I am indebted to the following authors, whose wonderful books taught me a great deal and also informed Waking Storms at many points: Sylvia A. Earle’s The World Is Blue provided me with an invaluable overview of ecological problems affecting the oceans. The Climate Crisis by David Archer and Stefan Rahmstorf was also helpful in this regard. Because I’ve never seen pack ice or nilas myself, my descriptions were largely based on what I learned from Barry H. Lopez’s magnificent Arctic Dreams. Nausicaa’s references to whaling, especially to hunting blue whales with exploding harpoons, were drawn from Philip Hoare’s The Whale. Alaska Geographic’s book The Bering Sea offered background information on declining seal populations in the region and the consequent behavior of orcas deprived of their usual prey. An excerpt from Dick Russell’s The Eye of the Whale, published in the New York Times, inspired the description of the gray whales’ migration. Any factual errors or whimsical deviations from accepted reality are entirely my responsibility, not theirs.

Gratitude is also due to everyone at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, especially to the Best Editor Ever, Julie Tibbott; to the Best Agent Ever, Kent D. Wolf; and as always to the Awesomest Husband of All Time, Todd Polenberg.

1

The Tank

“Hello,” the young man in the lab coat purred into a round speaker, his hands fidgeting. Ripples of azure light reflected on his cheeks. “Are you awake?” There was no response. He stood with a few other stiff-backed men, among them the nation’s secretary of defense, in a room divided in half by a wall of thick—and perfectly soundproof—glass. Behind the glass was something that resembled the kind of fake habitat found in a zoo, like an enclosure for keeping penguins or seals. Bubbling salt water filled most of the tank to a depth of about five feet, but on the right there was an artificial shore of baby blue cement sloping down into the water. That was where the resemblance to a zoo display ended, though. A giant flat-screen television blazed high on the wall above the tank’s deep end, playing what appeared to be a reality show about rich teenagers. Flouncy pink satin cushions were heaped along the shore just above the waterline, and a large white dresser decorated with golden scrolls perched on a ledge at the back. Various electronic gadgets were scattered on the cement, but beyond the clutter the tank gave no sign of being inhabited. “You have a very important visitor today, so . . . your full cooperation . . .”