Just then the first big female started to recover, and Amy leaped in front of Nate to stand over the killer. "You get up, bitch, I'll knock you on your ass again. Your choice." The female froze. "Oh, fuck it," Amy said, and she zapped the big female on the nose with both stun guns at once, then wheeled on the other one, who was getting up but quickly dropped and played dead under Amy's gaze. "Good," Amy said.

"So we clear?" Amy shouted to the crowd.

There was whaleyspeak murmuring, and Amy screamed, "Are we fucking clear, people?"

"Yeah, clear," came a dozen little mashed-elf voices in English.

"Sure, sure, sure, you know it," said one little voice.

"Clear as a window," came another.

"Just kidding," said an elf-on-helium voice.

"Good," Amy said. "Let's go, Nate."

Nate was still trying to find his feet. His knees had gone a little rubbery when he thought his head was going to be bitten off. Emily 7 caught him by the arm and steadied him. Amy started to lead them out of the amphitheater, then stopped. "Just a second."

She went back to where the lead killer female was just climbing to her feet and zapped her in the chest with the stun gun, which knocked her flat on her back again.

As Amy strutted past Nate and Emily 7, she said, "Okay, now we can go."

"Where are we going?" Nate asked.

"Em says you slept with her."

Nate looked at Emily 7, who grinned, big and toothy, and snickered.

"Yeah, slept. Just slept. That's all. Tell her, Emily."

Emily whistled, actually a tune this time, and rolled her eyes.

"Really," Nate said.

"I know," Amy said.

"Oh." Nate heard squeaks coming from behind them in the corridor. "Wasn't that a little risky, taking on a thousand whaley boys with a couple of stun guns?"

"I love these things," Amy said, clicking the buttons to make miniature blue lightning arc across the contacts. "No, I didn't take on a thousand whaley boys, I took on one — an alpha female. Know what that makes me?" She smiled and then, without even breaking stride, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. "And never forget it."

"I won't." Then that last week's anxiety about losing her came tumbling back over him. "Hey, where did you go? I thought the Colonel had taken you."

"I went out on my mother's ship to send a message."

"What message?"

"I was calling our ride. All the whaley boys had been put on notice: No pilot was going to take his ship out of here with you on board, still won't. But I could go, so I went out with my mother to pick up some supplies. And I called a ride."

"What, Emily 7 can't pilot a ship?"

"Uh-uh," squeaked Emily 7.

"Only pilots can pilot a ship, duh. Anyway" — Amy checked her watch — "your ride should be in the harbor soon. I have to go by my place and grab something I want to take."

An hour later they stood at the water's edge in the harbor, and Amy was checking her watch again. "I am so pissed," she said, tapping her foot frantically.

It seemed as if every thirty seconds they had been cornered by some human resident of Gooville, and Amy had to tell the story again. Emily 7 was the only one of the whaley boys, other than the crew of Amy's mother's ship, that was still in the grotto.

"You think they'll revolt, hurt humans?" Nate asked.

"No, they'll be fine. That was a first. It's not every day you find out that your messiah is plotting to kill you. Give 'em a day or two to get over the embarrassment — everything will be back to normal."

"I guess it's just as well that we're getting out of here. You don't want to face those two females you zapped."

"Bring it on," Amy said, patting the pockets of her shorts. "Besides, I'm sort of special here, Nate. I don't want to sound egotistical, but they really all do know me, know who I am, what I am. No one will bother me."

Just then Nate spotted a light coming from deep in the mirror-calm water.

"That's him," Amy said.

"Him?"

"Clay, coming to take you home."

"Me? You mean us."

"Em, can I get a minute?" Amy said.

" 'Kay," said Emily 7, skulking away from the shore toward town.

When Emily was out of hearing range, Amy put her arms around Nate and leaned back to look at him. "I can't go with you, Nate. I'm staying."

"What do you mean? Why?"

"I can't go. There's something about me you don't know. Something I should have told you before, but I thought you wouldn't… well, you know — I thought you wouldn't love me."

"Please, Amy, please don't tell me you're a lesbian. Because I've been through that once, and I don't think I could survive it again. Please."

"No, nothing like that. It's about my parents… well, my father really."

"The navigator?"

"Uh, no, not really. Actually, Nate, this is my father. She pulled a small specimen jar out of her pocket and held it up. There was a pink, jellylike substance in it.

"That looks like —»

"It is, Nate. It's the Goo. My mother was never intimate with her navigator, or with anyone in the first three years she was here, but one morning she woke up pregnant."

"And you're sure it was the Goo, not just that she had way too many mai-tais at the Gooville cabana club?"

"She knows it, and I know it, Nate. I'm sort of not normal."

"You feel normal." He pulled her closer.

"I'm not. For one thing, I don't just look a lot younger than I really am, but I'm also a lot stronger than I look, especially as a swimmer. Remember that day I found the humpback ship by sound? I really can hear directional sound underwater. And my muscle tissue is different. It stores oxygen the way a whale's tissue does, I can stay underwater without breathing for over an hour, longer if I don't exert myself. I'm the only one like me, Nate. I'm not really, you know… human."

Nate listened, trying to weigh what it really meant in the bigger picture, but he couldn't think of anything except that he wanted her to go with him, wanted her to be with him, no matter what she said she was. "I don't care, Amy. It doesn't matter. Look, I got over all this" — he gestured to all that — "and the fact that you're sixty-four years old and your mother is a famous dead aviatrix. As long as you don't start liking girls, I'll be fine."

"That's not the point, Nate. I can't leave here, not for long anyway. None of us can. Even the ones who weren't born here. The Goo becomes part of you. It takes care of you, but you become attached to it, almost literally. Like an addiction. It gets in your tissues by contact. That's how my mother had me. I've been gone a lot already this year. If I left now, or if I left for longer that a few months at a time, I'd get sick. I'd probably die."

At that moment a yellow research submersible bubbled up to the surface of the lagoon, a dozen headlights blazing into the grotto around a great Plexiglas bubble in the front.

"That's it, then. I'll stay. I don't mind, Amy. I'll stay here. We can live here. I could spend a lifetime learning about this place, the Goo."

"You can't do that either. It will become part of you, too. If you stay too long, you won't be able to leave either. You had to have noticed that first night we got drunk together, how fast you recovered from the hangover."

Nate thought about how quickly his wounds had healed, too — weeks, maybe months of healing overnight. There was no other explanation. He thought about spending his life with only fleeting glimpses of sunlight, and he said, "I don't care. I'll stay."

"No you won't. I won't let you. You have things to do." She shoved the specimen jar in his pocket, then kissed him hard. He kissed her back, for a long time.

The hatch at the top of the dry exit tower on the sub opened, and Clay popped up to see Nate and Amy for the first time since they'd both disappeared.