Christopher Moore - Fluke, Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

"Come show me." Clay stormed through the door and back to the office.

"What you looking for?"

"I don't know. Clues. Mysteries. Meaning."

"You gone lolo, you know?"

About the time that Nathan Quinn had started to master his nausea in the whale ship's constant motion (four days on board), another force started working on his body. He felt an uneasiness come over him in waves, and for twenty or so seconds he would feel as if he needed to crawl out of his skin. Then it would pass and leave him feeling a little numb for a few seconds, only to start up again.

Poynter and Poe were moving around the small cabin looking at different gobs and bumps of bioluminescence as if they were gleaning some meaning from them, but, try as he might, Nate couldn't figure out what they were monitoring. It would have helped to be able to get out of the seat and take a closer look, but Poynter had ordered him strapped in after he made his first break for the back orifice. He'd nearly made it, too. Had dived at it just like he'd seen the whaley boys do, except that only one arm had gone through, and he ended up stuck to the floor of the whale, his face against the rubbery skin, his hand trailing out in the cold ocean.

"Well, that was phenomenally stupid," said Poynter.

"I think I've dislocated my shoulder," Nate said.

"I should leave you there. Maybe a remora or two will latch on to your hand and teach you a lesson."

"Or a cookie-cutter shark," said Poe. "Nasty bastards." The whaley boys turned in their seats and snickered, bobbing their heads and blowing the occasional raspberry, which could inflict considerable moisture off a four-inch-wide tongue. Evidently Quinn was a cetacean laugh riot. He'd always suspected that, actually.

Poynter got down on his hands and knees and looked Nate in the eye. "While you're down there, I'd like you to think on what might have happened if you'd been successful at launching yourself through that orifice. First, we're at — Skippy, what's the depth?" Skippy chirped and clicked a number of times. "A hundred and fifty feet. Beyond the fact that you'd probably have blown out your eardrums almost immediately, you might think on how you were going to get to the surface on one breath of air. And should you have gotten to the surface, what were you going to do then? We're five hundred miles from the nearest land."

"I hadn't worked out the whole plan," Nate said.

"So, actually, I might be looking at success, right? You just wanted to test the outside water temperature?"

"Sure," said Nate, thinking it might be best to stay agreeable.

"Can you feel your hand?"

"It's a little chilly, but, yes."

"Oh, good."

And so they'd left him there a couple of hours, his hand and about six inches of his arm hanging out in the open sea as the whale ship swam along, and when they finally pulled him up, they put him in his seat and kept him restrained except to eat and go to the bathroom. He'd tried to relax and observe — learn what he could — but then a few minutes ago these waves of uneasiness had started hitting him. "He's got the sonic willies," said Poe.

Poynter looked away from Skippy's console. "It's the subsonics, Doc. You're feeling the sound waves even though you can't hear them. We've been communicating with the blue for about ten minutes now."

"You might have said something."

"I just did."

"Couple of hours you'll be in the blue, Doc. You can stand up again, walk around a little. Have some privacy."

"So you're communicating with it in low-frequency sound?"

"Yep. Just like you thought, Doc, there was meaning in the call."

"Yeah, but I didn't think this, that there were guys, and guylike things, riding about inside whales. How in the hell can this be happening? How can I not know about this?"

"So you're giving up on the being-dead strategy?" asked Poe.

"What is it? Space aliens?"

Poynter unbuttoned his shirt and showed some chest hair. "Do I look like a space alien?"

"Well, no, but them." Nate nodded toward the whaley boys. They looked at each other and snickered, a sort of wheezing laughter coming from their blowholes, paused, looked back at Nate, then snickered some more.

"Maybe on their planet sentient life evolved from whales rather than apes," Quinn continued. "I can see how they might have landed here, deployed these whale ships, and kept under the radar of human detection while they looked around. I mean, man obviously isn't the most peaceful of creatures."

"That work for you, Doc?" asked Poynter.

"On their planet they developed an organically based technology, rather than one based on combustion and manipulation of minerals like ours."

"Oh, that is good," said Poe.

"He's on a roll," said Poynter. "Unraveling the mystery, he is."

Skippy and Scooter nodded to each other and grinned.

"So that's it? This ship is extraterrestrial?" Quinn felt the small victory rush that one gets from proving a hypothesis — even one as bizarre as space aliens riding in whale ships.

"Sure," said Poe, "that works for me. You, Cap?"

"Yeah, moon men, that's what you guys are," Poynter said to the whaley boys.

"Meep," said Scooter.

And in a high, squeaky, little-girl voice, Skippy croaked, "Phone home."

The whaley boys gave each other a high four and collapsed into fits of hysterical wheezing.

"What did he say?" Nate nearly snapped his neck trying to turn around against the restraints. "They can talk?"

"Well, I guess, if you call that talking," Poe said. He exchanged high fives with Poynter at the expense of the whaley boys, who paused in their own laughter to roll the whale ship in three quick spirals, which tossed the unsecured Poe and Poynter around the soft cabin like a couple of rag dolls.

Poynter came up with a bloody lip from connecting with his own knee. Poe had barked his shin on one of the whaley boys' heads as he went over. Strapped in, Nate concentrated on not watching a rerun of his lunch of raw tuna and water.

"Bastards!" said Poe.

"That what you expected in your race of super-intelligent, space-faring extraterrestrials, Nate?" Poynter wiped blood from his lower lip and flung it at Scooter.

Carl Linnaeus, an eighteenth-century Swedish doctor who specialized in the treatment of syphilis, is credited with inventing the modern system that is used for classifying plants and animals. Linnaeus is responsible for naming the humpback whale Megaptera novaeangliae, or "big wings of New England," and later naming the blue whale Balaenoptera musculus, or "little mouse": at 110 feet long, over a hundred tons, an animal whose tongue alone is larger than a full-grown African elephant — the largest animal to ever live on the planet. "Little mouse"? Some speculated that this ironic misnomer was perpetrated entirely to confuse Linnaeus's lab assistants, as in Run out and bring me back a "little mouse," Sven. Others think that the pox had gone to Carl's head.

Quinn was crouched over the back orifice, Skippy and Scooter holding him by either arm, Poynter and Poe crouched before him, saluting. He could feel the texture of the opening under his bare feet, like wet tire tread.

"It's been a pleasure, Doc," Poynter said. "Have a great trip."

"We'll see you back at base," said Poe. "Now, just relax. You're barely going to contact water. Hold your nose and blow."

Quinn did.

Poynter counted, "One, two —»

"Meep."

Nate was sucked out the orifice, felt a brief chill and some pressure pushing back against his ears, and found himself in a chamber only a little taller than that in the humpback, with a fairly amused woman.