Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
The End
About the author
Acknowledgements
Notes
Copyright 2015 by Frank M Sheldon. All Rights reserved. No part of this manuscript may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except for a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. S-50523
Far from the Sea We Know
by Frank M Sheldon
For Caroline
“Fiction is obliged to stick to the possibilities. Truth isn’t.”
– Mark Twain
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“The Time will come when those who dedicate themselves to Science and those who devote themselves to the Divine will find each other and, from that day, be surprised forever.”
– Doctor Martin Bell, Founder of The Point Kinatai Marine Science Center
CHAPTER 1
Somewhere off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, not long before the beginning of the twenty-first century…
“Three points off the starboard bow!” Matthew shouted above the grinding gears. It did no good. The hulk of a man he had yelled at still stood staring at the ocean swells as unseeing as a stunned cod. To be safe, he disengaged the winch, took a step back and leaned hard against the gunnels of the Eva Shay before speaking again.
“The whale up front,” Matthew yelled again while pointing toward the western horizon. “Gilliard, the whale is Purple!”
“I ain’t…deaf,” the man eventually mumbled back, and that too was strange, for Gilliard’s mouth was famous on the waterfront for having a life of its own. Matthew had never seen the man so utterly speechless. This gave strength to doubt, so he again looked westward to compare the clear evidence of his own eyes with what his mind argued could never be.
They had just been securing the last of the gear for the trip back to the southern reaches of British Columbia. As always seemed to happen after the last of the catch was in, the adrenaline that had kept them going for six days and nights of fishing was beginning to dry up. Yet now, as if reading his concerns, one by one the tired crew finally looked up and soon all were staring out in the same direction. There before them, fifty or more gray whales in tight formation were heading north on their annual migration. An unprecedented grouping like this was incredible enough, yet their odd behavior was not what held their gaze now. It was the whale leading them.
No one spoke a word until Gilliard’s voice, at last reborn, came booming above the sound of the ship’s engine. “Goddamn freak or maybe…hey! Bet you a beer as cold as my old lady’s heart that those science bug-heads are behind this.” He paused to launch a huge gob of spit over the rail. “Going to drive us all down to handouts, spending our tax money like it’s their due! What you bet?”
Matthew gave him a sharp glance before looking back to the whales.
“Now, professor, you going back to your schooling down in the States next week, ain’t yah? Still believe you can become one of those useless fools?” Gilliard spat again. “You never even learned to bait a hook right, so I doubt they’ll let you join their precious little tribe but, hey, why don’t you ask them why they did it? Painting whales purple so they can track ’em or something? Hell, why stop there, why not give ’em cute little hats—Hey! You listening to me?”
Matthew was not. He was still facing seaward, completely transfixed. With the light behind them, the gray whales stood out clearly from the distant swells, their arching backs pouring in and out of the seas like warm tar. Then he felt the Eva Shay come about and glanced up to see Captain Juvinor in the pilothouse with his hand on the wheel. He had propped opened the window and brought a pair of ancient binoculars up to his old, yet smooth, pink face.
Gilliard, his eyes squinted, looked up toward the wheelhouse. “So what is it, Captain?”
“I can only tell you what it ain’t,” the Captain called down, continuing to peer through the binoculars. “She’s no whale God ever made.”
“Devil fish then,” Gilliard said under his breath. He glanced around, but his smirking face found no takers.
Matthew vaulted over a hatch cover, and ran up toward the bow. The cold spray on his face was reassuring, but nothing else was. Everything he saw seemed etched into his eyes, every smell and sound amplified. A cold wind played up from behind as they changed heading and blew a lock of dark curly hair across his eyes. He pushed the hair back under his baseball cap, finding the sensation of his hand comforting.
The Captain’s new heading would soon have them closing in on the whales. The unmistakable smell of fresh-plowed earth coming from the immense sea mammals wafted past Matthew like a false call to home. He watched the whales rise and fall in unison, their slow dance hypnotic, but kept going back to the lead whale. Her hide was covered with large blotches of garishly purple skin, intermingled with the usual dark shades of gray. The cartoon-colored flukes, splotched with violet and magenta were an insult to his eyes.
Matthew looked astern to the other crew who were lining the gunwales and yelled, “Anybody have a camera?”
He turned back, and every joint in his body instantly locked. The lead whale was suddenly much closer and had turned straight toward the Eva Shay. Now it stood upright in the water as if spy hopping, but was dead still. The whale’s colored surfaces began to shimmer and the light seared his eyes like a cold flame.
Everything stopped.
“No…,” Matthew whispered to no one. “Wait…”
Bright burning gray, the world erased, acid taste and smell of violets, always the same, never the same…
His knees had given out and his hands were grasping the railing so hard that his fingers were bone white. Crosscurrents of feeling flooded th
rough and left him drained. He shook his head, but wished he had not. For the first time in his life, he was seasick.
He got his breath back and tried to speak. Words rolled out of his mouth, yet he did not know them as his own and they left without memory. His heart pounded to a crescendo, then calmed as the reverie fell away like a morning mist. A gull’s cry overhead ended in a mad laugh.
Matthew looked in every direction. There was not a whale in sight. All his crewmates had lost their footing. Some slumped listlessly over hatch covers. One man was trying to stand. Gilliard sat on the deck like a baby, with glazed eyes and splayed feet.
Matthew found it hard to remember what had happened. He tried to play it back in his mind and describe it in words to himself, but his attention kept wandering.
He looked at his watch: five-seventeen in the afternoon on May twenty-ninth. At least he got the time.
Up in the wheelhouse, old Livijo was shouting as he stared at the sonar unit.
“Haaa,” Livijo yelled, “I have the fish finder, and it go so crazy!” He thumped the instrument like a preacher on his bible, gripping the open window frame with the other hand. A desperate smile contorted his face as he glanced back at the screen.
“First is stuff. Stuff all over the place, and now nothing—wait! Wait, is back, back now, the screen back, but no show the damn thing. They…gone, gone, all them gone. Bottom, yes, is right, nothing else, they move so fast, too fast, sweet Mother of God, me never—”
“Livijo!” Captain Juvinor silenced the old man. Sadness came to Juvinor’s eyes. He closed them and whispered something to himself, paused for a moment, and then leaned out the window toward the crew. “There’s a weather front moving on us, time we get out of here. Okay, feet on the deck, now! See to your line, Gilliard.”
It was late. They needed to finish stowing the gear and ice the rest of the fish. He made himself work again, but he kept a watch on the horizon. The sky was darkening.
“Painting whales,” Gilliard said, as he went through the motions of tightening already taut lines, his voice robbed again of its power. “Ungodly bastards to do a thing like that.”
His words broke into mutterings, and then trailed off to one quiet sob.