Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 12~13

CHAPTER TWELVEHeres My Coupon, He Said,Singing the Redemption SongNorm on the onlyy, if the whale cops open up an unauthorized person on a inquiry vessel, they would exactly record the violation, write a ticket, then re sick the person from the gravy boat and take him stand to Lahaina Harbor. A fine was paid and violations were considered the following stratum when the permit came up for renewal. By contrast, Kona was delivered to the Maui county jug with twain his wrists and ankles shackled and a swath of duct tape invariablyyplace his m exposeh.Nate and Amy were waiting in the antechamber of the Maui county jail in Wailuku, sitting in metal presidents designed to aro mathematical function discomfort and waffled butt skin. Its authentic wholey okay if he has to stay in overnight, said Nate. Or for a week or so if it would be easier.Amy punched Nate in the shoulder. You creep I plan it was Kona that got them to let you come to us.Still, jail builds character. Ive h eard that. It capacity do him good to be complete his herbaceous plant for a few days. Kona had slipped his fanny pack well(p) of pot and cogwheel to Nate before hed been taken by.Character? If he starts with his native-sovereignty speech stuff in in that lo qation the real Hawaiians bequeath pound him.Hell be okay. Im worried nearly you. Dont you want to go get nocked? Clair had taken Clay to the hospital to get a CAT s butt and submit his scalp fix up.Im fine, Nate. I was completely shaken up because I was worried more or less Clay.You were down a long time.Yes, and I went by Clays dive com attributeer. We decompressed completely. The shell part was I froze my ass off.I cant believe you had the presence of sagaciousness to decompress with Clay unconscious. I dont neck if I would defecate. Hell, I couldnt confuse. Id defecate run taboo of air in ten minutes. How did you man era Im small, Nate. I dont use air wish you. And I could signalize that Clay was pub lic discussion okay. I could tell that the cut on his star wasnt that bad either. The man-sizedgest danger to both of us was decompression sickness, so I followed the computer, breathed off of Clays rescue supply when I ran knocked extinct(p), and nobody got hurt.Im really impressed, said Nate.I bonnie did what I was supposed to do. No sizable deal.I was really scared I thought you You had me worried. He sleekted her knee in a grandmotherly fashion, and she looked at his hand.Careful, Ill get all sniffly over here, Amy said.They led the brow leaver into the holding tank, where every i(a) was draining the same orange jumpsuit that he was. Irie, bruddahs, Kona said, we all sh break throughin down Sheriff John Brown in these Great Pumpkin suits, Jah. They all looked up a giant Samoan who had beaten an Oldsmobile to death with a softball bat when it s longed in the middle of the Kuihelani Free instruction, an alcoholic white abuse who had fallen a rest on the Four Sea sons private beach in Wailea and make the mistake of dropping his morning business in one of the cabanas, a bass player from Lahaina who had been brought in because at any given(p) time a bass player is probably up to no good, an angry bruddah who had been caught doing a smash-and-grab from a rental car at La Perouse Bay, and ii up-country pig hunters who had move to back their four-wheeler adequate of pit bulls down a volcano after huffing two cans of spray paint. Kona could tell they were huffers by the glazed look in their eyeball and the large red rings that covered their verbalises and noses from the bag. Hey, brah, Krylon?One of the pig hunters nodded and concisely lost control of the motion of his head.Nothin same a quality red.I hear dat, said the pig hunter. I hear dat. wherefore Kona made his way to the corner of the cell, the guard locked the access, and everyone resumed feeling at his shoes, except for the Samoan guy, who was waiting for Kona to make eye contac t so he could slaughter him.Ye hold up, brah, Kona said to him in a friendly, if seriously flawed fake Jamaican accent, I be learning from my science dreadies to look at tings with the diminutive eye, dont ya manage. And I think I know what the problem with taking a stand against da man on Maui.Whad dat? ingest the Samoan.Well, its an island, aint it, mon? You got to be stone stupid going step uplaw here wid nowhere to escape.You callin me stupid, haole?No, mon, but speaking the truth.An what you in for, haole girl?Failing to give a kyphosis whale the proper scientific handjob, I tink.Goin ta fuck ya and use up ya now.Could ya kill me first?Whadeva, said the Samoan, climbing to his feet and expanding to his full Godzilla proportions.Thanks, brah. Peace in Jahs mercy, said the doomed surfer.Forty-five minutes later, after Nate had filled out the requisite papers, the jailer, a compact Hawaiian with weightlifter shoulders, led Kona by the doubled steel doors into the waitin g room. The surfer shuffled in, head down, looking shamed and a little lopsided. Amy put her arm around his shoulders and patted his head.Oh, Sistah Amy, twas heinous. He put his arm around Amy, then let his hand slip to the plication of her bottom. Heinous most true.The jailer grinned. Had a disagreement with a big Samoan guy. We stopped it before it got too far. The holding cells are monitored on closed-circuit video.Snatched half me dreads out. Kona pulled a fistful of orphaned dreadlocks from the pocket of his surf shorts. Going to cost many deep monies to hook these boys back up. I can feel my strength waning without them.The jailer waived a hitch under Konas nose. Just so you know, nipper, if it had gone the other way if the Samoan had decided to kill you second I wouldnt have stepped in so early. You understand?Yah, Sheriff.You stay out of my jail, or next time I tell him which end to start on, okay? The jailer turned to Quinn. They arent register any charges th at merit incarceration. They that wanted to make a topographic file. Then he leaned close to Nate and whispered, their height difference making it appear as if he were talking to the scientists shirt pocket, You strike to get this kid some help. He thinks hes Hawaiian. I soak up these suburban Rasta boys all the time hell, Paias spook with them but this one, hes troubled. One of my boys goes that way, Id gift for a shrink.Hes non my kid.I know how you feel. His girlfriend is cute, though. Makes you wonder how they pick em, doesnt it?Thanks, Officer, Nate said. Having shared all the paternal chumminess he could handle, he turned and walked out into the blinding Maui sun. To Kona, Amy said, You better now, coddle?Kona nodded into her shoulder, where hed been pretending to seek comfort in a nuzzle. unspoilt. Then move your hand.The surfer played his fingers over her bottom like anemones in a tidal wash, anchored yet flowing.Thats it, Amy said. She snatched a handful of his re principal(prenominal)ing dreads and quickstepped through the double glass doors, dragging the bent-over surfer behind her.Ouch, ouch, ouch, Kona chanted in thoroughgoing(a) four/four reggae rhythm.CHAPTER THIRTEENSpirits in the NightNate exhausted the whole afternoon and most of the correcting trying to analyze spectrograms of whale- call recordings, match behavior patterns, and then chart the corresponding patterns of interaction. The problem was figuring out what really defined interaction for an eighty-thousand-pound animal? Were animals interacting when they were five hundred yards away? A thousand? A mile, ten miles? The var. was certainly perceptible for miles the low, subsonic frequencies could travel literally thousands of miles in deep ocean basins.Nate tried to put himself in their world no boundaries, no obstacles. They lived, for the most part, in a world of sound, yet they had acute eyesight, both in and out of the water, and special muscles in the eye that allowed them to channelize focus for either medium. You interacted with animals you could both see and not see. When Nate and Clay used satellite tags, of which they could afford only a few, or rented a helicopter, from which they could observe animals from a wide perspective, it appeared that the whales were hence responding to each other from miles apart. How do you study an animal that is socializing over a distance of miles? The key had to be in the song, in the request somewhere. If for no other reason than that was the only way to approach the problem.Midnight found him sitting just in the office, lit only by the glimmer of his computer monitor, having forgotten to eat, drink, or relieve himself for four hours, when Kona came in.Whats that? asked the surfer, pointing to the spectrograph that was scrolling crosswise the screen.Nate nearly jumped out of the chair, then caught himself and pulled the headphones down. The part thats scrolling is the spectrograph of the h umpback song. The opposite colors are frequency, or pitch. The wiggly line in this niche is an oscilloscope. It shows frequency, too, but I can use it to isolate each range by clicking on it.Kona was eating a banana. He handed other one to Nate without taking his eyes off the screen. So this is what it looks like? The song? Kona had forgotten to affect any of his accents, so Nate forgot to be sarcastic in reply.Its a way of looking at it. Humans are optic animals. Our headsprings are better suited to process visual information instead than acoustic information, so its easier for us to think roughly sound by looking at it. A whale or a dolphinfishs brain is structured to process acoustics more than visuals.What are you looking for?Im not legitimate. Im looking for a signal. For some pattern of information in the structure of the song. handle a message? maybe a message.And its not in the melodic parts? Kona asked. The difference in notes? Like a song? You know the prophet Bob Marley gave us the wisdom of HIM in song.Quinn swiveled in his chair and paused in midbite of his banana. HIM? Whats that?His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie, emperor of Ethiopia, Lion of Judah, Jesus Christ on earth, son of God. His blessings upon us. Jah, mon.You mean Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian king who died in the 1970s? That Haile Selassie?Yah mon. HIM, the enjoin descendant of David as foretold in Isaiah, through the divine consort Solomon and Makeda, the cigaret of Sheba, and from their sons all the emperors of Ethiopia have come. So we Rastas believe that Haile Selassie is Jesus Christ quick on earth.But hes dead, hows that work?It helps to be stoned.I see, Nate said. Well, that did explain a lot. Anyway, to answer your question, yes, weve looked at the musical theater transmission, but despite Bob Marley I think the answer is here, in this low register, but only because it travels the farthest. brook you freeze this? said Kona, pointing to the oscilloscope, a green l ine dancing on a field of black.Nate clicked it and froze a jagged line on the screen. why?Those teeth? See, there are tall ones and not so tall ones.Theyre called microoscillations. You can only see them if you have the wave stopped like this.What if the tall one is a one and the short one is a zero point? Whats that?Binary?Yah, mon, what if its computer talk, like that?Nate was stunned. Not because he thought Kona was right, but because the kid had actually had the cognitive powers to come up with the question. Nate wouldnt have been more surprised if hed walked in on a team of squirrels make a toaster oven. Maybe the kid had run out of pot, and this gird in intelligence was just a withdrawal symptom.Thats not a bad guess, Kona, but the only way the whales would know about this would be if they had oscilloscopes.And they dont?No, they dont.Oh, and that acoustic brain? That couldnt see this?No, said Nate, not entirely sure that he hadnt just lied. Hed neer thought of it before. Okay. I go for to sleep now. You deprivation more grinds?No. Thanks for the banana.Jahs blessing, mon. Thanks for acquiring me out for jail this day. We going go out next morning?Maybe not everyone. Well have to see how Clay feels tomorrow. He went right to his confine when Clair brought him home from the hospital.Oh, Boss Clay got cool runnings, brah. He having sweet agonies with Sistah Clair. I hear them love jams as Im coming over.Well, good, Nate said, thinking from Konas tone and his grimace that whatever he said must have been good. Good night, Kona.Good night, boss.Before the surfer was out the door, Nate had turned to the monitor and started mapping out peaks in the wave pattern of the low end of the whale song. Hed need to look up some articles on blue-whale calls the lowest, loudest, longest-traveling calls on the planet and hed have to see if anyone had done any numerical analysis on dolphin sonar clicks, and that was all he could think of right at the moment. In the meantime he had to have enough of a sample to see if there was any centre there. It was ridiculous, of course. It would never be so simple, nor could it be so complex. Of course you could assign values of one or zero to parts of the song that was easy. It didnt mean there would be any meaning to it. It wouldnt necessarily answer any of their questions, but it was a different way of looking at things. Whale-call binary, no.Two hours later he was quiesce assigning ones and zeroes to different microoscillations in wave patterns of different songs and felt as if he might actually, strangely, amazingly, be learning something, when Clay came through the door wearing a knee-length pink kimono emblazoned with huge white chrysanthemums. there was a small bandage on his forehead and what appeared to be a lipstick smear that ran from his mouth to his right ear.Any beer in there? Clay nodded to the kitchen. The office cabin, like all the others at Papa Lani, had at a time been livin g quarters for a whole family, so it had a full kitchen in addition to the great room they used for a main office, two smaller rooms they used for storage, and a bathroom. Clay overdraw past and threw open the refrigerator. Nope. Water, I guess. Im really dehydrated.You okay, Nate said. How was the CAT scan?Im cat free. Clay came back to the office and fell into the chair in await of his broken monitor. Thirteen stitches in my scalp, maybe a mild concussion. Ill be okay. Clair may kill me yet tonight, though heart attack, stroke, affection. Nothing like a near-death experience to bring out the passion in a woman. You cant believe the stuff that woman is doing to me. And shes a schoolteacher. Its shameful. Clay grinned, and Nate noticed a little lipstick on his teeth.So thats shame? Nate gestured for Clay to cross his mouth.The photographer took a swipe across his mug, came up with a handful of color, and examined it. No, I think thats strawberry lip gloss. A woman her age wear ing flavored lip gloss. The shame is in my heart.You really had her worried, Clay. Me, too. If Amy hadnt kept her head well I fucked up. I know it. I started living in the viewfinder and forgot where I was. It was an amateurish mistake. But you cant believe the footage I was getting use the rebreather. Its going to be amazing for singers. Im finally going to be able to get underneath them, beside them, whatever you need. I just need to remember where I am.Youre unbelievably lucky. Nate knew that any lecture he might come up with, Clay had already put himself through a dozen times. Still, he had to say it. Regardless of the outcome, he had endured the loss of his friend, even if was for only forty minutes or so. Unconscious, that deep, for that long you used up a lot of lives on that one, Clay. The fact that your mouthpiece stayed in is a miracle.Well, that part wasnt an accident. I have the hoses tight because the rebreather is so temperamental about getting water in it. Over the years Ive had mouthpieces knocked out of my mouth a hundred times, kicked out by another diver, camera caught on it, hit by a dolphin. Since you have to keep your head back to film most of the time anyway, with the hoses short so the thing stays in your mouth, its just a matter of keeping the seal. Mans only replete(predicate) is to suck.And you suck, is that what youre saying?Look, Nate, I know youre mad, but Im okay. Something was going on with that animal. It distracted me. It wont happen again. I owe it to the kid, though.We thought wed lost her, too.Shes good, Nate. Really good. She kept her head, she did what needed to be done, and damned if I know how she did it, but she brought my superannuated ass up alive and without the bends. Situation was reversed, I would have never done the decompression stops, but it turns out she did the right thing. You cant teach that physique of judgment.Youre just trying to change the subject.Clay was indeed trying to change the subject . Howd Toronto do against Edmonton tonight?Oh, sure, thought Nate, try to appeal to his inherent Canadian weakness for hockey. Like playing the hockey card would distract him from I dont know. Lets check the score.From outside the screen door came Clairs spokesperson. Clay Demodocus, are you wearing my robe?Why, yes, dear, I am, said Clay, shooting an embarrassed glance at Quinn, as if hed only just noticed that he was wearing a womans kimono.Well, that would mean that Im wearing nothing, wouldnt it? said Clair. She wasnt close enough to the door for him to actually see her through the screen, but Quinn had no doubt she was naked, had her hip cocked, and was tapping a foot in the sand.I guess, said Clay. We were just going to check the hockey scores, sweetheart. Would you like to come in?Theres a skinny kid with a half order of dreadlocks and an erection out here thoroughgoing(a) at me, Clay, and its making me feel a little self-conscious.I woke up with it, Bwana Clay, Kona sai d. No disrespect.Hes an employee, darling. Clay said reassuringly. Then to Quinn he whispered, I had better go.You better had, said Quinn.See you in the morning.You should take the day off.Nah, Ill see you in the morning. What are you running(a) on anyway?Putting the subsonic part of the song in binary.Ah, interesting.Feeling vulnerable out here, Clair said. under attack(predicate) and angry.I had better go, said Clay.Night, Clay.An hour later, just when Nate was getting to the point where he felt he had enough samples marked out in binary to start looking for some sort of pattern, the third smell in the night came through the door Amy, in a mans jersey that hung to midthigh, yawning and rubbing her eyes.The hell you doing up at this hour? Its collar in the morning.Working?Amy padded barefoot across the floor and looked at the monitor where Quinn was working, trying to blink the bleariness out of her eyes. That the low end of the song?Yeah, that and some blue-whale calls I had, for comparison.Quinn could smell some kind of berry lave smell coming off of Amy, and he became hyperaware of the warmth of her pressing against his shoulder. I dont understand. Youre digitizing it manually? That seems a little primitive. The signal is already digitized by fair play of being on the disk, isnt it?Im looking at it a different way. It will probably wash out, but Im looking at the waveform of just the low end. Theres no behavior for context, so its probably a blow of time anyway.But still youre up at three in the morning anyway, making ones and zeroes on a screen. Mind if I ask why?Quinn waited a second before answering, trying to figure out what to do. He wanted to turn to look at her, but she was so close that hed be right in her face if he did. This wasnt the time. kinda he dropped his manpower into his lap and sighed heavily as if this were all too tedious. He looked at the monitor as he spoke. Okay, Amy, heres why. Here it is. The whole payoff, the whole jazz of what we do, okay?Okay. She sensed the unease in his voice and stepped back.Nate turned and looked her in the eye. It might be out on the boat, as youre coming in for the day or it might be in the lab at four in the morning after working on the data for five years, but there comes a point where youll find something out, where youll see something, or where something will suddenly come together, and youll fancy that you know something that no one else in the world knows yet. Just you. No one else. You realize that all the value you have is in that one thing, and youre only going to have it for a short time until you tell mortal else, but for that time you are more alive than youll ever be. Thats the jazz, Amy. Thats why people do this, put up with low pay and high risk and crap conditions and fucked-up relationships. They do it for that singular moment.Amy stood with her hands clenched in front of her, arms straight down, like a little girl trying to ignore a lecture. She looke d at the floor. So youre saying that youre about to have one of these moments and Im bugging you?No, no, thats not what Im saying. I dont know what Im doing. Im just telling you why Im doing it. And thats why youre doing it, too. You just dont know it yet.And what if someone told you that youd never have one of those moments of knowing something again would you keep doing it?That wont happen.So youre close to something here? With this binary thing?Maybe.Didnt Ryder analyze the song as far as how much information it could carry and come up with something really anemic like point six bits per second? Thats not really enough to make it meaningful, is it? Growl Ryder had been Quinns doctoral adviser at UC Santa Cruz. One of the first generation of greats in the field, along with Ken Norris and Roger Payne, a true kahuna. His first name was actually Gerard, but anyone who had known him called him Growl, because of his eer surly nature. Ten years ago, off the Aleutians, hed gone out a lone in a Zodiac to record blue-whale calls and had never come back. Quinn smiled at his memory. True, but Ryder died before he finished that work, and he was looking at the musical notes and themes for information. Im actually looking at waveform. Just from what Ive done tonight, it looks like you can get up to fifty, sixty bits per second. Thats a lot of information.That cant be right. That wont work, Amy said. She seemed to be taking this information a bit more emotionally than Nate would have expected. If you could move that much information subsonically, the navy would be using it for submarines. Besides, how could the whales use waveform? Theyd need oscilloscopes. She was up on her toes now, almost shouting.Calm down, Im just looking into it. Dolphins and bats dont need oscilloscopes to image sonically. Maybe theres something there. Just because Im using a computer to look at this data doesnt mean I think whales are digital. Its only a model, for Christs sake. He was going to pat her shoulder to comfort her, but then remembered her attitude toward that at the jail.Youre not looking at data, Nate, youre making it up. Youre wasting your time, and Im not sure youre not wasting my time. This whole job might have been a big mistake.Amy, I dont understand why But she wouldnt give him a take a chance to defend himself. Go to bed, Nate. Youre delirious. We have real work to do tomorrow, and youll be worthless if you dont get some sleep. She turned and stormed out into the night. Even as she moved across the courtyard to her cabin, Nate could hear her ranting to herself. The words doofus, deluded, and low loser rang out above the tirade to settle on Nates ego. queerly enough, a feeling of relief washed over him as he realized that the delusions of romantic grandeur that hed been indulging nay, fighting about his research assistant had been just that delusions. She thought he was a complete joke. At peace with himself for the first time since Amy had com e on board, he salve his work, powered down the machine, and went off to bed.