Free Fluke, Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore Page A

the gaunt scientist to nod before he took the next question.
    "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. Quinn looked at Amy and she winked at him, then, when he looked back to Margaret, he saw Libby beside her, winking at him as well. But at least the tension among the researchers was broken, and Quinn noticed that Captain Tarwater and Jon Thomas Fuller and his entourage were no longer raising their hands to ask questions. Perhaps they realized that they weren't going to learn anything, and they certainly didn't want to try to pursue their own agendas in front of a crowd and be slapped down the way Gilbert Box had. Quinn took the questions from the nonscientists.
    "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,
Quinn thought.
    "Thank you, Dr. Quinn," said the reporter. She sat down.
    "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 Quinn.
    "What a load of crap," said Cliff Hyland.
    "Rippin' talk, Doc," Kona said, "Marley's ghost was in ye."

CHAPTER NINE
Relativity
    Leathery