Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale
    Sings

    CONTENTS

    CHAPTER TWO
    CHAPTER THREE
    CHAPTER FOUR
    CHAPTER FIVE
    CHAPTER SIX
    CHAPTER SEVEN
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    CHAPTER NINE
    CHAPTER TEN
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
    CHAPTER TWELVE
    CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
    CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    CHAPTER NINETEEN
    CHAPTER TWENTY
    CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
    CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
    CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
    CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
    CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
    CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
    CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
    CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
    CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
    CHAPTER THIRTY
    CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
    CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
    CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
    CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
    CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
    CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
    CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
    CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
    AUTHOR NOTES
    CONSERVATION
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    Whale Trust

    Flaps:

    After reverently lambasting the most cherished rites and credos of virtually every one of the world's major religions in his transcendently hilarious novel Lamb, the one and only Christopher Moore returns with a wild look at interspecies communication, adventure on the high seas, and an eons-old mystery.
    Marine behavioral biologist Nate Quinn is in love – with the salt air and sun-drenched waters off Maui… and especially with the majestic ocean-dwelling behemoths that have been bleeping and hooting their haunting music for more than twenty million years. But just why do the humpback whales sing? That's the question that has Nate and his crew poking, charting, recording, and photographing any large marine mammal that crosses their path. Until the extraordinary day when a whale lifts its tail into the air to display a cryptic message spelled out in foot-high letters: Bite me.
    No one on Nate's team has ever seen such a thing; not his longtime partner, photographer Clay Demodocus, not their saucy young research assistant, Amy. Not even spliff-puffing white-boy Rastaman, Kona (the former Preston Applebaum of New Jersey), could boast such a sighting in one of his dope-induced hallucinations. And when a roll of film returns from the lab missing the crucial tail shot – and their research facility is summarily trashed – Nate realizes that something very fishy indeed is going on.
    This, apparently, is big, involving dangerously interested other parties – competitive researchers, the cutthroat tourist industry, perhaps even the military. The weirdness only gets weirder when a call comes in from Nate's big-bucks benefactor saying that a whale has made contact – by phone. And it's asking for a hot pastrami and Swiss on rye. Suddenly the answer to the question that has daunted and driven Nate throughout his adult life is within his reach. But it's waiting for him in the form of an amazing adventure beneath the waves, 623 feet down, somewhere off the coast of Chile. And it's not what anyone would think.
    It must be said: Christopher Moore's Fluke is a whale of a novel.
    Grateful acknowledgment is made for
    permission to reprint from the
    following:

    The Log of the Sea of Cortez by John
    Steinbeck,

    Copyright © 1941 by John Steinbeck
    and Edward F. Ricketts.

    Copyright renewed © 1969 by John
    Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts Jr.

    Used by permission of Viking Penguin,
    a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

    The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins,
    Copyright © 1976,1989.

    Reprinted by permission of Oxford
    University Press.

    With the Whales by Flip Nicklin,
    Copyright © 1990.

    Reprinted by permission of NorthWord
    Press.

    This is a work of fiction. The
    characters, incidents, and dialogues are
    products

    of the author's imagination and are not
    to be construed as real. Any
    resemblance

    to actual events or persons, living or
    dead, is entirely coincidental.

    FLUKE.

    Copyright © 2003 by Christopher
    Moore. All rights reserved.

    Printed in the United States of
    America.

    No part of this book may be used or
    reproduced in any manner whatsoever
    without

    written permission except in the case of
    brief quotations embodied in critical
    articles

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    FIRST EDITION

    Designed by Adrian Leichter

    Printed on acid-free paper
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
    Moore, Christopher,