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

"I like him," Clay said. "He's predictable."

But Amy and Clair missed the comment. They were applying sunscreen 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. "Don't sell yourself short, pumpkin."

The ersatz Hawaiian stood on the bow rail like he was hanging 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 ignored his greeting, Kona gave the traditional island response: "What, I owe you money?"

"Settle, Kona," Nate said. "And get down off of there."

Kona made his way back to the console. "Old white jacket givin' you the stink-eye. Why, he think you an agent of Babylon?"

"He does bad science. People come to me to ask me about him, I tell them he does bad science."

"And we do the good science?"

"We don't change our numbers to please the people who fund us. The Japanese want numbers that show recovery of the humpback population to levels where the IWC will let them start hunting them again. Gilbert tries 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 evil 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 kid knew, whales had been and always would be safe from hunters. Quinn knew better. "Eating whale is very traditional in Japan. It sort of has the ritual of our Thanksgiving. But it's dying out."

"Then it's all good."

"No. There are a lot of old men who want to bring back whale hunting as a tradition. The Japanese whaling industry is subsidized by the government. It's not even a viable business. They serve whale meat in the school-lunch program so kids will develop a taste 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 found whale meat from half a dozen endangered whale species in Japanese markets. They try to pass it off as minke whale, but the DNA doesn't lie."

"Minke? That devil in the white war paint killing our minke?"

"We don't have any minkes here in Hawaii."

"Course not, the Count killing them. We going to chant down this evil fuckery." Kona dug into his red, gold, and green fanny pack. Out came an extraordinarily complex network of plastic, brass, and stainless-steel tubing, which in seconds Kona had assembled into what Quinn thought was either a very small and elegant linear particle accelerator or, more likely, the most complex bong ever constructed.

"Slow de boat, brah. I got to spark up for freedom. Chant down Babylon, go into battle for Jah's glory, mon. Slow de boat."

"Put that away."

Kona paused, his Bic lighter poised over the bowl. "Take 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 raised the lighter.

"No. Put that away. I'll show you how to drop the hydrophone." Quinn checked the tape in the recorder on the console.

"Save our minkes?" Kona waved the lighter, unlit, in circles over the bowl.

"Did Clay show you how to take an ID photo?" Nate pulled the hydrophone and the coil of cord out of its case.

"Ride Jah's herb into the mystic?"

"No! Put that away and get the 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. "All right, brah, but when they have eated all your minkes, will not be Jah's fault."

An hour later, after listening, and moving, and listening again, they had found their singer. Kona stood balanced 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 kidnap 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 parapet of a building. Nate guessed that he would be able to hold that position for about two minutes before his knees locked permanently and he'd be forced to finish life in a toadish squat. Still, he envied Kona the enthusiasm of discovery, the fascination 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 statement of mating and yet refused to give up any direct evidence that it was, Nate felt a profound irrelevance. Sexually, socially, intellectually, fiscally, scientifically irrelevant — a sack of borrowed atoms lumpily arranged in a Nate shape. No effect, purpose, or stability.

He tried to listen more closely to what the whale was doing, to lose himself in analyzing what exactly was going on below, but that merely seemed to underscore the suspicion that not only was he getting old, he might be going crazy. This was the first time he'd been out since the "bite me" incident, and since then he had convinced himself that it must have been some sort of hallucination. Still, he cringed a bit every time the whale humped its tail to dive, expecting to see a message scrawled across the flukes.

"He's making them up noises, boss."

Nate nodded. The kid was learning fast. "Get your camera ready, Kona. He'll breathe three, maybe four times before he dives, so be ready."

Abruptly 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 starboard side. Nate turned the boat slowly in place and waited.

They were looking in the direction in which Kona had seen the whale moving underwater when he surfaced behind them, not ten feet away from the boat, the blow making both of them jump, the spray wafting across them in a rainbow cloud.

"Ho! Dat buggah up, boss!"

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Nate said under his breath. He pulled down the throttle and came in behind the whale. On its next breath the whale rolled and slapped a long pectoral 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 grass and rocks. Buy him squeaky toys."

"Get ready for your ID shot," Nate instructed.

"When we're done with him, can I keep him? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeze!"

"Here 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-foot lens of smooth water formed on the surface by the turbulence of the whale's 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 as Nate had taught him. A monkey can do my job, Nate thought. An hour's experience and this stoner is already doing it. This kid is younger, stronger, and faster than I am, and I'm not even sure that I'm smarter, as if that matters. I'm totally irrelevant.