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

"Uh, nothing I can be sure of. I mean, actually, the recorder isn't working right. Something dragging. Probably just needs to be cleaned."

And everyone, including Amy, looked at Quinn for a moment as if to say, Well, you lying satchel of walrus spit, that is the weakest story I've ever heard, and you're not fooling anyone.

"Shame," Clay said. "Nice day to miss out on the water. Maybe you can get back with the other recorder and get out again before the wind comes up." Clay knew something was up with Nate, but he also trusted his judgment enough not to press it. Nate would tell him when he thought he should know.

"Speaking of that," Hyland said, "we'd better get going." He headed down the dock toward his own boat. Tarwater stared at Nate just long enough to convey disgust before turning on his heel and marching after Hyland.

When they were gone, Amy said, "Tarwater is a creep."

"He's all right. He's got a job to do is all," Clay said. "What's with the recorder?"

"The recorder is fine," Nate said.

"Then what gives? It's a perfect day." Clay liked to state the obvious when it was positive. It was sunny, calm, with no wind, and the underwater visibility was two hundred feet. It was a perfect day to research whales.

Nate started handing waterproof cases of equipment to Clay. "I don't know. I may have seen something out there, Clay. I have to think about it and see the pictures. I'm going to drop some film off at the lab, then go back to Papa Lani and write up some research until the film's ready."

Clay flinched, just a tad. It was Amy's job to drop off film and write up research. "Okay. How 'bout you, kiddo?" Clay said to Amy. "My new guy doesn't look like he's going to show, and I need someone topside while I'm under."

Amy looked to Nate for some kind of approval, but when he simply kept unloading cases without a reaction, she just shrugged. "Sure, I'd love to."

Clay suddenly became self-conscious and shuffled in his flip-flops, looking for a second more like a five-year-old kid than a barrel-chested, fifty-year-old man. "By calling you 'kiddo' I didn't mean to dimmish you by age or anything, you know."

"I know," Amy said.

"And I wasn't making any sort of comment on your competency either."

"I understand, Clay."

Clay cleared his throat unnecessarily. "Okay," he said.

"Okay," Amy said. She grabbed two Pelican cases full of equipment, stepped up onto the dock, and started schlepping the stuff to the parking area so it could be loaded into Nate's pickup. Over her shoulder she said, "You guys both so need to get laid."

"I think that's reverse harassment," Clay said to Nate.

"I may be having hallucinations," said Nate.

"No, she really said that," Clay said.

After Quinn had left, Amy climbed into the Always Confused and began untying the stern line. She glanced over her shoulder to look at the forty-foot cabin cruiser where Captain Tarwater posed on the bow looking like an advertisement for a particularly rigid laundry detergent — Bumstick Go-Be-Bright, perhaps.

"Clay, you ever heard of a uniformed naval officer accompanying a researcher into the field before?"

Clay looked up from doing a battery check on the GPS. "Not unless the researcher was working from a navy vessel. Once I was along on a destroyer for a study on the effects of high explosives on resident populations of southern sea lions in the Falkland Islands. They wanted to see what would happen if you set off a ten-thousand-pound charge in proximity to a sea lion colony. There was a uniformed officer in charge of that."

Amy cast the line back to the dock and turned to face Clay. "What was the effect?"

"Well, it blew them the fuck up, didn't it? I mean, that's a lot of explosives."

"They let you film that for National Science ?"

"Just stills," Clay said. "I don't think they anticipated it going the way it did. I got some great shots of it raining seal meat." Clay started the engine.

"Yuck." Amy untied the bumpers and pulled them into the boat. "But you've never seen a uniformed officer working here? Before now, I mean."

"Nowhere else," Clay said. He pulled down the gear lever. There was a thump, and the boat began to creep forward.

Amy pushed them away from the surrounding boats with a padded boat hook. "What do you think they're doing?"

"I was trying to find out this morning when you guys came in. They loaded an awfully big case before you got here. I asked what it was, and Tarwater got all sketchy. Cliff said it was some acoustics stuff."

"Directional array?" Amy asked. Researchers sometimes towed large arrays of hydrophones that could, unlike a single hydrophone, detect the direction from which sound was traveling.

"Could be," Clay said. "Except they don't have a winch on their boat.

"A wench? What are you trying to say, Clay?" Amy feigned being offended. "Are you calling me a wench?"

Clay grinned at her. "Amy, I am old and have a girlfriend, and therefore I am immune to your hotness. Please cease your useless attempts to make me uncomfortable."

"Let's follow them."

"They've been working on the lee side of Lanai. I don't want to take the Confused past the wind line."

"So you were trying to find out what they're up to?"

"I fished. No bites. Cliff's not going to say anything with Tarwater standing there."

"So let's follow them."

"We actually may get some work done today. It's a good day, after all, and we might not get a dozen windless days all season here. We can't afford to lose a day, Amy. Which reminds me, what's up with Nate? Not like him to blow off a good field day."

"You know, he's nuts," Amy said, as if it were understood. "Too much time thinking about whales."

"Oh, right. I forgot." As they motored out of the harbor, Clay waved to a group of researchers who had gathered at the fuel station to buy coffee. Twenty universities and a dozen foundations were represented in that group. Clay was single-handedly responsible for making the scientists who worked out of Lahaina into a social community. He knew them all, and he couldn't help it — he liked people who worked with whales — and he just liked it when people got along.

He'd started weekly meetings and presentations of papers at the Pacific Whale Sanctuary building in Kihei, which brought all the scientists together to socialize, trade information, and, for some, to try to weasel some useful data out of someone without the burden of field research.

Amy waved to the group, too, as she dug into one of the orange Pelican waterproof cases. "Come on, Clay, let's follow Tarwater and see what he's up to." She pulled a huge pair of twenty-power binoculars out of the case and showed them to Clay. "We can watch from a distance."

"You might want to go up in the bow and look for whales, Amy."

"Whales? They're big and wet. What else do you need to know?"

"You scientists never cease to amaze me," Clay said. "Come hold the wheel while I get a pencil to write that down."

"Let's follow Tarwater."

The gate to the Papa Lani compound was hanging open when Nate drove up. Not good. Clay was adamant about their always replacing the big Masterlock on the gate when they left the compound.

Papa Lani was a group of wood-frame buildings on two acres northeast of Lahaina in the middle of a half dozen sugarcane fields that had been donated to Maui Whale by a wealthy woman Clay and Nate affectionately referred to as the "Old Broad." The property consisted of six small bungalows that had once been used to board plantation workers but had long since been converted to housing, laboratory, and office space for Clay, Nate, and any assistants, researchers, or film crews who might be working with them for the season. Getting the compound had been a godsend for Maui Whale, given the cost of housing and storage in Lahaina. Clay had named the compound Papa Lani (Hawaiian for "heaven") in honor of their good fortune, but someone had left the gate to heaven open, and from what Nate could tell as he drove in, the angel shit had hit the fan.