“I don't miss that, ” Boone says.
“And it doesn't miss you,” Johnny replies.
This is true. When Boone pulled the pin at SDPD, his lieutenant's only regret was that it hadn't been attached to a grenade. Despite his remark, Johnny disagrees-Boone was a good cop. A very good cop.
It was a shame what happened.
But now Boone is following High Tide's eyes back out to the ocean, at which the big man is gazing with an almost reverential intensity.
“It's coming,” High Tide says. “The swell.”
“Big?” Boone asks.
“Not big,” says High Tide. “Huge.”
A real thunder crusher.
Like, ka- boom.
5
What is a wave anyway?
We know one when we see one, but what is it?
The physicists call it an “energy-transport phenomenon.”
The dictionary says it's “a disturbance that travels through a medium from one location to another location.”
Adisturbance.
It's certainly that.
Something gets disturbed. That is, something strikes something else and sets off a vibration. Clap your hands right now and you'll hear a sound. What you're actually hearing is a sound wave. Something struck something else and it set off a vibration that strikes your eardrum.
The vibration is energy. It's transported through the phenomenon of a wave from one location to the other.
The water itself doesn't actually move. What happens is one particle of water bumps into the next, which bumps into the next, and so on and so forth until it hits something. It's like that idiot wave at a sports event-the people don't move around the stadium, but the wave does. The energy flows from one person to another.
So when you're riding a wave, you're not riding water. The water is the medium, but what you're really riding is energy.