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!”
The huge jaw of a sperm whale abruptly opened right in front of Hotshot and closed before he could react — so that a moment later the dolphin was keeping quite still, while Kit held him with great delicacy in his huge fangs. Kit’s eyes looked angry, but the tone of his song was casual enough. “Hotshot,” he said, not stopping, just swimming along with casual deliberateness, “I’m probably singing too. And even if I’m not, I am a sperm whale. Don’t push your luck.”
Hotshot said nothing. Kit swam a few more of his own lengths, then opened his mouth and let the dolphin loose. “Hey,” he said then, “no hard feelings.”
“Of course not,” Hotshot said in his usual recklessly merry voice. But Nita noticed that the dolphin made his reply from a safe distance. “No problem, Mi”—Kit looked at Hotshot, silent—“ah, Kit.”
“Minnow it is,” Kit said, sounding casual himself. The four of them swam on; Nita dropped back a few lengths and put her head up beside Kit’s so that she could sing her quietest and not be heard too far off.
“What was that all about?”
“I’m not sure,” Kit said — and now that only Nita was listening, he sounded a bit shaken. “S’reee might have been right when she said this body doesn’t actually have what’s-his-voice’s—“
“Aivaaan.”
“His memories, yeah. But the body has its own memories. What it’s like to be a sperm. What it means to be a sperm, I guess. You don’t make fun of us — of them.” He paused, looking even more shaken. “Neets — don’t let me get lost!”
“Huh?”
“Me. I don’t beat people up, that’s not my style!”
“You didn’t beat him up—“
“No. I just did the ocean equivalent of pinning him up against the wall and scaring him a good one. Neets, I got into being a wizard because I wanted other people not to do that kind of stuff to me! And now—“
“I’ll keep an eye on you,” Nita said, as they began to come up on another foghorn, a loud one. And there was something odd about that foghorn. Its note was incredibly deep. That has to be almost too deep for people to hear at all. What kind of—
The note sounded again, and Nita shot Kit an amazed look as she felt the water all around her, and even the air in her lungs, vibrate in response to it. One note, the lowest note she could possibly imagine, held and held until a merely human singer would have collapsed trying to sing it… and then slurred slowly down through another note, and another, and holding on a last one of such profound depth that the water shook as if with thunder.
S’reee slowed her pace and answered the note in kind, the courtesy of one species of whale to another on meeting or parting — singing the same slow, somber sequence, several octaves higher. There was a pause; then she was answered with a humpback’s graceful fluting, but sung in a bottom-shaking baritone.
“Come on,” S’reee said, and dived.
The waters around Sandy Hook boil with krill in the spring and summer, so that by night the krill’s swarming luminescence defines every current and finstroke in a blaze of blue-green light; and by day the sun slants through the water, brown with millions of tiny bodies, as thickly as through the air in a dusty room. As the group dived, they began to make out a great dark shape in the cloudy water, moving so slowly it barely did more than drift. A last brown-red curtain of water parted before them in a swirl of current, and Nita found herself staring down at her first blue whale.
