The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel (3 page)

A horn from the harbor spun them. Five more paparazzi roared past in outboards, cameras pointed. Where had they come from? Did they follow the actress literally to the ends of the earth? Sara felt her own gaze dragged inevitably back, as a lover’s to his most beloved, and her heart yearned in exactly the same way. She wanted to stroke that shining hair. Fold, or better yet be folded, within those arms. She shook her head, confused. Was it sexual? It felt deeper, more moving. More like … worship?

“Is that really … Tehiyah Dorée?” Eddi murmured, flushed, panting, beside her. “Or am I dreaming this?”

“I think it is, Eddi.”

“Holy cow. I mean … holy
cow
.”

Dorée was talking with Perrault. One of the women who’d accompanied her aboard stood an arm’s length away. The captain was saying, “Our space is limited, Tehiyah. I can take five pieces of luggage—absolutely no more. Scientific equipment, food, and fuel have to take precedence. And we don’t have any extra bunks.”

The full lips pouted. “I really need Georgita. She can film, too. So we wouldn’t need anyone for that.”

“Eddi’s already part of the team. She has a lot of experience with whales.”

“We have enough whale scientists.” Dorée’s gaze flicked around, lighted on Sara. Who felt absurdly like genuflecting. She suddenly realized she was grinning in a silly way, and dropped her gaze to her boots. Only to feel it drawn up again, to rest once more on the flushed cheeks, the wind-whipped silken hair. “Are you trying to tell me she can’t come?” Dorée added.

The captain cleared his throat. “I’m afraid—well, yes. Sorry.”

“You wouldn’t have this boat, be taking this voyage, without me. Isn’t that right?”

“Without Jules-Louis, that’s true.”

“Well, I’m sure he doesn’t want me to sail all alone. That can’t be what you had in mind either. Can it?”

“I wish you’d brought this up before. We have so little space, only so much food—”

“Like I said. Leave someone else ashore.” Dorée looked around; noticed Sara. Waved a hand. “Her.”

“She’s the doctor. The scientist.”

“Then someone else. I don’t care. Georgita’s coming.”

Through all this the mild-looking, wan, slightly hunched girl in question had stood unspeaking, not participating beyond a glance down the companionway, then out at the bay. She clutched a wrap close against her chest.

The standing group broke, then re-formed as the silver-haired man in the topcoat bounded up the gangway. Suddenly the actress shrank two or three inches. She relaxed into him, twined an arm around his sleeve, and
became a different woman
. Sara blinked, not crediting what she’d just seen. Dorée looked up into the older man’s face with a yearning, dreamy fascination.

He put an arm around her shoulders. “There is a problem? Dru?”

“Monsieur,” Perrault said, and saluted. “Welcome back aboard.”

“The owner,” Eddi whispered. “Dru’s boss. He used to race too, years ago. He’s loaning his boat to the Protectors.”

Perrault began in rapid French, but the older man held up a hand and said pleasantly, “In English, please. For Tehiyah. The new engines? They are not working out?”

“No, they’re fine. The problem … as you know, space is very limited. I didn’t plan on another crew member.”

“Well, I understand that. Ty, darling, can you possibly get along without her? I’m sure Dru will do everything he can to make you comfortable.”

“I need someone to talk to. We’ll be out a long time. It’s a girl thing, Jules.”

“Well then. There’s a woman—
bien sûr
. There’s another.” The Frenchman smiled at Sara and Eddi. “I’m sure they’d be happy to help with your hair, or—whatever else you might need. Dru’s been sailing with me a good many years. He would not say it was inconvenient if this weren’t so. And he’s right about all that luggage. You really do tend to—”

“‘Inconvenient.’ Why can’t
you
come? Honey?”

“I would very much like to, but there is the commitment in Djibouti. Really, one has to make compromises now and then. This is an adventure, after all.”

“I just can’t go without her,” Dorée said. The pale woman they were discussing never moved, never spoke. Sara wondered if she was mute.

Beside her, Eddi seemed to flinch, then stepped forward. “Really, if it’s a question of bunks … she can have mine.”

Perrault frowned. Before he could say anything Dorée said, “Oh, my, no. We couldn’t. Where would
you
go?”

“I don’t need much. Any flat place. I can sleep somewhere up forward.”

“Then it’s settled,” the older man said. Sara could see in his eyes what he was thinking: Let the little people deal with it.

“One moment.” Perrault ran a hand through his hair; he seemed to be gritting his teeth. “We already have so much extra fuel I’m compromising stability. I can’t take any more
mon tabarnak de
luggage—”

“Georgita won’t bring much. Will you, Georgie?”

The girl shrugged. The wind changed, blowing exhaust their way from the stern. Perrault coughed into a fist, then sneezed. Jamie Quill came stepping lightly along the deck-edge from forward. Despite his bulk the first mate moved like a cat on a fence, one foot in front of the other despite
Anemone
’s pitching as wakes from the circling paparazzi lifted, then dropped her below the level of the pier. “Dru. We doin’ this?”

“Spring lines first. Then the stern.”

“Looks like you’re ready.” The older Frenchman looked aloft, then to where the sea opened. “I wish … well, you’ll see some sights. Take good care of her, Dru.”

“I will, Jules.”

They shook hands, and the owner turned to Dorée. They embraced, held it; Sara looked away. Strobes flashed. Then, at some unseen signal, both turned to the cameras, to the raised, extended boom mikes dangling above them. Madsen took off his silly hat and moved up to stand with Dorée and the Frenchman. Perrault, too, turned to face the reporters.

“This is a great moment,” the older Frenchman said sonorously, removing his sunglasses. “For the first time, a mission of the Cetacean Protection League sets sail. We wish these courageous sailors the best. I now introduce Lars Madsen, of the CPL.”

Madsen said a few words Sara couldn’t quite hear. He ended, “And now: Tehiyah Dorée.”

The actress lifted her face; blinked up at the sky. Spread her arms; and her voice rang out over the listeners.

“The earth is our responsibility. For too long, we’ve treated it as our hunting grounds and our trash heap. We sail today to protect the noblest creatures on this watery planet from greed and murder. I thank all our patrons for their great generosity, especially Jules-Louis Vergeigne.” Drawing him in by one arm, she turned a brilliant smile to the lenses, eyes glittering with incipient tears. “We sail! Thank you all for your prayers and good wishes. Until we are victorious, we will not return.”

With a creak and a sway of the narrow gangway, Vergeigne loped up onto the pier and turned, palm lifted in farewell. Perrault and Madsen braced their shoulders to it, and the brow rolled up onto the pier. “Both springs aboard,” Quill yelled from forward.

“
Très bien
.” Perrault bent to uncleat one of the mooring lines. He shook it in some abrupt complex way, and a wave traveled along it and on the pier a loop jumped straight up off its bollard. He hauled it in hand over hand and coiled it down into a locker in the stern. Then pushed past Sara to the wheel, shoving her aside. She stepped out of his way, muttering an apology. The engines dropped to a drone. He rotated a lever up, then circled his index in the air.

Cries from the pier mingled with those of circling gulls. “
Au revoir!
” “Love you,
chérie!
” “You’re our favorite, Tehiyah!” “Good-bye! Be careful!”

The engines climbed the scale again. White water shot out with a gushing roar. A gap rocking with dark green miniature maelstroms widened between
Anemone
and the pier. Far down in them Sara glimpsed small fish fleeing frantically in among the pilings. A shiver raveled her spine the way the wave had traveled up the mooring line. Past one of the bollards she caught a squared-off silhouette; another. Dully gleaming, brass-bound butterscotch leather.

Someone on the pier noticed at the same time. “Georgie—Tehiyah’s bags!”

“You’ve forgotten two of Miss Dorée’s bags,” the pale-haired woman said, answering Sara’s doubt that she could speak. Dorée herself had climbed onto the forward deck and was standing at the very bow, posing like a Nike, scarlet scarf fluttering in the rising wind. “We have to go back!”

“
C’est bien assez, c’est trop
,” Perrault muttered. He looked at Sara and the creases deepened around his eyes. “She’s got enough luggage. Don’t you think?”

“Georgie!
Tehiyah!
” the voices grew fainter as distance expanded, as the boat became a separate world. The pier slowly moved aft, the mountains marching with
Anemone
. Perrault touched the wheel only now and then, avoiding the motorboats that fell in on either side. Stone breakwaters reached out, and
Anemone
rolled between them. Sara lost her balance and almost fell, but caught herself. Pain twisted through her wrist.

Perrault shouted to Dorée to come aft. He bent to the panel, and a pane of heavy, glossy-shining cloth expanded. It stiffened in the wind as it unfurled, and the boat heeled.

Past the breakwaters the motorboats circled them one last time, lurching and pitching in the heavier seas, then headed back. The silver inlet she’d seen from the air stretched out before them, the whitecapped mountains glinting across it. As the sail hardened,
Anemone
dipped and rose. Spray arched in shimmering rainbows. The wind was much colder out here than in Ushuaia. Cold and utterly fresh, as if no human lung had ever taken it in.

The captain depressed a button and a second enormously tall sail complexly woven of some shining fiber hummed upward from within the boom. Sapphire and cream and bronze, covered with aggressively abstract logos and brand names, it burned in the weak sunlight.
Anemone
steadied into its stride like a dressage horse, accelerating swiftly. He shut the engines down and another sail unloomed itself, glittering in gold and bronze, and the big Dewoitine accelerated yet again, lifting from the sea as if creating her own wind.

They sped along a rocky coast, planing over a light chop, a broad bay glittering to starboard. Sara clung to the lifeline, exhilarated both at their unexpected speed and at the barren beauty of the swiftly passing shore. Beside her Eddi breathed, “Oh my cow. Can you believe it?”

Small black shapes—penguins! she thought, thrilled at her first glimpse of them—dotted the snow. Or was that white coating acres of guano? A red and white lighthouse glimmered in the distance, rose, then fell behind. The sail creaked, the boat leaned, the sea rushed and tumbled past.

“Fair winds and a full ship,” she murmured.

“What’s that, Sara?”

“Oh—just something they used to say where I grew up.”

“Dolphins,” Madsen yelled, and she followed his pointing glove to silver wheels turning just beneath the sea. They parted as
Anemone
slid past, streamlined, reaching for the wind, full of power and curves and light and spray that blew over their faces from the waves she severed and trod underfoot. The world glittered and shone, and Sara sucked deep breaths of it and laughed aloud for the first time in what felt like longer than forever.

3

The Convergence

Two days later, she gripped a handhold in the galley as
Anemone
launched herself into space for the hundred thousandth time. Pans screeched across the stove’s grillwork, setting her teeth on edge. The fumes of stewing ratatouille nauseated her. They were supposed to take turns cooking, but she’d noticed not everyone who was supposed to ended up actually doing it.

Quill said
Anemone
was a good sea boat, but as far as she could see sailing aboard her was as miserable as a stretch in Guantanamo. The interrupted sleep. The cramped quarters. And everyone caged up together, like rats in an underfunded lab. Since they’d left Ushuaia something had gone haywire every day. First the port shaft had started vibrating, leaking through what Perrault and Quill called a “dripless” seal—she couldn’t tell if they meant this ironically or not. Then the salon, which was supposed to rotate to counterbalance the heel of the boat, kept jamming, stopped in the wrong position.

Not to mention living with the same eight people always in arm’s reach, with no escape, to never be alone even for an hour.

Sara carried the steaming entree out into the salon, where a table gimballed this way and that beneath a ventilation hatch down which fresh wind and blue sky poured. “Lunch!” she yelled.

Madsen and Quill were on deck, where the crew took turns, two at a time: Eddi and Sara, Dorée and Perrault, Lars and Jamie. Even when he wasn’t on watch, the captain seemed to be working on something pretty much around the clock. Bodine was exempted, of course, and Georgita was off, too; three hours after they’d passed the red-and-white lighthouse at Fin del Mundo, Norris-Simpson—that was her last name—had staggered whey-faced to her bunk and not been seen since.

“LUNCH!” Sara hollered again, grateful she’d barely felt queasy even the first day at sea, though the sheer unendingness of the motion was wearing her out.

“One minute.” Perrault’s voice floated up.

She stumbled over a displaced square of decking and looked down. Into the bilge: unfinished raw fiberglass, dirty water, hoses, wires, tools, and in among them his body, cramped into a crooked curl, like a corpse forced into a too-small coffin.

“What’re you doing down there … uh, Dru?”

“Keel seal’s leaking. Go ahead, eat. I’ll be right up.”

Eddi and Bodine straggled to the table, clinging to handholds like astronauts on a space walk. The door to the aft cabin opened and Dorée groped out. She almost fell into the open void, saved only by Bodine’s warning. She made a face and slid onto the banquette next to Auer. “Get some sleep?” Eddi asked her.