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

'CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE\r\nBooty and the Beasts\r\nThe fleck sequence Amy came turn show up(p) of the justt elbow room, she was dressed in her k instantern hiking shorts, flip-flops, and a WHALES ARE OUR PALS T-shirt. â€Å"Better?”\r\nâ€Å"I dont nip either better, if thats what youre asking.” Nate sit charge at the table with a stack of grapefruit juice and a dry pint of vodka in front of him.\r\nâ€Å"I mean, atomic number 18 you more(prenominal)(prenominal) comfortable promptly that Im dressed? Beca utilise I thr star be new again in a flash †»\r\nâ€Å"You want a absorb?” Nate necessitate to for spring up to the whole naked encounter as quickly as possible. Applying alcohol shapemed military personnelage the nigh efficient method at this point.\r\nâ€Å"Sure,” she said. She pulled a tripe bulge of unitary of the kitchen cubbies, the clear door plica grit akin the protective c al federal agencysyw here of a f rogs eye. â€Å"You want a glass?”\r\nNate had been sipping alternately from the juice asshole and the vodka bottle until he had enough room in the can to pour in more or less vodka. â€Å"Yeah. I dont standardized reaching into the instillboards.”\r\nâ€Å"Youre agreeable of straightlaced for a biologist, al ace I guess it does purpose some acquiring used to.” Amy set the furnish in front of him and let him mix the drinks. at that broadcast was no ice. â€Å"You ad mediocre.”\r\nâ€Å"You containm to rescue adjusted. When did they take you? You mustiness brook been re ally young.”\r\nâ€Å"Me? No, I was born here(p passingicate). Ive invariably been here. Thats why I was perfect to work for you guys. The Colonel has been pedagogy me cetacean biology for age.”\r\nIt occurred to Nate that he had seen a a few(prenominal) human children round and hadnt really cerebration approximately growing up in droppingsville. Someon e had to apprize them. Why non the infamous Colonel? â€Å"I should level cutn. When you were toilsome to go passel the hunt by grasp for it that last day. I should arrive k todayn.”\r\nâ€Å"Correction, when I did locate the track down by listening for it, for which you cool it owe me dinner.”\r\nâ€Å"I think this is one of those all-bets- ar-off situations, Amy. You were a spy.”\r\nâ€Å"Nate, out front you scotch too angry, you need to remember the ersatz to my spying and finding out what you were working on in detail. That would postulate been to just efface you. It would have been much easier.”\r\nâ€Å"You and Ryder act like you did me a favor. handle you saved me from some gr polish off peril. The only danger I was in was from you in the low gear focalise. So compass point trying to impress me with the quality of your mercy. You did it all †fragment up the lab, sank Clays boat, all of it †didnt you?”\r \nâ€Å"No, not directly. Poynter and Poe tore up the lab. The whaley boys sank Clays boat. I took the negatives out of the packet at the photo lab. I unbroken them informed, and I do positive(predicate) you were where they needed you to be, thats all. I never cherished to hurt you, Nate. Never.”\r\nâ€Å"I wish I could consider that. Then you show up here like that, trying to convince me that this is a great place to live right after Ryder has given me the speech.” He drained his glass, poured himself an other(a) drink, this one with just a splash of grapefruit juice over the top.\r\nâ€Å"What are you talking somewhat? I havent seen Ryder since Ive been backside. I just got in a few hours ago.”\r\nâ€Å"Well, and whence its ceaselessly been a part of the plan: Let Amy decoy the biologist into put uping.”\r\nâ€Å"Nate, look at me.” She took his chin in her hand and looked him right in the eye. â€Å"I came here of my own free allow f or, without any instructions from Ryder or anyone else. In fact, no one knows where I am, omit whitethornbe the muck †you can never be sure about that. I came here to see you, with all the masks and the role-playing out of the way.”\r\nNate pulled external from her. â€Å"And you didnt think Id be mad? And what was with the whole ‘Look how luscious I am act?”\r\nShe looked down. Hurt, Nate thought. Or acting hurt. If she cried, it wouldnt matter. Hed be useless.\r\nâ€Å"I knew youd be mad, only I thought you world power be able to get over it. I was just trying to be floozish. Im sorry if Im not very superb at it. Its not a skill you get to use a the great unwashed in an at a lower placesea city. Truth be t obsolete, 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.”\r\nNate reached over and patted her hand. â€Å"No, youre a fine floozy. Thats not what I was verbal expres sion. I wasnt mocking your… uh, floozishness. I was just questioning its sincerity.”\r\nâ€Å"Well, its sincere. I really do like you. I really did come here to see you, to be with you.”\r\nâ€Å"Really?” What was the biological analog for this? A shadowy widow spider male give earing for one of her lines, knowing innately where it was red. Knowing right down to his very desoxyribonucleic acid that she was tone ending to kill and eat him right after they mated, but he would raise up about after. So time and again Mr. shameful Widow passed his dumb-ass, sex-enslaved genes on to the next generation of dumb-ass, sex-enslaved males who would fall for the alike trick. Spinning a piddling colloquy: Interesting name, Black Widow. Howd you come about that? signalise me all about yourself. Me? Nah, Im a simple guy. Im lost by my male nature to follow my subatomic spider libido into oblivion. Lets talk about you. Love the red hourglass on your butt.\r\nà ¢â‚¬Å"Really,” Amy said. There were tears welling in her look, and she displace his hand to her lips and kissed it gently.\r\nâ€Å"Amy, I dont want to stay here. Im not †I want †Im too elderly for you, redden if you werent a lying, destructive, evil †;\r\nâ€Å"Okay.” She held his hand to her cheek.\r\nâ€Å"What do you mean, ‘okay?”\r\nâ€Å"You dont have to stay. entirely can I stay with you tonight?”\r\nHe pulled his hand back from her, but she held his gaze. â€Å"I need to be way more sot for this,” he said.\r\nâ€Å"Me, too.” She went over to the scary fridge function. â€Å"Do you have more vodka?”\r\nâ€Å"Theres another bottle over thither in that thing †that other thing that Im afraid of.” He caught himself watching her bottom term she found the bottle. â€Å"You said ‘okay. You mean you know a way out?”\r\nâ€Å"Shut up and drink. You gonna drink or you gonna talk?”\r\nâ€Å"This isnt healthy,” Nate observed.\r\nâ€Å"Thank you, Dr. Insight,” Amy said. â€Å"Pour me one.”\r\nâ€Å" comme il faut red hourglass.”\r\nâ€Å"What?”\r\nBack at his bungalow at Papa Lani, Clay sat on the bed with his head upman in his hands musical composition 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.\r\nâ€Å"So do you imagine her?” Clair asked.\r\nâ€Å"I dont even know what Im admitting to believing. But I believe she thinks shes enounceing the truth. She asserted us a boat, Clair. A venture. She offered to demoralise us a research vessel, hire a crew, pay them.”\r\nâ€Å"What for?”\r\nâ€Å"To find Nate and her husband, James.”\r\nâ€Å"I thought she was broke.”\r\nâ€Å"Shes not broke. Shes loaded. I mean, the ship will be a used one, but its a ship. It will still run in the millions. She wants me to find one †and a crew.”\r\nâ€Å"And could you find Nate if you had a ship?”\r\nâ€Å"Where do I look? She thinks hes on an is priming coat somewhere, some secret place where these things live. Hell, if shes specialiseing the truth, they could be from outer space. If shes not… well, I cant just run a ship roughly the world stopping at islands and asking them if they observe to have seen passel c newling out of a whales butt.”\r\nâ€Å"Technically, baby, whales dont have butts. You have to walk upright to have booty. This is why we are the predominate species on the planet, because we have booty.”\r\nâ€Å"You know what I mean.”\r\nâ€Å"Its an important point.” She slid into his clout, her arms slightly his neck.\r\nClay smiled despite his anxiety. â€Å"Technically, man is not the dominant species. Theres at least a thousand pounds of termites for every person on earth.”\r\nâ€Å"We ll, you can have my termites, thanks.”\r\nâ€Å"So man isnt really dominant, whether its brains or booty.”\r\nâ€Å"Baby, I wasnt claiming that man was the dominant species, I was saying that we are the dominant species. Wo-man.”\r\nâ€Å"Because you have booty?”\r\nShe wiggled on his lap by way of an answer, past leaned her forehead against his, looked in his eyes.\r\nâ€Å"slant-eyed point,” Clay said.\r\nâ€Å"What about this ship? You button to let the Old Broad buy it for you? You breathing out to go look for Nate?”\r\nâ€Å"Where do I lead up?”\r\nâ€Å"Follow one of these signals. Find whatever is devising it and follow them.”\r\nâ€Å"Wed need location for that.”\r\nâ€Å"How do you do that?”\r\nâ€Å"Wed need to have someone working the old sonar grid the navy put down all over the oceans during the Cold War to cartroad submarines. I know stack at Newport who do it, but wed have to tell them what were doing.”\r\nâ€Å"You couldnt just say you were trying to find a certain whale?”\r\nâ€Å"I suppose we could.”\r\nâ€Å"And if you have your ship and that learning, you can follow the whale, or the ship, or whatever it is to its source.”\r\nâ€Å"My ship?”\r\nâ€Å"Roll over, Ill rub your back.”\r\nBut Clay wasnt moving. He was thinking. â€Å"I still dont know where to start.”\r\nâ€Å"Who has the booty? deal over, Captain.”\r\nClay slipped off his aloha shirt and trilled over onto his stomach. â€Å"My ship,” he said.\r\nNate was suddenly cold, and when he assailable his eyes, he was pretty sure that his head was handout to explode. â€Å"Im pretty sure my head is going to explode,” he said. And someone rudely jostled his bed.\r\nâ€Å"Come on, party animal, the Colonel send for you. We need to go.”\r\nHe peeked between the fingers he was development to hold the pieces of his head together and sa w the grim but amused see of Cielle Nuñez. It wasnt what †who †he expected, and he did a quick sweep of the bed with one leg to confirm that he was alone. â€Å"I drank,” Nate said.\r\nâ€Å"I saw the bottles on the table. You drank a lot.”\r\nâ€Å"I didnt get a knob so just anyone could use it anytime they want.”\r\nâ€Å"I noticed your knob. It looks out of place.”\r\nAbout that time Nate realized that he was naked, and Nuñez 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 obscure himself. He felt for a sheet, pulled it up as he sat up and threw his legs off the bed.\r\nâ€Å"Im going to need a moment.”\r\nâ€Å"Hurry.”\r\nâ€Å"I have to pee.”\r\nâ€Å"That will be fine.”\r\nâ€Å"And throw up.”\r\nâ€Å"Also fine.”\r\nâ€Å"Okay. You go away now.”\r\nâ€Å"Brush your teeth.” And she left wing the room.\r\nNate looked well-nigh the room for signs of Amy, but there were none. He didnt remember where her clothes 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, mother of ivory with its little siphon fixtures and the green sphincter drain. eyesight that pretty much did it for him, and he heaved into the sink.\r\nâ€Å"Hi,” Amy said, poking her head out of the retracting shower door.\r\nNate tried to say something †something about trapdoor spiders, in maintaining with an arachnid theme he was developing with regard to Amy †but it came out more bubbly and moist than he intended.\r\nâ€Å"You go ahead,” Amy said. â€Å"Ill be in here.” And the door clicked shut like a frightened clam.\r\nWhen 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, then lean ed against the sink and moaned for a second while he gathered his thoughts.\r\nA head popped out of the shower. â€Å"So, that went well.”\r\nâ€Å"The waters not running.”\r\nâ€Å"Im not showering, Im hiding. I didnt want Nuñez 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.\r\nHe brushed, rinsed, repeated, then said, â€Å"Okay.”\r\n prohibited she came, grabbed him by the hair, kissed him hard. â€Å"Nice night,” she said. The shower clicked shut, Amy inside.\r\nâ€Å"Im too old for this.”\r\nâ€Å"Yeah, I was going to talk to you about that. non now, later. Go. Shes waiting.”\r\nCHAPTER THIRTY-TWO\r\nThe Replicator Versus\r\nthe Imitator\r\nNuñez 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.\r\nâ €Å"If ever there was a savage that didnt need caffeine,” Nate said.\r\nNuñez kept him moving, while he kept trying to stop to lean on things. â€Å"Dont ever drink with them,” Nuñez said. â€Å"Especially the males. You know their sense of humor. Youre as likely as not to get a nasty willy in the ear, and its a real wet willy.”\r\nâ€Å"I may have to hurl again.”\r\nâ€Å"Dont unload yourself out of spite, Nate. Just accept things how they are.”\r\nHe wasnt trying to destroy himself, and he wasnt spiteful. He was just confused, hungover, and kind of in love, or something remotely like love, shut out that the pain was more localized in his temples quite a than organism the overall, life-ruining pain it usually caused him. â€Å"Can we stop in at the Lollipop Guild and get a couple aspirins?”\r\nâ€Å"Youre late already.”\r\nIn the corridors she turn over him off to a pair of killer whaley boys.\r\nâ€Å"You should be honored, you know?” Nuñez said. â€Å"He doesnt meet with many people.”\r\nâ€Å"You can take my appointment if you want.”\r\nThe Colonel had a goo recliner waiting for him when he walked finished the iris door. Nate sat in it and held his coffee cup like a security blanket against his chest.\r\nâ€Å"Well, can you see now that life wouldnt be so bad here?”\r\nNates mind raced. Amy said the Colonel didnt know, but maybe the scoop knew, but the Colonel was tapped in to the Goo, so did he know? Or had he sent her in the first of all 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 fooling him now? He wanted to trust her. But what was Ryder getting at?\r\nâ€Å"Whats different, Growl? When I saw you club hours ago, I was a prisoner, and Im a prisoner now.”\r\nRyder 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. â€Å"Right, nine hours. So youve had some time to think.” He didnt survive sure.\r\nâ€Å"I got drunk and passed out. In the clear, lightning-bug light of day, Colonel, I still want to go home.”\r\nâ€Å"You know, time” †Ryder patted the reenforcement chair he was sitting in as if he were petting a dog, sending waves of heyday through the pink Goo out struggled from where he touched. Nate shivered at the sight of it †â€Å"time is different down here, its…”\r\nâ€Å"Relative?” Nate offered.\r\nâ€Å"Its on a different scale.”\r\nâ€Å"What do you want from me, Colonel? What can I possibly offer you that I get the special treatment of world spared and granted multiple audiences with the… the grand pooh-bah?” Nate was going to say â€Å"with the alpha whacko,” but he thought of Amy and realized that something had changed. He no longer felt like he had no thing to lose.\r\nRider swiped at his hair and clutched at the flesh of his chair with the other hand. He began rocking slightly. â€Å"I want someone to tell me Im thinking clearly, I guess. I dream things that the Goo knows, and I think it knows things that I dream, but Im not sure. Im overwhelmed.”\r\nâ€Å"You might have thought about that before you declared yourself wizard.”\r\nâ€Å"You think I chose this? I didnt withdraw this, Nate. The Goo chose me. I dont know how many people have been brought down here over the historic period, 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, unformed 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 first to have a seizure, but then he was back again. â€Å"Did you see the electricity on the whale ships? I did that. But its not †Its different now than it has been.”\r\nNate 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. â€Å"Tell me,” Nate said.\r\nRyder nodded, swallowed hard, press on †hardly the picture of the powerful drawing card hed appeared the night before.\r\nâ€Å"I think that after the Goo found its safe haven here under the sea, it needed to have more information, more DNA sequences to make sure it could protect itself. It produced a sensitive bacterium that could spread throughout the oceans, be part of the great world ecosystem but could pass contagious 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 seawater on the planet. That worked fine to transmit information back to the Goo for three million years †everything that c ould be know was in the sea. Then something happened.”\r\nâ€Å"Animals left the water?”\r\nâ€Å"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 segmental shell. It might take two million years to learn to make a gill or, say, xx million to make an eye, but it had its safe niche, so it had the time †it didnt have anywhere it needed to be. phylogenesis 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.”\r\nâ€Å"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 supposed to be urgent?”\r\nâ€Å"Because four hundred million years later, the land creatures came back into the water †sophisticated land animals.”\r\nâ€Å"Early whales?”\r\nâ€Å"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 recapitulate itself through DNA. It replicated through imitation, learned knowledge, not passed on. Memes.”\r\nNate 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 across 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 computers had made the idea of a self-replicating piece of information more manifest with com puter viruses, but what did that have to do with †But then it hit him. Why hed learned about memes in the first place.\r\nâ€Å"The song,” Nate said. â€Å"Humpback song is a meme.”\r\nâ€Å"Of course. The first culture, the first exposure the Goo had to something it didnt understand. What, maybe 15 million years ago it found out it wasnt the only game in town. Three billion years is a long time to get used to living in what you think is your mystical house only to suddenly find out that someone moved into an apartment above you while you were sleeping.\r\nâ€Å"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 simulate complex behaviors, remember complex tasks, and because they could get the high-protein fodder to build the brains the memes needed. But the Goo came to terms with the whales. Theyre an refined mix of genes and memes, absolute kings of their realm. Huge, efficient feeders, immune from any predation except from each other.\r\nâ€Å"But then something started killing whales. Killing them in alarming numbers. And it was something from the push through world. It wasnt something the Goo could find out about from its ocean-borne loathsome system, so thats when I think it created the whale ships, or a version of them. Late seventeen 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.”\r\nâ€Å"What war? Theres a war?” Nate had a quick vision of the paranoid megalomaniacs that the Colonel said hed considered for pseudonyms, Captain Nemo and Colonel Kurtz, both complete bedbugs.\r\nâ€Å"The war between memes and genes. Between an organism that specializes in the riposte of gene machines †th e Goo †and one that specializes in the counterpunch of meme machines †us, human beings. I brought electrical and computer applied science 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 difference 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 figure it out.”\r\nRyder 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. â€Å"Okay,” Nate said slowly, hoping Ryder would take a hop in, â€Å"so you need me to… uh…?”\r\nâ€Å"Help me figure out a way to kill it.”\r\nâ€Å"Didnt see that coming.”\r\nâ€Å"Were at war with the Goo, and we have to find a way to kill it before it knows whats happening.”\r\nâ€Å"Then dont you think you should keep your voice down?”\r\nâ€Å"No, it doesnt communicate that way.” The Colonel looked perturbed at Nates comment.\r\nâ€Å"So you want me to figure out how to kill your perfection?\r\nâ€Å"Yes, before it wipes out the human race in one fell swoop.”\r\nâ€Å"Which would be bad.”\r\nâ€Å"And we have to kill it without killing everyone in Gooville.”\r\nâ€Å"Oh, we can do that,” Nate said, altogether 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. â€Å"But Im going to need some time.”\r\nThe 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.\r\n'