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

"Fuller's an asshole. Look, I don't really care if she finished high school. The kid has proven herself. She's got balls."

"Still, maybe I should call Tyack. Just in case."

"If you need to. Call him this afternoon when you get back in."

"I'm sure Fuller was just yanking my chain. He tried to offer us a boat like his if we backed his dolphin-park project."

"And you turned him down?"

"Of course."

"But those are really nice boats. Our armada has been reduced by fifty percent. Our nautical resources have declined by more than one-half. Our boatage is deficient by point five."

"What's up?" Amy said. She'd come back down the dock and seemed to have shaken off her earlier melancholy.

"Clay's being scientific. Fuller offered us a sixty-foot research vessel like his, with operating budget, if we back his dolphin project."

"Do I have to sleep with him?"

"We haven't put that on the table," Clay said, "but I'll bet we could get a sonar array if you're enthusiastic."

"Hell, Nate, take it," Amy said.

"It would mean selling out my credibility," said Quinn, appalled at what total whores his colleagues had become. "We'd be going over to the dark side."

Amy shrugged. "Those are really nice boats." The corner of her mouth twitched as if she was trying not to grin, and Nate realized that she was probably goofing on him.

"Yeah," said Clay. "Nice." Clay was goofing, too. He'd be all right. Nate shook his head, looking as if he were fighting disbelief, but actually he was trying to shake the memory of his dream of driving a big cabin cruiser through the streets of Seattle with Amy displayed as the bikinied figurehead. "If you're okay, Clay, we really should get out before the wind comes up."

"Go," Clay said. "I'll get the police report for the insurance company." To Amy he said, "You find Kona?"

"He's down there with that Tako guy."

"What's he doing down there?"

"It looked like he was building a saxophone. I didn't go close."

Quinn strode down the dock and looked to where Kona was talking with Tako Man. "No, that's his bong. It breaks down for easy portage."

"What's a bong?"

"Cute, Amy. Help me get the equipment in the boat."

Suddenly Kona started shouting and running down the dock toward them. "Bwanas! I found the boat!"

Clay perked up. "Where?"

"Right there. Tako Man says it's right there. He dove down there this morning."

Kona was pointing to a patch of murky jade green water in the center of the harbor. Jade green because of all the waste flushed from the live-aboards, as well as the bait, fish guts, seasickness, and bird poop that went into the water faster than the scavengers could clean it out, and so it caused a perpetual algae bloom.

"My boat," said Clay, looking forlornly at the empty water.

Amy stepped up and put her arm around Clay's shoulders to resume stage-two comfort. "He dove in that water?"

"The nightwalkers sank it, Bwana Clay. Tako Man saw them. Skinny blue-gray guys. He called them nightwalkers. I think aliens."

"Aliens are always gray, aren't they?" inquired Quinn.

"That's what I say to him," said Kona. "But he say no, not with the lightbulb head. He say they tall and froggy."

"You're high," said Clay.

"Tako Man got dank mystical buds, brah. Was a spiritual duty."

"He's not criticizing you, Kona," Quinn explained. "We just assume that you're high. Clay's just doubting the credibility of your story."

"You don't believe I? Give a man a mask, I'll dive down and get a ting off da boat for proof."

"Hepatitis, that's what you'll bring up," said Amy.

"I'm going to work," said Nate.

"My boat," said Clay.

Nate decided that perhaps he should offer a measure of solace. "Look at the bright side, Clay. At least whales are big."

"How is that the bright side?"

"We could be studying viruses. You have any idea what it costs to replace a scanning electron microscope?"

"My boat," said Clay.

Amy picked the whale. It had been a stressful morning for her, and Quinn wanted to convey his complete confidence in her, so he handed over the headphones and took directions as they narrowed down which of their whales was actually the singer.

"Wait a second," Amy said. "Shut down the engine."

And then she did something that Quinn had seen no one do for twenty-five years, and then it had been his mentor, Gerard Ryder, who most people agreed had been eccentric to the point of being full-blown bat shit. Amy hung over the side by her knees and put her head in the water. After about thirty seconds she swung up, spraying a great crest of seawater all over the boat, then pointed north.

"He's over there."

"That doesn't work, you know," said Quinn. It was pretty much accepted that humans didn't have directional hearing underwater. He was just gently trying to remind her.

"Go that way. That's where our whale is."

"Okay, there may indeed be a singer over there, but you didn't locate him by hearing him."

She just stood there next to him — dripping on his feet, the console, the field notes — looking at him.

"Okay, I'm going." He started the engine and pushed the throttle over. "Tell me when I get there."

A couple of minutes later Amy signaled for him to cut the engine, and she was hanging over the side with her head in the water while the boat was still coasting.

"Well, this is just stupid," Nate said while Amy was submerged.

Amy dedunked long enough to say, "I heard that."

"Looks like you're bobbing for whales, is what it looks like."

"Shut up," said Amy, up for a breath. "I'm trying to listen."

"You look like that cartoon character in 'B.C. that used to watch fish all day."

"That way," said Amy, up again, pointing and dog-shaking the water out of her hair onto the Ph.D. "About six hundred yards."

"Six hundred yards? You're sure?"

"Give or take fifty."

"If we're within a half mile of a singer, I'll buy you dinner."

" 'Kay. What do you suppose the freight is to fly a lobster from Maine to my plate in Lahaina?"

"I'm not going to need to know that."

"Drive the boat, please. Over there." And she pointed again, not unlike Babe Ruth indicating the Wrigley Field fence over which he would hit the famous promised home run (except Amy was thin, a girl, and alive).

Quinn heard the singer even before they put the hydrophone in the water. The whole boat started resonating to the song as they coasted into a drift.

Amy hopped up on the bow and pointed to some white spots dancing below the surface — pectoral fins and a tail. "There he is!"

If there had been a crowd, they would have gone wild.

Quinn smiled. Amy looked back at him and grinned. "Steak and lobster," she said. "Something red and French and expensive for the wine, something on fire for dessert — don't care what it is, long as there's flames coming off it — then a backrub before I send you back to your cabin alone, disappointed and confused. Ha!"

"It's a date," said Quinn.

"No, it's not a date. It's a bet, which you have lost miserably because you had the audacity to doubt me, and for which you shall remain ever sorry. Ha!"

"Shall we work now? Or would you like to gloat a bit longer?"

"Hmmm, let me think about it…"

She's so small, yet she contains so much evil, Quinn thought. He threw the field journal at her and read her the longitude and latitude off the GPS. "Film's in the camera. New roll. I loaded it this morning."

"I was thinking I'd gloat some more." Amy picked up the notebook, then paused as she opened it to begin writing. "Singing stopped."

"Sometimes I think they just stop singing to freak me out."