Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 1~2

For Jim Darling, Flip Nicklin,and Meagan J iodinesextraordinary people who doextraordinary workFluke (flook) 1. A lash of good luck2. A chance occurrence an accident3. A barb or barbed head, as on a harpoon4. any of the two horizont aloney flattened divisions of the backside of a runPART ONEThe SongAn ocean with let out itsunnamed monsters would be same(p) a tout ensemble dreamless sleep. JOHN STEINBECKThe scientific method is nonhingmore than a system of rules to keep usfrom lying to each other(a). KEN NORRISCHAPTER ONE gigantic and WetNext Question?Amy called the monster punkin.He was fifty feet spacious, wider than a city bus, and weighed eighty thousand pounds. One well-placed slap of his great tail would cut back absent the boat to fiberglass splinters and its occupants to red stains drifting in the olive-drab Hawaiian waters. Amy leaned everyplace the side of the boat and lowered the hy downslopehone shovel in on the titan. satisfactory morning, punkin, she sa id.Nathan Quinn shook his head and tried non to upchuck from the cuteness of it, of her, temporary hookup surreptitiously sneaking a look at her bottom and feeling a little sleazy about it. Science piece of tail be complex. Nate was a scientist. Amy was a scientist, also, but she looked fantastic in a pair of khaki hiking shorts, scientifically speaking.Below, the whale sang on, the boat vibrated with each note. The stainless rail at the bow began to buzz. Nate could feel the deeper notes resonate in his rib cage. The whale was into a ingredient of the song they called the green themes, a long series of whoops that sounded like an ambulance driving by pudding. A less proficient listener susceptibility nourish plan that the whale was rejoicing, celebrating, shouting howdy to the world to permit everyone and everything survive that he was alive and feeling good, but Nate was a trained listener, perhaps the most trained listener in the world, and to his expert ears the whal e was saying Well, he had no idea what in the hell the whale was saying, did he? Thats why they were out in that location blow outing in that sapphire highway off Maui in a small speedboat, sloshing their breakfasts around at s compensate in the morning No one k sore why the humpbacks sang. Nate had been listening to them, observing them, photographing them, and poking them with sticks for twenty-five long time, and he tranquillize had no idea why, merely, they sang.Hes into his ribbits, Amy said, identifying a section of the whales song that usually came right forwards the animal was about to surface. The scientific term for this noise was ribbits because thats what they sounded like. Science can be simple.Nate peeked over the side and looked at the whale that was suspended head gloomy in the water about fifty feet below them. His flukes and pectoral fins were exsanguine and described a crystal-blue chevron in the deep blue water. So bland was the great beast that he q ualification have been floating in space, the last beacon of some long- slain space-traveling race except that he was making guttural noises that would have sounded more appropriate coming out of a two-inch tree frog than the archaic remnant of a superrace. Nate smiled. He liked ribbits. The whale flicked his tail once and shot out of Nates field of vision. Hes coming up, Nate said.Amy tore off her headphones and picked up the motorized Nikon with the three-hundred-millimeter lens. Nate quickly pulled up the hydrophone, allowing the wet cord to spool into a coil at his feet, then turned to the console and started the engine. so they waited.T here(predicate) was a blast of air from behind them and they both spun around to see the newspaper column of water vapor hanging in the air, but it was far, perhaps three hundred meters behind them too far off to be their whale. That was the problem with the channel between Maui and Lanai where they worked There were so many whales tha t you often had a hard succession distinguishing the one you were studying from the hundreds of others. The abundance of animals was a both a compassion and a curse. That our guy? Amy asked. All the singers were guys. As far as they knew anyway. The DNA tests had proven that.Nope.There was another blow to their left, this one very much closer. Nate could see the white flukes or blades of his tail under the water, even from a hundred meters away. Amy hit the stop button on her expect. Nate pushed the throttle forward and they were off. Amy braced a stifle over against the console to steady herself, keeping the camera pointed toward the whale as the boat bounced along. He would blow three, maybe four times, then fluke and dunk. Amy had to be get when the whale dove to get a clear shot of his flukes so he could be identified and cataloged. When they were within thirty yards of the whale, Nate backed the throttle cut back and held them in position. The whale blew again, and th ey were close enough to fuck off some of the mist. There was none of the dead fish and commodious morning-mouth smell that they would have encountered in Alaska. Humpbacks didnt inseminate while they were in Hawaii.The whale fluked and Amy fired off two quick frames with the Nikon.Good boy, Amy said to the whale. She hit the lap timer button on her watch.Nate cut the engine and the speedboat settled into the gentle swell. He threw the hydrophone overboard, then hit the record button on the recorder that was bungee-corded to the console. Amy set the camera on the seat in front of the console, then snatched their notebook computer out of a waterproof pouch.Hes right on sixteen minutes, Amy said, checking the time and recording it in the notebook. She wrote the time and the frame total of the frivol away she had just shot. Nate read her the footage number off the recorder, then the longitude and latitude from the portable GPS (global positioning system) device. She put down the n otebook, and they listened. They werent right on top of the whale as they had been before, but they could hear him singing through the recorders speaker. Nate put on the headphones and sat back to listen.Thats how field interrogation was. Moments of frantic activity followed by long periods of waiting. (Nates first ex-wife had once commented that their sex life could be described in exactly the same way, but that was after they had separated, and she was just macrocosm snotty.) Actually, the wait here in Maui wasnt bad ten, fifteen minutes at a throw. When hed been studying right whales in the North Atlantic, Nate had sometimes waited weeks before he found a whale to study. Usually he liked to use the downtime (literally, the time the whale was down) to think about how he shouldve gotten a real number job, one where you do real money and had weekends off, or at least gotten into a branch of the field where the results of his work were more palpable, like sinking whaling ships a pirate. You know, security.Today Nate was actively hard not to watch Amy put on sunscreen. Amy was a snowflake in the land of the burnned. Most whale researchers spent a great deal of time outdoors, at sea. They were, for the most part, an intrepid, outdoorsy bunch who wore winding- and sunburn like battle scars, and there were few who didnt sport a semipermanent sunglasses raccoon tan and sun-bleached hair or a scaly bald spot. Amy, on the other hand, had milk-white pare down and straight, short black hair so dark that the highlights appeared blue in the Hawaiian sun. She was wearing maroon lipstick, which was so wildly inappropriate and out of character for this setting that it approached the comical and made her seem like the crosspatch geek of the Pacific, which was, in fact, one of the reasons her presence so disturbed Nate. (He reasoned A well-formed bottom hanging in space is just a well-formed bottom, but you hook up a well-formed bottom to a whip-smart woman and apply a dash of the awkward and what youve got yourself is well, trouble.)Nate did not watch her rub the SPF50 on her legs, over her ankles and feet. He did not watch her strip to her bikini top and apply the sunscreen over her chest and shoulders. (Tropical sun can fry you even through a shirt.) Nate especially did not notice when she grabbed his hand, squirted lotion into it, then turned, indicating that he should apply it to her back, which he did not noticing anything about her in the process. Professional courtesy. He was workings. He was a scientist. He was listening to the song of Megaptera novaeangliae ( defective wings of New England, a scientist had named the whale, thus proving that scientists drink), and he was not intrigued by her intriguing bottom because he had encountered and analyzed similar data in the past. According to Nates analysis, research assistants with intriguing bottoms turned into wives 66.666 percent of the time, and wives turned into ex-wives exact ly 100 percent of the time plus or minus 5 percent factored for post-divorce comfort sex.)Want me to do you? Amy asked, holding out her preferred sunscreen-slathering hand.You just dont go there, thought Nate, not even in a joke. One incorrect response to a bourne like that and you could lose your university position, if you had one, which Nate didnt, but still You dont even think about it.No thanks, this shirt has UV protection woven in, he said, thinking about what it would be like to have Amy do him.Amy looked suspiciously at his faded WE LIKE WHALES CONFERENCE 89 T-shirt and wiped the remaining sunscreen on her leg. Kay, she said.You know, I sure wish I could accede out why these guys sing, Nate said, the hummingbird of his mind having tasted all the flowers in the garden to return to that one plastic daisy that would just not give up the nectar.No kidding? Amy said, deadpan, smiling. and if you figure it out, what would we do tomorrow?Show off, Nate said, grinning.Id be typing all day, analyzing research, matching photographs, filing song tapes Bringing us doughnuts, Nate added, trying to help.Amy continued, counting down the list on her fingers, - picking up blank tapes, washing down the trucks and the boats, running to the photo lab Not so fast, Nate interrupted.What, youre going to deprive me the contentment of running to the photo lab while you bask in scientific glory?No, you can still go to the photo lab, but clay hired a guy to wash the trucks and boats.A delicate hand went to her forehead as she swooned, the southern belle in hiking shorts, taken with the vapors. If I faint and fall overboard, dont let me drown.You know, Amy, Nate said as he undressed the crossbow, I dont know how it was at Boston doing survey, but in behavior, research assistants are totally supposed to screak about the humiliating grunt work and lowly status to other research assistants. It was that way when I was doing it, it was that way going back centuries, i t has always been that way. Darwin himself had someone on the Beagle to file dead birds and sort index cards.He did not. Ive never read anything about that.Of course you didnt. Nobody writes about research assistants. Nate grinned again, celebration for a small victory. He realized he wasnt working up to standards on managing this research assistant. His partner, Clay, had hired her almost two weeks ago, and by now he should have had her terrorized. Instead she was working him like a Starbucks froth slave.Ten minutes, Amy said, checking the timer on her watch. You going to shoot him?Unless you want to? Nate notched the arrow into the crossbow. He close in the windbreaker they used to dress the crossbow under the console. It was very politically incorrect to carry a weapon for shooting whales through the crowded Lahaina hold back, so they carried it deep down the windbreaker, making it appear that they had a jacket on a hanger.Amy shook her head violently. Ill drive the boat.You should learn to do it.Ill drive the boat, Amy said.No one drives the boat. No one but Nate drove the boat. Granted, the Constantly Baffled was only a twenty-three-foot mako shark speedboat, and an agile four-year-old could pilot it on a calm day like today. Still, no one else drove the boat. It was a man thing, being inherently uncomfortable with the thought of a woman operating a boat or a television remote control.Up sounds, Nate said. They had a recording of the full sixteen-minute cycle of the song now all the way through twice, in fact. He stopped the recorder and pulled up the hydrophone, then started the engine.There, Amy said, pointing to the white fins and flukes moving under the water. The whale blew only twenty yards off the bow. Nate buried the throttle. Amy was wrenched off her feet and just caught herself on the railing next to the wheel console as the boat shot forward. Nate pulled up on the right side of the whale, no more than ten yards away as the whale came up for the second time. He steadied the wheel with his hip, pulled up the crossbow, and fired. The bolt bounced off the whales rubbery back, the hollow surgical steel arrowhead victorious out a cookie-cutter plug of skin and blubber the size of a pencil eraser before the wide plastic tip stopped the penetration.The whale lifted his tail out of the water and snapped it in the air, making a sound like a giant knuckle cracking as the massive tail muscles contracted.Hes pissed, Nate said. Lets go for a measurement.Now? Amy questioned. Normally they would wait for another dive cycle. Obviously Nate thought that because of their taking the skin sample the whale might start traveling. They could lose him before getting a measurement.Now. Ill shoot, you work the rangefinder.Nate backed off the throttle a bit, so he would be able to catch the entire tail fluke in the camera frame when the whale dove. Amy grabbed the laser rangefinder, which looked very much like a pair of binoculars made for a cyclops. By taking a distance measurement from the animals tail with the rangefinder and comparing the size of the tail in the frame of the picture, they could measure the carnal knowledge size of the entire animal. Nate had come up with an algorithm that, so far, gave them the length of a whale with 98 percent accuracy. Just a few years ago they wouldve had to have been in an aircraft to measure the length of a whale.Ready, Amy said.The whale blew and arched its back into a high hump as he readied for the dive (the reason whalers had named them humpbacks in the first place). Amy fixed the rangefinder on the whales back Nate trained the cameras telephoto on the same spot, and the autofocus motors made tiny adjustments with the movement of the boat.The whale fluked, raising its tail high in the air, and there, instead of the distinct pattern of black-and-white markings by which all humpbacks were identified, were spelled out in foot-high black letters across the white the wo rds BITE MENate hit the shutter button. Shocked, he fell into the captains chair, pulling back the throttle as he slumped. He let the Nikon loll in his lap.Holy shit Nate said. Did you see that?See what? I got seventy-three feet, Amy said, pulling down the rangefinder. Probably seventy-six from where you are. What were your frame numbers? She was reaching for the notebook as she looked back at Nate. Are you okay?Fine. Frame twenty-six, but I missed it, he lied. His mind was shuffling though a colossal stack of index cards, searching a million article abstracts he had read to find some explanation for what hed just seen. It couldnt possibly have been real. The film would show it. You didnt see any unusual markings when you did the ID photo?No, did you? No, never mind.Dont sweat it, Nate. Well get it next time he comes up, Amy said.Lets go in.You dont want to try again for a measurement? To make the data sample complete, they needed an ID photo, a recording of at least a full cycle of the song, a skin sample for DNA and toxin figures, and a measurement. The morning was wasted without the measurement.Lets go back to Lahaina, Nate said, staring down at the camera in his lap. You drive.CHAPTER TWOMaui No Ka Oi(Maui Is the Best)At first it was that old trickster Maui who cast his fishing line from his canoe and pulled the islands up from the bottom of the sea. When he was done fishing, he looked at those islands he had pulled up, and bladderwrack in the middle of the chain was one that was made up of two big volcanoes, sitting there together like the friendly, lopsided bosoms of the sea. Between them was a deep valley that Maui thought looked very much like cleavage, which he very much liked. And so, to that bumpy-bits island Maui gave his name, and its nickname became The Cleavage Island, which it stayed until some missionaries came along and renamed it The Valley Island (because if theres anything missionaries do well, its seek out and destroy fun). Then Maui l anded his canoe at a calm little beach on the west coast of his new island and said to himself, I could do with a few cocktails and some nookie. I shall go into Lahaina and get some.Well, time passed and some whalers came to the island, bringing steel tools and syphilis and other wonders from the West, and before anyone knew what was happening, they, too, were thinking that they wouldnt mind a few cocktails and a measure of nookie. So rather than sail back around the Horn to Nantucket to hoist noggins of grog and the skirts of the one(a) Hester, Millicent, or Prudence (so fast the dear woman would think shed fallen down a chimney and landed on a zucchini), they pulled into Lahaina, drawn by the drunken sex magic of old Maui. They didnt come to Maui for the whales, they came for the party.And so Lahaina became a whaling town. The irony of it was that even though the humpbacks had starting coming to birth their calves and sing their songs only a few years earlier, and in those days t he Hawaiian channels were teeming with the big-winged singers, it was not for the humpbacks that the whalers came. Humpbacks, like their other rorqual brothers the streamlined blue, fin, sei, minke, and Brydes whales were just too fast to catch in sailing ships and man-powered whaling boats. No, the whalers came to Lahaina to rest and recreate along their way to Japanese waters where they hunted the great sperm whale, who would literally float there like a big, dumb log while you rowed up to it and stuck a harpoon in its head. It would take the advent of steamships and the decimation of the big, floaty-fat right whales (so named because they did float when dead and therefore were the right whales to kill) before the hunters would turn their harpoons on the humpbacks.Following the whalers came the missionaries, the sugar farmers, the Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, and Portuguese who all worked the sugar plantations, and Mark Twain. Mark Twain went home. Everyone else stayed. In the meantime, index Kamehameha I united the islands through the clever application of firearms against wooden spears and moved Hawaiis capital to Lahaina. Sometime after that Amy came cruising into the Lahaina harbor at the wheel of a twenty-three-foot Mako speedboat with a tall, stunned- feeling Ph.D. sprawled across the bow seat.The radio chirped. Amy picked it up and keyed the mike. Go ahead, Clay.Something wrong? Clay Demodocus was obviously in the harbor and could see them coming in. It wasnt even eight in the morning. He was probably still preparing his boat to go out.Im not sure. Nate just decided to call it a day. Ill ask him why. To Nate she said, Clay wants to know why.Anomalous data, Nate said.Anomalous data, Amy repeated into the radio.There was a pause. Then Clay said, Uh, right, dumb. That stuff gets into everything.The harbor at Lahaina is not large. Only a hundred or so vessels can dock behind her breakwater. Most are sizable, fifty- to seventy-foot cruisers and ca tamarans, boats full of sunscreen-basted tourists out on the water for anything from dinner cruises to sport fishing to snorkeling at the half-sunken crater of Molokini to, of course, whale watching. Jet-skiing, parasailing, and waterskiing were all banned from December until April, while the humpbacks were in these waters, so many of the smaller boats that would normally be used to terrorize oceanic life in the name of recreation were leased by whale researchers for the season. On any given winter morning down at the harbor at Lahaina, you couldnt throw a coconut without conking a Ph.D. in cetacean biology (and you stood a good chance of winging two Masters of Science working on dissertations with the rebound).Clay Demodocus was engaged in a bit of research liars poker with a Ph.D. and a naval officer when Amy backed the Mako into the cause they shared with three tender zodiacs from sailing yachts anchored outside the breakwater, a thirty-two-foot motor-sailor, and the Maui Whale Research Foundations other boat (Clays boat), the Always Confused, a brand-new twenty-two-foot Grady White Fisherman, concentrate console. (Slips were hard to come by in Lahaina, and circumstances this season had dictated that the Maui Whale Research Foundation Nate and Clay perform a nautical track pile with six other small craft every day. You do what you have to do if you want to poke whales.)Shame, Clay said as Amy threw him the austere line. Nice calm day, too.We got everything but a measurement on one singer, Amy said.The scientist and the naval officer on the dock behind Clay nodded as if they understood completely. Clifford Hyland, a grizzled, gray-haired whale researcher from Iowa stood next to the young, razor-creased, snowy-white-uniformed Captain L. J. Tarwater, who was there to see that Hyland spent the navys money appropriately. Hyland looked a little embarrassed at the self-coloured thing and wouldnt make eye contact with Amy or Nate. Money was money, and a researcher took it where he could get it, but navy money, it was so so nasty. aurora Amy, said Tarwater, dazzling a perfectly even, perfectly white smile. He was lean and dark and frighteningly efficient-looking. Next to him, Clay and the scientists looked as if theyd been run through the dryer with a bag of lava rock.Good morning, Captain. Morning Cliff.Hey, Amy, Cliff Hyland said. Hey, Nate.Nathan Quinn shook off his confusion like a retriever who had just heard his name utter in context with food. What? What? Oh, hi, Cliff. What?Hyland and Quinn had both been part of a group of thirteen scientists who had first come to Lahaina in the seventies (The Killer Elite, Clay still called them, as they had all gone on to distinguish themselves as leaders in their fields). Actually, the original intention hadnt been for them to be a group, but they nevertheless became one primordial on when they all realized that the only way they could afford to stay on the island was if they pooled th eir resources and lived together. So for years thirteen of them and sometimes more if they could afford assistants, wives, or girlfriends lived every season in a two-bedroom house they rented in Lahaina. Hyland understood Quinns tendency to submerge himself in his research to the point of oblivion, so he wasnt affect that once again the rangy researcher had spaced out.Anomalous data, huh? Cliff asked, figuring that was what had sent Nate into the ozone.Uh, nothing I can be sure of. I mean, actually, the recorder isnt working right. Something dragging. Probably just needs to be cleaned.And everyone, including Amy, looked at Quinn for a moment as if to say, Well, you lying satchel of walrus spit, that is the weakest story Ive ever heard, and youre not fooling anyone.Shame, Clay said. Nice day to miss out on the water. Maybe you can get back with the other recorder and get out again before the wind comes up. Clay knew something was up with Nate, but he also trusted his judgment enough not to press it. Nate would tell him when he thought he should know.Speaking of that, Hyland said, wed better get going. He headed down the dock toward his own boat. Tarwater stared at Nate just long enough to convey revolt before turning on his heel and marching after Hyland.When they were gone, Amy said, Tarwater is a nutcase.Hes all right. Hes got a job to do is all, Clay said. Whats with the recorder?The recorder is fine, Nate said.Then what gives? Its a perfect day. Clay liked to state the obvious when it was positive. It was sunny, calm, with no wind, and the underwater visibility was two hundred feet. It was a perfect day to research whales.Nate started handing waterproof cases of equipment to Clay. I dont know. I may have seen something out there, Clay. I have to think about it and see the pictures. Im going to drop some film off at the lab, then go back to Papa Lani and write up some research until the films ready.Clay flinched, just a tad. It was Amys job to drop off film and write up research. Okay. How bout you, kiddo? Clay said to Amy. My new guy doesnt look like hes going to show, and I need someone topside while Im under.Amy looked to Nate for some kind of approval, but when he simply kept unloading cases without a reaction, she just shrugged. Sure, Id love to.Clay suddenly became self-conscious and shuffled in his flip-flops, looking for a second more like a five-year-old kid than a barrel-chested, fifty-year-old man. By calling you kiddo I didnt mean to dimmish you by age or anything, you know.I know, Amy said.And I wasnt making any sort of comment on your competency either.I understand, Clay.Clay cleared his throat unnecessarily. Okay, he said.Okay, Amy said. She grabbed two Pelican cases full of equipment, stepped up onto the dock, and started schlepping the stuff to the parking area so it could be loaded into Nates pickup. Over her shoulder she said, You guys both so need to get laid.I think thats annihilate harassment, Clay said to Nate.I may be having hallucinations, said Nate.No, she really said that, Clay said.After Quinn had left, Amy climbed into the Always Confused and began untying the stern line. She glanced over her shoulder to look at the forty-foot cabin cruiser where Captain Tarwater posed on the bow looking like an advertisement for a particularly sozzled laundry detergent Bumstick Go-Be-Bright, perhaps.Clay, you ever heard of a uniformed naval officer accompanying a researcher into the field before?Clay looked up from doing a battery check on the GPS. Not unless the researcher was working from a navy vessel. Once I was along on a guided missile destroyer for a study on the effects of high explosives on resident populations of southern sea lions in the Falkland Islands. They wanted to see what would happen if you set off a ten-thousand-pound charge in proximity to a sea lion colony. There was a uniformed officer in charge of that.Amy cast the line back to the dock and turned to face Clay. W hat was the effect?Well, it blew them the fuck up, didnt it? I mean, thats a lot of explosives.They let you film that for National Science?Just stills, Clay said. I dont think they anticipated it going the way it did. I got some great shots of it raining seal meat. Clay started the engine.Yuck. Amy untied the bumpers and pulled them into the boat. But youve never seen a uniformed officer working here? Before now, I mean.Nowhere else, Clay said. He pulled down the gear lever. There was a thump, and the boat began to creep forward.Amy pushed them away from the surrounding boats with a padded boat hook. What do you think theyre doing?I was trying to find out this morning when you guys came in. They loaded an awfully big case before you got here. I asked what it was, and Tarwater got all sketchy. Cliff said it was some acoustics stuff.Directional array? Amy asked. Researchers sometimes towed large arrays of hydrophones that could, unlike a single hydrophone, break the direction from wh ich sound was traveling.Could be, Clay said. Except they dont have a winch on their boat.A wench? What are you trying to say, Clay? Amy feigned being offended. Are you calling me a wench?Clay grinned at her. Amy, I am old and have a girlfriend, and therefore I am tolerant to your hotness. Please cease your useless attempts to make me uncomfortable.Lets follow them.Theyve been working on the lee side of Lanai. I dont want to take the Confused past the wind line.So you were trying to find out what theyre up to?I fished. No bites. Cliffs not going to say anything with Tarwater standing there.So lets follow them.We actually may get some work done today. Its a good day, after all, and we might not get a dozen windless days all season here. We cant afford to lose a day, Amy. Which reminds me, whats up with Nate? Not like him to blow off a good field day.You know, hes nuts, Amy said, as if it were understood. Too much time thinking about whales.Oh, right. I forgot. As they motored out of the harbor, Clay waved to a group of researchers who had gathered at the fuel station to debauch coffee. Twenty universities and a dozen foundations were represented in that group. Clay was single-handedly responsible for making the scientists who worked out of Lahaina into a social community. He knew them all, and he couldnt help it he liked people who worked with whales and he just liked it when people got along.Hed started weekly meetings and presentations of papers at the Pacific Whale Sanctuary building in Kihei, which brought all the scientists together to socialize, trade information, and, for some, to try to weasel some useful data out of someone without the burden of field research.Amy waved to the group, too, as she dug into one of the orange Pelican waterproof cases. induce on, Clay, lets follow Tarwater and see what hes up to. She pulled a huge pair of twenty-power binoculars out of the case and showed them to Clay. We can watch from a distance.You might want to go up in the bow and look for whales, Amy.Whales? Theyre big and wet. What else do you need to know?You scientists never cease to amaze me, Clay said. Come hold the wheel while I get a pencil to write that down.Lets follow Tarwater.