The Emissary (20 page)

Hungry from the night before, she opened all the cabinets in her kitchenette, looking for something healthy to munch on, but all she found was the usual hotel fare: potato chips, nuts, and chocolate bars, and plenty of booze in the bar. The tin from Max’s was
empty—not a crumb. With an hour or more to go before sunrise, she decided to find her way into the galley and make herself some breakfast, or, at the very least, heat up some leftovers from dinner the night before. Coffee and a couple of slices of toast would more than hold her over until the galley opened. Anything to get out of that room … her bed … the dream. It lingered, haunting, taking her back to that day and the requiem of death that sounded, over and over again, in her mind.

She dressed and threw some blush on her cheeks, and then grabbed her jacket and cap, warm gloves, and the camera, hoping some early-morning photography would capture the incredible spectrum of light that paints the horizon, over the great waves, the way the sun does when it rises on the water.

When she opened the door to leave, she found Fin, curled up against the doorway of her suite, sleeping. He was shivering, in the cold of the unheated hallway. Had she only known, she would have welcomed him in with her, a companion through the long night. She couldn’t believe this amazing animal was there for her, guarding her space through the night and waiting for her to wake up. She reached down to embrace Fin, so filled with gratitude and joy that he knew to be there in that moment. He lifted her spirits in an instant, and brought the joy back.

“Hooboy, Finny, you are a sight for sore eyes,” she said in a whisper.

Fin was playful—a couple of overzealous barks and the whole ship would have been awakened in the middle of the night. Jamie got into her jacket and hat and together they found their way down the poorly illuminated corridor, where only the emergency night-light lit the way. When they got to the lounge, she remembered where Doc had turned off the lights, so she was able to light up the public spaces—but she had no clue where to look for the thermostat. They would have to freeze until somebody woke up. She and Fin stole into the galley, thieves in the night, and there she
fumbled around trying to find the coffeepot. She’d never seen a ship’s galley before and everything was so … big. She finally found the coffee and filters, and put the pot on to brew—then she opened the refrigerator and found everything she needed: bread, butter, an assortment of jams, and cream for her coffee.

Fin sat quietly, waiting for his share of the bounty. She fed him the first two slices, and put another two in the toaster. As she waited for the toast to pop up, she gazed through the galley window, where, in the distance, the first hint of morning glowed indigo out on the horizon.

Pouring herself a cup of hot coffee, she thought she saw whales, far ahead of the ship. At first, she could just barely make them out. It was still dark and they were a significant distance away, but she could feel them—there was no mistaking Orcas ahead. And they were many. Jamie could never have imagined she would ever prefer not to be in the presence of whales. Something wasn’t right about it, even though the unnatural presence there was their intrusive ship, not the whales. Still, their appearance that early in the morning, leaping black silhouettes against the violet ray of Earth awakening, made her feel apprehensive.

Transfixed, she stared out the galley window. More whales were gathering, rapidly now. She could hear the force of their tails, slamming down hard against the water’s surface—as the dolphins had done, the day before, with Fin. These animals were clearly stressed, and the momentum was building, somehow, across species lines: the incident with Liz, the strange dolphin behavior with Fin, and now Orcas.

Fin heard them, too. He whined and gestured to Jamie to go back out on deck, just as insistently and with the same urgency as the day before.

“No way, boy,” Jamie said. She topped up her cup of coffee, buttered the toast, and carried a tray back out into the living room, to
the sofa. There she would wait for day to break and the cold night’s silence to be pierced by sounds of the others, moving about in the morning hours. Fin curled up at her feet, waiting patiently and watching for signs. When she finished eating, he jumped up onto the couch, right next to her, something he would never have dared to do in his master’s presence, but he knew, with Jamie, house rules didn’t apply.

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” she said. She hugged him tightly, and then lay down with her head on his back. The warmth of him close to her was reassuring, and she was starting to relax under the blanket, almost falling back to sleep, when, somewhere between the worlds of perception in her mind, she heard a whale call—just as clearly as if she were out there, in the water with them. She leaped to her feet, listening—a live audience to their distress calls—and she heard it again. She went back to the galley window, to find there were more whales, closer in—exhibiting those same behavioral patterns.

Something was seriously wrong. She could taste it.

With Fin following close to her side, Jamie searched near the galley door and finally found the key rack. Following her intuition, she took the key to the Tech Office and headed for the doorway, like Sherlock Holmes in pursuit of a clue, with Watson in tow. What she would find there, she didn’t yet know. What she was sure of, however, was that whatever was creating the agitation in the whales and dolphins had to be connected to that room.

Once inside, Jamie stood before the array of equipment with no idea whatsoever. What was she looking for? How could she find it? “Oh great computer god, show me where we are,” she said. She fiddled with a few switches, clueless, and then startled herself when one of the monitors actually came on. Frustrated, knowing she was out of her element completely, she walked back down to the main deck, into the hallway, past Sam’s cabin. She could hear voices coming from the room and decided to be bold, and knock.

He already hated her, so she figured there was nothing to lose.

Sam cracked the door just a sliver, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. Through the opening, she saw Liz, naked, in bed behind him—no surprise there.

“What the hell?” he demanded of Jamie.

“Forgive me, I realize this is off the charts—I’m sorry. Something is very wrong, I can feel it. I need you to tell me where we are in relationship to the whale sanctuary.”

“Are you out of your mind? It’s five in the morning!”

“Five? Oh, thank god it’s that late.”

“Five a.m., Jamie … five!”

“I know. I’m mortified.”

“Why didn’t you just go up to the navigation room and talk to Bobby? We’re on automatic pilot anyway, for god sakes.”

“I didn’t know that. I took a big liberty and went to the Tech Office and tried to turn on the equipment myself, but I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“What do you think you’re doing? That is highly sensitive equipment!”

In the background, Liz threw on Sam’s shirt and came to the door. “What on earth is going on?”

“It’s the whales. There’s a bunch of them, not far ahead of us. They’re amassing. I think we’ve entered the sanctuary,” said Jamie.

Sam threw his hands up in the air. “I give up.”

“Please, Sam. I might have done something stupid—I turned a few switches in there.”

“Jesus, Jamie! Let me get my pants on.” He closed the door in Jamie’s face, while she and Fin stood in the hall, waiting in the cold. Inside, Sam slipped into a sweatshirt and his wrinkled pants from the night before. Liz searched for her clothes, which were strewn all over the room, to dress to go with him. “No, you stay here … keep the bed warm. Hopefully, this will only take a minute.” He
sat on the edge of the bed, putting on his socks and shoes. “I so did not sign up to sail with this whack job.”

“Don’t you find it curious, though?” said Liz. “It was the dolphins yesterday—they were so strange.”

“I refuse to engage in a conversation about Cetaceans at five in the morning.” Sam opened the door, tucking his shirt into his pants, and then he stepped into the hall, where Jamie and Fin were waiting. They raced up to the Tech Office, where, fortunately, all Jamie had done was to turn on one of the monitors. The main systems board was untouched. “I can’t believe you would just walk in here and put the ship at risk, meddling where you have no idea what you’re doing.”

“I’m sorry—I didn’t know what to do—no one was awake.”

“There’s always someone on the bridge—just a few doors down.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jamie replied, apologetically.

Sam fired up the system and then sat down at his desk chair, typing on the keyboard, checking the system. “Sorry,” he said, with his back to her, “but isn’t the point of you being here that you’re supposed to be able to see these things? What part of your psychic genius am I missing?”

Jamie was embarrassed. She wasn’t one to react like she had, involving other people, especially in this instance—and especially disturbing Sam, the least likely person to be cooperative, in the middle of the night.

“Here you go,” said Sam. He pointed his cursor to a marker on the screen. “This is our GPS position. We are not in the sanctuary. Can we go back to sleep now?” He turned off the computers. “Please don’t ever do that again. You need answers? Go to the helm first—there’s a protocol to follow on a ship.”

“I still haven’t gotten the protocol memo. I wouldn’t even know where to find a life jacket, if I needed one!”

In all fairness, he had to admit that was true. His was the responsibility of explaining how the ship operated when Jamie first came aboard, but he had dumped her with Liz and walked away. “I tell you what,” he said, “I won’t mention this to anyone … you forget seeing Liz in my bed.”

“Liz, who?”

To her amazement, Sam smiled at her—for the first time.

“Back to sleep?”

“I’m up now—I’ll grab Liz and we’ll see you at breakfast.”

Sam closed the door behind them, stashing the key in his shirt pocket, and then he proceeded back down the hall to his cabin. Jamie was too wired to even consider sleep, and Fin was pushing to go out on deck.

When they came back down the stairs, she could smell the sweet aroma of fresh baking bread wafting from the galley. “Mmm. What’s that heavenly smell, boy? Something good is in the oven.” Jamie bundled herself up in her jacket, hat, and gloves, preparing for the cold of the morning out on deck. She was eager to see if the whales were still out there, and Fin had to get out—it seemed as if he needed to go down to the lower deck to his allocated toilet space, in a hurry. The minute she opened the door for him, he bounded out the door and disappeared down the stairs.

She stepped out into the chill of morning at sea, intent upon studying the whale activity, to pick up whatever information they might be trying to send to her. Mindful that she had spotted the Orcas ahead of the ship, she wanted to set herself up at the bow, but there was no protection there from the cold ocean winds. She settled for her place near the living room entrance, and after wiping down the deck chair with towels, she set herself up for whale watching. Only now, the Orcas were nowhere to be seen.

Fin came bouncing back up the stairs from the lower deck, and ran right over to her. He was restless, going back and forth to the
railing and looking out, as he had done before, searching the sea. Jamie looked everywhere, but they were gone. She began to have doubts. Had the shadowy Orcas actually been a vision, or were they real, physical beings out on the ocean? Sometimes her psychic sight was so powerful, so real, she couldn’t tell the difference. And then, in the penumbra of those early-morning hours, it was all the more possible that she was seeing between the veils, pulling from the shadows of night. Only Fin was there to corroborate her perception of the physical presence of the whales—but even then, he surely could see and hear the spirit world as well as she—if not better.

Pulling her thoughts back to the workings of the ship, sounds of pots clanging in the galley and the first footsteps of the crew moving about brought her focus back to the reality of where she was, and what she was there to do. It hit hard and with immense clarity, once again, that she would never be able to fulfill the task set out for her. There would be no oil for Mat Anderson—the whales were in the way of all of that. Less than forty-eight hours since her arrival, she could already see that her being there was an intricate part of a divine plan that was manifesting as a completely different scenario from what Mat had designed for them both. It had nothing to do with oil—that was just the vehicle that had set it all in motion.

Someone from the other realms, the spirit side, spoke the words
“Go deep. Listen to the messenger. Find what’s hidden.”
She allowed those feelings and information to flow through her, trusting that, as the hours passed, she would gain clarity—answers to the mystical puzzle held in those words—and that all would be shown to her.

The screeching of a flood of seagulls snapped her back to the matters at hand: the mechanics of the ship and its impact on the waters. Fin leaped up and ran forward, to the ship’s bow, barking like mad. The Orcas were back—only now she was witness to a huge pod, and she could see newborns leaping out of the water, surrounded by their guardians. Was it a nursery, straight ahead?
She tried to estimate how many were out there, but counting was impossible. They were everywhere, hundreds, it seemed. It was a rare spectacle of nature that, in any other circumstance, would have filled her with joy and celebration. And yet, as breathtaking as it was to see such beauty, Jamie’s reaction was not one of joy, but of alarm.

The ship’s motors had just fired up and they were headed straight towards the pod. From the bow, Jamie could see the equipment at the top of the ship: the radar and other unidentifiable devices had begun spinning, and in minutes were rotating at full speed. Almost immediately, the whales became agitated, exhibiting the same behaviors and signs she had seen in the dolphins the day before.

Jamie flew up the stairs to the bridge, but, contrary to what Sam had told her, no one was at the helm. She then raced to the Tech Office, and there was Sam, staring sleepily into the screen, sipping from a mug of coffee. She was breathless. “Thank god you’re here.”