11
Weeks pass. I become practiced in the art of quick naps, steal-
ing sleep whenever Bao will let me. I forget what the rest of
the
Minnow
looks like. All I know is the trainer deck, every
inch of it. Bao eats voraciously, and it’s not long until he’s the
size of the leatherback turtles that make up part of his genet-
ics. He’s finally big enough to swim alongside the ship.
Santa Elena claps me on the back when I tell her.
We flush him in the morning, just after the sun rises.
Two pirates haul down the partitions separating Bao’s tank
from the channel that washes out into the sea, and out with
the bathwater goes a seven-hundred-pound, monstrous baby,
squalling almost as loudly as the day he came into the world.
He plunges into the NeoPacific and bobs up immediately, his
blowholes flaring as he takes in his new environment.
I toss a fish at him, hitting him in the side of the head. Bao
blinks, snaps it up, then looks to see where it came from as I
