Far From The Sea We Know

by Frank Sheldon

  “How about you, Matthew?” Penny said, as she suddenly broke into an impossibly wide grin. “A cup of java will set you right.”

  “Well…”

  “As long as we’re at it,” Skimmer said, “you’ll find some doughnuts back there on the left in that carrier bag. You folks look like you’ve been in small planes before. Help yourself, as long as you’re sure you can keep it down. A guy I ran up last week had to speak to God on the great white telephone, only remember, I don’t have one.”

  Skimmer noticed the puzzled look on Matthew’s face. “A toilet, catch? Well, he couldn’t manage the bag I gave him so, instead, he lost his lunch right where you’re sitting, all over that seat. And guess who does cleanup later? Used that pet stuff, but it still might be a bit fragrant, sorry. Much obliged if you’d pour me a coffee. Cups are in there.”

  Matthew fished mugs out of an old toolbox Skimmer was using as a larder.

  “No cream for me,” Skimmer said. “Black and bitter, like my life. Hah!”

  Penny scrutinized the pilot intently for a moment. Then, with the hint of a look toward Matthew, she retrieved the paper bag and placed a doughnut, or Spudnut as the label indicated, on a paper napkin within Skimmer’s reach. She tilted the open bag toward Matthew.

  “No thanks.”

  “They don’t look too greasy,” she said, peering into the bag in the bright morning light. She took one and held out her other hand to Matthew. “Yeah, pour me a black one, too.”

  He filled her mug, managing to not spill a drop in the swaying plane, and then another for himself, ignoring the cream and sugar.

  “Coffee, black, all around,” Skimmer said as he lifted his mug in their direction. “Here’s to ya. Even warmer than I reckoned it’d be up here, so I’m going to open the window a tad. Holler, if it gets too much.” He turned back to the controls.

  After she finished her coffee, Penny started leafing through some papers in a soft leather case.

  “I found this last night and downloaded it,” she said, handing a small sheaf of papers to Matthew. “It’s from a research site I have access to, paid memberships only, highly reputable. This woman has been doing a study on reports of animals showing up in odd places. Places where they don’t belong. She must have great credentials or they would never have listed something like this. I suppose you could consider it a branch of cryptozoology. From what I can see, she did a quality investigation, well documented.”

  “I believe I heard about this somewhere,” Matthew said.

  “I doubt it.”

  “I did.”

  “Okay, you did. In any case, she was able to eliminate most reports right away: zoo escapes, hoaxes, and so on. The instances she was left with all involved highly credible people, some truly fascinating cases that no one has ever been able to explain. Would you believe kangaroos in Nova Scotia, for instance?”

  “Not unless they escaped from a zoo or something,” he said. He felt a slight sneer take over his face and wished it had not. “It’s just that I’m not really interested in the paranormal.”

  “Well, who but an idiot could be? The important point here is that others have described incidents similar to what you reported.”

  “If you can believe them.”

  “As I said, if you were listening, she only included reports from highly reliable people. Forest rangers, state troopers. In other words, people with training in observation. That makes this at least worth considering. We’re taking your report seriously, after all…”

  “Okay. Yes, you’re right. I didn’t get much sleep last night, sorry if I’m a little dull,” he said. “Maybe this coffee will help.” He poured the rest down his throat, grateful for once that it was not hot.

  Penny poured a little more in her mug and took her first bite of the doughnut.

  “Mmm, not bad at all,” she said. “Sure you don’t want to try some? Here.” She thrust her doughnut under his nose.

  “No, that’s okay.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She took another big bite and devoured the whole thing in two more mouthfuls.

  Matthew stared into his coffee for a moment, then looked up at her. She was watching his other hand, which had unconsciously rolled his napkin into a small tight ball.

  “Was there anything else of interest in this study?” he asked.

  “There were no cases of a witness to an animal’s appearance or disappearance, no case where someone saw that happen.”

  “Not surprising.”

  “What this researcher is documenting is only when an animal turns up someplace it shouldn’t. Not how it got there.”

  “Fine, but you don’t really believe they really teleport, do you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So, nothing new.”

  “No, but I’ve been thinking about how whales have the largest brains on the planet. And dolphins even larger compared to their body weight.”

  “It’s more complicated than brain to body weight.”

  “The old formulas for calculating intelligence capability are falling out of favor, and perhaps for good reason. I sometimes think they were simply cooked up to keep humans at the head of the intelligence ranking.”

  “When I hear that, I remember an old fisherman who told me, ‘If those dolphins are so smart, how come they keep getting caught in our nets?’ He’s right.”

  “There may be other orders of intelligence.”

  “I’m sure there are, but though we might wish it otherwise, man is unique on this planet.”

  “Uniquely stupid more often than not.”

  The effort to talk over the engine noise left little energy for getting mad. Her attitude was annoying. So much like his own. “Okay,” he said, rubbing his eyes with his fingers, “brain size used to be one of the arguments that dolphins are an intelligent species, perhaps as intelligent as man. Or even more. The evidence suggests, however, that their brains haven’t changed that much over the last seventy million years compared to land animals and in some important areas are poorly developed. Sure, dolphins are smart, just not as smart as some might like to believe. And gray whales are even further down the scale, at least compared with dolphins and killer whales—”

  “You mean ‘orcas’?”

  “‘Killer whale’ is the more common name.”

  “Aren’t they really dolphins?”

  She was right, of course. He took an overdue deep breath.

  “Yes, but ‘killer’ certainly fits. In packs, they are known to attack a gray whale, eating the fins, then the lips and tongue, their favorite parts. All this while the whale is still alive, and the attack can go on for hours before it dies. They kill without mercy, and perhaps not despite their level of intelligence, but because of it.”

  “Thanks for the lesson,” she said after a while.

  “I’m sorry, but people are always romanticizing these animals because they’re beautiful.”

  “And they have rarely, if ever, attacked humans in the wild. If they did,” she said, smiling, “they would have been wiped out years ago. Perhaps another indication of their intelligence?”

  “Folks,” Skimmer suddenly yelled over his shoulder, “we’re about five minutes from splash down at Victoria. Clearing customs shouldn’t take long. Penny, I was expecting the usual battery acid, but your coffee went down like silk.”

  “That’s because my mother made it.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Customs did go smoothly. Skimmer used the wait to fuel up, so they had time to grab some sandwiches. They were airborne again in less than half an hour.

  The de Havilland sailed north, swaying back and forth in the gusts coming off the mountains, sometimes suddenly but more often gently. Matthew was getting used to it, like the rocking of a cradle by an unseen hand. Between clouds and peaks, they steadily made way. Below them the coast of British Columbia unrolled and the sovereignty of towns and roads was gradually relinquished to what might still pass for true wilderness.

&nbs
p; “We’re not really getting anywhere with this,” Penny said. “We need to look at the best approach to the situation rather than try for explanations. We don’t have enough to play with yet.”

  “Some readings of the vital signs of the leader would help, and I’d certainly like to have a look at some skin samples.”

  “Wouldn’t all that be risky?”

  He shook his head. “A little, but the Valentina has equipment on board to monitor heartbeats from a distance. I’d be surprised if they weren’t already doing this. To get the tissue samples, we’ll have to get in tight and take a swipe.”

  “Do you have much real experience with this?” she asked.

  “That was all supposed to happen this next year.”

  “Okay,” Skimmer’s voice boomed. “We are about there. The weather is fine, as forecasted, so we’ll touch down no problemo. Check your seat belts, you never know, right? Don’t worry, no disasters planned for today.”

  Matthew’s ears popped as they plunged down toward a sheltered cove that seemed much too small for them to land safely. As if sensing his doubts, the cove seemed to suddenly grow wider before them, and the floatplane was soon slapping the tops of low waves. They settled in quickly against the drag of the water.

  “Made it again,” Skimmer said, leaning back toward them. He taxied the floatplane across the cove into the mouth of a small harbor and then to the only dock.

  Most of the harbor was naturally formed, a small cove within a larger cove. To close it off from the worst of the sea had required only extending the natural points of land. The slopes around them were thick with Douglas fir and cedar, but the crests of mountains beyond could still be seen rising up above the trees. It had the feeling of quiet, even though there were people working all around them. No one was idle, yet no one was rushing. Skimmer tied up the plane where the three could step directly onto a float.

  Skimmer got the passenger door open, and Matthew and Penny climbed out.

  “Okay folks, here comes your gear. One, two, one, two….” He began to pass baggage through the opening.

  Perched at the far end of the dock was a small cedar-sided café named Gabby’s. A few other buildings, houses, and shacks rested on nearby slopes where the land had been cleared of trees. Vessels in a variety of sizes, primarily for fishing, were resting at anchor. Others were pulled up onto the rocky scrabble of a nearby beach.

  “We need to contact the Valentina, right away,” Penny said as she put down the last bag. “Too bad we couldn’t have landed right by the ship.”

  “Much too rough out there,” Matthew said, his gaze on the ocean’s horizon.

  “I’ve done it before,” she said.

  “Then your pilot was nuts.”

  “Can you contact the Valentina, Matthew?”

  He said nothing.

  “Matthew?”

  He finally glanced toward her and nodded, and fished out the sat-phone.

  “Hope that thing works,” she said, as he hit a preset.

  “It’s ringing, so I guess—Hello?”

  Captain Andrew Thorssen’s voice came on the line surprisingly fast.

  “Captain here.”

  “Captain, it’s me, Matthew Amati.”

  “Where are you?”

  “We just landed at Abercrombie. How’s it going today?”

  “We’ll be coming by sooner than expected. About two hours, seventeen nautical miles out. Can you make it?”

  “It will be close, Captain, but I think we can. I’ll find the man who is going to take us out, right away.”

  “Good.”

  There was a noticeable pause, then Matthew let his breath out. “Can you say anything? I mean the whales—”

  “Wrong time.”

  “Okay, we’ll get out there when we can.”

  “Be looking,” Thorssen said, followed by a click. The call was over.

  “Is everything okay, Matthew?” Penny asked.

  “Not sure, but we’ve got to get moving,” Matthew said, almost whispering. “The Valentina is closer than we figured.” He turned toward her. “I’m going to run down that launch, if you can watch everything here.”

  “Go ahead, Matthew. I’ll be waiting up in the café.”

  “What about the gear?”

  “I can take care of it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Matthew, go.”

  “All right,” he said and spontaneously took her hand, then let it go. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  He was about to race up the gangplank from the float to the pier, when Skimmer called out to him. “Watch yourself out in the deep blue, folks.”

  The engine started on the last word, drowning out any possibility of a belated thanks, but Matthew waved and mouthed the words anyway.

  CHAPTER 7

  There was no one at the dock to meet them. Not a good sign. After asking around, Matthew finally found the son of the man who was supposed to take them out for the short trip to the Valentina. He was grinding paint off the sides of a wooden dory with a power sander, and without even glancing up as Matthew approached said, “Dad knows you’re coming.”

  Matthew guessed that the man was in his mid thirties, about the same age as himself. His bruised hands and arms told of someone who had spent a long time on the water. A deep scar lay across his left brow.

  “Do you know where your father is now?” Matthew asked. “We need to leave immediately.”

  The man looked him over, started brushing paint dust off the dory. “He knows about you. He’ll be here.”

  “Yeah, but when? Look, our ship is coming by earlier than we thought.”

  “Doing science out there, are you?”

  “Research, yes.”

  “Bet you’re a seal lover, eh? Tear up our gear and steal fish right out of our nets, but we’re supposed to just watch and appreciate. Between them or us, I pick us.”

  “We’re tracking gray whales. They don’t even feed when they migrate.”

  The man put the sander down and just stared at Matthew. Finally he said, “You know what it’s like now, trying to keep this going? Do we need more dumb-ass restrictions? It’s hard enough already, and every time those fools start in, sure as day, we got some new regulation, made up by some witless twerp who in his entire life has never fed anybody or done anything that people really needed. Then they all go to the supermarket and demand their ‘wild-caught’ salmon tidy wrapped in plastic like a chocolate so they don’t have to think about where it came from.”

  “Overfishing is the real problem, everybody knows that.”

  “And the regulation says we have to throw ’em back if the wrong fish winds up in the net, and those all die anyway, so what’s the point?”

  The sound of an engine, rolling across the water behind them, began to reverberate in Matthew’s gut as it grew louder.

  “That’s dad coming now,” the son spat out before turning away.

  The grinder resumed its tedious howl and Matthew was left staring at the son’s hulking back. He turned toward the approaching launch and waved, feeling like a tourist.

  After they talked, the father promised to be at the float in ten minutes. Matthew thanked him and ran back, but saw no sign of Penny or the gear. The café. She told him she would wait there.

  Gabby’s was more of a bar than a coffee place, which was not surprising, considering they were at the beginning of the real North. There was no espresso machine, but a respectable number of bottles lined the pine shelves behind the bar. The countertop itself was made of a single plank as thick as a fist and layered with polyurethane to fill its many scars. Penny was at a corner table, seated with two young men and a woman. Glasses, some already empty, were spread out in front of them.

  What was she doing?

  He let his breath go and walked over as slowly as he could.

  “Penny, we’ve got to go now. The boat’s coming.”

  She looked up, lifted a glass of whiskey to her lips and rolled it down, w
atching him the whole time.

  A hand caught his sleeve.

  “What’s the hurry, friend? Have one with us.” The man who spoke looked like an Inuit. He was short and stocky, with a big friendly face. The woman could have been his sister and the other looked barely out of his teens. They all gazed up at him, the liquor in their eyes making it seem they were looking straight through him.

  “No time, today,” Matthew said. “Sorry. Maybe on the way back. Penny, this is really going to be close, so—”

  “We’ll make it,” she said, and turned to the man who had spoken. “Normy, could you help with the gear again?”

  “Sure. We brought it here, now we bring it back. Like the tide.” He glanced over his shoulder at Matthew. “You gonna roll the bones with us, Professor?”

  Matthew’s smile disintegrated. The song on the jukebox had just ended. There was dead silence. The terror that had seized him on the Eva Shay inexplicably descended again. The world was dissolving around him, pieces falling out of place into an endless chaos of gray. Normy took his hand. His own was damp with cold sweat. He could see nothing, could only feel Normy’s hand, with only the heat of it keeping him from going under forever, and it now brought him slowly back. He felt grateful, but then the memory of it faded, and as if from a great distance, he heard Normy whisper, “You go deep, man…”

  As Matthew’s vision cleared, the faces around him came back into focus. All had puzzled looks, all except Normy.

  The moment passed and all the chairs started scraping back at once. He had his balance back but did not try to move yet. Penny left two twenties on the table as she got up. Everyone picked up a bag or two and filed out the door without a word. He picked up the last remaining duffel, but the heaviness of it oppressed him. He wanted to leave it behind, along with everything else. He stood for a moment, feeling detached and out of place.

  Penny was waiting for him at the door. “Are you okay?”

  In response, he hefted the bag’s strap to his shoulder and nodded to her to keep moving.