Raphael Carter - The Fortunate Fall

“When I gave them to you, they’d been unrefrigerated for at least a day. Does that narrow it down?”

“In that case, I’d say it’s fresh. A couple of weeks, maybe less.”

I frowned, to simulate a skepticism I no longer felt. “Not that I doubt your expertise, Dr. Terentev, but this is a little hard to accept. Is there any chance it could be a hoax? Could you fake it with nanoconstruction?”

“No way,” he said emphatically. “You’d never get all the bug byproducts out of the blood without killing the cells.”

“So somewhere in the world is a live humpback whale.”

“Live or very recently dead, yes.”

“Well, I’m sure everyone who saw The Day of the Whale has the same question: could you clone more whales from this?”

He shook his head. “No. Not from blood. Blood doesn’t have that much DNA, and what there is, is all jumbled up. It’d be like trying to put together a book that had been cut up into single words.”

“But if you had a tissue sample? If you had a live whale?”

He nodded thoughtfully. “I’m not a marine biologist, but I’d say it’s possible in theory. It would take a lot of trial and error to get the fetus to grow in vitro, but given enough time, it could probably be done. And if the whale were female, certainly.”

“Thank you, Vladimir Terentev.”

He smiled. “Always a pleasure, Maya.”

“Hypocrite,” Keishi said as I signed off.

At least he didn’t say hi to his mother. How soon can you be here?

“How soon is this?”

I turned around to face her. “I meant in person.”

“My person is in Moscow. While you were putting together a backup story, I’ve been trying to figure out where you could hide a whale.”

If she had been corporeal, I would have clapped her on the shoulder. “Always the true believer. What did you find out while I was wasting my time?”

She frowned. “I mostly wasted my time, too. Voskresenye had his signals bounced through here, but it was apparently just a false trail. My best guess is that the whale might be somewhere in Arkhangelsk.”

“Where he was imprisoned.”

“Exactly.”

I nodded. “Are you still sitting on the curb?”

“I’m in a cab on the way to the trainport.”

“Okay, go to full-link. I’m going to call Voskresenye.”

Keishi disappeared as I turned to the videophone. “Pavel of null hearth, clan Darkness-at-Noon.” The phone chirked and purred for long seconds. Then Voskresenye’s face appeared, in an unusually tight close-up, as though to hide the background. “Well,” he said, “Maya Tatyanichna. What a pleasant surprise. So glad to have a chance to say good-bye before the mother ship takes me back.”

“When can I see the whale?”

He smiled at my haste. “Arkhangelsk. Five o’clock tomorrow.”

“That’s not my time slot,” I said.

“Maya Tatyanichna, you have the last whale in the world. They will give you any time slot you want.”

I gave him a calculating look. “How secure is this line?”

He touched something on his videophone. “I will vouch for it against a Weaver.”

“All right, then. If I tell News One about the whale, they’ll take this story away from me so fast I’ll get friction burns on my camera chip. Now if you want to sit across from a smooth-head, that’s your option, but—”

“Oh, no, Maya Tatyanichna!” he said with ardor. “No other camera in the world will suit so well.”

“Well, then. Let me come up with something to tell News One, and we’ll do it in my usual time slot.”

“Your time slot is far too obscure,” he said. “Tell News One whatever you like; but it must be at five.”

“I can’t just commandeer prime time. If I called in favors I might get it, but slots between five and six are only ninety seconds long. Is that enough for you?”

“Ninety seconds?” he said. “Why so much? Ask them for ten, if it’s easier. When you show them the whale, do you think they will cut you off?”

“No,” I said, nodding slowly, “I guess they won’t at that.” I had been thinking much too small. “Where do I go?”

“If you come to Arkhangelsk alone, at the proper time you will be guided to the whale. If anyone else comes with you, you will never find me.”

“My screener—”

“Of course,” he said. “Naturally your screener may accompany you.”

“Can I meet you, at, say, four o’clock? I’ll need to set up shots, and plan what we’re going to cover. And since I won’t have time to run the whole story about you and the Guardians, I’d like to have you finish it in advance, so we can put it in as memory.”

“I am afraid that I cannot allow that,” he said. “You may be followed. I accept it as inevitable that my sanctuary will be found after your Netcast is finished, but I will not have them barging in while we are still on the air.”

“You expect them to find the whale? To take possession of her?”

“I expect—” he briefly studied a point just below the screen, then raised his eyes again “—that I will no longer be able to keep her where she is now.”

“I understand your protectiveness, but what would it hurt for you to provide a tissue sample? Think of the importance of—”

“Contrary to what the producers of vids believe, Maya Tatyanichna,” he interrupted, “you cannot just dump a cloned calf in the middle of the ocean and expect her to repopulate her kind. Whales in the wild had millennia of accumulated knowledge that is now irrevocably lost. Without a parent to protect and guide her, a cloned whale would starve, freeze, or drown in a matter of days.”

“Could your whale—”

“She could not,” he snapped, “and even if she could, I would not allow it. Hundreds of whales would die in this ridiculous experiment, and even if some lived, if they eventually flourished, what do you think would happen? Amusement parks would capture them, ships of tourists harass them; perfumers would discover a need for ambergris; jaded executives would pay thousands to slot up Queequeg on adventure vacations…. No, Maya Tatyanichna. There will be no whales.”

“But we need them,” I said.

“We need them? Is that the best reason you can come up with?” He laughed, a rasping, mechanical sound. “The kings of the ocean are gone, and what is our argument for their return? We need them? We? Their murderers? The ones that made the water bitter in their mouths, and killed the food they ate? The ones that made the ocean boil red with their blood for miles around? Men need them? Those vermin? Those stinging insects? Struggling pustulent humanity— needs them? Do you think a whale cares? You might as well need the sun to rise at midnight because you’re feeling a bit chilly. Yes, of course, certainly we need them. But the question is, do we deserve them?”

Silence. Then I heard the whirring as he moved his hand toward the vidphone’s control panel. He paused and said: “Be in Arkhangelsk.”

“I will.”

CONNECTION BROKEN, said the phone.

“Well,” I said. “He can be goaded.”

“I charge you to use this power only for good,” Keishi said solemnly.

“Just when I thought you were starting to understand this business. Mirabara, park your body on a train to Arkhangelsk and get your bandwidth over here. We’ve got work to do.”

She materialized again. “Already bought the ticket. What do you need?”

“I won’t say I need anything. I seem to get attacked when I use that word. What I want is to know everything there is to know about whales by noon tomorrow. Biology, history, poetry, folklore, you name it.”