Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

I'll leave after you go. Brush your teeth." And then she was back in her shell.
    He brushed, rinsed, repeated, then said, "Okay."
    Out she came, grabbed him by the hair, kissed him hard. "Nice night," she said. The shower clicked shut, Amy inside.
    "I'm too old for this."
    "Yeah, I was going to talk to you about that. Not now, later. Go. She's waiting."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
    The Replicator Versus the Imitator
    Nuсez bought him a large cup of coffee at a cafe where whaley boys stood around pouring down lattes the size of fire extinguishers and exchanging clicks and whistles at an irritating volume.
    "If ever there was a creature that didn't need caffeine," Nate said.
    Nuсez kept him moving, while he kept trying to stop to lean on things. "Don't ever drink with them," Nuсez said. "Especially the males. You know their sense of humor. You're as likely as not to get a wet willy in the ear, and it's a real wet willy."
    "I may have to hurl again."
    "Don't destroy yourself out of spite, Nate. Just accept things how they are."
    He wasn't trying to destroy himself, and he wasn't spiteful. He was just confused, hungover, and kind of in love, or something remotely like love, except that the pain was more localized in his temples rather than being the overall, life-ruining pain it usually caused him. "Can we stop in at the Lollipop Guild and get a couple aspirins?"
    "You're late already."
    In the corridors she handed him off to a pair of killer whaley boys.
    "You should be honored, you know?" Nuсez said. "He doesn't meet with many people."
    "You can take my appointment if you want."
    * * *
    The Colonel had a goo recliner waiting for him when he walked through the iris door. Nate sat in it and held his coffee cup like a security blanket against his chest.
    "Well, can you see now that life wouldn't be so bad here?"
    Nate's mind raced. Amy said the Colonel didn't know, but maybe the Goo knew, but the Colonel was tapped in to the Goo, so did he know? Or had he sent her in the first place and this was all a scam, just like when he'd sent her to Hawaii to spy on him? She'd fooled him for a month there, why couldn't she be fooling him now? He wanted to trust her. But what was Ryder getting at?
    "What's different, Growl? When I saw you nine hours ago, I was a prisoner, and I'm a prisoner now."
    Ryder seemed surprised. He wiped the lock of gray hair out of his eyes furiously, as if it had caused him to make some sort of mistake. "Right, nine hours. So you've had some time to think." He didn't sound sure.
    "I got drunk and passed out. In the clear, lightning-bug light of day, Colonel, I still want to go home."
    "You know, time" – Ryder patted the living chair he was sitting in as if he were petting a dog, sending waves of blush through the pink Goo outward from where he touched. Nate shivered at the sight of it – "time is different down here, it's…"
    "Relative?" Nate offered.
    "It's on a different scale."
    "What do you want from me, Colonel? What can I possibly offer you that I get the special treatment of being spared and granted multiple audiences with the… the grand pooh-bah?" Nate was going to say "with the alpha whacko," but he thought of Amy and realized that something had changed. He no longer felt like he had nothing to lose.
    Rider swiped at his hair and clutched at the flesh of his chair with the other hand. He began rocking slightly. "I want someone to tell me I'm thinking clearly, I guess. I dream things that the Goo knows, and I think it knows things that I dream, but I'm not sure. I'm overwhelmed."
    "You might have thought about that before you declared yourself wizard."
    "You think I chose this? I didn't choose this, Nate. The Goo chose me. I don't know how many people have been brought down here over the years, but I was the first biologist. I was the first one who had some idea how the Goo worked. It had the whaley boys bring me to a place like this, where there was raw, unformed animal, and it never let me leave. I've tried to make things better for people in Gooville, but -" Ryder's eyes rolled up in his head as if he were starting to have a seizure, but then he was back again. "Did you see the electricity on the whale ships? I did that. But it's not – It's different now than it has been."
    Nate suddenly felt bad for the older man. Ryder was behaving like an early Alzheimer's patient who is realizing that he's losing recognition of his grandchildren's faces. "Tell me," Nate said.
    Ryder nodded, swallowed