Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

drowned. He felt himself being pulled upward and so closed his eyes and surrendered.
    "No, no, no, son," said Papa. "You're not in heaven. The tits are not blue in heaven. You are still alive."
    Papa's face was very much smashed against the glass of his helmet, wearing the sort of expression he might have had if he'd run full speed into a bulletproof window and someone had snapped a picture at maximum mash, yet Clay could see that his eyes were smiling.
    "My little Cleandros, you know it is not time for you to join me?"
    Clay nodded.
    "And when it comes time for you to join me, it should be because you are old and tired and ready to go, not because the sea is wanting to crush you."
    Clay nodded again, then opened his eyes. This time there was a stabbing pain in his head, but he squinted through it to see Amy's face through her dive mask. She held his regulator in his mouth and was gripping the back of his head to make him look at her. When she was sure that he was conscious and knew where he was, she gave him the okay signal and waited until he returned it. Amy then let go of Clay's regulator, and they swam slowly upward, to surface four hundred yards from where they'd first submerged.
    Clay immediately looked around for the boat and found nothing where he expected it, the closest vessels being a group of boats too far away to be the Always Confused. He checked his dive computer. He'd been down for an hour and fifteen minutes. That couldn't be right.
    "That's them," Amy said. She looked down into the water. "Oops. Let me get my top off of your face."
    "Okay," Clay mumbled into the rebreather.
    * * *
    Kona was in tears, wailing like Bob Marley in a bear trap – inconsolable. "Clay gone. The Snowy Biscuit gone. And I was going to poke squid with her, too."
    "You were not," said Nate.
    But the artificial Hawaiian didn't hear. "There!" Kona shouted as he leaped onto the shoulders of the stocky whale cop to get a better view. "It's the white wahine! Praise to Jah! Thanks be to His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie. Go there, Sheriff. A saving be needed."
    "Handcuff this kid," said the cop.

CHAPTER TWELVE
    Here's My Coupon, He Said, Singing
    the Redemption Song
    Normally, if the whale cops found an unauthorized person on a research vessel, they would simply record the violation, write a ticket, then remove the person from the boat and take him back to Lahaina Harbor. A fine was paid and violations were considered the following year when the permit came up for renewal. By contrast, Kona was delivered to the Maui county jail with both his wrists and ankles shackled and a swath of duct tape over his mouth.
    Nate and Amy were waiting in the lobby of the Maui county jail in Wailuku, sitting in metal chairs designed to promote discomfort and waffled butt skin. "It's really 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 thought it was Kona that got them to let you come to us."
    "Still, jail builds character. I've heard that. It might do him good to be off his herb for a few days." Kona had slipped his fanny pack full of pot and paraphernalia to Nate before he'd been taken away.
    "Character? If he starts with his native-sovereignty speech stuff in there the real Hawaiians will pound him."
    "He'll be okay. I'm worried about you. Don't you want to go get checked?" Clair had taken Clay to the hospital to get a CAT scan and have his scalp stitched up.
    "I'm fine, Nate. I was only shaken up because I was worried about Clay."
    "You were down a long time."
    "Yes, and I went by Clay's dive computer. We decompressed completely. The worst part was I froze my ass off."
    "I can't believe you had the presence of mind to decompress with Clay unconscious. I don't know if I would have. Hell, I couldn't have. I'd have run out of air in ten minutes. How did you manage -"
    "I'm small, Nate. I don't use air like you. And I could tell that Clay was breathing okay. I could tell that the cut on his head wasn't that bad either. The biggest danger to both of us was decompression sickness, so I followed the computer, breathed off of Clay's rescue supply when I ran out, and nobody got hurt."
    "I'm really impressed," said Nate.
    "I just did what I was supposed to do. No big deal."
    "I was really scared – I thought you – You had me worried." He patted her knee in a grandmotherly fashion, and she looked at his hand.
    "Careful, I'll get all sniffly over