Fluke or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings - By Christopher Moore Page 0,76
a biologist friend in Vancouver.
"No, these are residents," Nuñez said. "They're just excited about a bait ball they've found. Probably sardines." Resident killer whales ate only fish; transients ate mammals, whales and seals. Over the last few years scientists tended to refer to them as completely different species, even though they appeared the same to the layman.
"You know what they are by their call?"
"More than that," Cal said, "we know what they're saying. The whaley boys can translate."
"All killer whales are named Kevin. You knew that, right?" said Jane. She had a slight Eastern European accent, Russian maybe. She looked a little amused, her blue eyes dark under the yellow cast of the bioluminescence, but she didn't appear to be joking. She patted the seat next to her, indicating that Nate should sit down.
"Like all the pilots are named Scooter and Skippy?" Nate said.
"Actually, they have numbers like Emily - their choice, by the way - but since there are never more than one pair of them on a ship, we don't bother with the numbers."
Nate suddenly realize that in all his time on both of the whale ships, except when one of the pilots had gone outside to catch fish, the pilots always seemed to be at the controls. "Don't they ever sleep?"
"Sure," said Jane. "We're pretty sure they sleep with half their brain at a time, like whales, so between two of them the ship always has a full pilot. Without one of them at the controls, it's basically a big lump of meat."
"You said that you're pretty sure. You don't know?"
"Well, they don't know for sure," said Jane, "and they're not very excited about our doing experiments on them. Now that you've joined us, though, maybe you'll be able to figure out what's going on with them. We sort of play it all by ear. The whaley boys and the Colonel run things. Cielle, you didn't tell him all this?"
"He was pretty beat," Nuñez said. "I tried to get him settled in as soon as I could."
Nate wanted to protest the "settled in" comment. After all, he was a prisoner here, but these people didn't behave at all like captors. They immediately impressed him as having the same dynamic that he'd seen in research teams, a "we're all in this together, let's make the best of it" attitude. He didn't want to yell at these people. Still, it made him a little uncomfortable that she was so forthcoming with information. When your kidnappers showed you their faces, they were giving you the message that you weren't going home.
Nuñez set a plate down in front of him. It had a salad of mixed seaweeds, carrots, and mushrooms, a piece of cooked fish, which looked like halibut, and what appeared to be rice.
"Eat up," she said. "A couple of nutrition drinks aren't going to get you back up to speed. We do eat a lot of raw fish, even on the blue, but you need some carbs until you adjust to this diet. There's plenty of rice when you finish that."
"Thanks." Nate dug in while the others, all but Cal, excused themselves to work in other parts of the ship. The older man had obviously been charged with Nate's second orientation lecture.
Cal scratched his beard, looked around at the pilots, then leaned over to Nate and spoke in a lowered voice. "They're very promiscuous. You know how dolphin females will mate with all the males in the pod so no one can be assured of who the father of her calf is? They think it keeps the males from murdering her calf when it's born."
"That's the theory," Nate said.
"They're sort of like that, and back at base you have a big pod to deal with. You start down that path... well, you've got a lot of whaley boys to sex up."
"I didn't sex her up," Nate hissed, spraying rice out over the table. "I'm not sexing up any whaley boys... er, girls - »
"Whatever. Look, they're very close. Here on the ship they don't have separate quarters - they share one big cabin. Sex is very casual with them, but they understand that we're a little more hung up about it. Some of them seem to affect human shyness. We generally don't mix sexually with them. It's not forbidden, but it's... you know, frowned upon. It's only natural for a guy to be curious - »