Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

Nate."
    "Females run the show in a whale society," Amy explained. "You know, as it should be."
    Cielle Nuсez looked from Amy to Nate and smiled. "Oh, Nate, what have you gotten yourself into?" And then she snickered like a whaley boy and left.
    "She wanted you," Amy said. "She hides it really well, but I could tell."
    From then on they went out together every morning. Nate insisted that Amy take him far into the catacombs during the day. There they found Gooville's underground farms: tunnels where grains of wheat grew right on the walls – no stalks – others where you could pick tomatoes from two-inch stems that seemed to grow directly out of rock.
    "How does any of this ripen without photosynthesis?" Nate asked, handling an apricot that was growing not on a tree but on a broad stem like a mushroom.
    "Don't know," Amy shrugged. "Geothermal heat. The Colonel says the Goo extends deep under the continent, where it draws heat from the earth. I'll show you the kitchens where they prepare most of the food – it's all geothermal. The old-timers say that at first there was only seafood to eat, but over the years the Goo has provided more and different foods."
    "What are these? Chicken nuggets?" He plucked one from the ceiling.
    A whaley boy working nearby whistled and clicked harshly.
    "He says not to pick them, they're not ripe."
    Nate tossed the nugget to the floor of the cave, where a softball-size multilegged thing scurried out of a hatch, retrieved it, and scurried back into its trapdoor.
    "I've seen enough here," Nate said.
    * * *
    In the afternoon they did errands and shopping, but still no one asked Nate for any form of payment, and he'd stopped offering. In the evening they usually had dinner in his apartment. After they had shared two meals out at Gooville cafйs, Amy had insisted that they eat in.
    "You're studying them," she said, meaning the whaley boys.
    "No I'm not. I'm just looking at them."
    "Who are you kidding? You have that look, that researcher look, that lost-in-your-theories look. You think I don't know that look? I worked with you, remember?"
    Nate shrugged. "It's what I do. I study whales." He'd been trying to learn the whaley boys' whistle-and-click language. Emily 7 had come by his apartment a couple of afternoons when Amy was away, and while he thought she might have come for amorous reasons, he managed to channel her energies into lessons on whaleyspeak. They'd become friends of sorts. He hadn't mentioned the lessons to Amy, afraid that she might tease him about Emily the way the whale-ship crew had. "I observe. I collect data and try to find meaning in it."
    Amy nodded, thinking about it, then said, "So if rescuing manatees and dolphins got you into the field, why didn't you do something more active to help the animals? Veterinary medicine or something."
    "I always wonder. I've thought about the people at Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd, putting themselves in harm's way, ramming whaling ships, running Zodiacs in front of harpoon guns to try to protect the animals. I've wondered if that was the way to go."
    "And you thought you could do more as a scientist, studying them?"
    "No, I thought that being a scientist was something that I could do. There's a path to becoming a biologist – an educational process. There isn't for being a pirate."
    "No, you're wrong, there is a school for that. I saw it on a matchbook when I was in Maui. I'm sure it said you could learn to be a pirate if you passed a simple test."
    "That's learn to draw a pirate."
    "Whatever. So you compromised?"
    "Did I? I think what we – what I do has value."
    "So do I. I'm not saying that. I'm just wondering, you know, now that you're dead, do you feel your life was wasted?"
    "I'm not dead, Amy. Jeez, that's an awful thing to say."
    "You know, effectively dead, I mean. Your life being over. Jeepers, does that make me a necrophiliac? When we get out of here, maybe I'll have to go to a meeting or something. Do they have those?"
    "Amy, I'm wondering if maybe I don't want to get out of here." He'd been thinking about it a lot. Life here really wasn't bad, and since he'd been looking for a way out on their daily excursions (only to be reminded that he'd have to go through the miles of pressure locks only to emerge six hundred feet below the sea), maybe he and Amy could make a future together. The whole Gooville ecosystem would certainly keep him interested.
    "Hi, my name's Amy, and I hump the dead."
    "Maybe, if I can talk the Colonel