The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel (11 page)

“I did,” Auer said. “He’s fine.”

“Wonder if he’d like to come up.” She waited, but no one said anything.

*   *   *

He did eventually, an hour later, a bundle wadded under his armpit. He balanced on metal and plastic, looking up to where Perrault was pinning a new spreader into place. The old one lay in the cockpit, twisted crystalline gray at the fracture point. “Anywhere up here to hang out wet stuff?”

“Good idea, let’s peg out the oilies,” Quill said. He picked up the broken metal, examined it critically, and flipped it end over end over the side. It struck with a splash, sinking fast as it dropped astern, visible beneath the water for only a few seconds before it melted into the wavering green. “Long’s we got sun. Anywhere on the windward lifeline. There’s small stuff in the locker if you want to lash it.”

She went below to gather her own clothes. Georgita was awake, staring up at the underside of Sara’s bunk. Her reddened eyes did not blink. “You okay, Georgie?” Sara asked her.

“All right.”

“Want me to help you to the toilet? To wash up?”

“That’s all right. I was just listening.”

“Um … listening?”

“Can’t you hear them? They’re all around us.”

“Who? Who’s all around us?”

“I’m not sure. But I can feel them. So beautiful. Like angels.”

What
was
she talking about? Sara frowned. She’d sponged her down during the storm, and Eddi had cleaned her up again the night before. She wouldn’t have minded, if the woman had really been ill. But something else was wrong, something more fundamental and systemic than a broken arm. What sane adult seemed perfectly content to soil her sheets? “You ought to get up, Georgie. You can’t stay in your bunk forever.”

“My arm hurts.”

“Let’s see.” She knelt and peeled the blanket aside. The splints were in place. The arm looked puffy, but not alarmingly so. Yet the girl seemed unable to manage the slightest effort. “You can’t stay in bed,” she said again, more sternly. “It’s nice topside. The sun’s out.”

“I don’t really want to. Thanks.” She turned her face to the hull and her eyelids sank closed. Sara hesitated, kneeling. Then thought: Fine. Whatever. She got up and began pulling dirty underclothes out of her laundry bag, wincing at the fermented stench.

*   *   *

Presently the lifeline flapped with socks, underwear, and inside-out mustang suits. Walking the length of the deck, balancing against the roll, but enjoying the opportunity to move around, she doubted they’d dry completely—not soaked with salt water—but there was no fresh to rinse with. The air might be a degree or two above freezing. Auer had put her fleece top back on. The sun was an orange Necco Wafer on the horizon. Below the Circle, it never set, only spiraled, gradually rising each day, until it reached its apex at the height of the Antarctic summer; then slowly declined. She hugged herself, still worrying about Georgita. Bodine could set a bone, but she couldn’t shake the feeling something else was wrong. It wasn’t natural to lie in your own …

“Don’t stare at it,” Quill warned, hustling past with a heavy-looking bag of red sailcloth. Up forward Perrault and Madsen were dropping the jib, gathering in great flapping folds as it slid to the deck. “And if you stay up much longer, put on sunscreen.”

She heaved a sigh. This seemed overprotective, after they’d barely survived a gale, but she just nodded.

“Want some of mine?” Dorée held out a tube.

Surprised, Sara took it. The product was labeled in French and looked expensive. “You sure?”

“Keep it, I have plenty. One of Jules’s companies makes it. How’s Georgie?”

“I’m worried.” She explained. “Now she won’t get up at all.”

The actress frowned. “Want me to have a look?”

“Actually, Tehiyah, Eddi and I could’ve used your help cleaning her up.”

“I’m no good at that type of thing, I’m afraid. Maybe it was a mistake, letting her come.”

Sara stared. Could Dorée have
forgotten
she’d browbeaten the girl into coming? That smooth lovely face gave no clue. The actress massaged her cheeks where the sunscreen emollient glistened. Then her forehead, taking her time, as if working cream polish into a rich leather saddle. Catching Sara’s examination she smiled, full dark lips bending into a lovely curve that expressed far more than a simple smile should.

“Do you want me?” she murmured.

Sara started. “I … excuse me—?”

Dorée put three fingers on Sara’s wrist. Those lips parted, ready to speak, as Sara stopped breathing, unable even to think, much less guess or anticipate what she’d say next.

“Whale ho!” Perrault called from aloft.

She turned as the others scrambled to their feet, staring out to where the captain’s outstretched arm pointed. Quill and Madsen stood on the coachroof, shading their eyes. Dorée pushed past to clamber up with them. Auer stared, frozen; then scrambled toward where she’d wedged the camera. Sara started to climb atop a fuel barrel, then remembered what had happened to Georgita. She searched the locker and found the binocular case. Unsnapped it and hastily wiped the lenses clear of crystallized salt.

“There she blows,” Dorée called gaily.

Sara shuddered. Surely Tehiyah couldn’t mean what she’d inferred. Or could she? But why was she so surprised? Was it that she didn’t believe Tehiyah Dorée could go both ways? Or that she could be interested in
her
?

To hell with that. Whales! She jammed the glasses to her face and focused on distant white feathers amid slaty blue, blossoming across many degrees of horizon. Quill went back to the helm.
Anemone
came around and he trimmed the sails on a course to intercept.

The expanse of slowly heaving sea between them and the pod gradually narrowed. Everyone was topside now except for Bodine and Georgita. Madsen hung from a shroud, rather unnecessarily daringly, Sara thought, watching through a small pair of binoculars and carrying on a running commentary. “Five … six … eight. See the tail? There’s a flipper. Pretty sure they’re humpbacks. They spend summers here and head north for the winter. Two more! Mick’ll be picking up their songs, down below. Wait a minute … another group behind the first. To the left. Maybe a dozen more. Smaller.”

“Minkes?” Quill said.

“‘Piked whales,’ Jamie. We don’t call whales after their killers. They’re both baleen feeders, the pikes and the humpbacks.”

She clung to the shroud, unable to look away. The giant flippers of the humpbacks wheeled and crashed with flat smacks and splashes that rolled across the sea like the clash of a distant battle. The pikes were smaller, more streamlined. Their rostrums—the points of their upper jaws—were sharper, their dorsals hooked and set farther back. The second pod stayed clear of the first, the groups not quite intermingling. She started for the companionway, to go down to Bodine and listen, but couldn’t leave the spectacle.
Anemone
was sailing nearly parallel to the pod now. They were clearly on the move, although the whales gave the impression of ambling, rather than hurrying.

“Another,” Eddi yelled. “One whale. Off to starboard.”

Sara snapped round, searching where the videographer pointed. She expected more humpbacks, or more pikes. They were the most common species, since the great whales had been winnowed from the oceans. But this spout was lower and bent to one side. She put a hand on Madsen’s shoulder. “What’s that?”

He shaded his eyes. “Sperm whale.”

“Physeter macrocephalus.”

“I can’t believe it! All this time at sea and not a single sighting. Now we’ve got three different species in view at once.”

“How it goes,” Quill rumbled. “Either too much, or not enough. Like wind.”

Remarkable. But then, if they were in an area of rich food resources, not all that strange. The question was, where were the whalers? She studied the distant splashes. Madsen was telling her the pods were mainly females and young. “The males only join them for about three months, to mate. Otherwise they’re loners.”

“Interesting.” The males of many species spent most of their time alone, meeting others only to breed or to defend territory. “You’ve spent a lot of time whale watching?”

“We all did, whenever we could. It was inspiring. To see the animals we were there to protect.”

“I can imagine. All you whale-huggers.” She smiled to show she was joking. “Were there scientists on your cruises?”

He hesitated. “Not really. The Japanese claim they’re conducting ‘research.’ Which was why I thought it was strange you were coming. It’s a loaded word, in our community.” He smiled too. “Us
whale-huggers
. A good one, Sara. I’ll remember that.”

The humpback pod was closing in on them now. Lifting the glasses, she watched the great heads shoving the water to either side. A blow jetted up every few minutes. Beside some of the larger whales swam smaller copies. Cries rose from the other side of the boat. She turned; one of the humpbacks had come in close and was twisting beneath the water, the white patches of its undersides and flippers a lighter blue in the deep topaz jade. Gulls dipped low, screaming as they plummeted into the froth churned up by great tails. A humpback rolled onto its side, curious eye upturned. Such a small orb to supply view to such an enormous creature. But then, the percentage of brain volume devoted to sight, the visual cortex, was much smaller than in a human being.

She turned back to see the lone sperm had altered its course, maintaining its distance. She raised the glasses. The huge creature looked like a reef in a storm. As it plowed into each wave it shattered it, tossing up violent bursts of spray the wind trailed off in twisting veils.

Then, for just a moment, she saw it clearly. Glimpsed a massive lump of head in the trough between two seas, filling it with heaving green water and foam like beaten eggwhites. She squinted into the eyepieces. Not black, like the others. She couldn’t really label its color. Quartz veined with iron, perhaps. Or perhaps that was just the sheen of water on its skin reflecting sky and spume. Its blow jetted sideways in a sudden burst of mist like steam from an old-fashioned factory whistle. It rolled and heaved, far apart from the others. Then the tail levered up slowly, and the sea surged empty once again.

She should get to work. She stowed the glasses carefully, as Quill had taught them, and went below. Her fatigue had backed off. She slid down the companionway and lurch-walked forward as the boat rolled around her like the rotating tunnel in a fun fair. Only now her hands went out of their own accord to grasp and steady, and her boots knew exactly where to step to anticipate the next lean of the deck.

*   *   *

Bodine was in his chair, seatbelt swinging loose, bulky earphones clamped to his big head. His detached legs swung weirdly from a makeshift hook in the overhead. He glanced at her with unfocused eyes. The screen traced colored lines that vibrated. When he actually noticed her he flinched, as if recalled from a dream.

When he turned a knob a long, hissing note, flutelike, yet far more complexly modulated, filled the swaying forepeak. It went up and down the scale in chirps and grunts and fartlike repetitive clicks, going on and on but sounding anything but random.

“The humpbacks?”

“Right. A typical song. This unit downshifts the sound; what they’re actually putting out can go way above the highest freq we can hear.” He cranked a dial and aligned a needle with a shimmering spoke. “This one’s broad on the port beam. From the intensity, four, five hundred yards away.”

“About where the pod is.” And lifting her head, she could hear them through the hull even without the earphones. Though no doubt she wasn’t getting the full range, the way he was.

“It’s mainly the males who sing, and they don’t usually stick with the pod. But it’s not unheard-of.” He rooted in a plastic milk crate and came up with a file folder. He flipped to a printout and flicked it over to her.

It was a monograph on the acoustic analysis of humpback songs. She nodded. “You’re recording these?”

“Well, I was planning to. Then we got knocked down, and all my zip ties broke and the workstation took a dive out of the rack.” He jerked a thumb at a disassembled computer. “Until I get that working again, and our satcom comes back up, I’m not digitizing squat.”

That explained the crashes and curses during the storm. She found a perch on a crate of batteries. “Mick … what exactly did you do in Afghanistan?”

He showed teeth. “What they told me to.”

“Electronics?”

“Sort of a mix of that, and intelligence.”

It didn’t sound like a way to lose your legs, but he didn’t meet her gaze or seem eager to add any specifics. She tried again. “How’d you get hooked up with Sea Shepherd? That’s where you met Lars, right?”

He rolled his head as if his neck ached, and she half reached out. Her hand paused, then returned to her lap. For a moment she’d wanted to rub his nape … but fortunately he hadn’t seen it. “I had my military disability,” he said. “Didn’t have to work. But after a while I started to feel, like, shit. Sitting at home posting crap on my blog … going to grad school … I was drinking. Giving my wife a hard time. Ex-wife, now. Classes bored me. Going head-to-head with whalers sounded like it might get the old burn going again.”

“Did it?”

“Up to a point. But the Shepherds have these very strict rules of engagement. What they can’t or won’t do. So it was easy for the whalers to escalate. Then the insurance people and the lawyers got involved and the ship was impounded. Lars and I stayed in touch, though.”

He tensed, fixing like a spaniel as a new spoke glimmered into a coruscating fan. Frequency waves raced up and down. “Sperm. Big one.”

“There’s one up there. Magnificent creature.”

“Uh-huh.” He flipped switches and keyboarded, then stared at a screen filled with what looked like fuzz. “I was checking for radars. But I suspect they’ve turned them off.”

She was lost for a moment, then realized he’d shifted topic from whales to whalers. “Can they hunt without radar?”

“Not for long, not in ice. But the open sea extends farther south this year. Which may not be good news for the whales. At least, the baleen feeders.”