Dana Stabenow - Dead in the Water

She looked down at her plate, and was aware, not necessarily of things coming to a halt around her, but of attention being shifted to the two of them in an almost palpable way. "And proud of it," she agreed cheerfully, and forked up some egg.

"How can you be? Animals have souls," Andy told her, as earnest and as solemn as he had been the night before holding forth on prana, "the same as humans. Did you know that after death an animal may be reincarnated as a human, and vice versa?"

"Yes," Kate said calmly, taking the wind out of his sails and causing the other two men in the galley to look askance at each other and warily at her. Aleuts believed all things, animate and inanimate, had souls. She had learned that at her grandmother's knee, almost before she learned to walk, but she saw no reason to explain this to Andy.

"Well, then," Andy said, recovering, "don't you agree that it's wrong to kill animals unnecessarily? It interrupts their spiritual journey. It forces them to suffer another rebirth." Kate bit into a second slice of bacon and Andy, his voice rising slightly, said, "It upsets the cosmic scheme of things!"

Kate swallowed and said, "Define 'unnecessarily.'

"What?"

"Define 'unnecessarily.' " Nonplussed, he didn't reply, and Kate said, "It's necessary for me to eat."

"But not meat," he said quickly.

"No?"

Her tone was mild. Andy sensed a potential convert.

"You can get everything you need, every essential vitamin, every mineral, all the nourishment your body requires for health and a long life from a vegetarian diet." Kate chewed bacon. "And without the senseless and wasteful slaughter of other living creatures!" Andy looked at her, his face expectant. If he'd had a tail, it would have been wagging.

Kate regarded him for a moment without expression, and returned to her bacon. He sighed, a gusty sigh of disappointment.

He oinked once more but his heart wasn't in it. She ignored him, eating her way placidly through the rest of her bacon and eggs, watching him from the corner of her eye as she did so.

A little over two years back, in another life, when she had worked full-time instead of part-time for Jack Morgan, Kate's throat had been cut almost literally from ear to ear in an altercation with a gentleman caught in the act of abusing his four-year-old daughter at knifed point. The gentleman was now deceased, and Kate's voice was now as scarred as her throat, a low husk of sound ranging anywhere from rough to rasping, and, when she chose, from harsh to horrifying. This morning she chose. Andy's mouth had barely closed on a heaping spoonful of granola when her scream ripped across the peaceful breakfast scene with all the soothing quality of a grizzly's claws ripping through flesh.

The eggs Ned was in the process of flipping had the frying pan jerked out from beneath them and they splattered across the stove top, and the rest of Harry's coffee splashed across the front of his shirt.

"Jesus! What the fuck is wrong with you?" Harry roared at her. Ned was cursing slowly and steadily over the charring mess on the stove. "What's going on?" Seth called down from the bridge.

She ignored them, watching Andy mop milk and cereal out of his lap with a shaking hand. He looked up and she caught his eye. She leaned forward and said in an oh-so-gentle voice, "Were you aware that scientists have recorded the screams of plants as they are picked?"

Andy's jaw dropped. He stared at her, speechless. In the ensuing silence, Ned turned away to hide a grin. A deep, rusty chuckle rumbled up out of Harry's chest.

Andy bent back over his cereal bowl without another word, and Kate bit into her last piece of bacon with relish.

After breakfast it was Kate's watch and she went up to the bridge to relieve Seth, who gave her a quizzical look, or as near to it as those bland gray eyes could produce.

She responded with an equally bland smile.

Not five minutes after her butt hit the seat of the long-legged chair bolted to the deck next to the steering wheel, Harry Gault appeared on the bridge. He came to a stop next to her and waited, obviously expecting her to move so he could sit down.

She didn't budge. "Harry," she said calmly, "it's my watch, and I'm standing it. If you didn't trust me to steer this bucket, you should never have hired me on."

His answer was almost a snarl. "Like I had a say."

That was true enough, but Kate forebore to belabor the point. The fog was lifting a little, far enough to see a flat sea the same color as the fog rolling out in every direction. The automatic pilot was on, and all Kate had to do was mind the compass and watch for deadheads.

Harry stood there for another minute, his glower gathering in force and ferocity. Kate glanced over at the radar, found a clear screen and began to hum a little beneath her breath. After a moment or two and another near snarl, Harry stamped back down the stairs into the galley. The slam of his stateroom door reverberated all the way up to the bridge, and Kate broke into song.

" ' 'Tis a damn tough life full of toil and strife we whalemen undergo.' " She leaned forward to get a better look at a spot on the endless plain of water that turned out to be an Arctic tern, starting his 22,000-mile trip south a little late in her opinion. She sat back, hooked her toes over the top rung and thought about her skipper.

" 'And we don't give a damn when the gale is done how hard the winds did blow.' " And then there were three, and the third was Harry Gault, skipper of the good ship Avilda, now and six months ago, when Alcala and Brown had disappeared. He was short, bulky and obstreperous, one of those men who took his lack of height out on every moving target that came within range. That and the fact that his seamanship was borderline competent were the only two things she knew about him. So far. Finding out more was why she was on board.

"'Now we're homeward bound 'tis a grand old sound on a good ship taut and free, and we won't give a damn when we drink our rum with the girls of old Maui."' There was a tentative noise at the top of the stairs and she turned to see Andy Pence standing there, his expression indicating he had yet to forgive her for the scene at the breakfast table. "Hey there."

He directed his gaze at a point two inches above her left shoulder. "I was just on my way into the chart room."

She waved a benevolent hand. "Be my guest.

Fourth on the crew roster was Andy Pence, fresh off the beach of Ventura, California, seeking true adventure in the Far North, high as a kite on anything and everything Alaskan, and Kate's bunkie. Thus far, she had discovered that he meditated beneath a percale pyramid and didn't eat red meat. Last and most important, Andy Pence had been hired on after Kate, when the deckhand who had replaced Alcala had quit, and probably had nothing whatever to do with Alcala's and Brown's disappearance.

At best, he was harmless; at worst, a hindrance.

She thought back to the galley and grinned to herself. He was also, she hoped, a fast learner.

The rustle of stiff paper came from behind her. Curious, she checked the horizon and the autopilot and went back to see what Andy was up to.

The chart room stood aft of the wheelhouse. Andy was leaning his elbows on the tilted surface of the chart table, mooning over a marine chart. Kate stood up on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder. "What're you looking at the Shumagins for? That's a tad north of our heading, isn't it?"

Still very much on his dignity, he did not deem the question worthy of a civil reply. She smiled a little behind his back. He was so very young. The smile faded. As young as Stu Brown and Chris Alcala. She returned to the wheelhouse and hoisted herself back into the captain's chair, resuming her scan of the horizon.

It was almost noon, and the fog was beginning to burn off.