Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

encountered and analyzed similar data in the past. According to Nate's analysis, research assistants with intriguing bottoms turned into wives 66.666 percent of the time, and wives turned into ex-wives exactly 100 percent of the time – plus or minus 5 percent factored for post-divorce comfort sex.)
    "Want me to do you?" Amy asked, holding out her preferred sunscreen-slathering hand.
    You just don't go there, thought Nate, not even in a joke. One incorrect response to a line like that and you could lose your university position, if you had one, which Nate didn't, but still… You don't even think about it.
    "No thanks, this shirt has UV protection woven in," he said, thinking about what it would be like to have Amy do him.
    Amy looked suspiciously at his faded WE LIKE WHALES CONFERENCE '89 T-shirt and wiped the remaining sunscreen on her leg. " 'Kay," she said.
    "You know, I sure wish I could figure out why these guys sing," Nate said, the hummingbird of his mind having tasted all the flowers in the garden to return to that one plastic daisy that would just not give up the nectar.
    "No kidding?" Amy said, deadpan, smiling. "But if you figure it out, what would we do tomorrow?"
    "Show off," Nate said, grinning.
    "I'd be typing all day, analyzing research, matching photographs, filing song tapes -"
    "Bringing us doughnuts," Nate added, trying to help.
    Amy continued, counting down the list on her fingers, "- picking up blank tapes, washing down the trucks and the boats, running to the photo lab -"
    "Not so fast," Nate interrupted.
    "What, you're going to deprive me the joy of running to the photo lab while you bask in scientific glory?"
    "No, you can still go to the photo lab, but Clay hired a guy to wash the trucks and boats."
    A delicate hand went to her forehead as she swooned, the southern belle in hiking shorts, taken with the vapors. "If I faint and fall overboard, don't let me drown."
    "You know, Amy," Nate said as he undressed the crossbow, "I don't know how it was at Boston doing survey, but in behavior, research assistants are only supposed to bitch about the humiliating grunt work and lowly status to other research assistants. It was that way when I was doing it, it was that way going back centuries, it has always been that way. Darwin himself had someone on the Beagle to file dead birds and sort index cards."
    "He did not. I've never read anything about that."
    "Of course you didn't. Nobody writes about research assistants." Nate grinned again, celebration for a small victory. He realized he wasn't working up to standards on managing this research assistant. His partner, Clay, had hired her almost two weeks ago, and by now he should have had her terrorized. Instead she was working him like a Starbucks froth slave.
    "Ten minutes," Amy said, checking the timer on her watch. "You going to shoot him?"
    "Unless you want to?" Nate notched the arrow into the crossbow. He tucked the windbreaker they used to "dress" the crossbow under the console. It was very politically incorrect to carry a weapon for shooting whales through the crowded Lahaina harbor, so they carried it inside the windbreaker, making it appear that they had a jacket on a hanger.
    Amy shook her head violently. "I'll drive the boat."
    "You should learn to do it."
    "I'll drive the boat," Amy said.
    "No one drives the boat." No one but Nate drove the boat. Granted, the Constantly Baffled was only a twenty-three-foot Mako speedboat, and an agile four-year-old could pilot it on a calm day like today. Still, no one else drove the boat. It was a man thing, being inherently uncomfortable with the thought of a woman operating a boat or a television remote control.
    "Up sounds," Nate said. They had a recording of the full sixteen-minute cycle of the song now – all the way through twice, in fact. He stopped the recorder and pulled up the hydrophone, then started the engine.
    "There," Amy said, pointing to the white fins and flukes moving under the water. The whale blew only twenty yards off the bow. Nate buried the throttle. Amy was wrenched off her feet and just caught herself on the railing next to the wheel console as the boat shot forward. Nate pulled up on the right side of the whale, no more than ten yards away as the whale came up for the second time. He steadied the wheel with his hip, pulled up the crossbow, and fired. The bolt bounced off the whale's rubbery back, the hollow surgical steel arrowhead taking out a cookie-cutter plug of skin and