Fluke, Or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore

Author:Christopher Moore [Moore, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction - General
ISBN: 9780380978410
Publisher: W. Morrow
Published: 2003-05-22T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

Back in what was now only his office, Clay dug Amy's resume out of his files and made the call. He braced himself, trying to figure out how, exactly, he was going to tell these strangers that their daughter was missing and assumed to have drowned. He felt sad and alone, and his elbow hurt from the jolt of electricity he'd taken the night before. He didn't want to do this. He reached for the phone, then stopped and closed his eyes, as if he could make the whole thing go away, but on the back of his eyelids he saw the face of his mother as he had last seen her, looking up at him out of her barrel of brine, "Make the call, you pussy. If anyone knows how not to get bad news, it's you. Part of loyalty is following up, you sniveling coward. Don't be like your brothers."

Ah, sweet Mama, Clay thought. He dialed the phone -- a number with a 716 area code, Tonawanda, New York. It rang three times, and the recorded operator came on, saying that the number he'd reached was not in service at this time. He checked it, then dialed the next number down, which also turned out not to be working. He called Tonawanda information for Amy's parents, and the operator told him there was no such listing. At a loss, he called Woods Hole Oceanographic Center, where Amy had gotten her master's. Clay knew one of her advisers, Marcus Loughten, an irascible Brit who had worked at Woods Hole for twenty years and was famous in the field for his work in underwater acoustics. Loughten answered on the third ring.

"Loughten," Loughten said.

"Marcus, this is Clay Demodocus. We worked together on--"

"Yes, Clay, I bloody know who you are. Calling from Hawaii, are you?"

"Well, yes, I--"

"Probably, what, seventy-eight degrees with a breeze? It's seven below zero Fahrenheit here. I'm out installing bloody sound buoys in a monthlong blizzard to keep right whales from getting run over by supertankers."

"Right, the sound buoys. How are those working out?"

"They're not."

"No? Why not?"

"Well, right whales are stupid as shit, aren't they? It's not like a supertanker is quiet. If sound was going to deter them, then they'd be bloody well deterred by the engine noise, wouldn't they? They don't make the connection. Stupid shits."

"Oh, sorry to hear that. Uh, why keep doing it then?"

"We have funding."

"Right. Look, Marcus, I need some information on one of your students who came out here to work with us. Amy Earhart? Would have been with you guys until fall of last year."

"No, I don't know that name."

"Sure you do, five-five, thin, pale, dark hair with kind of unnatural blue highlights, smart as a whip."

"Sorry, Clay. That doesn't fit any of my students."

Clay took a deep breath and trudged on. Biologists were notorious for treating their grad students as subhuman, but Clay was surprised that Loughten didn't remember Amy. She was cute, and if Clay could judge from

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.