“Blues!” she said, one sharp happy note, then dived into the cloud of bluefish and krill, and helped herself to lunch.
It was a little while before she’d had enough. It took Nita only a couple of minutes to get used to the way a humpback ate — by straining krill and others of the tiniest ocean creatures, including the smallest of the blues, through the sievelike plates of whalebone, or “baleen,” in her jaws. The swift blue shapes that had been darting frantically in all directions were calming down already as Nita soared out of the whirling cloud of them and headed back over to S’reee and Kit, feeling slightly abashed and that an explanation of some kind was in order for the sudden interruption of their trip. However, there turned out to be no need for one. S’reee had stopped for a snack herself; and Nita realized that Kit had been snacking on fish ever since they left Tiana Beach. A sperm whale was, after all, one of the biggest of the “toothed” whales, and needed a lot of food to keep that great bulk working. Not that he did anything but swallow the fish whole when he caught them; a sperm’s terrible teeth are mostly for defense.
Kit paused only long enough to eat nine or ten of the biggest blues, then drifted down toward the pilings and the objects stacked sloppily among them. “Neets,” he said, “will you take a look at this? It’s cars!”
She glided down beside him. Sure enough, the corroded fins of an old-model Cadillac were jutting out of a great mound of coral. Under the tangled whiteness of the coral, as if under a blanket of snow, she could make out the buried shapes of hoods or doors, or the wheels and axles of wrecks wedged on their sides and choked with weed. Fish, blues and others, darted in and out of broken car windows and crumpled hoods, while in several places crabs crouched in the shells of broken headlights.
“It’s a fish haven,” S’reee said as she glided down beside them. “The land people dump scrap metal on the bottom, and the plants and coral come and make a reef out of it. The fish come to eat the littler fish and krill that live in reefs; and then the boats come and catch the fish. And it works just as well for us as for the fishers who live on land. But we’ve got other business than dinner to attend to, at the moment. And HNii’t, don’t you think it would be a good idea if you surfaced now?”
Nita and Kit looked at one another in shock, then started upward in a hurry, with S’reee following them at a more leisurely pace. “How long have we been down?” Kit whistled.
They surfaced in a rush, all three, and blew. S’reee looked at Kit in some puzzlement; the question apparently meant nothing to her. “Long enough to need to come up again,” she said.
“Neets, look,” Kit said in a rumbly groan, a sperm whale’s sound of surprise. She fluked hard once or twice, using her tail to lift herself out of the swell, and was surprised to see, standing up from the shore half a mile away, a tall brick tower with a pointed, weathered green-bronze top; a red light flashed at the tower’s peak. “Jones Beach already!” she said. “That’s miles and miles from Tiana—“
“We’ve made good time,” S’reee said, “but we’ve a ways to go yet. Let’s put our tails into it. I don’t want to keep the Blue waiting.”
They swam on. Even if the sight of the Jones Beach tower hadn’t convinced Nita they were getting close to New York, she now found that the increasing noise of the environment would have tipped off the whale that she’d become. Back at Tiana Beach, there had been only the single mournful hoot of the Shinnecock horn and the far-off sound of the various buoy bells. But this close to New York Harbor, the peaceful background hiss of the ocean soon turned into an incredible racket. Bells and horns and whistles and gongs shrieked and clunked and whanged in the water as they passed them; no sooner was she out of range of one than another one assaulted her twitching skin.
Singing pained notes at one another, the three ran the gauntlet of sound. It got worse instead of better as they got closer to the harbor entrance, and to the banging and clanging was added the sound of persistent dull engine noise. Their course to Sandy Hook unfortunately crossed all three of the major approaches to New York Harbor. Along all three of them big boats came and went with an endless low throbbing, and small ones passed with a rattling, jarring buzz that reminded Nita of lawn mowers and chain saws.
The three surfaced often to get relief from the sound, until S’reee warned to dive deep for a long underwater run through one of the shipping lanes. Nita was beginning to feel the slow discomfort that was a whale’s experience of shortness of breath before S’reee headed for the surface again.
They broached and blew and looked around them. Not far away stood a huge, black, white-lettered structure on four steel pilings. A white building stood atop the deck, and beside it was a red tower with several flashing lights. A horn on the platform sang one noncommittal note, shortLONG! short-LONG! again and again.
“Ambrose Light,” Kit said.
“The Speaking Tower, yes,” S’reee said. “After this it’ll be quieter — there are fewer markers between here and the Hook. And listen! There’s a friend’s voice.”
Nita went down again to listen, and finally managed to sort out a dolphin’s distant chattering from the background racket. She surfaced again and floated with the others awhile, watching Hotshot come, glittering in the sun like a bright lance hurling itself through the swells. As he came abreast of the Lightship he leaped high out of the water in a spectacular arc and hit the surface with a noise that pierced even all the hooting and dinging going on.
“For Sea’s sake, we hear you!” S’reee sang at the top of her lungs, and then added in annoyed affection, “He’s such a showoff.”
“But most dolphins are,” Kit said, with a note to his song that made it plain he wasn’t sure how he knew that.
“True enough. He’s worse than some, though. No question that he’s one of the best of the young wizards, and a talented singer. I love him dearly. But what this business of being Wanderer is going to do to his precious ego—“ She broke off as Hotshot came within hearing range. “Did you find him?”
“He’s feeding off the Hook,” Hotshot said, arrowing through the water toward them and executing a couple of playful and utterly unnecessary barrel rolls as he came. Nita began to wonder if S’reee might be right about him. “He’s worried about something, though he wouldn’t tell me what it was. Said it was just as well you were coming; he would’ve come looking for you if you hadn’t.”
The four of them started swimming again immediately; that last sentence was by itself most startling news. Blue whales did not do things, Nita realized, in the sudden-memory way that meant the information was the Sea s gift. Blue whales were, that was all. Action was for other, swifter species except in the Song of the Twelve, where the Blue briefly became a power to be reckoned with. The Song, as Tom had warned, had a way of changing the ones who sang it… sometimes even before they started.
“Are you ready for the Oath?” S’reee was saying to the dolphin. “Any last thoughts?”
“Only that this is going to be one more Song like any other,” Hotshot said ”even if it is your first time. Don’t worry, Ree; if you have any problems, I’ll help you out.”
Nita privately thought that this was a little on the braggy side, coming from a junior wizard. The thought of talking to an Advisory or Senior that way. — Tom, say — shocked her. Nevertheless, she kept her mouth shut, for it seemed like Hotshot and S’reee had known one another for a while.
“And how are our fry doing here?” Hotshot said, swimming careless rings around Nita as he sang. “Getting used to the fins all right?”
“Pretty much,” Nita said. Hotshot did one last loop around her and then headed off in Kit’s direction. “How about you, Minnow — eeeech!”