In the water the whaley boy's eyes no longer bugged out as they did inside the whale. Like whales and dolphins, Nate realized, whaley boys possessed muscles that could actually change the shape of the eye for focusing in either air or water. Scooter did a rapid turn and snatched the tuna in his jaws not ten feet from the eye of the whale. Nate could hear the snap and saw blood in the water around Scooter's mouth.

"Yes!" said Poe. "It's sashimi tonight."

Nate had eaten nothing but raw fish since he'd been on board the whale ship, but this was the first time he'd seen it caught. Still, he couldn't quite share Poe's enthusiasm. "Is this all you eat? Raw fish?"

"It beats the alternatives," said Poe. "The whale carries a nutrient paste that's like krill puree."

"Oh, my God," said Nate.

Poynter leaned in close to Nate, so he was only inches from the scientist's ear. "Thus the somewhat substantial demand for culinary variety, as in — oh, I don't know — a pastrami on rye!"

"I said I was sorry," Nate muttered.

"Yeah, right."

"Drop me off anywhere. I'll go get you one."

"We don't land these things on shore."

"You don't?"

"Except to paint 'bite me' on the flukes," said Poe.

"Yeah, except for that," said Poynter.

Skippy meeped as Scooter scooted in through the poop chute with tuna in hand. Upon seeing the pilot's entrance, Nate started thinking, for the first time since he'd been eaten, about how to escape.

This is just stupid, Amy thought. She'd been paddling like a madwoman for four hours and was still barely halfway to Molokai. She'd been past the channel wind line for two of those four hours and so battled four-foot swells and a crosswind that threatened to take her out to sea.

"Who gives GPS coordinates for a meeting? Who does business like that?" She'd been shouting into the wind on and off for an hour, then checking the little liquid-crystal map on the display of the GPS receiver. The "you are here" dot never seemed to move. Well, that wasn't true. If she paused from paddling to take a drink of water or apply some sunscreen, the dot seemed to jump off course a mile at a time.

"Are you guys on drugs?" she screamed into the wind.

Her shoulders ached, and she'd drunk nearly all of the two-liter bottle of water she'd brought with her. She started to regret not having brought along some kind of snack. "An easy paddle. 'Just rent a kayak. You won't need a power boat. I'm adrift on a piece of Tupperware, you nitwits!"

She leaned back on the kayak to catch her breath and watched the direction and speed indicators change on the GPS. She could rest maybe five minutes without drifting too far. She closed her eyes and let the swells rock her into a light doze. It was quiet, just the white noise of wind and water, not even a slap of waves on the kayak — she was so light that it rode high in the water and over the tops of the waves without a sound. She thought about Nate, about how frightened he must have been in those last moments, about how much she'd started to enjoy working with him. Action nerd. She smiled to herself, a melancholy smile as she dozed off, but then the sound of a fusillade of bubbles breaking the surface near the kayak jolted her to alertness. It was a huge expulsion of air, as if someone had set off an explosion deep under the water.

She started paddling away from the eruptions of bubbles, but even as she moved, the sea began to darken around her, the crystal blue turning to shadow in a huge pool under the kayak. Then something hit the little boat, tossing Amy into the air twenty feet before she hit the water and the darkness surrounded her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I Lick the Body Electric

The Maui sunset had set the sky on fire and everything in the bungalow had taken on the glowing pink tone of paradise — or hell, depending on where you were standing. Clay dismembered the bird and put the severed pieces on a platter to transport them to the grill.

"You'll need something to bring those in on," Clair said. Her dress was a purple hibiscus-flower print, and the orchid she wore in her hair looked like lavender dragonflies humping. She was dicing pickles into the macaroni salad.

"What's wrong with this?" Clay held up the plate with the raw chicken.

"You can't use the same plate. You'll get salmonella."

"Fine, fuck it," Clay said, tossing the plate into the yard. The chicken parts bounced nicely, breading themselves with a light coating of sand, ants, and dried grass. "When did chicken become like plutonium anyway, for Christ's sake? You can't let it touch you or it's certain fucking death. And eggs and hamburgers kill you unless you cook them to the consistency of limestone! And if you turn on your fucking cell phone, the plane is going to plunge out of the sky in a ball of flames? And kids can't take a dump anymore but they have to have a helmet and pads on make them look like the Road Warrior. Right? Right? What the fuck happened to the world? When did everything get so goddamn deadly? Huh? I've been going to sea for thirty damned years, and nothing's killed me. I've swum with everything that can bite, sting, or eat you, and I've done every stupid thing at depth that any human can — and I'm still alive. Fuck, Clair, I was unconscious for an hour underwater less than a week ago, and it didn't kill me. Now you're going to tell me that I'm going to get whacked by a fucking chicken leg? Well, just fuck it then!"

He didn't know where to go, so he came back in and slammed the screen door behind him, then opened it and slammed it again. "Goddamn it!" And he stood there, breathing hard. Not really looking at anything.

Clair put down her knife and pickle, then wiped her hands. As she came toward Clay she pulled a large bobby pin from the back of her hair, and her long, thick locks cascaded down her back. She took Clay's right hand and kissed each of his fingertips, licked his thumb, then took his index finger in her mouth and made a show of removing it slowly and with maximum moisture. Clay looked at the floor, shaking.

"Baby," she said as she placed the bobby pin firmly between Clay's wet thumb and index finger, "I need you to go over to that wall and take this bobby pin and insert it ever so firmly into that electrical outlet over there."

Clay looked up at her at last.

"Because," she continued, "I know that you aren't mad at me and that you're just grieving for your friends, but I think you need to be reminded that you aren't invulnerable and that you can hurt even more than you do now. And I think it would be better if you did it yourself, because otherwise I'll have to brain you with your own iron skillet."

"That would be wrong," Clay said.

"It is a cruel world, baby."

Clay took her in his arms and buried his face in her hair and just stood there in the doorway for a long time.

Amy had been missing for thirty-two hours. That morning a fisherman had found her kayak washing against some rocks on Molokai and had called the rental company in Maui. A life jacket was still strapped on the front of the boat, he said. The Coast Guard had stopped looking already.

"Now, let me go," Clair said. "I have to get that chicken out of the yard and rinse it off."

"I don't think we should eat that."

"Please. I'm going to cook it up for Kona. You're taking me out."

"I am?"

"Of course."

"After I stick this in the outlet, right?"

"You can grieve, Clay — that's as it should be — but you can't feel guilty for being alive."

"So, I don't have to stick this in the outlet?"

"You used foul language at me, baby. I don't see any way around it."

"Oh, well, that's true. You go get Kona's chicken out of the yard. I'll do this."