Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

by Christopher Moore

  "I just know things by being in contact with the Goo, but I'm not far off. It might be less time — two hundred years."

  "Two hundred years? The whaley boys are definitely sentient by any definition, and I don't even know what the whale ships are, but they're definitely alive, too. That kind of complexity doesn't happen in that short a time."

  "No, I'd say the Goo has probably been here as long as three and a half billion years. The rocks around these caves are some of the oldest in the world. I'm just saying the whaley boys and the ships are new. They're only a few hundred years old because that's how long ago the Goo needed them."

  "The Goo needed them, so it made them to serve it? Like it has will?"

  "It does have will. It's self-aware, and it knows a lot. In fact, I'd venture to say that the Goo is a repository for every bit of biological knowledge on the planet. This, Nate, this Goo is as close to God as we are ever going to see. It's the perfect soup."

  "As in primordial soup?"

  "Precisely. Four billion years ago some big organic molecules grouped up, probably around some deep-sea source of geothermal heat, and they learned how to divide, how to replicate. Since replication is the name of life's game, it very quickly — probably in the span of less than a hundred million years — covered the entire planet. Big organic molecules that couldn't exist now because there are millions of bacteria that would eat them, but back then there were no bacteria. At one time the entire oceanic surface of the earth was populated by one single living thing that had learned to replicate itself. Sure, as the replicators were exposed to different conditions they mutated, they developed into new species, they fed on each other, some colonized each other and turned into complex animals, and then more complex animals, but part of that original living animal pulled back into its original niche. By this time chemical information was being exchanged — first by UNA, then by DNA — and as each new species evolved, it carried on all the information for making the next species, and that information came back to the original animal. But it had its safe niche, pulling energy from the earth's heat, sheltered in the deep ocean and by rock. It took in all the information from the animals that it came in contact with, but it changed only enough to protect itself, replicate itself. While a million million species lived and died in the sea, this original animal evolved very slowly, learning, always learning. Think of it, Nate: Within the cells of your body is not only the blueprint for every living thing on earth but everything that has ever lived. Ninety-eight percent of your DNA is just hitching a ride, just lucky little genes that were smart enough to align themselves to other successful genes, like marrying into money, if you will. But the Goo, not only does it have all of those genes, it has the diagram to turn them on and off. That seat you're sitting on may well be three billion years old."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  * * *

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

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

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

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

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Motherfluker

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

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

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

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

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

  "Yah, mon. The mucusphere."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "That's some evil fuckery."

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

  "The Chinese fry kitties?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Yeah," said Clay.

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

  "Is that what we're doing?"

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

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

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

  "I don't believe in magic."

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

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

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

  * * *

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

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

  "A whale ship ate you, too?"

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

  "And they brought you all the way here?"

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

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

  "Well, African-American, then."

  "You are not African-American."

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

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

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

  "Amy!"

  "What!"

  "You set me up!"

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

  "Yes, but —»

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

  "You are naked."

  "Ha! I think I've made my point."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Hey, buster, I'm not that young."

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

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

  "Yes, that's it," Nate said.

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

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

  * * *

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

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

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

  "Of course not, Elizabeth."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "I'm sure he was, Elizabeth, but —»

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