Loughten said.:
"Marcus, this is Clay Demodocus. We worked together on - »
"Yes, Clay, I bloody know who you are. Calling from Hawaii, are you?"
"Well, yes, I - »
"Probably, what, seventy-eight degrees with a breeze? It's seven below zero Fahrenheit here. I'm out installing bloody sound buoys in a monthlong blizzard to keep right whales from getting run over by supertankers."
"Right, the sound buoys. How are those working out?"
"They're not."
"No? Why not?"
"Well, right whales are stupid as shit, aren't they? It's not like a supertanker is quiet. If sound was going to deter them, then they'd be bloody well deterred by the engine noise, wouldn't they? They don't make the connection. Stupid shits."
"Oh, sorry to hear that. Uh, why keep doing it then?"
"We have funding."
"Right. Look, Marcus, I need some information on one of your students who came out here to work with us. Amy Earhart? Would have been with you guys until fall of last year."
"No, I don't know that name."
"Sure you do, five-five, thin, pale, dark hair with kind of unnatural blue highlights, smart as a whip."
"Sorry, Clay. That doesn't fit any of my students."
Clay took a deep breath and trudged on. Biologists were notorious for treating their grad students as subhuman, but Clay was surprised that Loughten didn't remember Amy. She was cute, and if Clay could judge from a night of drinking he'd done with Loughten at a marine mammal conference in France, the Brit was more than a bit of a horndog.
"Great ass, Marcus. You'd remember."
"I'm sure I would, but I don't."
Clay studied the resume. "What about Peter? Would he - »
"No, Clay, I know all of Peter's grad students as well. Did you call to confirm her references when you took her on?"
"Well, no."
"Good work, then. Abscond with your Nikons, did she?"
"No, she's missing at sea. I'm trying to contact her family."
"Sorry. Wish I could be of help. I'll check the records, just to be sure - in case I've had a ministroke that killed the part of the brain that remembers fine bottoms."
"Thanks."
"Good luck, Clay. My best to Quinn."
Clay cringed. It turned out he really wasn't up for bearing bad news. "Will do, Marcus. Good-bye." Clay hung up and resumed staring at the phone. Well, he thought, I knew absolutely nothing about this woman that I thought I knew. Libby Quinn had already called (sobbing) to say that they should have some kind of joint service at the sanctuary for Nate and Amy, and that Clay should speak. What was he going to say about Amy? Dearly beloved, I think we all knew Amy as scientist, a colleague, a friend, a woman who showed up out of nowhere with a completely manufactured history, but I think, because she saved my life, that I came to know her better than anyone here, and I can tell you unequivocally, she was a smart aleck with a cute butt.
Yeah, he'd need to work on that. Damn it, he missed them both.
Clay decided to kill the day by editing video: time-eating busywork that supplied at least an imaginary escape from the real world. The afternoon found him going through the rebreather footage he'd taken on the day the whale had conked him, for the first time going past the point where he was unconscious, just to see if the camera picked up anything usable. Clay let the video run: minutes of blue water, the camera tossing around at the end of the wrist lanyard, then Amy's leg as she comes down to stop his descent. He cranked the audio. Hiss of ambient noise, then the bubbles from Amy's regulator, the slow hiss of his own breathing through the rebreather. As Amy starts to swim to the surface, the camera catches his fins hanging limply against a field of blue, then Amy's fins kicking in and out of the frame. Both their breathing is steady on the audio track.
Clay looked at the time signature of the video. Fifteen minutes when the motion stops. Amy making her first decompression stop. On the audio he hears the chorus of distant singing humpbacks, a boat motor not too far off, and Amy's steady bubbles. Then the bubbles stop.
The camera settles against his thigh and drifts, the lens up, catches light from the surface, then Amy's hand holding on to his buoyancy vest, reading the data off his dive computer. Her regulator is out of her mouth. On the audio there's only his breathing. The camera swings away.
Ten