Fluke or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings - By Christopher Moore Page 0,125
Maybe we can be a little more purposeful in what we're doing. Maybe a little more active, conservation-wise."
"I could go for that. I like whales."
"I mean, we have the resources now, and even if I could prove the meaning of the song - somehow decipher the vocabulary of it - I could never prove the purpose. You know, without compromising Gooville."
"Not a good idea." During the trip home Nate had explained it all.
"I mean, there's no reason we can't do good science and still, you know - »
"Kick some ass."
"Well, yeah."
Clay affected an exaggerated Greek accent. "Sometimes, boss, you just got to unbuckle your pants and go looking for trouble."
"Zorba?"
"Yeah." Clay grinned.
"Great book," Nate said. "Is that the Always Confused?"
Clay pulled up a pair of binoculars and focused on a speedboat that was rounding the Lahaina breakwater, showing more wake than she should in the harbor. Kona was driving the Always Confused.
"My boat," Clay said, somewhat distressed.
"You need to get over that, Clay."
The speedboat came around to a parallel course with the Clair as the ship cut her engines in preparation to drop anchor. Kona was waving and screaming like a madman. "Irie, Bwana Nate! Irie! The lion come home! Praise Jah's mercy. Irie!"
Nate came down the steps from the flying bridge to the deck. Whatever resentment he might have had for the surfer at one time was gone. Whatever threat he might have felt from the boy had melted away. Whatever irrelevancy Kona's youth and strength might have underscored in his own character was irrelevant. Maybe it was time to be an example instead of a competitor. Besides, he was genuinely glad to see the kid. "Hey, kid, how you doing?"
"Jammin' now, don't you know."
"That's good. How'd you like to go be a pirate?"
Because the Navy didn't maintain permanent offices on Maui, Captain L. J. Tarwater had been given a small office that the navy sublet for him in the Coast Guard building, which meant that, unlike on a naval base, here the public could pretty much come and go as they wished. So Tarwater wasn't that surprised to see someone come strolling through his office door. What he was surprised by was that it was Nathan Quinn, whom he thought quite drowned, and who was carrying a four-gallon glass jar full of some clear liquid.
"Quinn, I thought you were lost at sea."
"I was. I'm found now. We need to have a chat." He set the jar on Tarwater's desk, leaving a wet ring on some papers there, then went back and shut the door to the outer offices.
"Look, Quinn, if this is some kind of stunt, like spray-painting fur, you're wasting your time. You guys act like the military is the great Satan. I'm here to study these animals. I grew up in the same generation you did, and so did most of the people in the navy who do what I do. We don't want to hurt these animals."
"Okay," Nate said. "We only have two things to talk about here. Then I'll show you something."
"What's in the jar? That better not be kerosene or anything."
"It's seawater. I got it at the beach about ten minutes ago. Don't worry about it. Look, first you're going to finish your study and you're going to strongly recommend that the navy's torpedo range not be moved into the sanctuary. You will not let that happen. The animals do dive to depths where they can be hurt by the explosions, and they will be hurt by the explosions, which you'll be setting off not to defend the country but just so you guys can practice."
"There's no evidence that they ever dive deeper than two hundred feet."
"There will be. I've got data tags coming in from the mainland, I'll have data in a month."
"Still..."
"Shut up," Nate said, then thought better of it and added, "Please." Then he continued. "Second, you need to do everything in your power to back off of testing low-frequency active sonar. We know that it kills deepwater hunters like beaked whales, and there's probably some chance that it also injures the humpbacks, and under no circumstances do you want to do that."
"And why would that be?"
"You know what my work has been for the last twenty-five years, right?"
"You've been studying the humpback song. What, trying to figure its purpose?"
"I found it, Tarwater. It's a prayer. The singers are praying."
"That's preposterous. There's no way you could know that."