Peter Watts: Bulk Food

The captain shakes his head. “You’re the ambassadors. We’re just the taxi. They don’t want us in the zone while you commune .”

Periwinkle smiles patiently. She hears the resentment in the captain’s voice, but she understands. It must be hard, seeing the Chosen Few going to make history while he just drives the boat.

She feels sorry for him. She resolves to chant with him when he comes back to pick them up.

The captain grunts and waves her away. He sniffs and wonders, not for the first time, if this woman remembered to clean the snails out of those shells before incorporating them into her own personal fashion statement. Or maybe it’s one of those natural fragrances they’re advertising these days.

The passengers file onto the platform. The first mate, still holding Dipnet ’s leash, leaps back onto the foredeck. The boat growls backwards, changes gear, and wallows off into the haze. The sound of her engine fades with distance.

Eventually all is quiet again. The Chosen look about eagerly, not wanting to speak in this holy place. The orcas that guided them here have disappeared. Swells lap against the floats. The Race Rocks Lighthouse complains about the fog.

“Hey, you guys.” It’s the heretic again. He’s watching the boat recede “When exactly are they supposed to be coming back for us?”

The others don’t answer. This is a quiet moment, a sacred moment. It’s no time to chatter about logistics. This guy doesn’t know the first thing about reverence. Really, sometimes they wonder how he ever made the cut.

One whole Plexiglas wall looks into the turquoise arena of the killer whale tank; a pair of tail flukes disappear up through the surface in ratcheting increments. The opposite wall serves as little more than a frame for the biggest flatscreen monitor Doug has ever seen. Murky green water swirls across that display. Wriggling wavelight reflects off a glass coffee table in the middle of the room. An antique oak desk looms behind it like a small wooden mesa.

In the middle of it all, Doug looks up from the floor at Anna Marie Hamilton and Bob Finch, executive director of the Aquarium. Anna Marie Hamilton and Bob Finch look back. This goes on for a moment or two.

“Can I help you, sir?” Finch asks at last.

“I—I think I got lost,” Doug says, experimentally putting his foot down on the floor. It hurts, but it feels limpable, not broken.

“The viewing gallery is that way,” Anna Marie announces, pointing to a different door than the one through which Doug arrived. “And I’m in the middle of some very tough negotiating, fighting for the freedom of our spiritual sib—”

“Actually, Ann—Ms. Hamilton, I suspect that Mr.—Mr. …”

“Largha,” Doug says weakly.

“I suspect that Mr. Largha isn’t all that interested in the boring details of our, er, negotiations.” Finch extends a hand, helps Doug up off the carpet. Doug stands unsteadily.

“I was looking for—the gift shop !” His mission! Precious seconds, precious minutes irretrievably lost while all those other dorks and bozos line up to lay claim for his meat! If he doesn’t come home with the steaks, he’ll be sleeping on the sofa for a week. Doug turns and lunges towards the door he came through.

He forgets all about his ankle for the half-second it takes for him to try and run on it. By the end of that same second he’s on the floor again. “My steaks—” he whimpers. “I was going to be at the head of the line … I had it planned to the second …”

“Well, I must say,” Finch extends a helping hand again, “it’s heartening to see someone so enthusiastic about the Aquarium’s new programs. Not everyone is, you know. Let me see what I can do.”

Anna Marie Hamilton stands with her arms folded, sighing impatiently. “ Mister Finch,” she says, “if you think I’m going to let this distract me from the liberation of—”

“Not now, Ms. Hamilton. This will only take a moment. And then I promise, we can get right back to your tough and uncompromising negotiations.” Finch takes a step towards the door, turns back to Doug. “Say, Mr. Largha, would you like to talk to a killer whale while you’re waiting? A Matriarch ? We have a live link to Juan de Fuca.” He raises an arm to the flatscreen on one wall.

“Uh, live?” Emotions squabble in Doug’s cortex. The pain of failure. The hope of salvation. And now, a vague discomfort. “I don’t know. I mean, they are okay with this, aren’t they? The whole whale show thing?”

“Mr. Largha, not only are they okay with it—it was their idea.

So how about it? A conversation with a real, alien intelligence?”

“I don’t know,” Doug stammers. “I don’t know what I’d say —”

Anna Marie snorts.

Finch draws a remote control from his blazer. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.” He points the remote at the flatscreen, thumbs a control.

Nothing obvious happens.

“Back in a moment,” Finch promises, and closes the door behind him.

Anna Marie turns her back. Doug wonders if maybe she’s offended by someone who would be in such a rush to line up for orca steaks.

Or maybe she just doesn’t like people very much.

A long, mournful whistle. “Sister Predator,” intones an artificial voice.

Doug turns to the flatscreen. A black-and-white shape looms up in the murky green wash of Juan de Fuca Strait. Lipless jaws open a crack; a zigzag crescent of conical teeth reflects gray in the dim light.

That whistle again. In one corner of the flatscreen, a flashing green tag: Receiving . “Fellow Sister Predator. Welcome.”

Doug gawks.

Clicks. Two rapid-fire squeals. A moan. More clicks.

Receiving .

“I am Second Grandmother. I trust you enjoy Aquarium and its many award-winning educational displays—”

Bzzt . In the upper left-hand corner of the screen: Line Interrupt . Silence.

At a panel on Finch’s desk, Anna Marie Hamilton takes her finger off a red button.

“Wow,” Doug says. “It was really talking.”

Anna Marie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well, it’s not like they’re going to beat us on the SAT’s or anything.”

A reporter waylays Bob Finch in a public corridor on his way to the gift shop. She seeks a reaction in the wake of Hamilton’s demonstration. Finch considers. “We agree with the activists on one score. Orcas have their own values and their own society, and we’re morally bound to respect their choices.” He smiles faintly. “Where Ms. Hamilton and I part ways, of course, is that she never bothered to find out what those values were before leaping to defend them.”

The door opens. Finch the Savior stands in the doorway with a wooden box in one hand, a plastic bag in the other.

Doug, rising with his hopes off the couch, forgets all about the Matriarch and his ankle. “Are those my steaks?”

Finch smiles. “Mr. Largha, it takes several days to prepare the merchandise. Each sample has to be measured, weighed, and studied in accordance to our mandate of conservation through research.”

“Oh, right.” Doug nods. “I knew that.”

“The gift shop is only taking a list of names.”

“Right.”

“And unfortunately, all of today’s specimen has already been spoken for. The line-up stretches all the way back into the Amazon gallery, in fact, so I brought a couple of items which I thought might do instead,” Finch says. He holds up the bag.

“There was quite a run on these, I was lucky to get one.”