The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel (36 page)

They met with a crash that knocked them all off their feet and set the mast jangling again.

But the boat’s smooth flank seemed to yield, absorbing the blow. The whale dragged down their side, its spout jetting again to drench them all with a stinking exhalation. For a moment she thought they’d avoided a direct collision. But then something hard crashed against the hull. A crunch ran up her bones into the very tympana of her ears, as if her own body were being torn apart. And as the scribbled waxy-yellow bulk, scored with livid signs, passed by again, she glimpsed something hanging from its flank, long as a man’s body, trailed by many fathoms of bright orange line striped at intervals with black. From his clinging perch, one arm hugging the mast, Kimura yelled, “Harpoon. One of our—one of
their
harpoons.”

“The fleet’s?” Madsen shouted.

The Japanese nodded hard. “From
Number 3
. They use that line.”

The whale had half rolled as it slid aft. Now, for the second time, she looked directly down into its eye. Only for a fraction of a second, though, as her gaze dropped to a splitting-wedge of jaw, long as a stretch limousine, that gaped to expose yellow pointed teeth many inches long.

Then it was gone again, in a welter of foam. The lift and drop of a massive tail sent solid sea cascading over them, drenching them all.

With a spasmodic, rejecting gesture a panting Madsen pushed both throttles all the way forward and spun the wheel centerline, pointing between two small floes several hundred yards ahead. “Shit, shit,” he mumbled. The engines rose in pitch. Yet something was wrong with the notes, as if one warred with the other, discordant, grinding. A shudder worked its way up the steering pedestal, plucking the after shroud to a shimmy. A thunderclap came from astern, echoing over the water and back off the ice. The mast swayed and creaked. From beneath came that same cracking groan they’d heard earlier in the voyage.

“Oh fuck, the keel,” Eddi said, clinging to the winch and looking astern, where the whale had submerged again. The thunder, Sara realized, must have been its tail striking the sea as it sounded.

She whirled, staring. “Where are you going? Mick—he’s still back there—”

“He’s dead, Sara. He never came up.”

Eddi’s arms wrapped her as if she thought she might go over the side after him. She shuddered, looking down at the cold sea sliding past as
Anemone
accelerated. But slowly, with a deep shudder like her own.

“She’s not getting on step,” Madsen yelled. “I’ve got rpm, but something’s wrong.”

Auer hugged her closer, and water squelched and ran down between them. “Hy, you better get down from there,” she shouted. “Can you get down?”

“My side. I think I broke something.”

“Sara, can you help me get him down?”

“I need a lookout. In case that thing comes back.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I’ll be right back up.” She forced herself to move. They got the sobbing man into the cockpit, then down into the salon. They laid him in a bunk. When she stepped back Sara heard a splash. She looked down and flinched. The water around her boots was an inch deep.

*   *   *

When they poked their heads topside again the engines were howling, the stern was shaking, and the masttop was quivering in large circles against charcoal clouds from which snow was still dropping. Madsen kept adjusting the throttles and frowning. He shouted, above the yowl of engines and the whine of the wind, “How’s he doing?”

“In pain. A broken rib?”

“I think we left it behind. It can’t keep up, not at this speed. But there’s something wrong.”

“Sounds like it,” Auer said. “And we’re taking water below.”

Lars blanched. “Water? How fast? How much?”

“About an inch on the salon floor.” Sara kept swallowing, trying not to think about Mick tobogganing past, just out of her reach, or the thing that had attacked them. “When it hit us? Maybe it knocked something loose. Like the keel.”

“That wire Dru and Jamie rigged,” Eddi said.

“I need to check it.” He looked around the horizon, then back where they’d come from. The sea surged in the gathering darkness. Snow whirled into their faces. “Eddi, can you take it?”

“Up here? It’s fucking freezing, with this wind—”

“Afraid so. No radar. Use the binoculars. Look for white patches. But keep going. As fast as you can without shaking her to pieces.”

“We’re burning a lot of fuel,” Sara pointed out.

“I just want to leave that thing astern.” Madsen relinquished the wheel. “Okay, I’m going below.”

In the salon Sara squatted beside him as he pulled the access plates off the keel well and inspected the pivots. Hy kept groaning in the bunk but there was nothing she could do for him until they figured out where the leak was coming from. Finally the Dane clambered out. He said harshly, “The pins, all right. Sheared through their sockets.”

“But it’s only an inch deep, and it hasn’t come up any.”

“That’s because it runs aft and down into the bilge, and the pumps in the engine compartment pump it out. As long as they’re running, we’re okay. When they stop, we sink.”

“Oh shit.”

“Uh-huh.” Oil and bilge-muck smeared his cheeks. He looked gaunt and exhausted. “It didn’t seem like anything could kill Mick,” he muttered. “He got through the war. Coped with everything.” He glanced at her. “At one point I thought the two of you—”

“Is there any way we can slow down the leak?” she asked. Not wanting to talk about the other.

“Not that I can see. We’re lucky it didn’t tear out of the hull. Then we’d just turn over and go down.” He rubbed his cheek, glancing to where the Japanese moaned. “Can you do something for him? I’m going to check the shafts. See if that’s where all that vibration’s coming from.”

When he went aft she pulled a chair to the bunk. “Any better, Hy?”

“Every time I breathe, hurts.”

“Are you spitting up blood?” She had a vague memory, something about broken ribs puncturing the lungs. “Let me get the first-aid book.”

“I very need something for this pain,” he said. “This is really hurts.”

The book wasn’t very helpful. Wrapping or bandaging wouldn’t help. Painkillers would help him breathe, that was about all. She selected some and took them to him. “Water,” he croaked.

“The system’s still frozen. I’m melting ice for tea. Can you get them down dry?” He made a face but swallowed and lay back, stiffening with each breath. She put her face in her hands. She ought to cry, oughtn’t she? But they hadn’t really been in love. Had they?

“Are you all right, Sara?” Hy peered at her like a sick cat.

“I’m just so very tired. And scared.” She shook herself and lifted her head. “I understand why it’s angry. After all. What I don’t understand is why it’s displaying this agonistic behavior toward
us.
We were trying to
stop
the killing.”

He passed a hand over a sweating forehead. “Perhaps it has confused us with the whalers.”

“It’s the only explanation I can think of. Did you see the harpoon?”

“I saw it.” Kimura shifted and flinched again. Breathed hard. “Oh. That does not feel good. Like harpoon in
my
side. But the strange thing is, they are not designed to do that.”

“To do what?”

“To stick in like that. I don’t know the right word—but there are explosives in the head. A bomb? It explodes inside, to kill. This one did not go off, or the animal would not be alive. An explosion inside will kill any whale.” He hesitated. “That is why I am not sure this is a whale.”

For a second she wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “What—what are you saying? That it
isn’t
a whale? I
saw
it. What the hell
else
can it be?”

“No, no—you are right. It is what it is. A sperm whale. Male, most likely, from the size. It witnessed the attack on the pod—”

“On its mate, maybe? Maybe that was its calf—”

“Those were minkes, not sperm, Sara. Also sperm pods do not come down to the Antarctic. Only the males.”

“Oh. Right.” She was still puzzling over what he’d said, though. “You didn’t hit your head, did you? When you got knocked down?”

“No.”

“No bumps, lacerations? Blood from your scalp?”

He shook his head. “What is your feeling? You are the animal behaviorist, after all.”

Behind them the engine-hum dropped a note, then another. A disquieting vibration laced it, setting up a sympathetic buzzing somewhere in the galley. She tried to think objectively, but it seemed harder than usual. “Well—I hadn’t really had time to think about it. In chimps—I guess, more generally, in primates—we see agonistic behavior mainly either in dominance relationships, or in territorial defense. In fact, they meet Vehrenkamp’s—uh, criteria for despotic dominance. But—
whales
?” She waved her hands, as if she were back in the classroom, and just that gesture made the words come more easily. “If they
have
social hierarchies, there’s got to be some mechanism for intimidating conspecifics. To assert dominance status, and access to sexually receptive females. I could see a butting behavior stemming from sexual competition. Chimps also defend territory, to exploit scarce food resources, and cooperate to do so by violence—thus mimicking, or prefiguring, human tribal warfare. Um—but I can’t see whales doing that.”

He looked grave. “It’s hard to conceive of. Based on what little I have seen, I would agree that it is unlikely.”

“But there
is
a precedent for a rogue. Almost two centuries ago, now—”

“Mocha Dick,” Kimura said.

Despite herself a chill tensed her shoulders. She sat back, trying to force the behavior they’d just observed into some methodological framework. Could this animal really be aggressive, malevolent, murderous? Like the legendary beast?

The old frame house still stood on Center Street, only a block or two from the restaurants and bike rental stands and T-shirt shops of Nantucket harbor. Her family had lost it long ago; the last time she’d been to the island, it had been a fancy art gallery, with a candy shop next door. A plaque at street level said it had been owned by Captain George Pollard, Jr.; that Herman Melville had spoken to him, and that Pollard’s true story had been the basis for the famous novel.

But in fact, Melville had not met the old man until long after the book had been published. Pollard had gotten another captaincy after the sinking of the
Essex
, despite the lurid tales of castaways and cannibalism. But he’d lost that ship as well, and two strikes were enough for the canny shipowners whose mansions still stood along maple-shaded streets. Pitied by the townspeople, Pollard had finally been given the sinecure of a night watchman.

But Melville had read about the disaster, or heard a garbled sea-version during his own voyages. He’d changed the name, and perhaps the beast’s color—although most sources said the name “Mocha” had actually referred to Mocha Island, off Chile—to Moby Dick, the White Whale. Now she wondered what might have led to that long-ago maritime disaster. Could the same events recur after two long centuries? Could a difference in color between one creature and its fellows, the very whiteness of the whale itself, lead to rejection, thence to self-awareness, and at last, to violence? Was she perhaps reading her own feelings into this creature’s? Or did she even need a reductive explanation?

“You’re very quiet,” Kimura murmured.

“I’m thinking.”

“About your hypothesis? Damage to spindle neurons?”

“Right now, I’m wondering if that’s even necessary.”

“How do you mean?”

She spread her hands. “Well, try to look at this from the animal’s point of view. It’s probably seen this slaughter, this predation, going on for its whole life. This … mass murder. Then it sees the bloodshed once more, up close, and snaps. Like a psychotic break.

“Or maybe not even that. I mean, what would
we
do if aliens began harvesting us as food? Generation after generation? Maybe attack
is
the only rational response.” She halted, hands outstretched, as she remembered her own lab, and Arminius’s menaced snarl. The last time she’d seen him, before the intern had gone in to work with him. She’d dismissed it as morning grouchiness, maybe hunger. Dismissed it … to her everlasting regret.

Madsen came back, wiping his hands on a paper towel he wadded and threw aside. He blew out, looking tired, avoiding their questioning looks. “The pumps are clear. But they won’t run long without charge from the generators. And something’s still wrong. A lot of vibration. Either the props are damaged, or the shafts got wrenched out of line when that thing slammed into the stern.”

Sara looked down at the ripples that ran to and fro, lapping at her boots. “Can we keep running the engines?”

“Not for much longer. The mounting bolts are starting to pull out. I told Eddi to run slower, bring the rpm down.” He jerked the silly dog-faced cap off and scratched tousled dark blond hair, and Sara saw that before many more years he’d begin to bald. “I’m not—I don’t know as much about all that as Dru and Jamie did. Or even Mick.”

“But we have to keep one going, right? To pump?”

“Until we run out of fuel, anyway. We’ll just have to make as much distance toward Melbourne as we can.” He caught her quizzical look. “Yeah—Australia. With damaged shafts and the mast the way it is, we can’t make Cape Town. So that’s our only hope now. Or maybe Tasmania—that’d be a few hundred miles closer.”

Kimura winced as the boat leaned. Eddi must be avoiding ice. He lifted a hand. “Yeah?” Madsen said.

“It may not be smart to keep engine on.”

“What do you mean?”

“The longer you run, the more damage. We will need it if there is another storm. Also, the sound will tell it where we are.”

“It?” The Dane blinked, then understood. “Will tell
it
where we are? Yeah, I guess so, maybe. Wait a minute. It didn’t attack us, until we were running the engines. Before that, we were sailing.”

“And when we were with the fleet, we were running on the motors,” Sara said.