Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

TWENTY-EIGHT
    Single-Celled Animal
    Stockholm syndrome or not, Nate was starting to get tired of the whole hippie-commune, everything-is-wonderful-and-the-Goo-will-provide attitude. Nuсez had come by for three days running to take him out on the town, and every person he met was just a little too damn satisfied with the whole idea that they were living inside a giant organism six hundred feet under the ocean. Like this was a normal thing. Like he just wasn't getting with the program because he continued to ask questions. At least the whaley boys would blow wet raspberries at him and snicker as he walked by. At least they had some sense of the absurdity of all this, despite the fact that they shouldn't even have existed in the first place, which did seem to be a large point of denial on their part.
    They'd installed him in what he guessed was a premier apartment, or what you'd call an apartment, on the second floor, looking out over the grotto. The windows were oval, and the glass in them, although perfectly clear, was flexible. It was like looking out on the world through a condom, and that was just the beginning of the things that creeped him out about this place. He had a kitchen sink, a bathroom sink, and a shower – all of which had big honking sphincters in the bottom of them – and the seal on the door around his refrigerator, if that's what you called it, appeared to be made out of slugs, or at least something that left an iridescent slime on you if you brushed up against it. There was also a toothed garbage disposal in the kitchen, which he wouldn't even go near. The worst of it was that the apartment didn't make any attempt to conceal that it was alive. His first day there, when the human crew from the whale ship had come by for a drink – a housewarming – there had been a scaly knob on the wall by the front door that when pushed would cause the door to open. After the crew left and Nate returned from his shower, the doorknob had healed over. There was a scar there in the shell, but that was all. Nate was locked in.
    There was a tom-tom thrumming of stones hitting his front picture window. Nate went to the window, looked out on the vast grotto and harbor, then down on the source of his torment. A pod of whaley-boy kids was winging stones at his window. Thump, thump-a, thump. The stones bounced off, leaving no mark. When Nate appeared at the window, the thumping became more furious, as the whaley kids picked up the pace and aimed right at him, as if a well-placed shot might drop him in a dunking tank.
    "There's a reason cetaceans don't have hands in the real world!" Nate screamed at them. "You are that reason! You little freaks!"
    Thump, thump-a, thump, thump, clack. Occasionally a missed throw hit the shell-like frame of the window, sounding like a marble hitting tile.
    I sound like Old Man Spangler yelling at my brother and me for raiding his apple trees, Nate thought. When did I turn into that guy? I don't want to be that guy.
    There was a soft knock on the shell of his front door. As he turned, the door flipped open like shutters, two pieces of shell retracting on muscles hidden in the wall. Nate felt like a surprised box turtle. Cielle Nuсez stood in the doorway with canvas shopping bags folded under her arm. She was a pleasant woman, attractive, competent, and non-threatening; Nate was sure that's why she'd been chosen to be his guide.
    "You ready to do some shopping, Nate? I called to tell you I was coming, but you didn't answer."
    The apartment had a speaking apparatus, a sort of ornate tube thing that whistled and buzzed green metallic beetle wings when there was a call. Nate was afraid of it.
    "Cielle, can we drop any pretense that we are just buddies out for the day? You lock me in here when you leave."
    "For your own safety."
    "Somehow that always seems to be the argument the jailer uses."
    "You want to go get some food and clothes or not?" Nate shrugged and followed her out the door. They walked along the perimeter of the grotto, which seemed a cross between an old English village and an Art Nouveau hobbit housing project: irregularly shaped doors and windows looking into shops that displayed baked goods and other prepared foods. Evidently the Goo wasn't big on having fire around for home cooking. All the cooked foods were prepared somewhere else in the complex. There was a warming cabinet in Nate's apartment that looked like a breadbox made out of a giant armadillo shell. It worked