CHAPTER NINETEEN

Scooter Don't Meep

The whale tossed like a roller coaster moving through tomato soup  -  great gut-flopping waves of muscular motion. Quinn rolled to his hands and knees and urped his breakfast into a splatter pattern across the rubbery gray floor, then heaved in time with the rhythm of the whale's swimming until he was empty and exhausted.

"Hurl patrol," came a voice out of the dark.

"Flush and gush, boys, the doc blew ballast back here," came another voice.

Quinn rolled onto his bottom and scooted away from the voices until he came against a bulkhead, which was warm and moist and gave at his touch. He felt huge muscles moving behind the skin and nearly jumped. He scooted away, then sat balled up near where he'd been sick. Cold seawater rolled down from the front of the whale and over his feet, taking his recently vacated breakfast with it. His ears popped with a pressure increase, and in a second the water was gone.

The interior of the whale looked like a bad van conversion done by a latex freak: damp, rubbery skin over everything, lit by a light blue haze coming from the eyes up front, the rest dimly lit by bioluminescent strips of green that ran over the top of the teardrop-shaped chamber. At the front of the chamber, on either side by the eyes, two things sat in seats that wrapped around their bodies. Quinn didn't know what they were, and his mind felt as if it were ripping open trying to grasp the whole of the situation. Details like nonhuman humanoids decked out in gray skin couldn't register enough space in his consciousness to be examined or analyzed. In fact, he could keep his eyes open for only a few seconds before the nausea returned.

Inside the whale smelled like fish.

Standing, or sort of standing  -  riding was a more appropriate term, as everything inside the whale was moving  -  behind the seated creatures were two men, one about forty, the other twenty-five, both barefoot but wearing military khakis without insignias or any badges of rank, but the older man was obviously in command. Quinn had tried for five minutes to ask them the questions coming into his mind, but each time he opened his mouth, he had to stop himself from throwing up. He'd always considered himself pretty seaworthy until now.

"What...?" he managed to get out before his gorge rose again.

"It really helps with the incredulity if you accept that you're dead," said the older man.

"I'm dead?"

"I didn't say that, but if you accept that you are, it sort of quells the anxiety."

"Yeah, if you're already dead, what bad can really happen?" said the younger guy.

"Then I am dead?"

"Nope. Breathe and go with the motion," said the older guy. "It's not going to stop, so if you fight it, you'll lose."

"Your lunch," added the young guy, and then he let loose a giggle at his own joke.

"There's less motion toward the front. The head tracks close to level. But you knew that."

Quinn hadn't been able to apply any of his analytical powers to the situation because he flat couldn't accept it. Yes, in another world he realized that he knew that the whale's head would have less motion than the tail, but he'd never even considered that he might be thinking about it from the perspective of an internal organ.

"I'm inside a whale?"

"Ding, ding, ding, he's gotten the bonus answer." The young guy leaned back against the back of the seat where one of the gray creatures was sitting, and a chairlike protrusion rose out of the floor to catch him. "Tell him what he's won, Captain."

"Hospitality, Poe. Help the doctor up to the front so we can talk without him tossing his cookies."

The younger guy helped Quinn to his feet and across the undulating floor to the chair thing that had risen behind one of the gray creatures facing the back of the ship. Once close to the creatures, Quinn couldn't take his eyes off them. They were humanoid, in that they had two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head, but their heads were like that of a pilot whale, with a large melon in the front  -  for transmitting and receiving sound underwater, Quinn guessed  -  and their eyes were set wide to the side, so the creatures would see with binocular vision. Their hands were inserted into consoles that rose out of the floor and appeared to have no instrumentation whatsoever except for some bioluminescent nodules that looked like cloudy eyeballs and emitted different colors of light. The creatures appeared as if they had become part of the whale.

"We call them the whaley boys," the older man said. "They pilot the whale."

"The one directly behind you is Scooter, the other one is Skippy. Say hi, guys."

The creatures turned as far as the chairs would allow them and made clicking and squeaking noises, then seemed to smile at Quinn. While smiling they showed mouthfuls of sharp, peglike teeth. With the teeth set against their dark gray skins and the melon above, the whaley boys put Quinn in mind of more cheerful versions of the creature from the Alien movies. Scooter saluted Nate with a hand consisting of four very long webbed fingers and only the suggestion of a thumb.

"They say hi," said Poe. "I'm Poe. This is Captain Poynter." Poynter, the older man, tipped his hat and offered a hand to shake. Quinn took it and waggled it limply.

"The whaley boys don't speak English as we know it," Poe said, "although they have a few squeaks that come out like words. They're tapped directly in to the whale's nervous system. They steer it, control all the processes at any given time. We can't do much on the whales without them. Certainly could never drive one. The whales and the whaley boys are made for each other."

Poe pushed against the back of Skippy's seat, and another seat formed out of the floor to cradle him as he leaned back into it. "I love that," Poe said.

Poynter backed up to a rubbery bulkhead, and a seat formed out of the wall to catch him as well.

"If they're paying attention, they'll never let you fall." Poe grinned. "Of course, almost everything in here is soft  -  child safe, don't you know  -  except the spine, which runs over the top, so you wouldn't be hurt if you did fall. But just the same, we're secured when they're doing maneuvers. You think you're sick now  -  wait until we go for a breach. Don't freak out." Poe turned to the whaley boys. "Secure the doc, boys." The arms of the seat shape wrapped over Quinn's lap. Parts came over his shoulders and fused across his chest, then around his hips and over his lap. Quinn freaked out.

"Get it off me! Get it off me! I can't breathe!"

"Prepare for breach," said Poynter.

Scooter chirped. Skippy grinned. Similar restraints extruded from all their seats, securing them.

The attitude of the whale changed, going up at a nearly sixty-degree angle  -  and then the angle went sharper as they moved. Quinn was looking backward at the tail section of the teardrop interior. The lurching movement of the luminescent strips was starting to nauseate him. He could feel his internal organs shifting with the acceleration, and then the whale ship went vertical and airborne. At the apex of the motion, Quinn's stomach tried to escape through his diaphragm, then shifted as they fell sideways. There was an enormous concussion as the ship hit the water. Slowly the whale came back around, and they were horizontal again.

The whaley boys chirped and clicked gleefully, grinning back at Quinn, then at each other, then back at Quinn, nodding as if to say, Was that cool, or what? Their necks were nearly as wide as their shoulders, and Quinn could see heavy muscles moving under the skin. "They love that," said Poynter.

"I kind of like it, too," said Poe. "Except when they go overboard and do twenty or thirty breaches in a row. Even I get sick when they do that. And the noise... well, you heard it."

Quinn shook his head, closed his eyes, then opened them again. The only way to deal with this experience was to accept it at face value: He was in a whale, one that was somehow being used as a submarine by human and nonhuman sentient creatures. Everything he knew no longer applied, but then again, maybe it did. What put him on the less loopy side of sanity was noticing the whaley boys' thick necks.

"They're amphibious, right?" Quinn asked Poynter. "Their necks are thick to take the stress of swimming at high speeds?" Quinn rose in his chair as far as the restraints would allow and saw that Scooter did indeed have a blowhole just behind his melon. He was a humanoid whale, or a dolphin creature. Scooter was impossible. All of this was impossible. The details, not the big picture, Quinn reminded himself. In the big picture there be madness. "They're like a whale/human hybrid, aren't they?"

"Which would be why we call them the whaley boys," said Poynter.

"Wait, are you accusing us of something?" asked Poe. "Because these guys are not the love children of us and some whales. We don't do that kind of thing."

"Well, there was that one time," said Poynter.

"Okay, yeah, just that one time," said Poe.

But Quinn was studying Scooter, and Scooter was eyeing him right back. "Although they appear to be able to turn their heads, like beluga whales. Their neck vertebrae probably aren't fused like most whales'." The scientist rising, Quinn was comfortable now, his fear taken away by curiosity. He was focused on finding out things, which was his home turf, even in this completely unreal situation. If he focused on the details, the big picture wouldn't throw him over the edge into drooling lunacy.

"Let's ask them," said Poe. "Scooter, are your vertebrae fused together, or are you just a big, no-necked gray thug?"

Scooter turned his head to Poe and made a loud raspberry sound, spraying whaley spit all down the front of Poe's khakis and increasing the odor of decaying fish in the cabin by a factor of ten.

"We don't know what they are, Dr. Quinn," said Captain Poynter. "They were here when we got here, and we got here just like you did. We've all been on this ride."

"Meep," said Skippy.

"I taught him that," said Poe.

"That's from a Warner Brothers' cartoon," Quinn said. "Road Runner."

"No, that would be two meeps. Skippy only does one. Therefore, it's original. Isn't that right, Skippy?"

"Meep."

For some reason the meep did it. Some minds, particularly those with a scientific bent, a love of truth and certainty, have limits to how much absurdity they can handle. And here Quinn found himself well over the limit.

"Skippy and Scooter and Poynter and Poe  -  I can't handle it!" he screamed.

He felt as if his mind were a rubber band being stretched to breaking, and the meep had tweaked it. He screamed until he could feel veins pulsing in his forehead.

"You let it out now," said Captain Poynter. "Just go with it." Then, to Poe, "You know, I wouldn't have thought the alliteration would have done it. You ever hear of that?"

"Nope, I had an uncle who used to get nauseated at Reader's Digest article titles  -  you know, 'Terrible Truths of Toxic Toe Jam'  -  but I thought it was more because he read them in the doctor's office than the alliteration. You sure it wasn't the meep that did it?"

"This can't be happening. This can't be happening," Quinn chanted. He was hyperventilating, and his vision had gone to a blur, his heart pounding like he'd been running a sprint across an electrified floor.

"Anxiety attack," said Poynter. He put his hand on Quinn's forehead and spoke softly. "Okay, Doc, here's the skinny. You are in a living ship that resembles a whale but is not a whale. There are two other guys aboard who have lived through this, so you can live through this. In addition, there are two guys who are not strictly human, but they won't hurt you. You are going to live and deal with this. This is real. You are not insane. Now, calm the fuck down."

And it was then that Poynter stepped back and Poe threw the bucket of cold seawater in Quinn's face.

"Hey," Quinn said. He sputtered and blinked seawater out of his eyes.

"I told you to go with the dead thing, but you didn't listen," Poe said.

Nothing had changed, but things, his heart, slowed down, and Quinn looked around. "Where did that bucket come from? There was no bucket in here. There was nothing but us. And where did you get the water?"

Poe held the bucket at ready. "You're sure you're okay? I don't want to freak you out again."

"Yeah. I'm okay," said Quinn. And actually, he was. He'd decided to go with the idea that he was already dead, and that seemed to make everything fall into perspective. "I'm dead."

"That's the spirit," said Poe. He held the bucket against a wall, and a small portal opened and sucked the bucket in. Quinn would have sworn there hadn't been any seams in the wall to indicate there'd been an opening there.

"Hey," said Poynter, taking on the tone of the deeply offended, "now that you're dead, I've got a bone to pick with you about not bringing me my sandwich."

Quinn looked at the sharp features and narrowed eyes of the captain  -  who now seemed genuinely angry  -  and a shiver ran through his body that had nothing to do with the cold seawater running out of his hair. "Sorry," he said, shrugging as much as he could in the restraints.

"Damn it, how hard could that have been? You've got a Ph.D. for Christ's sake  -  you can't get a fucking pastrami on rye? I've got a good mind to chuck you out the anus."

"Shhhhhhhh, Cap," Poe said. "That was gonna be a surprise."

"Meep," said Skippy.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Missing Biscuit,

Flopping Tuna

"Bwana Clay, you seen the Snowy Biscuit?"

Clay and Clair sat on the lanai of Clay's bungalow drinking mai-tais and watching smoke roll out the vents of a Weber kettle barbecue. Kona had his long board tucked underneath his arm and was heading for his Maui cruiser, a lime Krylon-over-rust 1975 BMW 2002, with no windows and seats that were covered in ratty blankets.

Clay was two mai-tais south of lucid, but he could still talk, "She took Nate's truck into town this morning. Haven't seen her since."

"Sistah wanted me to teach her some surfing. Got some easy sets rolling on West Shore, good for that."

"Sorry," said Clay. "We're smoking a big hunk of ahi tuna if you'd like to join us."

"No," said Clair.

"Tanks, but I'm going down to Lahaina town and see if I can find that Snowy Biscuit. We going to work tomorrow?"

"Maybe," said Clay, trying to think through a rum cloud. They'd pulled the Always Confused up out of the bottom of the harbor, and the boatyard had said it would be a week or so before it was ready to float again, although even then it would need some major cleaning. Still, they had Nate's boat. He looked at Clair.

"You're not sitting home tomorrow whining to me about your hangover," Clair said. "You get out there on the water and be sick like a proper man." She'd revised her thoughts on Clay's staying off the water. He was who he was.

"Yeah, plan on going out if it's not too windy," Clay said. "Hey, we supposed to have wind?" It occurred to Clay that he hadn't checked the weather since Nate had disappeared.

"Calm morning, trades in the afternoon," Kona said. "We can work."

"Tell Amy when you see her, okay. Take my cell phone with you. Call me when you find her. You sure you won't have dinner with us?"

"No," said Clair.

"No," said Kona, grinning at Clair. "Auntie, you embarrassed that Kona seen you naked? You look fine, yeah."

Clair stood up. "You go ahead, call me 'Auntie' again, see if I don't snatch out the rest of those dreads and use them to make cat toys."

"Ease up, I'm going to find the Biscuit." And he loped to the Beemer, slid the long board in through the back window, hooked the skeg over the passenger seat to secure it, and then drove off to Lahaina to look for Amy.

It was two in the morning when the phone in Clay's bungalow rang. "Tell me you're not in jail," Clay said.

"Not in jail, Bwana Clay, but maybe you need to sit down."

"I'm in bed sleeping, Kona. What?"

"The truck, Bwana Nate's truck. It's here at the kayak rental in Lahaina. They say Amy rent a kayak this morning, about eleven."

"They're still there?"

"I waked the guy up."

"They don't know where she went? They let her go alone? He didn't call us when it got dark?"

"She said she was just using it to tow behind the boat, for research. He know she a whale researcher, so he didn't think nothing of it. Sometime they take kayaks two, three days."

"You checked? She's not on the boat?"

"You mean the not sunk one?"

"Yes, that would be the one."

"Yeah, I check. The boat in the slip. No kayak."

"Stay there. I'll be down in a few minutes. I have to get dressed and call the Coast Guard."

"This kayak guy says it not on him  -  she signed a wafer. That some kind of religious thing?"

"Waiver, Kona, she signed a waiver. Are you high?"

"Yes."

"Of course. Sorry. Okay, I'll be right there."

Nate was three days inside the whale before he asked, "Your names aren't really Poynter and Poe, are they?"

"What?" said Poynter. "You're eaten by a giant whale ship and you're worried that we might be traveling under assumed names? Go for it, Poe."

"Give us a flush, boys!" Poe said.

Water came gushing down the floor of the whale from the front. Pantsless, Ensign Poe took three steps and went into a slide toward the tail like he was sliding into third base on a wet rain tarp. As he reached the end of the chamber, he spread his arms out to his sides at right angles. There was a sucking sound, and he sank up to his armpits into an orifice that only a second ago had appeared as just an impression in solid skin.

"Wow, that's cold," said Poe. "How deep are we?"

Scooter clicked and whistled a couple of times.

"Ninety feet," said Poynter. "Can't be that bad."

"Feels colder. I think my 'nads have crawled up inside my body."

Nate simply stared, gape-jawed, at the arms and head of the ensign, just above floor level.

"You see, Doc," said Poynter, "most of the time we call it the 'back orifice' instead of the anus, you know, because otherwise, with us moving in and out of it, there's implications. His lower body is in the sea right now, at three atmospheres, yet the back orifice is sealed around him and it's not crushing his chest. It's not crushing your chest, is it, Poe?"

"No, sir. It's snug for sure, but I can breathe."

"How is that possible?" asked Nate.

"You're a diver. You've been down, what, a hundred and twenty, hundred and thirty feet?"

"A hundred and fifty, by accident, but what does that have to do with this?"

"You never had sphincter failure at that depth, did you? Blow up like a puffer fish?"

"No."

"Well, there you go, Nate. This here is just advanced poop-chute technology. We don't even understand it ourselves, but it's the key to sanitation on these small ships, and it's how we get in and out. Normally the mouth on these humpback ships doesn't even open, which gives us a lot more room, but this one was made specially to retrieve 'Dirts. That's you people."

"Made? By whom?" Of course they were made. Nothing like this could have evolved.

"Later," said Poynter. "Poe, you done?"

"Aye, aye, Captain."

"Get back in here."

"Mighty cold out here, sir. I'm telling you, my tackle's going to look like I'm posing for a baby picture."

"I'm sure the doc will take that into account, Poe."

Nate could feel a slight change in pressure in his ears, and Poe oozed back into the whale. The orifice sealed behind him, leaving almost no water on the floor. The ensign sidled, crablike, to the front of the ship, shielding his privates with his hands. He retrieved his pants from a storage nook that opened with a flap of skin like the blowhole on a killer whale. The whale's interior was lined with the storage nooks, but you couldn't even see the seams by the dim bioluminescence when they were closed.

"You're going to learn how to do that, Nate. It's just the civilized thing to do until we transfer you to the blue. Can't have you doing your business in the ship."

When he'd had to go to the bathroom, they'd sent Nate to the back of the whale, where he'd gone on the floor. Seconds later the whaley boys had let a bit of water in through a crack in the mouth, which washed across the floor and effectively flushed the mess out the back orifice.

"The blue?" Nate asked.

"Yeah, we can't take you where they want you in this little thing. We'll transfer you to a blue and send you on. You'll have to go through the poop chutes."

"So there's a blue-whale ship as well?"

"Ships," Poynter corrected. "Yeah, and other species, too."

"Right whales are my favorites," Poe said. "Slower than hell, but really wide. Plenty of room. You'll see."

"So they  -  the whaley boys  -  can regulate the pressure that precisely? They can let in water, expel it, keep the pressure in here from giving us the bends? Allow us to transfer from one of these ships to another?"

"Yep, they're tapped in to the whale directly. They're like his cerebral cortex, I guess. The whale ships have a brain, but that only takes care of autonomic functions. Allows it to act like a whale for hours on end  -  diving, breathing, stuff like that. But without one of the whaley boys tapped in, they're just dumb machines, limited function. The pilots control higher functions  -  navigation and such. They really show off their stuff in these humpbacks  -  the breaching, the singing, you know."

"This thing sings?" Nate couldn't help himself. He wanted to hear a whale sing from the inside.

"Of course it sings. You heard it sing."

Since Nate had been on, the only sound the whale ship had made was the beating of its enormous flukes and the explosive blow every ten minutes or so.

"I hate it when they sing," said Poe.

"What's the purpose of the song?" Nate asked. He didn't care who these guys were or what they were doing. He now had the opportunity to get the answer to a question he'd pursued for most of his adult life. "Why do they sing?"

"Because we tell them to," said Poynter. "Why'd you think?"

"No. It's not right." Nate buried his face in his hands. "Kidnapped by morons."

Scooter let loose with a series of frantic chirps. The whaley boy was staring out the eye into the blue Pacific.

"School of tuna outside," said Poe.

"Go, Scooter," said Poynter. "Go get some."

The restraints retracted from around Scooter's waist, and the creature stood up for the first time since Nate had come on board. He was taller than Nate, maybe six-six, with lean gray legs that looked like those of a giant bullfrog crossbred with a fullback and terminated in long, webbed feet that resembled the rear flippers of a walrus. Scooter took three quick steps and dove at the floor in the back of the whale. There was a whooshing sound, and he disappeared, headfirst, through the back orifice, which sealed behind him with a distinct pop.

Poe stepped into the seat that Scooter had vacated and looked out through the eye. "Nate, check this out. Watch how these guys hunt."

Nate looked out the whale's eye and saw Scooter's lithe form swim by at incredible speed, darting back and forth with astounding agility in pursuit of a twenty-pound tuna.

In the water the whaley boy's eyes no longer bugged out as they did inside the whale. Like whales and dolphins, Nate realized, whaley boys possessed muscles that could actually change the shape of the eye for focusing in either air or water. Scooter did a rapid turn and snatched the tuna in his jaws not ten feet from the eye of the whale. Nate could hear the snap and saw blood in the water around Scooter's mouth.

"Yes!" said Poe. "It's sashimi tonight."

Nate had eaten nothing but raw fish since he'd been on board the whale ship, but this was the first time he'd seen it caught. Still, he couldn't quite share Poe's enthusiasm. "Is this all you eat? Raw fish?"

"It beats the alternatives," said Poe. "The whale carries a nutrient paste that's like krill puree."

"Oh, my God," said Nate.

Poynter leaned in close to Nate, so he was only inches from the scientist's ear. "Thus the somewhat substantial demand for culinary variety, as in  -  oh, I don't know  -  a pastrami on rye!"

"I said I was sorry," Nate muttered.

"Yeah, right."

"Drop me off anywhere. I'll go get you one."

"We don't land these things on shore."

"You don't?"

"Except to paint 'bite me' on the flukes," said Poe.

"Yeah, except for that," said Poynter.

Skippy meeped as Scooter scooted in through the poop chute with tuna in hand. Upon seeing the pilot's entrance, Nate started thinking, for the first time since he'd been eaten, about how to escape.

This is just stupid, Amy thought. She'd been paddling like a madwoman for four hours and was still barely halfway to Molokai. She'd been past the channel wind line for two of those four hours and so battled four-foot swells and a crosswind that threatened to take her out to sea.

"Who gives GPS coordinates for a meeting? Who does business like that?" She'd been shouting into the wind on and off for an hour, then checking the little liquid-crystal map on the display of the GPS receiver. The "you are here" dot never seemed to move. Well, that wasn't true. If she paused from paddling to take a drink of water or apply some sunscreen, the dot seemed to jump off course a mile at a time.

"Are you guys on drugs?" she screamed into the wind.

Her shoulders ached, and she'd drunk nearly all of the two-liter bottle of water she'd brought with her. She started to regret not having brought along some kind of snack. "An easy paddle. 'Just rent a kayak. You won't need a power boat. I'm adrift on a piece of Tupperware, you nitwits!"

She leaned back on the kayak to catch her breath and watched the direction and speed indicators change on the GPS. She could rest maybe five minutes without drifting too far. She closed her eyes and let the swells rock her into a light doze. It was quiet, just the white noise of wind and water, not even a slap of waves on the kayak  -  she was so light that it rode high in the water and over the tops of the waves without a sound. She thought about Nate, about how frightened he must have been in those last moments, about how much she'd started to enjoy working with him. Action nerd. She smiled to herself, a melancholy smile as she dozed off, but then the sound of a fusillade of bubbles breaking the surface near the kayak jolted her to alertness. It was a huge expulsion of air, as if someone had set off an explosion deep under the water.

She started paddling away from the eruptions of bubbles, but even as she moved, the sea began to darken around her, the crystal blue turning to shadow in a huge pool under the kayak. Then something hit the little boat, tossing Amy into the air twenty feet before she hit the water and the darkness surrounded her.