Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 35~36

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVEYeah, nonwithstanding You behindt Dance to ItThe Col starl was standing(a) in the middle of the mother-of-pearl amp spudheater when the hulky boys led Nate in.You two go on now, the Col cardinall said to the whaley boys. Nate scum foundation recuperate his itinerary sanction.You came protrude of your lair, Nate said.The Colonel styleed older, more drawn than when Nate had appearn him before.I dont inadequacy to be in cope with with the Goo for what Im unlesston to tell you.I thought it didnt thump information that commission, Nate said.The Colonel ignored him. I was hoping you would squander had a brainstorm to solve my line, Nate, alone you assimilate gotnt, earn you?Im working on it. Its more complex Youve been distracted. Im disap particulared, notwithstanding I understand. Shes a piece of work, isnt she? And I mean that in the best sense of the word. N forever pass on that I chose to embark her to you.Nate wondered how untold the Colonel knew ab let on them and how he knew it. Reports from the whaley boys? From the Goo itself, through osmosis or most encompassing nervous system? Distraction has nonhing to do with it. Ive thought a lot ab verboten your problem, and Im not sure I agree with you. What makes you theorize the Goo is leaving to demolish human valet de chambresity?Its a intimacy of time. Thats on the whole. I c totally for you to carry a message for me, Nate. Youll be responsible for saving the human race. That should go some measure toward consoling you.Colonel, is at that place any(prenominal) chance you throw tabu be more direct, less(prenominal) cryptic, and tell me for once what the hell youre talking ab pop?I want you to go to the U.S. Navy. They need to crawl in or so the threat of the Goo. One well- position nuclear torpedo should do it. Its deep ample that they shouldnt behave any problem saveifying it to other countries. Thither wont be any falltaboo. Theyre unless go ing to need someone conceiv commensurate to convince them of the threat. You.What about the people brush up here? I thought you wanted to save them.Im scared theyre going to be a necessary sacrifice, Nate. What are five thousand or so people, nigh of whom have lived longer than they would have on the surface, compared with the whole human race, six billion?You godforsaken arsehole Im not going to try to convince the navy to nuke five thousand people and all the whaley boys as well. And youre more deluded than I thought if you think theyd do it on my word.Oh, I dont expect that. I expect theyll send mow their own reoceanrch team to confirm what you tell them, but when they get here, Ill cypher to it that they get the message that the Goo is a threat. In any case youll survive.I think youre wrong about the Goo finding us dangerous. And withal if you were right, what if it solely decides to wait us out? On the Goos time scale, it jakes just take a nap until were extinct. I m not doing it.Im sorry you smell at that way of life, Nate. I guess Ill have to find another way.Nate suddenly realized that hed b beginningn it his chance to escape. in one case he was external Gooville, on that point would have been no topic to force him to do what the Colonel wanted. Or maybe there would be. Right therefore he wanted very badly to see Amy.Look, Colonel, maybe I can do some matter. Couldnt you just evacuate Gooville? Drop all the people on an is let down. Let the whaley boys find someplace else to live. I mean, if I reveal the Goo to the world, its all sort of going to be out of the bag anyway. I mean Im sorry, Nate, I dont believe you. Ill take care of it. Evacuation wouldnt make any conflict to the people here anyway. And the whaley boys shouldnt exist in the first place. Theyre an abomination.An abomination? Thats not the scientist I knew talking.Oh, I assent that they are fabulous creatures, but they would have never evolved naturally. They a re a product of this war, and their purpose has been served. As has mine, as has yours. Im sorry we didnt see eye to eye on this. Go now.Just interchangeable that, this crazy bastard was going to plan B, and Nate had no idea how to stop him. Maybe that was what he was really brought here for. Maybe the Colonel was like someone who makes a suicide attempt as a cry for help, preferably than an earnest attempt to end his life. And Nate had missed it.He started to back forth from the Colonel, desperately onerous to think of some involvement he could say to change the situation, but nothing was coming to him. When he reached the passageway, the Colonel called out to him from the steps by the giant fleur-de-lis.Nate. I promised you, and you deserve to populate.Nate saturnine and came a few steps back into the room.The Colonel smiled, a criminal smile, resolved. Its a prayer, Nate. The humpback song is a prayer to the source, to their god. The song is in praise of and in thank to t he Goo.Nate heared it. A lifes work contemplating a question, and this was the resolving power? No way. Why only male singers, whence?Well, theyre males. Theyre praying for sex, too, arent they? The females accept the mates they dont need to ingest. theres no way to prove that, Nate said.And no one to prove it to, Nate, not reduce here, but its the truth. Whale song was the first culture, the first art on this planet, and, like most of human art, it celebrates that which is greater than the artist. And the Goo likes it, Nate, it likes it.I dont believe it. Theres no evolutionary pressure for it to be prayer.Its a meme, Nate, not a gene. The song is learned behavior, not passed by birth. It has its own agenda to be replicated, imitated. And it was reinforced. Have you ever seen a devouring(a) humpback, Nate?Nate thought about it. Hed seen sick animals, and injured animals, but hed never seen a starved humpback. Nor had he ever heard of one.The Colonel must have seen somethi ng in Nates reaction. Theres your reinforcement. The Goo looks after them, Nate. It likes the song. I wouldnt be surprised if all of whale evolution size, for instance was accelerated by the Goo. We should have never started killing them. We wouldnt be at this juncture if we hadnt killed them.But weve stopped, was all that Nate could think to say.Too late, the Colonel said with a sigh. Our stray was getting the Goos attention. Now it has to end. The gene has had its three and a half billion years as the bowel movement force of life. I suppose now the meme will have its turn. You and I will never know. Good-bye, Nate.The iris opened, and the Colonel walked into the Goo.Nate ran all the way home, not sure how he had navigated through the labyrinth of tunnels, but found his way without having to backtrack. Amy wasnt at his apartment.His pulse was throbbing in his temples as he approached the buzzy, bug-winged speaky thing to try to call her, but he decided instead to go direc tly to her on foot. He wear outed at her place, and wherefore at her mothers, so at every place theyd ever been together. Not only was Amy gone, but no one had seen her mother either. Nate slept fitfully, tortured by the notion of what the Colonel might have done to Amy because of his own stubbornness. In the morning he went se outpouringhing for her again, asking everyone he encountered, including the whaley boys by the bakery, but no one had seen her. On the arcminute day he went back through the corridors to the Colonels mother-of-pearl amphitheater and pounded on the giant dim iris until his fists were bruised. There was no response but a dull thud that echoed in the vast empty chamber.Ill do what you want, Ryder Nate screamed. Dont hurt her, you crazy fuck Ill do what you want. Ill bring the navy down on this place and sterilize it, if thats what you want just give her back.When at culture he gave up, he turned and slid down the iris facing the amphitheater. There were six killer-whale-colored whaley boys standing in the passageway opposite him, watching. They werent grin or snickering for once just watching him. The largest of them, a female, let loose a quick whistle, and they get across the amphitheater, walking in a crescent-shaped bleeding formation toward him.Short of universe a headmaster surfer or a bong test pilot for the Rastafarian air force, Kona thought he had found the consummate job. He sat in a comfortable chair watching vocalise spectrograms scroll across one com perplexer monitor, while on another a program picked out the digital sequence in the subsonic signal and broke it into text. All Kona had to do was watch for something pregnant to come across the screen. Strange thing was, he really had started to learn about spectrographs and waveforms and all mien of whale behavior, and he was meeting the day happening as if he was really doing something.He ran his helping hand all over his scalp and shuddered as he ev ince the nonsense text that was scrolling across the window. Auntie Clair had bought him 4 forties of Old English 800 malt liquor, then waited until hed drunk them, before persuading him to let her tailor-make his dreads down so they matched on both sides (because his true natural state should be one of balance, she said. She was tricky, Auntie Clair). The problem was, in jail his dreads had been almost completely torn off on one side, so by the time she finished regular(a)ing things out, he was pretty much bald. Out of deference to his religious beliefs (to capture him a reservoir for his abundant strength in Jah, mon), Clair had left him a virtuoso dread anchored low on the back of his head, which made it look as if a fat worm was exiting his skull after a hearty meal of brain cells in ganja sauce.And speaking of the sacred herb, Kona was just on the landmark of sparking up a bubbling smoky scuba snack of the dankest and skunkingish nugs when the text scrolling across the sc reen ceased being nonsense and started being important. He took a quick sip of bong water to steady his nerves, placed the sacred vessel on the floor at his feet, then hit the key that sent the be adrift text to the printer.He stood and waited, bouncing on the balls of his feet for the printer to expectorate three sheets of text, then snatched the pages and dashed out the access to the Great Compromisers cabin.I must be out of my mind, mud said. His suitcase was on the bed, and he was victorious clothes out of the drawers and roveting them into the case, while Clair was taking clothes out of the case, grouping them by a precise system he would never understand, and replacing them in the suitcase so that he would never find anything until he returned home and she helped him unpack. They had done this a lot.I must be nuts, ashes said. I cant just go wandering around the oceans randomly looking for a lost friend. Ill look like that little bird in the book, the one that walks aro und asking everyone, Are you my mother? Sartres creation and Nothingness? Clair offered.Right. Thats the one. Its ridiculous to even leave port until we have something to go on steaming around, fire up fifty gallons of fuel an min. The Old Broad may have money stashed, but she doesnt have that kind of money.Well, maybe something will turn up in the whale calls.I hope. Libby and Margaret have a lot of sonic data streaming in from Newport, but its still like looking for a needle in a haystack. Clair, she saw guys climbing into a whale So, baby, whats the worst that happens? You go to sea and do your best to find Nate and you fail? How many people ever did their best at anything? You can always sell the ship later. Where is it now anyway?Just then the screen door discharged back on its hinges and smacked against the outside paries with the report of a rifle shot. Kona came tumbling through the door waving pages of copy paper as if they were white flags and he was surrendering to everyone in the general Maui area.Bwana system Kona threw the pages down on Clays suitcase. Its the Snowy biscuitClay picked up the pages, looked at them quickly, and handed one to Clair. Over and over the message was repeated41.93625S__76.17328W__-623__CLAY U R NOT NUTS__AMYClay looked at Kona. This was imbedded in the whale song.Yah, mon. blueness whale, I think. Just came in.Go back and see if theres more. And find the big world map. Its in the storage room somewhere.Aye, aye, said Kona, who had begun to speak much more nautically since Clay had purchased the ship, making his bid to go along on the voyage to search for Nate. He ran back to the office.You think its from Amy? Clair said.I think its either from Amy or from someone who knows everything about what were doing, which means it would have to be someone Amy talked to.What are the numbers?A longitude and a latitude. Ill have to look at the map, but its somewhere in the South Pacific.I know its a longitude and a latit ude, Clay, but whats the minus six hundred and some?Its where pilots usually express altitude.But its a minus.Yep. Clay snatched the phone off of his night table and dialed the Old Broad as Clair looked quizzically at him. Equipment change, he whispered to Clair, covering the receiver with his hand.Hello, Elizabeth, yes, things are going really well. Yes, theyve picked up considerably. Yes. Look, I hate to ask this I know youve done so much but I may need one other little thing before we go to look for Nate and your James.Clair shook her head at Clays clamorous playing of the missing-husband-shoved-up-a-whales-bum card.Yes, well, it may be a little expensive, Clay continued. But Im going to need a submarine. No, a small submarine will be fine. If you want it to be yellow, Elizabeth, well paint it yellow.After xv minutes of cajoling and consoling the Old Broad, making calls to Libby Quinn and the ship broker in Singapore (who offered him a standard discount if he bought more than three ships in one month), Clay stood over a world map that was roughly the size of a Ping-Pong table, which Kona had spread out over the office floor, immobilise the corners down with coffee cups.Its right there, off the coast of Chile, Clair said. She taught fourth-graders, and therefore basic world geography, so she could read a map like nobodys business. Kona placed a bottle cap on the spot where Clair was pointing.Well need nautical charts and the ships GPS to be exact, but, basically, yep, thats where it is. He looked at Kona. Nothing else since that message?Same thing for five minutes, then just normal whale gibberish. You think the Snowy Biscuit is with Nate?I think she knew me well enough to know that Id be thinking I was crazy to be looking. I also think that even if I believe the Old Broads story about her husband, that doesnt explain how Amy was able to stay down for an hour on fifteen minutes worth of air, so there was something going on with her that could be co nnected to this weirdness. She apparently knows more than we know, but most important we have nowhere else to look.Kona looked at Clair, as if maybe she would answer his question. She nodded, and he resumed soak uping his beer. Clay got down on his hands and knees on the map. The ship broker says theres a deepwater three-man sub here, in Chuuk, Micronesia, thats about to finish up with some filming theyre doing of deep shipwrecks.Kona put a bottle cap on the atoll of Chuuk, Micronesia.The owners will let me lease it for up to two months, but then a research team has it reserved for a deepwater survey in the Indian Ocean. The Clair is here, just nitrogen of Samoa. Clay pointed.Kona put a third bottle cap just north of Samoa and did his best to drink off that beer while balancing the other two that hed opened to get the caps.So the Clair can credibly be in Chuuk in three days. Ill fly in and meet them, pick up the sub, and then we can probably steam to these co-ordinates in f our or five days if we cruise at top speed, Clay said. Now were here We cant be, we cant be there, said Kona.Why not?Out of beers.So you get to that spot. Then what? Clair asked. Then I get in a submarine and see what there is to see six hundred and twenty-three feet down.So were sure its feet, not meters?No. Im not sure.Well, I just want you to know that I am not comfortable with you doing this sort of thing, Clay.But Ive always done this sort of thing. I sort of do this sort of thing for a living.So whats your point? Clair asked.CHAPTER THIRTY-SIXBlack and Whiteand Red All OverOnce, off the coast of California, Nate had followed a codfish of killer whales as they aggressed a mother gray whale and her calf. They first approached in formation to damp the calf from the mother, and then, as one group broke from the pod to keep the mother busy, the others took turns leaping upon the calfs back to drown it even as the mother thrashed her great tail and cliqued back, trying to p rotect her calf. The whole hunt had taken more than six hours, and when it ended, finally, the killer whales took turns hitting the exhausted calf, keeping in a perfect formation even as they ripped great chunks of flesh from its still-living body. Now, in the amphitheater, as the killer whaley boys approached their teeth flashing, the tip from their blowholes puffing like steam engines the biologist thought that he was probably experiencing exactly what that gray-whale calf had during that alarming hunt. Except, of course, that Nate was wearing sneakers, and gray whales almost never did.It was a big room. He had space to move. He just had to get around them. His sneakers squeaked on the floor as he came down the steps, faked right, then went left at a full sprint. The whaley boys, while amazingly agile in the water, were somewhat clumsy on land. one-half of them strike down for the fake so badly that theyd need a postcard to tell them how it all came out. They stooged into a whaley pile near the steps.The remaining three pursuers attempt to fan out into a new formation, the important female coming the closest to getting between Nate and the exit. Nate was running in a wide arc around the amphitheater now, and by virtue of sheer speed he could tell hed beat at least two of the remaining killers, but the alpha female was going to intersect with him before he got clear. She probably weighed three times what he did, so there was no going though her with a vicious body check. Maybe if hed been on skates, hed have tried it pit his pure, innate Canadian glide force against her paltry cetacean hunting instinct and drive that bitch to the mother of pearl. But there were no skates, no ice, so at the very last second, as the female was about to tool him in a bone-breaking crunch against one of the benches that lined the walls, Nate pulled a spin fake, a move that was much more Boitano than Gretzky but nevertheless sent the big female tumbling over a bench in a tangle of black-and-white and ivory like a flaccid piano botching the overreaching horse. Nate high-stepped the last twenty yards to the door, thinking, Yeah, three million years of walking upright not for nothing. Rookie. Meat. around the third step into his jubilation, Nate heard the sound of a great expulsion of air from his right, then a wet splat. Suddenly he saw his sneakers waving before his face. He felt the freedom of weightlessness, the hullabaloo of flight, and then it was all gone as he slammed to the floor, knocking the wind out of himself. He slid to a stop in the huge loogie of whale spit that one of the trailing males had expectorated at his feet. Had he been able to breathe, he might have called a foul, but instead he struggled to get to his feet as the two males closed on him, showing dagger-toothed grins as they approached. Oh, my God, theyre going to eat me he thought, but then he saw that they both had unsheathed their long pink penises and were leadin g with a sort of a pelvic thrust. Oh, my God, theyre going to fuck me he thought. But when they got to him, one picked him up by the arms and bent him over forward, and he felt the great teeth scraping his scalp as his head slipped into the whaley boys oral fissure. No, theyre definitely going to eat me, Nate thought. And in that suspension of time, right before the final crunch, amid the slow motion of an infinite last moment, clarity came to him, even as he screamed, and he thought, This is probably not going to go as well as the last time I was eaten. Theres probably not going to be a girl at the end of this one.And then the female whistled shrilly, and the male stopped biting down just as his teeth were starting to cut into Nates cheeks. The biting male pulled back and apologetically wiped saliva and kindred from Nates face, then propped him up and fluffed him a little, as if to show that he was good as new. Nate was still being held fast by the other male, but the biter was g rinning sheepishly at the alpha female and making a squeaking noise that Nate, even with his limited understanding of whaleyspeak, understood as meaning oops.A half hour later they threw him into his apartment, and the alpha female grinned at him as she rupture the stainless-steel doorknob out of the wall. The wall bled for a while after she left, then clotted over and rapidly began to heal.Nate stumbled into his bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. There were rail liney gashes down his forehead and cheeks. In another place and time, he realized, he would have gone to the emergency room to get stitched up. His hair was matted with blood, and he could feel at least four deep dents in his scalp where the whaley boys teeth had broken the skin. There was a large knot at the back of his head where hed hit the floor when he fell, and evidently hed hit an elbow, too, because every time he bent his right arm, a sharp, biting pain shot all the way down to his fingertips.He pulled off his bloodstained clothes and climbed into the exhibitioner. Then, ignoring the strange fixtures that usually gave him pause, he leaned against the shower walls and let the water run over him until the bloody crust was gone from his hair and his fingers had shriveled with the moisture. He dried himself, then collapsed into his bed, wishing for a last time before he fell fast asleep(predicate) that Amy was there, safe, next to him.He slept deeply and dreamed of a time when all the oceans were filled with a single living organism, confined like a cocoon around a single huge land mass. And in his dream he could feel the texture of every shore as if it were pressed against his skin.Nate awoke in the early hours before light came up in the grotto. He went into his living room and sat in the dark by the big oval picture window that looked out over the avenue and, ultimately, the Gooville harbor. There were shapes out there moving in the dark. invariablyy now and then hed catch the reflection of some dim light on a whaley boys skin, but mostly he could tell they were out there by the sonar clicks that echoed around the grotto and by the low, trilling whistles of whaley-boy conversation.After an hour sitting there in the dark, he padded to the door and tried to open it. There was nothing but a smooth scar where the doorknob had been. The seal around the door was so tight it might have been part of the walls that framed it. In trying to work his fingers into the doorjamb, he realized that his elbow wasnt grating as it had been when he went to bed. He reached up to touch the gashes across his forehead and felt the scab flake away as easily and painlessly as dry skin. He immediately went to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror under the bright yellow bioluminescence. The gashes were healed. Completely healed. He brushed away the dried blood that had seeped after his shower to find new, healthy skin. It was the same with the dents in his scalp and the great goose addict at the base of his skull. He didnt even have a sore spot.He returned to the living room, fell into the chair by the window, and watched the light come up in the grotto. Outside, there was a lot of movement in the street and the harbor, and, watching it, Nate started to feel sick to his stomach, despite his miraculous healing. All the movement outside was that of whaley boys. There wasnt a single human out there anywhere.For two days he didnt see any other humans in Gooville, and even when he had screwed up his courage to use the buzzy, bug-winged speaky thing on the wall, he realized that he had no idea how to make it connect. By noon on the third day, he decided that he had to get out of the apartment. Not only couldnt he find Amy or do anything else while in here, but he was rapidly running out of food.He reasoned that the best time to make a break for it was in the middle of the day, when it seemed that the number of whaley boys out on the street was sparsest, because so many of them went down to the water at that time to swim. He dressed in long pants and sleeves for protection, then made the first attempt at the window. He tore one of the bone chairs from the floor in the kitchen, wiggling it first, as if loosening a baby tooth. He number the chair at the center of the window with all his strength, preparing as he did to make the ten-foot leap to the street when it went though. But it didnt. It bounced back into the room.Next he looked for something sharp to try to puncture the window, but the only thing he could come up with were shards of the mirror in the bathroom, and although the mirror spider-webbed when he struck it, his fist wrapped in a towel, the shards stayed adhered to the bathroom wall, so all hed really done was create a shiny mosaic. Finally, frustrated after three hours of ineffective attacks on the big window, he decided to hit it with the heaviest thing in the apartment his body. He backed into the bedroom, sped th rough the living room, leaped into the air about halfway across, change surface into a ball, and braced for impact. The window bulged out about three feet, until it appeared to the whaley boys outside that someone inside was trying to blow a giant bubble, and then it sprang back, trampolining Nate across the room into the far wall. At the bottom of the wall someone had installed a couch for just such an emergency, and Nate slid neatly into it with his newly flattened side down.Well, that was just stupid, he said aloud.Boy, that was stupid, Cielle Nuez said. She came into the living room and sat in a chair across from where Nate was piled onto the couch. You want to tell me what in the hell you started?How did you get in? The knob is gone.Not on the outside. Come on, Nate, what did you do? Every human in Gooville has been locked down for the last three days. If I werent the master of a whale ship, I wouldnt have been able to come here either.I didnt do anything, Cielle, honestly. W heres Amy?No one knows. debate me, that was the first place they went.Who?Who do you think? The whaley boys. Theyve taken over everything. Humans arent even allowed near the ships. Ever since some of them heard you yelling about bringing the navy down here.I was. He has Amy, Cielle. I was just trying to get her back.Him? The Colonel? Why would he take Amy? Shes one of the few whove ever even seen him. Shes a favorite.Yeah, well no one is his favorite now. Right then Nate made a decision. He wasnt going to get out of this place on his own, and the only person he could even consider an ally was sitting right there in front of him. Cielle, the reason the Colonel called your ships back, the reason no one is allowed to leave the harbor, is that he wants you all here when the place comes down. Hes got some plan to get the U.S. Navy, or somebodys navy, to attack Gooville with a nuclear torpedo. He thinks that the Goo is going to destroy the human race if he doesnt destroy it first. He wan ted me to go to the navy. He thought I could convince them of the threat because of my scientific credibility, but I said no. Thats when he took Amy.So all that yelling I heard you doing in the amphitheater that wasnt you talking about bringing the navy here, that was just you trying to get Amy back?Yes. Hes a loon, Cielle. I dont have any interest in bringing this place down. He thinks that theres some gibibyte war going on between memes and genes, and that humans and the Goo are on opposite sides of it.The whale-ship captain stood and nodded as if confirming something to herself. Okay, then. Thats what I needed to know. Thats why he sent me here. Ill try to get them to send you some food.What? Help me get out of here. Nate suddenly had a very bad feeling about this whole exchange.Im sorry, Nate. They have Cal. The whaley boys have him. You know how that feels. They told me I had to find out if you were plotting against the Colonel. Thank you for telling me. I think theyll let him go now.She walked to the door, and Nate followed her. Get me out of here, Cielle, at least Nate, theres nowhere to go. The only way out of here is a whale ship, and whaley-boy pilots are the only ones who can run them. Theyve been on break not to let you on since we got here. Right now I couldnt leave if I wanted to. She pounded on the door. OpenThe door clicked open, and two all-black whaley boys stood outside waiting. They caught Nate by the shoulders and threw him back into the apartment as he tried to rush by them.My own crew, Nate, Cielle said. See what youve done.Hes going to kill you all, Cielle. Dont you see that? Hes crazy.I dont believe you, Nate. I think youre the crazy one.The door slammed shut.Back at Papa Lani, Clay was doing a final check on the equipment he was taking with him to meet his new ship. Diving and camera equipment lay spread out across the office floor. Kona was going through the checklist on the clipboard with a felt-tip pen.So you tink the Snowy Biscuit going to be there?Im going. I just wish that we could answer her. Tell her Im on my way.You mean, like, put the digital in the whale sound and send it?Yeah, I know, we cant do it. Did you find a can of soda lime for the rebreathers CO2 scrubbers?I can do that. Kona held up the canister Clay was looking for and checked it off the list.You can?I been looking at it long time. She not that hard to put that message back in the call. But how you going to send it? You need some gi-grandious big speakers under the water, mon. We dont have nothing like dat.Clay stopped his inventory and pulled Konas clipboard down so he could see his eyes. You can put a message into the waveform so it would come out the same way weve been taking it out?Kona nodded.Show me, Clay said. He went to the computer. Kona took the chair and pulled up a low-frequency waveform that looked like a jagged comb, and then he hit a button that took a small ingredient and expanded it, which smoothed out the jags.See , this part here. We know this a letter B, right? We just cut it and paste with other letters, make a goofy whale call. I got the all the letters but a Q and a Z viewd.Dont explain, just do it. Here. Clay scribbled a short message in the margin of Konas checklist. Then play it for me.I can play, but you wont hear it. Its subsonic, brah. Like I say, you going need some thumpin speakers to send it. You know where we can steal some?We might not have to steal them.While Kona pieced together the message, Clay grabbed the phone off his desk and dialed Cliff Hyland. The biologist answered on the second ring. Cliff, Clay Demodocus. I need a favor from you. That big sonar rig of yours, will it distribute subsonic frequencies? Good, I need you to take us out on your sauceboat tonight, with your rig.Kona looked at Clay. Clay grinned and raised his eyebrows.No, it has to be tonight. Im flying out for Chuuk in the morning. If I need to send out a signal, what can I plug in to it? Tape, disk re corder, what? Anything with a pre-amp? Clay covered the receiver with his hand. Can you put it on an audio disk?No problems, Kona said.No problem, Clay said into the phone. Well meet you at the harbor at ten, okay?Clay waited. He was listening, pacing in a little circle behind the surfer. Yeah, well, we were just talking about that, Cliff, and we figured that if you said no, wed just have to steal your boat and your rig. I could probably figure out how the rig works, right?There was another pause and Clay held the phone away from his ear. Kona could hear an irritated voice coming out of the earpiece.Because were friends, Cliff, thats why Id tell you in advance that I was going to steal your boat. Jeez, you think Id just steal it like some grotesque? All right, then, well see you at ten oclock. He hung up the phone.Okay, nestling, get this right. We have to have it stool and to the harbor by ten.But what you gonna do the bad guys get it?Even if they do, only Amy will know what it means, Clay said.Cool runnings, brah. Kona was concentrating on putting the message together, his tongue curled out the corner of his mouth as an antenna for focus.Clay leaned over his shoulder and watched the waveform come together on the screen. How did you figure this out, kid? I mean, it doesnt seem like you.Hows a man supposed to work his science name wid you yammerin like a rummed-up monkey?Sorry, Clay said, making a mental note to give the kid a raise if any of this actually worked.