where they live. When it gets bad, they move. But we—”

“Right,” he said. Responding not to what she’d voiced, but to the next step in her reasoning. Which, she had to admit, she liked.

The whales kept calling, echoed now and then by others, fainter, incomparably farther off. No one had realized elephants used ground-conducted subsonics until Katharine Payne at Cornell had discovered their seismic communication. Someday someone would discover just what these “songs” were. She doubted it would be her—better minds had tried—but there could be no doubt the phenomenon carried some freight of meaning. If only to mark territory, or identify a pod. But then why would the songs
change
?

“You’re deep in thought.”

She half grinned. Conscious, suddenly, of his warmth only inches away. Her eyes drifted to his lap, then to where the legs of the coveralls were neatly rolled and clamped with binder clips. He was damaged, sometimes unpredictable, but she had to admire his determination. He stayed at his post. He hauled himself around the boat using those massive shoulders almost, if not quite, as nimbly as those who still had legs. She’d never heard him complain, though who knew how much it hurt. She cleared her throat. “Are you—comfortable?”

He looked confused. “What?”

“I mean—your injuries. Do they give you pain?”

He looked taken aback, but only shrugged. Seemed to go somewhere else, though he didn’t shift in the chair. “Not so much these days,” he said, looking away. “Your eye? How’s that doing?”

“Better. Not itching as much.”

He reared back, stretching. Those powerful shoulders bunched, those big hands worked at his neck. He said through his teeth, “But it does get old, sitting in the same position.”

She said, “Turn away.”

His hands stopped. “Turn what?”

“Away from me. Bend forward. Yes. Like that.”

Under her hands his muscles were hard as resined carbon. So taut it was painful to feel. Her own fingers, stronger than they’d probably ever been after weeks fighting the wheel, barely sank in. He kept leaning away, head bent, and as she worked up and then down his spine he relaxed. “Better?” she murmured.

“You got strong hands.”

“Mm-hm.” She worked on, until he winced and straightened.

Something rolled off his work surface and fell into her lap. She picked it up, started to replace it, then turned it over in her fingers. At first she’d thought it a spool of green thread. It was a wooden spool, yes, but wrapped with something thicker than thread, so dull and shineless it was almost invisible. “What’s this?”

He squinted in the screenlight. “Trip wire.”

“
Trip wire?
It looks like what you’d use to … strangle someone.”

He chuckled. “Not hardly. Breaking strength on that’s only about fifty pounds. But it comes in useful more often than you’d think. That and hundred-mile-an-hour tape, you can fix almost anything.”

She was still holding it when he gently removed her glasses and took her face in his hands. She stopped thinking. When his mouth found hers in the darkness she seemed to stop feeling. Or felt all too much, as her arms rose to pull him close.

When his hand found her neck and followed its curve down into her pullover she broke away, breathing hard. He tensed. “Sorry … am I going too fast?”

She glanced at the open oval of the access. “I don’t know. But I’d better close that.”

When she came back she stood bent, breathing fast and shallow as he kissed her again. Those rough hands seemed to know in advance every curve they encountered, every zipper. Her top came off and she sank back again on the duffel, unable to muster objections as his fingers found her nipples. She closed her eyes and sighed.

“Feel good?”

“Very.”

His mouth sought hers again. The scratchy stubble of bristly beard. Rough warm lips that somehow evoked pleasure down her whole body.

Then his hand slipped lower, and she gasped. Started to push it away, but her arm had lost the power to do so. Enervated by the waves of pleasure that made her hips jerk as his fingers found exactly what she wanted them to. She lay back, eyes still closed, conscious of cold air on her naked skin, throat to belly, but intent above all else on the focused warmth that pulsed and grew. Her hips moved again, and she bit her lip to stifle the noises she wanted to make. Above them the whales still called, trilling and reverberating in haunting refrains that forever hovered at the edge of meaning.

“Such a lovely woman,” he murmured, breath hot against her skin.

Astonishment penetrated. Could she really be doing this? Falling for a legless veteran, a man she barely knew? Or were they all so sealed in, so hermetically isolated, she didn’t know what she was feeling? Some uninvolved corner of her mind whispered: This is not smart. You’re not eighteen anymore, messing around in a car on ‘Sconsett Bluff.

His fingers paused. She opened her single eye to his face, hovering. “Still okay?”

“I … guess.”

“Having doubts?”

“A little.”

His lips traced from hers to her neck. And downward. The sea whispered past, hissing and surging. She stiffened, fingers digging into the duffel on which she lay. “—hurt you?” he murmured.

“Uh-uh. Oh.
Oh
.” Shamed, yet still wanting more, she laid her arm over her face. Bit her wrist.

He shifted, grunted deep in his throat, and she heard the chair creak and felt his weight come onto the duffel too. Heard the sloughing of cloth and another exhalation as he shifted again. She lay with legs spread, the air icy between them, and didn’t care. She arched her back to shift something hard out from beneath it and lifted her knees. Her shoulders drew back, bracing. A wave gathered between her legs, rising in throbs of something almost like anguish.

When she opened her eye again he hung close above her, bare chest hairy, a steel chain hanging from a dark nest. His neck looked strangely vulnerable, his nostrils like caverns. His hand left her and took his weight to one side as he half rolled, working the last of his clothing down his trunk.

Despite herself, she glanced down.

The cloth pushed free from his crotch and his penis sprang free. But her gaze traveled past it, to where there was … nothing. Save blunt appendages seamed with wormtracings of stitching and scar tissue.

She suddenly realized what he intended, and her acquiescence turned inside out. He wore no protection. She had none either. Since Leo had left she hadn’t bothered. Hadn’t thought it would be necessary. But that wasn’t it. She didn’t want this, even if he’d worn something, or if she’d brought her pills. They were co-workers. Unprofessional. Stupid. Sara, what are you doing?

“What are you doing?” she said. Her hand came up to shield her nakedness. Her legs straightened, pushing her upright even as his weight eased down on her. She felt his penis probing, rigid, engorged, seeking. “
What are you doing?
”

He went tense too, suddenly suspending motion. Said nothing, though he bent his head back, trying to look down into her face. But her gaze slid aside. She got a hand up and locked an elbow over her breasts.

“What’s wrong?”

“This whole thing. That’s what’s wrong.”

“It feels right to me.”

“Well, it’s not going where you want it to go.” She realized as she said this that it was a double entendre, and almost smiled, but still felt intimidated. He was so much stronger, and heavier, and he was right above her. If he wanted to he could keep on, and she’d be helpless, unless she screamed. Which she didn’t want to. Above all, she didn’t want the others to see her like this.

But instead of pushing her arms aside, he cleared his throat and rolled away, letting in a smell of damp hemp. “I get it,” he said, voice altered, cold, ten thousand miles distant.

She fought to sit up and pull her clothes back over her. “Get it … get what?”

“I guess it’s a turnoff, all right. A shock.”

“What are you talking about? I didn’t…” Her voice trailed off as she realized what he thought. “I … I didn’t see all that much. But that’s not it. Believe me, Mick. Not at all.”

“It’s got to be pretty
unaesthetic
. To suddenly see those, those stumps, when you’re expecting something else.”

“No!” She struggled to sit up, appalled. “Mick … you have to believe me. That had nothing to do with it. We’re co-workers. This boat’s too small for us to just … hook up, or whatever.”

“You don’t have to explain. Make excuses.”

She suddenly felt guilty. She reached for him. “Let me do something else, then.”

“Forget it.” His voice had a rough edge that could have been anger or something else. His face was turned to the darkness. “Just get out.”

“I told you, it’s not what you think. I just don’t want to … but I’ll take care of you.” She worked moisture up in her mouth, licked her hand. “Turn this way—”

“I said
get out
.”

She backed away. Rearranged her clothes as he hoisted with both arms, poised against the roll of the hull, then lowered himself back into the seat. When he clamped the earphones back on, his shadow, thrown by the dim light against the overhead, seemed to have grown horns, like a bull’s. Not looking at her he rasped, again, finally, “Go on. Get out.”

She looked back to see him still turned away, deep in the cavelike dim, as the songs of the whales echoed against the hoarse never-ending whisper of the sea.

9

First Encounter

“So, d’we have ourselves a little fun last night?”

Sara lifted her attention from Rice Chex and ultrapasteurized milk to Eddi Auer’s protuberant blue eyes. They were alone in the galley. “What?”

“I saw you coming back, you know. From up forward.”

She pushed hair off her face. “Oh, for …
Nothing happened
, Eddi.”

“Oh, of course not. Of
course
not.”

Why was she so angry? Sara glanced up again. “Wait a minute.
You’re
not sweet on him, are you?”

“None of your damn business.”

She took the other woman’s arm. “Okay, I’ll level: I almost gave way. But at the last minute, I decided it wouldn’t be smart. Okay? The field’s still open. If he’s who you want.”

Auer wavered, glancing at her and then away. Finally she grinned. Punched Sara’s arm. “You whore dog. You really are, you know. All right, forget it. Water over the dam.”

Whore dog? “I just wanted you to know—”

“If you got some, good for you. About time somebody did. Besides
her.
”

The companionway banged open. Quill’s bearded visage hung upside down. “All hands on deck. Get ’em up! Mustang suits and life preservers.”

She and Eddi tore their gazes from each other. As they shook people awake a long-unfamiliar rumble began aft, built, then dropped to a steady hum. The engines! Her heart beat faster. They’d caught up with their quarry at last.

When she lumbered topside, bulky and clumsy in heavy gear and face mask and insulated gloves and goggles, Quill and Perrault and Madsen were in the cockpit. The wind was an icy blade in her throat. She gasped, coughing, as she squinted around. The sea surged past in six-foot piles of blue-black ink, tops shredded into long manes of frothy spray. Scattered clouds galloped across a bright sky like spooked horses. Then she remembered. Duh, Sara; you aren’t supposed to be up here. She turned to climb back down, but the captain caught her arm. “Where are you going?”

“You wanted me to steer.”

“Not in the bubble. From where you can hear my commands.” He jerked a thumb at where Madsen stood. “Steer one two five.”

The steel tubing of the wheel felt frigid even through padded gloves. She wrestled it, boots slipping on the ice that coated the cockpit sole, and got the lubber’s line back on 125. Then lifted her head and squinted.