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

The whale-ship captain stood and nodded as if confirming something to herself. "Okay, then. That's what I needed to know. That's why he sent me here. I'll try to get them to send you some food."

"What? Help me get out of here." Nate suddenly had a very bad feeling about this whole exchange.

"I'm sorry, Nate. They have Cal. The whaley boys have him. You know how that feels. They told me I had to find out if you were plotting against the Colonel. Thank you for telling me. I think they'll let him go now."

She walked to the door, and Nate followed her. "Get me out of here, Cielle, at least —»

"Nate, there's nowhere to go. The only way out of here is a whale ship, and whaley-boy pilots are the only ones who can run them. They've been on notice not to let you on since we got here. Right now I couldn't leave if I wanted to." She pounded on the door. "Open!"

The door clicked open, and two all-black whaley boys stood outside waiting. They caught Nate by the shoulders and threw him back into the apartment as he tried to rush by them.

"My own crew, Nate," Cielle said. "See what you've done."

"He's going to kill you all, Cielle. Don't you see that? He's crazy."

"I don't believe you, Nate. I think you're the crazy one."

The door slammed shut.

Back at Papa Lani, Clay was doing a final check on the equipment he was taking with him to meet his new ship. Diving and camera equipment lay spread out across the office floor. Kona was going through the checklist on the clipboard with a felt-tip pen.

"So you tink the Snowy Biscuit going to be there?"

"I'm going. I just wish that we could answer her. Tell her I'm on my way."

"You mean, like, put the digital in the whale sound and send it?"

"Yeah, I know, we can't do it. Did you find a canister of soda lime for the rebreather's CO2 scrubbers?"

"I can do that." Kona held up the canister Clay was looking for and checked it off the list.

"You can?"

"I been looking at it long time. She not that hard to put that message back in the call. But how you going to send it? You need some gi-grandious big speakers under the water, mon. We don't have nothing like dat."

Clay stopped his inventory and pulled Kona's clipboard down so he could see his eyes. "You can put a message into the waveform so it would come out the same way we've been taking it out?"

Kona nodded.

"Show me," Clay said. He went to the computer. Kona took the chair and pulled up a low-frequency waveform that looked like a jagged comb, and then he hit a button that took a small section and expanded it, which smoothed out the jags.

"See, this part here. We know this a letter B, right? We just cut it and paste with other letters, make a goofy whale call. I got the all the letters but a Q and a Z figured."

"Don't explain, just do it. Here." Clay scribbled a short message in the margin of Kona's checklist. "Then play it for me."

"I can play, but you won't hear it. It's subsonic, brah. Like I say, you going need some thumpin' speakers to send it. You know where we can steal some?"

"We might not have to steal them."

While Kona pieced together the message, Clay grabbed the phone off his desk and dialed Cliff Hyland. The biologist answered on the second ring. "Cliff, Clay Demodocus. I need a favor from you. That big sonar rig of yours, will it broadcast subsonic frequencies?… Good, I need you to take us out on your boat tonight, with your rig."

Kona looked at Clay. Clay grinned and raised his eyebrows.

"No, it has to be tonight. I'm flying out for Chuuk in the morning. If I need to send out a signal, what can I plug in to it? Tape, disk recorder, what? Anything with a pre-amp?" Clay covered the receiver with his hand. "Can you put it on an audio disk?"

"No problems," Kona said.

"No problem," Clay said into the phone. "We'll meet you at the harbor at ten, okay?"

Clay waited. He was listening, pacing in a little circle behind the surfer. "Yeah, well, we were just talking about that, Cliff, and we figured that if you said no, we'd just have to steal your boat and your rig. I could probably figure out how the rig works, right?"

There was another pause and Clay held the phone away from his ear. Kona could hear an irritated voice coming out of the earpiece.

"Because we're friends, Cliff, that's why I'd tell you in advance that I was going to steal your boat. Jeez, you think I'd just steal it like some stranger? All right, then, we'll see you at ten o'clock." He hung up the phone.

"Okay, kid, get this right. We have to have it ready and to the harbor by ten."

"But what you gonna do the bad guys get it?"

"Even if they do, only Amy will know what it means," Clay said.

"Cool runnings, brah." Kona was concentrating on putting the message together, his tongue curled out the corner of his mouth as an antenna for focus.

Clay leaned over his shoulder and watched the waveform come together on the screen. "How did you figure this out, kid? I mean, it doesn't seem like you."

"How's a man supposed to work his science dub wid you yammerin' like a rummed-up monkey?"

"Sorry," Clay said, making a mental note to give the kid a raise if any of this actually worked.

Nate was five more days alone in the apartment before they came for him. It started at dawn on the sixth day, when he noticed a group of whaley boys gathering around below his window. There had been humans out on the streets since the day he'd told Cielle about the Colonel's plan, but Gooville hadn't quite returned to normal (given that normal in Gooville was still extraordinarily weird to begin with). He could tell that the humans and whaley boys alike were on edge. Today there were no humans in the streets, and all the whaley boys were emitting a shrill call that he was sure he'd heard before, but strangely enough it hadn't been in the city under the sea. Hearing the hunting call in these circumstances made him shudder.

He watch them gather, rubbing up against one another as if to strengthen the bond among them, milling around in small walking pods as if working off nervous energy, each of them raising his head occasionally and letting go the hunting call — flashing teeth, jaws snapping like bear traps. He knew they were coming.

Nate was dressed and waiting for them when they came through the door. Four of them took him, lifted him in the air by his legs and shoulders, and carried him over their heads down the stairs to the street, then on into the passageways. The whole crowd moved into the passageways, their calls becoming more frequent and deafeningly shrill in the smaller confines.

Even as his captors' long fingers dug into his flesh, a calm resolve came over Nate — an almost trancelike state, the acceptance that it was all going to be over soon. He looked to either side, only to have mouthfuls of teeth snarl at him, and even among the frenzy, here and there he heard the characteristic hissing snicker of a whaley-boy laugh. Well, they do know how to have a good time, he thought.

He soon recognized the path they were taking him down. He could hear the calls of hundreds of them echoing through the caverns from the mother-of-pearl amphitheater. Maybe the entire whaley-boy population was waiting there.

As they entered the amphitheater and the calls reached a crescendo, Nate stretched his neck and saw two big killer-whale-colored females holding the Colonel in the middle of the floor. The whaley boys holding Nate lowered him to his feet, and then two of them pulled him back against the benches to watch with the others.

One of the big females holding the Colonel shrieked a long, high call, and the crowd calmed down, not quite silent, but the hunting calls stopped. The Colonel's eyes were wide, and Nate wouldn't have been surprised if the old man had started to bark and foam at the mouth. When things quieted down enough for him to be heard, he started shouting. The big female who was holding him clamped a hand over his mouth. Nate could see the Colonel fighting for breath, and he struggled against his own captors in empathy. Then the female started to speak — in their whistling, clicking language — and the crowd stopped even snickering. Their eyes bulged, and they turned their heads to the side to better hear her.