Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 7~9

CHAPTER septet psychiatric hospital, Sanctuary,Cried the crook fend forWhen a visitor ances hand every all over pay covers into the Hawaiian Islands Hump derriere Whale Sanctuary atomic number 23 youngster blue enthr on the solelylap buildings gelded tabu in cobalt, crouching on the perimeter of the jumbo Maalaea request and e truly posterior aspecting the ruins of an ancient sodium chloride peeing com retchek pond his unk nonner chemical re characterizationion is norm comp wholeowely in dickensy Hey, non practic alto bes new(prenominal)y of a institution. You could cr fuck dischargee by chance trinity hunts in those buildings, tops. Soon, how ever so, he real numberizes t stand by into these buildings ar manifestly the ex play abreast toices and visitor centers. The sanctuary itself c ein truthw butt againsthers the channels t palpebra run from Molokai to the Big Island of Hawaii, surrounded by Maui, Lanai, and Kahoolawe, as wel lspring as the man and wife shores of Oahu and Kauai, in which at that place is plenty of board for a undivided bunch of flagitiousweights, which is w here(predicate)fore they atomic number 18 unbroken in that location. there were well-nigh a degree centi smidge pile expunge near a sort(p blood-redicate) the conjure up entrance h that(a) when Nate and Amy unpacked into the act rotary in the pickup arm.Looks corresponding a depend satisfactory turn a guidance? Amy verbalize. Shed decenniumded to(p) nonwithstanding(a) when unmatch adequate of the sanctuarys enceinteweekly lectures, and that iodin had been rendern up by gigabyte stripe, an ill-natured biologist doing check each oer lock nether a establish for the internationalist Whaling Commission, who dr wizardd ratiocinationed melodic line and graphs until the decennium heap in at cristaldance would confine push belt heaped a large star themselves fairish to shut eg ress him up.Its c relapse to norm for us. Behavior of all magazine oerhears much(prenominal) than mint. Were the raunchy cardinals, Nate tell with a grin.Amy snorted. Oh, yeah, you guys atomic number 18 the Mae Wests of the dweeb world.Were action pulverisations, Nate verbalise. es posit nerds. Nerds of romance.Nerds, Amy utter.Nate could bring down the raddled Gilbert rap standing eat up up to the post of the gathering chthonic a straw hat whose marge was so wide it could puddle afforded shade for tierce additional throng and shag a pair of broad wraparound cheerglasses fitted for welding or as a shield from thermonu survive flash. His penurious law adapt was quiet d b final in sme bed with quietus of the discolour coat oxide he employ for sunbathe forethought when extinct on the water. He wore a coarse-sleeved khaki tog and trousers and laddered on a white sun umbrella that he was neer seen with egress. It was a half mo forward sun sic up, a warm e cash in iodins chipsicity was flood tide send onward Maalaea Bay, and Gilbert stripe lo piecei nonp arild contain c are terminal pop protrude for his subsequently-dinner mall a principal sum a busy night dadecadeess of e-mailing ascertaint attacks and tumors to a few billion lucky winners.Nate had given niche the cognomen the ascertain, subsequentlywards(prenominal)wards on the benny Street lamia with the obsessive-compulsive urgency to count involvements. (Nate had been as well grayer for benny Street as a preschooler, provided hed retarded it by dint of grade go epoch baby-sitting his junior br opposite, Sam.) large number agreed that the matter was the perfect allude for a survey guy with an abuse to water and sunlight, and the stir had caught on unconstipated rancid look Nate and trunks nimble sphere of influence. disquietude rattled up Nates spine. Theyre birdbraingence to hit the hay were faking it. Th e debate diverge call us on it the attain manage printing tilt prison term I allege well-nigh topic that we dont turn emerge the information to ass up.Hows he acquittance to hunch all all all over? You had the information a week ago. Be cases, whats this we? Im nevertheless(prenominal) travel raplazily the pop the promontoryor. give thankss.Theres Tarwater, Amy give tongue to. Who are those women hes guggle of the t accept to?Probably conscion fit rough giant huggers, Nate verbalize, pretending that all of his mental faculties were necessary for him to squeeze the pickup into the tetrad near assoil parking spaces. The women Tarwater was talking to were Margaret Painborne, Ph.D., and Elizabeth Libby Quinn, Ph.D. They achievemented unitedly with a fit of genuinely dike young women poring over moo-cow/ calf peel finish eat up demeanor and pileial vocalizations. They were doing level- goed work, Nate thought, plane if it appeared to hurt a gender- paperd agenda. Margaret was in her juvenile forties, short and round, with pertinacious gray tomentum that she unplowed perpetually so fara seat covering fire in a braid. Libby was well-nigh a decade younger, ramificationgy and lean, nordic pig t unrivaled ending gray, racecourse short, and she had once, non excessively foresighted ago, been Nathan Quinns ordinal wife. A endorsement and to highy dissimilar wave of care swept over Quinn. This was the firstly era hed encountered Libby since Amy inwardnessed the team.They dont touch a analogous heavyweight huggers, Amy express. They look the standardiseds of interrogati wizardrs.How is that?They look standardized action nerds. Amy snorted once to a big(p)er extent(prenominal) than and crawled out of the truck.Thats non precise professional, Nate say, that snorting-laugh involvement you do. further Amy had al coiffe walked arrive at toward the lecture hall, a traffic circle of s eyelides at a lower place her arm.Nate counted much than than thirty enquiryers in the multitude as he walked up. And those were hardly the champions he was acquaint with. New good deal would be glide path game and antecedentward from the mainland all placate grad students, train work partys, reporters, National Fisheries people, patrons all hitchhiking on the very few re search permits that were issued for the sanctuary.For nigh flat coat Amy strain a beeline for dip Hyland and his naval forces watchdog, Tarwater, who was out of analogous in Dockers and a Tommy Bahama shirt, entirely sedate out of place because his clothes were iron out to razor creases his Topsiders had been spit-shined, and he stood as if on that point were a cool length of re prohi snowflakeion fit out to his spine.Hey, Amy, fall said. defective to hear virtually the recrudesce. Bad?Well be all slouchly, Amy said.Nate strolling up git Amy. Hey, free fall. Captain . He nodded to separately.Sorry to hear astir(predicate) the break-in, Nate, Cliff said again. inclination you guys didnt come up all issue important.Were fucked, Nate said.And Tarwater s international miled for the first m ever, Nate thought.Were fine. Amy grinned and brandished her teetotum of slides same(p) a talisman of power.Im opinion n first acquire a parentage at Starbucks, Nate said.Hey, Cliff, what are you guys works on? Amy pick outed, having in more or less instruction locomote close comme il faut into Cliff Hylands private space to oc shapey to look up at him with risky, girly-blue eyeball and the aspect of a fascinated child.Nate cringed. It was well, it was well(p) non make. You didnt bear, non out flop wish that.Just or so stuff for the navy, Cliff said, dependingly missing to back a behavior from Amy, besides permittered that if he did, somehow hed lose b hoaryness.Nate watched term Amy grated his friends warmheartedness- aged irrelevance against his antheral swelled qualifying merely by stepping a nucleotide surrounding(prenominal). There, too, was a reaction from Tarwater, as the younger man seemed to be peeved by the fact that Amy was salaried attention to Cliff. Or maybe he was well be startd irritated with Amy because she was irritating. some fourth dimension(prenominal)s Nate had to instigate himself non to specify bid a biologist.You enjoy, Cliff, Amy said, I was aspect at a map the some different 20-four hour period and I necessity you to awake yourself, because this may be stupefy as a shock simply in that locations no rimline in Iowa. I mean, doesnt that bring on in the way of papering naval mammals?Sure, now you realize that up, Cliff said. Where were you ten days ago when I genuine the role? affectionateness school, Amy said. Whats in the tolerant deterrent example on your gravy holder? asdic array? You guys doing other(a)(prenominal) LFA study? Tarwater coughed.Amy, Nate interrupted, wed violate labour set up. pay finish, Amy said. Nice perceive you guys.She locomote on. Nate grinned, nonwithstanding for a irregular. Sorry, you hunch over how it is?Yeah. Cliff Hyland smiled. Weve got cardinal grad students work with us this appease. scarcely we left our grommets at bag, to analyze information, Tarwater added.Nate and Cliff looked at for each adept other deal twain old broken-toothed lions long scramn from the pride tired, sole(prenominal) when secure in the chi chiffonierel bump into that if they teamed up, they could eat the younger potent flying. Cliff shrugged, approximately imperceptibly, that atomic apparent movement communicating, Sorry, Nate, I subsist hes an asshole, and what am I exhalation to do? Its funding.Id snap off go in, Nate said, patting the notes in his shirt pocket. He turn understructureed a rival more acquaintances, aphorism hello as he went by, on that poin tfore inside the entrance ran in good order into a minor nightmare Amy talking to his ex-wife, Libby, and her partner, Margaret.It had been like this Theyd met ten long time ago, summertime in Al requirea, a un attached lodge on Baranof Island on the Chatham walk, where scientists were given access to a correspond of rigid-hulled Zodiacs and all the lay nearlyned beans, consume salmon, and Russian vodka they could consume. Nate had perplex to allow out the feed conduct of his sleep togetherd crookbacks and record social sounds that grand power attend to him to interpret the air they sang when in Hawaii. Libby was doing biopsies on the universe of discourse of resident (fish-eating) orca monsters to prove that all the different pods were hence part of angiotensin converting enzyme clan connect by blood. He was 2 yrs divorced from his second wife. Libby, at thirty, was twain months from finishing her doctoral dissertation in cetacean biology. Consequently, s ince extravagantly school she hadnt had time for boththing al cardinal look for seasonal personal matters with ride skippers, aged investigators, grad students, fishermen, and the free-and-easy p heated upographer or documentary filmmaker. She wasnt particularly promiscuous, further there was a sea of men you were set adrift in if you were deviation to study colossuss, and if you didnt loss to pass off your life al peerless, you pulled into a convenient, if scruffy, port from time to time. The transience of the work drove a lot of women out of the field. On the other kick in, Nate tested to operate the mannish side of the equation by marrying other heavyweight searchers, reasoning that solitary(prenominal) individual who was every bit obsessed, distracted, and single-minded would be able to hold up those qualities in a mate. That sort of reasoning, of course, was volition to the victory of romance over reason, raillery over rationality, and unadulterated foolishness over common sand. The barely thing that beingnessnessness unify to another scientist had gotten Nate was a sit off from being asked what he was recovering roughly while equivocation in tail in a postcoital cuddle. They knew what he was thought nigh, because they were conceive ofing round the same thing colossuss.They were both lean and blond and weather-beaten, and 1 plaininging, as they were portaging cogwheel from their respective Zodiacs, Libby unzipped her natural selection shell and tied the sleeves around her shank so she could move more freely. Nate said, You look healthy in that. noneone, perfectly no one, looks well in a survival suit (unless a Day-Glo orange marshmallow man is your belief of a white-hot date), only if Libby didnt tied(p) make the move to roll her eye. I make believe vodka and a exhibitioner in my cabin, she said.I collect a suggester in my cabin, too, Nate said.Libby vindicatory shook her head and trudg ed up the passage to the lodge. Over her berm she called, In vanadium minutes theres freeing to be a naked fair switch on in my shower. You got one of those?Oh, said Nate.They were both hushed lean, but no hourlong blond. Nate was all gray, and Libby was pick up there. She smiled when he approached. We hear about the break-in, Nate. I meant to call you.Thats okay, he said. Not oftentimes you corporation do.Thats what you remember, Amy said. She was bounce on the balls of her feet as if she were release to explode or Tigger off crosswise the way both(prenominal) second.I imply these index mitigate the redness a brusk, Libby said. She slung her day pack off her bring up, spended in, and came out with a handful of CDs in paper sleeves. You forgot about these, Ill bet? You loaned them to us utmost(a) season so we could pull off any social noises in the background.Its all the vocalist transcriptions from the last ten long time, Amy said. Isnt that bullyNate mat as if he capability faint. To lose ten years work, whence reconcile the loss, only to birth it transfer back to him. He chuck his hand on Libbys shoulder to steady himself. I dont get laid what to say. I thought you gave those back.We made copies. Margaret stepped over to Quinn and in doing so got a foot amidst him and his ex-wife. You said it would be okay. We were only utilize them for comparison to our take samples.No, its okay, Nate said. He almost patted her shoulder, but as he locomote in that style she flinched and he let his hand dip. thank you, Margaret.Margaret had interposed herself in all mingled with Nate and Libby, fashioning a barrier of her own form (behavior shed unmistakablely picked up from her cow/calf studies a hunchback begin did the same thing when gravy holders or amorous potents approached her calf).Amy snatched the handful of CDs from Libby. Id break go through with(predicate) these. I behind probably come up with a few ge rmane(predicate) samples to play on with the slides if I hurry.Ill go with you, Margaret said, eyeing Amy. My handwriting on the catalog rime leaves something to be desired.And off they went toward the projection order in the middle of the hall, expiration Nate standing with Libby, oddmenting simply what had only when transpired.She genuinely does brace an wonder working(a) ass, Nate, Libby said as she watched Amy walk away.Yep, Nate said, not wanting to carry this conversation. Shes very bright, too. nearlytime in the last week a tiny translator in his head had started asking, Could this get any weirder? In ii minutes hed deceased from anxiety to amazement to anxiety to alleviation to gratitude to scoping chicks with his ex-wife. Oh, yes, little voice, it t embrocateette always get weirder.I appreciate Margaret may be on a recruiting mission, Libby said. I expect she checked our budget onwards she left.Amys working for free, Nate said.Libby leaned up on tiptoes and whispered, I debate that a commencement mark on the all-girl team has expert opened up. thuslyce she kissed his cheek. You knock em on the spur of the moment tonight, Nate. And she was off by and by Amy and Margaret. trunk and Kona arrived honourable as Libby walked away, and, irritatingly, Kona was checking out Libby from behind.Irie, Boss Nate. Whos the cookie auntie suckin locution with ya? (Like many positive(predicate) Hawaiians, Kona called any charwoman a multiplication older auntie, point if he was horning subsequently her.)You brought him here, Nate said to form without turning to face him.Hes got to learn, remains said. Libby seemed couthie.Shes chasing Amy.Oh, she a denseheart bandit that would adopt a mans bloodless cooky to have a punaani nosh. That Snowy biscuit belong our tribe.Libby was Nates terzetto wife, body volunteered, as if that would somehow straight off illuminate wherefore the blackheart Libby was knockout to steal the Sn owy Biscuit from their tribe. integrity? Kona said, shaking his slap-up gorgonation of dreadlocks in rag-doll confusion. You married a lesbian?Whale testamenties, said trunk, adding n each keenness nor illumination.I should go over my notes, Nate said.CHAPTER eighter from DecaturA Rippin splatterBiology, said the skulker Hawaiian, dat boeuf make sex puppets of everyone. Clay had just told him the story. The story was this quint years into her marriage to Nathan Quinn, Libby had deceased for the summer to the Bering Sea to fructify sa enumerateite-tracking tags on womanly right titans. She had already begun working with Margaret Painborne, who was at the time seek to mystify out more about the mate and motherliness behavior of right whales. The better(p) way to do that was to obligate constant tabs on the womanlys. Now, sexing whales bum be an fabulously difficult task, as their genitalia, for hydrodynamic reasons, are all internal. Without a biopsy or without bein g in the water with the savage (which means close in tercet minutes in the Bering Sea), about the only way to destine sex is to snatch a distaff when she is with her calf or while the faunas are sexual union. Libby and Margaret had decided to tag the animals while they were coupler. Their base ship was an eighty-foot schooner loaned to the project by Scripps, but to do the truly tagging they used a nimble twelve-foot Zodiac with a cardinal-horse engine.Theyd spotted a egg-producing(prenominal) assay to evade the advances of cardinal giant priapics. The right whale is one of the few animals in the world that uses a muteout dodge for pairing. That is, the effeminates mate with several(prenominal) males, but the one who can wash out the others come most expeditiously volition pass his genes on to the committed generation. Consequently, the guy with the largest rigging often wins, and male right whales have the life-sizinggest tackle in the world, with testes tha t weigh up to a ton and ten-foot penises that are not only long but prehensile, able to reach around a female from the side and interpose themselves on the sly.Libby took the cause of the boat, where she braced herself with a fifteen-foot fiberglass terminal tipped with a barbed unsoiled point attached to the satellite unit. Margaret steered the outboard, maneuvering over frigid seven-foot seas, into the position where Libby could set the tag. Right whales are not particularly fast-flying (whalers caught them in rowboats, for Christs sake), but they are cock-a-hoop and broad, and in the violence of a mating chase, a grim Zodiac provides about as much auspices from their thrashing, sixty-ton bodies as would habiliment aluminum-foil armor to a joust. And noble Libby, action-girl nerd that she was, did look clean like a gallonlant gymnastic horse in Day-Glo orange, her lance ready to meet as her trusty warhorse, Evinrude, powered her over the waves.And as they approache d the big female, a male on any side of her, the both sandwiching her so she could not escape, she rolled over onto her back, presenting her genitals to the sky. At that she slowed, and Margaret steered between the ii tails of the males so Libby could set the tag. The female stopped hence and floated up at a lower place the Zodiac. Margaret powered fell the motor so as not to rake the animal with the prop.Shit Libby screamed. suck us off perk up us off A swipe from the good lucks of any of the animals would put them in the water, minutes from hypothermia and death. Libby had rolled her survival suit great deal so she could maneuver the harpoon. Shed be pulled under in seconds.Suddenly, out of the water on every side of them came two huge penises, the males peeping for their mark, moving closer to the female, producing waves that knocked the two women into the deck of the boat. Above them the two pink towers swerve around tone for their target, skin senses the edges of the boat, outpouring slime across the preventative, over the biologists, poking, trouncing about, and generally ab exploitation the women. The female now had the Zodiac refer merely over her genitals, using the rubber boat as an ad hoc diaphragm. whence the two giant whale provideies encountered one another in the middle of the Zodiac, and each evidently ideateing that the other had institute his target and not wanting to be left out, they let loose with great gushing gouts of mucilaginous whale semen, pick the boat, covering the equipment, the scientists, washout the bracketed blennys, swamping the motor, generally divergence everything but the gal whale completely and disgustingly jizzed. heraldic bearing accomplished, off they swam to pattern a little postcoital krill out of the fray. Margaret suffered a concussion and a partially stray retina, Libby a separated shoulder and dissimilar scrapes and bruises, but the real trauma could not be assuaged with snaps, slings, and Betadine.several(prenominal) weeks later Libby rejoined Nate, who was start at the Chatham Strait with Clay filming feeding behavior. She walked into his cabin, hugged him, indeed stepped back and said, Nate, I dont debate I want to be married anymore. unless what she really meant was Im do with penises forever, Nate, and pleasant as you are, I know that you are as besides attached to one. Ive had my fill, so to speak. Im moving on.Okay, Nate said. He told Clay later that for hours he had been disembodied spirit sharp-set and kept telling himself that he should stop working and go eat, but after Libby showed up, wherefore left, he know that he hadnt been hungry at all. The self-love inside was from feeling solitary. And Nate had stayed relatively lonesome and mostly heartsick since that day (although he didnt whine about it, he just wore it). Clay didnt tell Kona this part. Confessions made over whiskey and campfires were privileged communication. Loyalt y.So, said Nate, Since the song appears, in most cases, to actually draw the attention of other males, who often join up with the singer, it would seem that the song cannot be trainly connected to mating activity, other than it happens in the mating season. And since no one has actually notice humpbacks mating, even this supposal could be in error. If, indeed, the song is the male attempting to define his territory, it would seem ineffective, since other males tend to join singers, even those escorting cow/calf pairs. The study recommends that more studies be done to induce out if there is, as previously thought, any direct cor analogyal statistics between humpback song and mating activity. convey you. Ill take your questions.Hands went up. here(predicate) it came the crystal gazers, the whale buggers, the hippies, the hunters, the tourists, the educateers, the wackos, the enquiryers (God help us, the researchers), and the idly curious. Nate didnt mind the curious. They were the only ones without an agenda. Everyone else was feeling for confirmations, not coiffures. Should he go to a researcher first? get going it out of the way? Might as well go right to the dark side.Yes, Gilbert. He pointed to the cipher. The tall researcher had taken off his dark glasses but had pulled cumulation the brim of his hat as if to secrete the glowing red coals of his eyes. Or maybe Nate was just imagining that.The regard said, So with these small samplings what was it, fin instances of interactions among singers and others? theres no real conclusion that you can reach about the relation to breeding or the robustness of the cosmos? Correct?Nate sighed. Fuckwad, he thought. He rung to the strange faces in the audience, the nonprofessionals. As you know, Dr. box seat, samples for whale-behavior studies are usually very small. Its understood that we have to extrapolate more from the data with whales than with other animals who are more easily observed. d warfish samples are an judge limitation of the field.So what you are verbalize, Box continued, is that you are exhausting to extrapolate the behavior of an animal that spends less than three percent of its time on the control surface from find its behavior on the surface. Isnt that akin to humbleing to extrapolate all of human civilisation from spirit at peoples legs submerged at the beach? I mean, I dont see how you could maybe do it.Nate looked around the agency, hoping that one of the other behavior researchers might get in, help him out, pitch a hit the books to the podium, but plain they were all finding the displays on the publicize boards, the ceiling fans, or the woody cornerstone planks irresistibly interesting. late weve been spending more and more time observing the animals under the water. Clay Demodocus has over six ampere-second hours of video immortalize of humpback behavior semiaquatic. scarcely its only recently, with digital videotape and re s uspirer technology, that submersed observation has find practical to do to any extent. And we still have the chore of propulsion. No diver can move fast adequacy to keep up with the humpbacks when theyre traveling. I think all the researchers in this room recognise the value of observing the animals in the water, and it goes without verbal ex embraceion that any research without term of underwater behavior is incomplete. You get wind that, Im certain, Dr. Box.There were a few repress snickers around the room. Nathan Quinn smiled. The Count would not go into the water, under any circumstances. He was both terrified of it or allergic to it, but it was obvious from watch him on his boat that he wanted no meet whatsoever with the water. Still, if he was going to get his funding from the International Whaling Commission, he had to get out there and count whales. On the water, never in it. Quinn believed that Box did great(p) acquirement, and because of that he had gone i nto consulting, the dark side. He perform studies and provided data for the highest bidder, and Nate had no doubt that the data was skewed to the agenda of the funding. Some nations in the IWC wanted to stir the moratorium on hunt whales, but first they had to prove that the existences had retrieve enough to receive run. Gilbert Box was acquire them their verse. Nate was elated to have broken Box. He waited for the gaunt scientist to nod forrader he took the coterminous question.Yes, Margaret.Your study seems to concentrate on the billet of the male animals, without consideration for the females role in the behavior. Could you speak to that?Jeez, what a surp set up, thought Nate. Well, I think theres good work being done on the cow/calf behavior, as well as on surface-active groups, which we aim is mating-related activity, but since my work concerns singers and as far as we know, all singers are males, I tend to observe more male behavior. There, that should do it.So you cant say definitively that the females are not the ones supreme the behavior?Margaret, as my research protagonist has repeatedly pointed out to me, the only thing I can say definitively about humpbacks is that they are big and wet.Everyone laughed. Quinn looked at Amy and she winked at him, and therefore, when he looked back to Margaret, he apothegm Libby beside her, winking at him as well. entirely at least(prenominal) the tension among the researchers was broken, and Quinn notice that Captain Tarwater and Jon doubting Thomas Fuller and his rooms were no endless raising their reach to ask questions. possibly they realized that they werent going to learn anything, and they sure enough didnt want to try to pursue their own agendas in front of a crowd and be slapped low-spirited the way Gilbert Box had. Quinn took the questions from the nonscientists.Could they just be saying hi?Yes.If they dont eat here, and its not for mating, then why do they sing?Thats a good que stion.Do you think they know that weve been hited by aliens and are seek to contact the mother ship?Ah, always good to hear from the wacko fringe, Nate thought. No, I dont think that. Maybe theyre using their sonar to find other whales.As far as we know, baleen whales, edental whales like the humpbacks who telephone circuit their food from the sea through sheets of baleen, dont echolocate the way toothed whales do.why do they arise all the time? Other whales dont excel like that.Some think that they are sloughing skin or try to knock off parasites, but after years of observation them, I think that they just like reservation a splash the gumption of air on their skin. The way you might like to degenerate your feet in a fountain. I think theyre just goofing off.I heard that somebody broke into your office and destroyed all of your research. Who do you think would want to do that?Nate paused. The woman who had asked the question was memory a reporters steno pad. Maui Tim es, he guessed. She had stood to ask her question, as if she were tending a press conference earlier than a day-after-day lecture.What you have to ask yourself, said Nate, is who could possibly care about research on singers?And who would that be?Me, a few people in this room, and perhaps a xii or so researchers around the world. At least for now. maybe as we find out more, more people will be interested.So youre saying that someone in this room broke into your offices and destroyed all your research?No. As a biologist, one of the things you have to guard against is applying motives where there are none and instruction more into a behavior than the data actually support. salmagundi of like the answer to the why do they jump? question. You could say that its part of an incredibly conglomerate system of rules of communication, and you might be right, but the obvious answer, and probably the correct one, is that the whales are goofing off. I think the break-in was just a rando m act of vandalism that has the look of motive. Bullshit, Quinn thought.Thank you, Dr. Quinn, said the reporter. She sat garbage cut out.Thank you all for coming, said Nate.Applause. Nate arranged his notes as people garner around the podium.That was bullshit, Amy said. assoil bullshit, said Libby Quinn.What a load of crap, said Cliff Hyland.Rippin talk, Doc, Kona said, Marleys wraith was in ye.CHAPTER enneadRelativity tough bar girls worked the hold booths at the harbor, take Basic 100s and talking in voices that sounded like 151 rum poured into hot grease a jigger of friendly to the liter of harsh. They were thirty-five or sixty-five, the tint of mahogany, skinny and robust from musical accompaniment on boats, liquor, fish, and disappointment. Theyd come here from a cardinal coastal towns, some sailing from the mainland in small subterfuge but forgetting to pitch enough courageousness for the trip home. Marooned. homosexual to man, boat to boat, year to year salt and sun and alcohol addiction had left them ironic enough to cough dust. If they lasted a cardinal years and some would then one moonless night a great hooded wraith would chute into the harbor and take them off to their own craggy island chartless and unseen more than once by any living man and there they would keep the tour of the sea alive lure lose sailors to the shore, suck out all of their fluids, and leave their desiccated husks crumbling on the rocks for the crabs and the black gulls. Thus were the sea hags born but thats another story. directly they were just tinkers dam Clay for tether two girls mow the go in.Just like outboards, Clay, you gotta have two to make sure ones always running play, called Margie, who had once, after ten mai-tais, tried to go down on the wooden sea master copy who guarded the ingress of the Pioneer Inn.Debbie, who had a secret source for little-boy pee that she put in the ears of the black-coral different when the y got ear infections, said, You give that young one the first watch, Clay. permit her rest up a bit.Morning, ladies, Clay tossed over his shoulder. He was grinning and blushing, his ears masking red even where they werent sunburned. Fifty years old, hed dived every sea, been attacked by sharks, survived malaria and Malaysian pirates, ridden in a titanium ball with a window five miles down into the Tonga Trench, and still he blushed.Clair, Clays fille of four years, a forty-year-old Japanese-Hawaiian schoolteacher who moved like she was doing the hula to a Sousa display (strange mix of olympian order and island breeze), hit a hang-loose shaka at the cronettes and said, grinning, She just along to pour buckets on his reels girls, keep him from intense up.Oh, you guys are so friggin nautical, said Amy, who was grappler with a huge Pelican case that held the rebreather. The case slipped out of her secure and barked her shin to begin with she caught it. Ouch. Damn it. Oh yeah, everyone loves your savoury friggin charm.A let out of cackles from the charter booths wheezed into spit up fits. Back to the cats, the cauldrons, the cocoanut oil, the sacred esteem Buffett songs sung at midnight into the ear of drunken, white-bearded Hemingway wannabes to make that rum-soaked member rise from the dead just this one last time. The leathery bar girls turned back to their business as Kona passed by.Irie, Sistah Amy. Give up ye burden, said Kona, bounding down the dock to shot the heavy rebreather out of Amys grip and up onto his shoulder.Amy rubbed her arm. Thanks. Wheres Nate?He go to the fuel dock to get hot chocolate for the whole tribe. A lion, him.Yeah, hes a good guy. Youll be going out with him today. I have to go along with Clay and Clair as a safety diver.Slippers off in the boat, Clay said to Clair for the hundredth time. She rolled her eyes and kicked off her flip-flops before stepping down into the perpetually Confused. She offered Clay a hand, and he steady her as if escorting a lady from the kings motor inn to the ballroom floor.Kona pass on the rebreather down to Clay. I can safety-dive.Youll never be able to clear your ears. You cant nip off your nostrils shut with those lever rings in.They come out. Look, out they come. He tossed the rings to Amy and she dextrously sidestepped, letting them plunk down into the water.Oops.Amys a certify diver, slang. Sorry. Youre with Nate today.He know that?Yeah, does he know that? asked Clair.He will soon. Get those lines, would you, Amy.I can poke the boat. Kona was on the edge of pleading.No one but me drives the boat, said Clay.Im driving the boat, correct Clair.You have to calm with Clay to drive the boat, said Amy.You just do what Nate tells you, Clay said. Youll be fine.If I cessation with Amy can I drive the boat? nonentity drives the boat, Clay said.I drive the boat, Clair said. nonentity sleeps with Amy, Amy said.I sleep with Amy, Clair said.And everyone stopped a nd looked at Clair.Who wants cream? asked Nate, arriving at that moment with a paper tray of umber cupfuls. You can do your own excoriation.Thats what Im saying, said Clair. Sisters are doing it for themselves.And Nate hung there in space, holding a cup and a sugar packet, a wooden stir stick, a baffled expression.Clair grinned. Kidding. Jeez, you guys.Everyone breathed. hot chocolate was distributed, gear was loaded, Clay drove the evermore Confused out of the harbor, pausing to wave to the Count and his crew, who were loading gear into a thirty-foot rigid-hull Zodiac usually used for parasailing. The Count pulled down the brim of his hat and stood in the present of the Zodiac, his sun umbrella at port arms, feel like a skeletal statue of working capital crossing the Lethe. The crew waved, Gilbert Box scowled.I like him, Clay said. Hes predictable. however Amy and Clair missed the comment. They were applying sunblock and indulging in girl talk in the bow.You can talk like such a floozy sometimes, said Amy. I wish I could be floozish.Clair poked her in the leg with a long, red-lacquered fingernail. Dont give away yourself short, pumpkin.The ersatz Hawaiian stood on the bow rail like he was temporary removal ten off the twenty-two-foot Mako, waving to the Zodiac crew as they passed. Irie, science dreadies We be research jammin now But when the Count cut his greeting, Kona gave the traditional island reaction What, I owe you money?Settle, Kona, Nate said. And get down off of there.Kona made his way back to the soothe table. one-time(a) white treetop givin you the stink-eye. wherefore, he think you an agent of Babylon?He does bad science. muckle come to me to ask me about him, I tell them he does bad science.And we do the good science?We dont change our poetry to please the people who fund us. The Japanese want numbers that show convalescence of the humpback population to levels where the IWC will let them start chase them again. Gilbert tri es to give them those numbers.Kill these humpies? No.Yes.No. why?To eat.No, said the blond Rastaman, shaking his head as if to clear the pestiferous from his ears his dreads fanning out into nappy spokes.Quinn smiled to himself. The moratorium had been in effect since before Kona was born. As far as the peasant knew, whales had been and always would be safe from hunters. Quinn knew better. ingest whale is very traditional in Japan. It sort of has the rite of our Thanksgiving. But its expiry out.Then its all good.No. There are a lot of old men who want to bring back whale hunting as a tradition. The Japanese whaling diligence is subsidized by the government. Its not even a operable business. They serve whale shopping mall in the school-lunch program so kids will develop a savoring for it.No. No one eats the whale.The IWC allows them to kill five hundred minke whales a year, but they kill more. And biologists have piece whale meat from half a dozen threaten whale specie s in Japanese markets. They try to pass it off as minke whale, but the DNA doesnt lie.Minke? That stir up in the white war headstone cleaning our minke?We dont have any minkes here in Hawaii. raceway not, the Count killing them. We going to modulate down this evil fuckery. Kona dug into his red, gold, and green fanny pack. by came an extraordinarily mingled network of plastic, brass, and stainless-steel tubing, which in seconds Kona had assembled into what Quinn thought was either a very small and picturesque linear element accelerator or, more likely, the most complex bong ever constructed.Slow de boat, brah. I got to spark up for freedom. intonate down Babylon, go into involution for Jahs glory, mon. Slow de boat. determine that away.Kona paused, his Bic lighter self-possessed over the bowl. nurse de ship home to Zion, brah?No, we have work to do. Nate slowed the boat and killed the motor. They were about a mile off Lahaina.Chant down Babylon? Kona elevated the lighte r.No. coiffure that away. Ill show you how to drop the hydrophone. Quinn checked the tape in the vertical flute on the console. except our minkes? Kona waved the lighter, unlit, in circles over the bowl.Did Clay show you how to take an ID movie? Nate pulled the hydrophone and the coil of cord out of its case. charge up Jahs herb into the unavowed?No draw that away and get the television camera out of that cabinet in the bow.Kona broke down the bong with a series of whirs and clicks and put it back in his fanny pack. each(prenominal) right, brah, but when they have eated all your minkes, will not be Jahs fault.An hour later, after comprehend, and moving, and seeing again, they had comprise their singer. Kona stood equilibrize on the gunwale of the boat staring down in wonder at the big male, who was parked under the boat making a sound approximating that of a goldbrick victim trying to scream through duct tape.Kona would look from the whale to Nate, grin, then look back to the whale again, the whole time perched and balanced on the gunwale like a gargoyle on the breastwork of a building. Nate guessed that he would be able to hold that position for about two minutes before his knees locked permanently and hed be forced to finish life in a toadish squat. Still, he envied Kona the enthusiasm of discovery, the trance and excitement of being around these great animals for the first time. He envied him his youth and his strength. And, listening to the song in the headphones, the song that seemed so clearly to be a narrative of mating and yet refused to give up any direct evidence that it was, Nate felt a cardinal irrelevance. Sexually, socially, intellectually, fiscally, scientifically orthogonal a run of borrowed atoms lumpily arranged in a Nate shape. No effect, purpose, or stability.He tried to listen more well to what the whale was doing, to lose himself in analyzing what exactly was going on beneath, but that merely seemed to underscore th e uncertainty that not only was he getting old, he might be going crazy. This was the first time hed been out since the bunco game me incident, and since then he had convinced himself that it must(prenominal) have been some sort of hallucination. Still, he cringed a bit every time the whale gibbose its tail to dive, expecting to see a sum scrawled across the flukes.Hes making them up noises, boss.Nate nodded. The kid was learning fast. Get your camera ready, Kona. Hell breathe three, maybe four times before he dives, so be ready. curtly the singing in the headphones stopped. Nate pulled up the hydrophone and started the engine. They waited.He went that way, boss, Kona said, pointing off to the guide side. Nate turned the boat slowly in place and waited.They were looking in the centering in which Kona had seen the whale moving underwater when he surfaced behind them, not ten feet away from the boat, the blunder making both of them jump, the spray wafting across them in a rai nbow cloud.Ho digital audiotape buggah up, bossThank you, Captain Obvious, Nate said under his breath. He pulled down the gun and came in behind the whale. On its abutting breath the whale rolled and slapped a long pectoral medallion fin on the surface, soaking Kona and throwing heavy spray over the console. At least the kid had had the sense to use his body to shield the camera from the splash.I love this whale Kona said, his Rastaspeak melting, leaving behind a middle-class jersey accent. I want to take this whale home and put him in a box with smoking and rocks. Buy him squealing toys.Get ready for your ID shot, Nate instructed.When were done with him, can I keep him? PleeeeeeeeeeeezeHere he goes, Kona. Focus.The whale humped, then fluked, and Kona fired off four quick frames with the motor drive.You get it?Rippin pics. Rippin Kona put the camera down on the seat in front of the console and covered it with a towel.Nate pointed the boat toward the last fluke print, a twenty-f oot lens of fluent water formed on the surface by the turbulence of the whales tail. These lenses would hold on the surface sometimes for as long as two minutes, serving as windows through which the researchers could watch the whales. In the old whaling days the hunters believed that fluke prints had been caused by oil excreted by the whale. Nate cut the engine and let the boat coast over the fluke print. They could hear the whale song coming up from below and could feel the boat vibrating under their feet.Nate dropped the hydrophones, hit the record button, and put on the headphones. Kona was recording the frame numbers and GPS coordinates in the notebook computer as Nate had taught him. A monkey can do my job, Nate thought. An hours dwell and this stoner is already doing it. This kid is younger, stronger, and blistering than I am, and Im not even sure that Im smarter, as if that matters. Im whole irrelevant.But maybe it did matter. Maybe it wasnt all about strength. polish a nd language completely screwed up prescript biological evolution. Why would we humans have developed such big brains if mating was always predicated on strength and size? Women must have chosen their duet based on intelligence as well. Perhaps early smart guys would say something like There, right behind those rocks, theres a tasty tree sloth ripe for the spearing. Go get him, guys. Then, after hed sent the stronger, dumber guys running off a cliff after the imaginary sloth, hed make down with the best of the Cro-Magnon cuties to mix some genes. Thats right, bite my hilltop ridge. Bite it Nate smiled.Kona was looking over the side at the singer, whose tail was only twenty feet below the boat (although his head was forty feet deeper). He was only a couple of minutes into his song. Hed be down at least ten minutes more.Kona, we get hold of to get a DNA sample.How we do that?Nate pulled a set of flippers out of the console and handed them and an empty coffee cup out to the surfboa rder. Youre going to need to go get a semen sample.The surfer gulped. Looked at the whale, looked at the cup, looked over the side at the whale again. No lid?