"Because you have booty?"

She wiggled on his lap by way of an answer, then leaned her forehead against his, looked in his eyes.

"Good point," Clay said.

"What about this ship? You going to let the Old Broad buy it for you? You going to go look for Nate?"

"Where do I start?"

"Follow one of these signals. Find whatever is making it and follow them."

"We'd need location for that."

"How do you do that?"

"We'd need to have someone working the old sonar grid the navy put down all over the oceans during the Cold War to track submarines. I know people at Newport who do it, but we'd have to tell them what we're doing."

"You couldn't just say you were trying to find a certain whale?"

"I suppose we could."

"And if you have your ship and that information, you can follow the whale, or the ship, or whatever it is to its source."

"My ship?"

"Roll over, I'll rub your back."

But Clay wasn't moving. He was thinking. "I still don't know where to start."

"Who has the booty? Turn over, Captain."

Clay slipped off his aloha shirt and rolled over onto his stomach. "My ship," he said.

Nate was suddenly cold, and when he opened his eyes, he was pretty sure that his head was going to explode. "I'm pretty sure my head is going to explode," he said. And someone rudely jostled his bed.

"Come on, party animal, the Colonel sent for you. We need to go."

He peeked between the fingers he was using to hold the pieces of his head together and saw the menacing but amused face of Cielle Nuñez. It wasn't what — who — he expected, and he did a quick sweep of the bed with one leg to confirm that he was alone. "I drank," Nate said.

"I saw the bottles on the table. You drank a lot."

"I didn't get a knob so just anyone could use it anytime they want."

"I noticed your knob. It looks out of place."

About that time Nate realized that he was naked, and Nuñez was standing over his naked body, and he was going to have to let the pieces of his head go where they may if he was going to cover himself. He felt for a sheet, pulled it up as he sat up and threw his legs off the bed.

"I'm going to need a moment."

"Hurry."

"I have to pee."

"That will be fine."

"And throw up."

"Also fine."

"Okay. You go away now."

"Brush your teeth." And she left the room.

Nate looked around the room for signs of Amy, but there were none. He didn't remember where her clothes were, but the last time he'd seen them, he was pretty sure they weren't on her. He stumbled into the bathroom and looked into the basin, mother of pearl with its little siphon fixtures and the green sphincter drain. Seeing that pretty much did it for him, and he heaved into the sink.

"Hi," Amy said, poking her head out of the retracting shower door.

Nate tried to say something — something about trapdoor spiders, in keeping with an arachnid theme he was developing with regard to Amy — but it came out more bubbly and moist than he intended.

"You go ahead," Amy said. "I'll be in here." And the door clicked shut like a frightened clam.

When Nate had finished reviewing the contents of his stomach, he rinsed his face and the sink, emptied his bladder into the thing on which he would not sit, then leaned against the sink and moaned for a second while he gathered his thoughts.

A head popped out of the shower. "So, that went well."

"The water's not running."

"I'm not showering, I'm hiding. I didn't want Nuñez to see me. The Colonel shouldn't know I've been here. I'll leave after you go. Brush your teeth." And then she was back in her shell.

He brushed, rinsed, repeated, then said, "Okay."

Out she came, grabbed him by the hair, kissed him hard. "Nice night," she said. The shower clicked shut, Amy inside.

"I'm too old for this."

"Yeah, I was going to talk to you about that. Not now, later. Go. She's waiting."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The Replicator Versus

the Imitator

Nuñez bought him a large cup of coffee at a cafe where whaley boys stood around pouring down lattes the size of fire extinguishers and exchanging clicks and whistles at an irritating volume.

"If ever there was a creature that didn't need caffeine," Nate said.

Nuñez kept him moving, while he kept trying to stop to lean on things. "Don't ever drink with them," Nuñez said. "Especially the males. You know their sense of humor. You're as likely as not to get a wet willy in the ear, and it's a real wet willy."

"I may have to hurl again."

"Don't destroy yourself out of spite, Nate. Just accept things how they are."

He wasn't trying to destroy himself, and he wasn't spiteful. He was just confused, hungover, and kind of in love, or something remotely like love, except that the pain was more localized in his temples rather than being the overall, life-ruining pain it usually caused him. "Can we stop in at the Lollipop Guild and get a couple aspirins?"

"You're late already."

In the corridors she handed him off to a pair of killer whaley boys.

"You should be honored, you know?" Nuñez said. "He doesn't meet with many people."

"You can take my appointment if you want."

The Colonel had a goo recliner waiting for him when he walked through the iris door. Nate sat in it and held his coffee cup like a security blanket against his chest.

"Well, can you see now that life wouldn't be so bad here?"

Nate's mind raced. Amy said the Colonel didn't know, but maybe the Goo knew, but the Colonel was tapped in to the Goo, so did he know? Or had he sent her in the first place and this was all a scam, just like when he'd sent her to Hawaii to spy on him? She'd fooled him for a month there, why couldn't she be fooling him now? He wanted to trust her. But what was Ryder getting at?

"What's different, Growl? When I saw you nine hours ago, I was a prisoner, and I'm a prisoner now."

Ryder seemed surprised. He wiped the lock of gray hair out of his eyes furiously, as if it had caused him to make some sort of mistake. "Right, nine hours. So you've had some time to think." He didn't sound sure.

"I got drunk and passed out. In the clear, lightning-bug light of day, Colonel, I still want to go home."

"You know, time" — Ryder patted the living chair he was sitting in as if he were petting a dog, sending waves of blush through the pink Goo outward from where he touched. Nate shivered at the sight of it — "time is different down here, it's…"

"Relative?" Nate offered.

"It's on a different scale."

"What do you want from me, Colonel? What can I possibly offer you that I get the special treatment of being spared and granted multiple audiences with the… the grand pooh-bah?" Nate was going to say "with the alpha whacko," but he thought of Amy and realized that something had changed. He no longer felt like he had nothing to lose.

Rider swiped at his hair and clutched at the flesh of his chair with the other hand. He began rocking slightly. "I want someone to tell me I'm thinking clearly, I guess. I dream things that the Goo knows, and I think it knows things that I dream, but I'm not sure. I'm overwhelmed."

"You might have thought about that before you declared yourself wizard."

"You think I chose this? I didn't choose this, Nate. The Goo chose me. I don't know how many people have been brought down here over the years, but I was the first biologist. I was the first one who had some idea how the Goo worked. It had the whaley boys bring me to a place like this, where there was raw, unformed animal, and it never let me leave. I've tried to make things better for people in Gooville, but — " Ryder's eyes rolled up in his head as if he were starting to have a seizure, but then he was back again. "Did you see the electricity on the whale ships? I did that. But it's not — It's different now than it has been."