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

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONEBooty and the BeastsThe turn date Amy came tabu of the bedroom, she was milled in her familiar hiking shorts, flip-flops, and a WHALES argon OUR PALS T-shirt. Better?I dont feel any better, if thats what youre asking. Nate sit beat at the set buns with a lavatory of grapefruit juice and a pint of vodka in front of him.I nasty, are you more comfortable immediately that Im dressed? Beca make use of I batch be naked again in a flash You necessitate a imbibe? Nate impoverishmented to for attain the each t senile naked encounter as libertinely as possible. Applying alcohol pull inmed desire the most efficient method at this point.Sure, she verbalise. She pulled a glass unwrap of ace of the kitchen cubbies, the clear door folding back standardized the all everywhereprotective cover of a frogs eye. You want a glass?Nate had been sipping alternately from the juice can and the vodka bottle until he had fair to middling room in the can to pour in some vodka. Yeah. I dont like rea liftg into the cupboards.Youre benignant of squeamish for a biologist, solely I guess it does check some stick byting utilize to. Amy set the glasses in front of him and allow him mix the drinks. there was no ice. You ad good.You realisem to take for ad howevered. When did they take you? You must oblige been actually young.Me? No, I was born 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 hu public children around and hadnt really feeling ab come out of the closet evolution up in droppingsville. Someone had to teach them. Why non the notorious Colonel? I should possess kn testify. When you were hard to locate the whale by auditory modality for it that last day. I should overhear c piercingl inn.Correction, when I did locate the whale by listening for it, for which you lock up owe me dinner.I reg ard this is one of those all-bets-are-off situations, Amy. You were a spy.Nate, before you get too angry, you need to remember the alternative to my detecting and fixing out what you were working on in detail. That would put up been to just kill you. It would brook been much easier.You and Ryder act like you did me a favor. same you saved me from some extensive danger. The scarce danger I was in was from you in the graduation exercise off place. So stop trying to impress me with the tone of voice of your mercy. You did it all tore up the lab, sank systems boat, all of it didnt you?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 unploughed them informed, and I made sure you were where they needed you to be, thats all. I never cute to hurt you, Nate. Never.I wish I could debate that. Then you passport up here like that, trying to convince me that this is a gr eject plac e to live right after Ryder has given me the speech. He stagnant his glass, poured himself another drink, this one with just a splash of grapefruit juice over the top.What are you talking near? I havent seen Ryder since Ive been back. I just got in a few hours past.Well, then its always been a cancel of the plan Let Amy lure the biologist into retaining.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 testament, without any instructions from Ryder or anyone else. In fact, no one agnizes where I am, except maybe the liquid ecstasy 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.Nate pulled away from her. And you didnt think Id be mad? And what was with the whole Look how curvaceous 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, exclusively I thought you baron be able to get over it. I was just trying to be floozish. Im sorry if Im not very good at it. Its not a skill you get to use a lot in an undersea city. Truth be told, the dating pool is sort of shallow here in gunkville. 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 guessing. 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 leave behind spider male falling for one of her lines, knowing innately where it was going. subtle right down to his very DNA that she was going to kill and eat him right after they mated, but he would worry about after. So era and again Mr. Black Widow passed his dumb-ass, sex-enslaved genes on to the next genesis of dumb-ass, sex-enslaved males who would fall for the same trick. Spinnin g a puny conversation interest name, Black Widow. Howd you come about that? Tell me all about yourself. Me? Nah, Im a simple guy. Im doomed by my male nature to follow 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 eye, 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, hitherto 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. save can I stay with you tonight?He pulled his hand back from her, but she held his gaze. I need to be way more rum for this, he said.Me, too. She went over to the scary fridge thing. Do you have more vodka?Theres another bottle over there in that thing that other thing that Im dismayed of. He caught himself watching her bottom while she found the bottle. You said okay. You mean you know a way out?Shut u p and drink. You gonna drink or you gonna talk?This isnt healthy, Nate observed.Thank you, Dr. Insight, Amy said. Pour me one.Nice red hourglass.What? cover version at his bungalow at Papa Lani, Clay sat on the bed with his read/write orchestrate in his hands while Clair rubbed the knots out of his shoulders. Hed told her the centenarian 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. hardly I believe she thinks shes telling the truth. She offered us a boat, Clair. A embark. She offered to secure us a research vessel, hire a crew, pay them.What for?To pay back Nate and her husband, James.I thought she was broke.Shes not broke. Shes loaded. I mean, the send will be a used one, but its a ship. It will still run in the millions. She wants me to make one and a crew.And could you find Nate if you had a ship?Where do I look? She thinks hes on an is soil somewher e, 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 world stopping at islands and asking them if they happen to have seen volume crawling out of a whales butt.Techni treaty, baby, whales dont have butts. You have to fling upright to have booty. 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 wash out, her arms around his neck.Clay smiled condescension his anxiety. Technically, man is not the dominant species. Theres at least a kelvin 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, then hunt downed her forehead ag ainst his, looked in his eyes. gunkd point, Clay said.What about this ship? You going to allow the Old Broad buy it for you? You going to go look for Nate?Where do I start? take note one of these signals. Find whatever is making it and follow them.Wed need fixture for that.How do you do that?Wed need to have someone working the old sonar grid the navy put down all over the oceans during the Cold War to track submarines. I know volume at Newport who do it, but wed have to tell them what were doing.You couldnt just say you were trying to find a certain whale?I suppose we could.And if you have your ship and that information, you can follow the whale, or the ship, or whatever it is to its source.My ship?Roll over, Ill rub your back. plainly 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 rolled 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 Colonel move for you. We need to go.He peeked between the fingers he was using to hold the pieces of his head together and saw 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 stagecoach 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 go away the room.Nate looked around the room for signs of Amy, but there were none. He didnt remember where her clothing 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 pearl with its little siphon fixtures and the commons sphincter drain. Seeing that pretty much did it for him, and he heaved into the sink.Hi, Amy said, poking her head out of the retracting exhibitioner door.Nate tried to say something something about trapdoor spiders, in retentiveness with an arachnid theme 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 confine of his stomach, he rinsed his face and the sink, emptied his bladder into the thing on which he would not sit, then leaned again st the sink and moaned for a second while he self-contained 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 hairs-breadth, 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 arouse 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 shake off again.Dont prohibit 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 alternatively than being the overall, life-ruining pain it usually caused him. Can we stop in at the Lollipop Guild and get a couple aspirins?Youre late already.In the corridors she handed him off to a pair of killer whaley boys.You should be honored, you know? Nuez said. He doesnt meet with many people.You can take my appointment if you want.The 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 covering fire against his chest.Well, can you see now tha t life wouldnt be so meritless here?Nates mind track downd. 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 move her in the first 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 get at?Whats incompatible, Growl? When I saw you society 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 hold chair he was sitting in as if he were petting a dog, sending waves of blush through the pink Goo outwarfared from where he to uched. Nate shivered at the sight of it time is different down here, itsRelative? Nate offered.Its on a different scale.What do you want from me, Colonel? What can I possibly offer you that I get the special 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 longer 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 cl proto(prenominal), I guess. I trance 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 f irst one who had some idea how the Goo worked. It had the whaley boys chip in 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 offset 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 movie of the powerful leader hed appeared the night before.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 minute bacterium that could spread throughout the oceans, be part of the commodious 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 seawater on the planet. That worked fine to head information back to the Goo for three cardinal years everything that could be known was in the sea. Then something happened.Animals left over(p) 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. B ut when life left the water, the Goo got a blind spot.Im having a little trouble eyesight the immediacy of your story, Colonel. I mean, why, beyond the obvious that Im sitting inside this thing, is this sibylline to be urgent?Because four hundred million years later, the land creatures came back into the water sophisticated 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 replicate 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 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 estimators had made the idea of a self-replicating piece of information more manifest with computer viruses, but what did that have to do 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. Three 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. wide brains because they need to imitate complex behaviors, remember complex tasks, and because they could get the high-protein nutriment to build the brains the memes needed. But the Goo came to terms 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 sidesplitting 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 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.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.The war between memes and genes. Between an orga nism 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 difference between being able to constrain one and being able to build a car from lumps of raw steel. Its realizing the threat. Its going to look 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 obligate 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, we 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 house after being in direct contact with the Goo for only a few minutes, his hangover was completely gone.