Fluke, Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings (22 page)

Nate suddenly felt something he'd felt before only when waking up in a hotel with the bedspread pulled up around his face: a deep and earnest hope, motivated by disgust, that in all the time it had been there, someone had cleaned the cast-off genetic material from it. He stood up, just for safety. "How could you possibly know this, Growl? It goes against everything we know about evolution."

"No it doesn't. It completely fits. Yes, a complex process like life can develop, given enough time, but we also know that an animal that fits perfectly into its niche isn't pressured to change. Sharks have remained basically the same for a hundred million years, the chambered nautilus for five hundred million. Well, you're just looking at the animal that found its niche first. The first animal, the source."

Nate shook his head at the magnitude of it. "You might be able to explain the evolutionary path being preserved, but you can't explain consciousness, analytical thought, processes that require a very complex mechanism to perform. You can't pull off that sort of complexity of function with big, fluffy organic molecules."

"The molecules have evolved, but they remembered. The Goo is a complex, if amorphous, life form; there are no analogs for it. Everything is a model of it, and nothing is a model of it."

Nate stepped back from the Colonel, and the Goo flexed to make room for him. The movement gave him a brief moment of vertigo, and he lost his balance. The Goo caught him, the surface moving forward against his shoulder blades just enough to steady him on his feet. Nate whipped around quickly and the Goo pulled back. "God, that's creepy!"

"There you go, Nate. Aware. You'd be amazed at what the Goo knows — at what it can tell us. You can have a life here, Nate. You'll see things here you would never see, you'll do things you could never do. And in the process you can help me unravel the greatest biological riddle in the history of the world."

"I think you're supposed to laugh manically after saying something like that, Colonel."

"If you help me, I'll give you what you've always wanted."

"Despite what you think, what I want is to go home."

"That's not going to happen, Nate. Not ever. You're a bright man, so I won't insult you by pretending the circumstances are any different than they are: You are not ever going to leave these caverns alive, so now you have to make the decision of how you want to spend your life. You can have everything here that you could have on the surface — much more, in fact — but you're not leaving."

"Well, in that case, Colonel, see if you can get your giant booger to duplicate you so you can go fuck yourself."

"I know what the whale song means, Nate. I know what it's for." Nate felt as if he'd been sucker-punched by his own obsession, but he tried not to show the impact.

"Doesn't really matter now, does it?"

"I understand. You take a little time to work into the idea, Nate, but there is some urgency. This isn't just standing back and collecting data — we need to do something. I want your help. We'll talk soon."

The Goo came down and seemed to envelop the Colonel. There was a sound like ripping paper, and a long, pink tunnel opened behind Nate, leading all the way to the iris door through which he'd entered. He took one last look over his shoulder, but there was nothing except Goo, Ryder was gone.

Nate was met in the hall by the two big killer whaley boys, who took one look at his face, then looked at each other, then snickered, with big toothy grins. Emily 7 was nowhere to be seen.

"He's a fucking squirrel," Nate said.

The whaley boys went into wheezing fits of laughter, doubling over as they led Nate down the corridor and back to the grotto.
Say what you want,
Nate thought.
The Goo designed these guys to enjoy themselves.

As soon as Nate entered the apartment, he knew he wasn't alone. There was a smell there, and not just the ubiquitous ocean smell that permeated the whole grotto, but a sweeter, artificial smell. He quickly checked the main living rooms and the bathroom. When the portal to the bedroom opened, he could see a shape under the covers in his double bed. The biolighting hadn't come on in the bedroom as usual. Nate sighed. The shape under the covers nuzzled into the corner of the bed exactly the way she had on the whale ship.

"Emily 7, you are a lovely — ah — person, really, but I'm — " He was what? He had no idea what he was going to say. He was just trying to get to know himself better? He needed some space? But then he realized that whatever, whoever was under the sheets was too small to be the enamored whaley boy. Nuñez, he thought. This was going to be worse than Emily 7. Nuñez was really his only human contact in Gooville, even if she was working for the cause. He didn't want to alienate her. He couldn't afford to. He moved into the room, trying to think of a way that this could possibly not make things worse.

"Look, I know that we've spent a lot of time together, and I like you, I really do —»

"Good," said Amy, throwing back the covers. "I like you, too. You coming in?"

Clay and Kona had spent the day cleaning the muck out of the raised-from-the-deep
Always Confused.
Now Clay stood on the breakwater at the Lahaina Harbor, watching the sun bubble red into the Pacific and throw purple fire over the island. He was feeling that particular mix of melancholy and agitation that usually comes with drinking coffee and Irish whiskey at the wake of someone you never knew, and it usually ends in a fight. He felt as if he should do something, but he didn't know what. He needed to move, but he didn't know where. Libby had confirmed that the last message about Nate had been recorded more than a week after he'd disappeared, and it seemed to be more evidence that Nate had survived his ordeal in the channel, but where was he? How do you rush in to save someone when you don't know where he is? All their analysis of the tapes since then had yielded nothing but whale calls. Clay was lost.

"What you doing?" Kona, barefoot and smelling of bleach, came up behind him.

"I'm waiting for the green flash." He wasn't, really, but sometimes, just as the sun dipped below the horizon, it happened. He needed something to happen.

"Yeah, I seen that. What cause that?"

"Uh, well" — and that was another thing, he didn't have enough of a handle on the natural sciences to keep this whole project going — "I believe as the sun disappears under the horizon, the residual spectrum bounces off the mucusphere, thus causing the green flash."

"Yah, mon. The mucusphere."

"It's science," said Clay, knowing that it wasn't science.

"When the boat clean, then we going out, record whales and like dat?"

Good question,
Clay thought. He could collect the data, but he didn't have the knowledge necessary to analyze it. He had hoped that Amy would do that.

"I don't know. If we find Nate, maybe."

"You think he still living, then? Even after all this time?"

"Yeah. I hope. I guess we should keep up the work until we can find him."

"Yeah. Nate say them Japanese going to kill our minkes if you don't work hard."

"Minke whales, yeah. I've been on one of their ships. Norwegians, too."

"That's some evil fuckery."

"Maybe. The minke herd is large. They're not endangered. The Japanese and the Norwegians aren't really taking enough of them to hurt the population, so why shouldn't we let them hunt them? I mean, what's the argument for stopping them? Because whales are cute? The Chinese fry kitties — we don't protest them."

"The Chinese fry kitties?"

"I'm not saying I agree with killing them, but we really don't have a good argument."

"The Chinese fry kitties?" Kona's voice was getting higher each time he spoke.

"Maybe some of the work we do here can prove that these animals have culture, that they're closer to us than they perceive.
Then
we'll have an argument."

"Kitties? Like, little meow kitties? They just fry them?"

Clay was musing, watching the sunset and feeling sad and frustrated, and words came out of him like a long, rambling sigh: "Of course, when I was on the whaling ship, I saw how the Japanese whalers looked at the animals. They see them as fish. No more or less than a tuna. But I was photographing a sperm-whale mother and her calf, and the calf got separated from the pod. The mother came back to get the calf and pushed it away from our Zodiac. The whalers were visibly moved. They recognized that mother/child behavior. It wasn't fish behavior. So it's not a lost cause."

"Kitties?" Kona sighed, taking on the same tone of resignation that Clay had used.

"Yeah," said Clay.

"So how we going to find Nate so we can do good work and save them humpies and minkes?"

"Is that what we're doing?"

"No. Not now. Now we just watching for a green flash."

"I don't know any science, Kona. I made that up, about the green flash."

"Ah, I didn't know. Science you don't know just looks like magic."

"I don't believe in magic."

"Oh, brah, don't say dat. Magic come bite you in the ass for sure. You going to need my help for sure now."

Clay felt some of the weight of his melancholy lift by sharing a moment with the surfer, but his need to act was worrying at him like a flea in the ear. "Let's take a drive up-country, Kona."

"They really fry kitties in China?" Kona said, his voice so high now that dogs living around the harbor winced.

"Amy, what, how — what?" The lights had come up, and Nate could see that it was Amy in his bed. It was a lot of Amy that he hadn't seen before.

"They took me, Nate. Just like you. A few days later. It was horrible. Quick, hold me."

"A whale ship ate you, too?"

"Yes, just like you. Hold me, I'm so afraid."

"And they brought you all the way here?"

"Yes, just like you, only it's worse for a dame. I feel… so… so naked. Hold me."

" 'Dame'? No one says 'dame' anymore."

"Well, African-American, then."

"You are
not
African-American."

"I can't remember all the politically correct terms. Christ, Nate, what do you need, a diagram? Crawl in." Amy flapped the covers, threw them back, then struck a cheesecake pose, grinning.

But Nate backed away. "You put your head in the water to listen for the whale. The only other person I ever saw do that was Ryder."

"Look at my tan line, Nate." She danced her fingertips over her tan line, which to Nate looked more like a beige line. Nevertheless, she had his attention. "I've never had a tan line before."

"Amy!"

"What!"

"You set me up!"

"I'm naked over here. Haven't you thought about that?"

"Yes, but —»

"Ha! You admit it. I was your research assistant. You had firing power over me. Yet there you are, thinking about me naked."

"You
are
naked."

"Ha! I think I've made my point."

"That 'ha' thing is unprofessional, Amy."

"Don't care. I no longer work for you, and you are not the boss of me anymore, and furthermore, look at this butt." She rolled over. He did. She looked back over her shoulder and grinned. "Ha!"

"Stop that." He looked at the wall. "You spied on me. You caused all this to happen."

"Don't be ridiculous. I was just part of it, but all that is forgiven. Look how luscious I am." Amy did a presentation wave over herself, as if Nate had just won her in a game show.

"Would you stop that?" Nate reached over and pulled the covers up to her chin.

"Lus-cious," she said, pulling the covers down, revealing a breast with each syllable.

Nate walked out of the room. "Put on some clothes and come out here. I'm not going to try to talk to you like that."

"Fine, don't talk," she called after him. "Just crawl in."

"You're just bait," he called from the kitchen.

"Hey, buster, I'm not that young."

"This conversation is over until you come out here fully dressed." Nate sat down at his little dining table and tried to will away his erection.

"What are you, some kind of fruitcake, some kind of sissy boy, some kind of fairy, huh?"

"Yes, that's it," Nate said.

For a moment nothing but quiet from the bedroom. Then: "Oh, my God, I feel like such a maroon." Her voice was softer now. She came stumbling out of the bedroom, the sheet wrapped around her. "I'm really sorry, Nate. I had no idea. You seemed so interested. I wouldn't have —»

"Ha!" Nate said. "See how it feels."

The Old Broad had given them iced ginger tea and set Kona up at one of her telescopes to look at the moon. She sat down next to Clay on the lanai and they listened to the night for a while.

"It's nice up here," Clay said. "I don't think I've been up here at night before."

"Clay, I'm usually in bed by now, so I hope you don't think me dense if I get things clear in my mind."

"Of course not, Elizabeth."

"Thank you. As I see it, for years you and Nate have been telling everyone that I'm a nut job because I said I could communicate with whales. Now you drive up here in a froth — in the middle of the night — to deliver the earth-shattering news that what I've been telling you all along is possible?" She leaned her chin on her fist and looked wide-eyed at Clay. "That about right?"

"We never called you a nut job, Elizabeth," Clay said. "That's an overstatement."

"Doesn't matter, Clay. I'm not mad." She sipped her tea. "And I'm not angry either. I've been in these islands a very long time, Clay, and I've lived on the side of this volcano for most of it. I've spent more time looking down on that channel than most people have spent on the planet, but not once did you or Nate ask me why. Didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, I guess. Easier to think I was just a few bananas short of a bunch than to ask me why I was interested."

Clay felt sweat running down the small of his back. He'd been uncomfortable around the Old Broad before, but in a totally different way — the way one feels when a matron aunt pinches your cheek and starts to ramble inanely about the old days, not like this. This was like getting sandbagged by a prosecutor. "I don't think that Nate or I could answer that question, Elizabeth, so it's not out of order that we didn't ask you."

"That's a load a shark balls, old Auntie," Kona said, not looking away from the eyepiece of the eight-inch mirror telescope.

"He's a sweet boy," the Old Broad said. "Clay, you know that Mr. Robinson was in the navy. Did I ever tell you what it was that he did?"

"No, ma'am, I just assumed he was an officer."

"I can understand how you might think that, but all the money came from my family. No, sweetheart, he was a noncom, a chief petty officer, a sonar man. In fact, I'm told he was the best sonar man in the navy at the time."

"I'm sure he was, Elizabeth, but —»

"Shut up, Clay. You came here for help, I'm helping you."

"Yes, ma'am." Clay shut up.

"James — that was Mr. Robinson's first name — he loved to listen to the humpbacks. He said they made his job a damn sight harder, but he loved them. We were stationed in Honolulu then, but submarine crews were on and off on hundred-day duty shifts, so when he would have time in port, we would come over to Maui, rent a boat, and go out in the channel. He wanted me to be part of the world he lived in all the time — the world of sound under the sea. You can understand that, can't you, Clay?"

"Of course." But Clay was getting a not-so-good feeling about this trip down memory lane. He had things he needed to know, but he wasn't sure that this was part of them.

"That's when I bought Papa Lani with some of my father's money. We thought we'd live there full-time eventually, maybe turn it into a hotel. Anyway, one day James and I decided to rent a little powerboat and camp on the ocean side of Lanai. It was a calm day and an easy trip. On our way over, a big humpback came up beside the boat. It even seemed to change course when we did. James slowed down so we could stay with our new friend. There were no rules then about getting close to the whales like there are now. We didn't even know we were supposed to save them back then, but James loved the humpbacks, and I had come to as well.

"There was no one but the pineapple-company workers on Lanai at that time, so we found a deserted beach where we thought we'd build a fire, cook some dinner, drink highballs from tin cups, swim naked, and… you know, make love on the beach. See there, I've shocked you."

"No you haven't," said Clay.

"Yes I have. I'm sorry."

"No you haven't. Really, I'm fine, tell the story."
Old ladies,
he thought.

"When the trade winds came up that evening, we pitched the tent a little ways off the beach in a small canyon sheltered from the wind. Well, I gave James my best hummer, and he fell asleep right away."

Clay choked on his iced tea.

"Oh, my dear, did an ice cube go down the wrong pipe? Kona, come here and Heimlich Clay, dear."

"No, I'm fine." Clay waved the surfer away. "Really, I'm okay." Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he wiped his nose on his shirttail. He was suddenly incredibly grateful he hadn't brought Clair. "Just need to catch my breath."

Kona sat down cross-legged at their feet, having suddenly found that he was interested in history. "Go ahead, old Auntie."

"Well, I got a little bit of a headache. So I decided to go back to the boat to get an aspirin from the first-aid kit. Come to think of it, it must have been from the tension in my neck. I always got a crick in my neck when I did that, but James loved it so."

"Jesus, Elizabeth, would you get on with the story," Clay said.

"I'm sorry, dear, I've shocked you, haven't I?"

"No, I'm fine. I'm just curious to find out what happened."

"Well, as long as I didn't shock you. I suppose I should be more discreet in front of the boy, but it
is
part of the story."

"No, please. What happened on the beach?"

"You know, we could fuck like mad monkeys, all night long, and it never gave me a headache, but one —»

"The beach, please."

"When I got to the beach, there were two men near the boat. It looked like they were doing something to the engine. I ducked behind a rock before they saw me. I watched them in the moonlight, a short one and the tall one. The tall one seemed to be wearing some sort of helmet or diving suit. But then the short one said something, and the tall one started laughing — snickering, really — and I saw his face in the moonlight. It wasn't a helmet, Clay. It was a face — a smooth, shiny face, with a jaw full of teeth. I could see the teeth even from where I was. It wasn't human, Clay.

"Well, I went back and woke James, told him he had to come see. I took him back to my hiding place. The two men, or the man and that thing were still there, but behind them, right there almost on the beach, was also a humpback, a big one. The water couldn't have been ten feet deep where he was, yet he was sitting there calm as could be.

"Well, all James saw was the two men messing with our boat. We had drunk quite a few cocktails, I guess, and James had his big, strong man act to do. He told me to stay where I was and not to move for anything. Then he went after them — shouting at the top of his lungs for them to get away. The tall one, the nonhuman thing, dove under the water right away, but the man looked around like he'd been trapped. He started wading out toward the whale, and James went right in after him. Then, at last, James saw the whale. He just stopped there in the surf and looked. That's when the thing came up out of the water behind him. Suddenly it was just there, looming behind James. I wanted to yell, but I was so afraid. The thing, it hit James with something, maybe a rock, and he fell forward into the water. Then I screamed for all I was worth, but I'm not sure they even heard me over the noise of the wind and the surf.