Far From The Sea We Know (21 page)

“Way off the mark, Jack,” Thorssen said.

“No, sir,
you
are. And now, enough.”
He was no longer yelling, but still spoke forcefully. “It is my sad
duty to inform you all that there will be a call shortly relieving
the Captain of his command. We hope this can be accomplished
without incident, as that would be in everyone’s best interest.
That’s right,” he said, looking around at the shocked faces lining
the room. “This shoddy perpetration has been exposed.”

“But,” Mary said, “you seemed so…distraught
before…”

“I was, to put it mildly. I know I lost it
for a while, and I’m sorry for the way I acted. Please forgive me,
all of you, but it was because…” He gestured toward Thorssen. “They
are responsible for the death of one whale and, I now have reason
to believe, at least several more. Yes. Why? So they could fake the
‘displacement’ thing. Didn’t care what they had to do to get more
funding. Mister Amati was their unwitting stooge.”

He stared at Matthew, who felt almost
mesmerized by Ripler’s rhetoric.

“You were
used
, Matthew, right from
the beginning. They counted on your inexperience but got careless
and made a few crucial mistakes.” He addressed the group. “We now
have irrefutable proof. It’s close to what I surmised already but
with a few further twists that I couldn’t have imagined. In
addition, we have just received confirmation that Doctor Bell is
being ‘asked’ to resign as Director of the Point. The reality is
that he’s being forced to leave, in disgrace.”

Ripler now directed his piecing gaze at
Martin Bell’s daughter.

“I’m sorry, Penny, I really am. Your father
did groundbreaking work once and I will always remember him for
that. In spite of what you might believe, exposing this whole
shabby affair has given me no pleasure. As much as possible, we’ll
try to keep this out of the media, but that won’t be easy, thanks
to the conspirators’ efforts to make this a revenue spinning
story.”

“I don’t understand,” Emory said. He was
crying. So were Malcolm and several others. Chiffrey looked
perplexed, but seemed content to just watch what was becoming a
sordid drama unfold.

Ripler held up his hand and nodded. “I know
this is all difficult to hear. I will explain the details shortly.
A bizarre tale, in the fullest sense of the word, and they came so
close to pulling it off.”

Ripler looked increasingly relaxed and
confident. His voice had become quieter. He spoke sincerely and
with compassion. Everyone was riveted by his revelations.

“I’m also sorry to say that at least two
other people here were in on this, and you know who you are,”
Ripler continued. “The rest of you, like Matthew, were flimflammed.
Don’t feel bad.”

“Are you sure about all this?” Chiffrey
finally asked.

“Absolutely and I can prove everything. It
was a clever connivance, without doubt. How all this impacts your
investigation here I will leave up to you, but my guess is you will
have much to reconsider. And in spite of everything, I
will
defend Matthew when the time comes.”

Ripler glanced behind at the sound of steps
and smiled as Becka ran in. She stopped short, obviously upset, and
looked at Thorssen. He was not denying anything, but just looked
weary. A bitter taste welled up in the back of Matthew’s throat,
and behind it was anger, yet somehow he could find no answer or
words to Ripler’s accusations.

“You sick twisted creep!” Penny yelled. “I
don’t believe a word you’re saying.” She scanned the room as if
waiting for someone to challenge her.

Ripler closed his eyes and gently shook his
head. “I am sorry. I truly wish that all of this had never
happened. Becka can confirm every word I have said.” Becka looked
at Penny helplessly, as if pleading forgiveness.

No one else spoke. The room was as silent as
a tomb until Dirk burst in, almost knocking Becka over. He jumped
up and down like a little child.

“They’ve turned around,” he shouted. “The
whales, they’re circling all around us, going crazy! The Navy ships
are coming and—”

Everyone in the room, but one, started for
the door without hearing the rest. Matthew was swept along with
Penny beside him, although she seemed more to be riding the current
of people than a part of it. He twisted around to see Thorssen, the
only man left in the lab. A hint of a smile played on his face like
a lonely sun break.

Dirk had not been exaggerating. The
whales—more than fifty—were swimming in a circle around the
Valentina
and they were moving fast, sprinting and leaping
and twisting. Astern, the Navy cruiser and what looked like the
salvage vessel were only a couple of kilometers away and pulling up
fast. Matthew looked up to the bridge just in time to see the
Captain enter it through the outside hatchway. The pitch of the
engines dropped as they were powered down, and soon the ship was
coasting.

“Hey!” yelled Dirk, pointing toward the bow.
Lorraine Hart had climbed over the railing and was hanging by an
arm and a leg, laughing, waving, yelling. Matthew strained to make
out what she was saying, but then his heart almost stopped.
Immediately below the dangling Lorraine, a large whale suddenly
emerged, upright and nearly a third of the way out of the water.
There was a white blaze on her forehead, and the rest of her was a
vivid magenta shot through with veins of copper green.

Dirk ran by and Matthew instinctively
followed.

“What happened?” Matthew said, as they
dashed up to the bow. “You were supposed to be keeping Lorraine out
of trouble.”

“I saw the whales out the porthole!” Dirk
said. “Lorraine seemed okay, but when I turned back, she was gone.
God, look at the color. I—Hey, Lorraine! Stop! No!”

Her arm slipped, and she was now hanging by
only her leg. Dirk reached her, stretched over and grabbed an arm.
Matthew strained but could not reach the other one.

“Pull her up a little, Dirk!”

Dirk grimaced, flexed, and lifted, closing
the distance just enough that Matthew could clasp Lorraine’s free
hand.

“Lorraine!” Dirk yelled, “We need to get you
back up.”

She laughed. “Hey, stop! That tickles!”

Matthew nodded to Dirk. “Now!”

They both lifted, and heaved her up over the
railing. She landed on top of Dirk, knocking him to the deck. He
looked more than just stunned.

“You fell,” Lorraine said. Then she
whispered something in Dirk’s ear.

Matthew couldn’t hear, but he didn’t care.
The whales had become motionless in the water, their immense heads
pointing up like chess pieces. They had not only aligned themselves
with the lead whale, but were facing astern, in the direction of
the approaching ships. At the speed they were making, the Navy
would be alongside in minutes.

Dirk groaned and clutched his stomach with
both hands.

A pressure wave hit Matthew at the same
moment, and he recognized it instantly as the same sensation that
had hit him on the
Eva Shay
. He didn’t fight it this time
and it did not affect him seriously.

“No, I can’t!” a voice cried behind him.

It was Ripler. He stared at Matthew, then at
the whales, and screamed, “No! I can’t! Waaaaait!”

Ripler’s legs seemed to disappear as he
crumpled, first to his knees, then onto his arms. He struggled to
keep himself from total collapse, but finally pitched over to one
side and curled up completely, and the look on his face was that of
a man whose world had been swept away, like so much trash, by the
tide.

Suddenly the whales were swimming again,
round and around, slowly then faster, churning the sea into a white
fizzling froth. As Matthew ran to the video array to see if it was
on, the whales turned flukes up and plunged under as one. Another
pressure wave hit him, stronger this time. He grabbed the railing
to stop his fall and managed to keep looking over the side. The
foam was already breaking up and the surface soon looked as if the
whales had never been there.

They were gone.

Dirk and Lorraine had fallen asleep in each
other’s arms, like entwined lovers. Toward the stern, most of the
other crewmembers lay sprawled on the deck. Only one person was
standing.

Penny.

She turned toward Matthew, seemingly
unaffected. Her whole face, lit up by those impossibly green eyes,
was one great shining smile.

“Well, that was fun,” she called to him.
“Let’s do it again. What? Why is everyone sprawled out like sick
cats?”

He walked back to her, still a little
unsteady. “You didn’t feel it?”

“Yes, a brief tingle up my spine, pleasant
such as it was, but…”

There had a slightly perplexed look as she
turned and walked away, as if she’d suddenly remembered something.
Or forgotten.

He didn’t go after her, but instead started
back toward the bridge. Along the way, he found Lieutenant Chiffrey
sitting on a crate, a hand resting on each knee, eyes closed, like
a carved Buddha. He slowly opened his eyes, got up, and walked by
Matthew as if he were not there.

Matthew climbed the steps to the bridge, and
waited a moment at the hatchway. From the radio came the sound of a
low static with an odd rhythm. It continued for a few seconds, then
ceased. Malcolm and Emory were on the floor, slumped together
against a console, their eyes closed. Asleep. The Captain was still
on his feet, but he was looking up, not ahead. When he noticed
Matthew, he motioned toward the screen they used to track Lefty.
The familiar blip from the tracking device was dead center.

“She’s under us?”

“The tag only works on the surface,”
Thorssen said.

“So where…?”

Then he saw it, resting on the flooring
plates of the bridge, directly in the middle. Matthew bent down and
tentatively reached out to touch what could only be Lefty’s
transceiver. The orange plastic casing was warm, almost hot. He
gave it a push, but it would not budge. The casing had partly
dissolved into the metal deck plates and was spread out a few
inches on all sides, like butter melting in a skillet. But it
wasn’t a liquid, it was a mass of tiny fibers, dividing and
branching like roots, a maze of intricate patterns that almost
seemed to move. They
were
moving!

The Captain seemed oddly unconcerned. Before
Matthew could say anything, Lieutenant Chiffrey entered the room,
noticeably pale, holding his sat-phone. He looked at Matthew, at
Thorssen, and then out across the sea. The Navy cruiser and salvage
ship were drifting slowly past them.

“Trouble?” Thorssen said to Chiffrey, but it
wasn’t really a question.

“Total loss of power. The props just…”

Chiffrey noticed the transceiver and bent
down like a supplicant. The plastic case had spread a little more
into the deck plates. He reached his hand out toward the roots,
just as Matthew had, but suddenly stopped when he saw the tiny
movements.

He looked up. “What in God’s name?” The
question was branded on his face as if it would always be
there.

The Captain bent down on one knee and put
his hand gently on Chiffrey’s shoulder. “The right thing to ask,
maybe, but who among us could bear the answer?”

Matthew left the bridge and walked back to
Penny’s cabin, and with every footfall it seemed that he was
stepping out of the world. Now he sat on the bunk, alone, his back
resting gently on the bulkhead, feeling as if he could sit there
forever.

Something began to play in him…

A breath drawn deep in the belly makes its
way to every cell, hums with a song like a whisper and reverberates
with all the music of light and darkness. The song sweeps into
every dingy corner and, as it does, all shadows are vanquished. A
long neglected room, packed to the ceiling with dusty papers,
broken tools, and heaps of ill-fitting clothes, is at last picked
up, its contents sorted, all together, one thing after another.
What does not belong draws apart and fades to nothing. What remains
is laid away to wait, there if needed, but no longer serving as the
bricks and mortar of a self-made prison.

In that moment, what he desires most could
be his forever if he can lose the need to name it….

“Never mistake the truth for what people
make of it.”

–
Captain Andrew
Thorssen

A face gazed back at the diver through his
mask.

He was under the stern of the disabled Navy
cruiser, sent down to inspect the damage. The propellers were gone,
leaving only the ends of the massive steel drive shafts, and it was
on the perfectly polished end of one that the diver saw a mirrored
face.

The hull drifted in the wind and, as it
turned, sunlight fell on the shaft and dazzled the diver’s eyes.
All the colors that ever were and would be, colors he had never
seen, danced before his eyes. He gave himself up to their silent
rapture and the need for anything more left him forever….

The formerly dazed crewmembers had now fully
revived, and wandered around the decks laughing and hugging each
other, all the while grinning ecstatically like idiot saints. The
exception was Ripler, who had been heavily sedated and placed under
the watchful eye of Mary Sims in the infirmary. He was in the bed
recently vacated by Daryl, the TV cameraman, who had unaccountably
snapped out of his withdrawal the instant the whales had vanished.
Daryl was now in his own state of bliss and insisted on thanking
everyone he met over and over, sometimes falling on his knees to
kiss their feet.

Penny tried to talk with some of the
students, but when she asked why they seemed so elated, they
somehow couldn’t explain it to her in a way that made sense. Their
euphoria eventually tired her, and she retreated to the fantail.
She stood there now, gazing at the disabled Navy vessels lazing in
the afternoon sun like tired suburbanites in their pools. Some
divers had gone down not long ago, but a recently arrived frigate
now blocked the view.