"Yeah, this is it," Mad Jack booms and makes a wide turn. His boat lies just around the next bend out in the bay. "Yeah, a body could get turned around in here easy enough." He speeds on for several minutes and sights the turn of the spit he first entered, and he cranks the throttle wide open to buzz out into the open water. But his boat is gone--or at least, it isn't here. "Dammit!" he begins to bluster, but is caught up short. "Well, what the hell. . . is this?" he stares at the bizarre scene. "Whales! Killer whales! A hell of a mess of 'em." He cuts the motor to hear a horrible howl and wail. He stares, not comprehending what is before him.
A flock of birds wheel above a pod of killer whales that are circling another killer whale. A dozen black teepee shapes cut through the water. Around them a churning mass of something flashes beneath the surface. He coasts, stunned, half the distance up to them before he can think. The motor dies. Reflexively, he grabs at the cord and hesitates, listening. The most unearthly sound he never heard washes over him. "I know this!" he mutters squinting.
It vibrates through his chest and raises a realm of feeling intimate and alien, raises recognition and repulsion.
In an instant, the scene before him snaps to a mesh that stretches into the very sky. He shakes his head, but the image persists, and it gleams as if it is wet. Every object before him seems a strand or knot of the net--an outline--an inline; a snatch of color, a bird cry, a date, sound, number, contour, flashes and blips from a radar screen. It all starts to shimmer brighter than the world composing it, but Mad Jack shivers and it dims.
Mad Jack reaches for the starter rope on the outboard and kicks a can in the skiff. The motor winds and the can clinks, the motor misses and dies, and the wailing stops. Mad Jack lays sprawled out knowing he has been discovered, that he has somehow trespassed. His wrists feel like they have snared in lashings.
Something has broken. The flashing in the water dims. The birds overhead wheel off one by one. A killer whale lifts its head up six feet out of the water, looks about, spies Mad Jack as sure as a target, and splashes over sideways with a clap on the surface. All of them charge his way fanning out to a line. Hurtling black shapes the size of boats splash his way throwing off white spray, more power and speed than he has ever seen. They thunder toward him,
