24

"I can't hear them," Max said.

Two hundred yards ahead, a pod of humpback whales was moving leisurely northward.

"You might if you were underwater," said Chase.  "You could hear them for miles."

"But if they sing..."

"It's not really singing, we call it that because we don't know how else to describe it.  They don't actually have voices.  They make sounds with a mechanism inside their heads.  And they don't do it all the time."

They stood on the flying bridge.  The boat was idling in neutral, bobbing slowly in the ocean swells.

The great gray bodies rolled through the sea, displacing mountains of water with their huge bulbous heads, displaying vast flat tail flukes fifteen or twenty feet wide, spouting geysers of misty breath into the warm air.  There were adults and young, males and females, but it was impossible to count them, for every so often one or two would slap the surface three times with their tails and then disappear in a deep dive, to reappear long minutes later in some unpredictable position among their fellows.

"What does their song say?" Max asked.

"For a long time, nobody knew; all they knew was that the whales were communicating, maybe talking about where they were going or where there might be food or if they sensed any danger.  All whales communicate; I've heard that blue whales can keep in touch with each other over a thousand miles of open ocean.  Humpbacks, though, are the only whales that sing in such a complex series of sounds and tones.  Now scientists are pretty sure that the song of humpbacks is sexual, that the males sing to attract the females."  Chase smiled.  "I like to think they're wrong, that the song is still a mystery."

"Why?"

"Mysteries are wonderful things.  It would be boring to have all the answers.  It's like the Loch Ness monster, I hope they never find him, either.  We need dragons to keep our imaginations alive."

"Max!" Amanda called from the stern.  "Come on down and get Harpo ready."

Max walked aft on the flying bridge and climbed down the ladder into the cockpit.

Three of the sea lions had been fitted with harnesses, and secured to each harness was a video camera whose lens pointed forward.  The fourth animal shifted nervously from side to side as if confused.

Amanda handed Max the fourth harness and showed him how to fit it around the sea lion's shoulders, along its belly, behind its flippers and over its back.

As Max slipped the leather straps over the silky skin, the sea lion nuzzled him with its icy nose and tickled him with its whiskers.

Amanda attached the camera and called up to Chase.  "All set."

Chase looked out at the ocean.  Everything seemed normal, peaceful.  And yet..."

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked.  "We have three months."

"Yeah, but we won't get whales every day.  Let's go."

"Okay, it's your call.  How close do you want me to get?  I don't need to break federal laws about harassing whales."

"Not too close.  The important thing is for us to get in front of the whales so the sea lions don't get pooped trying to catch up with them."

Chase put the boat in gear and accelerated, keeping well away from the whales so as not to alarm them with his engine noise.  On a  day this calm, there would be no problem keeping the whales in sight; their tail flukes and spouts would be visible for a mile or more, so he traveled what he judged to be five hundred yards in front of them before throttling back and letting the boat idle.

In the stern, the four sea lions were poised behind one another like school children lined up for lunch.  Amanda spoke to each one and made a series of gestures before switching on the video camera and sweeping her arm toward the opening in the transom.  Max stood behind her, mimicking her gestures.

One by one, the sea lions waddled to the stern and flung themselves into the ocean.

When they had all surfaced behind the boat, Amanda raised both arms and pointed at the approaching whales, and swept her arms downward.

The sea lions barked, turned and vanished beneath the surface.

"How long can they stay down?" asked Max.

"About ten minutes on each dive," Amanda said.  "Not as long as the whales, but they can dive over and over again, and they can go to six or seven hundred feet."

"Deeper than a person."

"Much.  And they don't have to decompress, they don't get bends, don't get embolisms."

From the flying bridge, Chase said, "You want the boat to follow them?"

"No, we'll stay here.  I don't want the whales to think the boat's chasing them.  You can shut the engine down if you want.  The ladies know where we are."

"But how can you be sure the sea lions will come back?" Max asked.

"Because they always have," Amanda said, and she smiled.

Chase came down from the flying bridge, turned off the engine and took a glass from a cabinet in the galley.  "Come on," he said to Max.  "Let's see if we can get lucky."

"Where to?"

"These aren't breeding grounds, and humpbacks usually sing only on their breeding grounds.  But maybe, just maybe, we can hear a little concert."

He led Max below, into the forward cabin.  He lifted a corner of the carpet and rolled it back a few feet., then dropped to his knees and put an ear to the cold fiberglass deck, motioning Max to do the same.

"What do you hear?" Chase asked.

"Water," Max said, "sort of slopping around, and... wait!"  His eyes widened.  "Yeah, I do!  But it's really weak."

"Here," Chase said, and he lifted Max's head and placed the bottom of a glass under his ear, the open bell against the deck.  "Better?"

Max grinned, and Chase knew what he was hearing:  the ghostly hoots and avian chirrups, the whistles and tweets, the lovely, lilting conversation between leviathans.

"Cool!" Max said, beaming.

"It sure is," said Chase, and he thought:  being a father is too.

The whales passed a few hundred yards to the east of the boat and continued on their way.  Gradually their sounds faded until, at last, even with the glass, Max could hear only faint echoes.  He and Chase went topside and opened the cooler Mrs. Bixler had packed for them.

*          *          *          *          *

The first of the sea lions returned after half an hour.

They were sitting in the stern, eating, when they heard a bark and looked over the stern and saw the animal ride a little swell onto the swimstep.

"Hello, Groucho," Amanda said.

Chase shook his head.  "I don't know how you can tell."

"Live with them night and day for three years, you'd be able to tell, too."

The sea lion raised itself up onto its long rear flipper and heaved itself through the door in the transom.

As Amanda removed the camera and harness, the sea lion barked excitedly and swung its head from side to side.

"What's she saying?" asked Max.

"She's telling me what she saw," Amanda said.  "You know, like, ‘Hey, Mom, get a load of this!’"

Chase said, "And what do you think she saw?"

Amanda held up the camera.  "We'll look at the tapes on the way in," she said.  "As soon as the others come back, we can try to catch up with the whales again."  Then she said to Max, "Why don't you give Groucho some fish while I dry this off and reload it?"

Max lifted a hatch in the afterdeck, brought out a bucket of mullet and dangled a fish before the sea lion.  It didn't snap at the fish, didn't lunge for it, just extended its neck, accepted the fish and seemed to inhale it.

The second sea lion, Chico, returned ten minutes later, the third, Harpo, a few minutes after that.  Max fed them both, and when they had eaten, they waddled across the deck and lay down in a heap with Groucho, and the three of them slept in the sun.

*          *          *          *          *

Amanda checked her watch; Chase knew this was the tenth time in the past five minutes.  Then she shaded her eyes and looked out over the flat water, straining to see any movement on the surface.

"You said they can keep diving all day," he said.

"They can, but they don't, especially after a workout like they had with the sharks."  She looked at her watch again.  "None of them has ever stayed out for two hours.  Besides, they want to:  they get tired, hungry."  She frowned.  "Particularly Zeppo.  She's the lazy one.  She's late.  Very late."

"Maybe she just decided to take off."

"Not a chance," Amanda said flatly.

"I don't know how you can be so certain.  She's a—"

"They're my animals," she snapped.

Chase raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, and said, "Sorry."

"Where are the binoculars?"

"There's a set up top and a set down below."

Amanda started to climb the ladder to the flying bridge.

"We can go look for her," Chase said.

"No, she knows where we are.  We're staying here till she comes back."

If, Chase found himself thinking.  If.