The Emissary

by Patricia Cori

  “Tommy, you better sit down for this one. I’m surrounded by a pod of about fifty big Humpbacks out here, right up close on all sides. Can’t even count’m. And I’ve got a huge Orca congregation ahead. Don’t know how to move. We’re in some serious trouble out here. Over.”

  “Did I hear you correctly, Captain? Over.”

  “Yeah, you heard me all right. I’m completely surrounded by estimate fifty or so whales, maybe more, and there’s a bunch more swimming towards us. They’re in some strange, aggressive behavior mode. Seems directed at the ship. Over.”

  Tom started laughing. “Jimbo, did you have too much to drink last night, or is this another one of your practical jokes? Over.”

  “This is no joke, Tommy. These boys are in a wild frenzy like I’ve never seen before, and they’re closing in on the ship. What’s the best course of action? Over.”

  Back in the Coast Guard office, Tom and two other officers were seated in front of their computer monitors. As the conversation ensued, the two other men rolled their desk chairs back to listen to what was transpiring. “Jimbo, there simply is no protocol for a ship being attacked by a gang of whales. Over.” Tom looked at his colleagues, and winked. He was still convinced Jimbo was joking with him.

  “Well, dang me, Tommy—you think I don’t know that? There’s no punch line here, if that’s what you’re waiting for. This is an emergency. Over.”

  It was the first time he’d ever heard fear in Jimbo’s voice. It made him realize, at last, that, however unprecedented the situation was, it was real and the situation seemed to be accelerating rapidly. “Get yourself out of there, Jimbo,” he said. “What’s holding you up? Over.”

  “If I try to navigate out, I could have a mass kill on my hands, at the very least. If I cut the engines and try to wait it out … hell … there’s enough whale muscle out there to capsize the ship. This is a first for me, my friend—I don’t know how to move. Over.”

  “Stand by,” Tom said, taking time to consult with his fellow officers.

  Jimbo and Jamie looked at each other, both aware of the danger. He waited nervously for instructions, while Tom and his colleagues conferred. Jimbo was a skilled captain. Though it made no sense at all, if he was talking “emergency,” then The Deepwater was in trouble. That was all they had to know.

  “What’s your position? Over.”

  “I’m in the north end of the sanctuary. Over.”

  “We think the best thing for you to do is to cut your engines and lay low. You’ve got enough steel in the water to hold your position. Wait for them to move on. Keep us informed when you are free to clear out. Over and out.”

  Jimbo cut the motors. He hung the radio back on its hook and to Jamie, he said, “I should have been listening to you all along …” He threw on his jacket just as Brady was walking in.

  “What’s our course of action, sir?” Brady asked, looking duly alarmed.

  “I’m not sure yet. Take the helm until I get back up here.” He stashed a walkie-talkie into his jacket pocket, and then he and Jamie ran out from the bridge, down into the lounge. They exploded out the door to the deck to find the entire crew standing around, watching the whales, spellbound. The water around the ship was so engulfed with their huge forms that it was almost black from the density of their bodies, three and four deep, and more were closing in: Humpbacks and big male Orcas, side by side, against man—or so it appeared. The question was: why?

  Fin was completely out of control, running circles around the ship, barking nonstop. Jamie finally managed to grab him by the collar.

  “Fin! Shush now! You need to quiet down.” In her hands, Fin became immediately submissive. Despite the chaos all around him, he simply lay down at her feet, waiting for her to take command—and she did just that, while everyone else just stood there, immobilized—even Jimbo.

  “Philippe, have we got a hydrophone?”

  Philippe nodded and looked at Sam.

  “No, I don’t mean the high-tech stuff. Have you got a good old-fashioned hydrophone?”

  “Yes, we have one—it’s on the lower deck.”

  “I don’t like this idea, whatever you’ve got in mind,” Jimbo said. “Try to throw a phone out, right now, in all that confusion? They be eatin’ it, at the very least.”

  “Let’s get it,” Jamie said, ignoring him, and she and Philippe ran down the stairs, with Fin following on her heels. Philippe disappeared into a storage room and emerged, minutes later, with the hydrophone, on a thirty-six-meter coil of cable. Jamie was now close enough to the water level that she could almost touch a few of the whales who were close in, hovering next to the hull of the ship.

  “All right, everybody, you heard the lady—let’s get down there!” said Jimbo, following her lead.

  By the time they got down the stairs, Philippe had thrown the hydrophone over the side and lowered it into the water, just missing the huge female Humpback, who was swimming so dangerously close to the ship that the device almost hit her.

  Just as quickly as Jamie placed the headphones over her ears, she had to rip them off. The intensity of the whales’ anguished cries and the thrashing about of their enormous bodies, reverberating through the water, was so much more than she could bear, and besides, she didn’t need a hydrophone to hear their calls. She handed the headphones to Philippe.

  “Listen to this.”

  He placed the set over his ears and was almost physically blown back by the intensity of the sounds. “It can’t be,” he said, incredulous. The enormity of the sound, this whale collective sounding its distress and agony through the waters, was overwhelming.

  “Can you get this hooked up to speakers?”

  Philippe nodded, stunned.

  “I want everybody to hear this, especially Sam.”

  While Philippe scrambled with the equipment, Jamie sat listening intently to the screams of almost one hundred whales, converging, under extreme duress, unfathomable in their immensity and despair. She was attempting communion with them all. Fin howled like a wolf under the pull of a full moon, only adding to the frenzy and confusion. He stood at the railing, crying incessantly, responding to their calls with sounds Jimbo had never heard come from him before. He howled madly, and nothing anyone could do would silence him.

  The speakers finally came on, belting out the cries of desperation so that all could hear. No one could have been prepared for the devastating calls from such impossible numbers of whales, in distress, surrounding the ship. Not one of them had ever even considered the enormity of a whale’s song, much less the expanse it could cover in the sea. And here now, with this massive presence around them, the intensity of the whales’ traumatized, collective voice was terrifying.

  As they stood almost paralyzed by the scene that surrounded them, the huge humpback whale scraped against the hull, pushing up against the side, rocking the ship dangerously. And all the while, Jamie kept hearing someone speaking to her from amongst them.

  “… It’s what’s hidden …”

  The mighty female was so close, Jamie could almost touch her. She peered over the ship’s railing, and there, once again, she found herself almost face-to-face with the great whale—in yet another tragedy, unfolding. She stared at Jamie, fixated upon her, and through that one eye facing up out of the water, she communicated the despair and urgency of the entire community, no less desperate than on that day of dying on the beach.

  Jamie turned back to Jimbo, who stood there, immobilized. All he could see was the impossible—whales attacking a ship. “She’s speaking to me,” Jamie cried. “Help us … we need your voice.”

  For the first time in his life, Jimbo felt totally impotent. He stood watching the scene unfold all around him, unsure and confused.

  “Listen to this! Oh my god, can no one else hear? ‘Help us, before we all are gone.’ ”

  Drowning in the sounds blasting from the speakers, the crew looked helplessly on while Jamie walked through her torment alone—but for Fin. What she could h
ear was unimaginable to them: spoken messages from the animal kingdom? They all were still locked in the world of their senses, where they could hear the physical cries and haunting calls of the whales and dolphins through the stereo, but they could never believe that she heard messages, nor could they feel the despair in Jamie’s soul.

  Not one of them, not even Philippe, had the vision to even question what possibly could have caused this unfathomable behavior. All they knew was that it didn’t fit into their box of reality. Across the minds of the captain and Sam, who had, indeed, activated the sonar in the breeding nurseries of Orcas in season, only a subtle trace of guilt fluttered—not for the damage and pain they might have inflicted on this community of living beings, but, rather, because they had proceeded through the sanctuary against Jamie’s express warnings and demands. There was no way, in their minds, that cutting through a channel in the ocean where a few Orcas might prefer to birth their young could have provoked anything like what they were witnessing firsthand. This was something so enormous, it had to be more than that.

  When had it ever occurred that whales attacked a ship? Never, in any record of man sailing the oceans, had there ever been an account of Cetaceans behaving in such a way with humans. And yet here it was, unfolding before their eyes. The great ocean mammals, targets for the hunters, seemed to have become the aggressive predators of man.

  Jamie leaned precipitously over the railing, speaking to the whale. “Please trust us. Move back … let us get out of your way, so that none of you is hurt.”

  The whale rolled to her side, lifting her huge fin up at Jamie, revealing that, somehow, the cord from the hydrophone had become entangled around her blowhole. The more she moved, the more she became entrapped and distressed. Jamie grappled with the cord, trying to free her, but, before anyone managed to catch her, she lost her footing—slipping on the wet flooring. In one calamitous instant, she hit her head violently up against the steel railing and went crashing to the floor with a vengeance. Blood started gushing out of her head, running down over her face, and dripping onto the floor. Fin was the first to race to her side, barking hysterically. Jimbo was second.

  “Jesus! Where’s Doc? Get him over here—stat!” He ripped off his jacket and covered her, kneeling down close. “You just lie still, Jamie. Just lie still, don’t try to move.” He removed his sweater, rolled it up, and carefully placed it under her head.

  “Where the hell is Doc! Move, people! Dom, get me some blankets fast.”

  Doc smashed open the glass to get to the first aid supplies. He moved into action immediately, treating the wound as best he could and then wrapping bandages around Jamie’s head, to try to stop the bleeding long enough to get her up to sickbay. “She needs stitches, immediately,” he told Jimbo.

  Jamie lay there, white as a sheet, but for the deep crimson stain of her own blood trickling down over her eyes.

  Fin was inconsolable. He ran back and forth, trying to get close to her, barking uncontrollably. Nothing Jimbo could do could contain him.

  “Berto—take that damned dog up into the mess and don’t let him out—he’s no help right now!”

  Beyond the immediate tragedy surrounding Jamie, right off the side of the ship, the great whale had begun thrashing wildly—one hundred tons of fear slamming up against the ship. With Doc tending to Jamie, Jimbo took command of his ship. He looked up at Philippe, who was in such confusion, he seemed to be in a state of shock himself. “Phil, pull those damned speakers and get that freakin’ cord off that whale—just cut it off if you can. Now! Bobby—call the Guard. We may need medical emergency assistance—go! Liz …”

  Doc interrupted him, looking grave. “She’s bleeding heavily and I’m not sure about her spine. I don’t think we should move her.”

  “Can we handle it here?”

  “I don’t know what kind of damage we’re talking about—she needs a hospital, Jimmy. Code Red.”

  Bobby was already up on main deck. Jimbo screamed into the walkie-talkie: “Make that ‘Code Red,’ Bobby—we need a medivac helicopter.”

  “Yes, sir!” Bobby called back as he raced up to the helm.

  Domenico returned with the blankets, which Jimbo tucked around Jamie’s trembling body while Doc treated the wound. Between the shock and the loss of blood, she was becoming delirious. She stared up at Jimbo, muttering incoherently. “Don’t let them … the towers … help … the music … help us …” She tried to lift her head, but couldn’t move.

  Jimbo held her hand, tightly. “Don’t try to move, Jamie—you have to stay real still. It’s going to be all right. Let us take care of you.” The bandages were already soaked in blood. “You’re going to have to sew her up, Doc—right here and now.”

  Doc carefully unwrapped the bloody gauze from her head. Her hair was matted with blood and more poured out from the gash in her scalp. On a ship that was rocking precipitously, with emergency conditions on board, he tried to hold a steady hand long enough to shave around a head wound that was gushing blood, on a person who was still conscious enough to feel everything. He called over to Liz, who was nearly frozen in panic, to assist. “There’s a needle and surgical thread in there,” he said, pointing to the medical case.

  Liz couldn’t move, the blinding fear paralyzing her completely.

  “Come on, girl! I need your help—snap out of it!”

  She came hesitatingly, repulsed by the blood, and kneeled down next to him, waiting for instructions.

  Jamie squeezed Jimbo’s hand with every last drop of strength she possessed. His face was blurry to her now, and she knew she was losing consciousness. Still, she was present enough to speak, and she had been given a message that had to get to Jimbo. Her voice was so faint, he had to put his ear close to her mouth. “They’re going to destroy them all, Jim,” she whispered. “It’s a lie … they’re using you. It’s not how you think,” she muttered, slipping out of consciousness. “They’re going to destroy the colony. You have to know. Please help them. It’s a lie … it’s all a lie.”

  And then, she blacked out.

  With the imprisoned whale now thrashing desperately up against the ship, Philippe couldn’t even consider attempting to free her, without risking his own life. Then again, he didn’t possess the same kind of selfless courage as Jamie to even try. He ripped the plug of the stereo from the wall, silencing the unbearable sounds, and then cut the rope from where it was secured on deck, enabling the whale to eventually fling it off and free herself. The great creature flapped her fluke down hard on the water, once again, and then pushed through the army of whales and swam away from the ship.

  The hydrophone sank slowly down into the depths of the sea, having done what it had to do for Jamie, and for the whales.

  Jimbo looked desperately at Doc, who was checking Jamie for a pulse.

  “It’s okay. We’ve still got her, but we need that copter, bad.”

  Jimbo called up to the bridge for an update.

  “Twenty-five minutes, Captain,” Bobby replied. And then he said, “Mat Anderson called, asking for an update on the situation.”

  “What did you tell him?” Jimbo looked all around him, disaster and chaos unfolding. All he needed now was Mat breathing down his neck.

  “I told him that, as far as I could see, you had everything under control, sir, but that you were busy down on lower deck. I didn’t provide any details.”

  “And he was okay with that?”

  “Yes, sir, he said it was good to hear that, and that he would be talking to you later on for a full report.”

  “That’s my boy, Bobbo. Looks like you’re the mind reader around here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s our official line from here on out, until we get things sorted. Make sure everybody’s clear on that—any questions come to me and me alone.”

  “Got you, Captain.”

  In the wake of Jamie’s dramatic accident, Doc was naturally the calmest of everyone present. He was trained for every kind of medica
l emergency, having seen it all in his day. During the war, he’d pulled boys out of the swamps, with their legs half gone. He looked up, reassuringly, at Jimbo. “You go do what you need to do—I’ve got this.”

  The captain stood up, with Jamie’s blood on his hands. He knew she was hanging on to life by a thread.

  “It’s a blessing on one hand that she’s out; she won’t have to feel this,” Doc said, trying to reassure him.

  “I’m havin’ a hard time finding the blessing in any of this,” Jimbo said. He turned to Sam, who had stepped away from the railing and braced himself up against the wall of the ship—never offering to help—clinging to his own fear. Not once did he move from that spot, as if his terror had frozen him there. Only then, when he saw the anguish in Jimbo’s eyes and realized that he was in trouble, did Sam finally get out of his own way enough to reach out.

  “Captain,” he said, “are you all right?”

  “Yeah, it’s not me we need to worry about.” Jimbo stared out at the water, mystified. “We should have listened to her. She warned us over and over again.” Several whales were slapping their big flukes down hard on the surface waves, spraying the ship with sheets of seawater. “The minute we get Jamie on that helicopter,” he said, “we move out of here, no matter what happens. We’ve got to get the ship out of here, out of the way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And we leave quietly—nothing operating from your end, you got that? This is where we all start paying attention to Jamie—the woman knows what she’s talking about.”

  Sam nodded, holding his head down. As insensitive as he could be, he still couldn’t help but feel partly responsible.

  “Let’s move. Domenico, go grab the gurney.”

  “Bring the head brace—it’s in the supply cabinet—and get me more blankets!” Doc shouted.

  While Jimbo watched him treat Jamie, tragedies they’d shared raced through his mind: lives that had been taken on his guard, and others that he’d saved. And now Jamie was lying in her blood, unconscious. He had to extract himself, and focus on getting the ship out of danger, but it was so hard to release from her. Doc could see his torment—he’d seen it many times before. He assured Jimbo that he had Jamie under control, as best as he could amid the precarious conditions on deck. With that, the captain ran up the stairs to the bridge, trying to outrun the doubts that kept clouding his vision, but dark shadows from Jamie’s warning obscured the light of his reasoning mind.