by David Poyer
“Very funny.”
“Well, I know whales. You know primates. All we would need is someone who knew elephants and we would—I think you say, corner the market?”
“You really do speak excellent English, Hy. Want to hand me that?”
“What?”
“That bowl you’re waving around.”
He looked at it, surprised, and handed it over to be dried. Reached for another. “So, expand on your hypothesis.”
“Well, basically, that either physical or infectious trauma, or possibly social disruption, impairs the regulation function of these neurons. You say they’re short-circuited; I say, they fail to regulate. Either way, the result’s massive social dysfunction, and unexplained, sudden violent behavior.”
She glanced away, all at once feeling her face heat. As if she were standing inches from a red-hot metal surface. Gleaming teeth. White bone. A sense of imminent doom speeded her breathing. Her heart throbbed oddly, and she had to take a deep breath. Another. The bowl clattered as she forced it into its rack.
“You are disturbed. Something I said?”
“No. No, something that happened to me.”
She glanced behind them. The salon was empty. Snoring came from behind one of the curtains, she wasn’t sure whose. Still, she lowered her voice. “One of my chimpanzees, at Brown. He went—out of control.”
“Wait a moment.” His brow furrowed. “I read of this event. A young woman. You?”
“No—unfortunately.” She kept forcing herself to breathe. The words were hard to say. She had to fight to make her mouth articulate them. “A lab assistant. She lost most of her face, and her … sight.”
A hand gripped her shoulder. “This is most unfortunate. But you could not be to blame.”
She covered her face. Ashamed of the tears, yet unable to stop them. “She was new to the project. I should have been the one he turned on.”
“What happened to the subject?”
“I told you. She—”
“I am sorry. I mean the animal. What happened to it?”
“Shot by a security guard.”
“Was there an examination? An autopsy?”
“I tried to arrange one. The college said no. On the lawyers’ advice. They said if I accepted responsibility, the school would pay a settlement. If I didn’t, there’d be a trial. I don’t have that kind of money. If it went to a civil trial, and I lost, there’d be nothing for the woman who was injured.” She shrugged. “I said it was my fault, for not putting in enough safeguards, giving her enough training.”
He squeezed her arm again. She sniffled, hating herself for crying, and wiped her face with a paper towel. Finally he said, “So that is why you are interested in the rogue phenomenon.”
“Well. Yes.” She blew her nose. Barked a short laugh. “Though there was another one, a very famous one, early in our family’s history.”
“Oh yes,” he said. “Pollard.”
“You know?”
“I put it together. You said you were from Nantucket. I have read the literature. About Captain George Pollard, from Nantucket, and how his ship was attacked by a sperm whale.” He leaned to look out the portlight. “I thought that was why you were out here.”
“Not quite so direct a relationship. But it did cross my mind, when I was invited on this expedition.”
“Your great-grandfather?”
“Oh, much further back than that. And I don’t know if old George was actually a direct ancestor. But there weren’t that many families on the island. We’re all related, the Starbucks and the Coffins and the Folgers and the Pollards. And then there were the—the circumstances of what happened after. After his ship sank, I mean.”
“That I did not read of. What happened?”
She looked away, both ashamed and astonished that such ancient history could still affect her. “Well. After the Essex went down—that was the ship the whale attacked—he and his crew were adrift in the Pacific for months. This was in 1820. There weren’t that many places they could land. It’s a long story. Some say one thing, some another. But eventually they ran out of food. So they picked straws, and Captain Pollard’s young cousin lost.”
“And then the book was written.”
“That’s it, though they say Melville only met Captain Pollard after it was published.”
“That was a long time ago, Sara. No need to conceal it.”
“I didn’t conceal it,” she flared, then caught herself. “Well, I don’t exactly tell everyone about it either.”
“I understand, believe me. We all have not so happy things in our family history.” He squinted again, not at her, and she got the impression he too was thinking of something personal and specific. But he didn’t share it.
They finished the washing up and she made coffee and they moved out to the salon, where Madsen, smelling the fresh brew, slid back his curtain and joined them.
They sat for a while around the table before the Dane said, out of the blue, “So, you saw whaling up close.”
“All too close—closely—I am afraid. It is not pretty, the business.” He waved toward the galley, for what reason Sara didn’t quite see. “And it is a business. Each whale, twenty million yen.”
“About a quarter million dollars, I heard,” Madsen said.
“That is about the same. As there are fewer whales, each is worth more.” Kimura snickered. “Like tigers to Chinese. A very impure business.”
“An interesting word,” Lars said. “I’d use ‘cruel,’ or maybe ‘bloody.’”
“Maybe ‘corrupt’ is the word I want. ‘Impure’ I think has the religious meaning?”
They nodded, Sara thinking how much better his command of the language was when he was discussing neurobiology. “Few Japanese eat whale meat. The ruling party gives subsidies. Gives children whale meat in school. But the fleet is under pressure, too. The commanders of the kill ships, they are driven men. For them, it is a share system. If they do not kill enough, they are not paid; their men lose money too. That is why they hate you.”
“Hate us? Good,” Madsen said. “Do you know Captain Nakame?”
Hideyashi tucked his chin, surprised. “Of course. He is captain of Maru Number 3. The ship they sent me to, after they wrecked my lab.”
“He’s the one who rammed our boat season before last.”
“I heard the crew talking of it. You call him ‘Captain Crunch.’ Is that not so?”
Madsen grinned. “Yeah. We do.” He sobered. “Slavery was profitable once, too. But whaling … we’ve got to stop it. Some whales—sperms, for example—have the largest brains that have ever existed on earth. The other groups just want to stop the hunting. But the Cetacean Protection League believes whales and certain other species—great apes, chimpanzees—should have some special status. Maybe like corporations—nonhuman persons, with rights and legal representation. Until they do, even if we stop harpooning them, we’ll keep destroying their environment. The end will be slower, but the same.”
Sara was pondering this when Dorée suddenly appeared, hanging upside down in the companionway. “Come up, come up!” she yelled. Her voice was so high it broke. They stopped talking instantly, and set their mugs aside.
* * *
The first thing she noticed was that the wind had died away altogether. For the first time, as far as she could recall, since they’d left Ushuaia. Its absence seemed unnatural. The second was that the sky was, not exactly clear, but brighter than it had been in days. Now and then the sun was even visible, as if through a worn wrapping of old gauze, glowing a cold, strange saffron, as if it had been replaced by some alien star.
Dorée was pointing ahead, to where that sallow light glimmered on a distorted city of pinnacles and towers, top-heavy bulging minarets with flattened tops. With the naked eye they seemed real, but when Sara put binoculars to her eyes they dissolved into wavering blurs. Anemone slid silently over a soundless sea, slow, languorous, and somehow oppressive, rippling its gently heaving
yet dully mirrorlike surface in her passing. Sara shivered, gazing at the distant bergs that glittered and shone sapphire and aquamarine, topaz and carnelian.
“Over there,” Tehiyah cried in a queer hushed voice. The helm creaked as she put the wheel over, and Anemone, silently obedient as some mystically animated conveyance, imperceptibly marched her bow around the horizon.
Toward two tabular bergs whose outstretched arms sheltered an embayment, a patch of open water that, unlike the mirror around the boat, seethed and glittered in the ominous light of that never-setting sun. Bits of berg gleamed redly between their prow and the distant sparkle. Anemone passed one at the length of a bow-shot. Penguins stood like patient commuters on a platform, watching them ghost past. The sail shivered as if taking a chill, fell limp, swelled again. She couldn’t feel any wind, but it was still breathing them onward, as if the boat slid on slightly undulating, frictionless ice. Like skating on the frozen cranberry bogs, in the Nantucket winter … Perrault stood with one arm wrapped around the forestay, binoculars in the other hand. The rest came up from below behind her, and the forward hatch slid open to the seal-like hump of Bodine’s head. Yet no one spoke; as if the distant city, the play and glitter of carmine light, were a Tír na nÓg, beyond any map, not to be prattled of, or its spell would be shattered.
“How lovely,” Dorée breathed.
“If you’ll move a little to the left,” Eddi suggested.
The actress flinched and glanced back, as if, Sara thought, she’d forgotten for once cameras existed. She arched her spine and pasted on a smile. “How’s this?”
“Great.”
“Deep in the Antarctic, we relax during a rare break in the heavy weather. When it’s calm, the sea is incredibly beautiful. I can look deep down into it, and watch our shadow moving with us. Ahead, over my shoulder, you can see two large tabular icebergs. Is that something moving, over there? Captain?”
“Whales,” Perrault called back. Auer shifted the lens to him, but he didn’t take the binoculars from his eyes. Far ahead, a tail lifted from the water, flourished, then slid gracefully under.
“Humpbacks, I think,” Madsen added from his perch on the coach house.
“Really.” Kimura wriggled up the companionway. He shivered—he was in just the poly-cotton blue pullover jacket and pants, and a pair of Eddi’s Dacca shoes, made out of recycled plastic bags—but kept climbing, until he stood in the crimson sunlight. When he put out a hand to steady himself it landed on Sara’s thigh. She stepped away, but he didn’t seem to notice, just groped again and this time got a winch. “Humpbacks? A pod?”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” Bodine called back. She saw why his head looked deformed: earphones were clamped to it. He lifted one side. “I’m not sure what it is.”
“I’m heading for them,” Dorée called, and the captain, without turning, nodded.
The twin bergs slowly rose, the sky golden-white as French vanilla above them. Turquoise shadows shifted at their bases. Petrels and whalebirds darted across the fissured faces. At their base the slow swell, almost imperceptible in the open, exploded with a sullen roar. Sara clung to the lifeline. It was still the Antarctic, but the lack of wind made it seem almost warm.
“They’re not humpbacks,” Madsen called. “I’m not sure what they are.”
“Killers?”
“No, they’re all black. And they’re bigger.”
They rounded a point of ice, and there they lay. Blowing, rolling on their backs, tossing out their flippers. Here and there one breached, thrusting its massive body free of the liquid element that buoyed it, then crashing back in a burst of spray. Up forward Madsen was in an excited discussion with the captain. At last Perrault nodded, and the Dane shouted back, “They’re right whales!”
“Rights?” Kimura and Auer both echoed.
“Eubalaena. I’ve never seen them before! Let’s bring in the genoa. Then drop the main. We can watch, but we’re not going any closer.”
Anemone slid past another massive wedding-cake furrowed and seamed and spotted with lichen like old rust, or old blood. The sails hummed down and she drifted sedately to a halt and began rolling as her crew gathered on the port side, each with binoculars or camera or video recorder.
Auer and Madsen both fed Dorée sentences, with the camera off; then the actress talked excitedly into the lens about how huge these whales were, how endangered, how they’d gotten the name “right whale.” “They were rich in oil, easy to harpoon, and they floated after they were dead. That made them the ‘right’ whales to kill. They’ve been protected since 1937. The species may be slowly recovering, but is still quite rare.”
They seemed to be feeding, but in a leisurely way. The sea had taken on a strawberry-jam tinge, and looking down into it Sara noted streams of krill moving past. A current? Or could they swim? She just didn’t know enough about this ecosystem. She lifted her binoculars, trying to pick out an individual, but in the flurry of feeding and play she couldn’t be sure where any given right surfaced or blew again. They’d need to tag them with sonar transducers. Plot their movements with GPS. Any serious study would require more boats, more researchers, and far more time and money than she’d ever be able to assemble.
For the first time the whalers’ contention made a brutal sense. The only way to extract actual data from whales was to kill them. But as Hideyashi had pointed out, that yielded only the grossest information. Like trying to study theology by autopsying a dead bishop.
She lowered the glasses, then raised them again. A whale blew, sunlight sparkling through the spray in a caressing rainbow. Calves roamed the pod, venturing away from their mothers. “Dolphins with them,” Kimura said beside her. “Between that one that just sounded, and the floe?”
“I don’t—I don’t see them.”
“Hourglasses, I think. The little black-and-white ones. We often saw them together.” She realized he meant we as he and the other whalers.
Bodine poked his head up again. “Got something weird here.”
“What, Mick?”
“Remember the 5R call? The five-click names? I’m picking that up here. Loud and clear.”
For a moment she was confused, then remembered. “So there are sperm whales here too?”
“I’m only picking up one. And not in the pod, I don’t think. Somewhere off to the west.”
“Keep the tapes running,” she called back. “Maybe we can get a specific call and localize it to a visual sighting.” He nodded and disappeared again into the forepeak.
They lay to, marveling, for some time. Gradually the rights, wary at first, moved closer. Led, as both Lars and Hideyashi said was usual, by the calves. They were much bigger than humpbacks, their fins shorter, almost blunt, with a notch that reminded her of the leaf of a shamrock. At one point an adult sniffed within a hundred yards, close enough to make out the blanched callosities on its head. Kimura said these were small colonies in their own right, of whale lice, barnacles, worms, a whole ecosystem that lived on the leftovers of the whale’s feeding.
“Is that enough?” Dorée said at last, tossing her hair over a shoulder.
Eddi lowered the camera. “If you think so, Tehiyah.”
“There’s got to be something there we can use. I’m so cold! I’ll come back up later.” She shivered dramatically, and let herself down the companionway.
The cinematographer set the camera carefully in its case, arranged lenses and memory chips, snapped it closed. She straightened and gazed at the whales. Said, tentatively, “It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the water.”
“Good grief, Eddi. It’s got to be beyond freezing.”
“We have wet suits. Lars? Wouldn’t you like to swim with them?”
Madsen rubbed a dirty blond beard. “Uh … maybe. I don’t see any leopard seals or killers. Really think we could?”
“We’ll probably never have another chance.” She fiddled with the case. “I have a waterproof housing for this. But I don’t want to go in alone
… Sara?”
“You’re crazy.” Sara laughed. “You’re not getting me in there.”
* * *
She teetered uncertainly where the stern ramp dropped to the water. The inflatable bobbed astern. The swim platform Perrault had rigged shifted under her weight as she struggled the fins on over heavy booties. Her whole body was sausaged into thick rubber. Under that was thermal underwear and a wool sweater, but her skin was still goose-pimpling in advance. Eddi kept saying it would be cold at first, then warm as the water next to her skin heated. What she didn’t say was how warm “warm” was, and Sara was getting the feeling her own standards of comfort and those of the ex-trainer might be different. Above her Madsen swung a leg over the side. Below, Auer was finning her way to the inflatable. When she reached it she grabbed a line and turned. Hooked an arm and aimed the camera, now in a plastic housing. “Come on, Sara. Soon as you get in the water, it’ll feel a lot nicer.”
“Oh shit,” she muttered, already regretting she’d caved in. Sailing to Antarctica was crazy enough. But splashing around in freezing water with whales—she had to admit, though, Eddi was right. She’d probably never have the chance to do this again.
“Waiting for you, Sara-o,” Lars called from above. She muttered, “Shit,” pressed the mask to her face with one hand, as Eddi had, and took a long stride out.
Blue light. Incredible, stabbing cold. She gasped and fought her way to the surface. The suit made that easy; in fact, it would have been hard to stay down. She bobbed, gasping and hacking, fighting to get air through the snorkel even as her whole inside seemed to recoil away from her skin, which was rapidly being coated in liquid ice from the neck down. The cold was so intense that after the initial burn, which felt like being plunged into hot grease, it numbed within seconds.
Beside her a crash, a burst of foam, as the Dane plunged in a few feet away. “Swim,” Auer called. “Kick, Sara. It’ll warm you up.”
Shitshitshit. Sara, you idiot. She kicked. Reached for the line and followed it. More sea came down the snorkel and she coughed it out, nearly retching. Oh yes, this was fun.