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Nate looked around the room, hoping that one of the other behavior researchers might jump in, help him out, throw a bone to the podium, but apparently they were all finding the displays on the bulletin boards, the ceiling fans, or the wooden floor planks irresistibly interesting.
"Lately we've been spending more and more time observing the animals under the water. Clay Demodocus has over six hundred hours of videotape of humpback behavior underwater. But it's only recently, with digital videotape and rebreather technology, that underwater observation has become practical to do to any extent. And we still have the problem of propulsion. No diver can swim fast enough to keep up with the humpbacks when they're traveling. I think all the researchers in this room understand the value of observing the animals in the water, and it goes without saying that any research without consideration of underwater behavior is incomplete. You understand that, I'm sure, Dr. Box."
There were a few stifled snickers around the room. Nathan Qui
"Yes, Margaret."
"Your study seems to focus on the perspective of the male animals, without consideration for the female's role in the behavior. Could you speak to that?"
Jeez, what a surprise, thought Nate. "Well, I think there's good work being done on the cow/calf behavior, as well as on surface-active groups, which we assume is mating-related activity, but since my work concerns singers and as far as we know, all singers are males, I tend to observe more male behavior." There, that should do it.
"So you can't say definitively that the females are not the ones controlling the behavior?"
"Margaret, as my research assistant has repeatedly pointed out to me, the only thing I can say definitively about humpbacks is that they are big and wet."
Everyone laughed. Qui
"Could they just be saying hi?"
"Yes."
"If they don't eat here, and it's not for mating, then why do they sing?"
"That's a good question."
"Do you think they know that we've been contacted by aliens and are trying to contact the mother ship?"
Ah, always good to hear from the wacko fringe, Nate thought. "No, I don't think that."
"Maybe they're using their sonar to find other whales."
"As far as we know, baleen whales, toothless whales like the humpbacks who strain their food from the sea through sheets of baleen, don't echolocate the way toothed whales do."
"Why do they jump all the time? Other whales don't jump like that."
"Some think that they are sloughing skin or trying to knock off parasites, but after years of watching them, I think that they just like making a splash — the sensation of air on their skin. The way you might like to dangle your feet in a fountain. I think they're just goofing off."
"I heard that someone broke into your office and destroyed all of your research. Who do you think would want to do that?"
Nate paused. The woman who had asked the question was holding a reporter's steno pad. Maui Times, he guessed. She had stood to ask her question, as if she were attending a press conference rather than a casual lecture.
"What you have to ask yourself," said Nate, "is who could possibly care about research on singers?"
"And who would that be?"
"Me, a few people in this room, and perhaps a dozen or so researchers around the world. At least for now. Perhaps as we find out more, more people will be interested."
"So you're saying that someone in this room broke into your offices and destroyed all your research?"
"No. As a biologist, one of the things you have to guard against is applying motives where there are none and reading more into a behavior than the data actually support. Sort of like the answer to the 'why do they jump? question. You could say that it's part of an incredibly complex system of communication, and you might be right, but the obvious answer, and probably the correct one, is that the whales are goofing off. I think the break-in was just a random act of vandalism that has the appearance of motive." Bullshit, Qui
"Thank you, Dr. Qui
"Thank you all for coming," said Nate.
Applause. Nate arranged his notes as people gathered around the podium.
"That was bullshit," Amy said.
"Complete bullshit," said Libby Qui
"What a load of crap," said Cliff Hyland.
"Rippin' talk, Doc," Kona said, "Marley's ghost was in ye."
CHAPTER NINE
Relativity
Leathery bar girls worked the charter booths at the harbor, smoking Basic 100s and talking in voices that sounded like 151 rum poured into hot grease — a jigger of friendly to the liter of harsh. They were thirty-five or sixty-five, the color of mahogany, ski
"Just like outboards, Clay, you gotta have two to make sure one's always ru
Debbie, who had a secret source for little-boy pee that she put in the ears of the black-coral divers when they got ear infections, said, "You give that young one the first watch, Clay. Let her rest up a bit."
"Morning, ladies," Clay tossed over his shoulder. He was gri