Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Read Free Page B

Hawaii's capital to Lahaina. Sometime after that Amy came cruising into the Lahaina harbor at the wheel of a twenty-three-foot Mako speedboat with a tall, stunned-looking Ph.D. sprawled across the bow seat.
    The radio chirped. Amy picked it up and keyed the mike. "Go ahead, Clay."
    "Something wrong?" Clay Demodocus was obviously in the harbor and could see them coming in. It wasn't even eight in the morning. He was probably still preparing his boat to go out.
    "I'm not sure. Nate just decided to call it a day. I'll ask him why." To Nate she said, "Clay wants to know why."
    "Anomalous data," Nate said.
    "Anomalous data," Amy repeated into the radio.
    There was a pause. Then Clay said, "Uh, right, understood. That stuff gets into everything."
    The harbor at Lahaina is not large. Only a hundred or so vessels can dock behind her breakwater. Most are sizable, fifty- to seventy-foot cruisers and catamarans, boats full of sunscreen-basted tourists out on the water for anything from dinner cruises to sport fishing to snorkeling at the half-sunken crater of Molokini to, of course, whale watching. Jet-skiing, parasailing, and waterskiing were all banned from December until April, while the humpbacks were in these waters, so many of the smaller boats that would normally be used to terrorize marine life in the name of recreation were leased by whale researchers for the season. On any given winter morning down at the harbor at Lahaina, you couldn't throw a coconut without conking a Ph.D. in cetacean biology (and you stood a good chance of winging two Masters of Science working on dissertations with the rebound).
    Clay Demodocus was engaged in a bit of research liars poker with a Ph.D. and a naval officer when Amy backed the Mako into the slip they shared with three tender zodiacs from sailing yachts anchored outside the breakwater, a thirty-two-foot motor-sailor, and the Maui Whale Research Foundation's other boat (Clay's boat), the Always Confused, a brand-new twenty-two-foot Grady White Fisherman, center console. (Slips were hard to come by in Lahaina, and circumstances this season had dictated that the Maui Whale Research Foundation – Nate and Clay – perform a nautical dog pile with six other small craft every day. You do what you have to do if you want to poke whales.)
    "Shame," Clay said as Amy threw him the stern line. "Nice calm day, too."
    "We got everything but a measurement on one singer," Amy said.
    The scientist and the naval officer on the dock behind Clay nodded as if they understood completely. Clifford Hyland, a grizzled, gray-haired whale researcher from Iowa stood next to the young, razor-creased, snowy-white-uniformed Captain L. J. Tarwater, who was there to see that Hyland spent the navy's money appropriately. Hyland looked a little embarrassed at the whole thing and wouldn't make eye contact with Amy or Nate. Money was money, and a researcher took it where he could get it, but navy money, it was so… so nasty.
    "Morning Amy," said Tarwater, dazzling a perfectly even, perfectly white smile. He was lean and dark and frighteningly efficient-looking. Next to him, Clay and the scientists looked as if they'd been run through the dryer with a bag of lava rock.
    "Good morning, Captain. Morning Cliff."
    "Hey, Amy," Cliff Hyland said. "Hey, Nate."
    Nathan Quinn shook off his confusion like a retriever who had just heard his name uttered in context with food. "What? What? Oh, hi, Cliff. What?"
    Hyland and Quinn had both been part of a group of thirteen scientists who had first come to Lahaina in the seventies ("The Killer Elite," Clay still called them, as they had all gone on to distinguish themselves as leaders in their fields). Actually, the original intention hadn't been for them to be a group, but they nevertheless became one early on when they all realized that the only way they could afford to stay on the island was if they pooled their resources and lived together. So for years thirteen of them – and sometimes more