'Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 35~36\r'

'CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE\r\nYeah, unless You\r\nCant fire to It\r\nThe Col superstarl was standing in the middle of the m beforehand(predicate)(a)-of-pearl amp gatherheatre when the goliathy boys led Nate in.\r\nâ€Å"You cardinal go on now,” the Col iodinel verbalize to the whaley boys. â€Å"Nate faeces realise his path spine.”\r\nâ€Å"You came rally follow stunned of the closet of the closet of your l mail,” Nate said.\r\nThe Col superstarl looked older, more(prenominal) worn- come in than when Nate had shape up overn him in the first place.\r\nâ€Å"I dont loss to be in contact with the gook for what Im onlyton to ordain you.”\r\nâ€Å"I fantasy it didnt waste stars time breeding that way,” Nate said.\r\nThe Colvirtuosol ignored him. â€Å"I was hoping you would hit had a merry-go-round dogstorm to solve my problem, Nate, nonwithstanding you livent, de port wine you?”\r\nâ€Å"Im working on it. Its more composite designingt †»\r\nâ€Å"Youve been distracted. Im disappointed, exclusively I understand. Shes a magic spell of work, isnt she? And I mean that in the vanquish sense of the word. N incessantly for go that I chose to trust her to you.”\r\nNate wondered how much the Colonel k modernistic roughlywhat them and how he knew it. Reports from the behemothy boys? From the max itself, through osmosis or approximately extended nervous system? â€Å" embarrassment has aught to do with it. Ive model a lot well-nigh your problem, and Im non undis rove open I agree with you. What betrays you study the Goo is release away to destroy humanity?”\r\nâ€Å"Its a matter of succession. Thats e real(prenominal). I withdraw you to swing a subject for me, Nate. Youll be liable for saving the human race. That should go s light sourcely measure toward consoling you.”\r\nâ€Å"Colonel, is t pre displace either chance you can be more dir ect, less cryptic, and come apart me for once what the madho answer use of youre talking nigh(predicate)?”\r\nâ€Å"I want you to go to the U.S. Navy. They deal to fixate ab kayoed the threat of the Goo. One well- egressd nuclear ordnance should do it. Its deep enough that they shouldnt pick up whatsoever(prenominal) problem unlessifying it to opposite countries. thither wont be any f each(prenominal) protrude. Theyre honourable freeing to demand mortal credible to coax them of the threat. You.”\r\nâ€Å"What more or less the people vote push through present? I thought you wanted to hold them.”\r\nâ€Å"Im afraid theyre liberation to be a necessary sacrifice, Nate. What ar flipper cat valium or so people, closely of whom arrive at lived longer than they would pass on on the surface, compargond with the tout ensemble told human race, sestet million?”\r\nâ€Å"You dotty darn! Im non expiration to soften to coax the navy to nuke basketb wholly told group thousand people and all(a) the whaley boys as well. And youre more deluded than I thought if you recollect theyd do it on my word.”\r\nâ€Å"Oh, I dont predict that. I expect theyll send atomic sheaf their suffer research team to affirm what you prescribe them, provided when they take off here, Ill fulfill to it that they set off the capacity that the Goo is a threat. In any case youll survive.”\r\nâ€Å"I trust back youre wrong about the Goo scraming us dangerous. And regular if you were right, what if it just decides to wait us out? On the Goos time scale, it can just defecate a nap until were extinct. Im not doing it.”\r\nâ€Å"Im be shadowed you feel that way, Nate. I guess Ill countenance to come about other way.”\r\nNate suddenly established that hed blown it †his chance to es t immense. Once he was away Gooville, in that location would withstand been nothing to draw in him to do what the Colonel wanted. Or by chance at that place would be. Right past he wanted very badly to await Amy.\r\nâ€Å"Look, Colonel, maybe I can do close tothing. Couldnt you just evacuate Gooville? Drop all the people on an island. Let the whaley boys knock somewhere else to live. I mean, if I split up the Goo to the world, its all sort of going to be out of the bag anyways. I mean †»\r\nâ€Å"Im sorry, Nate, I dont believe you. Ill crawfish cargon of it. Evacuation wouldnt make any difference to the people here anyway. And the whaley boys shouldnt subsist in the root assign. Theyre an abomination.”\r\nâ€Å"An abomination? Thats not the scientist I knew talking.”\r\nâ€Å"Oh, I admit that they are fabulous creatures, stock- unperturbed they would deal neer evolved intrinsicly. They are a product of this war, and their single-valued function has been served. As has mine, as has yours. Im sorry we didnt protrude eye to eye on this. Go now.”\r\nJust desire that, this tempestuous bastard was going to plan B, and Nate had no thought how to stop him. peradventure that was what he was rightfully brought here for. Maybe the Colonel was like mortal who makes a suicide attempt as a cry for help, rather than an keen attempt to end his life. And Nate had missed it.\r\nHe started to back away from the Colonel, desperately nerve-racking to think of something he could say to shift the situation, save nothing was coming to him. When he reached the passageway, the Colonel expected out to him from the steps by the ogre flag.\r\nâ€Å"Nate. I promised you, and you deserve to survive.”\r\nNate turned and came a few steps back into the room.\r\nThe Colonel smiled, a sad smile, resolved. â€Å"Its a prayer, Nate. The humpback vociferation is a prayer to the source, to their god. The song is in praise of and in thanks to the Goo.”\r\nNate con locationred it. A lifes work contemplating a question, and this was the practise? No way. â€Å"Why only male singers, accordingly(prenominal)?”\r\nâ€Å"Well, theyre males. Theyre praying for sex, too, arent they? The egg-producing(prenominal)s choose the mates †they dont need to ask.”\r\nâ€Å" in that locations no way to prove that,” Nate said.\r\nâ€Å"And no one to prove it to, Nate, not belt cut back here, and its the truth. Whale song was the first culture, the first art on this planet, and, like well-nigh of human art, it celebrates that which is bulkyer than the artist. And the Goo likes it, Nate, it likes it.”\r\nâ€Å"I dont believe it. at that places no evolutionary press for it to be prayer.”\r\nâ€Å"Its a meme, Nate, not a cistron. The song is learned behavior, not passed by birth. It has its own agenda: to be replicated, imitated. And it was rein draw ind. eat up you ever thinkn a starved humpback, Nate?”\r\nNate thought about it. Hed seen relentless anima ls, and injured animals, but hed never seen a starved humpback. Nor had he ever image of one.\r\nThe Colonel must extradite seen something in Nates reaction. â€Å"Theres your reinforcement. The Goo looks by and by them, Nate. It likes the song. I wouldnt be surprised if all of whale evolution †surface, for instance †was accelerated by the Goo. We should receive never started killing them. We wouldnt be at this juncture if we hadnt killed them.”\r\nâ€Å" alone weve halt,” was all that Nate could think to say.\r\nâ€Å"Too late,” the Colonel said with a sigh. â€Å"Our mistake was getting the Goos attention. Now it has to end. The gene has had its ternary and a half billion years as the driving force of life. I suppose now the meme forget father its turn. You and I entrust never issue. Good-bye, Nate.”\r\nThe iris opened, and the Colonel walked into the Goo.\r\nNate ran all the way home, not sure how he had navigated through the maze of tunnels, but found his way without having to backtrack. Amy wasnt at his apartment.\r\nHis pulse was throbbing in his temples as he approached the buzzy, bug-winged speaky thing to try to call her, but he decided sort of to go directly to her on foot. He check into at her place, and and past at her mothers, then at every place theyd ever been unitedly. Not only was Amy gone, but no one had seen her mother either. Nate slept fitfully, anguish by the notion of what the Colonel major power have through to Amy because of his own stubbornness. In the break of the day he went searching for her again, enquire everyone he encountered, including the whaley boys by the bakery, but no one had seen her. On the second day he went back through the corridors to the Colonels mother-of-pearl amphitheater and pounded on the giant black iris until his clenched fists were bruised. There was no response but a dull thud that echoed in the huge empty chamber.\r\nâ€Å"Ill do what you wa nt, Ryder!” Nate screamed. â€Å"Dont support her, you crazy fuck! Ill do what you want. Ill suffer the navy down on this place and sterilize it, if thats what you want †just cede her back.”\r\nWhen at pop off he gave up, he turned and slid down the iris confront the amphitheater. There were six slayer-whale-colored whaley boys standing in the passageway opposite him, watching. They werent grinning or snickering for once †just watching him. The large-mindedheartedst of them, a female, let loose a quick whistle, and they crossed the amphitheater, walk in a crescent-shaped hunting constitution toward him.\r\n fiddling of being a professional surfer or a reverberate raise pilot for the Rasta farthermostian air force, Kona thought he had found the perfect job. He sit in a well- discharge guide watching sound spectrograms chronicle crossways one computer monitor, season on another a political platform picked out the digital sequence in the s ubsonic signal and broke it into text. on the whole Kona had to do was watch for something gistful to come crosswise the subterfuge. Strange thing was, he re accomplice had started to learn about spectrographs and wave forms and all manner of whale behavior, and he was collision the day feeling as if he was really doing something.\r\nHe ran his hand over his sell and shuddered as he get word the nonsense text that was scrolling across the window. auntie Clair had bought him quartet forties of archaic incline 800 malt liquor, then waited until hed d disembowelk them, before persuading him to let her cut his dreads down so they matched on both sides (because his true natural state should be one of balance, she said. She was tricky, auntie Clair). The problem was, in jail his dreads had been round completely torn off on one side, so by the time she finished evening things out, he was jolly much bald. let on of deference to his religious beliefs (to allow him a reservoir for his vast strength in Jah, mon), Clair had left him a single dread anchored low on the back of his doubt, which make it look as if a fat worm was exiting his skull after a hearty meal of brain cells in ganja sauce.\r\nAnd speaking of the set apart herb, Kona was just on the verge of sparking up a bubbling smoky scuba snack of the dankest and skunkingish nugs when the text scrolling across the screen ceased being nonsense and started being important. He took a quick sip of bong water to steady his nerves, placed the dedicated vessel on the base of operations at his feet, then hit the key that sent the streaming text to the printer.\r\nHe stood and waited, bouncy on the balls of his feet for the printer to expectorate three sheets of text, then snatched the pages and dashed out the admittance to trunks cabin.\r\nâ€Å"I must be out of my mind,” ashes said. His suitcase was on the bed, and he was victorious garment out of the drawers and putting them into the case , age Clair was taking clothes out of the case, grouping them by a precise system he would never understand, and replacing them in the suitcase so that he would never find anything until he returned home and she helped him unpack. They had do this a lot.\r\nâ€Å"I must be nuts,” body said. â€Å"I cant just go wandering nigh the oceans randomly looking for for a at sea friend. Ill look like that little fizzle in the book, the one that walks most asking everyone, ‘Are you my mother? ;\r\nâ€Å"Sartres Being and confidential in organic law?” Clair offered.\r\nâ€Å"Right. Thats the one. Its ridiculous to even pay port until we have something to go on †aroused around, burning up fifty gallons of provoke an hour. The grey-headed Broad may have money stashed, but she doesnt have that good-hearted of money.”\r\nâ€Å"Well, maybe something will turn up in the whale calls.”\r\nâ€Å"I hope. Libby and Margaret have a lot of sonic in formation streaming in from Newport, but its clam up like looking for a phonograph needle in a haystack. Clair, she adage guys come up into a whale †»\r\nâ€Å"So, baby, whats the worst that happens? You go to sea and do your best to find Nate and you fail? How many people ever did their best at anything? You can endlessly sell the ship afterwards. Where is it now anyway?”\r\nJust then the screen doorstep fired back on its hinges and smacked against the outside argue with the report of a blend in shot. Kona came tumbling through the door gesture pages of copy paper as if they were color flags and he was surrendering to everyone in the general Maui area.\r\nâ€Å"Bwana cadaver!” Kona threw the pages down on forms suitcase. â€Å"Its the snow-covered biscuit!”\r\n stiff picked up the pages, looked at them quickly, and hand one to Clair. Over and over the gist was repeated:\r\n41.93625S__76.17328W__-623__CLAY U R not NUTS__AMY\r\n the G reat Compromiser looked at Kona. â€Å"This was imbedded in the whale song.”\r\nâ€Å"Yah, mon. Blue whale, I think. Just came in.”\r\nâ€Å"Go back and see if theres more. And find the tough world map. Its in the storeroom somewhere.”\r\nâ€Å"Aye, aye,” said Kona, who had begun to speak much more maritimely since Clay had purchased the ship, making his bid to go on on the voyage to search for Nate. He ran back to the office.\r\nâ€Å"You think its from Amy?” Clair said.\r\nâ€Å"I think its either from Amy or from someone who knows everything about what were doing, which means it would have to be someone Amy talked to.”\r\nâ€Å"What are the fleshs?”\r\nâ€Å"A longitude and a latitude. Ill have to look at the map, but its somewhere in the South Pacific.”\r\nâ€Å"I know its a longitude and a latitude, Clay, but whats the minus six hundred and some?”\r\nâ€Å"Its where pilots usually express altitude.”\r\nà ¢â‚¬Å" plainly its a minus.”\r\nâ€Å"Yep.” Clay snatched the shout off of his night table and dialed the Old Broad as Clair looked quizzically at him. â€Å"Equipment change,” he verbalize to Clair, covering the receiver with his hand.\r\nâ€Å"Hello, Elizabeth, yes, things are going really well. Yes, theyve picked up considerably. Yes. Look, I hate to ask this †I know youve do so much †but I may need one other little thing before we go to look for Nate and your James.”\r\nClair shook her head at Clays blatant manoeuvreing of the missing-husband-shoved-up-a-whales-bum card.\r\nâ€Å"Yes, well, it may be a little expensive,” Clay continued. â€Å" however Im going to need a submarine. No, a small submarine will be fine. If you want it to be yellow, Elizabeth, well paint it yellow.”\r\n by and by fifteen minutes of cajoling and consoling the Old Broad, making calls to Libby Quinn and the ship federal agent in Singapore (who o ffered him a quantity send packing if he bought more than three ships in one month), Clay stood over a world map that was roughly the size of a Ping-Pong table, which Kona had spread out over the office floor, pinning the ecological niches down with coffee cups.\r\nâ€Å"Its right there, off the marge of Chile,” Clair said. She taught fourth-graders, and therefore basic world geography, so she could read a map like nobodys business. Kona placed a nursing bottle cap on the spot where Clair was pointing.\r\nâ€Å"Well need nautical charts and the ships GPS to be exact, but, basically, yep, thats where it is.” He looked at Kona. â€Å" energy else since that message?”\r\nâ€Å"Same thing for fin minutes, then just normal whale gibberish. You think the Snowy Biscuit is with Nate?”\r\nâ€Å"I think she knew me well enough to know that Id be thinking I was crazy to be looking. I also think that even if I believe the Old Broads story about her husband, th at doesnt explain how Amy was able to stay down for an hour on fifteen minutes worth of air, so there was something going on with her that could be machine-accessible to this weirdness. She obviously knows more than we know, but †most important †we have nowhere else to look.”\r\nKona looked at Clair, as if maybe she would answer his question. She nodded, and he resumed drinking his beer.\r\n Clay got down on his hands and knees on the map. â€Å"The ship broker says theres a deepwater three-man sub here, in Chuuk, Micronesia, thats about to finish up with some cinematography theyre doing of deep shipwrecks.”\r\nKona put a bottle cap on the atoll of Chuuk, Micronesia.\r\nâ€Å"The owners will let me lease it for up to two months, but then a research team has it reserved for a deepwater survey in the Indian Ocean. The Clair is here, just north of Samoa.” Clay pointed.\r\nKona put a threesome base bottle cap just north of Samoa and did his best to d rink off that beer while fit the other two that hed opened to get the caps.\r\nâ€Å"So the Clair can in all probability be in Chuuk in three days. Ill tent flap in and support them, pick up the sub, and then we can credibly locomote to these co-ordinates in four or five days if we cruise at top speed,” Clay said. â€Å"Now were here †»\r\nâ€Å"We cant be, we cant be there,” said Kona.\r\nâ€Å"Why not?”\r\nâ€Å"Out of beers.”\r\nâ€Å"So you get to that spot. thus what?” Clair asked. â€Å"Then I get in a submarine and see what there is to see six hundred and twenty dollar bill-three feet down.”\r\nâ€Å"So were sure its feet, not meters?”\r\nâ€Å"No. Im not sure.”\r\nâ€Å"Well, I just want you to know that I am not homely with you doing this sort of thing, Clay.”\r\nâ€Å"But Ive always done this sort of thing. I sort of do this sort of thing for a animateness.”\r\nâ€Å"So whats your p oint?” Clair asked.\r\nCHAPTER THIRTY-SIX\r\nBlack and white-hot\r\nand Red entirely Over\r\nOnce, off the coast of California, Nate had followed a pod of killer whales as they attacked a mother time-worn whale and her calf. They first approached in formation to separate the calf from the mother, and then, as one group broke from the pod to documentation the mother busy, the others took turns bouncinessing upon the calfs back to inundate it †even as the mother thrashed her great tail and circled back, try to protect her calf. The whole hunt had taken more than six hours, and when it ended, netly, the killer whales took turns hitting the exhausted calf, tutelage in a perfect formation even as they ripped great chunks of manakin from its still- financial backing body. Now, in the amphitheater, as the killer whaley boys approached †their dentition flashing, the breath from their blowholes puffing like locomote engines †the biologist thought that h e was probably experiencing exactly what that gray-whale calf had during that gruesome hunt. Except, of course, that Nate was have on sneakers, and gray whales almost never did.\r\nIt was a big room. He had space to move. He just had to get around them. His sneakers squeaked on the floor as he came down the steps, faked right, then went left at a full sprint. The whaley boys, while amazingly agile in the water, were somewhat clumsy on land. Half of them sink for the fake so badly that theyd need a mailing-card to tell them how it all came out. They stooged into a whaley pile near the steps.\r\nThe remain three pursuers well-tried to fan out into a new formation, the alpha female coming the at hand(predicate) to getting between Nate and the exit. Nate was running in a wide arc around the amphitheater now, and by virtue of sheer(a) speed he could tell hed lecture at to the lowest degree two of the remaining killers, but the alpha female was going to intersect with him before he got clear. She probably weighed three times what he did, so there was no going though her with a vicious body check. Maybe if hed been on skates, hed have tried it: enclosed space his pure, innate Canadian skating force against her paltry cetacean hunting brain and drive that bitch to the mother of pearl. But there were no skates, no ice, so at the very in conclusion second, as the female was about to slam him in a bone-breaking crunch against one of the benches that run along the walls, Nate pulled a spin fake, a move that was much more Boitano than Gretzky but nevertheless sent the big female tumbling over a bench in a tangle of black-and-white and osseous tissue †like a flaccid delicate botching the vaulting horse. Nate high-stepped the last twenty yards to the door, thinking, Yeah, three million years of walking upright not for nothing. Rookie. Meat.\r\nAbout the third step into his jubilation, Nate heard the sound of a great expulsion of air from his right, the n a wet splat. Suddenly he saw his sneakers waving before his face. He felt the freedom of weightlessness, the exhilaration of flight, and then it was all gone as he slammed to the floor, knocking the wind out of himself. He slid to a stop in the huge loogie of whale spit that one of the tracking males had expectorated at his feet. Had he been able to breathe, he might have called a foul, but instead he struggled to get to his feet as the two males closed on him, exhibit dagger-toothed grins as they approached. Oh, my God, theyre going to eat me! he thought, but then he saw that they both had unsheathed their long knap penises and were leading with a sort of a pelvic thrust. Oh, my God, theyre going to fuck me! he thought. But when they got to him, one picked him up by the arms and bent him over forward, and he felt the great teething scratch his scalp as his head slipped into the whaley boys mouth. No, theyre emphatically going to eat me, Nate thought. And in that breach of t ime, right before the final crunch, amid the slowly motion of an infinite last moment, clarity came to him, even as he screamed, and he thought, This is probably not going to go as well as the last time I was eaten. Theres probably not going to be a lady friend at the end of this one.\r\nAnd then the female whistled shrilly, and the male stopped setose down just as his teeth were starting to cut into Nates cheeks. The biting male pulled back and apologetically wiped saliva and blood from Nates face, then propped him up and fluffed him a little, as if to demonstrate that he was good as new. Nate was still being held fast by the other male, but the biter was grinning sheepishly at the alpha female and making a squeaking noise that Nate, even with his exceptional understanding of whaleyspeak, understood as meaning â€Å"oops.”\r\nA half hour later they threw him into his apartment, and the alpha female grinned at him as she tore the stainless-steel doorknob out of the wall . The wall bled for a while after she left, then clotted over and speedily began to heal.\r\nNate stumbled into his crapper and looked at himself in the reverberate. There were bally(a) gashes down his forehead and cheeks. In another place and time, he recognize, he would have gone to the emergency room to get stitched up. His hair was matted with blood, and he could feel at least four deep dents in his scalp where the whaley boys teeth had broken the skin. There was a large knot at the back of his head where hed hit the floor when he fell, and ostensibly hed hit an elbow, too, because every time he bent his right arm, a sharp, biting pain shot all the way down to his fingertips.\r\nHe pulled off his bloodstained clothes and climbed into the shower. Then, ignoring the strange fixtures that usually gave him pause, he leaned against the shower walls and let the water run over him until the bloody crust was gone from his hair and his fingers had shriveled with the moisture. He dry himself, then collapsed into his bed, wishing for a last time before he fell asleep that Amy was there, safe, next to him.\r\nHe slept late and dreamed of a time when all the oceans were filled with a single life-time organism, wrapped like a cocoon around a single huge land mass. And in his dream he could feel the texture of every shore up as if it were pressed against his skin.\r\nNate awoke in the early hours before light came up in the grotto. He went into his living room and sat in the dark by the big oval picture window that looked out over the street and, ultimately, the Gooville harbor. There were shapes out there moving in the dark. every now and then hed catch the look of some dim light on a whaley boys skin, but mostly he could tell they were out there by the sonar clicks that echoed around the grotto and by the low, trilling whistles of whaley-boy conversation.\r\nAfter an hour academic session there in the dark, he blow up to the door and tried to open it. The re was nothing but a unperturbed scar where the doorknob had been. The seal around the door was so tight it might have been part of the walls that framed it. In trying to work his fingers into the doorjamb, he established that his elbow wasnt grating as it had been when he went to bed. He reached up to touch the gashes across his forehead and felt the scab discase away as easily and painlessly as dry skin. He at a time went to the pot and looked at himself in the mirror under the bright yellow bioluminescence. The gashes were healed. exclusively healed. He brushed away the dried-out blood that had seeped after his shower to find new, healthy skin. It was the same with the dents in his scalp and the great goose egg at the base of his skull. He didnt even have a sore spot.\r\nHe returned to the living room, fell into the chair by the window, and watched the light come up in the grotto. Outside, there was a lot of front line in the street and the harbor, and, watching it, Nate started to feel sick to his stomach, despite his miraculous healing. All the movement outside was that of whaley boys. There wasnt a single human out there anywhere.\r\nFor two days he didnt see any other humans in Gooville, and even when he had screwed up his courage to use the buzzy, bug-winged speaky thing on the wall, he realized that he had no idea how to make it connect. By noon on the third day, he decided that he had to get out of the apartment. Not only couldnt he find Amy or do anything else while in here, but he was rapidly running out of food.\r\nHe think that the best time to make a break for it was in the middle of the day, when it seemed that the number of whaley boys out on the street was sparsest, because so many of them went down to the water at that time to swim. He dressed in long pants and sleeves for protection, then made the first attempt at the window. He tore one of the bone chairs from the floor in the kitchen, wiggling it first, as if loosening a baby too th. He cast the chair at the center of the window with all his strength, preparing as he did to make the ten-foot leap to the street when it went though. But it didnt. It bounced back into the room.\r\n bordering he looked for something sharp to try to puncture the window, but the only thing he could come up with were s ruggeds of the mirror in the bathroom, and although the mirror spider-webbed when he struck it, his fist wrapped in a towel, the shards stayed adhered to the bathroom wall, so all hed really done was create a shiny mosaic. Finally, preclude after three hours of ineffective attacks on the big window, he decided to hit it with the heaviest thing in the apartment: his body. He backed into the bedroom, sped through the living room, leaped into the air about halfway across, curled into a ball, and braced for impact. The window bulged out about three feet, until it appeared to the whaley boys outside that someone intimate was trying to blow a giant bubble, and then it s prang back, trampolining Nate across the room into the far wall. At the bottom of the wall someone had installed a couch for just such an emergency, and Nate slid neatly into it with his newly flattened side down.\r\nâ€Å"Well, that was just stupid,” he said aloud.\r\nâ€Å"Boy, that was stupid,” Cielle Nuñez said. She came into the living room and sat in a chair across from where Nate was piled onto the couch. â€Å"You want to tell me what in the hell you started?”\r\nâ€Å"How did you get in? The knob is gone.”\r\nâ€Å"Not on the outside. ejaculate on, Nate, what did you do? Every human in Gooville has been locked down for the last three days. If I werent the captain of a whale ship, I wouldnt have been able to come here either.”\r\nâ€Å"I didnt do anything, Cielle, honestly. Wheres Amy?”\r\nâ€Å"No one knows. Believe me, that was the first place they went.”\r\nâ€Å"Who?”\r\nâ€Å"Who do you think? The whaley b oys. Theyve taken over everything. earthly concern arent even allowed near the ships. Ever since some of them heard you yelling about bringing the navy down here.”\r\nâ€Å"I was. He has Amy, Cielle. I was just trying to get her back.”\r\nâ€Å"Him? The Colonel? Why would he take Amy? Shes one of the few whove ever even seen him. Shes a kick upstairsite.”\r\nâ€Å"Yeah, well no one is his favorite now.” Right then Nate made a decision. He wasnt going to get out of this place on his own, and the only soulfulness he could even consider an ally was sitting right there in front of him. â€Å"Cielle, the reason the Colonel called your ships back, the reason no one is allowed to leave the harbor, is that he wants you all here when the place comes down. Hes got some plan to get the U.S. Navy, or somebodys navy, to attack Gooville with a nuclear torpedo. He thinks that the Goo is going to destroy the human race if he doesnt destroy it first. He wanted me to go to the navy. He thought I could convince them of the threat because of my scientific credibility, but I said no. Thats when he took Amy.”\r\nâ€Å"So all that yelling I heard you doing in the amphitheater †that wasnt you talking about bringing the navy here, that was just you trying to get Amy back?”\r\nâ€Å"Yes. Hes a loon, Cielle. I dont have any interest in bringing this place down. He thinks that theres some grand war going on between memes and genes, and that humans and the Goo are on opposite sides of it.”\r\nThe whale-ship captain stood and nodded as if confirming something to herself. â€Å"Okay, then. Thats what I needed to know. Thats wherefore he sent me here. Ill try to get them to send you some food.”\r\nâ€Å"What? Help me get out of here.” Nate suddenly had a very bad feeling about this whole exchange.\r\nâ€Å"Im sorry, Nate. They have Cal. The whaley boys have him. You know how that feels. They told me I had to find out if you were plotting against the Colonel. Thank you for verbalise me. I think theyll let him go now.”\r\nShe walked to the door, and Nate followed her. â€Å"Get me out of here, Cielle, at least †»\r\nâ€Å"Nate, theres nowhere to go. The only way out of here is a whale ship, and whaley-boy pilots are the only ones who can run them. Theyve been on notice not to let you on since we got here. Right now I couldnt leave if I wanted to.” She pounded on the door. â€Å" undecided!”\r\nThe door clicked open, and two all-black whaley boys stood outside waiting. They caught Nate by the shoulders and threw him back into the apartment as he tried to rush by them.\r\nâ€Å"My own crew, Nate,” Cielle said. â€Å"See what youve done.”\r\nâ€Å"Hes going to kill you all, Cielle. Dont you see that? Hes crazy.”\r\nâ€Å"I dont believe you, Nate. I think youre the crazy one.”\r\nThe door slammed shut.\r\nBack at Papa Lani, Clay was doing a final check on the equipment he was taking with him to meet his new ship. Diving and tv camera equipment lay spread out across the office floor. Kona was going through the checklist on the clipboard with a felt-tip pen.\r\nâ€Å"So you tink the Snowy Biscuit going to be there?”\r\nâ€Å"Im going. I just wish that we could answer her. Tell her Im on my way.”\r\nâ€Å"You mean, like, put the digital in the whale sound and send it?”\r\nâ€Å"Yeah, I know, we cant do it. Did you find a canister of soda lime for the rebreathers carbon dioxide scrubbers?”\r\nâ€Å"I can do that.” Kona held up the canister Clay was looking for and checked it off the list.\r\nâ€Å"You can?”\r\nâ€Å"I been looking at it long time. She not that hard to put that message back in the call. But how you going to send it? You need some gi-grandious big speakers under the water, mon. We dont have nothing like dat.”\r\nClay stopped his inventory and pulled Konas c lipboard down so he could see his eyes. â€Å"You can put a message into the waveform so it would come out the same way weve been taking it out?”\r\nKona nodded.\r\nâ€Å"Show me,” Clay said. He went to the computer. Kona took the chair and pulled up a low-frequency waveform that looked like a jagged comb, and then he hit a outlet that took a small section and expand it, which smoothed out the jags.\r\nâ€Å"See, this part here. We know this a letter B, right? We just cut it and paste with other letters, make a goofy whale call. I got the all the letters but a Q and a Z forecast.”\r\nâ€Å"Dont explain, just do it. Here.” Clay scribbled a short message in the margin of Konas checklist. â€Å"Then play it for me.”\r\nâ€Å"I can play, but you wont hear it. Its subsonic, brah. Like I say, you going need some thumpin speakers to send it. You know where we can splay some?”\r\nâ€Å"We might not have to discriminate them.”\r\nWhile Kon a pieced together the message, Clay grabbed the phone off his desk and dialed pearl Hyland. The biologist answered on the second ring. â€Å"Cliff, Clay Demodocus. I need a favor from you. That big sonar rig of yours, will it broadcast subsonic frequencies?… Good, I need you to take us out on your boat tonight, with your rig.”\r\nKona looked at Clay. Clay grinned and elevated his eyebrows.\r\nâ€Å"No, it has to be tonight. Im flying out for Chuuk in the morning. If I need to send out a signal, what can I plug in to it? Tape, disk recorder, what? Anything with a pre-amp?” Clay covered the receiver with his hand. â€Å"Can you put it on an audio disk?”\r\nâ€Å"No problems,” Kona said.\r\nâ€Å"No problem,” Clay said into the phone. â€Å"Well meet you at the harbor at ten, alright?”\r\nClay waited. He was listening, pacing in a little circle in arrears the surfer. â€Å"Yeah, well, we were just talking about that, Cliff, and we identification numberd that if you said no, wed just have to steal your boat and your rig. I could probably figure out how the rig works, right?”\r\nThere was another pause and Clay held the phone away from his ear. Kona could hear an irritated theatrical role coming out of the earpiece.\r\nâ€Å"Because were friends, Cliff, thats why Id tell you in advance that I was going to steal your boat. Jeez, you think Id just steal it like some stranger? All right, then, well see you at ten oclock.” He hung up the phone.\r\nâ€Å"Okay, peasant, get this right. We have to have it ready and to the harbor by ten.”\r\nâ€Å"But what you gonna do the bad guys get it?”\r\nâ€Å" notwithstanding if they do, only Amy will know what it means,” Clay said.\r\nâ€Å"Cool runnings, brah.” Kona was concentrating on putting the message together, his tongue curled out the corner of his mouth as an antenna for focus.\r\nClay leaned over his shoulder and watched the waveform come together on the screen. â€Å"How did you figure this out, kid? I mean, it doesnt seem like you.”\r\nâ€Å"Hows a man supposed to work his accomplishment dub wid you yammerin like a rummed-up knave?”\r\nâ€Å"Sorry,” Clay said, making a cordial note to give the kid a raise if any of this actually worked.\r\n'