Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

I have the hoses tight because the rebreather is so temperamental about getting water in it. Over the years I've 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, it's just a matter of keeping the seal. Man's only instinct is to suck."
    "And you suck, is that what you're saying?"
    "Look, Nate, I know you're mad, but I'm okay. Something was going on with that animal. It distracted me. It won't happen again. I owe it to the kid, though."
    "We thought we'd lost her, too."
    "She's 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 ancient 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 can't teach that kind of judgment."
    "You're just trying to change the subject."
    Clay was indeed trying to change the subject. "How'd 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 don't know. Let's check the score."
    From outside the screen door came Clair's voice. "Clay Demodocus, are you wearing my robe?"
    "Why, yes, dear, I am," said Clay, shooting an embarrassed glance at Quinn, as if he'd only just noticed that he was wearing a woman's kimono.
    "Well, that would mean that I'm wearing nothing, wouldn't it?" said Clair. She wasn't 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?"
    "There's a skinny kid with a half order of dreadlocks and an erection out here staring at me, Clay, and it's making me feel a little self-conscious."
    "I woke up with it, Bwana Clay," Kona said. "No disrespect."
    "He's 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, I'll see you in the morning. What are you working on anyway?"
    "Putting the subsonic part of the song in binary."
    "Ah, interesting."
    "Feeling vulnerable out here," Clair said. "Vulnerable 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 spirit in the night came through the door: Amy, in a man's T-shirt that hung to midthigh, yawning and rubbing her eyes.
    "The hell you doing up at this hour? It's three 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 shampoo smell coming off of Amy, and he became hyperaware of the warmth of her pressing against his shoulder. "I don't understand. You're digitizing it manually? That seems a little primitive. The signal is already digitized by virtue of being on the disk, isn't it?"
    "I'm looking at it a different way. It will probably wash out, but I'm looking at the waveform of just the low end. There's no behavior for context, so it's probably a waste of time anyway."
    "But still you're 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 he'd be right in her face if he did. This wasn't the time. Instead he dropped his hands into his lap and sighed heavily as if this were all too tedious. He looked at the monitor as he spoke. "Okay, Amy, here's 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 you're 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