Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

ended. Trust me, I've done it." And he had. The little bit of Goo in the water created the krill out of the other life in there, the ubiquitous SAR-11 bacteria that existed in every liter of seawater on the planet.
    Tarwater held up the krill. "But I thought they didn't eat when they were here."
    "You're thinking on too small a scale. They don't feed for four months, and then they do nothing but feed. They're thinking in advance – the way you might think about breakfast before you go to bed at night. Doesn't matter, really. What you need to do, Captain, is everything in your power and influence to stop the range and the LFA testing."
    Tarwater looked stunned now. "I'm just a captain."
    "But you're an ambitious captain. I can have a jar of seawater on the secretary of the navy's desk in ten hours. Do you really want to be the one to explain to this administration that you're hurting an animal that prays to God? Particularly this administration?"
    "No, sir, I do not," said Tarwater, looking decidedly more frightened than he had been just a second before.
    "I thought you were an intelligent man. I trust you'll handle this, and this will be the last anyone will hear of my jar."
    "Yes, sir," Tarwater said, more out of habit than respect.
    Nate took his tape recorder and his jar and walked out, grinning to himself, thinking about the praying humpbacks. Of course, it's not your particular God, he thought, but they do pray, and their god does feed them.
    He headed back to Papa Lani to make the calls and write the paper that would torpedo any hope of Jon Thomas Fuller's ever building a captive dolphin petting zoo on Maui.
    A pirate's work is never done.
    * * *
    Three months later the Clair cruised into the cold coastal waters off Chile on her way to Antarctica to intercept, stop, harass, and generally make business difficult for the Japanese whaling ship Kyo Maru. Clay was at the helm, and when the ship reached a precise point on the GPS receiver, he ordered the engines cut. It was a sunny day, unusually calm for this part of the Pacific. The water was so dark blue it almost appeared black.
    Clair was below in their cabin. She'd been seasick for most of the voyage, but she had insisted on coming along despite the nausea, using her saber-edged persuasive skills on the captain. ("Who's got the pirate booty? All right, then, help me pack.")
    Nate stood on the deck at the bow, his arm around Elizabeth Robinson. Above them swung an eighteen-foot rigid-hull Zodiac on a crane, ready to drop into the water whenever it was needed. There was another one on the stern, where once the submarine had been stowed. Up on the flying bridge, Kona scanned the sea around them with a pair of "big-eye" binoculars on a heavy iron mount that was welded to the railing.
    "There's one, a thousand yards."
    Clay came out onto the walkway beside Kona. They all looked to starboard, where the residual cloud of a whale blow was hanging over the calm water.
    "Another one!" Clay shouted, pointing to a second blow closer to the ship off the port bow.
    Then they started firing into the air as if triggered by a chained fuse: whale blows of different shapes, heights, and angles – great explosions of spray erupting so close to the ship now that the decks started to glisten with the moisture. Then the backs of the great whales rolled in the water around them, gray and black and blue, hills of slick flesh on all sides, moving slowly, then lying in the water. Nate and Elizabeth moved up to the bow railing and watched a group of sperm whales lolling in the water like logs just a few feet off the bow. Next to them a wide right whale floated, bobbing gently in the swell, only a slow wave of the tail revealing that the creature was alive. It rolled to one side, and its eye bulged as it looked at them.
    "You okay?" Nate asked Elizabeth, squeezing her shoulder. This was the first time she'd been out on the water in over forty years. In her hands she clutched a brown paper lunch bag.
    "They're still amazing up close. I'd forgotten."
    "Just wait."
    There were probably a hundred animals of different species around the ship now, most rolled on their side, one eye bulged out to focus in the air. Their blows settled into a syncopated rhythm, like cylinders of some great engine firing in succession.
    Kona jumped up and down next to Clay, praising Jah and laughing as each animal breathed or flicked a tail. "Irie, my whaley friends!" he shouted, waving to the animals close to