Fluke or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings - By Christopher Moore Page 0,30

loss of his father, a hard-helmet sponge diver, had taught him that. The old man was just touching bottom at eight hundred feet when a drunken deck hand dragged his ass across the engine start button, causing the prop to cut his father's air line. The pressure immediately drove Papa Demodocus's entire body into the bronze helmet, leaving only his weighted shoes showing, and it was in his great helmet that he was lowered into the grave. Little Clay (Cleandros in those days in Greece) was only five at the time, and that last vision of his father haunted him for years. He never did see a Marvin the Martian cartoon - that great goofy helmet body riding cartoon shoes - when he did not have to fight a tear and sniffle for Papa.

As Clay drifted down into the briny blue, he saw a bright light and a dark shape waiting there on the other side. Out of the light came a short but familiar figure. The face was still dark, but Clay knew the voice, even after so many years. "Welcome, Earth Being," said the vacuum-packed Greek.

"Papa," said Clay.

Clair dragged the heavy tank out of the Always Confused's bait well and tried to attach the regulator in order to hang it off a line for Amy and Clay to breathe from so they could decompress before coming up. Clay had shown her how to do this a dozen times, but she had never paid attention. It was his job to put the technothingies together. She didn't need to know this stuff. It wasn't as if she was ever going to go diving without him. She'd let him drone on about safety this and life-threatening that while she applied her attention to putting on sunscreen or braiding her hair so it wouldn't tangle in the equipment. Now she was blinking back tears and cursing herself for not having listened. When she thought she finally might have the regulator screwed on correctly, she grabbed it and dragged the tank to the side of the boat. The regulator came off in her hands.

"Goddamn it!" She snatched the radio and keyed the mike. "Nate, I need some help here."

"Go ahead, sistah," came back. "He be in the briny blue, fixing the propeller."

"Kona, do you know how a regulator goes on a scuba tank?"

"Yah mon, you got to keep the bowl above the water or your herb get wet and won't take the fire."

Clair took a deep breath and fought back a sob. "See if you can put Nate on."

Back on the Constantly Baffled, Nate was in the water with snorkel and fins fighting the weight of half a dozen wrenches and sockets he'd put in the pockets of his cargo shorts. He almost had the propeller off the boat. With luck he could install the shear pin and be up and running in a couple of minutes. It wasn't a complex procedure. It had just been made a lot trickier when Nate found that he couldn't reach the prop to work on it from inside the boat. Then, suddenly, his air supply was cut off.

He kicked up, spit the snorkel out of his mouth, and found himself staring Kona right in the face. The fake Hawaiian hung over the back of the boat, his thumb covering the end of Nate's snorkel, his other hand holding the radio, which he'd let slip halfway underwater.

"Call for you, boss."

Nate gasped and snatched the receiver out of Kona's hand - held it up out of the water. "What in the hell are you doing? That's not waterproof." He tried to sling the water out of the cell phone and keyed the mike. "Clair! Can you hear me?" No sound, not even static.

"But it's yellow," said Kona, as if that explained everything.

"I can see it's yellow. What did Clair say? Is Clay all right?"

"She wanted to know how to put the regulator on the tank. You have to keep the bowl above the water, I tell her."

"It's not a bong, you idiot. It's a real scuba tank. Help me out."

Nate handed up his fins, then stepped on the trim planes on the stern and pulled himself into the boat. At the console he turned on the marine radio and started calling. "Clair, you listening? This is the Constantly Baffled calling the Always Confused. Clair, are you there?"

"Constantly Baffled," cut in a stern, official-sounding male voice, "this is the Department of Conservation and