Earth Thirst Read Free Page A

Kujira doesn't seem to be worrying about their burn rate. The Japanese are notorious for keeping up appearances, but this is ridiculous. Two years ago, they were looking for someone to buy their boats, and I heard they weren't having much luck finding a buyer. Now? This is either suicidal desperation—not a trait commonly found in your typical Japanese businessman—or…”
    “Someone else is paying for it,” I say.
    “Who?”
    “Why do you think I know?”
    “Why else would you be here?”
    I smile at her. “Remember the bullet hole? Captain Morse, all bluster and bravery for the crew's sake aside, feels more secure with some… protection.”
    That sounds convenient,” she says. “Is that the story he's supposed to tell?”
    “You could ask him.”
    “I have. He pretends to not know what I'm talking about.”
    “It probably just slipped his mind.”
    She takes one more step, and even through the thick layers of her coat, I can feel the heat of her skin. “Maybe,” she says. Her eyes are bright, and I can hear her lungs expanding and contracting. “But I suspect getting any real information out of him is a waste of time. Especially when I could ask someone else, someone who would actually know.”
    My hand is on her arm when Nigel makes a noise behind us. “The captain has spotted the whalers. They're on the edge of the storm front. About sixty nautical miles to the west,” he says, ignoring the way we step back from one another, like teenagers caught by their parents, sitting too close to one another on the old couch in the basement.

THREE
    W e wait until the end of the day, even though there isn't much change in the available light in the sky. Winter near the Antarctic Circle is many days of near darkness, and for their own sanity, humans try to maintain a semblance of normalcy during these months. Sleep cycles and shift changes still occur in the last few hours of the nominal day, which makes this block of time optimal for our reconnaissance.
    The whaling fleet is ten nautical miles south of us, holding position in a half-arc with the two harpoon boats positioned at either end. We take a single Zodiac and head west, our rubber boat rising and falling across the restless sea. We mean to approach them from the south. This route will take an extra half-hour—time we don't really have, but it is a calculated risk.
    I'm not driving the boat, nor am I spotting, which means I get to bail. The rubber shield stretched across the front of the boat disperses the brunt of the spray from the ocean, but a lot of it still manages to get in the boat, and I spend most of my time hunched over in several inches of water, working the manual pump. The water is cold and tenacious, undeterred by the dry suits we are wearing; by the time we reach the research vessel, I've started to lose feeling in my toes. As Nigel cuts the engine of the Zodiac, and we glide the short distance remaining between us and the factory ship, I let myself think of the warm embrace of Mother for a moment. How good it would feel to be buried in her humus, surrounded by that warmth—that familiar security.
    But then the Zodiac bumps against the ugly steel plates of the research boat, and I'm wrenched back to the present, to the cold semi-darkness of the short night on the Southern Ocean. The tight embrace of the dry suits and Gore-Tex balaclavas isn't the same thing. Nigel eschews the headgear entirely, wearing a black stocking cap instead, and I can't say I blame him. Being in the tight grip of synthetic fabrics can be too constricting. It makes you clumsy.
    Phoebe goes first, the metal spikes in her gloves and boots giving her enough purchase to scale the side of the boat. The nylon line spools out in her wake, wiggling back and forth with the motion of her body as she climbs. With the sun below the horizon, we can keep our optic protection low; it is easy to follow her progress—a black glob of ink against the dull metal of the boat. She reaches