The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel (2 page)

“We have to get under way,” Perrault said at last. “Going to be pretty far along in the season, by the time we get out there.—Jamie, where can we stow another drum of fuel?”

When Sara’s bowl was empty Eddi got up and returned it rinsed out and filled with preserved pears. Their sweet pale flesh was so delicious she ate a second helping. The men got up and left, leaving everything on the table.

Eddi began to clear, but Sara hesitated. Her waitressing days were long past. Leo’d had his faults, but he’d always cleared at least his own place. Finally she carried her own plate and bowl into the galley.

Eddi left. Through the window Sara caught a frame of her under one of the pier lights, waving a finger as she argued with her cell. The wind was rising. Plastic bags and paper debris scudded along under the cold vibrating greenish light. Beyond the pier lay darkness. The boat jostled and leaned, creaked and sighed and clanked. A gurgle came from beneath, faded, then repeated itself, like some submarine monster attempting to communicate.

Hugging her chest, she walked the length of the boat, peeping into each compartment. The one farthest forward would probably be the lab. Someone had already installed a good deal of electronic equipment. She opened the louvered doors aft and looked in. Larger bunks—no, real beds—quite unlike the narrow shelves she and Eddi occupied. A corridor led to steps down which a faint light burned; the smells of diesel fuel and metal welled up. She considered her own cell, but couldn’t think of anyone who’d welcome hearing from her.

Finally she drew the curtain on her nook and undressed. The deck was cold against her bare feet. She shivered again, pulling palms down bare arms. Piloerection: an early mammalian response to fright and cold. She squirmed into her sleeping bag and pulled the blanket over it.

Then couldn’t sleep. The slight but never-ending motion, the abrupt, unfamiliar noises, kept startling her awake. She stared at the shifting pattern the light made as it came through the single port high up beside her bunk. It gleamed on the curved white of the bulkhead. Ivory white, white as …

… As teeth in a jaw ripped clean of flesh.

Terror rose like a cold sheet drawn up over her face, racing her heart, breaking sweat all over her body. She suffered it for a few minutes, then tried to roll out, intending to power up her e-reader. But she couldn’t move. She stared into the dark, panting, mind spiraling down into dumb panic.

Each time she saw a face—or even if she glimpsed her own, reflected in a mirrored surface—it came back.

She’d raised Arminius from a baby. Fed him with her own hands, nestled him to her breast in sleep. Taught him sign, and spent endless hours introducing him to the Montessori toys. Even when he’d grown to two hundred pounds, adolescent, tumescent, curious, he’d never shown her the least sign of agonistic behavior: the stretched lips, the bared teeth and fixed stare of the angry primate.

Save for an uncharacteristically grouchy snarl that last morning, as she’d slid his breakfast bowl into his cage.

Had the research assistant somehow angered him? Or had he, so imprinted on humans, become in his rough way enamored? They’d never know. The security guard, confronted by a supine girl, a mass of spattering blood, and the incisor-bared, window-rattling scream of an enraged adult male chimpanzee, had drawn his gun. Sara had heard the shot from her office, and come running.

Too late. For them all.

Someone had to bear the blame. So the university’s legal department had said. Better her than the school, her own counsel had advised. Accept responsibility. Move on. But there were memories one could not move past. Like distant mountains they walked with you, looming through veils of cloud on nights that hid gleaming shadows.

A once-lovely twenty-year-old blinded, left without lips or cheeks. The horror of it unveiled in the courtroom for sixty seconds, to stunned silence. Vacant sockets, bereft of sight. The white gleam of eternally bared teeth in what was no longer a face.

The chill shivered her curled-up legs and crawled along her spine. She panted into cupped hands, staring into the dark. Listening to the creak and sway of the boat, the hum of the wind, a distant voice on the pier arguing and arguing out over the ether, she waited helplessly for the dawn.

2

Fin del Mundo

She was on deck the next morning helping Perrault winch the Zodiac up the sloping stern ramp when the taxi rolled in. It didn’t stop at the head of the pier, as hers had, but drove right out onto the concrete, braking by the bollards that held
Anemone
fast.

Sara straightened, clamping the steadying line in one gloved hand, clinging to the gunwale with the other. An extremely tall blond young man in jeans hopped out. A worn military-style backpack was slung over his shoulder. From under a ludicrous hat in the shape of a dog’s face, long golden hair flickered in the icy sunlight. Startlingly pale blue eyes met hers, crinkling in a smile she couldn’t help returning before her gaze dropped.

Behind him, a stockier figure emerged. For a moment it seemed somehow inhuman, and she caught her breath. It swung and thrust its legs out, bending to adjust them. When it straightened, metal and plastic gleamed in the watery sunlight.

This man waved away his companion’s hand, braced on the cab’s door, and levered himself out. He teetered, then took a hesitant step, as she frowned, hand to her mouth. Then another.

“Ahoy the boat,” the blond guy called.

Perrault turned. “Lars? Mick?”

Mick. So he’d be—“Mr. Bodine?” Sara called. “Hi. I’m Dr. Pollard.”

The stocky man stood braced against a piling. He didn’t answer her. Simply looked the length of the boat, all the way to the bow. Then back to the stern.

She’d pulsed the usual sources for an assistant. But each inquiry had withered on the vine. Word traveled fast in the scientific community, and these days Dr. Sara Pollard might not be the best reference on a curriculum vitae. The only qualified applicant had come through the CPL—the Cetacean Protection League, sponsor of the expedition. Mikhail Bodine was an Afghanistan veteran. His master’s thesis had been about how dolphins reacted to confinement. He’d said he had the winter free, and the stipend would pay his plane fare.

But he’d never said anything about being … a double amputee.

As she wondered how he’d get around, Bodine stalked stiffly to the gap between pier and deck, bridged by a battered, paint-spattered aluminum gangway. He reached, and massive biceps tensed as he handed himself aboard, moving from handhold to handhold. Almost like … she turned away, admiring his adaptation to his handicap even as its resemblance to a great ape’s knuckle-walk made her shudder. Behind him the younger man handed across a heavy-looking duffel that clanked as Bodine eased it to the deck with one arm.

“Dr. Pollard?” Turquoise-green eyes, a shade she’d never seen before, locked with hers. “Mick Bodine. We corresponded.”

She forced a smile. “We certainly did. Did I say how much I admired your thesis?”

“Did I say how much I liked your book?” He turned to greet Perrault, then Eddi. “This is my good friend Lars Madsen. We did a season together against the Arctic sealers.”

They all shook hands. Sara took a deep breath and kept her eyes up, kept herself from backing away. If she did, she’d step off the stern. Lars Madsen’s grin was lit from within by a boyish eagerness that made her like him instantly. The hat, made to look like a goofy Saint Bernard, with dangling flaps that were the dog’s ears, looked warm, but also said,
I don’t take any of this shit too seriously
.

Bodine was another matter. His dark hair was military short and his smile looked even more forced than her own felt. The prostheses, emerging from hiking shorts, looked absurd on a wind-whipped deck, in an open harbor foaming with short choppy whitecaps.

Perrault kept shading his eyes at the clouds, then toward the gate.
She
, he’d said last night. “Right, take it all below,” he told the new arrivals. “You two are forward, on the port side. Opposite the girls.”

“Got it,” Bodine said. He twisted on those incongruous legs and hauled himself down the companionway. The blond, Lars Madsen, began swinging the duffels down to him, to disappear into the dimness.

Madsen crossed the plank several times, passing down more luggage. It must have contained delicate electronics, as he was very careful with it. Finally he paid the driver, who left. Meanwhile she and Eddi had been struggled with the inflatable dinghy. Its engine had snagged as they’d winched it upward. Lars grabbed one of the heavy braided handholds which cornered the rubber mass. “Take that other side—it is Sara?”

“Correct.”

“Take that side, and lift when I tell you.—Eddi, yes? Slack us just a tad, let her slide back.” His accent was Scandinavian. Madsen, yes, that might be Swedish. Or perhaps Norwegian. The winch clicked reluctantly. “Lift,” he grunted, and Sara tugged and something beneath the heavy gray bulk, so like a whale’s, popped free. They winched it in until the nose locked into the molded vee at the top of the ramp, and he bent to tie off the lines.

“Thanks,” Sara told him.

“Not a problem.” With his reddened cheeks, the silly hat, he looked like a boy out playing in the snow. His grin bent itself on her. She noted a complex fold to his eyelids, the beginnings of laugh lines. “Anything else I can help out with?”

Just trying to fit in? Or coming on to her? He
was
attractive, in a tall Nordic way that’d always appealed. And those blue eyes … she had to drop her gaze.

“What’s the plan?” Bodine’s head and shoulders were visible in the companionway.

“It was to get under way yesterday.” Perrault snapped a rope’s end against the gunwale, frowning. “Season’s not that long. We’re going to hit a depression if we don’t get out there soon.”

“Who we waiting on?”

“The principals.” The captain turned away.

“Who, or what, are ‘the principals’?” Sara asked Eddi. But got only a shrug in return.

*   *   *

Perhaps, like fruit flies, questions bred answers. Within the hour, as she was helping lay out lines, Perrault’s radio beeped. Eddi’s voice. “
Anemone
, gate: They’re here. An airport limo.”

She wondered how many limos Ushuaia Airport had. But Perrault was instructing, “Tell the driver exactly how far to the pier. We don’t want him making any wrong turns, okay? If he doesn’t speak English, draw him a map.”

A burst of static, then Eddi’s chipper lilt: “
So
on it, Skipper.”

Perrault bent to a panel. A whine began and built. When it reached a shriek the captain pressed a button and an engine rumbled into life. He waited, blinking across the bay, then pressed a second button. Another motor started, telegraphing a buzzing tremor through lifelines and shrouds. They sounded extremely powerful.

Perrault stepped up atop the steering dome, shading his eyes. He looked the boat over from masttop to deck, from stem to stern. Sara waited, rubbing her arms. She hadn’t worn a sweater this morning, and the Tierra del Fuegan summer was like November in Nantucket. Whitecaps chased each other across the harbor, rocking the boat. Gulls hovered, screaming, and a white fluid spattered down, just missing the boat. Across the pier a fishing trawler gunned its engine, sending a cloud of blue smoke drifting over them. Perrault coughed, looking annoyed. He pointed. “Forward spring. Take the slack out.”

“Which one…?”

He coughed again and frowned. “That one, by your foot. Now, when
she
comes aboard, stay out of her way.”

Sara nodded, still unclear whom they were referring to. She was about to ask when a black Mercedes turned onto the pier, slowed, and came to a noiseless halt. Behind it were other cars, a motorcade. From these spilled men and women in parkas and sweatshirts. They readied notebooks and serious-looking video cameras, jockeying for vantages. The limo’s doors stayed closed. At last the driver came around to open them. He bowed and stepped back.

“Oh my God,” Sara whispered.

Leggy, rangy, incredibly slim, the woman posed on the pier, shaking shining long black hair out into the breeze. With her, and a broadly smiling yet uneasy-looking Perrault, an older man, lean, tanned, silver-haired, sunglassed, waved to the cameras. Sara backed slowly away from the gangway, unable to believe her eyes, as the actress placed one boot on it, as if claiming a newly discovered land.

Yes; it was really her. She wore suede jeans that fit like a spray tan and a white parka with faux fox trim. Silk showed bright scarlet at her throat. The gulls darted madly overhead, screeching insults; she laughed, pointing them out to the older man. Past her Sara saw Lars Madsen unloading brass-trimmed butterscotch-leather suitcases from the limo’s boot. Then they were all headed for her: Perrault, Dorée, the older guy, in suit and tie and camel topcoat, and two more young women. The last woman onto the gangway turned and grasped both hand-chains, blocking it against the photographers, who promptly spread out along the pier. One focused a telephoto on Sara, who lifted a hand to shield her face. Just as she’d had to do outside the courtroom.

“Our crew, Miss Dorée,” Perrault was saying, and Sara started and bent awkwardly before an extended hand. As Dorée patted her shoulder as if knighting her, Sara stared wordless at a face familiar from enormous screens.

She’d often wondered, eyeing the tabloids in the checkout lines, what the celebrities on their covers really looked like. Without makeup and hair and lighting. Just like anyone else, she’d told herself scornfully. But no. This face and lips and chin spoke without speaking, invited without words, as if behind surface beauty lay another, transcendent, ageless, almost alien in its perfection. Tawny streaks gleamed within long black lashes, like the gems called tiger’s-eye. The curve of a full-lipped half smile was like the bestowal of a divine blessing.

Before she’d grasped it the moment was past. The actress was turning to Bodine, who’d hoisted himself into the sunlight and was leaning, artificial limbs sheathed in khaki Dockers, against a digital display sited to be visible from the large wheel aft. An identical pat on the shoulder, an identical smile. Behind her Eddi came jogging down the pier. She took in the logjam at the gangway, and stepped on a huge black rubber fender between the boat and the pier and vaulted aboard farther forward.