"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 throw 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."