Song of the Sound

by Jeff Gulvin

  The cow was thirty yards from them, close to the shore in relatively shallow water. John-Cody could see the swelling in her belly and he knew the birth was imminent. A strange sensation crept up on him as first he trod water then followed Libby’s lead, finning below the great black whale as she blew hard on the surface: he had come here to kill himself and yet finally, through Libby, he had let Mahina go and now he was underwater again, only this time for birth, not death.

  The cow bellowed, the sound loud enough to make him wince, vibrating through the water as a cry of pain: the whale eased over on her side and then back again, rolling in the water so the wake washed out to knock both Libby and John-Cody backwards. They steadied themselves and saw another whale making its way through the depths. The two animals greeted each other, easing their flanks together, stroking with flippers and rolling. Libby was below them, treading water and filming. John-Cody held back slightly as she moved in closer, watching to see how the whales would react and if their presence would be tolerated or not. The helper, aware of them both, turned and swam towards them like a giant black wall filling the sea before them, then she stopped and hung where she was, the line of white callosities running the length of her jaw. She picked them out visually, her eye working round in its blubber-encased socket, and then she rose once more to attend the pregnant cow.

  John-Cody finned over to Libby and her eyes were wide and shining behind her mask. He indicated they should descend a little further and swim round so they were behind the two whales. They swam hard, finning down quickly, John-Cody checking the depth gauge and the time they had used already. The two whales were off Beacon Point, not far from the Hardwicke site, and John-Cody could feel a new and disturbing current working its way through the bay.

  Libby slowed and righted herself, camera ready and focused on the two whales. The attendant was swimming round the pregnant cow whose genital slit was expanded now, and Libby felt a rush of adrenaline as she realized the birth was upon them. The cow rolled again and moaned and Libby could feel her discomfort woman to woman. All at once she thought of Bree, wondering what she was doing at that very moment. The cow moaned again and slapped the water so hard the reverberation almost took the camera from Libby’s grasp. But she held on and as she did she saw the tail flukes of the calf appear through the expanding genitals.

  John-Cody stared at the unfolding drama. For a split second he saw Mahina again in Moby Dick’s eye telling him this was not his appointed time, that there was new life in the world; and he felt a sense of things ongoing, life and death, rebirth.

  The newborn calf was immediately attended by the midwife, then the mother herself turned to look at her baby. John-Cody watched and felt that something was wrong. Then Libby was clutching his arm and pointing: he looked again and realized that the baby was just lying in the water, not rising instinctively to the surface for that first vital breath.

  The midwife had backed off and now the mother swam below her calf, gently lifting it on her snout, coaxing it to the surface. But the infant did not move. It had to move in order to breathe, and needed to swim constantly until it developed enough blubber to keep it buoyant and close to the surface.

  But there was no downward sweep of new flukes, no thrust of the head with its array of whitened callosities. The mother lifted it, pressing the baby to the surface, and John-Cody watched with every muscle tensed. The calf didn’t breathe and when the mother let go it sank like a stone. He stared at the mother, underneath her baby once more and easing it back to the surface: still it would not breathe and the water enveloped it again.

  The mother tried repeatedly, but every time she let go the baby sank, the flukes were still and the infant sucked no life. Come on. John-Cody voiced the words in his head. Come on. You have to breathe.

  The mother nosed the calf to the surface again but when she left it, it sank. John-Cody felt Libby’s gloved hand on his arm and he tightened his own fist round the tangi-wai in his palm. Breathe. Goddamn you. Breathe.

  But the baby wouldn’t breathe, wouldn’t swim. Its flukes were still like old rubber, its flesh puckered and wrinkled and peeling, very pale in the blue green of the water.

  The midwife returned, nuzzling the mother and in her turn guiding the infant towards the surface. Between them the two whales tried again and again and again, the calf lying across their snouts at an odd limp angle as they eased it above the surface. The midwife backed off and the mother tried again on her own: but the calf rolled off her snout and began to sink. John-Cody stared and stared and felt the emptiness in his soul as the mother remained where she was, no longer moving in.

  And the calf jerked, swept down with its flukes and rose to the surface as if it had woken from sleep. The mother swam underneath as if she was unsure it could make it, but the calf swam and breathed and blew and dived and blew all over again. John-Cody clenched his fist round the teardrop stone. Libby swam up, still filming the whales but looking directly at him. She brought her face close and through her mask he could make out the tears in her eyes.

  A glance at his wrist told him it was time for them to ascend and together they rose, drifting in a cloud of bubbles till their heads broke the surface and they saw the calf blow from above. John-Cody tore his mask from his face and gulped air himself, lying on his back with Libby beside him, their gloved fingers entwined.

  He heard the whine of the dinghy’s outboard and saw Jonah tearing across the bay towards them. Instinct told him something was wrong. He and Libby swam towards the dinghy, drawing Jonah away from where the calf was now enjoying its first moments of life. Jonah spotted them and slowed and when he drew alongside John-Cody already had his tank unbuckled.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘The Moeraki.’ Jonah’s eyes were dark. ‘They called for help on the radio. Mayday and then nothing.’

  John-Cody hauled himself over the side.

  ‘Tom saw smoke on the other side of the point.’ Jonah gestured north across the bay and John-Cody gazed at the tendrils that lifted beyond Rapoke Point on the ocean side of Enderby Island. He had seen the like many times before and knew it could just be cloud, as it so often was down here. He stood up and shaded his eyes and saw the spirals moving on the wind and knew there was no way he could say for sure whether he was looking at wisps of cloud or smoke from a burning boat. Jonah was helping Libby over the side: John-Cody stepped to the helm and guided them back to the Korimako.

  In the wheelhouse he stripped off his wetsuit and stood in a soaking T-shirt and underpants. Tom came up from the engine room and John-Cody threw a towel round his shoulders and took the wheel, whipping it hard to starboard and piling on the revs. They could afford to drag a little so long as the anchor chain didn’t rake the hull. He stared at the sky, dark and brooding now above the harbour, and he knew the storm was gathering force. Libby frowned as they headed east out of Port Ross, looking at the gaps between the land that lay directly to the north.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be quicker to go straight up there?’ she asked.

  John-Cody spoke without looking at her. ‘Too dangerous, Libby, there’s no safe passage. We have to go the long way round.’

  His face was suddenly still as he felt the current surge westerly beneath his feet.

  ‘Which way is the wind blowing, Tom?’

  ‘From the east.’ Tom’s voice was grave and John-Cody looked at him, aware he felt it too, and the two men regarded each other and said nothing. John-Cody stood at the wheel and Libby passed him his jeans, which were lying on the bench.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked as he worked them over pale and frozen legs.

  ‘Get below, Lib. Try to raise the Moeraki.’

  Libby dropped down the aft steps and lifted the handset on the single-side-band radio. ‘Moeraki, Moeraki, Moeraki. This is the Korimako. Do you copy, over?’

  On the bridge John-Cody steered the Korimako at full speed towards the entrance to Port Ross and the North East Cape. Tom stood beside him and Jonah also and none of them spok
e as they saw the squalls baiting the sea to a fury beyond the point.

  ‘Any joy, Libby?’ John-Cody yelled down the steps.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Keep trying.’ He looked ahead then glanced at Tom. ‘Your boat,’ he said, left the wheel and stepped onto the deck. He stood a moment by the dive locker with the wind full in his face and watched the white-tipped waves dancing on the horizon. Experience told him the storm was off the North East Cape, running out a mile or so east and up the coast of Enderby Island. If they could skirt it they would be OK, but by then the Moeraki and her crew might be lost. He chewed his lip and considered. They had not got the aluminium shields up on the side windows and there was barely time now. He looked through the fuzzy perspex at Tom and their eyes met and held. John-Cody knew they were both thinking the same thing. They would have to risk the eye of the storm with a westerly current under their feet and an easterly full in their faces.

  The first big waves crashed over the bows as they hit the choppy water out of the lee of the point and John-Cody went back inside, worked his way to the aft steps and called down to Libby.

  ‘Brace yourself down there, Lib. This is going to be rough.’

  She glanced up at him and for a moment they just looked at each other and then she turned her attention back to the radio.

  John-Cody set the autopilot and signalled for Jonah to give him a hand with the aluminium shields. Tom joined them and they managed to secure the leeward side, then made their way round the stern to the windward, which would be far more difficult. They were beyond the North East Cape now and the sea swamped the deck. John-Cody slipped and slithered in his rubber boots and Jonah gripped the rail as they tried to manhandle the shield into place.

  ‘Give it up!’ Tom had his hand cupped to his mouth and screamed at them through the wind. Between them they managed to get the shield back leeward and stow it.

  The wind tore at the tussock grass on Enderby Island, so powerfully that it ripped great clumps from their roots, and they caught in twisters which carried them out to sea. The water was black and foaming and it crashed between the rocks lifting like scarred and broken teeth beneath the cliffs.

  The Korimako was tossed like a spinning top, barrel rolling from side to side as she ploughed into the wind and dipped into troughs where the waves reared above the deck and broke with a sound like gunshots. Below deck, Libby sat at the chart table, gripping with one hand and her knees while she tried in vain to contact the Moeraki. In the end John-Cody appeared above her.

  ‘Give it up, Lib. You won’t raise them now.’

  She came up to the bridge still wearing the nylon inner she wore under her drysuit, gripping the handrails on the steps for all she was worth as the boat lurched from side to side. The front windows were awash, opaque almost, and John-Cody was steering by the radar, the current running the keel like a switchback. Jonah had everything battened down in the galley, but the boat rolled and crockery shifted and stores rattled the doors of the lockers, pots and pans striking one another with a metallic clang that set Libby’s teeth on edge.

  They were approaching the eye of the squall now and Libby stared out of the starboard windows at the white-dusted whirlwinds twisting up from the wave tops: ghostlike and spectral they rose, swarming across the ocean as if in battle with one another. She moved next to John-Cody where he stood at the wheel with every muscle tensed, and gripped the top of the bench for support. Tom was in her place by the starboard door, resting his weight on the lip of the dashboard, feet rooted against the edge of the cold store behind him. Jonah sat at the table and held on.

  John-Cody peered through the water-washed windows and thought about the crew of the fishing vessel in trouble north of Enderby Island. He looked sideways at Libby.

  ‘When you were on the radio, did you hear any other vessel trying to make contact?’

  She shook her head.

  And then her eyes balled in their sockets and she stared past him and through the window at the massive wall of water rising right in front of them.

  John-Cody saw the look in her eyes and he twisted round and the breath stuck in his throat.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Then he was yelling, ‘Standing wave. Standing wave. Get back from the windows.’

  He had barely got the words out when Libby saw the white crust flake at the summit as the wave began to topple. Fifty feet or more it rose, obscured by the weight of the storm, and then it was rearing right in front of them.

  She had no time to move: the wave hit with a sound that split her eardrums. A great tearing crack, a rumble like thunder right overhead and she felt the rush of the wind and then explosions across the bows and tonnes and tonnes of water splintered the reinforced windows. For a second all she heard was a great rending sound, then the windows gave and she was slammed against the wall to the right of the aft steps. Gallons of water sucked the breath from her body. She was picked up, held for a second in fingers of ice, then tossed below with the sea pouring over her in a blast that raked her bones. She hit the floor and the water enveloped her in a darkness that filled her mouth, nose and lungs, stopping up her ears and blinding her so she floundered, kicking like a diver, hands out to protect her face.

  John-Cody dropped to his knees just before the wave hit and he grabbed the spokes of the wheel and held on. He felt Tom crash against him then he was gone and he held that wheel for all he was worth. The sheer volume of water dragged at him like decompression in an aircraft, hauling and clawing and tearing. It sucked and boiled, rushing in his ears, filling his mouth: he tasted blood and salt and thought for a moment he would drown. He felt the Korimako roll badly and for a terrifying second he feared she would capsize, but then she bobbed and he was thrown bodily sideways, hands torn from their grip as he crashed into the starboard door.

  The boat righted herself and instinct took over as he scrabbled for a handhold: grabbing the door to the switch locker, he held on. The water hissed around him as it poured back through the smashed windows and washed out of the scuppers. John-Cody got to his feet, freezing cold, the sea to his waist, and looked for the others. Tom was below deck for’ard and he bobbed at the top-of the steps, the cabins full of water. John-Cody grabbed him by the hair and hauled him up and he opened his eyes and coughed and spluttered, vomit mixing with the water. Jonah reared up from behind them, a cut above his eye, and dived for the bilge-pump switch. John-Cody heard it click and hum and thanked God as the pumps began to work.

  He looked for Libby but couldn’t see her and in the same moment he spun the wheel to port and turned the Korimako’s stern into the wind, pointing them back the way they had come. He stood as the water level dropped and they ran for shelter at full speed. He yelled at Jonah to hunt for Libby and moments later he appeared at the top of the aft steps pushing her before him. John-Cody stared at her, pale and shivering, the shock etched in her eyes.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he shouted above the noise of the pumps and the wind battering them now in the stern. Dumbly she looked back at him and then she nodded and her eyes fluttered, closed then open again and focused.

  John-Cody steered by the wheel, fighting both the current that was against them and the wind that was behind them now. They heeled and rolled, taking on more water: he lost his footing and dropped to one knee before righting himself. Below decks they were awash, the pumps barely able to cope. Speed was what they needed and he flattened the throttle and the engine rattled and hammered under his feet.

  ‘What on earth happened?’ Libby came alongside him.

  ‘We took a standing wave. A westerly current meeting an easterly wind, it pushed the water into a wall that built and built till gravity toppled it over.’

  Then he noticed that the compass head was gone, ripped away from the gimbal that mounted it on the dashboard. He stared at the global positioning system and the radar and both the screens were blank. The breath dried in his throat as he looked at the autopilot, where the bearings were spinning out of control.

  TWEN
TY-FOUR

  NED POLE LISTENED TO the radio reports in his office and chewed on a fingernail. He had heard the distress call go up from the Moeraki and Tom Blanch answer on the Korimako. That was all he had heard; checking with the skippers of his crayfish boats, he learned that that was all anybody had heard. He sat at his desk and gazed absently out of the window. Jane was on the phone to the US, discussing John-Cody Gibbs’s imminent departure. He heard her talking about the Korimako and the wharf and how the price ought to come right down. He wandered to the window where the rain was sheeting and stared at the back paddock where the three horses took shelter under the trees. Barrio whinnied, pawing the sodden ground: Pole had not ridden him since he had witnessed Hunter Caldwell on his back and memories of his son were fresh and raw and painful.

  Behind him Jane put the phone down. ‘All’s well,’ she said. ‘They want your plans on e-mail as soon as possible.’

  Pole squinted at her.

  ‘Your plans, Ned: for the sound. How it’s going to work. This is your baby, remember, your big chance to prove you can be a businessman after all.’ She looked at him with her head to one side, a little mockery in her eyes.

  ‘No-one can make contact with the Moeraki.’

  Jane lifted one eyebrow.

  ‘She’s a fishing boat, last position given as north of the Auckland Islands.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So she raised a Mayday call and was answered by the Korimako. Nobody’s been able to raise either boat since.’

  ‘So?’ Jane said again.

  ‘They could be lost, Jane.’

  Jane shrugged. ‘Oh well, that’ll save immigration the bother of deporting Gibbs.’

  Pole looked at her then and finally knew he hated her. ‘You’ve never been to sea, have you?’ he said.

  ‘No. And I don’t intend to go.’ Jane sat down at her desk and indicated his. ‘Perhaps you better get the plan on e-mail, Ned. We’ve got a home to save, remember?’