Earth Thirst (2 page)

Talus clenches and unclenches his fist, watching the way his flesh tightens across his bones. “Stay close to her,” he orders. His eyes flick up at me so that I know I am being given this responsibility. “Feed her enough to keep her interested. Find out what she knows.”

“And then what?” I sense he's not finished.

He shows me his teeth. “Remember your priorities, Silas.”

“Remember who is family,” Phoebe adds, though she is looking at Talus and not me when she speaks.

TWO

T
he whaling fleet belongs to Kyodo Kujira Ltd, a Japanese fishing company, and is comprised of a processing ship, two harpoon boats, and a support boat. They are, ostensibly, hunting whales for research purposes—a gray area in international legislation and the Japanese haven't bothered to hide the fact they've been skirting the gray for many years. In the past, little more than lip service was ever paid to
scientific research
, but six months ago, Kyodo Kujira—who had been on the verge of bankruptcy—suddenly developed a change of heart.

It probably had something to do with a massive infusion of cash from the corporate giants who rule the biopharmaceutical and agrichemical industries.

There's an entire speculative industry in the medical and pharmaceutical literature, and more than one startup has bet its entire existence upon a bit of specious speculation in the literature. In this case, there was an article that caught fire in the community last year about the wide-ranging physiological properties of cetacean cartilage. Suddenly, the whaling market—which had been suffering recently due to a downturn in whale meat prices—is hot again.

Prime Earth is one of those militant environmental groups with more money than sense, and armed with a boat and a plan, they think they're going to be able to make some sort of difference for a few whale pods. It's all very reductionist and symbolic—save the whales, save the planet—and it is the sort of Neo New Age argument that gets a lot of play with the easily manipulated nouveau wealthy housewife that wants to do something to offset her carbon footprint. It's the sort of part-time environmentalist ethos that puts a boat overflowing with zealous volunteers out in the middle of the Southern Ocean, intent on getting between a pair of harpoon boats and their target, and will ultimately be about as effective a deterrent as chaining yourself to a tree has been on the logging industry. It's an ugly setup that has all sorts of opportunities for someone to do something stupid and, out here in the middle of the Southern Ocean, the repercussions of stupidity could be lethal.

We're several hundred miles from solid ground. I wasn't worried about drowning, but salt water is corrosive to Arcadian flesh. Too long in sea water and the flesh becomes tainted and doesn't absorb nutrients well. The four of us are much more resilient than the rest of the crew, but we aren't indestructible.

Remember who is family.

Sometimes it is hard to know who to trust. It is hard to know a person's true motivation. You trust your family with your life because that is the way it has always been. That is what keeps us strong. But those bonds can only take so much stress for so long before they start to fray. Before they weaken.

Keep her close.

I wanted to know why Meredith Vanderhaven was on this boat. Regardless of the story I had sold Talus, the coincidence bothered me. Given her contentious history with the food industry and Big Ag, it was possible that our paths would cross again, but I didn't like the way she had beat the odds. Was there something else going on? Had she known we were going to be here?

Behind all these questions lay others. Whispers I want to ignore, questions I want to dismiss as nothing more than distorted echoes.
What did she remember from that night? What have I forgotten?

The disease of neglected memory is an eventual consequence of leaving Mother's embrace, but seeing Mere again has triggered that nagging uneasiness much sooner than I would like. It contributes to my own paranoia and confounds my ability to think clearly. I get easier to spook. We all do.

There is something rotten about this mission
.

* * *

“Do you know what Prime Earth is going to do when we find the whalers?” I ask Mere. We are standing on the starboard side of the upper deck, sheltered from the wind that is pushing us toward the heavy storm in the south. It's mid-afternoon, and even if the sun wasn't obscured by the clouds, it wouldn't be very high in the sky.

She is wearing a heavy coat, a thick stocking cap, and her throat is hidden by the voluminous folds of a wool scarf. The tip of her nose and her cheeks are red. She stamps her feet and I know she's thinking about going inside, but she won't go in. Not while I'm in a sharing mood. The air is clean enough that I could go without my coat and hat, but that would only draw attention to me. It's the second week of July—mid-winter in the Southern Ocean. The air is always cleaner in winter climates.

“I've seen the videos from last year,” she says. “A lot of playing chicken and throwing—what is it?—that acid on deck.”

“Butyric. Stink gas, essentially. When they take a whale on and carve it up, the acid gets into the flesh and ruins it. They can't sell it.”

“So they just have to throw it away?”

“Yes, unless they can find another use for it. Some other buyer.”

She glances at me shrewdly. “Is there?”

“A buyer? I wouldn't know.”

Mere steps a little closer, letting my body act as a wind break. “Why are you here?” she asks.

“Why do you think we're here?” I throw the question back on her. “You're the one who took an extended vacation to come down and join the cruise. How many weeks have you been playing at sailor?”

“Two. And a half.”

“And what have you seen during that time?”

She shakes her head. “Lots of open water. Some birds; I think they were terns. I've been propositioned nearly a dozen times—only two of them have been poor sports about being turned down—and I've won around a hundred dollars in that endless poker game they run in the mess after dinner.” She lifts her shoulders and stares out at the sea. “Everyone is waiting for something to happen. Some of them are better at it than others. A few are… wound a little tight…” She trails off, and her words would have been lost in the bruising roar of the ocean against the hull of the boat if my hearing hadn't been so good.

“What are they waiting for?”

“Do you know what the whale market is like?” she asks, and when I don't immediately reply, she tells me. “Prime made an impact last year, but there's no sign any of their leadership actually bothered to notice. Japanese consumption of whale meat is down thirty percent from this time last year, and it's not from a lack of supply. Public perception has started to swing in an eco-friendly direction, and yet Kyodo Kujira sends out four boats for an extended whaling trip. In winter. They've been out for three weeks already, and I hear they're in no rush to return to port. Do you know how much it costs to keep these boats at sea for that long?”

“More than I make in a year,” I reply, a tiny smile touching the corners of my mouth.

“Really? How much does a private consultant like you make?”

“Less than you think. My tax rate is insane.”

“You should diversify your portfolio better.”

“I would if I knew what those words meant.”

She stands close to me, rising on her toes slightly to look closely at my eyes. I don't step back, though the smell of her breath and her blood is almost too much. “It's a matter of making good investments,” she breathes. “The wholesale price of whale meat is down forty percent. Over half the whalers never put out to sea this year, and yet Kyodo Kujira doesn't seem to be worrying about their burn rate. The Japanese are notorious for keeping up appearances, but this is ridiculous. Two years ago, they were looking for someone to buy their boats, and I heard they weren't having much luck finding a buyer. Now? This is either suicidal desperation—not a trait commonly found in your typical Japanese businessman—or…”

“Someone else is paying for it,” I say.

“Who?”

“Why do you think I know?”

“Why else would you be here?”

I smile at her. “Remember the bullet hole? Captain Morse, all bluster and bravery for the crew's sake aside, feels more secure with some… protection.”

That sounds convenient,” she says. “Is that the story he's supposed to tell?”

“You could ask him.”

“I have. He pretends to not know what I'm talking about.”

“It probably just slipped his mind.”

She takes one more step, and even through the thick layers of her coat, I can feel the heat of her skin. “Maybe,” she says. Her eyes are bright, and I can hear her lungs expanding and contracting. “But I suspect getting any real information out of him is a waste of time. Especially when I could ask someone else, someone who would actually know.”

My hand is on her arm when Nigel makes a noise behind us. “The captain has spotted the whalers. They're on the edge of the storm front. About sixty nautical miles to the west,” he says, ignoring the way we step back from one another, like teenagers caught by their parents, sitting too close to one another on the old couch in the basement.

THREE

W
e wait until the end of the day, even though there isn't much change in the available light in the sky. Winter near the Antarctic Circle is many days of near darkness, and for their own sanity, humans try to maintain a semblance of normalcy during these months. Sleep cycles and shift changes still occur in the last few hours of the nominal day, which makes this block of time optimal for our reconnaissance.

The whaling fleet is ten nautical miles south of us, holding position in a half-arc with the two harpoon boats positioned at either end. We take a single Zodiac and head west, our rubber boat rising and falling across the restless sea. We mean to approach them from the south. This route will take an extra half-hour—time we don't really have, but it is a calculated risk.

I'm not driving the boat, nor am I spotting, which means I get to bail. The rubber shield stretched across the front of the boat disperses the brunt of the spray from the ocean, but a lot of it still manages to get in the boat, and I spend most of my time hunched over in several inches of water, working the manual pump. The water is cold and tenacious, undeterred by the dry suits we are wearing; by the time we reach the research vessel, I've started to lose feeling in my toes. As Nigel cuts the engine of the Zodiac, and we glide the short distance remaining between us and the factory ship, I let myself think of the warm embrace of Mother for a moment. How good it would feel to be buried in her humus, surrounded by that warmth—that familiar security.

But then the Zodiac bumps against the ugly steel plates of the research boat, and I'm wrenched back to the present, to the cold semi-darkness of the short night on the Southern Ocean. The tight embrace of the dry suits and Gore-Tex balaclavas isn't the same thing. Nigel eschews the headgear entirely, wearing a black stocking cap instead, and I can't say I blame him. Being in the tight grip of synthetic fabrics can be too constricting. It makes you clumsy.

Phoebe goes first, the metal spikes in her gloves and boots giving her enough purchase to scale the side of the boat. The nylon line spools out in her wake, wiggling back and forth with the motion of her body as she climbs. With the sun below the horizon, we can keep our optic protection low; it is easy to follow her progress—a black glob of ink against the dull metal of the boat. She reaches the top, disappears, and then a few seconds later, the rope snaps tight.

All clear.

I go next, as Nigel secures the Zodiac to the hull with a pair of mag-clamps. He follows after and, just like that, we're on board the research ship.

We all have the same map memorized, and with Phoebe on point, we move quickly across the rain-slick deck. All our individual paranoia is set aside as soon as we climb aboard the boat. We've done this drill too many times over our lengthy lives. We know our jobs.

The meat-processing equipment is in place, and I give it a cursory glance at first, but then there is something that nags me about the general disarray and decrepitude of the hooks and blades. It hasn't been used. Even if they haven't been catching whales for the meat, they'd still need to process them for the research. And there are large barrels with hose-mounted assemblies bolted to the deck that look like recent additions. A cleansing system? It doesn't make sense. Why wouldn't they just use sea water pumps?

“Silas—”
Nigel and Phoebe are already inside the central stack. She gestures at me to stop dawdling, and I tear myself away from the scattered equipment on deck. I join them, and we slip down two levels and then through a cluster of tight hatches.

The boat creaks around us, and the sound of the engines are a dull throb, but there is no other sound. It's as if we are ghosts on a ghost ship. I fall behind the other two, growing more and more suspicious of the emptiness of the boat. With modern equipment, you could pilot a boat this size with a crew of six, but that sort of skeleton crew was normally reserved for massive shipping boats, not whalers who were ostensibly on a fishing expedition. If you caught a whale, you'd need at least twenty able bodies to run the processors; you could do it with less, but the risk to the crew was exponentially more dangerous than the savings in labor. And if this was supposed to be a research boat, wouldn't there be a scientific crew?

So where is everyone?

I pause at the next hatch. The lining is thicker than I'd expect it to be on a boat like this, even if it had been retrofitted into a high-tech floating bio-pharmaceutical laboratory. It's more like the sort found on a submarine: thick enough to hold back water and atmosphere. I hiss at Phoebe and wave her over.

“Something's wrong,” I say as she drifts back to my position. “Look at this seal.”

She touches the heavy hatch door we're standing next to, and it moves sluggishly under her finger. “Hydraulics,” she says.

The hatch can be opened and closed remotely. Remote control means remote viewing, and we both step back from the hatch, suddenly interested in the maze of conduits and cables running along the ceiling. Looking for security cameras, thermal scanners, motion triggers.