"I kind of like it, too," said Poe. "Except when they go overboard and do twenty or thirty breaches in a row. Even I get sick when they do that. And the noise… well, you heard it."

Quinn shook his head, closed his eyes, then opened them again. The only way to deal with this experience was to accept it at face value: He was in a whale, one that was somehow being used as a submarine by human and nonhuman sentient creatures. Everything he knew no longer applied, but then again, maybe it did. What put him on the less loopy side of sanity was noticing the whaley boys' thick necks.

"They're amphibious, right?" Quinn asked Poynter. "Their necks are thick to take the stress of swimming at high speeds?" Quinn rose in his chair as far as the restraints would allow and saw that Scooter did indeed have a blowhole just behind his melon. He was a humanoid whale, or a dolphin creature. Scooter was impossible. All of this was impossible. The details, not the big picture, Quinn reminded himself. In the big picture there be madness. "They're like a whale/human hybrid, aren't they?"

"Which would be why we call them the whaley boys," said Poynter.

"Wait, are you accusing us of something?" asked Poe. "Because these guys are not the love children of us and some whales. We don't do that kind of thing."

"Well, there was that one time," said Poynter.

"Okay, yeah, just that one time," said Poe.

But Quinn was studying Scooter, and Scooter was eyeing him right back. "Although they appear to be able to turn their heads, like beluga whales. Their neck vertebrae probably aren't fused like most whales'." The scientist rising, Quinn was comfortable now, his fear taken away by curiosity. He was focused on finding out things, which was his home turf, even in this completely unreal situation. If he focused on the details, the big picture wouldn't throw him over the edge into drooling lunacy.

"Let's ask them," said Poe. "Scooter, are your vertebrae fused together, or are you just a big, no-necked gray thug?"

Scooter turned his head to Poe and made a loud raspberry sound, spraying whaley spit all down the front of Poe's khakis and increasing the odor of decaying fish in the cabin by a factor of ten.

"We don't know what they are, Dr. Quinn," said Captain Poynter. "They were here when we got here, and we got here just like you did. We've all been on this ride."

"Meep," said Skippy.

"I taught him that," said Poe.

"That's from a Warner Brothers' cartoon," Quinn said. "Road Runner."

"No, that would be two meeps. Skippy only does one. Therefore, it's original. Isn't that right, Skippy?"

"Meep."

For some reason the meep did it. Some minds, particularly those with a scientific bent, a love of truth and certainty, have limits to how much absurdity they can handle. And here Quinn found himself well over the limit.

"Skippy and Scooter and Poynter and Poe — I can't handle it!" he screamed.

He felt as if his mind were a rubber band being stretched to breaking, and the meep had tweaked it. He screamed until he could feel veins pulsing in his forehead.

"You let it out now," said Captain Poynter. "Just go with it." Then, to Poe, "You know, I wouldn't have thought the alliteration would have done it. You ever hear of that?"

"Nope, I had an uncle who used to get nauseated at Reader's Digest article titles — you know, 'Terrible Truths of Toxic Toe Jam' — but I thought it was more because he read them in the doctor's office than the alliteration. You sure it wasn't the meep that did it?"

"This can't be happening. This can't be happening," Quinn chanted. He was hyperventilating, and his vision had gone to a blur, his heart pounding like he'd been running a sprint across an electrified floor.

"Anxiety attack," said Poynter. He put his hand on Quinn's forehead and spoke softly. "Okay, Doc, here's the skinny. You are in a living ship that resembles a whale but is not a whale. There are two other guys aboard who have lived through this, so you can live through this. In addition, there are two guys who are not strictly human, but they won't hurt you. You are going to live and deal with this. This is real. You are not insane. Now, calm the fuck down."

And it was then that Poynter stepped back and Poe threw the bucket of cold seawater in Quinn's face.

"Hey," Quinn said. He sputtered and blinked seawater out of his eyes.

"I told you to go with the dead thing, but you didn't listen," Poe said.

Nothing had changed, but things, his heart, slowed down, and Quinn looked around. "Where did that bucket come from? There was no bucket in here. There was nothing but us. And where did you get the water?"

Poe held the bucket at ready. "You're sure you're okay? I don't want to freak you out again."

"Yeah. I'm okay," said Quinn. And actually, he was. He'd decided to go with the idea that he was already dead, and that seemed to make everything fall into perspective. "I'm dead."

"That's the spirit," said Poe. He held the bucket against a wall, and a small portal opened and sucked the bucket in. Quinn would have sworn there hadn't been any seams in the wall to indicate there'd been an opening there.

"Hey," said Poynter, taking on the tone of the deeply offended, "now that you're dead, I've got a bone to pick with you about not bringing me my sandwich."

Quinn looked at the sharp features and narrowed eyes of the captain — who now seemed genuinely angry — and a shiver ran through his body that had nothing to do with the cold seawater running out of his hair. "Sorry," he said, shrugging as much as he could in the restraints.

"Damn it, how hard could that have been? You've got a Ph.D. for Christ's sake — you can't get a fucking pastrami on rye? I've got a good mind to chuck you out the anus."

"Shhhhhhhh, Cap," Poe said. "That was gonna be a surprise."

"Meep," said Skippy.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Missing Biscuit,

Flopping Tuna

"Bwana Clay, you seen the Snowy Biscuit?"

Clay and Clair sat on the lanai of Clay's bungalow drinking mai-tais and watching smoke roll out the vents of a Weber kettle barbecue. Kona had his long board tucked underneath his arm and was heading for his Maui cruiser, a lime Krylon-over-rust 1975 BMW 2002, with no windows and seats that were covered in ratty blankets.

Clay was two mai-tais south of lucid, but he could still talk, "She took Nate's truck into town this morning. Haven't seen her since."

"Sistah wanted me to teach her some surfing. Got some easy sets rolling on West Shore, good for that."

"Sorry," said Clay. "We're smoking a big hunk of ahi tuna if you'd like to join us."

"No," said Clair.

"Tanks, but I'm going down to Lahaina town and see if I can find that Snowy Biscuit. We going to work tomorrow?"

"Maybe," said Clay, trying to think through a rum cloud. They'd pulled the Always Confused up out of the bottom of the harbor, and the boatyard had said it would be a week or so before it was ready to float again, although even then it would need some major cleaning. Still, they had Nate's boat. He looked at Clair.

"You're not sitting home tomorrow whining to me about your hangover," Clair said. "You get out there on the water and be sick like a proper man." She'd revised her thoughts on Clay's staying off the water. He was who he was.

"Yeah, plan on going out if it's not too windy," Clay said. "Hey, we supposed to have wind?" It occurred to Clay that he hadn't checked the weather since Nate had disappeared.

"Calm morning, trades in the afternoon," Kona said. "We can work."

"Tell Amy when you see her, okay. Take my cell phone with you. Call me when you find her. You sure you won't have dinner with us?"

"No," said Clair.

"No," said Kona, grinning at Clair. "Auntie, you embarrassed that Kona seen you naked? You look fine, yeah."