Fluke or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings - By Christopher Moore Page 0,53

against the green shiplap. He parked his truck by the giant banyan tree next door and humped it over to the restaurant.

When Clay came up to the table, the hostess was just seating Cliff Hyland, Tarwater, and one of their grad students, a young blond woman with a raccoon sunburn and straw-dry hair.

"Hey, Cliff," Clay said. "You got a minute?"

"Clay, how you doing?" Hyland took off his sunglasses and stood to shake hands. "Please, join us."

Clay looked at Tarwater, and the naval officer nodded. "Sorry to hear about your partner," he said. Then he looked back down at his menu. The young woman sitting with them was watching the dynamic between the three men as if she might write a paper on it.

"Just a second," Clay said. "If I could talk to you outside."

Now Tarwater glanced up and gave Cliff Hyland an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

"Sure, Clay," Cliff said, "let's walk." He looked to the junior researcher. "When she comes, coffee, Portuguese sausage, eggs over easy, whole wheat."

The girl nodded. Hyland followed Clay out to the front of the hotel, which overlooked the harbor fueling station and the Carthaginian, a steel-hulled replica of a whaling brig, now used as a floating museum. They stood side by side, watching the harbor, each with a foot propped on the seawall.

"What's up, Clay?"

"What are you guys working on, Cliff?"

"You know I can't talk about that. I signed a nondisclosure thing."

"You got divers in the water, people with underwater coms?"

"Don't be silly, Clay. You've seen my crew. Except for Tarwater, they're just kids. What's this about?"

"Somebody's fucking with us, Cliff. They sank my boat, tore up the office, took Nate's papers and tapes. They're even messing with one of our benefactors. I'm not even sure they don't have something to do with Nate's - »

"And you think it's me?" Hyland took his foot off the seawall and turned to Clay. "Nate was my friend, too. I've known you guys, what? Twenty-two, twenty-three years? You can't think I'd do anything like that."

"I'm not saying you personally. What are you and Tarwater working on, Cliff? What would Nate know that would interfere with what you're doing?"

Hyland stared at his feet. Scratched his beard. "I don't know."

"You don't know? You know what we're doing - figure it out. Listen, I know you guys are using a big towable sonar rig, right? What's Tarwater looking at? Some new kind of active sonar? If it didn't have a hinky element, he wouldn't be here on site. Mines?"

"Damn it, Clay, I can't tell you! I can tell you that if I thought it was going to hurt the animals, or anyone in the field for that matter, I wouldn't be doing the work."

"Remember the navy's Pacific Biological Ocean Science Program? Were you in on that?"

"No. Birds, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, seabirds. The navy came to a bunch of field biologists with a ton of money - wanted seabirds tagged and tracked, behavior recorded, population information, habitat, everything. Everyone thought the heavens had opened up and started raining money. Thought the navy was doing some sort of secret impact study to preserve the birds. Do you know what the study was actually for?"

"No, that was before my time, Clay."

"They wanted to use the birds as delivery systems for biological weapons. Wanted to make sure they could predict that they'd fly to the enemy. Probably fifty scientists helped in that study."

"But it didn't happen, Clay, did it? I mean, the data was valuable scientifically, but the weapons project didn't pan out."

"As far as we know. That's the point. How would we know, until a seagull drops fucking anthrax on us?"

Cliff Hyland had aged a couple of years in the few minutes they'd been standing there. "I promise, Clay, if there's any indication that Tarwater or the navy or any of the spooky guys that come around from time to time are involved with trying to sabotage you guys, I'll call you in an instant. I promise you. But I can't tell you what I'm working on, or why. I don't exactly have funding coming out my ears. If I lose this, I'm teaching freshmen about dolphin jaws. I'm not ready for that. I need to be in the field."

Clay looked at him sideways and saw that there was real concern, maybe even a spark of desperation in Hyland's eyes. "You know, your funding might be a little easier to come by if you weren't based in Iowa.