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

Normally, if the whale cops found an unauthorized person on a research vessel, they would simply record the violation, write a ticket, then remove the person from the boat and take him back to Lahaina Harbor. A fine was paid and violations were considered the following year when the permit came up for renewal. By contrast, Kona was delivered to the Maui county jail with both his wrists and ankles shackled and a swath of duct tape over his mouth.

Nate and Amy were waiting in the lobby of the Maui county jail in Wailuku, sitting in metal chairs designed to promote discomfort and waffled butt skin. "It's really okay if he has to stay in overnight," said Nate. "Or for a week or so if it would be easier."

Amy punched Nate in the shoulder. "You creep! I thought it was Kona that got them to let you come to us."

"Still, jail builds character. I've heard that. It might do him good to be off his herb for a few days." Kona had slipped his fanny pack full of pot and paraphernalia to Nate before he'd been taken away.

"Character? If he starts with his native-sovereignty speech stuff in there the real Hawaiians will pound him."

"He'll be okay. I'm worried about you. Don't you want to go get checked?" Clair had taken Clay to the hospital to get a CAT scan and have his scalp stitched up.

"I'm fine, Nate. I was only shaken up because I was worried about Clay."

"You were down a long time."

"Yes, and I went by Clay's dive computer. We decompressed completely. The worst part was I froze my ass off."

"I can't believe you had the presence of mind to decompress with Clay unconscious. I don't know if I would have. Hell, I couldn't have. I'd have run out of air in ten minutes. How did you manage —»

"I'm small, Nate. I don't use air like you. And I could tell that Clay was breathing okay. I could tell that the cut on his head wasn't that bad either. The biggest danger to both of us was decompression sickness, so I followed the computer, breathed off of Clay's rescue supply when I ran out, and nobody got hurt."

"I'm really impressed," said Nate.

"I just did what I was supposed to do. No big deal."

"I was really scared — I thought you — You had me worried." He patted her knee in a grandmotherly fashion, and she looked at his hand.

"Careful, I'll get all sniffly over here," Amy said.

They led the surfer into the holding tank, where everyone was wearing the same orange jumpsuit that he was. "Irie, bruddahs," Kona said, "we all shoutin' down Sheriff John Brown in these Great Pumpkin suits, Jah." They all looked up: a giant Samoan who had beaten an Oldsmobile to death with a softball bat when it stalled in the middle of the Kuihelani Freeway, an alcoholic white guy who had fallen asleep on the Four Seasons' private beach in Wailea and made the mistake of dropping his morning business in one of the cabanas, a bass player from Lahaina who had been brought in because at any given time a bass player is probably up to no good, an angry bruddah who had been caught doing a smash-and-grab from a rental car at La Perouse Bay, and two up-country pig hunters who had tried to back their four-wheeler full of pit bulls down a volcano after huffing two cans of spray paint. Kona could tell they were huffers by the glazed look in their eyes and the large red rings that covered their mouths and noses from the bag. "Hey, brah, Krylon?"

One of the pig hunters nodded and briefly lost control of the motion of his head.

"Nothin' like a quality red."

"I hear dat," said the pig hunter. "I hear dat."

Then Kona made his way to the corner of the cell, the guard locked the door, and everyone resumed looking at his shoes, except for the Samoan guy, who was waiting for Kona to make eye contact so he could kill him.

"Ye know, brah," Kona said to him in a friendly, if seriously flawed fake Jamaican accent, "I be learning from my science dreadies to look at tings with the critical eye, don't ya know. And I think I know what the problem with taking a stand against da man on Maui."

"Whad dat?" ask the Samoan.

"Well, it's an island, ain't it, mon? You got to be stone stupid going outlaw here wid nowhere to escape."

"You callin' me stupid, haole?"

"No, mon, just speaking the truth."

"An' what you in for, haole girl?"

"Failing to give a humpback whale the proper scientific handjob, I tink."

"Goin' ta fuck ya and kill ya now."

"Could ya kill me first?"

"Whadeva," said the Samoan, climbing to his feet and expanding to his full Godzilla proportions.

"Thanks, brah. Peace in Jah's mercy," said the doomed surfer.

Forty-five minutes later, after Nate had filled out the requisite papers, the jailer, a compact Hawaiian with weightlifter shoulders, led Kona through the double steel doors into the waiting room. The surfer shuffled in, head down, looking ashamed and a little lopsided. Amy put her arm around his shoulders and patted his head.

"Oh, Sistah Amy, 'twas heinous." He put his arm around Amy, then let his hand slip to the curve of her bottom. "Heinous most true."

The jailer grinned. "Had a disagreement with a big Samoan guy. We stopped it before it got too far. The holding cells are monitored on closed-circuit video."

"Snatched half me dreads out." Kona pulled a handful of orphaned dreadlocks from the pocket of his surf shorts. "Going to cost some deep monies to hook these boys back up. I can feel my strength waning without them."

The jailer waived a finger under Kona's nose. "Just so you know, kid, if it had gone the other way — if the Samoan had decided to kill you second — I wouldn't have stepped in so early. You understand?"

"Yah, Sheriff."

"You stay out of my jail, or next time I tell him which end to start on, okay?" The jailer turned to Quinn. "They aren't filing any charges that merit incarceration. They just wanted to make a point." Then he leaned close to Nate and whispered, their height difference making it appear as if he were talking to the scientist's shirt pocket, "You need to get this kid some help. He thinks he's Hawaiian. I see these suburban Rasta boys all the time — hell, Paia's crawling with them — but this one, he's troubled. One of my boys goes that way, I'd pay for a shrink."

"He's not my kid."

"I know how you feel. His girlfriend is cute, though. Makes you wonder how they pick 'em, doesn't it?"

"Thanks, Officer," Nate said. Having shared all the paternal camaraderie he could handle, he turned and walked out into the blinding Maui sun. To Kona, Amy said, "You better now, baby?"

Kona nodded into her shoulder, where he'd been pretending to seek comfort in a nuzzle.

"Good. Then move your hand."

The surfer played his fingers over her bottom like anemones in a tidal wash, anchored yet flowing.

"That's it," Amy said. She snatched a handful of his remaining dreads and quickstepped through the double glass doors, dragging the bent-over surfer behind her.

"Ouch, ouch, ouch," Kona chanted in perfect four/four reggae rhythm.

Nate spent the whole afternoon and most of the evening trying to analyze spectrograms of whale-song recordings, correlate behavior patterns, and then chart the corresponding patterns of interaction. The problem was figuring out what actually defined interaction for an eighty-thousand-pound animal? Were animals interacting when they were five hundred yards away? A thousand? A mile, ten miles? The song was certainly audible for miles; the low, subsonic frequencies could travel literally thousands of miles in deep ocean basins.