CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Necrophiliacs Anonymous,

Gooville Chapter

Amy was carrying two stoppered porcelain bottles of beer when she entered the Colonel's chambers. The ruler of Gooville came sliding out of the pink wall as if it had given birth to him. He extended his arms to hug her, but instead of returning his embrace, Amy held up a beer.

"I brought you a beer."

"Amy, you know I don't really eat anymore."

"I thought you might like a beer, for old times' sake."

"Why are you here?"

"I hadn't seen you since I got back from Maui. I thought you'd want to debrief me or something."

"I've talked to Nathan Quinn."

"You have?"

"Don't be cute, Amy. I know what's going on between you two."

"I really don't have any choice, Colonel, I am cute. It's the burden I have to bear."

"He doesn't know what you are, does he?"

"Drink your beer, it's getting warm. Why do you keep it so steamy in here anyway?"

The Colonel accepted the beer from her and took a long pull. When he came up for air, he stared at the beer bottle with a look of surprise, as if it had just spoken to him.

"My, that's good. That's really good. I'd forgotten."

Amy toasted him with her own bottle and took a drink. "Colonel, we've known each other a long time. You've been like a father to me, but you are out of touch. I'm worried about you. I think you need to come out of here occasionally, like you used to. Walk around. Have some interaction with the people in town."

"Don't try to get in the way of what I'm doing, Amy."

"What are you talking about? I'm just worried about you."

The Colonel looked at the beer bottle in his hand again, as if it had just been teleported there, then he looked back to Amy with a little panic in his eyes. "Nate didn't tell you, then?"

"Tell me what? Nate doesn't have anything to do with this. You have lost touch."

The Colonel nodded, then leaned back into the wall of Goo behind him. It cradled him and formed a chaise longue, which he sat down on as he rubbed his temples. "Amy, did you ever do anything for a purpose greater than your own ambition? Did you ever feel a duty to something beyond yourself?"

"You mean, like persuading people that I'm something that I'm not to gain their trust so they could be kidnapped or killed in order to preserve my community? Yes, I have some concept of the idea of serving the greater good."

"I guess you do. I guess you do. Forgive me. Perhaps I do spend too much time alone."

"You think?"

"Could you leave me now? I do have to think."

"So you want to be alone now? That's what you're saying? This is how you're going to address the problem of spending too much time alone?"

"Go, Amy, and please don't interfere with Nate."

"Not yet."

"What do you mean, 'not yet'?"

"There's a deposit on that bottle. I'm not leaving without it."

"Then, Nate, he's not a problem? You're sure?" Here the Colonel forced a smile that looked much more like something menacing than an actual smile. "Because I will tell him about you if I must."

"The greater good," Amy said, returning the forced smile with a real one.

"Good," said the Colonel, draining the last of his beer. "Come back. And bring me another of these."

"You got it," Amy said. Then she took the bottle from him and left the chamber. Thin line between genius and full-blown batshit, she thought. Very thin line.

For two weeks the Colonel didn't send for Nate. Cielle Nuñez had stopped by the third morning that Amy was at Nate's apartment. "Well, you don't need me anymore," Cielle had said. "I'd just as soon get back to my ship anyway, although it doesn't look like we're going anywhere soon." Nate was disappointed that she hadn't been jealous.

"He's afraid of the cupboards, the fridge, and the garbage disposal," Cielle told Amy, as if she were talking to the dog sitter. "And you'll need to take him to get his clothes cleaned. You know he's going to be terrified of the washing machines."

"I'm right here," Nate said. "And I'm not afraid of the appliances. I'm just cautious."

"Your mother will be thrilled for you two, Amy. Her ship should be back at base soon."

"No, she's not due in for another six weeks," Amy said.

"Not anymore. The Colonel's called all the ships back to base."

"All of them? Why?"

Cielle shrugged. "He's the Colonel. Ours is not to question why. Well, Nate, it's been a pleasure, really. I'll probably see you around. You're in good hands."

She hugged Nate quickly and started out the door.

"Cielle, wait. I want to ask you something. If you don't mind."

She turned. "Ask away."

"When did your husband's yacht sink?"

Cielle raised an inquisitive eyebrow at Amy. "It's okay," Amy said. "He knows."

"Nineteen twenty-seven, Nate. In retrospect it was a blessing of sorts. He died doing what he liked doing, and two years later he would have been wiped out when the stock market crashed. I'm not sure he would have survived that."

"Thanks. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Cal and I have a really good life."

"Cal? Cal from the ship? You didn't tell me that —»

"He's my husband? The Colonel thought you might be more comfortable with a single woman to orient you. Women down here have never taken their husband's surname, Nate."

"Females run the show in a whale society," Amy explained. "You know, as it should be."

Cielle Nuñez looked from Amy to Nate and smiled. "Oh, Nate, what have you gotten yourself into?" And then she snickered like a whaley boy and left.

"She wanted you," Amy said. "She hides it really well, but I could tell."

From then on they went out together every morning. Nate insisted that Amy take him far into the catacombs during the day. There they found Gooville's underground farms: tunnels where grains of wheat grew right on the walls — no stalks — others where you could pick tomatoes from two-inch stems that seemed to grow directly out of rock.

"How does any of this ripen without photosynthesis?" Nate asked, handling an apricot that was growing not on a tree but on a broad stem like a mushroom.

"Don't know," Amy shrugged. "Geothermal heat. The Colonel says the Goo extends deep under the continent, where it draws heat from the earth. I'll show you the kitchens where they prepare most of the food — it's all geothermal. The old-timers say that at first there was only seafood to eat, but over the years the Goo has provided more and different foods."

"What are these? Chicken nuggets?" He plucked one from the ceiling.

A whaley boy working nearby whistled and clicked harshly.

"He says not to pick them, they're not ripe."

Nate tossed the nugget to the floor of the cave, where a softball-size multilegged thing scurried out of a hatch, retrieved it, and scurried back into its trapdoor.

"I've seen enough here," Nate said.

In the afternoon they did errands and shopping, but still no one asked Nate for any form of payment, and he'd stopped offering. In the evening they usually had dinner in his apartment. After they had shared two meals out at Gooville cafés, Amy had insisted that they eat in.

"You're studying them," she said, meaning the whaley boys.

"No I'm not. I'm just looking at them."

"Who are you kidding? You have that look, that researcher look, that lost-in-your-theories look. You think I don't know that look? I worked with you, remember?"

Nate shrugged. "It's what I do. I study whales." He'd been trying to learn the whaley boys' whistle-and-click language. Emily 7 had come by his apartment a couple of afternoons when Amy was away, and while he thought she might have come for amorous reasons, he managed to channel her energies into lessons on whaleyspeak. They'd become friends of sorts. He hadn't mentioned the lessons to Amy, afraid that she might tease him about Emily the way the whale-ship crew had. "I observe. I collect data and try to find meaning in it."