The Emissary

by Patricia Cori

  While Jamie was lost somewhere in thought, drifting around between the waves and the clouds, trying to get a better view of the whales through her zoom lens, she heard the Zodiac approaching the ship and then what sounded like a winch, hoisting it back onto the platform on the lower deck. Minutes later, Sam and Liz reappeared from the stairway, carrying their fins and dive masks. Liz was noticeably upset. She handed her gear to Sam, and walked right up to Jamie.

  “Did you see us out there? We were surrounded by at least twenty bottlenose dolphins.”

  “No! Where were you? I was watching Fin right near the ship—he had three or four of them with him. I never saw you.”

  “How could you have missed us? We were only about three hundred feet away—starboard.” As she stood dripping water from her wetsuit, Liz started shivering. “The water is freezing cold.”

  Jamie pointed out to sea. “Look out there—I’ve seen three spouts so far … are they Orcas?”

  Liz didn’t even turn to look. “They were behaving so strangely. I’ve never been afraid around dolphins before.”

  Jamie didn’t say anything, but she couldn’t understand how anyone could ever be “afraid” of dolphins.

  Sam walked up behind her with a big beach towel that he’d pulled from the hatch and he handed it to Liz. “I tried to tell her she was just freaked out over Jimbo’s ‘Tales of the Deep’ last night,” he said.

  Liz snapped at him. “No, that’s not it at all. I’m telling you they were aggressive—I felt threatened out there.”

  He went back to the locker and was quick to unzip the back of his wetsuit and step out of it, showing off his noteworthy physique. Dismissing Liz’s concern, he called out to her, teasingly. “Maybe they were in the middle of a mating dance. You know what they say about dolphins.”

  Liz was no longer in flirtation mode and she was put off by his cavalier attitude about something that clearly had her so upset. “Sam! I dive all the time and I’ve never experienced anything like this. It was almost as if they were trying to trap me in their circle … it was just too weird.”

  “Where was Sam?” Jamie asked, just ever so accusingly. “Weren’t you there?”

  “I couldn’t even see him. I was just surrounded by these huge creatures, swimming around me in circles.”

  Sam became defensive. “I was right there—you just got overwhelmed for a moment, that’s all—a little disoriented. It can be intense when you find yourself in the middle of a pod, miles away from shore.”

  “You’re not listening!” Liz replied, sharply.

  “Whoa, you can lighten up a little bit,” he said. “It was no big deal.”

  Jamie knew it was a big deal. “They were agitated out there with Fin too.”

  “Well, there you have it,” Sam said, with finality. “Mystery solved. Fin must have spooked them.”

  Jamie thought about it a moment. “Jimbo says Fin’s been swimming with dolphins since he was a pup. They came calling for him, that’s what it seemed like, and when he went out they welcomed him—I watched when he swam out. And besides, they were talking to him like they knew him … playing … but then, suddenly, something set them off.”

  Sam walked over to the locker to hang up his wetsuit. “Right,” he said, under his breath. “They were having a little coffee klatch, talking about the latest in sardine sandwiches.”

  When he came back over to them, Liz turned her back, gesturing to him to unzip her. “That is the first time I’ve ever been scared around dolphins … that’s all I know.” She peeled off the wetsuit, and wrapped herself in the towel, standing there, shivering, from more than just the cold.

  As Sam walked back again to the lockers, carrying her wetsuit, she whispered to Jamie, “I can’t really explain it, but something very strange was going on out there—it was otherworldly.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Jamie could see how deeply shaken Liz was.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t sense what was happening,” said Liz.

  “My focus was on Fin.” Squinting from the sun reflecting against the water and the ship’s sleek white walls, Jamie held her hand over her eyes to shield them. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Yes, sure … I’m fine,” said Liz. But she wasn’t.

  The dining bell rang. It was time to go in for lunch and Jamie was hungry, having missed breakfast.

  Sam came back with a big fleecy jacket for Liz, which was so huge on her she nearly disappeared into it. “We need to dry off and get dressed for lunch.”

  “You could use a bowl of hot soup, too,” Jamie suggested. “I’ll ask Alberto if he can whip something up for you.”

  Liz walked away with Sam, looking back over her shoulder at Jamie, quizzically. Jamie picked up her camera again and took one more look at the whales through the zoom. There were four spouts now, as far as she could make out.

  “I am here for you, my beauties,” she spoke, her words floating like thought bubbles over the ocean’s spray. “Don’t let the disguise of this ship fool you.”

  A second bell rang, calling everyone to lunch.

  The table was loaded with a scrumptious smorgasbord of Italian food: Italian panini, a huge bowl of homemade potato salad, a platter of antipasto, and steamed broccoli. Once Jamie sat down, a uniformed waiter came from the galley with a beautiful plate of grilled fresh vegetables and a side dish of couscous—really beautiful vegetarian fare. She was amazed and relieved to see that the personality of the ship and the crew seemed to have shifted, and everything seemed more professional—and cohesive. Alberto, also uniformed, came from the galley with a pitcher of freshly made lemonade, which he placed at the center of the table.

  “Miss Jamie,” he said, pointing to the waiter, “I present you our steward, Domenico.”

  Jamie smiled at Domenico, intrigued by his classic dark Sicilian features and beguiling smile.

  “You didn’t meet him last night. You see, his wife is pregnant … any day now, eh, Domenico? So that is why he wasn’t with us when you came aboard.” Domenico disappeared back into the galley and Alberto took his place at the table, next to Jamie. One by one, the other members of the crew arrived, with the exception of Brady, on duty at the helm. Liz was still uneasy about what had happened out in the water; she was off in a cloud of her own, working through it all in her mind. Fin lay in front of his full dish of food across the room … he clearly had not touched it. His head was down on the floor, and he seemed indifferent to everyone there—even to Jamie.

  Jimbo came in last, as usual. The first thing he noticed was that Fin hadn’t eaten. “What the devil’s gotten into you, boy?”

  Fin lifted his head listlessly, and then sank it back down between his paws, weighted to the floor.

  “Hmmm. He’s always ravenous after a swim. I guess after that shrimp feast, this dry dog food just ain’t cuttin’ it.” He patted his dog on the head and then took his place at the head of the table, heartily helping himself to a heaping portion of potato salad and an Italian sausage sandwich the size of a small submarine.

  Jamie was pleased to see that no alcohol was served.

  All through lunch, Fin’s abnormal behavior held everyone’s attention. One minute he was lifeless and despondent, glued to the floor, and the next he was restless and edgy, a cycle that continued repeatedly throughout the meal. Towards the end, he sat next to Jimbo and started barking, incessantly, and then walked to the door, looking back to see if anyone was following—back and forth, repeating the behavior over and over again, waiting for Jimbo to get the hint and follow him outside.

  Jamie excused herself and walked over to him, at the doorway. “He wants to show you something out there, Captain,” she said, in full support of Fin.

  “Yeah, I know what he’s whining about—there’s more damned dolphins out there,” he said, throwing his napkin onto the table. “All right, boy … hold your horses.” Jimbo grabbed his cigar case and then he and Jamie followed Fin o
ut the door, where Fin immediately returned to the railing, crouching down with his head wedged in the drain, between the railing wall and the deck floor. He stared out at the water, whining.

  Jamie and Jimbo both looked out over the waves, but there was nothing there. “Sometimes, I worry he’s gonna jump in when I’m not looking, and never come back.” Jimbo took a cigar from the case and lit it. “I don’t think I could live with myself if that ever happened … you know? Fin’s my boy—he’s my family.”

  That same loneliness that Jamie had seen in Jimbo the night before washed over him again, unconcealed and unapologetic, as if that part of him wanted to be found. “Whom had he lost along the way, besides himself?” she wondered. It was his sadness, but still it rolled through Jamie in waves: the empathic chill of her heightened sensitivity. That was the double-edged sword of psychic vision and no, she couldn’t turn it off, no matter how much she willed it sometimes—no matter how terrifying or painful it was to “see,” or to hear the whispers of spirits lost in transit … and worst of all, to feel the suffering of others in her own skin.

  Sam had to choose that moment to burst through the door, charging right over to them with the sensitivity of a raging bull, breaking the intimacy of that gentle flow of energy between them. “Captain, when you’re ready to roll, just give me a thumbs-up.”

  Jimbo looked at Jamie, acknowledging something he wasn’t even sure he could put into words, but she knew. Words were not needed. “Yeah, I suppose it’s time to get to work.”

  “Miss Hastings, I’ve been instructed to prepare a briefing for you on the technological capabilities of the ship. Liz says she’s already shown you where things are located on upper deck, so when you’re free—you know where to find me.”

  How different Sam was in Jimbo’s presence. Jamie figured he was just covering his back, in case she decided to make a complaint against him with the captain or higher up, to Mat Anderson. But that wasn’t it at all. He was always respectful around the captain, and she just happened to be there.

  When she got to the computer room, Jamie found Sam seated before an array of monitors and more high-tech computer equipment than she had ever seen in her life. Liz was beside him, her chair just a little too close to his—too intimate. They were engaged in a discussion about some sort of wave patterns—something way over Jamie’s head—when she interrupted them. Sam got up to get her a chair, while Jamie stared in bewilderment at the complex array of strange gadgets and equipment. “The captain said to put all the tools at your disposal, so here they are,” he said. “Everything but the actual navigation of the vessel itself is directed from here.”

  “It’s not as complicated as it looks,” Liz said, reassuringly.

  “All of this to run this ship? Amazing …”

  “All of this in search of oil,” he said, correcting her. “Where would you like me to start?”

  “I’d like to know more about the sonar equipment—that’s what concerns me the most.” Jamie took her seat slightly behind the two of them. “You’ll need to bear in mind that my technological savvy is limited to sending the occasional email.”

  “That’s like asking me to explain how to fly a 747 to a guy who never learned how to ride a bike.”

  “Well, I guess your boss has faith in you, Sam—so show me how to fly.”

  He swiveled his chair around so that he was looking at Jamie as he spoke. He seemed more professional now that he was in uniform, in his business environment, and assuming authority over his area of expertise: not that he was by any means more likable. “If you’ll tell me what you are specifically interested in knowing, I’ll do my best not to get into the minutia of how it’s managed technologically.”

  “Fair enough,” said Jamie. “Talk to me about the sonar equipment.”

  “Can you be a little more specific?”

  “I want to know how sonar is being used in the ocean, and how effective it is in searching for substrata oil deposits.”

  “Right. I’ll try to keep it as simple as possible. ‘Sonar’ is an acronym for ‘sound navigation ranging.’ We send a pulse into the water—we call it ‘pinging’—and it bounces back off objects in the water, natural or otherwise, and from the ocean floor.” He typed something on the keyboard and a series of data, unintelligible to Jamie, appeared on the screen. “The problem is it’s deep, and we get a lot of false readings from stuff in between.”

  “Stuff? You mean like whales, navigating their waters?” Jamie interrupted, sarcastically.

  Sam ignored her. “And then there’s the problem that there’s rough terrain down there, so we get these echoes from all over, at many different angles. They bounce off the valleys and hills and cave openings, which causes a lot of distortion and misreads.” He played around with the keyboard commands and a complicated chart appeared on a different monitor. “So, basically, we measure how deep an object is, or how deep the seafloor is, by how long it takes these ultrasonic waves to hit and come back up to the surface, where the equipment monitors the exact depth, based on a ratio of that return.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “The Deepwater is equipped with what we call a COTS-based, open-systems architecture that the Navy employs on all U.S. combat submarines.” He typed COTS on the keyboard and now a complete manual of information appeared on the monitor in front of Jamie. “We can create and utilize very intricate algorithms, which give us a much broader scope and allow us to create our own digital maps of the ocean floor.”

  “Whoa! Now you’ve lost me,” said Jamie. She simply couldn’t get her mind around science—especially the science of the military.

  “There are basically two kinds of sonar: passive, which just listens, and active, which is basically what the Navy uses in antisubmarine tracking and other military applications. That’s what we’ve been using to get down there.”

  “You use military-capacity sonar testing?” Jamie shrieked.

  “Well, yeah. This is an oil company research vessel. We’ve got state-of-the-art equipment on this baby.”

  “But it’s been reported that Navy sonar tests are making the whales insane and driving them to suicide!”

  Liz spoke out, almost defensively, on Sam’s behalf. “Actually, Jamie, that is a matter of conjecture. I mean, it certainly hasn’t been proven.”

  “What kind of proof do we need? We know that a lot of mass strandings happen immediately following some of those military sonar blasts. You’re telling me this ship uses the same-force equipment?”

  “Hold on. We work with ELFs—extremely low frequency waves. They operate at around three hundred hertz … not like the big guns the Navy is using. Hell, they use MFAS! That operates between three and four thousand hertz.”

  “Sorry,” said Jamie, “but can we speak English here?”

  “Mid-frequency active sonar. Now that shit is bad for the whales.”

  “So you’re telling me that private corporations are free to use this killer military equipment to chart the ocean floor? That’s outrageous!”

  “Well, we’re not just looking at the seafloor—that’s already been mapped out. We’re looking for oil deposits, don’t forget.”

  “I surely won’t.”

  “We also utilize special seismic air gun equipment, better known as the ‘towed air gun array.’ ”

  “Oh, my god. What is that?”

  “Didn’t Mat Anderson brief you at all on what we’re doing out here?”

  “The only brief I got from Mat, to be honest, was how the Deepwater operation was failing,” Jamie retorted. “Now what about this ‘air gun’ whatever-it-is system?”

  “Imagine a large piston with a plunger that discharges compressed, high-pressure air bubbles into the ocean—a powerful sound base. That’s why it’s called the ‘air gun.’ It’s a little hard to explain to a layman. Sorry … I mean ‘laywoman.’ ”

  Jamie shook her head in aggravation. This kid simply could not avoid making his digs, no matter what.

  “This creates
what we call a ‘pressure wave field,’ which gets pushed downward, actually beneath the seabed, and moves through the deeper earth below it—and then eventually reflects back up to the surface.”

  “That’s got to be great for the whales and dolphins.”

  “High-level hydrophones record sound signals as they are reflected through rocky sublayers of the seabed. And we get an idea of density, cavities, and potential oil deposits from reading the signals.”

  “Good god,” said Jamie. She had such a sense of dread over just this hint of what she was up against, in her fight for the whales and dolphins. Imagine what the big picture was really like! “All of this disruption of such sacred space.”

  Liz could feel Jamie’s angst intensifying. “I don’t think Jamie needs all the intricate details.”

  Sam exploded. “Sacred space—the oceans of this planet? You are so out of touch with reality! No offense, but what did you think goes on day and night, everywhere around this big globe? There is no sacred space left out there in the ocean. You’ve got global fishing on a massive scale, the cruise industry and private recreational boats, jet skis, and what have you …”

  Jamie cut him off mid-sentence. “You can stop there—I get your point.”

  “I’m not done yet. Then there are your military vessels and operations, major international naval testing and reconnaissance, oil drilling, oil-research sonar-testing vessels. It’s a virtual disco inferno down there. It just goes with the territory.”

  “Whose territory are we talking about? As I recall, the oceans are the ‘territory’ of the beings that inhabit it … not humans and our over-the-top military-style bombardment of the waters—and not oil-hungry corporations sucking the life out of the planet, and filling the oceans with their ineptitude.”

  Sam put his head to the desk, pretending to bang it against the surface. “Oh, please! Tell me I don’t have to apologize on behalf of the company for all the evils perpetrated on the oceans.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt for you to stop and think about what you are doing to contribute to their destruction.”