Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 31~32

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONEshekels and the BeastsThe aid date Amy came reveal of the bedroom, she was dressed in her familiar hiking shorts, flip-flops, and a WHALES ARE OUR PALS T-shirt. Better?I dont feel any better, if thats what youre request. Nate sat at the table with a can of grapefruit juice and a pint of vodka in front of him.I mean, are you more(prenominal)(prenominal) comfortable now that Im dressed? Because I can be naked again in a flash You motive a make happy? Nate ingested to for defer a crap the whole naked encounter as quickly as possible. Applying alcohol seemed a ilk(p) the most efficient method at this point.Sure, she said. She pulled a glass out of one of the kitchen cubbies, the clear portal f octogenarianing back analogous the protective c all everywhere of a frogs eye. You want a glass?Nate had been sipping alternately from the juice can and the vodka bottleful until he had enough room in the can to pour in some vodka. Yeah. I dont like rea chin upg in to the cupboards.Youre kind of squeamish for a biologist, but I calculate it does take some getting used to. Amy set the glasses in front of him and let him liquefy the drinks. Thither was no ice. You ad unspoiled.You seem to have ad averageed. When did they take you? You must have been really young.Me? No, I was born(p) here. Ive always been here. Thats why I was perfect to work for you guys. The Colonel has been teaching me cetacean biology for years.It occurred to Nate that he had seen a few human children around and hadnt really cerebration intimately growing up in Gooville. person had to teach them. Why non the infamous Colonel? I should have known. When you were trying to locate the whale by listening for it that last day. I should have known.Correction, when I did locate the whale by listening for it, for which you even owe me dinner.I speak up this is one of those all-bets-are- come to situations, Amy. You were a spy.Nate, before you get too angry, you need to co me back the alternative to my spying and finding out what you were working on in detail. That would have been to tho pour down you. It would have been much easier.You and Ryder act like you did me a favor. Like you saved me from some great danger. The only(prenominal) danger I was in was from you in the setoff place. So stop trying to impress me with the woodland of your mercy. You did it all tore up the lab, sank Clays boat, all of it didnt you?No, non directly. Poynter and Poe tore up the lab. The whaley boys sank Clays boat. I took the negatives out of the pile at the photo lab. I kept them informed, and I do sure you were where they needed you to be, thats all. I neer wanted to hurt you, Nate. Never.I wish I could entrust that. Then you show up here like that, trying to convince me that this is a great place to live remediate aft(prenominal) Ryder has abandoned me the speech. He drained his glass, poured himself another drink, this one with just a splash of gra pefruit juice over the top.What are you talking somewhat? I havent seen Ryder since Ive been back. I just got in a few hours ago.Well, because its always been a part of the plan Let Amy lure the biologist into perioding.Nate, look at me. She took his chin in her hand and looked him right in the eye. I came here of my own free forget, without any instruction manual from Ryder or anyone else. In fact, no one knows where I am, except perhaps the Goo you can neer be sure near that. I came here to see you, with all the masks and the role-playing out of the way.Nate pulled away from her. And you didnt gestate Id be mad? And what was with the whole Look how luscious I am act?She looked down. Hurt, Nate thought. Or acting hurt. If she cried, it wouldnt matter. Hed be useless.I knew youd be mad, but I thought you might be able to get over it. I was just trying to be floozish. Im sorry if Im not very oozingd at it. Its not a skill you get to use a lot in an lowsea city. Truth be told, the dating pool is sort of shallow here in Gooville. I was just trying to be sexy. I never said I was a good floozy.Nate reached over and patted her hand. No, youre a fine floozy. Thats not what I was saying. I wasnt questioning your uh, floozishness. I was just questioning its sincerity.Well, its sincere. I really do like you. I really did come here to see you, to be with you.Really? What was the biological analog for this? A black widow spider male falling for one of her lines, knowing innately where it was passing play. Knowing right down to his very DNA that she was breathing out to kill and eat him right after they mated, but he would worry just about after. So time and again Mr. Black Widow passed his dumb-ass, sex-enslaved divisors on to the next multiplication of dumb-ass, sex-enslaved males who would fall for the same trick. Spinning a little conversation Interesting name, Black Widow. Howd you come about that? place me all about yourself. Me? Nah, Im a simple guy. Im doomed by my male nature to marry my little spider libido into oblivion. Lets talk about you. Love the red hourglass on your butt.Really, Amy said. There were tears welling in her eyes, and she lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it gently.Amy, I dont want to stay here. Im not I want Im too old for you, even if you werent a lying, destructive, evil Okay. She held his hand to her cheek.What do you mean, okay?You dont have to stay. except can I stay with you tonight?He pulled his hand back from her, but she held his gaze. I need to be way more drunk for this, he said.Me, too. She went over to the s cary fridge thing. Do you have more vodka?Theres another bottle over there in that thing that other thing that Im afraid of. He caught himself watching her supply eyepatch she found the bottle. You said okay. You mean you know a way out?Shut up and drink. You gonna drink or you gonna talk?This isnt healthy, Nate observed.Thank you, Dr. Insight, Amy said. Pour me on e.Nice red hourglass.What?Back at his cottage at Papa Lani, Clay sat on the bed with his head in his hands while Clair rubbed the knots out of his shoulders. Hed told her the Old Broads story, and shed listened quietly, asking a few questions as he went along.So do you believe her? Clair asked.I dont even know what Im admitting to believing. But I believe she thinks shes telling the truth. She offered us a boat, Clair. A station. She offered to buy us a research vessel, hire a crew, pay them.What for?To find Nate and her husband, James.I thought she was broke.Shes not broke. Shes loaded. I mean, the ship will be a used one, but its a ship. It will still run in the one thousand thousands. She wants me to find one and a crew.And could you find Nate if you had a ship?Where do I look? She thinks hes on an island somewhere, some secret place where these things live. Hell, if shes telling the truth, they could be from outer space. If shes not well, I cant just run a ship around the wo rld stopping at islands and asking them if they happen to have seen people crawling out of a whales butt.Technically, baby, whales dont have butts. You have to walk frank to have boodle. This is why we are the dominant species on the planet, because we have booty.You know what I mean.Its an important point. She slid into his lap, her implements of war around his neck.Clay smiled despite his anxiety. Technically, man is not the dominant species. Theres at least a potassium pounds of termites for every person on earth.Well, you can have my termites, thanks.So man isnt really dominant, whether its brains or booty.Baby, I wasnt saying that man was the dominant species, I was saying that we are the dominant species. Wo-man.Because you have booty?She wiggled on his lap by way of an answer, accordingly leaned her forehead against his, looked in his eyes.Good point, Clay said.What about this ship? You going to let the Old Broad buy it for you? You going to go look for Nate?Where do I s tart?Follow one of these signals. Find any(prenominal) is making it and follow them.Wed need location for that.How do you do that?Wed need to have someone working the old sonar grid the navy seat down all over the oceans during the Cold War to track submarines. I know people at Newport who do it, but wed have to tell them what were doing.You couldnt just say you were trying to find a real whale?I suppose we could.And if you have your ship and that teaching, you can follow the whale, or the ship, or whatever it is to its source.My ship?Roll over, Ill rub your back.But Clay wasnt moving. He was thinking. I still dont know where to start.Who has the booty? Turn over, Captain.Clay slipped off his aloha shirt and turn over over onto his stomach. My ship, he said.Nate was suddenly cold, and when he opened his eyes, he was pretty sure that his head was going to explode. Im pretty sure my head is going to explode, he said. And someone rudely jostled his bed.Come on, party animal, the Co lonel sent for you. We need to go.He peeked between the fingers he was using to hold the pieces of his head together and see the menacing but amused face of Cielle Nuez. It wasnt what who he expected, and he did a quick sweep of the bed with one leg to confirm that he was alone. I drank, Nate said.I saw the bottles on the table. You drank a lot.I didnt get a knob so just anyone could use it anytime they want.I noticed your knob. It looks out of place.About that time Nate realized that he was naked, and Nuez was standing over his naked body, and he was going to have to let the pieces of his head go where they may if he was going to cover himself. He felt for a sheet, pulled it up as he sat up and threw his legs off the bed.Im going to need a moment.Hurry.I have to pee.That will be fine.And throw up.Also fine.Okay. You go away now.Brush your teeth. And she left the room.Nate looked around the room for signs of Amy, but there were none. He didnt remember where her garments were , but the last time hed seen them, he was pretty sure they werent on her. He stumbled into the bathroom and looked into the basin, set out of pearl with its little siphon fixtures and the green sphincter drain. Seeing that pretty much did it for him, and he heaved into the sink.Hi, Amy said, paper bag her head out of the retracting shower door.Nate tried to say something something about trapdoor spiders, in keeping with an arachnid understructure he was developing with regard to Amy but it came out more bubbly and moist than he intended.You go ahead, Amy said. Ill be in here. And the door clicked shut like a frightened clam.When Nate had finished reviewing the contents of his stomach, he rinsed his face and the sink, emptied his bladder into the thing on which he would not sit, and so leaned against the sink and moaned for a second while he gathered his thoughts.A head popped out of the shower. So, that went well.The waters not running.Im not showering, Im hiding. I didnt want Nuez to see me. The Colonel shouldnt know Ive been here. Ill leave after you go. Brush your teeth. And then she was back in her shell.He brushed, rinsed, repeated, then said, Okay.Out she came, grabbed him by the hair, kissed him hard. Nice night, she said. The shower clicked shut, Amy inside.Im too old for this.Yeah, I was going to talk to you about that. Not now, later. Go. Shes waiting.CHAPTER THIRTY-TWOThe Replicator Versusthe ImitatorNuez bought him a large cup of coffee at a cafe where whaley boys stood around pouring down lattes the size of fire extinguishers and exchanging clicks and whistles at an irritating volume.If ever there was a creature that didnt need caffeine, Nate said.Nuez kept him moving, while he kept trying to stop to lean on things. Dont ever drink with them, Nuez said. Especially the males. You know their sense of humor. Youre as likely as not to get a wet willy in the ear, and its a real wet willy.I may have to spue again.Dont destroy yourself out of spite, Nate. Just accept things how they are.He wasnt trying to destroy himself, and he wasnt spiteful. He was just confused, hungover, and kind of in love, or something remotely like love, except that the pain was more localized in his temples rather than beingness the overall, life-ruining pain it usually caused him. Can we stop in at the Lollipop purchase order and get a couple aspirins?Youre late already.In the corridors she handed him off to a pair of grampus whaley boys.You should be honored, you know? Nuez said. He doesnt meet with some people.You can take my appointment if you want.The Colonel had a goo recliner waiting for him when he walked through the iris door. Nate sat in it and held his coffee cup like a security blanket against his chest.Well, can you see now that life wouldnt be so large(p) here?Nates mind fly the coopd. Amy said the Colonel didnt know, but maybe the Goo knew, but the Colonel was tapped in to the Goo, so did he know? Or had he sent her in the f irst place and this was all a scam, just like when hed sent her to Hawaii to spy on him? Shed fooled him for a month there, why couldnt she be befool him now? He wanted to trust her. But what was Ryder getting at?Whats contrary, Growl? When I saw you nine hours ago, I was a prisoner, and Im a prisoner now.Ryder seemed surprised. He wiped the lock of gray hair out of his eyes furiously, as if it had caused him to make some sort of mistake. Right, nine hours. So youve had some time to think. He didnt sound sure.I got drunk and passed out. In the clear, lightning-bug light of day, Colonel, I still want to go home.You know, time Ryder patted the living control he was sitting in as if he were petting a dog, displace waves of blush through the pink Goo outward from where he touched. Nate shivered at the sight of it time is distinct down here, itsRelative? Nate offered.Its on a different scale.What do you want from me, Colonel? What can I perchance offer you that I get the spec ial treatment of being spared and granted multiple audiences with the the grand pooh-bah? Nate was going to say with the alpha whacko, but he thought of Amy and realized that something had changed. He no nightlong felt like he had nothing to lose.Rider swiped at his hair and clutched at the flesh of his chair with the other hand. He began rocking slightly. I want someone to tell me Im thinking clearly, I guess. I woolgather things that the Goo knows, and I think it knows things that I dream, but Im not sure. Im overwhelmed.You might have thought about that before you declared yourself wizard.You think I chose this? I didnt choose this, Nate. The Goo chose me. I dont know how many people have been brought down here over the years, but I was the first biologist. I was the first one who had some idea how the Goo worked. It had the whaley boys bring me to a place like this, where there was raw, formless animal, and it never let me leave. Ive tried to make things better for people in Gooville, but Ryders eyes rolled up in his head as if he were starting to have a seizure, but then he was back again. Did you see the electricity on the whale ships? I did that. But its not Its different now than it has been.Nate suddenly felt bad for the older man. Ryder was behaving like an early Alzheimers patient who is realizing that hes losing recognition of his grandchildrens faces. Tell me, Nate said.Ryder nodded, swallowed hard, pressed on hardly the picture of the powerful leader hed appeared the night before.I think that after the Goo found its secure haven here under the sea, it needed to have more information, more DNA sequences to make sure it could protect itself. It produced a minute bacterium that could spread throughout the oceans, be part of the great world ecosystem but could pass genetic information back to the source. We call the bacteria SAR-11. Its a thousand times smaller than normal bacteria, but its in every liter of saltwater on the planet. T hat worked fine to transmit information back to the Goo for three billion years everything that could be known was in the sea. Then something happened.Animals left the water?Exactly. Until then, everything there was to know every piece of information that could be known was transmitted through DNA, replicators, in creatures that lived in the seas. The Goo knew everything. Mind you, it might take a million years to learn how to make an arthropods segmented shell. It might take two million years to learn to make a gill or, say, twenty million to make an eye, but it had its safe niche, so it had the time it didnt have anywhere it needed to be. Evolution doesnt really have a destination. Its just dicking around with possibilities. The Goo is the same way. But when life left the water, the Goo got a blind spot.Im having a little trouble seeing the immediacy of your story, Colonel. I mean, why, beyond the obvious that Im sitting inside this thing, is this hypothetic to be urge nt?Because four hundred million years later, the land creatures came back into the water advance(a) land animals.Early whales?Yes, when mammals came back to the sea, they brought something that even the dinosaurs the reptiles and amphibians that had come back to the water didnt have. Something the Goo didnt know. Knowledge that didnt double itself through DNA. It replicated through imitation, learned knowledge, not passed on. Memes.Nate knew about memes, the information equivalent of a gene. A gene existed to replicate itself and required a vehicle, an organism, in which to do it. It was the same with memes, except a meme could replicate itself crossways vehicles, across brains. A tune you couldnt get out of your head, a recipe, a bad joke, the Mona Lisa all were memes of sort. They were a fun model to think about, and electronic computers had made the idea of a self-replicating piece of information more unvarnished with computer viruses, but what did that have to d o with But then it hit him. Why hed learned about memes in the first place.The song, Nate said. Humpback song is a meme.Of course. The first culture, the first exposure the Goo had to something it didnt understand. What, maybe fifteen million years ago it found out it wasnt the only game in town. collar billion years is a long time to get used to living in what you think is your private house only to suddenly find out that someone moved into an apartment above you while you were sleeping.For a long time the Goo didnt perceive that genes and memes were at odds. Whales were the first carriers. Big brains because they need to imitate complex behaviors, remember complex tasks, and because they could get the high-protein food to build the brains the memes needed. But the Goo came to scathe with the whales. Theyre an elegant mix of genes and memes, absolute kings of their realm. Huge, efficient feeders, immune from any predation except from each other.But then something started kill ing whales. Killing them in alarming numbers. And it was something from the surface world. It wasnt something the Goo could find out about from its ocean-borne nervous system, so thats when I think it created the whale ships, or a version of them. Late xvii or early eighteen hundreds, Id guess. Then, I think when it had somehow gotten back enough samples of human DNA, it made the whaley boys. To stay camouflaged but to watch, to bring people back here so it could learn, watch us. I may have been the final link that started the war.What war? Theres a war? Nate had a quick mess of the paranoid megalomaniacs that the Colonel said hed considered for pseudonyms, Captain Nemo and Colonel Kurtz, both complete bedbugs.The war between memes and genes. Between an organism that specializes in the replication of gene machines the Goo and one that specializes in the replication of meme machines us, human beings. I brought electrical and computer technology here. I brought the Goo the theoretical knowledge of memes and genes and how they work. Where the Goo is now and where it was before I came is the passing between being able to drive one and being able to build a car from lumps of raw steel. Its realizing the threat. Its going to paradigm it out.Ryder looked at Nate expectantly. Nate looked at him as if he wasnt getting the point. When hed studied under Ryder, the man had been so cogent, so clear. Grumpy, but clear. Okay, Nate said slowly, hoping Ryder would jump in, so you need me to uh?Help me figure out a way to kill it.Didnt see that coming.Were at war with the Goo, and we have to find a way to kill it before it knows whats happening.Then dont you think you should keep your voice down?No, it doesnt communicate that way. The Colonel looked perturbed at Nates comment.So you want me to figure out how to kill your god?Yes, before it wipes out the human race in one fell swoop.Which would be bad.And we have to kill it without killing everyone in Gooville.Oh, w e can do that, Nate said, completely confident, the way hed seen hostage negotiators in cop movies tell the bank robbers that their demands were being met and the helicopter was on the way. But Im going to need some time.The strangest thing was, as Nate left the Colonels chamber after being in direct contact with the Goo for only a few minutes, his hangover was completely gone.