Fluke, Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Read Online Free PDF Page A

won't believe the — " She pulled up, saw Clay staring at his broken monitor, the computer scattered over Nate's desk, files stacked here and there where they shouldn't be. "Oh," she said.
    "Someone broke in," Clay said forlornly.
    She put her hand on Clay's shoulder. "Today? In broad daylight?"
    Nate swiveled around in his chair. "They went through our living quarters, too. The police have already been here." He saw Clay staring at his monitor. "Oh, and that. Sorry, Clay."
    "You guys have insurance, right?" Amy said.
    Clay didn't look away from his broken monitor. "Dr. Quinn, did you pay the insurance?" Clay called Nate «doctor» only when he wanted to remind him of just how official and absolutely professional they really ought to be.
    "Last week. Went out with the boat insurance."
    "Well, then, we're okay," Amy said, jostling Clay, squeezing his shoulder, punching his arm, pinching his butt. "We can order a new monitor tonight, ya big palooka." she chirped, looking like a goth version of the bluebird of happiness.
    "Hey!" Clay grinned, "Yeah, we're okay." He turned to Nate, smiling. "Anything else broken? Anything missing?"
    Nate pointed to the wastebasket where a virtual haystack of audiotape was spilling over in tangles. "That was spread all over the compound along with all the files. We lost most of the tape, going back two years."
    Amy stopped being cheerful and looked appropriately concerned. "What about the digitals?" She elbowed Clay, who was still grinning, and he joined her in gravity. They frowned. (Nate recorded all the audio on analog tape, then transferred it to the computer for analysis. Theoretically, there should be digital copies of everything.)
    "These hard drives have been erased. I can't pull up anything from them." Nate took a deep breath, sighed, then spun back around in his chair and let his forehead fall against the desk with a thud that shook the whole bungalow.
    Amy and Clay winced. There were a lot of screws on that desk. Clay said, "Well, it couldn't have been that bad, Nate. You got it all cleaned up pretty quickly."
    "The guy you hired showed up late and helped me." Nate was speaking into the desk, his face right where it had landed.
    "Kona? Where is he?"
    "I sent him to the lab. I had some film I want to see right away."
    "I knew he wouldn't stand us up on his first day."
    "Clay, I need to talk to you. Amy, could you excuse us a minute, please?"
    "Sure," Amy said. "I'll go see if anything's missing from my cabin." She left.
    Clay said, "You going to look up? Or should I get down on the floor so I can see your face?"
    "Could you grab the first-aid kit while we talk?"
    "Screws embedded in your forehead?"
    "Feels like four, maybe five."
    "They're small, though, those little drive-mount screws."
    "Clay, you're always trying to cheer me up."
    "It's who I am," Clay said.

CHAPTER FOUR
Whale Men of Maui
    Who Clay was, was a guy who liked things — liked people, liked animals, liked cars, liked boats — who had an almost supernatural ability to spot the likability in almost anyone or anything. When he walked down the streets of Lahaina, he would nod and say hello to sunburned tourist couples in matching aloha wear (people generally considered to be a waste of humanity by most locals), but by the same token he would trade a backhanded hang-loose shaka (thumb and fingers extended, three middle fingers tucked, always backhand if you're a local) with a crash of native bruddahs in the parking lot of the ABC Store and get no scowls or pidgin curses, as would most haoles. People could sense that Clay liked them, as could animals, which was probably why Clay was still alive. Twenty-five years in the water with hunters and giants, and the worst he'd come out of it was to get a close tail-wash from a southern right whale that tumbled him like a cartoon into the idling prop of a Zodiac. (Oh, there were the two times he was drowned and the hypothermia, but that stuff wasn't caused by the animals; that was the