The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel (6 page)

“Okay, but even as an individual—couldn’t violence sometimes be a rational response to seeing the world as it really is? A lot of progress has been due to people who didn’t play nice with others. John Brown. Joan of Arc. Tom Paine.”

“John Wilkes Booth,” she countered. “Richard Speck. Lee Harvey Oswald, and Ted Bundy. The ones who really changed humankind for the better—Jesus, Gandhi, King—they weren’t men of violence. They were men of peace.”

“Uh, what did they change, again?” Bodine said, face harsh in the dim light. “Every one you mentioned—they killed him. And, human kind? There’s two words that don’t belong next to each other.”

Up in the bow the unceasing motion was more extreme than farther aft. She stood, wondering how he could take it cooped up here. Then thought: What choice does he have? “You lost your legs in Afghanistan?” she blurted, surprising herself.

“That’s right.”

“What happened?”

“A mine.” He looked away. “Some old Russian piece of shit they laid years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “Over and done. At least I’m still breathing. Hey—you smell coffee?”

He bent over the keyboard and tapped. The sea really must be turning colder. Condensation was beading on the hull interior—not fiberglass, Quill had said, but some kind of superstrong carbon fiber. Moisture ran down the bulkheads like tears. She hesitated, looking at the coarse hair on Bodine’s exposed nape. The rich roasted scent of fresh-brewed from the galley was half tempting, half nauseating. She pushed her hair off her face, trying to decide if she wanted any. “I’ll bring us some,” she said at last. He nodded, intent on the screen.

In the salon Dorée was sitting close to Perrault. Almost, Sara thought, in his lap. “Brr. It’s getting colder and colder,” she said. “Can’t we turn that heater up, Dru? It’s barely above freezing in here.”

“We have to conserve fuel, Tehiyah. For when we find the fleet.”

“Then run the motor.”

“That uses fuel too. Plus, we’re not going to slip up on any whales if we do that. You wanted to see whales, remember?”

As she turned to sidle past, Dorée put out a hand. Sara halted. Dorée tugged her head down to whisper into her ear. “We don’t need to
compete.
Which one do you want, Sara? Lars, or Dru?”

Sara blinked, brain erased like a whiteboard covered with erroneous equations. Before she could answer, the other woman gave her a catlike, conspiratorial smile and patted her cheek. Sara tried to come up with some joking reply, but failed.

The smell of the coffee soured suddenly in her stomach, or in her vagus nerves. A spring of saliva tided at the back of her throat. She hauled herself from handhold to handhold as the boat rolled and pitched, looking for a place to vomit as acid rose and burned, and she swallowed again and again.

4

Antarctic Sea

Sara clung to the wheel, feeling as close as she ever had to dead as the seas raved and the boat bounded for the four hundredth time since she’d come on watch. There was no dawn, as there’d been no real dark. The sun levitated above the horizon, steel gray and heatless behind thin clouds like iced-over glass. The cold air rushed over her, bleeding life itself away hour by hour. Her feet were dead even within four pairs of socks and heavy boots. Her hands felt nothing inside undergloves, then knitted wool, then waterproof fishermen’s gloves. She squinted through ski goggles strapped over a wool balaclava.

“Here it comes,” Eddi yelled from forward, where she knelt on the crazily pitching bow, hanging on like a squirrel on a wind-lashed branch. She leaned out with a baseball bat to smash a chip of white ice off the drum of the roller furler, where it had frozen like a dipped string of rock candy.

Sara glanced over a shoulder. A slaty mountain loomed behind her like a landslide. She hunched, clutching the wheel as the stern shot upward. The boat slipped sideways and she hauled the wheel over, panting. The sea peaked behind them and tore past, hissing threats, and the stern sagged again. The sail rustled and flapped, and she spun the wheel hard to starboard. The phosphorescent line on the compass steadied and began to march the other way.

A week out from Ushuaia, and she was wheezing, bone tired, bone cold, but beginning to feel she knew what to do, and might even be equal to it. Quill left her and Eddi in charge topside now, which made an ember of pride glow beneath the fatigue.

Though she’d always known that about herself: she’d work her ass off if anyone offered a little praise. That was the kind of lab rat that college, grad school, doctorate, and research bred. The Good Little Girl. The credulous Work Hard and You Will Be Rewarded fool. She smiled thinly beneath the balaclava. Right.

They didn’t stand set watches. A pair would come topside, stay until they simply couldn’t anymore, then yell down for relief. Dorée usually lasted half an hour. Sara tried grimly to take it for two. By that metric, she still had another hour to go.

Seven days at sea, and not another sail. Not a single ship. Only the occasional distant circling of an albatross, observing with the aloofness of a clockmaker God
Anemone’
s progress across the hazy wastes. Headed east, the wind at their stern. A course that brought those great rollers down on them again, again, again. Quill had warned against losing concentration even for an instant. “Let her come beam to, and she’ll bloody well broach. Roll over on her beam ends, and maybe keep going. I been on boats that went on over. Builder designed her to come back upright, but the sea don’t honor guarantees.”

The companionway slid back with a thud and Madsen peered out. He was growing his beard out and his cheeks glowed gold in the subdued cold light. Her gaze lingered on the long jaw, the wide brow. Those Arctic-pale irises blinked into the light, then locked on her. “Going okay, Sara?”

“Fine, Lars.”

“Where’s Eddi?”

“Chipping ice, up on the bow.”

“Want company?”

She said sure and presently he reappeared in a heavy sweatshirt and the white-and-brown doggie cap, the flaps that were its floppy ears tied down. He hauled himself into the cockpit and found a place out of the wind behind one of the yellow drums. Looked around the horizon, at the radar. Peered forward at Auer as she wound up for a swing, then back at Sara. Examining her. She kept her own gaze on the downwind path the bow would take. Quill had warned them to watch for ice, drifting logs, anything that might penetrate the hull. “
Anemone
’s fast because she’s light,” he’d growled. “But she’s brittle. We hit something hard, she’ll shatter. Be ice any day now. If it’s your watch, make fooking bloody sure you spot it before I do. That’s why you’re on the wheel, not to lollygag around with the self-steerer on like bloody fooking cruise control.”

She asked the Dane, “Aren’t you freezing in just a sweatshirt?”

“Guess I’m cold-blooded. How long’s Eddi been at that?”

“Fifteen minutes. Seems to build up as fast as she chips it off.”

“It’s the spray. I’d say leave it, but it’ll make us top-heavy if we don’t keep after it.”

“That’s what Jamie said.” They gazed at each other for a couple of seconds before she had to look to the horizon again. She shivered inside the heavy suit, but maybe not from the cold. A delicious tremor ran up the insides of her legs. No. She wasn’t going to think about that.

“Want a break?”

She relinquished the wheel gratefully, flexing cramped frozen fingers inside the mittens. Lars stood with boots planted wide, back straight, head up and chin out. The effort it had taken her to fight the steering looked like nothing to him. The bow rose to the sky as the next sea overtook them. He hardly glanced back, only touching the wheel now and then, yet the stern rose straight up. “How do you do that?” she said.

“Open yourself.”

“To what?”

“The rhythm of the sea. She knows the course. All you need to do is let her follow it.”

Mystical bullshit, but she didn’t want to argue. Relieved of the strain, her arms wanted to float straight up into the clouds. She glanced forward guiltily. “I should help Eddi.”

“Stay with me a minute.”

She sank back. Silence, broken only by the howl of the wind as they crested once more. Finally she said, “You’ve done a lot of sailing.”

“A lot of steering. Not so much sailing.”

“Were you in the navy?”

“Sea Shepherds.” Madsen fed the wheel a spoke right. A moment later, the boat lurched left, but by then the correction had taken effect, and the bow guillotined a hole down into the sea on a perfectly straight course.

Sara sat hugging herself. The Sea Shepherds were a splinter group of activists, more militant than Greenpeace. They harassed and boarded whaling ships, threw stink bombs to foul the meat. “How long were you with them?”

“Two seasons.”

“Was it fun?” God, how inane. Had she really said that?

“Fun?” He frowned at the radar. “Whales have been here for millions of years. Their brains are larger than ours. But these … people turn them into dog food, at so many dollars a ton. That is … well, obscene is the only word I know that comes close.”

“It’s still legal, though. Unfortunately.”

He gave her a sharp glance. “It
isn’t
. Even the International Whaling Commission recognized populations were declining. They put the Southern Ocean out of bounds. But the Japanese are still killing.”

“I’m not sure I understand. If it’s illegal—”

“There’s a loophole for science. And each country gets to define it. There’s nobody down here to enforce the convention. So the Japanese set their own quotas, and call it ‘research.’”

“Why did you leave the Shepherds?”

He steered for a time before answering. “At first, when they saw us, the Japanese would turn tail and run. Then they put up antiboarding nets, and spikes, and installed water cannons. Then they started shining lasers, hoping to blind us.”

“I think I heard about that.”

“If you did, that’s unusual—news channels are controlled by the same corporate interests that support the whaling fleet.”

“You mean, Japanese stations?”

“I mean
all
news.” The more he spoke, the less his accent intruded, or maybe she was getting used to it. “They called us terrorists, even though we were careful never to hurt anyone. Last season we actually started to cut into the fleet’s quota. So they decided to take more aggressive countermeasures.”

On the bow, Eddi staggered as she took a swing. The bat glanced off the ice and flew out of her hand as if jerked by an invisible string. It caromed off a wave, came up on a long graygreen backswell, then dropped astern. Auer shook a fist and shouted after it, but nothing audible made it aft. She turned and began crawling back.

Sara half stood and cupped hands around her mouth. “Watch out for that ice on deck,” she shouted.

“Wet ice, that’s not good,” Madsen muttered. They watched tensely as she crept aft hand over hand along her safety line. Her braced boots slipped off a stanchion once as the boat leaped, and Sara tensed; but Auer hung on like grim Death itself and at last Sara leaned to pull her bulky-clothed body into the cockpit.

Eddi sagged as if being deflated. “Gee. I feel really dizzy.”

“I wonder why. Sit down, you’re shaking. Better go below.”

“… on-n-n w-watch.” Her chattering teeth cut the words in pieces.

“Lars’ll help me.”

“Sure, Sara and I have it. Go below. Get warmed up.” Madsen bent to haul in the mainsheet, altering the set of the huge sail that strained above, dragging them over the waves. Immediately,
Anemone
picked up speed.

When the hatch slid closed Sara moved aft, to just beside the wheel. Where she could look up into his face. His cheeks were reddening; moisture glistened at the corners of his eyes. His nose was running. The blond stubble accentuated Viking cheekbones. Those ash-blue eyes gazed steadily ahead. Only now and then did he glance back for an oncoming sea, then ease the wheel this way or that. He looked as if he could stand there for weeks, like Ulysses, or maybe Leif Eriksson.

“You said … more aggressive countermeasures,” she prodded.

He cleared his throat. “We lost steerageway in front of one of their harpoon ships. The killer ships, that chase the pods and fire explosive-laden harpoons. They’re fast and maneuverable, with huge bows like axes. They rammed our boat. They called it an accident. But I looked up, just before they hit us, and saw the captain standing out on the bridge. Looking down at me. He yelled an order, and they swerved to hit us. Deliberately. It sank our boat. Two of our guys drowned.

“After that, our higher-ups decided to back off. So the whalers finished their season. Worse; they announced they’d taken even more, to make up the quota they hadn’t filled the year before. So we lost all the ground we’d gained, and didn’t save a single animal.”

She kept silent, looking alternately at the radar and the sea ahead. They were traveling faster, planing from wave to wave. The jolting was like repeated punches to her kidneys. Perrault stuck his head up into the transparent dome forward of the cockpit and searched around the horizon. He nodded to them, then sank out of sight.

“So you don’t … think they should have backed off?”

“No. We were costing the Japanese millions. Sooner or later, they would have had to stop. But when we started actually taking losses, we just … quit.”

“But the CPL doesn’t seem … my understanding was, they’re no more, uh, ready to use force than the other groups.”

He shrugged. “But we’re taking the fight to a different part of the Antarctic. Increasing the pressure. Have you ever seen a whale?”

“Once or twice. From far away, on the beach.”

“Once you do, up close, you’ll understand. They’re so beautiful. Intelligent, but not in our competitive, destructive way. We must save them, Sara. Whatever the cost.”

She shaded her eyes. “Hey—sorry to interrupt—”

“No problem, what?”

“Look over there. To starboard. No, farther forward. Do you see something?”

He narrowed his gaze too. After a long while he said, “Better call Dru.”