Far From The Sea We Know (6 page)

“That woke me up,” she said. “How you
doing?”

“Fine, I guess,” he said, opening his eyes
again. “Fine.”

“Maybe you could hand me my towel.”

He looked around, back and forth until she
said, “You’re standing on it.”

“Oh, sorry…here.”

The low rumble of an engine came faintly to
their ears at first, but continued to get louder until a floatplane
appeared over the trees to the north. It circled around just once
and made a lumbering, yet elegant, descent into the waiting
water.

“That thing looks as old as my grandmother,”
Penny said, towel-drying her hair.

“It’s a de Havilland. You still see them,
especially north of here.”

“Great. Will it get us there?”

“Built like a bridge. It won’t be all that
swift, but it should get us there all right.”

The pilot taxied toward them, then let off
the throttle, the propeller now moving so slowly that it was
visible, and the canoe-sized twin pontoons sank deeper into the
water.

“I should wade out to help him,” Penny said.
“I don’t think he’ll make it.”

“Oh, he will. Anyway, he’s got a paddle
strapped on, see there?”

The engine cut out and the door opened to
reveal a reedy character with a high altitude sunburn and a manic
smile hiding in a beard. He leaned out and gave a wave, then
scampered down to the nearest pontoon in one practiced movement. To
Matthew, the pilot looked like Charles Manson in hip boots.

When the plane had drifted close enough, the
pilot leapt off into the shallow water and allowed the plane to
beach itself on the gravel. Then he pushed the tail around so that
the plane faced away from them.

“See?” Matthew said. “We won’t even have to
get our feet wet. Okay, let’s…”

Penny began passing her gear to the pilot
before the end of his sentence.

His bags!

They were still in his truck, and he raced
off to get them.

By the time he got back, they had loaded
Penny’s things and were waiting only for him. Penny now stood on
the pontoon near the passenger door. He passed her his big duffel
first.

“Got it?”

With some effort, she heaved it half into
the doorway and held it while the pilot got a grip on the other
end.

“Sorry,” Matthew said. “Too many books, I
guess.” But she was listening to the pilot speaking and didn’t seem
to hear him.

A sun break opened in the clouds, sending a
dazzle of light off the water into his eyes. Suddenly he had that
familiar feeling. Why had he involved himself and why, again, was
he risking all that he had worked so hard to attain?

“Matthew?”

“Yeah,” and he reached for the closest of
his remaining bags.

“No, the other one next,” the pilot said. “I
got a ton of junk I’m taking up for someone else, but we’ll squeeze
it all in, I guess. Going fishing? Where’s your boat? I could strap
it on for a little extra. Drag, you know, uses more fuel, got to at
least pretend I’m running a profit-making business. I’m Brian, but
everyone calls me Skimmer. Not my idea, they just do ’cause I clip
a few trees now and then, have to if you want to get into the short
strips…”

He kept up this stream of jabber, as they
secured the last of the gear with chains.

“That all of it, friends?”

“Yeah,” Matthew said, “I guess. I’ll just do
the idiot check.”

He ran to his truck and, sure enough, found
his hat and sunglasses. Penny probably hadn’t forgotten anything.
He left the keys under the seat, hoping that Doctor Bell would
remember to have his truck picked up, then raced back to the
plane.

“Watch your head as you get in,” the pilot
said, as Matthew stepped on a pontoon. “My last passenger cracked
his a good one.”

Penny sat tying her sneakers and did not
look up as he stuck his head in. Matthew looked toward the back,
where their gear had joined a larger conglomeration of just about
everything imaginable. Though piled on and wedged in between the
seats, it looked like the weight of the load was in balance. Only
three seats, including the one next to the pilot, remained
free.

Matthew took the seat next to Penny, easing
himself in behind the pilot, who was flipping switches and checking
his gauges.

Penny was still in her swimsuit and was
already strapped in with her clothes on her lap. Though she must
have been cold, Matthew could feel the heat from her body.

“Somewhere back there, there’s a blanket if
you need it,” Skimmer said. “Miss, you’re a tough one to take a
plunge this early. It shouldn’t be cold upstairs, though. Won’t be
flying much over a thousand. I got so used to staying low because
of the weather around here, and I get nosebleeds if I go any
higher. Joke, that last one. Looks good today, though, lucky for
us, and yeah, wear the headset next to you, or you won’t be able to
hear a thing over the engine.”

Then he just sat there, grinning at them, as
unmoving as a gargoyle. Finally, he said, “Just waiting for the
word,
mon Capitan
.”

“You have it.”

“So, okay,” he said, hitting a few more
switches. “We’ll set down briefly at Victoria to clear customs
and—hey! What, this again?” He knocked his knuckles a few times on
the instrument panel. “I guess we can live with it. Okay, here we
go.”

Skimmer gave the wobble pump a stroke to get
the fuel moving, then hit the starter. The propeller kicked over
slowly, then seemed to start firing one cylinder at a time,
wheezing puffs of blue smoke for a few turns, until the engine
settled into a slow, lazy idle. The motor sounded healthy, Matthew
was glad enough to admit. He buckled his seat belts.

Out the window, Matthew saw a wedge of geese
coming up across the inlet. Their honking was not audible over the
engine, but he could imagine the sound.

“Okay, folks,” Skimmer said. “Here we go,
off into the great and wild blue! Hang on and keep cool. Ah, warm’d
be better, I guess, kind of cool up there…”

Skimmer gave the engine full throttle and
Matthew was glad to have the headset against the noise.
Nevertheless, the sonorous thrum of the engine vibrating through
his rib cage was some solace to his doubts about the pilot. The
aircraft, at least, was well maintained.

They started moving, slowly at first, then
quickly came up to speed as the pontoons began to lift from the
embrace of the water. The slight feeling of release of suction as
they broke free was familiar to Matthew from the few other trips
like this he had taken. Skimmer pulled up toward the sun as if it
might be their true destination before finally leveling out to a
northern heading.

No one had said a word for the first twenty
minutes of flight. Penny reached into a rucksack stashed near her
seat and pulled out a thermos.

“Like some coffee, Skimmer?” she said.

“I usually suck on grapes to save wear and
tear on the ol’ bladder. But I guess it won’t be too long before we
set down at Victoria for customs.”

“How about you, Matthew?” Penny said, as she
suddenly broke into an impossibly wide grin. “A cup of java will
set you right.”

“Well…”

“As long as we’re at it,” Skimmer said,
“you’ll find some doughnuts back there on the left in that carrier
bag. You folks look like you’ve been in small planes before. Help
yourself, as long as you’re sure you can keep it down. A guy I ran
up last week had to speak to God on the great white telephone, only
remember, I don’t have one.”

Skimmer noticed the puzzled look on
Matthew’s face. “A toilet, catch? Well, he couldn’t manage the bag
I gave him so, instead, he lost his lunch right where you’re
sitting, all over that seat. And guess who does cleanup later? Used
that pet stuff, but it still might be a bit fragrant, sorry. Much
obliged if you’d pour me a coffee. Cups are in there.”

Matthew fished mugs out of an old toolbox
Skimmer was using as a larder.

“No cream for me,” Skimmer said. “Black and
bitter, like my life. Hah!”

Penny scrutinized the pilot intently for a
moment. Then, with the hint of a look toward Matthew, she retrieved
the paper bag and placed a doughnut, or Spudnut as the label
indicated, on a paper napkin within Skimmer’s reach. She tilted the
open bag toward Matthew.

“No thanks.”

“They don’t look too greasy,” she said,
peering into the bag in the bright morning light. She took one and
held out her other hand to Matthew. “Yeah, pour me a black one,
too.”

He filled her mug, managing to not spill a
drop in the swaying plane, and then another for himself, ignoring
the cream and sugar.

“Coffee, black, all around,” Skimmer said as
he lifted his mug in their direction. “Here’s to ya. Even warmer
than I reckoned it’d be up here, so I’m going to open the window a
tad. Holler, if it gets too much.” He turned back to the
controls.

After she finished her coffee, Penny started
leafing through some papers in a soft leather case.

“I found this last night and downloaded it,”
she said, handing a small sheaf of papers to Matthew. “It’s from a
research site I have access to, paid memberships only, highly
reputable. This woman has been doing a study on reports of animals
showing up in odd places. Places where they don’t belong. She must
have great credentials or they would never have listed something
like this. I suppose you could consider it a branch of
cryptozoology. From what I can see, she did a quality
investigation, well documented.”

“I believe I heard about this somewhere,”
Matthew said.

“I doubt it.”

“I did.”

“Okay, you did. In any case, she was able to
eliminate most reports right away: zoo escapes, hoaxes, and so on.
The instances she was left with all involved highly credible
people, some truly fascinating cases that no one has ever been able
to explain. Would you believe kangaroos in Nova Scotia, for
instance?”

“Not unless they escaped from a zoo or
something,” he said. He felt a slight sneer take over his face and
wished it had not. “It’s just that I’m not really interested in the
paranormal.”

“Well, who but an idiot could be? The
important point here is that others have described incidents
similar to what you reported.”

“If you can believe them.”

“As I said, if you were listening, she only
included reports from highly reliable people. Forest rangers, state
troopers. In other words, people with training in observation. That
makes this at least worth considering. We’re taking your report
seriously, after all…”

“Okay. Yes, you’re right. I didn’t get much
sleep last night, sorry if I’m a little dull,” he said. “Maybe this
coffee will help.” He poured the rest down his throat, grateful for
once that it was not hot.

Penny poured a little more in her mug and
took her first bite of the doughnut.

“Mmm, not bad at all,” she said. “Sure you
don’t want to try some? Here.” She thrust her doughnut under his
nose.

“No, that’s okay.”

“Suit yourself.”

She took another big bite and devoured the
whole thing in two more mouthfuls.

Matthew stared into his coffee for a moment,
then looked up at her. She was watching his other hand, which had
unconsciously rolled his napkin into a small tight ball.

“Was there anything else of interest in this
study?” he asked.

“There were no cases of a witness to an
animal’s appearance or disappearance, no case where someone saw
that happen.”

“Not surprising.”

“What this researcher is documenting is only
when an animal turns up someplace it shouldn’t. Not how it got
there.”

“Fine, but you don’t really believe they
really teleport, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“So, nothing new.”

“No, but I’ve been thinking about how whales
have the largest brains on the planet. And dolphins even larger
compared to their body weight.”

“It’s more complicated than brain to body
weight.”

“The old formulas for calculating
intelligence capability are falling out of favor, and perhaps for
good reason. I sometimes think they were simply cooked up to keep
humans at the head of the intelligence ranking.”

“When I hear that, I remember an old
fisherman who told me, ‘If those dolphins are so smart, how come
they keep getting caught in our nets?’ He’s right.”

“There may be other orders of
intelligence.”

“I’m sure there are, but though we might
wish it otherwise, man is unique on this planet.”

“Uniquely stupid more often than not.”

The effort to talk over the engine noise
left little energy for getting mad. Her attitude was annoying. So
much like his own. “Okay,” he said, rubbing his eyes with his
fingers, “brain size used to be one of the arguments that dolphins
are an intelligent species, perhaps as intelligent as man. Or even
more. The evidence suggests, however, that their brains haven’t
changed that much over the last seventy million years compared to
land animals and in some important areas are poorly developed.
Sure, dolphins are smart, just not as smart as some might like to
believe. And gray whales are even further down the scale, at least
compared with dolphins and killer whales—”

“You mean ‘orcas’?”

“‘Killer whale’ is the more common
name.”

“Aren’t they really dolphins?”

She was right, of course. He took an overdue
deep breath.

“Yes, but ‘killer’ certainly fits. In packs,
they are known to attack a gray whale, eating the fins, then the
lips and tongue, their favorite parts. All this while the whale is
still alive, and the attack can go on for hours before it dies.
They kill without mercy, and perhaps not despite their level of
intelligence, but
because
of it.”

“Thanks for the lesson,” she said after a
while.

“I’m sorry, but people are always
romanticizing these animals because they’re beautiful.”