Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

place could possibly function; and two, how to get out of it. The Goo had to get energy from somewhere. The energy to light the huge grotto alone would require tens of millions of calories. If it got energy from outside, maybe you could use that same pathway to get out.
    "So do you guys feed it? The Goo?"
    "No."
    "Well, then-"
    "Don't know, Nate. I just don't know. How does dry-cleaning work?"
    "Well, I assume that they use solvents, that, uh – Look, biologists don't have a lot of stuff that needs to be dry-cleaned. I'm sure it's not that complicated a process."
    "Yeah, well, right back at you on all of your questions about the Goo."
    Cielle stood and gathered up her parcels. "Let's go, Nate. I'm taking you back to your apartment. Then I'm going right to the whaley-boy den and find out if they can get the Colonel to see you. Today."
    Nate still had a couple bites of his sandwich left. "Hey, I've still got a couple of bites of my sandwich left," he said.
    "Really? Well, did you ask yourself where in Gooville we got meatballs? What sort of meat might be in them?"
    Nate dropped his sandwich.
    "Bit of the whining wussy boy, aren't we?" said Brennan as she came out of the kitchen to take away their plates.
    * * *
    Nate was reading a cheesy lawyer novel that he'd found in the small library in his apartment when the whaley boys came for him. There were three of them, two large males with killer-whale coloring and a smaller female blue. Only when the blue squeaked "Hi Nate" in a mashed-elf voice did he recognize it as Emily 7.
    "Wow, hi, Emily. Is just Emily okay, or should I always say the Seven?" Nate always felt awkward with someone afterward, even if there wasn't anything for the ward to be after.
    She crossed her arms over her chest and bugged out her left eye at him.
    "Okay," Nate said, moving on, "I guess we'll be going, then. Did you see my new doorknob? Brand-new. Stainless steel. I realize it doesn't go with everything else, but, you know, it feels a little like freedom." Right, Nate. It's a doorknob, he thought.
    They led him around the perimeter of the grotto, beyond the village, and into one of the huge passageways that led away from the grotto.
    They walked for half an hour, tracing a labyrinth of passageways that got narrower and narrower the farther off they went, the bright red lobster-shell surface fading into something that looked like mother-of-pearl the deeper in they went. It glowed faintly, just enough so they could see where they were going.
    Finally the passageway started to broaden again and open into a large room that looked like some sort of oval amphitheater, all of it pearlescent and providing its own light. Benches lined the walls around the room, all in view of a wide ramp that led to a round portal the size of a garage door, closed now with an iris of black shell.
    "Ooooh, the great and powerful Oz will see you now," Nate said.
    The whaley boys, who normally found practically anything funny, just looked away. One of the black-and-whites started whistling a soft tune from his blowhole. "In the Hall of the Mountain King" or a Streisand tune – something creepy, Nate thought.
    Emily 7 backhanded the whistler in the chest, and he stopped abruptly. Then she put her hand on Nate's shoulder and gestured for him to go up the steps to the round portal.
    "Okay, I guess this is it." Nate started backing up the ramp as the whaley boys started backing away from him. "You guys better not leave me, because I'll never find my way back."
    Emily 7 grinned, that lovely hack-a-salmon-in-half smile of hers, and waved him on.
    "Thanks, Em. You look good, you know. Did I mention? Shiny." He hoped shiny was good.
    The iris opened behind him, and the whaley boys fell to their knees and touched their lower jaws to the floor. Nate turned to see that the pearlescent ramp led into a vibrant red chamber that was pulsing with light and glistening with moisture as the walls appeared to breathe. Now, this looked like a living thing – the inside of a living thing. Really much more what he'd expected to see when the whale had eaten him. He made his way forward. A few steps in, the ramp melded into the reddish flesh, which Nate could now see was shot through with blood vessels and what might be nerves. He couldn't get the size of the space he was in. It just seemed to expand to receive him and contract behind him, as if a bubble were moving along with him inside it. When the iris disappeared into the pink Goo, Nate felt a