SWELL

by Corwin Ericson

  “Because they were fished out.”

  “Yes, but if it weren’t for the whale councils, this type here, the messenger whales, wouldn’t even exist.” “I thought they couldn’t be bred.” “They can’t, they’re like samurai crabs.” “Yeah, and ninja lobsters.”

  “No, really, Japanese fishermen throw back crabs that look like they have the faces of mythic drowned samurais on their shells. So after centuries, the samurai crabs lived to breed, while the others were eaten. It was the same with these big blackies with the runic brindles—Northern Indian whalers left them alone to continue cruising the coasts and even up the fjords and rivers. They probably even knew the individual whales by name and could count on seeing them at certain times of the year as they made their migrations.”

  “So why are they so rare now?”

  “I didn’t even think they still existed. The entire species is nearly extinct, not just this breed. You should know, Orange. It’s your very ancestors that nearly killed them off. You Americans didn’t even notice the patterns. All you wanted was casks and casks of blubber. Your people never considered the value of a creature that was done with dry land and had learned how to navigate and communicate across the entire planet long before our species evolved. Think of it! These creatures walked the earth for longer than Homo Sapiens has, then shoved off to explore the oceans before we could even stand up.”

  “People from the Northern Indies have killed more whales and casked up an awful lot more blubber than my ancestors ever did, and they’re still doing it.”

  “Yes but we have relationships with whales; they’ve always been part of our culture.”

  This was an argument that people with much more conviction and education than myself had been having for a long time. I didn’t stand a rhetorical chance in hell.

  “And there’s something else strange about this whale, too. He has beautiful skin. It doesn’t make sense. He’s obviously old, probably older than me even, but he doesn’t have the scars he should have.”

  “From giant squid.” Some whales ate itsy bits of krill, others hunted the invisible depths for unseen monsters.

  “No, from propellors. Our shipping lanes are their old roads; just about the only time one ever sees what you call a right whale is when it’s been injured by a ship. A whale like this—I don’t see how it could live this long without some obvious damage. Which makes me wonder, where has it been all these years?”

  “And how did it recognize the sonar?”

  “Indeed!”

  “We’re being stalked by a pushy, loud wrong whale with a grudge against humanity.”

  “We are having a serendipitous encounter with a mythic creature that seems as curious about us as we are about him.”

  “I’m not that curious, and I think it thinks we’re just a soft touch for kribble.”

  “I know I told you before that our work on the Whale Network was making history, but we are actually making history right now. This is a very important interspecies moment. We will need to stay with this whale as long as possible, follow it where ever it goes.”

  “How are we going to do that? It’s going to figure out we’re out of snacks soon and then probably eat us just on principle.”

  “It would not eat us. And besides, they use their tails to smash boats; they only bash each other with their heads. We will have to follow this big old boy on the surface and then try to ping him with the sonar when he dives. We are going to have to stick close to him. It will be a sleigh ride straight out of the sagas!”

  “You know, you promised to take me back home tomorrow.”

  “Think about where this whale could lead us! A sanctuary—a literal sort of school even! Somewhere, our friend here learned from his elders how to avoid the dangerous ships and how to cadge food from Honeypaws with her whale song sonar. Wait till the councils hear about this!

  “Oh, hmm, they must already know—this sonar must be their way of scouting. These could be the very whales that teach us their language. Oh, this is historical. Deep, living history. Maybe the polar melt.…” Snorri guttered away into Finlindian raving.

  “You think it’s nearby?”

  “What?”

  “Whale Shangri-la.”

  “My best guess might be in the Arctic somewhere. Someplace where the floes are breaking up. A new Ultima Thule. There are myths older than my race; legends my people learned on their migration across the Arctic. You know the Norse Valhalla—their retirement home for old soldiers?”

  “Yes, but I don’t think that’s how your pagan neighbors would have described it.”

  “Well, the idea is not theirs. ‘Valhalla’ has its foundations in our language group—it is a corruption of how we would say ‘Whale Hall.’ The Norse built their veterans’ hospital over our own sacred foundation.”

  “So it’s where your whales go to drink mead and feast on

  squid?”

  “Many foreigners thought the exploration sagas we told were myths until anthropologists of the twentieth century began to see their literal and figurative truths. Why not this myth, too?”

  “I’m not dressed for the North Pole.”

  “Honeypaws has plenty of storm gear.” “I want to go home.”

  “We cannot lose track of this whale. It is too important.”

  I summoned a good loud, sustained stare, straight up from my diaphragm, let it resonate in my sinus cavities, and then shot it out my eyeballs at Snorri.

  “Don’t be petulant. Moments ago you were on the cusp of a dramatic cultural awakening. Something distant and deep called to you and you responded in kind. This is your time to be a hero.”

  Our friendly nemesis, in all his black brindled bulk, was done waiting for us to toss more kribble. It chuffed and grunted and then brought its head down hard enough to splash and lurch us.

  “Can we friend it?”

  “It may be an ally, but we will have to get to know it first.” “No, I mean add it to the Whale Network. What I’m thinking is we could shoot an antenna into it with the harpoon gun.”

  “Even if there were such a thing as the antenna javelin, I would never violate this. . . harbinger. This is a harbinger whale. A whale with safe harbor, here to tell us something. A whale with serious lineage.”

  “The Harbinger Whale. Well named, Snorri.”

  “Yes, and that’s just in English.”

  “I’m not coming with you.”

  “We are not leaving this whale.”

  Our new friend, the Harbinger—the probable smasher of Honeypaws, likely consumer of my flesh—was frothing the water again, less than its own length from the boat. He was chuckling like Jimmy Durante, if Durante were an antediluvian titan.

  “Fuck! Don’t we have anything left to feed it?”

  “Just your burritos.” Snorri had mocked my diet throughout the trip and pretended not to have a microwave for our first day at sea. “He wouldn’t want.…” We got soaked by a reeking geyser. The whale turned over, giving the churning water another slap with his fin, and looked at us with his other eye. He groaned and began snuffling the water right around the boat, as if he were vacuuming and our lazy feet were in the way. Snorri said the bumping would start again shortly and it was a good thing that Honeypaws was armored.

  “You can’t follow this whale anywhere if it wrecks us here, Snorri.”

  “Forbearance! And stay away from the sides.”

  Ignoring Snorri, I flicked a clump of spilled kribble over the side and watched it get sucked into one of the vortices swirling around us. I was not going down with this ship. I was not getting dragged to the Arctic. I had a small idea. “You said these phones talk to each other, right? They know where each other are?”

  “Yes, but not like other phones. No GPS. That can be accessed through other networks, but not legally yet, so these phones are configured only to locate other members of the Whale Network. We won’t incorporate GPS while our network is still in development to curtail espionage.

 
; “I’m going to try for a little distance now. Too much whelm.”

  As Snorri started the props and motored us off a bit, I sent my first-ever text message, a reply to Waldena: “Call Snarri ASSP—Ornge.” I had to leave the typos in, since the backspace key was too elusive.

  It only took a moment for the whale to catch up to us. “We’re not going to make it; we’ve got a pork chop tied around our neck or something.”

  Snorri looked puzzled. “Like an albatross?”

  “No, I mean it’s not going to stop fucking with us. We need more distance!”

  “I cannot let it out of my sight.”

  This time our new friend-cum-assassin pushed a wave like a small hill at us, catching us broadside and tipping Honeypaws dangerously toward swamping. Snorri stayed in the wheelhouse, trying to keep the bow pointed at the whale. I went back out on the deck and gathered up what crumbs of kribble I could find. I unfolded the phone back into its self-winding mode, the batarang croissant, sloshed it around some water and sprinkled the kribble on it. It fell right off. I needed something sticky. I hurried past Snorri at the wheel and into the galley, where I got my peanut butter.

  Snorri, whose native cuisine was entirely indefensible, had also mocked my peanut butter throughout the trip. He saw the jar and rolled his eyes. “This is a good time for a sandwich?”

  “I’ll just eat it out of the jar.” Back on the rear deck, I smeared my now crescent-shaped phone with the peanut butter and then dredged it in the pile of kribble I’d made. Would the whale hear me if I shouted? I knew it could see me. I waved and shouted.

  “I know, I know!” shouted back Snorri.

  “No you don’t!” I yelled and flung the phone at the whale. It bounced off his snout and began to sink right in front of him. I realized he couldn’t see in front of himself, but before I could rue my pitch, the big bully sucked it right up.

  Snorri ran out of the wheelhouse, “What have you done?!”

  “Now the Harbinger is on the Network, right?”

  “That was your phone!”

  “Now it’s his. My gift. He’s on the Net.”

  Snorri’s mouth hung open. “But. . . huh.” He pulled at an eyebrow. “Huh.”

  “Right?”

  “I had that phone made just for you.”

  “But you can track its signal now?” “Yes,” he said slowly, catching on to my idea. “Then let’s get the fuck outta here!”

  Snorri stood still, watching the whale. “Huh,” he said, yet again.

  “We are completely out of kribble. Peanut butter too. We have to go now.”

  Snorri twiddled a long strand of eyebrow. “You know, if they all had phones, they could sing to each other without interference from longwave radio and propwash noise.”

  “That’s. . . . ”

  Snorri punched me hard in the shoulder. “It might work!” We stood watching the whale watch us. I thought about his massive tongue working the peanut butter out of his baleen slats. “Hey, I never knew my phone number.”

  An hour later, Snorri’s phone squawked stridently. He scowled. “It’s not the whale.”

  “My ride?”

  “The witch,” he said, reading his screen. “She sends her regards and will be here soon.”

  “Snorri, you can’t expect me to come on a goo—whale chase to the North Pole. We’ve been out here for days and I’ve done my part already.”

  “You can do—were going to do—better than Waldena.”

  “Listen, we agreed. I get a ride home, you get to follow the whale anywhere you and he want.”

  “And Angie? You could make it work.”

  “Not from the Arctic Circle.”

  “What do you think she will have to say when she hears who you’ve been shipping with?”

  “She’s already not talking to me.”

  “You heard Moira, she’s almost ready to begin forgiving you.” “I’m just hitching the only ride in town. You could take me.” “I cannot, I would be out of range soon—no antenna, remember?”

  “My hands are tied.”

  Snorri said something in Finlindian that sounded scornful and conclusive.

  While we waited for my taxi, I gathered up my gear and my big wads of money. I wrapped each of the three banded stacks in a couple plastic bags each and put them in my duffel with my clothes. I decided to leave my burritos and cans of Beefaroni for Snorri in case he got iced in up north. When I got back topside, Snorri had his binoculars out. “The whale?”

  “I’m reading a heliogram from Waldena. A message sent by flashing a mirror in the sunlight. A very old and durable means of telecommunication.”

  “Why not use the phone?”

  “She’s being clever. She’s sending a short, rude poem that rhymes our names with sex acts. Her and my countrymen used to yell things like this at each other during battles. I hope she shows some more decorum around the Harbinger.”

  I wondered what my name rhymed with in Estonindian.

  Snorri had reversed roles, seemingly, with the whale. Now that he could track it, he had opened up some distance between us so he could stay nearby but not injure it with Honeypaws’s props. Also so that the whale wouldn’t sink us, but I knew he wouldn’t cop to that. He probably wouldn’t be up on the hydrofoils any time soon. I saw the flashes and then the Hammer Maiden about ten minutes out. I wondered if she had her crew with her. Ship-to-ship transfers are kind of tricky, but we had fine weather. We could use the harpoon gun to shoot a line to her and then, once we had it secured, I could slide over to her in a sort of harness. The danger is getting stuck between boats, dangling from the slack line. Snorri had returned to the wheel, grumbling. I waited until I could make out Waldena and waved to her. When she got close enough, Snorri came out and handed me a life vest and told me to put it on. “Are you certain, Orange?”

  “Ayup,” I said putting my arms through the holes.

  “Got everything? Your money?”

  “Ayup.”

  “Get up by the rail so you can make ready to secure her line. You are entirely sure?”

  “Yeah thanks, I’m all set.”

  Snorri put his hand on the back of my vest and rubbed. “Be heroic.” Before I could turn to hug him, he hooked his boot between my ankles and gave me a shove overboard.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Spouter

  There’s a way to approach smokers without being too apparent a mooch. It’s a certain kind of sidle that suggests a friendly complicity, a momentary rebellion to the main gathering. We used to lurk off to escape parental attention, but now things are mostly reversed. I had spotted a little eddy of young adults quietly spiraling off of the main pool of wedding guests; the girls appealingly clumsy in their dresses and heels, the guys looking unlikely to drone about the Patriots, despite their gelled-up crew cuts. I said Hey to them like I was supposed to know them, they said Hey back, like they were supposed to know me. I caught the joint twice as it swirled around the swaying vortex of tipsy post-teenagers. Soon, though, came the inevitable, “Who are you with?”

  The girl who asked me, her heels were sinking into the grass I’d trimmed earlier that afternoon. She wasn’t long for the vertical. She shouldn’t have been smoking, but her girlfriend was shouldering her up and smirking at me. I was with myself, which I think was evident to her, but I don’t think she’d sussed out my illegitimacy. If you’re going to drift off into the bushes with an unattended male at a wedding, it’s not supposed to be the help. I wasn’t wearing the clean white shirt and black pants, not jeans, with black shoes that Chosen had asked me to bring to change into after I helped set up the tent and humped gear around for the caterer. They’d come with their own efficient and tidy servers, so I’d been surreptitiously set loose to wander among the guests for the evening like a dog behaving tolerably off his leash. I didn’t even own a clean white shirt, not even an unstained white t-shirt. I would have just got in the way anyway. I was supposed to stay sober and out of trouble so I could help clean u
p later, so I stayed away from the keg and stuck with bottles of beer that stood conveniently upright in the inside pocket of my jean jacket.

  I didn’t want to wind up wondering whether I should offer a toot of tiger testes to this young woman who was already a few loops into her downward gyre, so I sidled away from their bubble and back into the walled garden of the Spouter, the B&B that Ill John and Chosen had bought while I was at sea with Snorri and Waldena. We’d worked on it all winter and spring; the paint was still fresh on Memorial Day. It was cute, I guess. Actually, there was one room, the Pineapple Room, that had given me a seizure. It was all the calico, I think. I’d spent too long in there staining the wainscot, and the patterns from the wallpaper and the nearly matching bedspread swirled into each other. My eyeballs stiffened, and my vision crazed with what seemed like pulsing afterimages of lightning jags. Electric colors dripped from auroral bursts that concussed my brain until it sloshed on its motor mounts. I couldn’t see or stand straight, and I knew I was going to lose my stomach and maybe more soon. So I crawled into the mostly pattern-free bathroom and pulled towels down off the rack to nest on while I panted into my palms, letting my warm breath soothe my throbbing eyelids.

  Towels are inordinately important to offislanders. The Spouter housed more towels than I’d ever seen in my life. I had always been secretly glad for bathroom floors, since they had reliably provided me with full stops to run-on descents. To find oneself on the bathroom floor means something painful and ugly is finally coming to an end. That afternoon when I was in postcalico recovery, I finally understood towels too. The wings of angels are best when they are a bit scratchy and smell of God’s BO, which, as a mere mortal, I don’t have enough scent receptors to discern.

  I own my parents’ towels and their house now. Or, they’re mine now. I own my own. I paid off the last of their second mortgage with the bundles of cash I’d got from the WhaleNet dividend. The result of this was that I was just as poor as I’d always been and still lived where I always lived. And I had to talk to my mother more often. And the bank knew who I was, and presumably someone in some office somewhere in America would soon be wondering where their tax money was. The assessment was astonishing. How I could own something so entirely expensive, yet feel so poor wasn’t something I’d worked out yet. It pleased my neighbors though. They liked that I was now suffering in a way they could understand. The transition from possession to ownership was both trivial and freighted with consequence. But mandatory, as far as my parents were concerned. I hoped I wasn’t going to have to buy their condo in Florida.