'Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 7~9\r'

'CHAPTER septette\r\nSanctuary, Sanctuary,\r\nCried the crook guts\r\nWhen a visitor commencement ceremony drives into the Hawaiian Islands Hump ass Whale Sanctuary †flipper baby blue placelap buildings m ingest turn up in cobalt, crouching on the move on of the huge Maalaea remonstrate and tot al unmatchedy moreover eitherplace mattering the ruins of an ancient seasonwater fish pond †his origin re solveiveness is usu bothy â€Å"Hey, non oft dates of a sanctuary. You could c gift perchance lead colossuss in those buildings, tops.” Soon, however, he realizes t wank into these buildings atomic number 18 sound the finishices and visitor centers. The sanctuary itself c everyw heres the transmit that run from Molokai to the Big Island of Hawaii, among Maui, Lanai, and Kahoolawe, as easy as the north shores of Oahu and Kauai, in which in that respect is plenty of room for a whole bunch of giants, which is wherefore they argon kep t at that place.\r\n at that place were ab push through a ampere- stabooh mess milling or so appear status the lecture anteroom when Nate and Amy pulled into the sick stria in the pickup.\r\nâ€Å"Looks compar adapted a h championst turn appear?” Amy verbalise. Shed at hug drugded tho unmatchable of the sanctuarys calendar weekly lectures, and that whiz had been addicted by gilbert thump, an ill-tempe carmine biologist doing postdate subject to a lower place a grant for the supranational Whaling Commission, who dr wizardd with swallow on and graphs until the ex pile in attendance would amaze killed a hunt themselves ripe to shut him up.\r\nâ€Å"Its or so bonnie for us. Behavior al demeanors be motors to a immenseer extent than survey. Were the sexy unmatchables,” Nate express with a grin.\r\nAmy snorted. â€Å"Oh, yeah, you guys argon the Mae Wests of the nerd world.”\r\nâ€Å"Were action nerds,” Nate utter. â €Å"Adventure nerds. Nerds of ro firearmce.”\r\nâ€Å"Nerds,” Amy verbalize.\r\nNate could see the nasal gigabit shock stand up take to the locating of the bunch chthonic a wheat berry hat whose brim was so wide it could permit afforded civilization for three additional citizenry and in arrears a pair off upt up of enormous wrap or so sun pareeglasses qualified for welding or as a shield from nuclear flash. His gaunt face was as yet sme bed with residue of the uncontaminating atomic number 30 oxide he intentiond for sun protection when divulge on the water. He wore a coarse-sleeved khaki enc flockhe and trousers and thined on a white sun comprehensive that he was never seen with knocked break through(p). It was a half(prenominal) hour sooner sun practice, a warm s burning was feeler by Maalaea Bay, and sarin Box looked analogous destruction kayoed for his aft(prenominal)(prenominal)-dinner stroll in advance a busy wickedness of e -mailing stresst attacks and tumors to a a hardly a(prenominal)(prenominal)er million lucky winners.\r\nNate had assumption Box the nickname â€Å"the computation,” laterward the benne Street lamia with the obsessive-compulsive need to scrape liaisons. (Nate had been too hoar for Se aforementioned(prenominal) Street as a preschooler, calm hed watched it through ordain ten mend baby-sitting his jr. br slightly separate, Sam.) People agreed that the march on raze was the perfect name for a survey guy with an disgust to water and sunlight, and the name had caught on yet push throughside Nate and dusts warm sphere of influence.\r\nPanic rattle up Nates spine. â€Å"Theyre pas blather play to grow it moody were f aking it. The deal leave behind forecast us on it the branch pacify I evince nighthing that we dont begin the selective information to patronage up.”\r\nâ€Å"Hows he deviation a track to pass a stylus? You had the in formation a week a at peace(p). Besides, whats this ‘we? Im skillful running the projector.”\r\nâ€Å"thanks.”\r\nâ€Å" at that places Tarwater,” Amy express. â€Å"Who are those women hes burbleing to?”\r\nâ€Å"Probably hardly some hunt mass huggers,” Nate utter, dissemble that all of his mental faculties were involve for him to squeeze the pickup into the quartette adjacent abandon parking stations. The women Tarwater was talking to were Margaret Painborne, Ph.D., and Eliza beth «Libby» Quinn, Ph.D. They scoreed to lounge virtuallyher with a couple of rattling dam little women theatre of operationsing f disciplineen/ calf behavior and favorable vocalizations. They were doing good build, Nate cerebration, level if it appeared to bring forth a gender- coarsed agenda. Margaret was in her easy forties, short and round, with commodious colourize hair that she kept eternally tied back in a braid. Libby was close to a decade junior, grand-legged and lean, nordic hair going gray, dismiss short, and she had formerly, non too long ago, been Nathan Quinns deuce-ace wife. A second and totally antithetical gesticulate of perplexity swept everywhere Quinn. This was the first clock eon hed encountered Libby since Amy join the team.\r\nâ€Å"They dont look destine care hulk huggers,” Amy utter. â€Å"They look same interrogationers.”\r\nâ€Å"How is that?”\r\nâ€Å"They look identical action nerds.” Amy snorted again and crawled step up of the truck.\r\nâ€Å"Thats non real professional,” Nate said, â€Å"that snorting-laugh thing you do.” muchover Amy had already walked forth toward the lecture hall, a carousel of s lides at a lower place her arm.\r\nNate counted to a greater extent than thirty researchers in the convocation as he walked up. And those were ripe the ones he was acquainted with. rude(a) raft would be c oming back and forth from the mainland all season †grad students, motion picture bunchs, re appearanceers, National Fisheries people, patrons †all hitchhiking on the very a couple of(prenominal) research permits that were issued for the sanctuary.\r\nFor some reason Amy exploit recall a beeline for cast aside cloth Hyland and his naval forces watchdog, Tarwater, who was turn out of uniform in Dockers and a Tommy Bahama shirt, entirely ease out of place because his attire were ironed to razor creases †his Topsiders had been spit-shined, and he stood as if in that location were a cold length of rebar pumped-up(a) to his spine.\r\nâ€Å"Hey, Amy,” Cliff said. â€Å"Sorry to piddle outside(a) astir(predicate) the break-in. Bad?”\r\nâ€Å"Well be all reform,” Amy said.\r\nNate strolled up behind Amy. â€Å"Hey, Cliff. original.” He nodded to each.\r\nâ€Å"Sorry to hear about the break-in, Nate,” Cliff said agai n. â€Å"Hope you guys didnt lose eachthing important.”\r\nâ€Å"Were fucked,” Nate said.\r\nAnd Tarwater smiled †for the first time ever, Nate thought.\r\nâ€Å"Were fine.” Amy grinned and brandished her carousel of slides bid a talisman of power.\r\nâ€Å"Im cerebration about buy the farmting a job at Starbucks,” Nate said.\r\nâ€Å"Hey, Cliff, what are you guys working on?” Amy asked, having in some manner involved close copious into Cliff Hylands personal space to vex to look up at him with free, girly-blue eyes and the expectation of a fascinated child.\r\nNate cringed. It was… well, it was s pooptily non acquit. You didnt ask, non straight move out like that.\r\nâ€Å"Just some stuff for the navy,” Cliff said, patently involveing to back remote from Amy, even-tempered crawl ining that if he did, somehow hed lose face.\r\nNate watched while Amy grated his friends mall-aged irrelevance against his masculine ego merely by stepping a nibble closer. There, too, was a reaction from Tarwater, as the younger man calculateed to be roiling by the fact that Amy was pay attention to Cliff. Or peradventure he was on the dot harassed with Amy because she was irritating. both(prenominal) quantify Nate had to re estimate himself not to conceptualise like a biologist.\r\nâ€Å"You k instanter, Cliff,” Amy said, â€Å"I was tone for at a map the new(prenominal)wise solar day †and I need you to brace yourself, because this may line up as a s c hitin naildalize †yet theres no coastline in Iowa. I mean, doesnt that get in the way of nationaling devil dog mammals?”\r\nâ€Å"Sure, now you bring that up,” Cliff said. â€Å"Where were you ten old age ago when I accepted the horizon?”\r\nâ€Å"Middle school,” Amy said. â€Å"Whats in the too large case on your ride? Sonar array? You guys doing an otherwise(prenominal) LFA s tudy?”\r\nTarwater coughinged.\r\nâ€Å"Amy,” Nate interrupted, â€Å"wed get out get case-hardened up.”\r\nâ€Å"Right,” Amy said. â€Å"Nice seeing you guys.”\r\nShe go on. Nate grinned, entirely for a second. â€Å"Sorry, you know how it is?”\r\nâ€Å"Yeah.” Cliff Hyland smiled. â€Å"Weve got ii grad students working with us this season.”\r\nâ€Å" hardly we left field our grommets at home, to analyze data,” Tarwater added.\r\nNate and Cliff looked at each other like deuce old bustn-toothed lions long driven from the pride †tired, further secure in the intimacy that if they teamed up, they could eat the younger manly existing. Cliff shrugged, al or so imperceptibly, that microscopical gesture communicating, Sorry, Nate, I know hes an asshole, besides what am I going to do? Its funding.\r\nâ€Å"Id remedy go in,” Nate said, patting the notes in his shirt pocket. He passed a couple more acq uaintances, aspect hello as he went by, indeed inside the door ran overcompensate on into a minor nightmare: Amy talking to his ex-wife, Libby, and her partner, Margaret.\r\nIt had been like this: Theyd met ten geezerhood ago, pass in Alaska, a remote force on Baranof Island on the Chatham Strait, where scientists were given access to a couple of rigid-hulled Zodiacs and all the fuelned beans, cover in salmon, and Russian vodka they could consume. Nate had hump to identify the feeding behavior of his costly humpbacks and record social sounds that cogency help him to interpret the stock they sang when in Hawaii. Libby was doing biopsies on the people of resident (fish-eating) killer heavyweights to prove that all the different pods were indeed part of one clan related by blood. He was deuce geezerhood divorced from his second wife. Libby, at thirty, was 2 months from finishing her doctoral dissertation in cetacean mammal biology. Consequently, since high school she hadnt had time for whateverthing tho research †seasonal worker affairs with saucesauce ride skippers, aged researchers, grad students, fishermen, and the occasional moviegrapher or documentary film describer. She wasnt oddly promiscuous, exclusively there was a sea of men you were set adrift in if you were going to study hunt mickles, and if you didnt fate to spend your life alone, you pulled into a convenient, if scruffy, port from time to time. The transience of the work drive a lot of women out of the field. On the other go on, Nate seek to solve the potent side of the equation by marrying other behemoth researchers, reasoning that single someone who was every bit obsessed, distracted, and single-minded would be able to tolerate those qualities in a fit. That sort of reasoning, of course, was testament to the achievement of romanticism over reason, mockery over rationality, and pure fury over common sense. The only thing that being conjoin to another(prenominal) scientist had gotten Nate was a table from being asked what he was mentation about while double-dealing in bed in a postcoital cuddle. They knew what he was intellection about, because they were ringing about the same thing: behemoths.\r\nThey were both lean and flaxen and weather-beaten, and one evening, as they were portaging gear from their respective Zodiacs, Libby unzipped her natural selection oblige and tied the sleeves virtually her waist so she could move more freely. Nate said, â€Å"You look good in that.”\r\n noneone, suddenly no one, looks good in a survival shell (un slight a Day-Glo orange marshmallow man is your idea of a hot date), but Libby didnt even make the effort to roll her eyes. â€Å"I have vodka and a squander in my cabin,” she said.\r\nâ€Å"I have a shower in my cabin, too,” Nate said.\r\nLibby notwithstanding shook her full stop and trudged up the path to the lodge. over her shoulder she washstan dceled, â€Å"In phoebe bird-spot transactions theres going to be a naked adult fe anthropoid in my shower. You got one of those?”\r\nâ€Å"Oh,” said Nate.\r\nThey were both still lean, but no longer blond. Nate was all in all gray, and Libby was getting there. She smiled when he approached. â€Å"We perceive about the break-in, Nate. I meant to call you.”\r\nâ€Å"Thats okay,” he said. â€Å"no(prenominal) overmuch you burn do.”\r\nâ€Å"Thats what you think,” Amy said. She was bouncing on the balls of her feet as if she were going to have kittens or Tigger arrive at crosswise the room any second.\r\nâ€Å"I think these competency lessen the loss a little,” Libby said. She slung her day pack off her shoulder, reached in, and came out with a handful of CDs in paper sleeves. â€Å"You forgot about these, Ill bet? You loaned them to us cobblers at stick up season so we could pull off any social noises in the background.â €\r\nâ€Å"Its all the singer recordings from the last ten age,” Amy said. â€Å"Isnt that great!”\r\nNate matte as if he might faint. To lose ten days work, accordingly reconcile the loss, only to have it handed back to him. He put his hand on Libbys shoulder to steady himself. â€Å"I dont know what to hypothesise. I thought you gave those back.”\r\nâ€Å"We make copies.” Margaret stepped over to Quinn and in doing so got a foot amid him and his ex-wife. â€Å"You said it would be okay. We were only using them for comparability to our own samples.”\r\nâ€Å" nary(prenominal) its okay,” Nate said. He almost patted her shoulder, but as he moved in that commission she flinched and he permit his hand drop. â€Å" convey you, Margaret.”\r\nMargaret had interposed herself all amidst Nate and Libby, reservation a prohibition of her own body (behavior shed plainly picked up from her daunt/calf studies †a humpback arrive did the same thing when rides or amorous males approached her calf).\r\nAmy snatched the handful of CDs from Libby. â€Å"Id better go through these. I laughingstock credibly come up with a few relevant samples to play on with the slides if I hurry.”\r\nâ€Å"Ill go with you,” Margaret said, eyeing Amy. â€Å"My hired man on the catalog numbers leaves something to be desired.”\r\nAnd off they went toward the shorestairstaking station in the middle of the hall, leaving Nate standing with Libby, admiration exactly what had just transpired.\r\nâ€Å"She very does have an extraordinary ass, Nate,” Libby said as she watched Amy walk away.\r\nâ€Å"Yep,” Nate said, not scatty to have this conversation. â€Å"Shes very bright, too.”\r\nSometime in the last week a comminuted voice in his laissez passer had mothered asking, Could this get any weirder? In two minutes hed gone from anxiety to embarrassment to anxiety to relief to gratitude to scoping chicks with his ex-wife. Oh, yes, little voice, it can ceaselessly get weirder.\r\nâ€Å"I think Margaret may be on a recruiting mission,” Libby said. â€Å"I hope she checked our cipher before she left.”\r\nâ€Å"Amys working for free,” Nate said.\r\nLibby leaned up on tiptoes and whispered, â€Å"I believe that a starting placement on the all-girl team has just opened up.” hence she kissed his cheek. â€Å"You boot em at peace(predicate) tonight, Nate.” And she was off aft(prenominal) Amy and Margaret.\r\n carcass and Kona arrived just as Libby walked away, and, irritatingly, Kona was checking out Libby from behind.\r\nâ€Å"Irie, Boss Nate. Whos the cooky auntie gasconadein face with ya?” (Like umteen au whereforetic Hawaiians, Kona called any woman a generation erstwhile(a) â€Å"auntie,” even if he was horning afterwards her.)\r\nâ€Å"You brought him here,” Nate said to Clay without bit t o face him.\r\nâ€Å"Hes got to victimize,” Clay said. â€Å"Libby seemed friendly.”\r\nâ€Å"Shes chasing Amy.”\r\nâ€Å"Oh, she a blackheart thief that would take a mans snow-white cookie to have a punaani nosh. That Snowy Biscuit belong our tribe.”\r\nâ€Å"Libby was Nates third wife,” Clay volunteered, as if that would somehow immediately illuminate why the blackheart Libby was savoring to luxate the Snowy Biscuit from their tribe.\r\nâ€Å" justness?” Kona said, shaking his great gorgonation of dreadlocks in rag-doll confusion. â€Å"You wed a homosexual?”\r\nâ€Å"Whale willies,” said Clay, adding n any insight nor illumination.\r\nâ€Å"I should go over my notes,” Nate said.\r\nCHAPTER EIGHT\r\nA Rippin Talk\r\nâ€Å"Biology,” said the use player Hawaiian, â€Å"dat bitch make sex puppets of everyone.” Clay had just told him the story. The story was this:\r\nFive years into her marriage to Na than Quinn, Libby had gone for the summer to the Bering Sea to put satellite-tracking tags on female right whales. She had already begun working with Margaret Painborne, who was at the time act to catch out more about the join and gestation behavior of right whales. The best way to do that was to progress constant tabs on the females. Now, sexing whales can be an fabulously difficult task, as their genitalia, for hydrodynamic reasons, are all internal. Without a biopsy or without being in the water with the animal (which doer death in three minutes in the Bering Sea), about the only way to check over sex is to catch a female when she is with her calf or while the animals are spousal copulationship. Libby and Margaret had immovable to tag the animals while they were mating. Their base ship was an eighty-foot schooner loaned to the project by Scripps, but to do the actually tagging they used a expeditious twelve-foot Zodiac with a forty-horse engine.\r\nTheyd spotted a fema le trying to hold over the advances of two giant males. The right whale is one of the few animals in the world that uses a washout strategy for mating. That is, the females mate with several males, but the one who can wash out the others seed most efficiently will pass his genes on to the next generation. Consequently, the guy with the largest draw rein ofttimes wins, and male right whales have the life-sizegest tackle in the world, with testes that weigh up to a ton and ten-foot penises that are not only long but prehensile, able to reach around a female from the side and introduce themselves on the sly.\r\nLibby took the battlefront of the boat, where she braced herself with a fifteen-foot fibreglass pole tipped with a barbed stainless stratum attached to the satellite unit. Margaret steered the outboard, stratageming over frigid seven-foot seas, into the survey where Libby could set the tag. Right whales are not particularly fast (whalers caught them in rowboats, for Chri sts sake), but they are full-size and broad, and in the frenzy of a mating chase, a olive-sized Zodiac provides about as much protection from their thrashing, sixty-ton bodies as would vesture aluminum-foil armor to a joust. And master Libby, action-girl nerd that she was, did look clean like a sheik knight in Day-Glo orange, her delegate ready to strike as her trusty warhorse, Evinrude, powered her over the waves.\r\nAnd as they approached the big female, a male on any side of her, the two sandwiching her so she could not escape, she rolled over onto her back, presenting her genitals to the sky. At that she slowed, and Margaret steered amongst the two tails of the males so Libby could set the tag. The female stop therefore and floated up under the Zodiac. Margaret powered strike down the force so as not to rake the animal with the prop.\r\nâ€Å" shop at!” Libby screamed. â€Å" apprehend us off! tolerate us off!” A swipe from the breaks of any of the an imals would put them in the water, minutes from hypothermia and death. Libby had rolled her survival suit down so she could maneuver the harpoon. Shed be pulled under in seconds.\r\nSuddenly, out of the water on either side of them came two huge penises, the males searching for their mark, mournful closer to the female, producing waves that knocked the two women into the nucleotide of the boat. Above them the two tapdance towers curved around tone for their target, feeling the edges of the boat, running goop across the rubber, over the biologists, poking, whipstitching about, and for the most part abusing the women. The female now had the Zodiac centered exactly over her genitals, using the rubber boat as an ad hoc diaphragm. past the two giant whale willies encountered one another in the middle of the Zodiac, and each simply thinking that the other had imbed his target and not wanting to be left out, they let loose with great burbling gouts of sticky whale seed, weft t he boat, covering the equipment, the scientists, washing the gunwales, swamping the motor, generally leaving everything but the gallon whale completely and disgustingly jizzed. Mission accomplished, off they swam to twine a little postcoital krill out of the fray. Margaret suffered a concussion and a partially detached retina, Libby a dislocated shoulder and confused scrapes and bruises, but the real harm could not be assuaged with snaps, slings, and Betadine.\r\nseveral(prenominal) weeks later Libby rejoined Nate, who was down at the Chatham Strait with Clay record feeding behavior. She walked into his cabin, hugged him, hence stepped back and said, â€Å"Nate, I dont think I want to be married anymore.” But what she really meant was â€Å"Im do with penises forever, Nate, and pleasant as you are, I know that you are still attached to one. Ive had my fill, so to speak. Im woful on.”\r\nâ€Å"Okay,” Nate said. He told Clay later that for hours he had b een feeling ravenous and kept telling himself that he should stop working and go eat, but after Libby showed up, thence left, he realized that he hadnt been hungry at all. The emptiness inside was from feeling lonesome. And Nate had stayed relatively lonesome and mostly despondent since that day (although he didnt snivel about it, he just wore it). Clay didnt tell Kona this part. Confessions do over whiskey and campfires were intimate communication. Loyalty.\r\nâ€Å"So,” said Nate, â€Å"Since the verse appears, in most cases, to actually draw the attention of other males, who often join up with the singer, it would seem that the song cannot be sayly connected to mating activity, other than it happens in the mating season. And since no one has actually ascertained humpbacks mating, even this assumption could be in error. If, indeed, the song is the male attempting to define his territory, it would seem in powerive, since other males tend to join singers, even those escorting cow/calf pairs. The study recommends that more studies be done to find out if there is, as previously thought, any direct correlation between humpback song and mating activity. give thanks you. Ill take your suspicions.”\r\n pass went up. hither it came: the crystal gazers, the whale buggers, the hippies, the hunters, the tourists, the developers, the wackos, the researchers (God help us, the researchers), and the idly curious. Nate didnt mind the curious. They were the only ones without an agenda. Everyone else was looking for confirmations, not answers. Should he go to a researcher first? Get it out of the way? dexterity as well go right to the dark side.\r\nâ€Å"Yes, Gilbert.” He pointed to the Count. The tall researcher had taken off his strainlasses but had pulled down the brim of his hat as if to conceal the keen red coals of his eyes. Or by chance Nate was just imagining that.\r\nThe Count said, â€Å"So with these baseborn samplings †what was it, five instances of interactions among singers and others? †theres no real conclusion that you can reach about the relation to breeding or the rigour of the population? Correct?”\r\nNate sighed. Fuckwad, he thought. He spoke to the fantastic faces in the audience, the nonprofessionals. â€Å"As you know, Dr. Box, samples for whale-behavior studies are usually very small. Its guess that we have to guess more from the data with whales than with other animals who are more easily ob allotd. tenuous samples are an accepted boundary of the field.”\r\nâ€Å"So what you are placeing,” Box continued, â€Å"is that you are trying to extrapolate the behavior of an animal that spends less than three percent of its time on the surface from spy its behavior on the surface. Isnt that akin to trying to extrapolate all of human civilization from looking at peoples legs underwater at the beach? I mean, I dont see how you could possibly do it.”\r\ nNate looked around the room, hoping that one of the other behavior researchers might tolerate in, help him out, throw a bone to the podium, but plain they were all finding the displays on the bulletin boards, the ceiling fans, or the wooden floor planks overwhelmingly interesting.\r\nâ€Å"Lately weve been spending more and more time detect the animals under the water. Clay Demodocus has over six hundred hours of tape of humpback behavior underwater. But its only recently, with digital videotape and re pillowr technology, that underwater observation has conk out practical to do to any extent. And we still have the hassle of propulsion. No diver can swim fast teeming to keep up with the humpbacks when theyre traveling. I think all the researchers in this room understand the look upon of observing the animals in the water, and it goes without saying that any research without context of underwater behavior is incomplete. You understand that, Im sure, Dr. Box.”\r\nThere were a few stifled snickers around the room. Nathan Quinn smiled. The Count would not go into the water, under any circumstances. He was either terrified of it or hypersensitised to it, but it was obvious from watching him on his boat that he wanted no edge whatsoever with the water. Still, if he was going to get his funding from the International Whaling Commission, he had to get out there and count whales. On the water, never in it. Quinn believed that Box did grim lore, and because of that he had gone into consulting, the â€Å"dark side.” He per organize studies and provided data for the highest bidder, and Nate had no doubt that the data was skewed to the agenda of the funding. Some nations in the IWC wanted to refer the moratorium on hunting whales, but first they had to prove that the populations had cured enough to sustain hunting. Gilbert Box was getting them their numbers. Nate was capable to have embarrassed Box. He waited for the gaunt scientist to nod bef ore he took the next question.\r\nâ€Å"Yes, Margaret.”\r\nâ€Å"Your study seems to focus on the office of the male animals, without consideration for the females role in the behavior. Could you speak to that?”\r\nJeez, what a surprise, thought Nate. â€Å"Well, I think theres good work being done on the cow/calf behavior, as well as on active groups, which we assume is mating-related activity, but since my work concerns singers and as remote as we know, all singers are males, I tend to observe more male behavior.” There, that should do it.\r\nâ€Å"So you cant say definitively that the females are not the ones controlling the behavior?”\r\nâ€Å"Margaret, as my research assistant has repeatedly pointed out to me, the only thing I can say definitively about humpbacks is that they are big and wet.”\r\nEveryone laughed. Quinn looked at Amy and she winked at him, then, when he looked back to Margaret, he piece Libby beside her, winking at him as well. But at to the lowest degree the tension among the researchers was stony-broken, and Quinn noticed that Captain Tarwater and Jon Thomas Fuller and his rooms were no longer pinnacle their hands to ask questions. by chance they realized that they werent going to learn anything, and they certainly didnt want to try to pursue their own agendas in front of a crowd and be slapped down the way Gilbert Box had. Quinn took the questions from the nonscientists.\r\nâ€Å"Could they just be saying hi?”\r\nâ€Å"Yes.”\r\nâ€Å"If they dont eat here, and its not for mating, then why do they sing?”\r\nâ€Å"Thats a good question.”\r\nâ€Å"Do you think they know that weve been clear uped by aliens and are trying to contact the mother ship?”\r\nAh, incessantly good to hear from the wacko fringe, Nate thought. â€Å"No, I dont think that.”\r\n â€Å"mayhap theyre using their sonar to find other whales.”\r\nâ€Å"As remote as we know, b aleen whales, edentulate whales like the humpbacks who strain their nutrition from the sea through sheets of baleen, dont echolocate the way toothed whales do.”\r\nâ€Å"Why do they jump all the time? Other whales dont jump like that.”\r\nâ€Å"Some think that they are sloughing skin or trying to knock off parasites, but after years of watching them, I think that they just like fashioning a splash †the hero of air on their skin. The way you might like to send packing your feet in a fountain. I think theyre just goofing off.”\r\nâ€Å"I heard that someone broke into your office and destruct all of your research. Who do you think would want to do that?”\r\nNate paused. The woman who had asked the question was holding a reporters steno pad. Maui Times, he guessed. She had stood to ask her question, as if she were attendance a press collection rather than a periodic lecture.\r\nâ€Å"What you have to ask yourself,” said Nate, â€Å"is w ho could possibly care about research on singers?”\r\nâ€Å"And who would that be?”\r\nâ€Å"Me, a few people in this room, and perhaps a dozen or so researchers around the world. At to the lowest degree for now. Perhaps as we find out more, more people will be interested.”\r\nâ€Å"So youre saying that someone in this room broke into your offices and destroyed all your research?”\r\nâ€Å"No. As a biologist, one of the things you have to guard against is applying motives where there are none and development more into a behavior than the data actually support. tell of like the answer to the ‘why do they jump? question. You could say that its part of an incredibly confused system of communication, and you might be right, but the obvious answer, and probably the correct one, is that the whales are goofing off. I think the break-in was just a random act of vandalism that has the appearance of motive.” Bullshit, Quinn thought.\r\nâ€Å"Thank you, Dr. Quinn,” said the reporter. She sat down.\r\nâ€Å"Thank you all for coming,” said Nate.\r\nApplause. Nate logical his notes as people gathered around the podium.\r\nâ€Å"That was bullshit,” Amy said.\r\nâ€Å"Complete bullshit,” said Libby Quinn.\r\nâ€Å"What a load of crap,” said Cliff Hyland.\r\nâ€Å"Rippin talk, Doc,” Kona said, â€Å"Marleys ghost was in ye.”\r\nCHAPTER NINE\r\nRelativity\r\n coriaceous bar girls worked the lock booths at the harbor, smoking Basic 100s and talking in voices that sounded like 151 inebriate poured into hot grease †a jigger of friendly to the lambert of harsh. They were thirty-five or sixty-five, the saturation of mahogany, skinny and strong from upkeep on boats, liquor, fish, and disappointment. Theyd come here from a dozen coastal towns, some sailing from the mainland in small craft but forgetting to save enough courageousness for the trip home. Marooned. Man to man, boat to boat, year to year †salt and sun and drinking had left them dry enough to cough dust. If they lasted a hundred years †and some would †then one moonless night a great hooded wraith would pounce into the harbor and take them off to their own craggy island †unmapped and unseen more than once by any subsisting man †and there they would keep the en warblement of the sea alive: lure lost sailors to the shore, suck out all of their fluids, and leave their desiccated husks crumbling on the rocks for the channelise and the black gulls. Thus were the sea hags born… but thats another story. Today they were just shuttle Clay for leading two girls down the dock.\r\nâ€Å"Just like outboards, Clay, you gotta have two to make sure ones always running,” called Margie, who had once, after ten mai-tais, tried to go down on the wooden sea captain who reticent the doorway of the Pioneer Inn.\r\nDebbie, who had a secret source for little-boy wee- wee that she put in the ears of the black-coral different when they got ear infections, said, â€Å"You give that young one the first watch, Clay. let her rest up a bit.”\r\nâ€Å"Morning, ladies,” Clay tossed over his shoulder. He was grinning and blushing, his ears showing red even where they werent sunburned. Fifty years old, hed dived every sea, been attacked by sharks, survived malaria and Malaysian pirates, ridden in a te ball with a window five miles down into the Tonga Trench, and still he blushed.\r\nClair, Clays girlfriend of quartet years, a forty-year-old Nipponese-Hawaiian schoolteacher who moved like she was doing the hula to a Sousa march (strange mix of august order and island breeze), backhanded a hang-loose shaka at the cronettes and said, grinning, â€Å"She just on to pour buckets on his reels girls, keep him from burning up.”\r\nâ€Å"Oh, you guys are so friggin nautical,” said Amy, who was wrestling with a huge Pelican case tha t held the rebreather. The case slipped out of her make out and barked her shin before she caught it. â€Å"Ouch. Damn it. Oh yeah, everyone loves your stimulating friggin charm.”\r\nA chorus of cackles from the charter booths wheezed into coughing fits. Back to the cats, the cauldrons, the cocoa palm oil, the sacred Jimmy Buffett songs sung at midnight into the ear of drunken, white-bearded Hemingway wannabes to make that rum-soaked member rise from the dead just this one last time. The leathery bar girls off back to their business as Kona passed by.\r\nâ€Å"Irie, Sistah Amy. Give up ye burden,” said Kona, bounding down the dock to drop the heavy rebreather out of Amys grip and up onto his shoulder.\r\nAmy rubbed her arm. â€Å"Thanks. Wheres Nate?”\r\nâ€Å"He go to the fuel dock to get coffee for the whole tribe. A lion, him.”\r\nâ€Å"Yeah, hes a good guy. Youll be going out with him today. I have to go along with Clay and Clair as a safety div er.”\r\nâ€Å"Slippers off in the boat,” Clay said to Clair for the ordinal time. She rolled her eyes and kicked off her flip-flops before stepping down into the endlessly Confused. She offered Clay a hand, and he steadied her as if escorting a lady from the kings court to the ballroom floor.\r\nKona handed the rebreather down to Clay. â€Å"I can safety-dive.”\r\nâ€Å"Youll never be able to clear your ears. You cant clip your nostrils shut with those nose go in.”\r\nâ€Å"They come out. Look, out they come.” He tossed the rings to Amy and she deftly sidestepped, permit them plop into the water.\r\nâ€Å"Oops.”\r\nâ€Å"Amys a aware diver, squirt. Sorry. Youre with Nate today.”\r\nâ€Å"He know that?”\r\nâ€Å"Yeah, does he know that?” asked Clair.\r\nâ€Å"He will soon. Get those lines, would you, Amy.”\r\nâ€Å"I can drive the boat.” Kona was on the edge of pleading.\r\nâ€Å"No one but me drives the boat,” said Clay.\r\nâ€Å"Im driving the boat,” turn Clair.\r\nâ€Å"You have to sleep with Clay to drive the boat,” said Amy.\r\nâ€Å"You just do what Nate tells you,” Clay said. â€Å"Youll be fine.”\r\nâ€Å"If I sleep with Amy can I drive the boat?”\r\nâ€Å"Nobody drives the boat,” Clay said.\r\nâ€Å"I drive the boat,” Clair said.\r\nâ€Å"Nobody sleeps with Amy,” Amy said.\r\nâ€Å"I sleep with Amy,” Clair said.\r\nAnd everyone stopped and looked at Clair.\r\nâ€Å"Who wants cream?” asked Nate, arriving at that act with a paper tray of coffee cups. â€Å"You can do your own colewort.”\r\nâ€Å"Thats what Im saying,” said Clair. â€Å"Sisters are doing it for themselves.”\r\nAnd Nate hung there in space, holding a cup and a sugar packet, a wooden arouse stick, a baffled expression.\r\nClair grinned. â€Å"Kidding. Jeez, you guys.”\r\nEveryone breathed. java was d istributed, gear was loaded, Clay drove the Always Confused out of the harbor, pausing to wave to the Count and his crew, who were shipment gear into a thirty-foot rigid-hull Zodiac usually used for parasailing. The Count pulled down the brim of his hat and stood in the bow of the Zodiac, his sun umbrella at port arms, looking like a otiose statue of Washington crossing the Lethe. The crew waved, Gilbert Box scowled.\r\nâ€Å"I like him,” Clay said. â€Å"Hes predictable.”\r\nBut Amy and Clair missed the comment. They were applying sunscreen and lenience in girl talk in the bow.\r\nâ€Å"You can talk like such a floozy sometimes,” said Amy. â€Å"I wish I could be floozish.”\r\nClair poked her in the leg with a long, red-lacquered fingernail. â€Å"Dont sell yourself short, pumpkin.”\r\nThe ersatz Hawaiian stood on the bow school like he was hanging ten off the twenty-two-foot Mako, gesture to the Zodiac crew as they passed. â€Å"Irie, sci ence dreadies! We be research jammin now!” But when the Count disregard his greeting, Kona gave the traditionalistic island response: â€Å"What, I owe you money?”\r\nâ€Å"Settle, Kona,” Nate said. â€Å"And get down off of there.”\r\nKona made his way back to the console. â€Å" quondam(a) white jacket givin you the stink-eye. Why, he think you an agent of Babylon?”\r\nâ€Å"He does bad science. People come to me to ask me about him, I tell them he does bad science.”\r\nâ€Å"And we do the good science?”\r\nâ€Å"We dont change our numbers to divert 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.”\r\nâ€Å"Kill these humpies? No.”\r\nâ€Å"Yes.”\r\nâ€Å"No. Why?”\r\nâ€Å"To eat.”\r\nâ€Å"No,” said the blond Rastaman, shaking his head a s if to clear the evil from his ears †his dreads fanning out into nappy spokes.\r\nQuinn 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. â€Å" have whale is very traditional in Japan. It sort of has the rite of our Thanksgiving. But its dying out.”\r\nâ€Å"Then its all good.”\r\nâ€Å"No. There are a lot of old men who want to bring back whale hunting as a tradition. The Japanese whaling industry is subsidised by the government. Its not even a viable business. They serve whale meat in the school-lunch program so kids will develop a audition for it.”\r\nâ€Å"No. No one eats the whale.”\r\nâ€Å"The IWC allows them to kill five hundred minke whales a year, but they kill more. And biologists have form whale meat from half a dozen be whale species in Japanese markets. They try to pass it off as minke whale, but the deoxyribonucleic acid doesnt lie.”\r\nâ€Å"Minke? That devil in the white war paint cleanup our minke?”\r\nâ€Å"We dont have any minkes here in Hawaii.”\r\nâ€Å"Course not, the Count killing them. We going to chant down this evil fuckery.” Kona take away into his red, gold, and green fanny pack. verboten came an extraordinarily complex vane 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 subatomic particle accelerator or, more likely, the most complex bong ever constructed.\r\nâ€Å" soft de boat, brah. I got to glister up for freedom. chirrup down Babylon, go into battle for Jahs glory, mon. Slow de boat.”\r\nâ€Å"Put that away.”\r\nKona paused, his Bic lighter poised over the bowl. â€Å"Take de ship home to Zion, brah?”\r\nâ€Å"No, we have work to do.” Nate slowed the boat and killed the motor. They were about a mile off Lahaina.\r\nâ€Å"Chant down Babylon?” Kona raised the lighter.\r\nâ€Å"No. Put that away. Ill show you how to drop the hydrophone.” Quinn checked the tape in the recorder on the console.\r\nâ€Å" moreover our minkes?” Kona waved the lighter, unlit, in circles over the bowl.\r\nâ€Å"Did Clay show you how to take an ID photo?” Nate pulled the hydrophone and the coil of cord out of its case.\r\nâ€Å"Ride Jahs herb into the recondite?”\r\nâ€Å"No! Put that away and get the camera out of that cabinet in the bow.”\r\nKona broke down the bong with a series of whirs and clicks and put it back in his fanny pack. â€Å"all(a) right, brah, but when they have eated all your minkes, will not be Jahs fault.”\r\nAn hour later, after auditory modality, and moving, and listening again, they had found their singer. Kona stood fit on the gunwale of the boat gaze down in wonder at the big male, who was place under the boat reservati on a sound approximating that of a kidnap victim trying to scream through communication channel tape.\r\nKona 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 hed be forced to finish life in a toadish squat. Still, he envied Kona the enthusiasm of discovery, the fascination and fervor of being around these great animals for the first time. He envied him his juvenility and his strength. And, listening to the song in the headphones, the song that seemed so distinctly to be a program line of mating and yet refused to give up any direct evidence that it was, Nate felt a profound irrelevance. Sexually, socially, intellectually, fiscally, scientifically foreign †a sack of borrowed atoms lumpily arranged in a Nate shape. No effect, purpo se, or stability.\r\nHe tried to listen more well 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 hed been out since the â€Å"bite me” incident, and since then he had convinced himself that it mustiness have been some sort of hallucination. Still, he cringed a bit every time the whale hunchbacked its tail to dive, expecting to see a message scrawled across the flukes.\r\nâ€Å"Hes do them up noises, boss.”\r\nNate nodded. The kid was study fast. â€Å"Get your camera ready, Kona. Hell breathe three, maybe four-spot times before he dives, so be ready.”\r\nAbruptly the render in the headphones stopped. Nate pulled up the hydrophone and started the engine. They waited.\r\nâ€Å"He went that way, boss,” Kona said, pointing off to the starboard side. Nate glowering the boat s lowly in place and waited.\r\nThey 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 dust wafting across them in a rainbow cloud.\r\nâ€Å"Ho! Dat buggah up, boss!”\r\nâ€Å"Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Nate said under his breath. He pulled down the choke 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 to the lowest degree the kid had had the sense to use his body to shield the camera from the splash.\r\nâ€Å"I love this whale!” Kona said, his Rastaspeak melting, leaving behind a middle-class Jersey accent. â€Å"I want to take this whale home and put him in a box with divulge and rocks. Buy him squeaky toys.”\r\nâ€Å"Get ready for your ID shot,” Nate instructed.\r\nâ€Å"When were done w ith him, can I keep him? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeze!”\r\nâ€Å"Here he goes, Kona. Focus.”\r\nThe whale humped, then fluked, and Kona fired off four quick phases with the motor drive.\r\nâ€Å"You get it?”\r\nâ€Å"Rippin pics. Rippin!” Kona put the camera down on the seat in front of the console and cover it with a towel.\r\nNate pointed the boat toward the last fluke print, a twenty-foot genus Lens of smooth water formed on the surface by the turbulence of the whales 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.\r\nNate dropped the hydrophones, hit the ;record; button, and put on t he headphones. Kona was recording the frame numbers and GPS coordinates in the notebook as Nate had taught him. A monkey around can do my job, Nate thought. An hours father and this stoner is already doing it. This kid is younger, stronger, and faster than I am, and Im not even sure that Im smarter, as if that matters. Im totally irrelevant.\r\nBut maybe it did matter. Maybe it wasnt all about strength. Culture and language completely screwed up normal biological evolution. Why would we humans have developed such big brains if mating was always predicated on strength and size? Women must have chosen their duad based on wisdom as well. Perhaps archean smart guys would say something like â€Å"There, right behind those rocks, theres a tasty sloth ripe for the spearing. Go get him, guys.” Then, after hed sent the stronger, dumber guys running off a cliff after the imaginary sloth, hed settle down with the best of the Cro-Magnon cuties to mix some genes. â€Å"Thats right, bite my brow ridge. prickle it!” Nate smiled.\r\nKona was looking over the side at the singer, whose tail was only twenty feet below the boat (although his head was forty feet deeper). He was only a couple of minutes into his song. Hed be down at least ten minutes more.\r\nâ€Å"Kona, we need to get a DNA sample.”\r\nâ€Å"How we do that?”\r\nNate pulled a set of flippers out of the console and handed them and an empty coffee cup out to the surfer. â€Å"Youre going to need to go get a semen sample.”\r\nThe surfer gulped. Looked at the whale, looked at the cup, looked over the side at the whale again. â€Å"No lid?”\r\n'