Ocean: War of Independence by Brian Herbert, Jan Herbert Page B

Ocean from Hawaii to Central America, then through the Panama Canal, and north in the Atlantic Ocean to New York City. Inside the lead pod, Kimo thought back on the detailed meetings, the long hours, the hard work. It had been exhausting, but exhilarating, a truly pioneering effort for the fledgling organization.
    Gwyneth rode in a water-filled tank now, forward in the passenger compartment of this pod, and there were similar tanks in other pods to hold any other Sea Warriors such as Pauline who needed to remain in contact with seawater at all times. Some of the long, sleek pods were filled with nothing but such passengers, in tank after tank—some of them sharing larger tanks.
    In Lower Bay, just outside the harbor of the metropolis, most of the pods opened up as the individual jetfish parted, allowing seawater to enter the conglomerated interiors, and enabling the Sea Warriors to swim out into the water on their own. Some of the other pods remained intact, because they carried associate members, and other supporters of the organization, who had not undergone the transformation to receive gills and other physical features. The incredibly supportive newsman Jimmy Waimea was among those people, along with a number of university professors, oceanographers, maritime lawyers, and environmental activists. All had made major contributions to the new Declaration of Ocean Independence….
    “My special friends are waiting for us,” Gwyneth said as she, Kimo, Alicia, and Dirk swam ahead of the others on the surface. They passed under the Varrazano Narrows Bridge, continuing into the large harbor. A blanket of gray sky lay over the city.
    Though Kimo could not see what she was talking about yet, he did not dispute her assertion, because she always knew when her whale friends were nearby. Presently, Kimo saw their hulking shapes coming from the depths and the sides, joining the swimming Sea Warriors and spouting water from blow holes. He thought he noticed a joyous energy in the movements of the whales as they swam with the human hybrids and the remaining jetfish pods, as if the large marine animals knew that a great deal of progress had already been made in restoring their ocean realm to what it should be, and that more successes lay ahead.
    Gwyneth had determined, based upon her powerful connectivity with the ocean, that whales of all species had been the leaders in the massive worldwide cleanup operation, a herculean effort that regurgitated all manner of wrecks and garbage from the ocean floor and tossed it back on the land. In some cases, such as the Puget Sound in the west and Chesapeake Bay in the east, floating plastics and other garbage had been dumped into the huge bays, and then the whales had positioned schools of dolphins or porpoises to keep it all from floating back out to sea, thus forcing humans to clean up their own disgusting messes and process the junk on land.
    “Look at the shore there,” Kimo said, as he climbed atop a massive blue whale with Gwyneth and his other core members. “And there.” He pointed left and right, to the shores of Staten Island and Brooklyn. Human cleanup crews were removing huge piles of garbage from the beaches and roadways where it had all been regurgitated from the sea, using litter crews, heavy equipment, and dump trucks.
    “They don’t seem to like looking at their own garbage,” Alicia said. “What made people think the creatures of the sea wanted to live with it?”
    “For land-dwellers, it was out of sight, out of mind,” Alicia said, “but those days are gone.”
    “Gone forever,” Gwyneth said, in her unusual, throaty voice. Kimo noticed that it had a new garbling effect in the open air, as if she were speaking underwater. Though in her lumpy gray appearance she may have done all of the changing she was going to do, perhaps she was continuing to metamorphose in other ways. Her original British accent, remnants of which she had retained for a time, seemed gone