Far From The Sea We Know

by Frank Sheldon

  “Why?”

  “I called Harold’s Air Force liaison myself. To say their interest was acute wouldn’t be an exaggeration. I never got anything like a definite statement that our anomaly had anything to do with their testing something, just a slew of official-speak about security and ‘it would be premature at this stage,’ and so on. I didn’t tell them about your sighting, since they didn’t ask.” Bell smiled at this. “After all, you were not working for the Point at the time, were you? They said they would get back to us soon, and I feel they will.”

  The phone rang.

  “I’m expecting a call from Andrew Thorssen on the Valentina. They were on the way to find Lefty, to verify the location to see if she had really changed position so abruptly. Excuse me.”

  He picked up the phone. “Yes. Put him through.” There was a pause and then, “Martin here, Andrew. Well and good enough. I’m going to put you on the speaker. Yes. Matthew Amati who I told you about earlier. Pen is here as well. That’s right, hold on.”

  Bell searched for and finally pushed the right button.

  “Go on, we’re all listening now.”

  “Glad you made it home, Penny.” The voice was low and resonant even over the phone. Matthew had never met the Captain, but had seen and heard him many times on the old documentaries of the voyages of the Valentina.

  “Thanks,” Penny answered. “We’re all ears, Andrew.”

  “We made contact just before dark. Didn’t have much light to get any visual. It’s Lefty, though.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “No doubt.”

  Matthew looked at Penny, who looked at Bell. Her father nodded slowly and said, “Anything else?”

  “We were able to confirm the identity of some of the other grays before dark. Decided not to use lights. Didn’t want to disturb them. Still following their usual route to their Arctic feeding grounds. Some unusual behavior.”

  “Really?” Bell said, an anticipatory smile already on his lips.

  “A currently unrecognized member seems to be leading them in an extremely tight formation. Never come across this before.”

  “What does this new member look like?” Bell asked.

  Matthew waited, not knowing what he wanted to hear.

  “Largest gray whale I’ve ever seen, maybe seventeen meters or more.”

  “That’s still within its growth potential,” Bell said. “At least in theory.”

  “What color is it?” Matthew asked, not being able to restrain himself any longer.

  “Hard to say. The sun was going down. The usual color.”

  Matthew slumped, not sure whether he felt relieved or let down.

  “Was already getting dark. We’ll have a better look tomorrow. Going to try infrared scanning tonight.”

  “That makes sense. We’ll talk in the morning, yes?”

  “Sure will. Good night, all.”

  There was silence as each sifted through the new information.

  “It brings in more questions than answers, doesn’t it?” Bell said. “Still, we have now a confirmed sighting of Lefty. If we compare another sighting we had of her two days before yours, Matthew, it fits the original tracking data perfectly. Somewhere between these two sightings, an unusual whale arrives on the scene and something like a family pod is formed, rather than the typical, random behavior of migrating grays. Then, it appears, they take just a minute to move north a distance that would usually take them a day or more, and go on with their migration.”

  “But the leader isn’t purple,” Matthew said.

  “Well?” Bell said as he leaned back and glanced at his daughter. He seemed as much at ease with all the ambiguity as he was half reclining on the couch.

  Penny turned her gaze inward for a moment, then said, “My take on it is, be careful not to discard what doesn’t fit the picture. I have a hunch that what Matthew saw and what Andrew reported about this lead whale still fits, despite the seeming color discrepancy. Maybe the color was a temporary thing. We need more time and a closer look. The Air Force’s acute interest in Harold’s inquiry seems odd.”

  “Did they in any way indicate that they thought Lefty might have moved?” Matthew asked. “The apparent displacement, I mean?”

  “Not from their questions,” Bell said. “I would say their concern revolved around what could throw off our tracking signals.”

  “Perhaps they’ve been having problems of their own,” Penny said.

  “Could be,” Bell said. “Or perhaps Harold was right, and they are testing something. Matthew’s right. I doubt if they have even considered the possibility that Lefty’s position really shifted. At the time, the only rational thing to conclude was instrument error, wasn’t it?”

  Bell got up and slowly circumnavigated the room. His broad smile reminded Matthew of Penny’s. He returned and stood behind his chair, his hands resting on its back.

  “I’d like very much for the two of you to go onboard the Valentina. I need to get your impressions. I know it’s not a small thing to ask, and I’d certainly like to go myself, but not at this time. I want to be here when we give the Air Force what we have to give them. I do not have a completely good feeling after that dolphin business a few years ago.”

  He looked at Matthew. “Don’t worry about your courses. They owe me a favor over there, and I think I can take care of it without any problem. Even get you your onboard credit early!”

  This would not really be making Matthew’s life easier, but he only hesitated an instant. Still, it shocked him to hear his own voice saying, “Yes, I can go.”

  Penny did not even need to say that she was coming.

  They spoke briefly of arrangements for the next morning. Bell called a man he knew who would come on short notice with a floatplane. The pilot agreed to fly them north to Charlotte Island, off British Columbia. There was a village called Abercrombie with a cove just large enough for the floatplane to set down. In the morning, Bell would call the Point and have them arrange for a local from the village to take Matthew and Penny from Abercrombie out to the Valentina in a small boat. If all went well, they would rendezvous about fifteen kilometers off the coast.

  “You had better be on your way home,” Bell said to Matthew. “Get some sleep.”

  As Matthew was getting his jacket on by the front door, Margaret Bell insisted he take home the rest of the pie. She handed it to him in a bag, already prepared.

  “Makes a lovely breakfast,” she said.

  This touched him unexpectedly, and he did not quite know what to say. Finally he managed, “I don’t usually have the opportunity for an evening with family. I’ll never forget the wonderful meal.”

  Margaret Bell smiled. “Come out again, won’t you? That is, if Martin ever gives you any time off.” She put her arm around her husband. “He’s relentless when he’s on to something.”

  Bell gazed at her as she spoke, obviously still in love.

  Penny began to walk away but glanced at Matthew over her shoulder. “Good night. See you in the morning.”

  “Yes. Good night.”

  But she was already gone.

  CHAPTER 5

  Matthew slept that night in a cheap boarding house near the Point. He had an arrangement to use a small room three or four days a week. This saved him traveling back and forth for lectures and classes, but it never felt like home.

  Just before his alarm went off in the morning, something pulled him with a start from a troubled sleep. Already five o’clock, but felt more like the middle of night. The spring break had allowed him to make extra money fishing but had prevented him from catching up on his sleep. He had already received an extension on some of his school projects, and now he would be missing classes. Doctor Bell’s assurances the night before, that he would square things with his professors seemed vague in the early light of morning. No way to back out now, though, so he pulled himself up from bed and got ready.

  He drove out to meet the floatplane, munching on the leftover pie Ma
rgaret Bell had given him the night before. Doubts came drifting back and took their well-worn place at his side. How easily he had jumped on board, not taking even a moment to think it through. Even though he had been asked to go, if the quest proved a fruitless, it was hard to believe that there would be no costs.

  As he drove, his thoughts wandered to a trip he had made with his parents as a boy. They had gone on a short holiday and had taken him to the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. He had stood for a long time, transfixed, in front of one particular exhibit. It demonstrated the predictability of what seemed at first to be random actions. A steady cascade of marbles tumbled down a peg-strewn board. Bouncing in all directions off the pegs, the marbles finally landed wherever they might. Collectively, however, they always filled up the same space in the end: a symmetrical shape painted on the board. From high in the middle, the curve tapered out to nothing at the sides. The inevitability of this outcome, repeated over and over, seemed to make a mockery of the freedom of the marbles’ fall.

  To break his mood, he scanned back and forth along the road and adjusted the rearview mirror. The memory lingered, however, of the pattern repeating itself endlessly, the outcome never exactly the same, yet in some depressing way, always the same.

  Matthew turned down a small hill, slowed the pickup and coasted to a stop. The inlet was before him, quiet in the lingering haze. As well as being close to the Bells’ house, it was convenient for the pilot who would be taking them north. Leaving from here would save them valuable time, and they should be standing on the deck of the Valentina before the end of the day. He looked at the cheap digital watch he had glued onto the dashboard of his old truck, then gazed up through his open window. He heard nothing, and saw but a few clouds that were already taking their leave. Sunlight, breaking though in the distance, briefly illuminated the headlands to the west.

  He slowly scanned the entire inlet, enjoying the moment of peace, comfortable to be alone until his mind wandered back to Penny. He looked again at the watch on the dashboard and hoped she won’t be late.

  Then an arm cut through the water’s surface from below, shimmering in the sun like liquid glass. It was Penny. He got out of his truck and watched as she sliced through the wavelets with long, well-paced strokes. There were no other cars in sight, so someone must have dropped her off earlier. Now he noticed her gear, lying in the tall grass near an outcropping of rock by the water’s edge. She was heading straight to it.

  Matthew walked over to wait for her, but she was there before he was.

  “Morning,” he said, stepping onto the small rock ledge. “Chilly in there?”

  She said nothing, seemingly oblivious to him. How could she stand the cold? He offered her a hand, but she ignored it and with her arms and a quick kick, sprang up out of the water onto the rock like a seal. Her black bathing suit clung to her body like a second skin, completing the effect. Gooseflesh prickled her arms and legs. She looked up at Matthew, squinting through water that ran down her forehead and face in gleaming rivulets. Suddenly, she shook her head and hair, sending sprays of water everywhere including into his eyes.

  “That woke me up,” she said. “How you doing?”

  “Fine, I guess,” he said, opening his eyes again. “Fine.”

  “Maybe you could hand me my towel.”

  He looked around, back and forth until she said, “You’re standing on it.”

  “Oh, sorry…here.”

  The low rumble of an engine came faintly to their ears at first, but continued to get louder until a floatplane appeared over the trees to the north. It circled around just once and made a lumbering, yet elegant, descent into the waiting water.

  “That thing looks as old as my grandmother,” Penny said, towel-drying her hair.

  “It’s a de Havilland. You still see them, especially north of here.”

  “Great. Will it get us there?”

  “Built like a bridge. It won’t be all that swift, but it should get us there all right.”

  The pilot taxied toward them, then let off the throttle, the propeller now moving so slowly that it was visible, and the canoe-sized twin pontoons sank deeper into the water.

  “I should wade out to help him,” Penny said. “I don’t think he’ll make it.”

  “Oh, he will. Anyway, he’s got a paddle strapped on, see there?”

  The engine cut out and the door opened to reveal a reedy character with a high altitude sunburn and a manic smile hiding in a beard. He leaned out and gave a wave, then scampered down to the nearest pontoon in one practiced movement. To Matthew, the pilot looked like Charles Manson in hip boots.

  When the plane had drifted close enough, the pilot leapt off into the shallow water and allowed the plane to beach itself on the gravel. Then he pushed the tail around so that the plane faced away from them.

  “See?” Matthew said. “We won’t even have to get our feet wet. Okay, let’s…”

  Penny began passing her gear to the pilot before the end of his sentence.

  His bags!

  They were still in his truck, and he raced off to get them.

  By the time he got back, they had loaded Penny’s things and were waiting only for him. Penny now stood on the pontoon near the passenger door. He passed her his big duffel first.

  “Got it?”

  With some effort, she heaved it half into the doorway and held it while the pilot got a grip on the other end.

  “Sorry,” Matthew said. “Too many books, I guess.” But she was listening to the pilot speaking and didn’t seem to hear him.

  A sun break opened in the clouds, sending a dazzle of light off the water into his eyes. Suddenly he had that familiar feeling. Why had he involved himself and why, again, was he risking all that he had worked so hard to attain?

  “Matthew?”

  “Yeah,” and he reached for the closest of his remaining bags.

  “No, the other one next,” the pilot said. “I got a ton of junk I’m taking up for someone else, but we’ll squeeze it all in, I guess. Going fishing? Where’s your boat? I could strap it on for a little extra. Drag, you know, uses more fuel, got to at least pretend I’m running a profit-making business. I’m Brian, but everyone calls me Skimmer. Not my idea, they just do ’cause I clip a few trees now and then, have to if you want to get into the short strips…”

  He kept up this stream of jabber, as they secured the last of the gear with chains.

  “That all of it, friends?”

  “Yeah,” Matthew said, “I guess. I’ll just do the idiot check.”

  He ran to his truck and, sure enough, found his hat and sunglasses. Penny probably hadn’t forgotten anything. He left the keys under the seat, hoping that Doctor Bell would remember to have his truck picked up, then raced back to the plane.

  “Watch your head as you get in,” the pilot said, as Matthew stepped on a pontoon. “My last passenger cracked his a good one.”

  Penny sat tying her sneakers and did not look up as he stuck his head in. Matthew looked toward the back, where their gear had joined a larger conglomeration of just about everything imaginable. Though piled on and wedged in between the seats, it looked like the weight of the load was in balance. Only three seats, including the one next to the pilot, remained free.

  Matthew took the seat next to Penny, easing himself in behind the pilot, who was flipping switches and checking his gauges.

  Penny was still in her swimsuit and was already strapped in with her clothes on her lap. Though she must have been cold, Matthew could feel the heat from her body.

  “Somewhere back there, there’s a blanket if you need it,” Skimmer said. “Miss, you’re a tough one to take a plunge this early. It shouldn’t be cold upstairs, though. Won’t be flying much over a thousand. I got so used to staying low because of the weather around here, and I get nosebleeds if I go any higher. Joke, that last one. Looks good today, though, lucky for us, and yeah, wear the headset next to you, or you won’t be able to hear a thing over the engine.”r />
  Then he just sat there, grinning at them, as unmoving as a gargoyle. Finally, he said, “Just waiting for the word, mon Capitan.”

  “You have it.”

  “So, okay,” he said, hitting a few more switches. “We’ll set down briefly at Victoria to clear customs and—hey! What, this again?” He knocked his knuckles a few times on the instrument panel. “I guess we can live with it. Okay, here we go.”

  Skimmer gave the wobble pump a stroke to get the fuel moving, then hit the starter. The propeller kicked over slowly, then seemed to start firing one cylinder at a time, wheezing puffs of blue smoke for a few turns, until the engine settled into a slow, lazy idle. The motor sounded healthy, Matthew was glad enough to admit. He buckled his seat belts.

  Out the window, Matthew saw a wedge of geese coming up across the inlet. Their honking was not audible over the engine, but he could imagine the sound.

  “Okay, folks,” Skimmer said. “Here we go, off into the great and wild blue! Hang on and keep cool. Ah, warm’d be better, I guess, kind of cool up there…”

  Skimmer gave the engine full throttle and Matthew was glad to have the headset against the noise. Nevertheless, the sonorous thrum of the engine vibrating through his rib cage was some solace to his doubts about the pilot. The aircraft, at least, was well maintained.

  They started moving, slowly at first, then quickly came up to speed as the pontoons began to lift from the embrace of the water. The slight feeling of release of suction as they broke free was familiar to Matthew from the few other trips like this he had taken. Skimmer pulled up toward the sun as if it might be their true destination before finally leveling out to a northern heading.

  No one had said a word for the first twenty minutes of flight. Penny reached into a rucksack stashed near her seat and pulled out a thermos.

  “Like some coffee, Skimmer?” she said.

  “I usually suck on grapes to save wear and tear on the ol’ bladder. But I guess it won’t be too long before we set down at Victoria for customs.”