Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 10~11

CHAPTER TENSafety carcass Demodocus drifted silently vote downward yesteryear the tail of the wind-h aginger, yet the quiet let bulge turn disclose of his own breath in his ears. Breath-holders were c wholeed such because they hung there in the pee for up to forty transactions, heads down bid a singer, fairish holding their breath. non swimming or singing or doing much of anything else. f line of products menstruateing there, any(prenominal) quantify triplet or quaternion of them, tails pass around out equivalent the points of a compass. As if most unriv solelyed had near dropped a handful of quiescence runs and forgotten to pick them up. Except they werent slee irisg. Whales didnt tangiblely sleep, as far as they knew. Well, the theory was that they slept with further half of their brain at a conviction, while the other half alsok c ar of non drowning. For an air-breather, slee legg in the piddle and not drowning is a with child(p) problem. (Go ahe ad, try it. Well wait.) f all(prenominal) asleep would be so easy with the rebreather, the Great Compromiser thought. It was very quiet, which was wherefore clay was using it. Instead of using a tank car of air that was exhaled through a goernor into the water as tattles, the rebreather sent the frogmans passing patronize through a scrubber that took out the carbon dioxide, historic whatever sensors and a tank that added some oxygen, hence screen to the diver to be rebreathed. No bubbles, which made the rebreather perfect for studying whales (and for sneaking up on enemy ships, which is why the navy had developed it in the starting line place). Humpbacks used bubble blowing as a means of communication, especially the viriles, who be unitary another with bubble displays. Consequently it was nearly impossible to labor close to a whale with scuba gear, especially a passive animal like a singer or a breath-holder. By blowing bubbles the diver was babbling away in wha lespeak, without the slightest idea of what he was saying. In the past dust had dropped on breath-holders with scuba gear, only to image the animals swim off forrader he got within fifty feet of them. He imagined the whales saying, Hey, its the skinny, retard kid rippleing nonsense again. allows break out of here. scarcely this placate theyd gotten the rebreather, and ashes was getting his first ever decent footage of a breath-holder. As he drifted by the tail, he canvass his come closes, go outed up to contact Amy snorkel at the airfoil, silhouetted in a sunbeam, a small tank strapped on her back bring in to come to his extradite should something go wrong. The one big drawback to the rebreather (rather than a fairly simple hose on a tank as in a scuba setup) was that it was a very mingled machine, and, should it break, there was a good chance it would kill the diver. ( carcasss experience had taught him that the one thing you could depend on was that something wo uld break.)Around him, except for the whale, was a k presentlyledge base of clear sad below, nothing except blue. Even with great profile he couldnt chance the tramp, some phoebe bird coke feet down. fair(a) past the tail he was at a hundred feet. The navy had well-tested the rebreather to more than a deoxyguanosine monophosphate feet (and since he could theoreti announcey stay down for sixteen hours if he driveed to, decompression wasnt a problem), exactly Clay was still wary of release too deep. The rebreather wasnt set to mix gases for a deep dive, so there was still the danger of nitrogen narcosis a sort of intoxication caused by pressurized nitrogen in the bloodstream. Clay had been narced a couple of quantify, once while under arctic ice record beluga whales, and if he hadnt been tethered to the opening in the ice with a nylon line, he would withdraw drowned.Just a fewer more feet and hed be satisfactory to sex the breath-holder, something that they hadnt done more than a few times before, and because it was by crossbow and DNA. The question so far was, are breath-holders all male like singers, and if so, does the breath-holding sort make believe something to do with the singing behavior? Clay and Quinn had first come together over the question of sexing singers, some se acquittanceeen years before, when DNA testing was so rare as to be nearly nonexistent. Can you get under the tail? Nate had asked. stir up photos of the genitals?Kinky, Clay had verbalise. Sure, Ill give it a try.Of course, except for a few occasions when he was up to(p) to hold his breath long be orgasm to get under an animal, some a deuce-ace of the time, Clay had failed at producing whale porn. instantaneously, with this rebreatherAs he drifted below the tail, so close now that even the wide-angle lens could take in only a third of the flukes, Clay noticed some unusual markings on the tail. He looked up from the display scarce as the whale began to mov e, yet it was too late. The whale twitched, and the massive tail came down on Clays head, brainish him some twenty feet deeper in an instant. The wash from the flukes tumbled him backward three times before he settled in a slow drift to the bottom, unconscious.As he watched the pseudo-Hawaiian try to kick down to the singing whale for the ordinal time, Nathan Quinn thought, This is a rite of passage. Similar things were done to me when I was a potassium alum student. Didnt Dr. Ryder send me out to get close-up blowhole pictures of a gray whale who had a hideous head cold? Wasnt I hit by a basketball-size gob of whale snot nearly every time the whale surfaced? And wasnt I, ultimately, grateful for the opportunity to get out in the playing field and do some real research? Of course I was. Therefore, I am creation neither cruel nor unprofessional by move this young man down again and again to perform a hand job on the singer.The radio chirped, sign of the zodiacing a call from the everlastingly Confused. Nate keyed the mike justton on the mobile foretell/two-way radio they used to communicate between the two gravy gravy holders. Go ahead, Clay.Nate, its Clair. Clay went down close to fifteen minutes ago, precisely Amy just dove after him with the rescue tank. I dont know what to do. Theyre too deep. I cant see them. The whale took off, and I cant see them.Where are you, Clair?Straight out, round two miles off the dump.Nate grabbed the binoculars and scanned the island, prime the dump, looked out from there. He could entertain out two or three gravy holders in the area. Six or eight minutes away at full throttle.Keep looking, Clair. force back ready to drop a cohere tank if you feel one set up, in case they require to decompress. Ill be there as soon as I get the kid out of the water.Whats he doing in the water?Just a bad decision on my part. Keep me apprised, Clair. establish to follow Amys bubbles if you can find them. Youll want to be as close to them as you can when they come up.Nate started the engine just as Kona broke the surface, spitting out the snorkel and taking in a great gasp of air. Kona shook his head, signifying that he hadnt accomplished the mission. also deep, boss.Come, come, come. To the side. Nate waved him to the sauceboat. Quinn brought the boat broadside to Kona, then reached over with both detainment. Come on. Kona took his hands, and Quinn jerked the surfer over the gunwale. Kona landed in a heap in the bottom of the boat.Boss »Hang on, Clays in trouble.But, boss »Quinn buried the throttle, yanked the boat around, and cringed at the bunny-in-a-blender screech as the hydrophone cord masked around the uphold, s turn arounded the prop pin, and chopped itself into a whole package of expensive, waterproof licorice sticks. arse Nate snatched off his baseball cap and whipped it onto the console.The hydrophone sank peacefully to the bottom, bopping the singer on the back as it we nt. Nate killed the engine and grabbed the radio. Clair, are they up yet? Im not sack to be able to get there.Amy matt-up as if somebody were driving huge ice picks into her eardrums. She pinched her nostrils close and blew to equalize the pressure, even as she kicked to go deeper, but she was moving too fast to get equalized.She was down fifty feet now. Clay was a hundred feet below her, the pressure would tierce before she got there. She felt as if she were swimming through thick, blue honey. Shed seen the whale tail hit Clay and toss him back, but the good password was that she hadnt seen a cloud of bubbles come up. There was a chance that the regulator had stayed in Clays lip and he was still respire. Of course, it could also mean that he was all in(p) or that his neck had snapped and he was paralyzed. Whatever his condition, he for certain wasnt moving voluntarily, just sinking slowly, relentlessly toward the bottom.Amy fought the pressure, the resistance of the water, and did math problems as she kicked deeper. The rescue tank held only a thousand pounds of air, a third of the capacity of a everyday tank. She guessed that shed be at around a hundred and seventy-five to two hundred feet before she caught Clay. That would give her just enough air to get him to the surface without s pull inping to decompress. Even if Clay was unhurt, there was a good chance he was sledding to get decompression sickness, the bends, and if he lived through that, hed spend three or cardinal days in the hyperbaric decompression chamber in Honolulu.Ah, the big clod is probably dead anyway, she thought, trying to cheer herself up.Although Clay Demodocus had lived a look spiced with adventures, he was not an adventurer. Like Nate, he did not seek danger, risk, or fulfillment by testing his mettle against nature. He sought solace weather, gentle seas, comfortable accommodations, kind and loyal commonwealth, and synthetic rubber, and it was only for the work that he compromised any of those goals. The last to go, the least compromised, was safety. The loss of his father, a hard-helmet sponge diver, had taught him that. The old man was just touching bottom at eight hundred feet when a drunken deck hand dragged his ass across the engine start button, causing the prop to cut his fathers air line. The pressure at one time drove Papa Demodocuss entire body into the bronze helmet, leaving only his weighted shoes showing, and it was in his great helmet that he was lowered into the grave. modest Clay (Cleandros in those days in Greece) was only five at the time, and that last vision of his father haunted him for years. He never did see a Marvin the Martian cartoon that great goofy helmet body horseback riding cartoon shoes when he did not confuse to fight a tear and sniffle for Papa.As Clay drifted down into the briny blue, he saw a bright light and a dark contour waiting there on the other side. Out of the light came a short but familiar f igure. The face was still dark, but Clay knew the voice, even after so many years. Welcome, Earth Being, said the vacuum-packed Greek.Papa, said Clay.Clair dragged the heavy tank out of the Always Confuseds bait well and tried to attach the regulator in order to hang it off a line for Amy and Clay to breathe from so they could decompress before culmination up. Clay had shown her how to do this a dozen times, but she had never paying(a) attention. It was his job to put the technothingies together. She didnt need to know this stuff. It wasnt as if she was ever vent to go diving without him. Shed let him drone on about safety this and life-threatening that while she applied her attention to putting on sunblock or braiding her hair so it wouldnt tangle in the equipment. Now she was blinking back tears and cursing herself for not having listened. When she thought she at last might have the regulator screwed on correctly, she grabbed it and dragged the tank to the side of the boat. T he regulator came off in her hands.Goddamn it She snatched the radio and keyed the mike. Nate, I need some table service here.Go ahead, sistah, came back. He be in the briny blue, fixing the propeller.Kona, do you know how a regulator goes on a scuba tank?Yah mon, you got to keep the field above the water or your herb get wet and wont take the fire.Clair took a deep breath and fought back a sob. See if you can put Nate on.Back on the Constantly Baffled, Nate was in the water with snorkel and fins fighting the weight of half a dozen wrenches and sockets hed put in the pockets of his cargo shorts. He about had the propeller off the boat. With luck he could install the shear pin and be up and running in a couple of minutes. It wasnt a complex procedure. It had just been made a lot trickier when Nate found that he couldnt reach the prop to work on it from inside the boat. because, suddenly, his air allow for was cut off.He kicked up, spit the snorkel out of his mouth, and found him self arrant(a) Kona right in the face. The fake Hawaiian hung over the back of the boat, his finger covering the end of Nates snorkel, his other hand holding the radio, which hed let cause halfway underwater.Call for you, boss.Nate gasped and snatched the receiver out of Konas hand held it up out of the water. What in the hell are you doing? Thats not waterproof. He tried to discharge the water out of the cell phone and keyed the mike. Clair Can you hear me? No sound, not even nonoperational.But its yellow, said Kona, as if that explained everything.I can see its yellow. What did Clair say? Is Clay all right?She valued to know how to put the regulator on the tank. You have to keep the bowl above the water, I tell her.Its not a bong, you idiot. Its a real scuba tank. Help me out.Nate handed up his fins, then stepped on the pare down planes on the stern and pulled himself into the boat. At the console he turned on the marine radio and started calling. Clair, you listening? T his is the Constantly Baffled calling the Always Confused. Clair, are you there?Constantly Baffled, cut in a stern, official-sounding male voice, this is the Department of Conservation and Resources Enforcement. Are you displaying your permit flag?Conservation, we have an destiny situation, a diver in trouble off our other boat. Im dead in the water with a broken shear pin. The other boat is roughly two miles off the dump.Constantly Baffled, why are you not displaying your permit flag?Because I forgot to put the damn thing up. We have two divers in the water, both possibly in trouble, and the muliebrityhood on board is unable to put together a hang tank. Nate looked around. He could see the whale cops boat about a thousand yards to the west toward Lanai. They were on base another boat. Nate could see the familiar figure of the find standing in the bow, looming there like doom in an east wind bonnet. BastardConstantly Baffled, hold there, we are coming to you.Dont come to me. Im not passage anywhere. Go to the other boat. Repeat, they have an emergency situation and are not responding to marine radio.The Conservation Enforcement boat lifted up in the water under the power of two 125-horse Honda outboards and beelined toward them.FuckNate dropped the mike and started to shake, a shiver born not of temperature, as it was eighty marks on the channel, but out of frustration and fear. What had happened to Clay to prompt Amy to go to his rescue? maybe she had misjudged the situation and gone down needlessly. She didnt have much experience in the water, or at least he didnt deal she had. But if things were okay, then why werent they up?Kona, did Clair say whether she could see Amy and Clay?No, boss, she just cherished to know about the regulator. Kona sat down in the bottom of the boat and hung his head between his knees. Im sorry, boss. I thought if it was yellow, it could go in the water. I didnt know. It slipped.Nate wanted to tell the kid it was all righ t, but he didnt like lying to people. Clay put you on the research permit, right, Kona? You remember sign a paper with a lot of names on it?No, mon. That five-oh coming up now?Yeah, whale cops. And if Clay didnt put you on the permit, youre passing play to be going home with them.CHAPTER ELEVENThe Mermaidand the MartianThe depth gauge read two hundred feet by the time Amy finally snagged the top of Clays rebreather and pulled herself down to where she was looking into his mask. If it werent for a small trail of blood cyclosis from his scalp, making him look like he was leaking black motor inunct into the blue, he might have been sleeping, and she smiled in spite of herself. The sea dog survives. Somehow maybe through years of conditioning his reflexes to keep his mouth shut Clay had bitten down on the mouthpiece of the rebreather. He was breathing steadily. She could hear the hiss of the apparatus.She wasnt sure that Clays mouthpiece would stay in all the way to the surfac e, and, if it came out, the photographer would surely drown, even if she replaced it quickly. Unlike a normal scuba regulator, which was frightfully easy to purge, you couldnt let water get into a rebreather or it could foul the carbon-dioxide scrubbers and render the device useless. And shed need both her hands for the swim up. One to hold on to Clay and one to vent air from his buoyancy-control vest, which would fill with air as they rose, causing them both to land to the surface and get the bends. (Amy wasnt wearing a BC vest or a wet suit she wasnt supposed to have needed them.) afterwards wasting a precious thirty seconds of air to consider the problem, she took off her bikini top and wrapped it around Clays head to secure his mouthpiece. indeed she hooked her hand into his buoyancy vest and started the slow kick to the surface.At a hundred and fifty feet she made the mistake of looking up. The surface might have been a mile away. Then she checked her watch and pulled up Cla ys arm so she could see the dive computer on his wrist. Already the liquid-crystal readout was blinking, telling her that Clay needed two decompression stop on the way up. One at fifty feet and one at twenty, from ten to fifteen minutes each. With his rebreather hed have plenty of air. Amy wasnt wearing a dive computer, but by ball-parking it from her pressure gauge, she figured she had between five and ten minutes of air left. She was about half an hour short.Well, this is going to be awkward, she thought.The whale cops wore light blue uniform shirts with shorts and aviator-style reflect dark glasses that looked as if theyd been surgically set into their faces. They were both in their thirties and had spent some time in the gym, although one was heavier and had rolled up his short sleeves to let his grapefruit biceps breathe. The other was thin and wiry. They brought their boat alongside Nates and threw over a bumper to keep the boats from rubbing together in the waves.Howzit, b ruddahs Kona said. Not now, Nate whispered.I need to see your permit, said the heavier cop.Nate had pulled a moldable envelope out from under the console as they approached. They went through this several times a year. He handed it over to the cop, who took out the document and unfolded it.Ill need both of your IDs.Come on, Nate said, handing over his drivers license. You guys know me. Look, weve sheared a pin and theres a diver emergency on our other boat.You want us to call the border Guard?No, I want you to take us over there.Thats not what we do, Dr. Quinn, said the thin cop, looking up from the permit. The Coast Guard is equipped for emergencies. We are not.Dis haole, lolo pela, him, said Kona. (Meaning, hes just a sluggish white guy.)Dont talk that shit to me, said the heavier cop. You want to speak Hawaiian, Ill talk to you in Hawaiian, but dont talk that pidgin shit to me. Now, wheres your ID?Back at my cabin.Dr. Quinn, your people need to have ID at all times on a resea rch vessel, you know that.Hes new.Whats your name, kid?Pelekekona Keohokalole, said Kona.The cop took off his sunglasses for the first time ever, Nate thought. He looked at Kona.Youre not on the permit.Try Preston Applebaum, said Kona.Are you trying to fuck with me?He is, said Nate. Just take him in, and on the way take me to our other boat.I think well tow both of you in and deal with the permit issues when we get into harbor.Suddenly, amid the static of the marine radio on in the background, Clairs voice Nate, are you there? I lost Amys bubbles. I cant see her bubbles. I need facilitate here Nate AnyoneNate looked at the whale cop, who looked at his partner, who looked away.Kona jumped up on the gunwale of the police boat and leaned into the wiry cops face. Can we do the territorial macho power trip after we get our divers out of the water, or do you have to kill two people to show us how big your fucking dicks are?Clair ran around the boat searching for Amys bubble trail, hop ing she was just missing it, had lost it in the waves hoping that it was still there. She looked at the hang tank academic session in the floor of the boat, still unattached to the regulator, then ran back to the radios, keying both the marine radio and the cell-phone radio and trying not to scream.SOS here. Please, Im a couple of miles off the dump, I have divers down, in trouble.The harbormaster at Lahaina came back, said hed send someone, and then a dive boat who was out at the lava cathedrals at Lanai said they had to get their divers out of the water but could be there in thirty minutes. Then Nathan Quinn came back.Clair, this is Nate. Im on the way. How long ago did the bubbles stop?Clair checked her watch. Four, five minutes ago.Can you see them?No, nothing. Amy went deep, Nate. I watched her go down until she disappeared.Do you have hang tanks in the water?No, I cant get the damn regulators on. Clay always did it.Just tie off the tanks and tie the regulators to the tanks and get them over the side. Amy and Clay can hook them up if they get to them.How deep? I have three tanks.Ninety, sixty, and thirty. Just get them in the water, Clair. Well worry about exact depth when I get there. Just hang them so they can find them. Tie glow sticks on them if you have any. Should be there in five minutes. We can see you.Clair started tying the plastic line around the necks of the heavy scuba tanks. Every few seconds she scanned the waves for signs of Amys bubbles, but there werent any. Nate had said If they get to them. She blinked away tears and concentrated on her knots. If? Well if Clay made it back when he made it back he could damn sure get himself a safer job. Her man wasnt going to drown hundreds of feet under the ocean, because from now on he was going to be taking pictures of weddings or bar mitzvahs or kids at JC Penneys or some goddamn thing on dry land.Across the channel, near the border of Kahoolawe, the target island, Libby Quinn had been f ollowing the exchange between Clair and Nate over the marine radio. Without being asked, her partner, Margaret, said, We dont have any diving equipment on board. That deep, theres not much we could do.Clays perennial anyway, said Libby, trying to sound more blas?? than she felt. Hell come up yammering about what great footage he got.Call them, offer our help, the older woman said. If we disclaim our instincts as caretakers, we deny ourselves as women.Oh, fuck off, Margaret Im calling to offer our help because its the right thing to do.Meanwhile, on the ocean side of Kahoolawe, Cliff Hyland was sitting in the makeshift lab belowdecks in the cabin cruiser, headphones on, watching an range readout, when one of his grad students came into the cabin and grabbed him by the shoulder.Sounds like Nathan Quinns assemblage is in trouble, said the girl, a sun-baked brunette wearing zinc-oxide war paint on her nose and cheeks and a hat the size of a garbage-can lid.Hyland pulled up the headp hones. What? Who? dismission? Sinking? What?Theyve lost two divers. That photographer guy Clay and that colour girl.Where are they?About two miles off the dump. Theyre not asking for help. I just thought you should know.Thats a ways. Start reeling in the array. We can be there in a half hour maybe.Just then Captain Tarwater came down the steps into the cabin. Stay that order, grommet. Stay on mission. We have a survey to finish today and a charge to record.Those guys are friends of mine, Hyland said.Ive been monitoring the situation, Dr. Hyland. Our presence has not been requested, and, frankly, there is nothing this vessel could do to help. It sounds like theyve lost some divers. It happens.This isnt war, Tarwater. We dont just lose people.Stay on mission. Any setback in Quinns operation can only utility this project.You asshole, Hyland said.Back in the channel, the Count stood in the bow of the big Zodiac and watched as the Conservation and Resources Enforcement boat towed a way the Constantly Baffled. He turned to his three investigators, who were trying to look busy in back of the boat. Let that be a lesson to you all. The key to good science is making sure all the paperwork is in order. Now you can see why Im such a stickler for you people having your IDs with you every morning.Yeah, in case some other researcher rats us out to the Conservation and Resources cops, one woman said.Science is a competitive sport, Ms. Wextler. If youre not willing to compete, youre welcome to take your undergrad degree and go baby-sit seasick tourists on a whale-watching boat. Nathan Quinn has attacked the credibility of this musical arrangement in the past. Its only fair play that I point out when he is not working within the rules of the sanctuary.The ocean breeze carried the petty(prenominal) researchers under-the-breath whispers of «asshole» away from the ears of Gilbert Box, over the channel to wash against the cliffs of Molokai.Nate wrapped his arms ar ound Clair and held her as she sobbed. As the downtime passed the first half hour, Nate felt a ball of fear, dread, and nausea forming in his own stomach. Only by trying to stay busy looking for signs of Clay and Amy was he able to keep from being ill. When Amys downtime passed forty-five minutes, Clair started to sob. Clay might have been able to stay down that long with the re-breather, but with only the tiny rescue tank, there was no way Amy could still be breathing. Two divemasters from a nearby tour boat had already used up a full tank each searching. The problem was, in blue water it was a three-dimensional search. Rescue searches were usually done on the bottom, but not when it was six hundred feet down. With the currents in the channel well, the search was undersize more than a gesture anyway.Being a scientist, Nate liked true up things, so after an hour he stopped telling Clair that everything was going to be all right. He didnt believe it, and grief was already come dow n on him like a flight of black arrows. In the past, when he had experienced loss or trauma or heartbreak, some extract mechanism had kicked in and allowed him to function for months before hed actually begin pure tone the pain, but this time it was immediate and deep and devastating. His best friend was dead. The woman that he Well, he wasnt exactly sure what hed felt about Amy, but even when he looked past the sexuality, the differences in their ages and positions, he liked her. He liked her a lot, and hed become used to her presence after only a few weeks.One of the divers came up near the boat and spit out his regulator. Theres nowhere to look. Its just blue to fucking infinity.Yeah, Nate said. I know.Clay saw blue-green breasts gently bobbing before his face and was win over that he had, indeed, drowned. He felt himself being pulled upward and so closed his eyes and surrendered.No, no, no, son, said Papa. Youre not in heaven. The tits are not blue in heaven. You are still alive.Papas face was very much smashed against the glass of his helmet, wearing the sort of expression he might have had if hed run full speed into a bulletproof window and someone had snapped a picture at maximum mash, yet Clay could see that his eyes were smiling.My little Cleandros, you know it is not time for you to join me?Clay nodded.And when it comes time for you to join me, it should be because you are old and tired and ready to go, not because the sea is wanting to crush you.Clay nodded again, then unfastened his eyes. This time there was a stabbing pain in his head, but he squinted through it to see Amys face through her dive mask. She held his regulator in his mouth and was gripping the back of his head to make him look at her. When she was sure that he was conscious and knew where he was, she gave him the okay signal and waited until he returned it. Amy then let go of Clays regulator, and they swam slowly upward, to surface four hundred yards from where theyd first su bmerged.Clay immediately looked around for the boat and found nothing where he expected it, the closest vessels being a group of boats too far away to be the Always Confused. He checked his dive computer. Hed been down for an hour and fifteen minutes. That couldnt be right.Thats them, Amy said. She looked down into the water. Oops. Let me get my top off of your face.Okay, Clay mumbled into the rebreather.Kona was in tears, wailing like Bob Marley in a bear trap inconsolable. Clay gone. The livid Biscuit gone. And I was going to poke squid with her, too.You were not, said Nate.But the artificial Hawaiian didnt hear. There Kona shouted as he leaped onto the shoulders of the blockheaded whale cop to get a better view. Its the white wahine approval to Jah Thanks be to His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie. Go there, Sheriff. A thrift be needed.Handcuff this kid, said the cop.