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

bubbles stop?"
    "Clair checked her watch. Four, five minutes ago."
    "Can you see them?"
    "No, nothing. Amy went deep, Nate. I watched her go down until she disappeared."
    "Do you have hang tanks in the water?"
    "No, I can't get the damn regulators on. Clay always did it."
    "Just tie off the tanks and tie the regulators to the tanks and get them over the side. Amy and Clay can hook them up if they get to them."
    "How deep? I have three tanks."
    "Ninety, sixty, and thirty. Just get them in the water, Clair. We'll worry about exact depth when I get there. Just hang them so they can find them. Tie glow sticks on them if you have any. Should be there in five minutes. We can see you."
    Clair started tying the plastic line around the necks of the heavy scuba tanks. Every few seconds she scanned the waves for signs of Amy's bubbles, but there weren't any. Nate had said "
If
they get to them." She blinked away tears and concentrated on her knots.
If?
Well
if
Clay made it
back — when
he made it back — he could damn sure get himself a safer job. Her man wasn't going to drown hundreds of feet under the ocean, because from now on he was going to be taking pictures of weddings or bar mitzvahs or kids at JC Penney's or some goddamn thing on dry land.
    * * *
    Across the channel, near the shore of Kahoolawe, the target island, Libby Quinn had been following the exchange between Clair and Nate over the marine radio. Without being asked, her partner, Margaret, said, "We don't have any diving equipment on board. That deep, there's not much we could do."
    "Clay's immortal anyway," said Libby, trying to sound more blasé than she felt. "He'll come up yammering about what great footage he got."
    "Call them, offer our help," the older woman said. "If we deny our instincts as caretakers, we deny ourselves as women."
    "Oh, fuck off, Margaret! I'm calling to offer our help because it's the right thing to do."
    Meanwhile, on the ocean side of Kahoolawe, Cliff Hyland was sitting in the makeshift lab belowdecks in the cabin cruiser, headphones on, watching an oscilloscope readout, when one of his grad students came into the cabin and grabbed him by the shoulder.
    "Sounds like Nathan Quinn's group is in trouble," said the girl, a sun-baked brunette wearing zinc-oxide war paint on her nose and cheeks and a hat the size of a garbage-can lid.
    Hyland pulled up the headphones. "What? Who? Fire? Sinking? What?"
    "They've lost two divers. That photographer guy Clay and that pale girl."
    "Where are they?"
    "About two miles off the dump. They're not asking for help. I just thought you should know."
    "That's a ways. Start reeling in the array. We can be there in a half hour maybe."
    Just then Captain Tarwater came down the steps into the cabin. "Stay that order, grommet. Stay on mission. We have a survey to finish today — and a charge to record."
    "Those guys are friends of mine," Hyland said.
    "I've been monitoring the situation, Dr. Hyland. Our presence has not been requested, and, frankly, there is nothing this vessel could do to help. It sounds like they've lost some divers. It happens."
    "This isn't war, Tarwater. We don't just
lose
people."
    "Stay on mission. Any setback in Quinn's operation can only benefit this project."
    "You asshole," Hyland said.
    Back in the channel, the Count stood in the bow of the big Zodiac and watched as the Conservation and Resources Enforcement boat towed away the
Constantly Baffled.
He turned to his three researchers, who were trying to look busy in back of the boat. "Let that be a lesson to you all. The key to good science is making sure all the paperwork is in order. Now you can see why I'm such a stickler for you people having your IDs with you every morning."
    "Yeah, in case some other researcher rats us out to the Conservation and Resources cops," one woman said.
    "Science is a competitive sport, Ms. Wextler. If you're not willing to compete, you're welcome to take your undergrad degree and go baby-sit seasick tourists