The two women looked at each other, then nodded. "We have to go," Libby said. "We'll call you, Clay. We're not running out on you."

"I know," Clay said.

After they left, Clay turned to the two surfers. Thirty years working with the best scientists and divers in the world, and this was what it came down to: two stoner kids. "If you guys need to go do things, I understand."

"Outta here," said Lolo, on his feet and bounding toward the door.

Clay looked at the screen where Lolo had been sitting. Scrolling across it: WILL ARRIVE GV APPRX 1300 MONDAY__HAVE__SIZE 11 SNEAKERS WAITING FOR QUINN__END MSS__AAAA__BAXYXABUDAB.

"Get him back," Clay said to Kona. "We need to know which tape this was."

"Libby gave them all to him."

"I know that. I need to know where she got it. Where and when it was recorded. Call Libby's cell phone. See if you can get hold of her." Clay was trying to make the screen print before the message scrolled away. "How the hell does this thing work?"

"How you know I'm not leaving?"

"You woke up this morning, Kona. Did you have a reason to get out of bed other than waves or pot?"

"Yah, mon, need to find Nate."

"How'd that feel?"

"I'm calling Libby, boss."

"Loyalty is important, son. I'll go catch Lolo. Confirm which tape it was."

"Shut up, boss. I'm trying to dial."

Behind them the cryptic message scrolled out of the printer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Single-Celled Animal

Stockholm syndrome or not, Nate was starting to get tired of the whole hippie-commune, everything-is-wonderful-and-the-Goo-will-provide attitude. Nuñez had come by for three days running to take him out on the town, and every person he met was just a little too damn satisfied with the whole idea that they were living inside a giant organism six hundred feet under the ocean. Like this was a normal thing. Like he just wasn't getting with the program because he continued to ask questions. At least the whaley boys would blow wet raspberries at him and snicker as he walked by. At least they had some sense of the absurdity of all this, despite the fact that they shouldn't even have existed in the first place, which did seem to be a large point of denial on their part.

They'd installed him in what he guessed was a premier apartment, or what you'd call an apartment, on the second floor, looking out over the grotto. The windows were oval, and the glass in them, although perfectly clear, was flexible. It was like looking out on the world through a condom, and that was just the beginning of the things that creeped him out about this place. He had a kitchen sink, a bathroom sink, and a shower — all of which had big honking sphincters in the bottom of them — and the seal on the door around his refrigerator, if that's what you called it, appeared to be made out of slugs, or at least something that left an iridescent slime on you if you brushed up against it. There was also a toothed garbage disposal in the kitchen, which he wouldn't even go near. The worst of it was that the apartment didn't make any attempt to conceal that it was alive. His first day there, when the human crew from the whale ship had come by for a drink — a housewarming — there had been a scaly knob on the wall by the front door that when pushed would cause the door to open. After the crew left and Nate returned from his shower, the doorknob had healed over. There was a scar there in the shell, but that was all. Nate was locked in.

There was a tom-tom thrumming of stones hitting his front picture window. Nate went to the window, looked out on the vast grotto and harbor, then down on the source of his torment. A pod of whaley-boy kids was winging stones at his window. Thump, thump-a, thump. The stones bounced off, leaving no mark. When Nate appeared at the window, the thumping became more furious, as the whaley kids picked up the pace and aimed right at him, as if a well-placed shot might drop him in a dunking tank.

"There's a reason cetaceans don't have hands in the real world!" Nate screamed at them. "You are that reason! You little freaks!"

Thump, thump-a, thump, thump, clack. Occasionally a missed throw hit the shell-like frame of the window, sounding like a marble hitting tile.

I sound like Old Man Spangler yelling at my brother and me for raiding his apple trees, Nate thought. When did I turn into that guy? I don't want to be that guy.

There was a soft knock on the shell of his front door. As he turned, the door flipped open like shutters, two pieces of shell retracting on muscles hidden in the wall. Nate felt like a surprised box turtle. Cielle Nuñez stood in the doorway with canvas shopping bags folded under her arm. She was a pleasant woman, attractive, competent, and non-threatening; Nate was sure that's why she'd been chosen to be his guide.

"You ready to do some shopping, Nate? I called to tell you I was coming, but you didn't answer."

The apartment had a speaking apparatus, a sort of ornate tube thing that whistled and buzzed green metallic beetle wings when there was a call. Nate was afraid of it.

"Cielle, can we drop any pretense that we are just buddies out for the day? You lock me in here when you leave."

"For your own safety."

"Somehow that always seems to be the argument the jailer uses."

"You want to go get some food and clothes or not?" Nate shrugged and followed her out the door. They walked along the perimeter of the grotto, which seemed a cross between an old English village and an Art Nouveau hobbit housing project: irregularly shaped doors and windows looking into shops that displayed baked goods and other prepared foods. Evidently the Goo wasn't big on having fire around for home cooking. All the cooked foods were prepared somewhere else in the complex. There was a warming cabinet in Nate's apartment that looked like a breadbox made out of a giant armadillo shell. It worked great. You rolled the top open, put the food in, then promptly lost your appetite.

"Let's get you something to wear today," Cielle said. "Those khakis are on loan. Only the whale-ship crews are supposed to wear them."

As they walked, a half dozen whaley kids followed them, chirping and giggling all the way.

"So I'd get in trouble if I started kicking whaley kids down the street?"

"Of course," Cielle laughed. "We have laws here, just like anywhere else."

"Evidently not ones that forbid kidnapping and unjustified imprisonment."

Nuñez stopped and grabbed his arm. "Look, what are you complaining about? This is a good place to be. You're not being mistreated. Everyone's been kind to you. What's the problem?"

"What's the problem? The problem is that all you people were yanked out of your lives, taken away from your families and friends, taken from everything that you knew, and you all act like it doesn't bother you in the least. Well, it bothers me, Cielle. It fucking bothers me a lot. And I don't understand this whole colony, or city, or whatever this thing is. How does it even exist without anyone knowing about it? In all these years, why has no one gotten out and spoiled the secret of this place?"

"I told you, we were all going to drown —»

"Bullshit. I don't buy that for a second. That gratitude toward your rescuer only lasts for a short while. I've seen it. It doesn't take over your life. Everyone I've met is blissed out. You people worship the Goo, don't you?"

"Nate, you don't want to be locked in, you won't be locked in. You can have the run of Gooville — go anywhere you want. There's hundreds of miles of passages. Some of them even I haven't seen. Go. Leave the grotto and go down any one of those passages. But you know what? You'll be back looking for your apartment tonight. You are not a prisoner, you're just living in a different place and a different way."