Except that, today, there weren’t any whales. The crew
stared at the screens, which by the application of ingenious technology could
spot anything larger than a sardine and calculate its net value on the international
oil market, and found them blank. The occasional fish that did show up was barreling
through the water as if in a great hurry to get elsewhere.
The captain drummed his fingers on the console. He was
afraid that he might soon be conducting his own research project to find out what
happened to a statistically small sample of whaler captains who came back
without a factory ship full of research materials . He wondered what they did
to you. Maybe they locked you in a room with a harpoon gun and expected you to
do the honourable thing."
This is from the 1990 fantasy
novel ‘Good Omens’ by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman – a wickedly funny story
of the apocalypse (and hence oddly topical) - and the excerpt above is one of
many odd little peregrinations that they take around the world away from the
main story, as the world is prepared for its end.
There is a little more
to this whaling-themed aside – which you are encouraged to read for yourself –
but it conclude with another wonderful one-liner (and you can imagine the fun
that Pratchett and Gaiman had playing off each other’s wonderful wits):
‘And
ten billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance’.
(Kappamaki, by the way, appears to be a reference to
cucumber sushi!)
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