The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel (22 page)

Eddi came back from forward, but stopped dead on hearing that. “
A hundred and forty-four
humpbacks?”

He bit his lip. “Yes, miss.”

Sara kept a firm grip on the conversation. “Tell me more about your own research.”

Kimura reached for a napkin and began sketching. A strange, irregular outline, like a broccoli chopped in half. “Well, as I said, he found damage to amygdala caused dysfunction in social relationships. I am trying to establish what structure in whale brain corresponds to human and primate amygdala. A study at Emory University located a limbic-like structure in the brains of
Orcinus orca
with MRI imaging. Here, where I circle? It elucidated the gross morphology and described extensive cortical gyrification and sulcation. The cortical map is different from that of humans. No one agrees which structures mediate which behaviors. However, they described a cortical limbic lobe, here, and what appears to be a well-developed amygdala. For killer whales, as I said. I attempted to map the corresponding structures in the humpback—”

“This is sickening,” Auer said. “You cut up a hundred and forty-four whales for their
brains
?”

“Eddi,” Sara said.

“What? I just asked him—”

Anemone
rocked and shuddered like an oxcart rolling over rubble. Perrault came staggering forward, rubbing his chin. When he saw Sara he raised his eyebrows. Under the table, where the man she was interviewing could not see, she pointed a thumb up. The captain nodded. “Sara, can I see you up forward?”

In the long forepeak gear stirred uneasily in the shadows. Bodine’s worn chair was empty; he was probably still aft with Quill. Perrault eased the door shut and murmured, “Well?”

“How’s he doing?”

“Jamie? He is strong. We’ll just have to wait and see. The Japanese?”

“He’s the real thing, Dru. A neuroanatomist, not a behaviorist like me. But he knows his way around the whale brain.”

Perrault considered this. “What’s he say about why he jumped ship?”

“We haven’t gotten to that yet.”

“Okay, let’s find out.”

Back in the salon, the captain ranged long arms and legs in a chair and sighed. “Sara tells me you’re a brain researcher,” he began.

Kimura nodded politely and folded his hands. “That is accurate, Captain.”

“Cut up a lot of whales, over there?”

“A hundred and forty-four,” Auer put in, scowling.

“Eddi, do me a favor. Go relieve Lars, on deck. He needs to be in on this.”

“I was going to give him a—”

“Just for a little while. Please. I believe we are in an ice-free area, but keep a sharp lookout all the same.”

When she was gone they waited in silence until Madsen staggered down the companionway, shedding snow and water off his mustang suit, cursing. He began stripping off the gear, leaving puddles as he walked toward them, his boots squelching.

“How’s the visibility up there?”

“Not so bad.” He half turned as Bodine limped out of the passageway, and the two men, each trying to get out of the other’s way, collided clumsily. “Sorry.”

“My fault.” Bodine looked at Perrault. “He’s resting. I gave him double the dose of cipro. All I could think of to do.”

“Will he pull through?”

“I don’t know, Sara. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Thank you,” Perrault said. Bodine limped on forward, disappeared into his space, and closed the door.

The captain said, “Lars, we were about to get into why Hideyashi jumped ship.”

“Okay.” Madsen threw himself on the settee and stretched out an arm. Glanced at Sara, then back at the Japanese. “I’m listening.”

“You cut up a lot of whales,” the captain repeated.

“Yes.” Kimura sighed, looking at his hands. “But they were already dead, of course.”

“You’re part of their
research
effort?” Madsen said, straightening again.

“I was. Yes.”

“He’s a bona fide neuroanatomist. I’ve established that,” Sara put in.

“All right, then. Why’d you jump ship?”

“I am not only a scientist,” Kimura said. “I am also the son of a priest at the Yasukuni shrine.”

Madsen tilted his head. “What is that, exactly?”

“The principal Shinto shrine in Chiyoda—in Tokyo.”

“What’s that got to do with jumping overboard?”

“I have explained some of this to Dr. Pollard. When I applied for permission to do research, the executives of the institute—”

“That’s the Institute of Cetacean Research?” Madsen said.

“Correct. They were very welcoming. They promised a laboratory assistant, a dedicated space, and a budget of seven hundred thirty thousand yen.”

Sara said, “Didn’t they come through?”

“Oh yes. They provided the grant, the lab, and the assistant. What they did not say was that I was expected to lie.”

Madsen leaned forward. “Lie about what?”

“To receive the grant, I had to also agree to act as the scientific observer for the—they call it an ‘expedition.’ But of course it is not. As I quickly came to understand.”

“All right,” said Sara. “What did they want you to do—certify false results?”

He shook his head. “My results were my own. No one cared what I was doing, anyway. They just cut out the brains and carried them up to me in buckets. What they wanted me to certify—to lie about—was the kill figures.”

“The quotas.” Madsen still leaned forward, intent. “The Japanese government sets them. Nine hundred beaked whales—”

Kimura frowned. “Nine hundred what?”

The Dane hesitated. “Sometimes called minkes.”

“Oh yes, minkes. We call them ‘cockroaches’ on the ship. That is right. Nine hundred minkes, one hundred humpbacks, and one hundred fin whales.”

“But you said earlier you dissected one hundred forty-four humpback brains,” Sara said. Feeling sick as she remembered the eerie beauty of a symphony in the deep.

“So they’re taking more whales than the quota permits,” Madsen bored in.

Kimura nodded. “When it was made plain I would have to certify that only the quota had been taken, I pointed out a problem. I had over that number of samples. Publication of my paper would make obvious the quota had been exceeded. I was then ordered to destroy forty-four of my sample sets.”

“And you refused,” Sara guessed.

He twisted his fingers. “Of course! I could not do otherwise. They tried to reason with me. Then said I would lose my grant, and not receive my doctorate. I still would not cooperate.”

“Then what?”

“One morning I went to my laboratory to find that all my samples had been thrown overboard, and my data deleted from my computer. Because I had talked to others in the crew, they removed me from the processing ship and put me to work on
Number 3
cleaning toilets. It was then I realized that this was
kigare
, that I had brought it down on myself. True research must be carried out in the spirit of truth.”

Perrault said, “What was that word you used?”

“
Kigare?
It is like karma. The
kami
—the spirits—ensure that one pays for what one does. Unless one expiates wrong actions, this accumulation of evil determines fate. I became convinced I was taking part in wrong, in killing these great creatures. When a man realizes this, it is his duty to cease the action and purify himself. The usual ritual involves water.” He smiled. “So you see why jumping overboard seemed appropriate.”

Sara sat back, uncertain how to take this. A student with scientific training, believing in spirits, karma? “And you feel this … ritual … purified you?”

Kimura chuckled. “I see your mind, Dr. Pollard. You are saying, to yourself, How can a scientist think like this? I know, it will seem not quite rational. But you forget, I am Japanese.”

“And the son of a priest.”

“Exactly so. I know there is nothing to these feelings. But the feelings themselves have objective reality. And I truly have come to believe killing animals with brains that show structures consistent with a capability for intelligent thought—well, you see where I am going.” He shrugged. “No doubt you feel the same way. Or you would not be trying to stop us.”

She felt uneasy at that assumption, but didn’t contradict him. Kimura sat back and adjusted his blanket. He looked around and shivered. “It is really very cold in this ship.”

“
We
don’t burn whale oil for heat,” Madsen said harshly. “So, you jumped ship to purify yourself. Like Sara asked: Are you purified?”

Kimura gave a slight shrug. “That is for the
kami
to say. The spirits of nature. Not me.”

Perrault said, “What do you expect us to do with you?”

“I will assist in whatever way I can that does not involve hurting people.”

Madsen said, “Even if they’re doing evil?”

The Japanese said in a modest voice, “That is difficult to say.”

Lars threw Sara a glance she found difficult to read. Suspicion, though, was definitely part of it.

The forward hatch creaked open. Bodine stood framed by darkness. “Captain? Answer to your message.”

Perrault rose. “Which one?”

“To
Maru Number 3.”
He waved a scrap of paper.

“Read it.”

“Captain Nakame demands the return of the junior research employee Kimura Hideyashi, who was restricted to his quarters pending trial in Japan for drunkenness, disobeying orders, fighting with crew members, and destroying scientific equipment. He will steam to meet us. He requests our position.”

Perrault swayed as the deck pitched. “No response from the home office?”

“Not yet.”

“You will not return me,” a soft voice said. “Please? If you do, I will only jump again. And this time you may not be there.”

They waited as Perrault swayed, shadows beneath his eyes. The captain finally drew a breath and muttered, “I won’t return you. No.”

“Good decision,” Madsen said.

Perrault looked at his watch. “I’ll want you back at the wheel, Sara. With those sharp eyes. Keep Eddi up there as your ice lookout.”

“Yes, sir.” She rose.

“Mick, send the following: ‘Message received.’ Give them coordinates one hundred miles southwest of our current position. Then shut down. Turn off our radar and running lights. Sara, head north. Away from the ice.”

“But you’re giving up the fleet,” Madsen said. “Heading away from them. That’s not—”

“Until we get a legal opinion,” Perrault said. “If anyone has a problem with that decision, I will be in my cabin.” He started back, then turned. “Or, no. I will be in Mr. Quill’s room.”

When he’d left they sat or stood for a moment in the near dark. Then silently scattered, each to his or her assigned task.

11

The Corvette

She steered for hours, locked in the queer fishbowl world under the dome; within the boat, yet not. In all that time the seas rolled huge and empty under chasing clouds that only occasionally parted for a low sun the ominous reddish black of a rotting tomato. Each sea built off
Anemone
’s quarter, loomed, then burst against her side, seething the smooth composite with harshly hissing foam. Sara’s mind wandered, but her attention did not slip from the one hundred to four hundred yards in front of the dipping, tossing prow.

Then something seized her thigh and she flinched, only belatedly recalling she had a body that was not the boat’s, tendons other than shrouds, a consciousness not bounded by a saw-toothed horizon. It was Perrault. He clambered up to relieve her, their bodies twisting around each other like in an interpretive dance, or a party game designed to be played drunk. When she climbed down she staggered. Fell to her knees. Then groped erect again, and felt her way to her bunk.

*   *   *

“Breakfast,” Eddi sang.

Sara woke from a sleep akin to death. Found herself shuddering, bare of blankets. Nosing her own dank animal reek. Was this what she smelled like to the others? Of too much perfume over underwear stink and old sweat? She shivered and reached for the damp sweater that swayed from a hook. Grabbed the handhold and waited for the roll and swung herself down.

Dorée stood braced in the galley, hair hanging over her face, pushing something around on the stove to the accompaniment of a popping sizzle. Plates slid this way and that, corraled by the wooden grid that kept them from flying off. Sara got coffee and joined Auer, Bodine, and Georgie. Kimura sat a few feet off, cocooned in blankets but still shivering. His face was lemony gray, and his gaze was locked to a fire extinguisher bracketed to the bulkhead. A glance upward told her Lars was steering. She murmured a good-morning that only Georgie returned. “How’s Jamie doing?” she asked Bodine. He shook his head, squinting as if the light hurt his eyes. Their exhaled breaths mingled, white, vaporous, like visible ghosts.

Dorée lurched from the galley like a hermit crab venturing from its shell, caught herself on a stanchion, then slapped a platter down in front of them. Sara noticed that the rash, or whatever it was, extended up her neck now. The digits sticking out of teal gloves with the fingers snipped short were white and red with chilblains.

“Thank you, Tehiyah.”

A sour glance. “I never cook. Remember?”

“Well, I see I was wrong.” The eggs were partially charred, rubber at the edges. The toast, cremated. Shriveled, turdlike objects turned out to be soy sausages. Sara forced herself to chew one. Swallowed. There. Another bite.

From nowhere a distant voice whispered. Distorted, incomprehensible, but in distinct words. She lifted her head. The others looked up too, some quickly, others slowly. We’re all getting stupid, she thought.

Norris-Simpson frowned. “D’ I just hear something?”

“Shut up,” said Bodine. They listened. The voice spoke again, low and crackling. Sara pushed back her plate and rose. It seemed to be coming from back by the nav station.

“VHF call,” Madsen’s shout echoed down. “Get the captain.”

Sara crammed the last sausage into her mouth and lurched up, rising off her feet as the deck slanted away, then coming down so hard pain shot through her knees. She gasped, and scurried aft.