Moby Jack is still in cold pursuit. Now that it has cut us away from the main school of belugas, it bears down hard on our stern. The distance between us is gradually increasing, but if I’m right about it, that won’t make any difference to the eventual outcome.
The belugas are moving into the shallows of a river outlet from Somerset Island, presumably to feed on cod and squid. They fill the blue basin of water with their twelve-foot-long bodies, rubbing against each other, their flukes slapping the surface, creating great gouts of water, which fly up and then fall to smack on the surface. The river delta is a writhing mass of white giants, thrashing and surging, spilling the flow over the alluvial plain where the wading birds are gathered. The birds protest but their complaints go unheeded. The whales are too full of themselves to notice that they’re disturbing others: like a crowd of football fans when their team has won.
Once I had my degree, I went to work for a company making radar equipment for luxury yachts, but promotion was slow and I became dispirited. Jacqueline told me not to panic, to wait for a while before looking elsewhere. I did. I waited four years. The whole time my father was on my back, asking me when I was going to start making some ‘real money’ so that he could call me his son. ‘You’re just like your Uncle Timothy,’ he told me on my twenty-sixth birthday, ‘a slow loser. You’ll be old and grey before your time, trudging to work with hunched shoulders, earning a pittance all your life, scared to say boo to anyone looking like an accountant.’ Dad owned a stock brokering firm and was impatient of losers of any variety, slow, fast or medium, especially his progeny.
It was shortly after this birthday that I was contacted by an international company interested in my work on the beluga migration routes which they had heard about. I asked, where they had heard about it? ‘Oh,’ the voice on the end of the line said, ‘we listen in the right places’. Was I interested? Yes, of course I was interested, and a meeting was arranged. The source of the information, as it turned out, was not as I imagined the result of industrial spying, but a clever remark of my father’s at a businessman’s dinner. ‘My son studied whale spawning grounds during his time at university,’ my father had said, ‘can you imagine anything more bloody useless than charting the places where fish go to fuck?’
Apparently someone did not think it useless, because they offered me an enormous salary to work for them. I spent several weeks in making the most important decision of my life, walking the floor at night, weighing the consequences. Finally, I made my resolution and resigned myself to that decision.
I went the same night to say goodbye to Jacqueline.
Apart from negotiating an increase in the salary I had made the stipulation that if I was to hand over the information they required, I would do it on the spot, on the bridge of the ship. I was no fool, despite what my father thought of me. If I’d given them what they wanted straight away, they would have taken it and said thanks very much ta-ta fellah. I was going to eke it out to them, at the same time they would pump money into my account at an offshore bank on the Cayman Islands. I could make checks from the ship to the bank, regarding my account, using a codeword. I wasn’t going to be cheated out of my earnings. They smiled knowingly and said they understood. If there was one thing they did understand, it was avarice.
Before joining the ship I went into hospital for a minor operation on my right leg.
Then I went off, without a companion Queequeg, to hunt the white whale. Captain Jisteain was a weedy-looking man, with yellow-rimmed eyes and a heavy smoking habit. Unlike Ahab he had no passion driving his blood like hot mercury through his veins, no obsessive vengeance urging him on. He had no dark and wonderful oaths to scream into the wind, no skin that burned feverishly while he stared out at the wild sea. I could not imagine him lifting his streaming face to the storm and cursing God for sending a typhoon that robbed him of his kill, nor blaspheming with such marvellous inventiveness that it actually added to the depth and breadth of human thought and language. His eyes never strayed to where the crow’s nest once reigned, nor did his ears listen for that heart-stopping ‘Thar she blows!’ which sent the captains of former whaling ships into shivers of excitement. Jisteain spent most of his time in his cabin, reading Regency novels and smoking Turkish cigarettes.
We were bound for the Arctic circle, where the white whale formed a hoop around the axis of the Earth. I spent my days staring at changing skies, interesting seas, that melded into one another at some times, and broke and separated cleanly at others. The horizon was on some days a line as sharp as the edge of typing paper and on others a mountainous seascape. The colours varied as much as the shapes of the waves: green, blue, purple, black, and with dozens of different shades between.
On the deck in the morning there would be fish which had tried to jump the ship and had struck an obstruction halfway across—or had simply not leaped strongly enough. We ate these for breakfast, along with seaweed and shellfish gathered during motion. The chef was resourceful. Even flotsam and jetsam was harvested from the sea: one evening we came across a whole armada of coconuts, presumably shaken into the sea during a hurricane somewhere in the tropics and carried by the currents towards the magnetic north.
Finally, the Titan, with its arsenal of defensive computers and anti-missile missiles, not to speak of its whale-killing potential, arrived in the Arctic and found the belugas. The school I led them to was not the largest in the area, but this particular school would, I knew from former intelligence, contain Moby Jack. I was in fact leading the ship to Moby Jack and its doom and not to the killing seas.
Captain Jisteain has come onto the bridge rubbing the sleep from his eyes. I’m leaving the black box running, so that it catches our conversation. Later, Jacqueline, when you transpose this into the written word, please fill in the gaps so that it flows like a narrative. It’ll make much more interesting reading that way, for the members of our organisation. I am after all about to make the ultimate sacrifice: my life for that of my fellow creatures. Forgive me if I want to dramatise that moment to give it some power. I don’t want to go out with whimper, but with a bang. A hero’s death deserves dramatic telling. My ego requires that the world recognise me and become emotional at the mention of my name. I am not a modest man, my darling.
‘Why aren’t we killing whales? Coxswain, why are we heading out to open waters?’
The coxswain looks towards me with a worried expression and the captain turns to stare. Giving Jisteain a tight smile, I say, ‘We’re heading this way on my orders.’ He whirls on me, his little moustache twitching. ‘Who gave you the
bloody right to give orders?’
‘You did,’ I reply.
He stands there, smouldering, realising that yes, he did give me permission to steer the ship towards the belugas. I was the one who knew where they were, therefore he was superfluous on the bridge. I could take over until the school was found, he had stated.
‘Turn the ship around,’ he orders the coxswain. ‘Now.’
Looking out over the sea and broken ice I notice Moby Jack is coming towards us at a high rate of knots.
‘I think you’ll find you’re too late,’ I say to the captain. ‘Moby Jack is about to smash us to smithereens. You’re no Captain Ahab, but I’m afraid you’re destined for the same end. The white whale is about to destroy you and your ship. I ordered the ship away from the bay, so that the belugas would not be harmed when we get blown out of the water.’
The captain snarls, ‘What the hell are you talking about? Moby Dick? Are you crazy?’ He stares at the single white whale bearing down on the ship, its tail driving the water behind it, churning the ocean into a boiling wake. There ’s something about the determination of that whale which surprises even Jisteain. He doesn’t know what to make of the situation and his face is a picture of perplexity and indecision.
‘Not Moby Dick—his descendant, Moby Jack. I may be crazy,’ I say. ‘I probably am. I’ve sacrificed myself, my life, for a few thousand whales. Moby Jack is not a real whale
, by the way. I think it’s fair to tell you that at this stage of the deadly game. Moby Jack is a warship in the guise of a whale, designed by my girl friend, Jacqueline Jones for the International Anti-whaling Activists...’
He interrupts me. ‘The IAA? That bunch of bloody terrorists? Now I know you’re mad,’ he snorts. ‘Those militant sons-of-bitches will get what’s coming to them if they mess with me. I’ll have them intercepted. They’ll rot in some Canadian jail for the rest of their lives.’
‘Believe me,’ I tell him simply, ‘the last few minutes of your life could be better spent in praying, or dictating a letter to your loved ones, or even cutting your toenails in preparation for the long journey to hell. Ranting and raving is an utterly useless activity at such a time. Even the deranged Ahab was calm and reflective just before his death. You are going to die. We all are. There’s nothing that can save us now. I forgot to tell the company by the way—I’m a member of the IAA myself—have been ever since college.’
His eyes narrow. He picks up a pair of viewers and looks at the oncoming white whale. Something he sees convinces him that it is a device, not a living creature.
‘Who’s in that thing?’ he asks.
‘No one,’ I reply. ‘It’s being run remotely.’
‘There ’s nothing that monster can throw at us that I can’t shoot down or blow out of the water,’ he says with confidence. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
‘It’s a sad thing to be the bearer of rotten news,’ I say in reply, ‘but Moby Jack is armed with J.A.W.S.’
Now he turns to stare at me with a worried expression.
‘Justified Attack Weapons System,’ he says. ‘That bloody monstrous spray-launching invention of the anti-whalers? It doesn’t matter how erratic their trajectories are, a JAWS missile needs a homing device physically located on the target vessel...’
‘That’s always been the IAAs’ problem,’ I say, ‘until now of course.’
I give him a grim little smile.
He glares at me. ‘You! You brought a fucking homing device on board. You bastard! I ought to throw you overboard, you bloody shit.’
I shrug. ‘Be my guest. I stand a better chance in the ocean than I do on the Titan. I could survive perhaps three or four minutes in that freezing water, whereas you have rather less time...’
‘We’ll find it,’ snaps Jisteain. ‘We’ll find the bloody thing and then you’ll go over. Full steam ahead,’ he orders the coxswain. Then on the loudspeakers system, ‘All hands—search the ship for a homing device. I want anything suspicious thrown over the side immediately. Anything, do you hear? Hang the expense of a mistake. All our lives are at stake here. Just throw it over and we’ll ask questions later.’
With full power we begin to pull away from Moby Jack rapidly, but we shall be in range for a time. Jisteain and I stare out over the choppy waves at the oncoming white whale, then something happens, it blossoms, opening like a flower blooming, and missiles are launched as a spray of seeds into the atmosphere. They are crazy pods, zipping around randomly, seeking the homing signal, difficult to shoot down in numbers because of their erratic movements, their unpredictable zig-zagging.
Around Moby Jack’s belly the sea froths: ripples appear on the surface, heading every which-way. A clutch of torpedoes has also been launched, to dance along the wavetops, jumping and leaping impetuously. Jisteain goes white and for the first time reveals a little fear.
‘My computers will seek out and destroy those,’ says Jisteain quickly. ‘We’ll shoot them out of the sky—we’ll blow them out of the water.’
He has none of the heroic stature of Ahab, none of his magnificent profanity, none of his demented rhetoric. But then Jisteain has never been torn apart by a whale, nor suffered his embittered soul to be disfigured by the mad spirit of a sea monster. He has all his limbs, his organs, his manhood. He has never drunk rum from a harpoon head, nor tempered steel with his own blood. Jisteain has only Ahab’s cold determination, the unfeeling side of Ahab which allowed the mad captain to sail away from a ship searching its lost children. In truth, Jisteain is a poor sacrifice to Moby Jack.
‘You can’t possibly get them all,’ I tell him, ‘if you don’t find the homing device. It only takes one to get through. Once they find the beam from the homing device, they’ll come in like a swarm of mosquitoes after warm blood. One will be enough to blast us into so many fragments it’ll be raining shards on Somerset Island for the next few days.’
‘We’ll find the homing device,’ he says, with just a trace of doubt in his voice. ‘We have a minute or two yet.’
His men are already dumping things into the ocean, my luggage, my camera, in fact everything belonging to me. They are also scanning the ship with homing device detectors. However, the inner bridge where I am standing, containing as it does the computer that runs the ship, its navigation devices, steering equipment, weather forecasting apparatus, and so on, is of course shielded. The shield that prevents penetration by enemy probes will protect the homing device from detection until it’s too late. That’s my gamble and it appears to be working, because they’re running scared on the decks below me. Not even the promise of a shining gold Spanish doubloon nailed to the mast for these fellows: only the certainty of brilliance from a coin of plutonium.
They won’t find the homing device. The reason is, it’s inside me. I had it implanted within my thigh after I accepted the job with the company. Jisteain’s men can search the ship from stem to stern, they will find nothing. In a moment I will step outside the bridge and small missiles and torpedoes will rush joyfully in to be the first to give birth to heat, light and an explosion that will blast the ship to tiny fragments, startling the beluga whales.
Some of those little harpoons careening around the ship are exploding now as the Titan’s computers desperately try to track them and detonate them. Small black spears, most of them not more than a foot in length, yet able to destroy a ship such as ours with ease. They’re twisting and turning erratically, crazily in the sky. They dance around the heavens in their dozens: agents of death telemarking at whim. Looking. Seeking. Then once they recognise the target, to spear it without compassion.
Irony: the little whale Moby Jack will have harpooned the mighty ship, for the target they’re seeking is within me, standing on the bridge of the Titan waiting for death and glory. I have experienced love, what more can a man ask? I have sacrificed the mellowing, the ageing of that love for the sake of humankind as well as the whales, for whaling dehumanises us, debases us to a level lower than any creature on the Earth.
Call me crazy, but I believe there is a greater love at risk than just a relationship between two people. I would rather save the greater at the expense of the lesser, however potent the latter may feel. I am about to experience the ultimate mystery, to travel the last and longest journey. Don’t be sad for me, Jacqueline. I look on such a death as a triumph, and I won’t have my triumphs wept over like wretched failures.
And father—you are a poor, miserable man.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
“The Sculptor” Interzone No. 60, June 1992.
“Black Drongo” Omni Vol. 16 No. 8, May 1994.
“Bonsai Tiger” Spectrum SF 1 2000.
“Attack of The Charlie Chaplins” New Worlds, edited by David Garnett,
White Wolf Books 1997.
“Cherub” Heaven Sent, edited by Peter Crowther, DAW Books 1995.
“The Council of Beasts” Interzone No. 111, September 1996.
“The Frog Chauffeur” Silver Birch, Blood Moon, edited by Ellen Datlow
and Terri Windling, Avon Books 1999.
“Hamelin, Nebraska” Interzone No. 48, June 1991.
“Hunter’s Hall”: 1993 Mysterious Christmas Tales, Scholastic Books.
“Something’s Wrong With The Sofa” The Edge 1997.
“Death Of The Mocking Man” Interzone No. 147, December 1999.
“Wayang Kulit” Interzone No. 90, December 1994.
“Inside The Walled City” Walls of Fear, edited by Kathryn Cramer,
William Morrow 1990.
“My Lady Lygia” REM, Issue 2 1992.
“Oracle Bones” Touch Wood (Narrow Houses 2) edited by Peter Crowther, Little Brown 1993.
“Paper Moon” Omni Vol. 9 No. 4, January 1986.
“Store Wars” The Anthology of Fantasy and Supernatural, edited by Stephen Jones and David Sutton, Tiger Books 1994.
“The Megowl” Chilling Christmas Tales, Scholastic Books 1992.
“The Silver Collar” Blood Is Not Enough, edited by Ellen Datlow, William Morrow 1989.
“Moby Jack” The Edge 1997.
MOBY JACK & OTHER TALL TALES
Copyright © Garry Kilworth 2006 & 2010
Introduction
Copyright © Robert Holdstock 2006 & 2010
The right of Garry Kilworth to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published in 2006 by PS Publishing Ltd. This electronic version is published in May 2011 by PS by arrangement with the author. All rights reserved by the author.
FIRST EBOOK EDITION
ISBN 978-1-848631-48-9
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
PS Publishing Ltd
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