Eye of the Whale Read Online Free PDF Page A

the idea that whales would care about humans was difficult to accept, not to mention impossible to prove.
    “Dolphin save people—dog, too. Why shouldn’t a whale save you so?” Milton was smiling, confident in his interpretation.
    Elizabeth did not answer. Human-animal encounters like the one she had just experienced were always anecdotal and impossible tostudy. Her father’s superstitious beliefs aside, animal intent was not provable. Elizabeth unclipped her weight belt and slowly peeled off her fins, feeling increasingly human.
    Milton stopped smiling as the boat began to vibrate again with the sound of the whale song.
    “Cut the engine,” Elizabeth said. The boat went silent with a sputter. Elizabeth grabbed the waterproof case, the clear cover revealing the digital audio recorder inside. She dropped the hydrophone overboard and put on her headset.
    “What’s wrong?” Milton asked, perhaps noticing the expression on her face.
    She pushed one earpiece closer to her ear, not believing what she was hearing. In her spiral flip pad, she quickly recorded the time and started making notes.
    “What’s wrong?” Milton asked again.
    “The song is different—completely different.”
    “Maybe he just done tired of the old song.”
    “They don’t just start singing new songs.” She knew that the change in the song was as extraordinary as what she had witnessed in the water, perhaps more so.
    With both hands, Elizabeth pressed the earphones against her ears, trying to hear the higher frequencies better. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth opened in mute recognition. The rapid transformation was unprecedented enough, but the sounds were totally impossible in a song.
    “Are we recording?” Elizabeth asked anxiously, pointing to the pelican case on the bench next to him.
    Milton looked down. “Yes, Liza, we getting every last word.”

THREE
    Moments later
Aboard the Masuyo Maru
1 mile off the coast of Bequia
    T OKUJIRO K AZUMI peered through the enormous deck-mounted military binoculars from aboard the factory fishing ship. Through the eyepieces he saw the American researcher in her tiny hired boat. While he could see her long black braided hair, he could not see her beautiful face. He had been following her work since long before the recent National Geographic article. What he could not see in the sixty times magnification, he remembered from the full-page photograph in the magazine. Her face was wide, her high cheekbones like cliffs, her eyebrows arching over eyes that were so blue and so deep he could stare at them in the photo for hours. Her mixed race made the eyes linger, as the mind tried to understand what ancestry could have caused such a fusion of features and such consummate beauty. The magazine journalist must have wondered enough to ask and revealed the answer: a Jewish mother and a Native American father. The crossbreeds, like Elizabeth McKay and like him, were the hardiest and most vigorous, always taking the best qualities from each genetic strain. It was as true for humans as it was for dogs. He thought of his pet, Kioko, a mix breed, who had lived for eighteen years. It was not long enough. Kazumi still could not bring himself to imagine getting another.

    The boat bobbed on the surface like a floating green buoy. Sweet Madonna was painted casually in red along the sideboard. He could barely make out the headphones pressed against her ears. Listening to the whales, Kazumi thought. He groaned, remembering her papers, which he had read online. Even the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission had decided to discuss whale communication at the next meeting, largely because of her work. The day that humans could understand whale communication would spell the end of whaling forever. People did not want to eat food that was intelligent enough to talk.
    Oil from whale blubber had become obsolete as a result of the discovery of petroleum. The only remaining market was for whale meat, and