Moby Jack & Other Tall Tales (48 page)

‘You did,’ I reply.

He stands
there
, smouldering, realising that yes, he
did
give me permission to steer the ship towards the belugas. I was the one who knew where they
were,
therefore he was superfluous on the bridge. I could take over until the school was found, he had stated.

‘Turn the ship around,’ he orders the coxswain. ‘Now.’

Looking out over the sea and broken ice I notice Moby Jack is coming towards us at a high rate of knots.

‘I think you’ll find you’re too late,’ I say to the captain. ‘Moby Jack is about to smash us to smithereens. You’re no Captain Ahab, but I’m afraid you’re destined for the same end. The white whale is about to destroy you and your ship. I ordered the ship away from the bay, so that the belugas would not be harmed when we get blown out of the water.’

The captain snarls, ‘
What
the hell are you talking about? Moby Dick? Are you crazy?’ He stares at the single white whale bearing down on the ship, its tail driving the water behind it, churning the ocean into a boiling wake. There ’s something about the determination of that whale which surprises even Jisteain. He doesn’t know what to make of the situation and his face is a picture of perplexity and indecision.

‘Not Moby Dick—his descendant, Moby Jack.
I may be crazy,’ I say. ‘I probably am. I’ve sacrificed myself, my life, for a few thousand whales. Moby Jack is not a real whale, by the way. I think it’s fair to tell you that at this stage of the deadly game. Moby Jack is a warship in the guise of a whale, designed by my girl friend, Jacqueline Jones for the International Anti-whaling Activists...’

He interrupts me.
‘The IAA?
That bunch of bloody terrorists?
Now I know you’re mad,’ he snorts. ‘Those militant sons-of-bitches will get what’s coming to them if they mess with me. I’ll have them intercepted. They’ll rot in some Canadian jail for the rest of their lives.’

‘Believe me,’ I tell him simply, ‘the last few minutes of your life could be better spent in praying, or dictating a letter to your loved ones, or even cutting your toenails in preparation for the long journey to hell. Ranting and raving is an utterly useless activity at such a time. Even the deranged Ahab was calm and reflective just before his death. You
are
going to die. We all are. There’s nothing that can save us now. I forgot to tell the company by the way—I’m a member of the IAA myself—have been ever since college.’

His eyes narrow.
He picks up a pair of viewers and looks at the oncoming white whale. Something he sees convinces him that it is a device, not a living creature.

‘Who’s in that thing?’ he asks.

‘No one,’ I reply. ‘It’s being run remotely.’

‘There ’s nothing that monster can throw at us that I can’t shoot down or blow out of the water,’ he says with confidence. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

‘It’s a sad thing to be the bearer of rotten news,’ I say in reply, ‘but Moby Jack is armed with J.A.W.S.’

Now he turns to stare at me with a worried expression.

‘Justified Attack Weapons System,’ he says.
‘That bloody monstrous spray-launching invention of the anti-whalers?
It doesn’t matter how erratic their trajectories are, a JAWS missile needs a homing device physically located on the target vessel...’

‘That’s always been the IAAs’ problem,’ I say, ‘until now of course.’

I give him a grim little smile.

He glares at me. ‘You! You brought a fucking homing device on board. You bastard! I ought to throw you overboard, you bloody shit.’

I shrug. ‘Be my guest. I stand a better chance in the ocean than I do on the
Titan
. I could survive perhaps three or four minutes in that freezing water, whereas you have rather less time...’

‘We’ll find it,’ snaps Jisteain. ‘We’ll find the bloody thing and then you’ll go over. Full steam ahead,’ he orders the coxswain. Then on the loudspeakers system, ‘All hands—search the ship for a homing device. I want anything suspicious thrown over the side immediately. Anything, do you hear? Hang the expense of a mistake. All our lives are at stake here. Just throw it over and we’ll ask questions later.’

With full power we begin to pull away from Moby Jack rapidly, but we shall be in range for a time. Jisteain and I stare out over the choppy waves at the oncoming white whale, then something happens, it blossoms, opening like a flower blooming, and missiles are launched as a spray of seeds into the atmosphere. They are crazy pods, zipping around randomly, seeking the homing signal, difficult to shoot down in numbers because of their erratic movements,
their
unpredictable zig-zagging.

Around Moby Jack’s belly the sea froths: ripples appear on the surface, heading every which-way. A clutch of torpedoes has also been launched, to dance along the wavetops, jumping and leaping impetuously. Jisteain goes white and for the first time reveals a little fear.

‘My computers will seek out and destroy those,’ says Jisteain quickly. ‘We’ll shoot them out of the sky—we’ll blow them out of the water.’

He has none of the heroic stature of Ahab, none of his magnificent profanity, none of his demented rhetoric. But then Jisteain has never been torn apart by a whale, nor suffered his embittered soul to be disfigured by the mad spirit of a sea monster. He has all his limbs, his organs,
his
manhood. He has never drunk rum from a harpoon head, nor tempered steel with his own blood. Jisteain has only Ahab’s cold determination, the unfeeling side of
Ahab which
allowed the mad captain to sail away from a ship searching its lost children. In truth, Jisteain is a poor sacrifice to Moby Jack.

‘You can’t possibly get them all,’ I tell him, ‘if you don’t find the homing device. It only takes one to get through. Once they find the beam from the homing device, they’ll come in like a swarm of mosquitoes after warm blood. One will be enough to blast us into so many fragments it’ll be raining shards on Somerset Island for the next few days.’

‘We’ll find the homing device,’ he says, with just a trace of doubt in his voice. ‘We have a minute or two yet.’

His men are already dumping things into the ocean, my luggage, my camera, in fact everything belonging to me. They are also scanning the ship with homing device detectors. However, the inner bridge where I am standing, containing as it does the computer that runs the ship, its navigation devices, steering equipment, weather forecasting apparatus, and so on, is of course shielded. The shield that prevents penetration by enemy probes will protect the homing device from detection until it’s too late. That’s my gamble and it appears to be working, because they’re running scared on the decks below me. Not even the
promise
of a shining gold Spanish doubloon nailed to the mast for these fellows: only the certainty of brilliance from a coin of plutonium.

They won’t find the homing device. The reason is
,
it’s inside
me
. I had it implanted within my thigh after I accepted the job with the company.
Jisteain’s men can search the ship from stem to stern
,
they will find nothing
. In a moment I will step outside the bridge and small missiles and torpedoes will rush joyfully in to be the first to give birth to heat, light and an explosion that will blast the ship to tiny fragments, startling the beluga whales.

Some of those little harpoons careening around the ship are exploding now as the
Titan’s
computers desperately try to track them and detonate them. Small black spears, most of them not more than a foot in length, yet able to destroy a ship such as ours with ease. They’re twisting and turning erratically, crazily in the sky. They dance around the heavens in their dozens: agents of death telemarking at whim. Looking. Seeking. Then once they recognise the target, to spear it without compassion.

Irony: the little whale Moby Jack will have harpooned the mighty ship, for the target they’re seeking is within
me
, standing on the bridge of the
Titan
waiting for death and glory. I have experienced love, what more can a man ask? I have sacrificed the mellowing, the ageing of that love for the sake of humankind as well as the whales, for whaling dehumanises us, debases us to a level lower than any creature on the Earth.

Call me crazy, but I believe there is a greater love at risk than just a relationship between two people. I would rather save the greater at the expense of the lesser, however potent the latter may feel. I am about to experience the ultimate mystery, to travel the last and longest journey. Don’t be sad for me, Jacqueline. I look on such a death as a triumph, and I won’t have my triumphs wept over like wretched failures.

And father—you are a poor, miserable man.