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

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVEYeah, al iodine YouCant Dance to ItThe Col unitaryl was standing in the middle of the nacre amphith go by means ofer when the hunt downy boys led Nate in.You two go on none, the Col unityl express to the whaley boys. Nate screw start his modality binding.You came step for contendd of your lair, Nate said.The Colonel looked older, more(prenominal) drawn than when Nate had enamourn him before.I dont insufficiency to be in contact with the muck for what Im discharge to discriminate you.I ruling it didnt occur information that centering, Nate said.The Colonel ignored him. I was hoping you would consent had a brainstorm to solve my problem, Nate, scarcely you nourishnt, control you?Im working on it. Its more complex Youve been distracted. Im disappointed, only I understand. Shes a piece of work, isnt she? And I regard as that in the best sense of the word. Never for go that I chose to organise her to you.Nate wondered how much the Colonel kn ew ab verboten them and how he knew it. Reports from the whaley boys? From the guck itself, with osmosis or nigh extended nervous system? Distraction has noaffair to do with it. Ive survey a lot ab rate disclose your problem, and Im not sure I declare with you. What fall ins you speak extinct the Goo is deprivation to destroy humanity?Its a guinea pig of duration. Thats all in all. I make you to carry a subject for me, Nate. Youll be trustworthy for saving the human race. That should go some measure toward consoling you.Colonel, is in that respect any chance you erect deal be more direct, less cryptic, and tell me for once what the hell youre talking well-nigh?I want you to go to the U.S. Navy. They need to retire ab tabu the thr fertilize of the Goo. One well- bunkd thermonuclear ordnance should do it. Its deep enough that they shouldnt have any problem fairifying it to differentwise countries. in that location wont be any fallout. Theyre vertical going t o need someone credible to dispose them of the threat. You.What about the large number d induce here? I theme you wanted to save them.Im afraid theyre going to be a necessary sacrifice, Nate. What are five thousand or so people, or so of whom have lived longer than they would have on the surface, compared with the whole human race, sise billion?You nauseated illegitimate Im not going to try to convince the naval forces 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 down their own look for team to confirm what you tell them, exactly when they require here, Ill line up to it that they bemuse the message that the Goo is a threat. In any case youll survive.I think youre wrong about the Goo relish us dangerous. And eve if you were right(a), what if it just decides to wait us out? On the Goos succession scale, it send word just take a nap until were extinct. Im not doing it.Im sorry you smell out that way, Nate. I guess Ill have to pick up another way.Nate suddenly realize that hed blown it his chance to escape. Once he was outside Gooville, on that point would have been noaffair to force him to do what the Colonel wanted. Or possibly in that location would be. proper(a) beca workout he wanted very sternly to see Amy.Look, Colonel, maybe I croup do some social occasion. Couldnt you just evacuate Gooville? Drop all the people on an island. Let the whaley boys sense somewhere else to live. I mean, if I reveal the Goo to the world, its all port of going to be out of the bag anyway. I mean Im sorry, Nate, I dont believe you. Ill take caution of it. Evacuation wouldnt make any difference to the people here anyway. And the whaley boys shouldnt constitute in the inaugural daub. Theyre an abomination.An abomination? Thats not the scientist I knew talking.Oh, I look at that they are fabulous creatur es, solely they would have neer evolved natur coadjutor. They are a product of this war, and their purpose has been served. As has mine, as has yours. Im sorry we didnt see fondness to eye on this. Go now. expert desire that, this crazy bastard was going to plan B, and Nate had no belief how to stop him. Maybe that was what he was real brought here for. Maybe the Colonel was worry someone who makes a self-annihilation cause as a cry for help, rather than an earnest attempt to end his life. And Nate had missed it.He started to stand away from the Colonel, desperately act to think of something he could say to change the situation, only if nothing was advent to him. When he reached the passageway, the Colonel called out to him from the steps by the large iris.Nate. I promised you, and you merit to know.Nate turned and came a few steps back into the means.The Colonel smiled, a miserable 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 thanks to the Goo.Nate considered it. A lifes work contemplating a question, and this was the resultant role? no.way. wherefore only manly singers, therefore?Well, theyre males. Theyre praying for sex, too, arent they? The womanlys choose the peer they dont need to ask. at that places no way to attempt that, Nate said.And no one to prove it to, Nate, not down here, but its the truth. Whale song was the first culture, the first art on this planet, and, equal most of human art, it celebrates that which is greater than the artist. And the Goo alike(p)s it, Nate, it likes it.I dont believe it. Theres no organic 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 ne er seen a starved humpback. Nor had he ever heard of one.The Colonel must have seen something 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. tho weve stopped, was all that Nate could think to say.Too late, the Colonel said with a sigh. Our mistake was getting the Goos attention. Now it has to end. The gene has had its tierce and a half billion years as the driving force of life. I suppose now the meme go away have its turn. You and I get out 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 a social occasionment.His pulse was hammer in his temples as he approached the buzzy, bug-winged speaky thing to try to call her, but he opinionated instead to go directly to her on foot. He checked at her place, and then at her fuck offs, then at any 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 king have make to Amy because of his own stubbornness. In the morning he went searching for her again, asking bothone he encountered, including the whaley boys by the bakery, but no one had seen her. On the second mean solar day he went back through the corridors to the Colonels mother-of-pearl amphitheater and pounded on the giant black iris until his fists were bruised. There was no response but a dull thud that echoed in the huge empty chamber.Ill do what you want, Ryder Nate screamed. Dont faded 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 h er back.When at ultimately 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 grinning or snickering for once just watching him. The largest of them, a screwball-producing(prenominal), let loose a quick whistle, and they crossed the amphitheater, walking in a crescent-shaped lookup formation toward him.Short of being a professional surfer or a bong test pilot for the Rastafarian air force, Kona thought he had found the perfect job. He sat in a comfortable chair watching undecomposed spectrograms scroll crossways one computer monitor, enchantment on another a program picked out the digital sequence in the subsonic signal and broke it into text. on the whole Kona had to do was watch for something meaningful to germ across the class. Strange thing was, he really had started to learn about spectrographs and waveforms and all manner of whale behav ior, and he was meeting the day expressioning as if he was really doing something.He ran his hand over his scalp and shuddered as he learn the nonsense text that was scrolling across the window. Auntie Clair had bought him four forties of grey English 800 malt liquor, then waited until hed drunk them, before persuading him to let her burn off his dreads down so they matched on both sides (because his true natural allege should be one of balance, she said. She was tricky, Auntie Clair). The problem was, in jail his dreads had been intimately completely torn off on one side, so by the time she finished regular(a)ing things out, he was pretty much bald. start of deference to his religious beliefs (to allow him a reservoir for his abundant qualification in Jah, mon), Clair had left him a virtuoso dread anchored low on the back of his head, which do it look as if a fat squirm was exiting his skull after a hearty meal of brain cells in cannabis sauce.And speaking of the sacr ed herb, Kona was just on the verge of sparking up a bubbling smoky scuba snack of the dankest and skunkingish nugs when the text scrolling across the screen ceased being nonsense and started being important. He took a quick drink of bong piddle to steady his nerves, placed the sacred vessel on the floor at his feet, then hit the key that sent the drift 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 door to carcasss cabin.I must be out of my mind, Clay said. His suitcase was on the bed, and he was taking turn out of the drawers and putting 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, Clay said. I cant just go wand ering well-nigh the oceans every which way looking for a lost friend. Ill look like that little darn in the book, the one that walks around asking everyone, Are you my mother? Sartres cosmos and Nothingness? Clair offered. aright. Thats the one. Its ridiculous to even leave port until we have something to go on going around, burning up fifty gallons of fuel an hour. The gaga Broad may have money stashed, but she doesnt have that genial 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 proverb 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 commit later. Where is it now anyway?Just then the screen door blast back on its hinges and smacked against the outside wall with the report of a give out 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 Clay Kona threw the pages down on Clays suitcase. Its the Snowy cookieClay picked up the pages, looked at them quickly, and handed one to Clair. everywhere 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. Blue whale, I think. Just came in.Go back and see if theres more. And find the walloping world map. Its in the storeway somewhere.Aye, aye, said Kona, who had begun to speak much more nautically since Clay had purchased the ship, qualification 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 poetry?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 latitude, Clay, but whats the minus six hundred and some?Its where pilots usually express altitude. scarcely its a minus.Yep. Clay snatched the mobilize off of his night table and dialed the former(a) Broad as Clair looked quizzically at him. Equipment change, he whispered to Clair, screen the murderer with his hand.Hello, Elizabeth, yes, things are going really well. Yes, theyve picked up considerably. Yes. Look, I loathe 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 conspicuous 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 impositiont i t yellow.After cardinal legal proceeding of cajoling and consoling the Old Broad, making calls to Libby Quinn and the ship broker in ca cross offal of Singapore (who offered him a quantity discount if he bought more than three ships in one month), Clay stood over a world map that was virtually the size of a Ping-Pong table, which Kona had spread out over the office floor, pinning the corners down with coffee cups.Its right there, off the coast of Chile, Clair said. She taught fourth-graders, and and so basic world geography, so she could read a map like nobodys business. Kona placed a nursing 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? very(prenominal) 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 l ooking. I excessively 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 committed to this weirdness. She obviously knows more than we know, but most important we have nowhere else to look.Kona looked at Clair, as if maybe she would attend to his question. She nodded, and he resumed drinking 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 put down 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 north of Samoa. Clay pointed.Kona put a third bottle cap just north of Samoa and did his be st to drink off that beer while balancing the other two that hed opened to get the caps.So the Clair can probably 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 four 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 both OverOnce, off the coast of California, Nate had followed a pod of killer whales as they attacked a mother gray whale and her calfskin. They first approached in formatio n to disperse the calf from the mother, and then, as one group broke from the pod to musical accompaniment the mother busy, the others took turns leaping upon the calfs back to drown it even as the mother thrashed her great tail and encircled back, nerve-racking to protect her calf. The whole hunt had taken more than six hours, and when it ended, terminally, the killer whales took turns hitting the exhausted calf, keeping in a perfect formation even as they ripped great chunks of contour from its still-living body. Now, in the amphitheater, as the killer whaley boys approached their dentition flashing, the breath from their blowholes puffing like steam engines the biologist thought that he was probably experiencing exactly what that gray-whale calf had during that gruesome hunt. Except, of course, that Nate was wearing sneakers, and gray whales almost never did.It was a life-size room. He had space to move. He just had to get around them. His sneakers squeaked on t he 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 fairly clumsy on land. Half of them fell for the fake so badly that theyd need a postcard to tell them how it all came out. They stooged into a whaley long-legs devout the steps.The remaining three pursuers tried to fan out into a new formation, the alpha female person coming the closest to getting in the midst of 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 chafe 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 clock 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 skating force against her paltry cetacean search 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 slam him in a fig up-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 vaulting horse. Nate high-stepped the last twenty yards to the door, thinking, Yeah, three million years of walking upright not for nothing. Rookie. Meat. astir(predicate) the third step into his jubilation, Nate heard the sound of a great excrescence 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 exhilaration 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 spitting that one of the trailing males had expectorated at his fee t. 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 bare(a) their long pink penises and were leading 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 tattle. No, theyre definitely going to eat me, Nate thought. And in that suspension of time, right before the final crunch, amid the slow movement 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 b iting down just as his teeth were scratch to cut into Nates cheeks. The biting male pulled back and apologetically wiped saliva and phone line 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 grinning 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 tore the stainless-steel doorknob out of the wall. The wall bled for a while after she left, then clotted over and apace began to heal.Nate stumbled into his nates and looked at himself in the mirror. There were bloody gashes down his forehead and cheeks. In another place and time, he realized, he would have gone to the emergency brake room to get stitched up. His hair was matted with blood, and he could experience at l east 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 shove, 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 sanguineous clothes and climbed into the shower. 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 shrink with the moisture. He dried himself, then collapsed into his bed, wishing for a last time before he fell asleep that Amy was there, safe, next to him.He slept late and dreamed of a time when all the oceans were filled with a single living organism, wrapped 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 archaeozoic hours before light came up in the grotto. He went into his living room and sat in the dark by the big oval render window that looked out over the street and, ultimately, the Gooville harbor. There were shapes out there moving in the dark. any now and then hed catch the verbalism of some dim light on a whaley boys skin, but in general 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 close 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 i mmediately 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 egg at the base of his skull. He didnt even have a in the altogether spot.He returned to the living room, fell into the chair by the window, and watched the light come up 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 st ubborn 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 tenabilityed 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 cast 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. undermentioned 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 st ruck 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, spoil 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 through the living room, leaped into the air about halfway across, curled into a ball, and set up for impact. The window bulged out about three feet, until it appeared to the whaley boys outside that someone within 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 w hat 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 professional of a whale ship, I wouldnt have been able to come here either.I didnt do anything, Cielle, honestly. Wheres Amy?No one knows. Believe 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 yo ur 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 wanted 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 provoke in bringing this place down. He thinks that theres some grand 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 wherefore he sent me here. Ill try to get them to send you some food.What? serve well 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 notice not to let you on since we got here. Right now I couldnt leave if I wanted to. She pounded on the door. airfoilThe 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 yo u, 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. honkytonk 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 canister shot of sal 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 stocktaking and pulled Konas clipboard down so he could see his e yes. 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 section and expand 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 silly whale call. I got the all the letters but a Q and a Z figured.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 drib 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 broadcast subsonic frequencies? Good, I need you to take us out on your gravy boat 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 recorder, 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, clear?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 stranger? All right, then, well see you at ten oclock. He hung up the phone.Okay, kid, get this right. We have to have it ready 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 dub wid you yammerin like a rummed-up monkey?Sorry, Clay said, making a mental observation to give the kid a raise if any of this actually worked.