'I don't know,' Al said.

The two of them stood together, staring into the island's little bay. Light reflected off a million choppy wavelets. Seagulls floated on the water, dipping their beaks and preening their feathers.

'A submarine?'

'No. It wasn't a submarine.' Al looked exasperated.

'A…?' Sam forgot what he was going to suggest. He forgot to close his mouth, just stood there with it hanging open as a large, grey-blue shadow broke the surface of the water and expelled a jet of mist into the air with another whoosh! and then vanished again.

Al's expression was equally dumbfounded. His eyebrows extended themselves towards his hairline and his cigar hung limp from his fingers. 'Sam.' His voice was husky, breathless. 'Do you know what that was?'

Big. It was something big. And it had something to do with milk. Sam knew he should know this one. Big and milk. Swiss cheese or not, he had to get his brain to function. 'A…cow?'

'No.' This time Al's expression was pure exasperation. 'It wasn't a cow. How could you think it was a cow?' He paused as the beast surfaced and blew and vanished again, exhaling a slow, rapt breath with its disappearance. 'That,' he said, his voice broken with awe, 'is a Blue Whale.'

'Blue Whale. I know what that is. That's the biggest whale. The biggest animal.'

Al nodded. 'The largest animal to have ever lived on earth.' Al's expression went from thoughtful to harsh. 'They're rare because those nozzles with the whaling boats hunt them. Harpoons, explosions, it's all…' He waved his cigar about in the air, unable to put in words exactly what "it all" was.

They stared out at the water, waiting for the whale to appear again. It was almost a minute later that the depths became a shadow and its spout misted the air above it. It rolled its back above the surface along to its small dorsal fin then sank without showing its flukes. The little bay was too shallow to allow it to dive properly.

'It's going to be in a lot of trouble when the tide goes all the way out,' Sam said.

'Oh cheez.' All keyed a question to Ziggy's handlink and smacked it till it squealed, threatened it with a fist, then bashed it again. 'Sam, I think you hit the nail right on the head there.'

'What?'

'It's the whale. Ziggy says there's a seventy nine percent chance you're here for the whale.'

The whale spouted again and lifted its pectoral flipper into the air. That flipper was twice as long as all of Sam. 'How am I supposed to help that?' He looked hopelessly as the fin swung through the air as if the beast was waving, then vanished, without a splash, back into the water.

'Keep it alive.'

'How?'

'Don't let it dry out if it gets stuck in the sun. These things spend half their lives in polar seas, they're very sensitive to heat.'

'How'm I supposed to keep a whole whale wet? I don't even have a bucket.'

Al stared into the middle distance, a brief shake of his head as if he was disagreeing with someone. Gooshie, probably. He turned back and focussed on Sam. 'Don't worry, kid. You'll think of something.' It was a false bravado, Al wasn't even fooling himself. 'Look, why don't I go and find out if Gooshie's got anything more on this for you.' He was gone before Sam could stop him.

There was just the beach and the crabs and the whale and Sam. How did you help a whale? He felt helpless, hopeless. If he'd been leapt here to do a job, and that job was to save a whale, then what happened when he didn't? Would he just have to stay and stay until he died there, until the crabs ate him down to bare bones? He walked along the water's edge to the rocky spit, then followed it in. Already the tide was dragging out, exposing clusters of shellfish, clams and oysters. He used a rock to smash them open, pulled them out of the shells and ate them fresh, streaming with the salt taste of the ocean. Was there some rule about not eating shellfish about months ending in the letter "Y" or something? He couldn't remember. Anyway, hadn't Al said it was August? So it should be okay. It was good to have something other than fruit in his belly.

The whale must have come in during the height of the storm when the water was deep enough over the reef for it to pass through without injuring itself on the coral crags. His knowledge of the dangers of the place began to filter through the gaps that twisted his memories into a labyrinth. Corals were full of bacteria that could cause terrible infections. He wondered how dangerous whales were. This kind weren't armed with teeth, but when you were that big, who needed teeth?

Sam circled the small island, dragging pieces of driftwood back to his fire, and tending it. He raked the coals into a heap and placed a breadfruit on them to roast. At least he had food now and warmth. He added more sticks and branches to the growing pile beside his signal fire so that it was there for him to add on. He gathered palm fronds as well, stacking them in a pile of their own on the other side, hoping they'd provide a plume of smoke that would attract a ship. Despite Al's assurance that he was there for the whale, Sam still felt as if it was the man he had to save. He looked around his campfire, the hatbox with the jewellery in it, the pile of junk books. He flicked open a book and wondered how long it was going to be before he resorted to reading about the amorous exploits of Sharmaine and Alphonse or Brighitta and James de la Roche. Getting up from her chair, she turned, hesitantly at the sound of his voice, that voice she had so yearned for. Nope. He dropped the book back onto the pile with a sigh of relief. He wasn't quite that desperate yet.

'They get married in the end.'

Sam let out a grunt of surprise. It never failed to startle him when Al did that. 'I wish you'd knock or something.'

Al shrugged. 'You figure out how I can knock and I will.'

'I mean, what if I was doing something, well, private.'

'I'd cover my eyes.'

'How do you know they get married in the end? Have you read that?'

'Those fantasies always finish up with the two people getting married. My sec-thir-sec-yeah, second wife was addicted to them. That's how come we got married.' He shook his head as if denying the memory. 'She never believed me when I told her those stories were ending halfway through the relationship, they never got up to the divorce part.'

Sam crouched down by the fire and used a stick to drag the breadfruit out. He wasn't sure if it was done but couldn't think of any way to tell other than by eating it. 'So did you find out anything more.'

'Yeah, but nothing you're gonna like hearing.'

'Try me.' He picked the breadfruit up, pulling at it to get it apart.

'Edwards is dying.'

Sam waited, shocked, to hear more. The breadfruit burned his fingers and he dropped it with a cry. He was doing everything he possibly could to get this man rescued. Edwards wasn't supposed to die. He stuck the burned fingers into his mouth and sucked them, waited for Al to give him some hope, tell him this was a joke, something.

'The docs've got him hooked up to life support. He flatlined but they got his heart beating again.'

'If he flatlined then that means his brain isn't functioning any more. He's dead.' All of a sudden Sam didn't feel like eating. Not breadfruit, not anything.

Al nodded, his expression helpless, apologetic.