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

"Correct," said Kona, "No bread, or meat, or cheese, specified."

Libby glared at him. "And you have the navy setting off simulated explosions in preparation to put a torpedo range in the middle of the Humpback Whale Sanctuary." She paused meaningfully and pivoted thoughtfully — like Hercule Poirot in flip-flops. "You have a tape of Amy doing a breath-hold dive for what appears to be an hour, with no ill effects."

"Topless," Kona added. Science.

"You have Amy claiming that Nate was eaten by a whale, which we all know is simply not possible, given the diameter of the humpback's throat, even if one were inclined to bite him, which we know they wouldn't." (She was just a deerstalker, a calabash, and a cocaine habit short of being Sherlock Holmes here.) "Then you have Amy taking a kayak out for no apparent reason and disappearing, presumed drowned. And you say that Nate was working on finding binary in the lower registers of the whale song, and you think that means something? Have I got that right?"

"Yeah," said Clay. "But you have the break-in to our offices to get the sound tapes, and you have my boat being sunk, too. Okay, it sounded more connected when we were talking about it last night."

Libby Quinn stopped pacing and turned to look at both of them. She wore cargo shorts, tech sandals, and a running bra and appeared ready at any moment to just take off and do something outdoorsy and strenuous. They both looked down, subdued, as if they were still under the threat of Clair's deadly spoon of calm. Clay had always had a secret attraction to Libby, even while she'd been married to Quinn, and it was only within the last year or so he'd been able to make eye contact with her at all. Kona, on the other hand, had studied dozens of videotapes on the lesbian lifestyle, especially as it pertained to having a third party show up in the middle of an intimate moment (usually with a pizza), so he had long ago assigned a «hot» rating to Libby, despite the fact that she was twice his age.

"Help us," Kona said, trying to sound pathetic, staring at the floor.

"This is what you guys have, and you think because I know a little biology I can make something of all this?"

"And that," said Clay, pointing at the now arranged and collated pages of ones and ohs on his desk.

Libby walked over and flipped through the pages. "Clay, this is nothing. I can't do anything with this. Even if Nate was on to something, what do you think? That even if we recognize a pattern, it's going to mean something to us? Look, Clay, I loved Nate, too, you know I did, but —»

"Just tell us where to start," Kona said.

"And tell me if you see anything in this." Clay went to his computer and hit a key. A still of the edge view of the whale tail from his rebreather dive was on the screen. "Nate said that he had seen some markings on a whale tail, Libby. Some writing. Well, I thought there was something on this whale, too, before it knocked me out. But this is the best shot of the tail we have. It could mean something."

"Like what?" Her voice was kind.

"I don't know what, Libby. If I knew what, I wouldn't have called you. But there's too much weird stuff going on that almost fits together, and we don't know what to do."

Libby studied the tail still. "There is something there. You don't have a better shot?"

"No, this is something I do know about. This is the best I have."

"You know, Margaret and I were helping a guy from Texas A&.M who was designing a software program that would shift perspective of tail shots, so edge and bad-angle views could be shifted and extrapolated into usable ID photos. You know how many get tossed because of bad angles?"

"You have this program?"

"Yes, it's still in beta tests, but it works. I think we can shift this shot, and if there's something meaningful there, we'll see it."

"Cool runnings," Kona said.

"As far as this binary thing, I think it's a shot in the dark, but if it's going to mean anything, you're going to have to get your ones and ohs in the computer. Kona, can you type?"

"Well, on ones and ohs? I shred most masterful, mon."

"Right. I'll set you up with a simple text file — just ones and ohs — and we'll figure out if we can do anything with it later. No mistakes, okay?"

Kona nodded.

Clay finally looked up and smiled. "Thanks, Libby."

"I'm not saying it's anything, Clay, but I wasn't exactly fair to Nate when he was around. Maybe I owe him one now that he's gone. Besides, it's windy. Fieldwork would have sucked today. I'm going to call Margaret, have her bring the program over. I'll help you if you promise that you'll put all your weight into stopping this torpedo range and you'll sign Maui Whale on to the petition against low-frequency active sonar. You guys have a problem with that?"

She was giving them the "spoon of death" look, and it occurred to both of them that this might be something that was innate to all women, not just Clair, and that they should be very, very afraid.

"Nope," said Kona.

"Sounds good to me. I'll put on a pot of coffee," said Clay.

"Margaret is absolutely going to shit when she hears about the torpedo range," said Libby Quinn as she reached for Clay's phone.

A small explosion went off over his head, and Nate dove under the table. When he looked up, Emily 7 was bent over staring at him with her watery whale eyes and a mild expression of distress, and Nuñez was crouched at the other end of the table smiling.

"That was the blow, Nate," Nuñez said. "A little more intense than the humpback's, huh? These ships act like real whales, remember. The blowhole is right above our heads. Vented to the rest of the ship, but, you know, every twenty minutes or so it's going to go. You get used to it."

"Sure, I knew that," said Nate, crawling out from under the table. He'd been out off of Santa Cruz searching for the blues. You usually found them by the sound of their blows, which you could hear up to a mile and a half away. He looked up, expecting to see sky through the blowhole, but instead he saw just more smooth whaleskin.

"They behave like whales, but the physiology is completely different to allow for the living quarters. I don't really understand it, but for instance the blowhole is vented down the sides somewhere to some axillary lungs that do the oxygen exchange with the blood. I don't know how they got us electricity at all. I mean, I said I wanted a coffeepot, and they put in an outlet. There are circuits all over the bridge for our machinery. The other bodily functions seem to be handled by smaller versions of liver, kidneys, and so forth around the outside of the cabins. The main spine runs over the top of the ship. There's no digestive system. The ship's digestive system is at the base; it hooks up and pumps nutrient-rich blood into the ship, which stores enough energy in blubber to run it for six months at sea, or around the world at least once. We can cruise at twenty knots as long as no one is watching."

"What do you mean, 'no one is watching'?"

"I mean you guys. Biologists. If one of you guys is watching us, we have to slow it down after a couple of hours. Especially if we're tagged."

"This ship has been satellite-tagged? What do you do?"

"We go to silent running for a while. Then we dive, and one of the whaley boys goes outside and pulls the tag off. We've been tagged twice by that Bruce Mate guy from Oregon State. That guy's a menace. Probably has a satellite tag on his wife to track her trips to the can. If they'd asked me, he'd be the one riding with us now."

"You know who he is?" Nate was aghast. As a scientist, you were always fighting being overwhelmed by what you don't know, but the magnitude of this whole operation — it was too much.