The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel

by David Poyer

  “Well, it’s not going where you want it to go.” She realized as she said this that it was a double entendre, and almost smiled, but still felt intimidated. He was so much stronger, and heavier, and he was right above her. If he wanted to he could keep on, and she’d be helpless, unless she screamed. Which she didn’t want to. Above all, she didn’t want the others to see her like this.

  But instead of pushing her arms aside, he cleared his throat and rolled away, letting in a smell of damp hemp. “I get it,” he said, voice altered, cold, ten thousand miles distant.

  She fought to sit up and pull her clothes back over her. “Get it … get what?”

  “I guess it’s a turnoff, all right. A shock.”

  “What are you talking about? I didn’t…” Her voice trailed off as she realized what he thought. “I … I didn’t see all that much. But that’s not it. Believe me, Mick. Not at all.”

  “It’s got to be pretty unaesthetic. To suddenly see those, those stumps, when you’re expecting something else.”

  “No!” She struggled to sit up, appalled. “Mick … you have to believe me. That had nothing to do with it. We’re co-workers. This boat’s too small for us to just … hook up, or whatever.”

  “You don’t have to explain. Make excuses.”

  She suddenly felt guilty. She reached for him. “Let me do something else, then.”

  “Forget it.” His voice had a rough edge that could have been anger or something else. His face was turned to the darkness. “Just get out.”

  “I told you, it’s not what you think. I just don’t want to … but I’ll take care of you.” She worked moisture up in her mouth, licked her hand. “Turn this way—”

  “I said get out.”

  She backed away. Rearranged her clothes as he hoisted with both arms, poised against the roll of the hull, then lowered himself back into the seat. When he clamped the earphones back on, his shadow, thrown by the dim light against the overhead, seemed to have grown horns, like a bull’s. Not looking at her he rasped, again, finally, “Go on. Get out.”

  She looked back to see him still turned away, deep in the cavelike dim, as the songs of the whales echoed against the hoarse never-ending whisper of the sea.

  9

  First Encounter

  “So, d’we have ourselves a little fun last night?”

  Sara lifted her attention from Rice Chex and ultrapasteurized milk to Eddi Auer’s protuberant blue eyes. They were alone in the galley. “What?”

  “I saw you coming back, you know. From up forward.”

  She pushed hair off her face. “Oh, for … Nothing happened, Eddi.”

  “Oh, of course not. Of course not.”

  Why was she so angry? Sara glanced up again. “Wait a minute. You’re not sweet on him, are you?”

  “None of your damn business.”

  She took the other woman’s arm. “Okay, I’ll level: I almost gave way. But at the last minute, I decided it wouldn’t be smart. Okay? The field’s still open. If he’s who you want.”

  Auer wavered, glancing at her and then away. Finally she grinned. Punched Sara’s arm. “You whore dog. You really are, you know. All right, forget it. Water over the dam.”

  Whore dog? “I just wanted you to know—”

  “If you got some, good for you. About time somebody did. Besides her.”

  The companionway banged open. Quill’s bearded visage hung upside down. “All hands on deck. Get ’em up! Mustang suits and life preservers.”

  She and Eddi tore their gazes from each other. As they shook people awake a long-unfamiliar rumble began aft, built, then dropped to a steady hum. The engines! Her heart beat faster. They’d caught up with their quarry at last.

  When she lumbered topside, bulky and clumsy in heavy gear and face mask and insulated gloves and goggles, Quill and Perrault and Madsen were in the cockpit. The wind was an icy blade in her throat. She gasped, coughing, as she squinted around. The sea surged past in six-foot piles of blue-black ink, tops shredded into long manes of frothy spray. Scattered clouds galloped across a bright sky like spooked horses. Then she remembered. Duh, Sara; you aren’t supposed to be up here. She turned to climb back down, but the captain caught her arm. “Where are you going?”

  “You wanted me to steer.”

  “Not in the bubble. From where you can hear my commands.” He jerked a thumb at where Madsen stood. “Steer one two five.”

  The steel tubing of the wheel felt frigid even through padded gloves. She wrestled it, boots slipping on the ice that coated the cockpit sole, and got the lubber’s line back on 125. Then lifted her head and squinted.

  A distant gray pricking amid scattered mountains of ice. The bergs glowed in the sky, glittered in the pale low sun. A jeweled rampart, white and blue and emerald, sent colored beams searching the majestically sailing clouds. Brightness below, brightness above; and in the distance, a colorless speck irritating the sclera of the vast horizon.

  “All the way,” Perrault yelled. Quill bent and the big bronze-and-gold genoa flapped and slammed as it fed out of the furler. Anemone dipped, then rose, a racehorse leaving the starting gate, and began to accelerate. Sara concentrated on the course, which she saw led almost directly to the gray thing, and on avoiding any brash in their path. Perrault too was searching ahead, binoculars poised on the tips of his gloves. The bow rose, peeling curving foils of transparent sea off to both sides, then leaving them behind to a gathering roar. The genoa cracked and bellied, then snapped full, ripples chasing each other over its turgid surface. The wheel strained against her arm and leg muscles. She spun on left trim and the pull lessened, but she still had to brace herself.

  Madsen had binoculars too. He lay out along the coach house aiming them. Then yelled, “It’s a kill ship.”

  “Can you make out a number?”

  “Not till we get closer.”

  She crouched, squinting into the spray that blew over them from windward. The gray speck had become a ship, with black funnel and white pilothouse and a curved, almost sickle-like bow. It was headed away, seemingly oblivious to their presence, but they were catching up. She dropped her gaze; in that second’s glimpse she’d gone five degrees off course. She got them back on just in time for Perrault to shout, “Aim for her stern.”

  “That’s me?” she yelled.

  “Yes! You must pay attention. And respond instantly. Aim for her stern! We’ll pass close aboard, to her port side.—Lars, get ready.”

  “Inflatable in the water?”

  “Not just yet. Let’s do a close pass and see what we can see. Maybe get something on their decks, at least.”

  Madsen pushed back down into the cockpit as Eddi and Georgita and Tehiyah came up the companionway, one after the other, in exposure suits, muffled and goggled. Quill followed. A brief confusion ensued before those who wanted up got up and those who wanted down got down. The women started flailing at the ice and undoing straps on the inflatable. “Don’t cast loose yet,” Perrault ordered. “Just make sure everything’s free and ready.” Looking past him, Sara saw the forward hatch come open and a moment later a black head bob up. Bodine, shoulders crowding the coaming, peering under the taut swell of the foresail toward the ship ahead.

  Madsen pushed up the companionway again with a wooden box slung over one shoulder. Quill, behind him, toted thick coils of straw-colored plastic line. They clipped safety lanyards and edged forward with their burdens, boots sliding on the slick white crust that frosted the deck. A translucent carapace stood inches thick on every shroud and winch. With each dash of spray, it seemed to grow. Anemone bowed, then surged up as if to attack the very clouds, following the massively swelling genoa, the unreefed main, eager, alive, avid. If a boat could be said to be joyful, Sara thought, puffing freezing air as she made minuscule corrections, then this one was. She too felt like shouting aloud after groping through so many days of overcast and misery. Ahead lay one of the ships they’d pursued for so many weeks, over thousands of miles. She might n
ot share the dedication of some of the CPL members, but she couldn’t disagree that whaling in an internationally declared sanctuary had to merit at least a protest.

  When she looked up again they were half a mile away. The other ship had come right and she made out again that queerly curved bow. Perrault, back behind binoculars, told her to pass to starboard, not port, as close as she could and still have room to steer clear if the ship turned into them.

  “This may well be Nakame.”

  “Who?”

  “The one we told you about,” Madsen called back. He was crouched at the lifeline, prying the cover off the wooden crate with a screwdriver. “The guy they call Captain Crunch.”

  “We have a number yet?” asked Quill. No one answered. He was flaking out the heavy line along Anemone’s side. The one she’d been lying against the night before, in Bodine’s lair. The hard things that had dug into her back were round plastic floats, knotted into a heavy pale-yellow polyethylene braid every couple of arm’s lengths. She flashed back for a fraction of a second as her face heated. “Whore dog.” On her back, legs parted—

  “Farther right,” Perrault snapped. She bit her lip under the knitted mask and concentrated. The boat charged across the waves, barely pitching now. Sails pulling, engines pushing, she left behind a flattened track of green sea flecked with foam, a dash of spray, a curl of exhaust. A patch of sea seethed ahead: krill, or millions of small fish. Gulls parted before the onrushing predator; then whirled up into the bright hard sky, protesting in a harsh clattering cacophony as Anemone slashed across the writhing sea, arrow-straight, incredibly fast, finally up on full plane as she drove toward the ship that slowly came around to meet her, lengthening, exposing more and more of herself to sight.

  Madsen called, “Something alongside.”

  Quill, at the same instant: “Whales!”

  She lifted her eyes from the compass to a flurry of spume close by the gray hull. At the same moment Perrault yelled, “Left, come left. Pass up her starboard side.” She must have responded too slowly, because he grabbed the wheel and wrestled it around, then relinquished it again.

  All at once they plunged into a smell that made her throat close. A sulfurous, thick, nauseating stink of rotten meat and decaying blood so dense Anemone seemed to slow. Dorée gasped, sealing a glove over her nose. Georgita gagged.

  Men in red helmets and yellow parkas moved about the decks of the still slowly turning ship, or stood at the life rails with eyes shaded, watching. Less than a hundred yards away now, Sara made out what thrashed and blew, racing desperately beside the pursuing hull. Two of them. Their raked dorsals proclaimed them minkes. A thick clot of smoke chuffed off the stack, and white foam boiled at the stern. A lone slickered figure stood forward, one hand on the lowered barrel of a harpoon gun, watching the racing whales.

  “Stand by the float line,” Perrault yelled, and she jerked her attention back. The whales were angling right, away from their pursuer, whose ability to turn after them was blocked now by Anemone, coming up astern. Dru was putting them between the hunters and their quarry.

  They were close beneath the hull now. A row of ideographs marched across the bow. Beneath it Roman letters read SIRYU No. 3. Madsen cupped his hands and shouted at the men who stared down, “Stop your illegal poaching! Stop killing innocent whales!” The Japanese, all in identical yellow slickers, looked down without expression, as if at a not very entertaining performance. One or two X’d their fore arms, a gesture she couldn’t interpret. The gunner on the harpoon frowned and swung it toward them. Then, in response to a shout that echoed across the water, aimed it away.

  “Closer,” Perrault yelled. She took her lip hard in her teeth again and steered so that the gap ahead, already narrow, became disappearingly thin. Madsen pushed the opened crate to Bodine, who seized it. The Dane skidded over the ice to seize the flemished-out line as the mate grabbed the after end. Together, heaving at the mass of polyethylene, they lifted it over the lifeline, festooning it in drooping catenaries just above the rushing sea.

  Madsen straightened, pulling a dull gray can with a red stripe from inside his suit. He weighed it in his glove, staring up at the steel wall that rose far above their heads. The sea bulged like a tensed muscle between the hulls. “No closer, she will suck you in,” Perrault shouted. “Steady now. Steady. Throw!”

  Bodine’s and Madsen’s arms whipped upward simultaneously, and two gray cans lofted, rifled, spinning. One hurtled over the ship’s rail; the other crashed against a bow anchor, bounced off, smoking, and dropped into the water.

  A searing-hot scent suddenly cut the stink of rotten meat. Another can snapped upward, an overhand by Quill that shattered a window in the other’s pilothouse. “Oh, nice pitch,” Madsen shouted. “Damn, that was sweet. They won’t like that!”

  “What’s that they’re throwing?” Eddi coughed from beneath her glove. Sara shook her head.

  The prow of the killer wavered, as if whoever was at the helm had a moment of indecision. Sara eyed it as they drew abreast, then exhaled as Anemone forged ahead, into clear sea. She shaded her eyes to see the whales making their escape, pushing white waves, then vanishing as they sounded.

  Madsen scampered aft, cradling another can. He gripped the shroud and cocked an arm, head lifted to judge the range; wound up, and threw. This one fell onto the other ship’s forecastle, and a silvery smoke burst up around the harpooner. He staggered back, and his screams as he flailed at his eyes rose over the roar of the bow wave.

  “What is that?” Auer gasped. Sara shook her head, her own eyes and mucous membranes starting to burn in earnest, holding her breath to keep whatever it was from searing her nasal passages. She’d thought they’d be throwing stink bombs, or maybe red paint. Perhaps even blood—something symbolic. But the doused harpooner was hanging over the rail, vomiting and beating at his face.

  She was jerked from puzzlement by Perrault cuffing her. “I said, cross her bow,” the captain yelled. Then pushed her aside. She stumbled back and fell over the inflatable. Dorée and Georgita caught her, and the three women leaned together. “What is that stuff?” she muttered. “In the cans they’re throwing?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, Georgie, I don’t,” she snapped. “Do you?”

  “You didn’t smell it? It’s tear gas, or pepper spray or something.”

  “Good God,” she muttered.

  “Heave,” Quill roared. She blinked tears from her vision to see the captain had cut left, directly in front of the racing killer.

  Madsen and the mate straightened, each heaving at a loop, and the heavy urine-colored plastic fell into the sea, thrashing and writhing like something alive. It disappeared below the surface, then bobbed up in their wake, borne up by the spherical pods, streamed at the end of a lighter line that uncoiled swiftly aft. The looming prow swung away, roaring out a steady bow wave.

  She looked along the other craft’s length, now boiling with yellow slickers. The orange floats reached toward the racing bow, then vanished beneath it to a ringing whoop from Bodine and a high-stepping jig from Madsen. She tensed, clutching the helm stand, while Perrault gazed hard aft too. But the enemy, silver smoke still rising from here and there along its decks, kept turning.

  With a spurt of foam the floats spat from beneath her counter, dancing along the waves. Perrault’s shoulders sagged. Madsen stopped his jig, staring aft. “Fuck,” he muttered. A shift in the wind brought the acrid burning again. A sudden pain in her sinuses, a searing irritation in her throat. Dorée doubled, coughing uncontrollably.

  Now the other was swinging back. Smoke jetted from the stack, black against blue, and the hammer of her engines came across the water. A white stream jetted out, swinging this way and that before the wind tattered it into smoking spray. “Hoses,” Tehiyah yelled. “They’re going to turn fire hoses on us.”

  “Hold on,” Perrault said between clenched teeth. He eyed the telltales on the sail, looked over his shoulder, and suddenly cut h
ard right. Aenemone heeled, swaying far over. The sails sagged for a moment before a leaping Quill was on the winches, elbows blurring as he spun them taut again.

  A muffled roar built, like a dragon inhaling before breathing flame. Bodine cried a warning from the forward hatch. She didn’t catch the words, but heard the mortal admonition in his tone. Perrault faked a turn to port, then came right again. Past him she saw a berg rolling in the sea, three tour buses long. Waves broke on it in leaping cascades of glowing spray.

  She turned, gripping a strap on the inflatable to avoid being bucked overboard as the killer’s bow wave surged under them, and found herself looking directly up through the shattered window of its pilothouse into the broad face of a middle-aged Asian. His reddened, pouchy eyes streamed with tears. Above stubbled cheeks, below a brush haircut streaked with gray, she met his harsh, condemning gaze. He mopped his face with a sleeve, then turned to shout at someone out of sight. The helmsman, she guessed, because the bow veered right, toward them, closer and closer as it gathered speed. Now that towering recurved bow was a gray guillotine, peeling the sea apart as it remorselessly tracked them, slashing apart the green turbulent water of their fleeing wake.

  The pursued had become the pursuer. The killer of whales, now something even more ominous. “He’s going to ram us,” she breathed.

  “What?” said Eddi. She sounded frightened, crouching on the far side of the inflatable’s swelling bulk, cradling her camera. A thin glaze of ice had formed on her upwind flank, and white rime coated the mouth-hole where she breathed through her mask.

  “Dru,” Dorée screamed shrilly. “He’s going to run us down!”

  Perrault didn’t answer. Looking forward, Sara saw his spine a tense line, his attention pinned to the swiftly narrowing gap between Anemone’s outthrust sprit and the surging breakers that marked the berg ahead. He tossed a glance back over one shoulder, then faced forward again.

  Something heavy and incredibly powerful slammed her down onto the icy deck. She screamed as it shook her body and filled her mouth. She emerged choking and shaking as the heavy solid jet moved forward, splintering on the cockpit lockers and fuel drums into a white gush of saltwater that blew handles overboard off the winches and slammed the locker covers up and wrenched them off their hinges. The hose-jets blocked Perrault against the wheel, pinning him there for seconds before lifting and moving on to pour their combined streams through the open companionway. One caught Quill as he struggled aft, swept his feet out from under him, and rolled him forward all flailing arms and legs until he fetched up in the bow pulpit. When the spray blew off she saw with a squeeze of the heart the berg, now surging and rolling mere yards ahead. The waves were blasting themselves apart against it with terrific force.