The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel

by David Poyer

  “Unfortunately, this isn’t a democracy,” Perrault said. “It is more like a small Third World dictatorship. My orders are to find the whaling fleet. As my owner instructed me. And the CPL office, my charterers on this voyage, expect. I deeply respect you, Miss Dorée, but you do not have the power to alter my instructions.”

  Dorée’s cheeks glowed. She pushed back from the table. Looked around. No one met her eyes. Georgita coughed again, and her hand sank back into her lap. The actress slammed her palms on the table, and pushed herself up. “I don’t believe this. That isn’t the last word. I’m sending a message.”

  “Mick, give Miss Dorée every facility for transmitting it,” Perrault said gravely. “But there is no more to be said. We press on. That is my watchword: press on. It has taken me through many storms. So, I will take the first watch. And the rest of you had better try to get some shut-eyes.”

  His calm gaze met Sara’s. She blinked and glanced away; glanced up, at one of the portlights, though which the everlasting hoary light glowed through inches of rime. And one by one, the others rose and stumbled away.

  8

  Whalesong

  Through the rest of that day and into the next the snow continued to fall. They headed southeast under reefed sails. Perrault stayed on deck, backing up whoever was in the bubble. Sara put in four hours on watch, slept for six, then reluctantly took another four in the helmsman’s seat when Dorée said she had a migraine and could only see black dots and whirling patterns. Her own eye hurt, but Bodine gave her drops for the pain.

  The ice came in all sizes and shapes and colors, aquamarine and old-copper green and pearly white, from flat floes up to the icebergs they’d passed before. Not solid pack, but interspersed with stretches of black sea miles across. The bergs weren’t really the danger. They showed up clearly on radar, and the horn echoed from them when Perrault sounded it, a prolonged, mournful drone that seemed to fit perfectly with the seascape. The dangerous ice was the pieces the size of refrigerators or trucks that had splintered off the bigger bergs.

  These were so low in the water the radar didn’t pick them up. They loomed suddenly out of the twilit fog, coalescing out of the furry opaqueness a hundred, two hundred yards ahead. Which meant she had ten or fifteen seconds to alter course before Anemone’s delicate hull would impact. Usually she saw them and put the wheel over, steering downwind when she could, upwind when she couldn’t. But sometimes she didn’t see them in time. Then the captain would yell over the intercom, rumbling like a French James Earl Jones inside the cold-mask he wore, and she’d startle out of whatever twilight she’d gone to and shiver and put the helm over. Then watch as the slowly heaving masses, sometimes opalescent, sometimes stained with emerald or ocher, populated with raucous seabirds or curiously staring penguins, like retirees watching the world go by from a bench in a small-town hardware store, and once even a somnolent and solitary bull walrus who groggily lifted his shaggy head, slid slowly past. Sometimes, only yards away.

  When she climbed down again she could barely move. The cold struck through the thin transparent plastic of the dome. Freed of the support of the padded bucket seat, lap and shoulder belts, she reeled as Anemone lunged and banged over jagged seas.

  Madsen wriggled up past her through the framework and settled both hands on the wheel. His ridiculous cap pressed against the top of the dome; the floppy earflaps danced and dangled. “Do we know where we’re going?” he muttered.

  She couldn’t meet his eyes. The memory of his pale skinny ass pistoning in the master cabin was too vivid. “I just steer the course, Lars. An hour ago we came left. Zero nine four.”

  “Yeah, I know. But d’you know why?” He must have caught something on her face because he added hastily, “Mick picked up radars again.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, the ice comes up on you quick. We’re making fifteen knots. Steer downwind of it when you can—”

  “I know all that.”

  “Then you don’t need any advice from me,” she snapped. Ignoring whatever he muttered behind her, she groped her way to the galley. Hands shaking, she sliced hard waxy slabs off a chunk of Gruyère, squirted mustard on it from the bright yellow French’s container, and fitted crackers around it.

  She ate four cracker-and-cheese sandwiches, washing them down with cold coffee, followed by a Cadbury raisin-and-nut bar. She thought briefly about what the Dane had said: that they’d picked up the fleet again. Then dismissed it.

  Georgita was snoring in the lower berth. Sara chimpanzeed up to her own bunk. She wound like a silkworm into musty blankets, buckled in, and stared up. Above her face swollen droplets of condensation rolled back and forth. They hung, elongated, then pattered to the deck. Black skeins of mold webbed the once-immaculate overhead, creeping over curving white plastic. She stared at them, mind vacant. Then, closing her good eye, submerged without seam into the utter blackness of complete fatigue.

  * * *

  A rough hand was shaking her awake. “I did two tricks,” she muttered. “Almost back to back.”

  “Dinner, Sara. Tofu jambalaya.”

  An inner debate ended with unbuckling the strap, turning counterclockwise three times to loosen the blankets, and crawling out. She poured bottled water into a washcloth, rubbed her face, touched the eyepatch gently, rinsed her mouth. Her clothes stank, but nothing could be done about that. Georgita’s bunk was empty. She rattled the curtain open and stepped through.

  Perrault, Tehiyah, Georgita, Lars, and Mick sat round the table, clinging to handholds as the boat jolted. The wind seemed to have come up; the illuminated meter on the bulkhead showed they were making eighteen knots. A spicy-hot smell brought her nose up as Eddi weaved out of the galley, a steaming pan extended gingerly in front of her. Their gazes tracked it anxiously, one or another flinching out of the way as it approached. When it clanged to a landing they were all on it, spooning spicy masses of yellow rice and red sauce into bowls. For a few minutes the only sounds were the whine of the wind, the crash of the sea, and the chomp and smack of mastication. “More, who wants it,” Auer yelled from the galley. “I saved some for Jamie when he comes off watch too.”

  “This is the best stuff I ever ate,” Madsen moaned.

  “It’s very good,” Georgita murmured, sniffling.

  “Hell of a lot better than MREs.”

  “Yeah, this is great, Eddi,” Sara said. “Drives the cold right out of your head.”

  “You’re a great chef, Eddi,” Dorée said, holding her bowl up for more as the videographer navigated to the table again. “We should just make you the cook. We’d eat like this all the time.”

  No one said anything to this. Perrault murmured, “Sara, how is your eye? Any better?”

  “It itches.”

  “Probably a good sign. Healing,” Bodine said.

  The captain asked, “Mick, how are those radars looking? Anything new?”

  “I have two now.”

  “Any clue as to range? Distance?”

  “That’s why I wanted to go in at an angle.”

  “That would take longer to close.”

  “Right, but it’d’ve given us a bearing change. I could estimate range from that. But since we’re headed directly for them, all I have’s a guess. Curvature of the earth, masthead height—could be a hundred miles away. Or closer.”

  Dorée had been busy with a second bowl of jambalaya. “By the way. I need to use that bow compartment for a couple of hours.”

  “What for?” Bodine and Sara both said together. They glanced at each other, then back at the actress.

  She said into her bowl, “You’ve got all that room up there, and the dryer isn’t working—”

  “What dryer?” Auer said, behind her. Sara’s ears pricked up too.

  “You know, the clothes dryer in the master suite. Georgie did some things for me, but they’re not drying right. We need to hang them up. You’ve got all that room up forward.”

  “That’s our work space,” Bodine said. “My equi
pment. And Sara’s whale charts.”

  Sara sat rigid, suddenly furious. Her spoon rattled against the bowl. “Wait a minute. You had a dryer? While we were going around in moldy clothes, wet all the time?”

  Dorée said loftily, “Well, it’s in the master suite. Like I said.”

  “That means there’s a washer, too?”

  “A very small one. There isn’t enough water to take care of everybody. But it’s broken now. As I said. The washer-dryer. So there’s no point crying over it. But Georgie still has these clothes to deal with. It won’t be in your way, Mick. It’ll be way above your head. We can string a line—”

  “Not in my lab space,” Sara said.

  “I have to stand with Sara on this one,” Bodine said. She hesitated, then nodded thanks. He slowly closed one eye, as if to say: Gotta stick together.

  Perrault slid his bowl away. He leaned forward, gaze sharpening, but saying nothing as the two women faced off. And before Sara’s eyes Dorée made some mysterious transition from one of them into something beyond them. “I don’t like to have to say this. But there’s a reason I’m in the master suite.”

  “We know perfectly well why,” Eddi said.

  “And who’s in there with you,” Sara said. She was instantly sorry—whatever privacy any of them had, he or she had a right to—but it was out. Madsen flushed, gaze nailed to the bowl he was fondling.

  “Perhaps a liqueur, to finish such a fine meal,” said Perrault. “I think we’ve earned a stimulant.”

  “There wouldn’t be an expedition without me,” Dorée said past him. “So it’s not out of the ordinary to ask for some small conveniences.”

  “Why should you get better treatment than the rest of us? Eddi’s a videographer. Mick’s a handicapped vet. And I’m here to do research,” Sara said, hating what she was saying at the same time she took great pleasure in it. Wielding words like a broken bottle in a bar fight, to slash and spray blood. “What do you do? You don’t take your turn in the galley, don’t clean up, don’t even stand watch anymore—”

  “I had a migraine. You don’t want someone up there who can’t see.” She turned to the captain, showing perfect white teeth. “Do I really have to put up with these attacks?”

  “No. No, you don’t.” Perrault sucked a breath. Spread long fingers, then tented them. “We all have to pull together here—”

  “Obviously not all of us,” Auer said, darting a glare at Dorée.

  “There has to be a distinction drawn,” the actress said. “Between principals and … staff.”

  “We’re all shipmates,” Perrault said.

  “Some more matey than others,” Sara said.

  Dorée leaned forward. Sara felt the sting on her cheek before she realized what had just happened. A full-handed, resounding slap. “Mind your place,” Dorée hissed. “We all know who you are. The unemployed scientist. The one who got her assistant’s face torn off, because she fucked up with a wild animal.”

  “No, Sara. No,” said Bodine, and she realized the hands holding her back on that side were his, and that Madsen was gripping her just as tightly. Which was just as well, maybe, because she was going over the table to ruin that perfect face.

  Dorée leaned back. “This is so unfair,” she choked out. She was crying. Though of course, who knew how authentic her tears would be. Sara’s rage doubled as she saw the men’s expressions soften. “You have no idea whose—how many asses I had to kiss. You think my life’s so privileged? I was on stage at ten. I had to—you don’t know what I’ve had to do.”

  “We’ve all had to do things to survive,” Georgita murmured. “That’s certainly true.”

  “Shut up, Georgie. You’re not in this discussion. It all started with you breaking the dryer, anyway.”

  “I’m sorry, Tehiyah.”

  “I want everyone to just calm down,” Perrault shouted. It was the first time he’d raised his voice to them; a shocked silence fell. “Sara. Tehiyah. You will apologize now to each other.”

  “I won’t. Fuck her, she’s fired,” Dorée said. Sara just stared, too enraged to get a coherent word out.

  “No one’s being fired. You will apologize, or I will punish you both.”

  “You already tried that,” Sara said bitterly. “She never touched a scrub brush.”

  “I still have wet laundry,” Dorée stated.

  The companionway hatch slid back, and a gust of snowflakes whirled into the salon. Quill’s head poked in, masked in black wool and platinum rime. “The hell’s going on down here? Sounds like a fooking catfight.”

  “This is too much. It’s cold all the time. Jules said there were heaters. He promised I’d be warm.”

  “In Antarctica?” Sara drawled.

  “Shut up, Pollard!”

  “You didn’t like the diesel smell, Tehiyah. And we can’t spare fuel to keep it like toast. Now, I’ve had enough of this. I’m warning you both,” Perrault said. He rose, eyed Bodine and Madsen. “Let her go,” he said, and Sara felt them uncrimp her arms. He waited to see how she’d react. She hunched her shoulders, but kept her fists in her lap. He nodded, and went into the galley.

  When he came out he carried a dark bottle. “I want us to drink together, and remember where we are. In these latitudes, the sea is more dangerous than anywhere else on earth. And any help? It is too far away to matter. There is no room for”—he eyed the women distastefully—“screaming fights. Slapping. Or insults. Once again, I demand an apology.”

  Dorée smiled through tears like a rainbow emerging through a summer shower. “I truly am sorry, Sara dear. We’re all so on edge, you know. I didn’t mean what I said. About you being a total failure as a scientist, I mean.”

  “And I didn’t mean what I said, about your being so lazy and useless,” Sara said, and they glared at each other across the slanting cabin, smiling hard.

  * * *

  She lay huddled in her bunk for some interminable time, curled around the flickering spice-warmth in her belly, and at last drowsed off.

  A scrape and jingle as if Marley’s Ghost were dragging his chains past her ear woke her. She lay listening, but it trailed away aft and didn’t come again. The light through her porthole was dimmer. Evening, though there was no night. The boat was careening from sea to sea with shrugs and bangs that threw her against the straps. She lay listening for ice and fighting the need to pee.

  At last she gave in to the inevitable. She unlashed herself and climbed down. Her breath steamed. A stagger of the boat as she stepped to the deck planted her foot square on Georgita’s chest, narrowly missing the splinted arm.

  “Oof. Sara … what’d you…”

  “Sorry, Georgie. I’m so sorry. Go back to sleep.”

  Shadows loomed in the salon. It was cold as an ice cave. The table gleamed with moisture. Their exhaled breaths, condensing. It pattered down from the curved overhead with each lurch and slam. Black skeins of mildew ran down from the portlights, closing her throat when she got too close. From the dark narrow cave to which the open hatch led echoed the erratic staccato of Bodine’s snoring. When she peered forward he was melted into his chair, head back, mouth agape.

  The head was flooded. Turds and paper sloshed to and fro in the bowl of the high-tech vacuum toilet. When she pressed the button nothing happened. She wiped the lid down with damp tissue and perched, lifting her feet to avoid the tide each time the boat heeled. A scraping began forward and passed down the port side, followed by something bumping the hull. When she went to wash her hands the faucet hissed ominously, but gave no water.

  Quill was in the bubble, ass sagging over the too-small seat. Pouched eyes lined with scarlet inflammation blinked down at her, then back at the sea. His tangled beard was red as blood. After a moment’s horrified puzzlement she realized it was only the remains of the jambalaya.

  “The toilet doesn’t work,” she murmured. “And I think the freshwater system’s frozen.”

  “Plunger’s in the locker under the sink.”
/>   Great. “Where’s the captain?”

  “Topside.”

  “I hear ice. And isn’t it getting rougher?”

  “It’s little stuff. Brash. And the fog’s closing in. Shitty weather, actually.” He leaned into the plastic, tensing, and cranked the wheel hard left. He worked the sheeting mechanism, then twisted in his seat, grimacing. “Fooking cramps in me spine … can you take it for a few minutes?”

  “Isn’t anybody else up?”

  “Just you, I guess.”

  She wavered, liking neither more hours in the seat nor the alternative. Finally she muttered, “I’ll see if I can fix the toilet.”

  * * *

  Each time they pitched, the bowl’s contents sloshed over the sides. She kept dragging her sleeve across her face, breathing through her mouth. At last she got the bowl cleared of solids, the circuit breaker reset, and the clog of soggy paper out of the vacuum line. When she pressed the button the flipper at the bottom opened and with a choking, explosive suck everything vanished, pulled down into oblivion. What happened to it after that she cared not. She found an unopened pack of Wet Wipes, peeled off her top, and cleaned herself as best she could, armpits and neck and face, the too-strong fruit-flowery fragrance for once welcome.

  When she weaved back out into the salon Bodine was at the table, prosthetics sticking out stiffly. Perrault and Quill were with him. Mugs steamed and slid. The long jean-clad limbs and sea boots dangling from the bubble must be Madsen’s. The captain nodded at her. “Coffee is hot. If you would like some. Jamie says you fixed the WC.”

  “I guess the doctorate wasn’t wasted.”

  A frown; the irony seemed lost on him. “Go on,” he said to Bodine.

  “They’re mike clicks, all right. You can hear those farther than you can make out speech transmissions. And they’re on the channel they use for communications with the kill ships.”

  The Frenchman exchanged glances with Quill, then faced Bodine again. “The radars?”

  “Getting stronger. May be a third, more distant. On almost the same bearing. But masked by the others.”