Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

skull after a hearty meal of brain cells in ganja sauce.
    And speaking of the sacred herb, Kona was just on the verge of sparking up a bubbling smoky scuba snack of the dankest and skunkingish nugs when the text scrolling across the screen ceased being nonsense and started being important. He took a quick sip of bong water to steady his nerves, placed the sacred vessel on the floor at his feet, then hit the key that sent the streaming text to the printer.
    He stood and waited, bouncing on the balls of his feet for the printer to expectorate three sheets of text, then snatched the pages and dashed out the door to Clay's cabin.
    * * *
    "I must be out of my mind," Clay said. His suitcase was on the bed, and he was taking clothes out of the drawers and putting them into the case, while Clair was taking clothes out of the case, grouping them by a precise system he would never understand, and replacing them in the suitcase so that he would never find anything until he returned home and she helped him unpack. They had done this a lot.
    "I must be nuts," Clay said. "I can't just go wandering around the oceans randomly looking for a lost friend. I'll look like that little bird in the book, the one that walks around asking everyone, 'Are you my mother?' "
    "Sartre's Being and Nothingness ?" Clair offered.
    "Right. That's the one. It's ridiculous to even leave port until we have something to go on – steaming around, burning up fifty gallons of fuel an hour. The Old Broad may have money stashed, but she doesn't have that kind of money."
    "Well, maybe something will turn up in the whale calls."
    "I hope. Libby and Margaret have a lot of sonic data streaming in from Newport, but it's still like looking for a needle in a haystack. Clair, she saw guys climbing into a whale -"
    "So, baby, what's the worst that happens? You go to sea and do your best to find Nate and you fail? How many people ever did their best at anything? You can always sell the ship later. Where is it now anyway?"
    Just then the screen door fired back on its hinges and smacked against the outside wall with the report of a rifle shot. Kona came tumbling through the door waving pages of copy paper as if they were white flags and he was surrendering to everyone in the general Maui area.
    "Bwana Clay!" Kona threw the pages down on Clay's suitcase. "It's the Snowy Biscuit!"
    Clay picked up the pages, looked at them quickly, and handed one to Clair. Over and over the message was repeated:
    41.93625S__76.17328W__-623__CLAY U R NOT NUTS__AMY
    Clay looked at Kona. "This was imbedded in the whale song."
    "Yah, mon. Blue whale, I think. Just came in."
    "Go back and see if there's more. And find the big world map. It's in the storeroom somewhere."
    "Aye, aye," said Kona, who had begun to speak much more nautically since Clay had purchased the ship, making his bid to go along on the voyage to search for Nate. He ran back to the office.
    "You think it's from Amy?" Clair said.
    "I think it's either from Amy or from someone who knows everything about what we're doing, which means it would have to be someone Amy talked to."
    "What are the numbers?"
    "A longitude and a latitude. I'll have to look at the map, but it's somewhere in the South Pacific."
    "I know it's a longitude and a latitude, Clay, but what's the minus six hundred and some?"
    "It's where pilots usually express altitude."
    "But it's a minus."
    "Yep." Clay snatched the phone off of his night table and dialed the Old Broad as Clair looked quizzically at him. "Equipment change," he whispered to Clair, covering the receiver with his hand.
    "Hello, Elizabeth, yes, things are going really well. Yes, they've picked up considerably. Yes. Look, I hate to ask this – I know you've done so much – but I may need one other little thing before we go to look for Nate and your James."
    Clair shook her head at Clay's blatant playing of the missing-husband-shoved-up-a-whale's-bum card.
    "Yes, well, it may be a little expensive," Clay continued. "But I'm going to need a submarine. No, a small submarine will be fine. If you want it to be yellow, Elizabeth, we'll paint it yellow."
    After fifteen minutes of cajoling and consoling the Old Broad, making calls to Libby Quinn and the ship broker in Singapore (who offered him a quantity discount if he bought more than three ships in one month), Clay stood over a world map that was roughly the size of a Ping-Pong table, which Kona had spread out over the office floor, pinning the corners