Christopher Moore - Fluke, Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

"Could they just be saying hi?"

"Yes."

"If they don't eat here, and it's not for mating, then why do they sing?"

"That's a good question."

"Do you think they know that we've been contacted by aliens and are trying to contact the mother ship?"

Ah, always good to hear from the wacko fringe, Nate thought. "No, I don't think that."

"Maybe they're using their sonar to find other whales."

"As far as we know, baleen whales, toothless whales like the humpbacks who strain their food from the sea through sheets of baleen, don't echolocate the way toothed whales do."

"Why do they jump all the time? Other whales don't jump like that."

"Some think that they are sloughing skin or trying to knock off parasites, but after years of watching them, I think that they just like making a splash — the sensation of air on their skin. The way you might like to dangle your feet in a fountain. I think they're just goofing off."

"I heard that someone 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 holding a reporter's steno pad. Maui Times, he guessed. She had stood to ask her question, as if she were attending a press conference rather than a casual 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 dozen or so researchers around the world. At least for now. Perhaps as we find out more, more people will be interested."

"So you're 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 reading more into a behavior than the data actually support. Sort of like the answer to the 'why do they jump? question. You could say that it's part of an incredibly complex system 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 random act of vandalism that has the appearance of motive." Bullshit, Quinn thought.

"Thank you, Dr. Quinn," said the reporter. She sat down.

"Thank you all for coming," said Nate.

Applause. Nate arranged his notes as people gathered around the podium.

"That was bullshit," Amy said.

"Complete bullshit," said Libby Quinn.

"What a load of crap," said Cliff Hyland.

"Rippin' talk, Doc," Kona said, "Marley's ghost was in ye."

Leathery bar girls worked the charter booths at the harbor, smoking 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 color of mahogany, skinny and strong from living on boats, liquor, fish, and disappointment. They'd come here from a dozen coastal towns, some sailing from the mainland in small craft but forgetting to save enough courage for the trip home. Marooned. Man to man, boat to boat, year to year — salt and sun and drinking had left them dry enough to cough dust. If they lasted a hundred years — and some would — then one moonless night a great hooded wraith would swoop into the harbor and take them off to their own craggy island — uncharted and unseen more than once by any living man — and there they would keep the enchantment of the sea alive: lure lost 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 that's another story. Today they were just razzing Clay for leading two girls down the dock.

"Just like outboards, Clay, you gotta have two to make sure one's always running," called Margie, who had once, after ten mai-tais, tried to go down on the wooden sea captain who guarded the doorway of the Pioneer Inn.

Debbie, who had a secret source for little-boy pee that she put in the ears of the black-coral divers when they got ear infections, said, "You give that young one the first watch, Clay. Let her rest up a bit."

"Morning, ladies," Clay tossed over his shoulder. He was grinning and blushing, his ears showing red even where they weren't sunburned. Fifty years old, he'd 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, Clay's girlfriend of four years, a forty-year-old Japanese-Hawaiian schoolteacher who moved like she was doing the hula to a Sousa march (strange mix of regal order and island breeze), backhanded a hang-loose shaka at the cronettes and said, grinning, "She just along to pour buckets on his reels girls, keep him from burning up."

"Oh, you guys are so friggin' nautical," said Amy, who was wrestling with a huge Pelican case that held the rebreather. The case slipped out of her grip and barked her shin before she caught it. "Ouch. Damn it. Oh yeah, everyone loves your salty friggin' charm."

A chorus of cackles from the charter booths wheezed into coughing fits. Back to the cats, the cauldrons, the coconut oil, the sacred Jimmy 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 sweep the heavy rebreather out of Amy's grip and up onto his shoulder.

Amy rubbed her arm. "Thanks. Where's Nate?"

"He go to the fuel dock to get coffee for the whole tribe. A lion, him."

"Yeah, he's a good guy. You'll 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 Always Confused. She offered Clay a hand, and he steadied her as if escorting a lady from the king's court to the ballroom floor.

Kona handed the rebreather down to Clay. "I can safety-dive."

"You'll never be able to clear your ears. You can't pinch your nostrils shut with those nose rings in."

"They come out. Look, out they come." He tossed the rings to Amy and she deftly sidestepped, letting them plop into the water.

"Oops."

"Amy's a certified diver, kid. Sorry. You're with Nate today."

"He know that?"

"Yeah, does he know that?" asked Clair.

"He will soon. Get those lines, would you, Amy."

"I can drive the boat." Kona was on the edge of pleading.

"No one but me drives the boat," said Clay.

"I'm driving the boat," corrected Clair.

"You have to sleep with Clay to drive the boat," said Amy.

"You just do what Nate tells you," Clay said. "You'll be fine."

"If I sleep with Amy can I drive the boat?"

"Nobody drives the boat," Clay said.

"I drive the boat," Clair said.

"Nobody sleeps with Amy," Amy said.

"I sleep with Amy," Clair said.

And everyone stopped and looked at Clair.

"Who wants cream?" asked Nate, arriving at that moment with a paper tray of coffee cups. "You can do your own sugar."

"That's what I'm 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. Coffee was distributed, gear was loaded, Clay drove the Always 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 normally used for parasailing. The Count pulled down the brim of his hat and stood in the bow of the Zodiac, his sun umbrella at port arms, looking like a skeletal statue of Washington crossing the Lethe. The crew waved, Gilbert Box scowled.