Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

competent and conscientious boat pilot. All told, an hour had passed, and when it seemed obvious that no one else was going to stand up, the minister moved toward the podium but was beaten to it by Kona, who had slipped from Clair's steely grip and high-stepped his way to the front.
    "Like old Auntie say, Nathan is living on. But no one here today say a thing about the Snowy Biscuit, who – Jah's mercy be on her – is feeding fishes in the briny blue about now." (Sniff.) "I know her only short time, but I think I can say for all of us, that I always want to see her naked. Truth, mon. And when I think upon the round, firm -"
    "- she will be missed," Clay said, finishing for the faux Hawaiian. He had clamped a hand over Kona's mouth and was dragging him out the door. "She was a bright kid." With that, the minister jumped to the podium, thanked everyone for coming, and declared, with a prayer, all respects paid in full. Amen.
    * * *
    "Well, yes, mental health can be a problem," said Growl Ryder.
    "Being God's conscience is a tough job."
    Nate looked around, and, as if following his gaze, the Goo receded around them until they were in a chamber about fifteen feet in diameter – a bubble. It was like camping in someone's bladder, Nate thought.
    "That better?" Ryder asked.
    Nate realized that the Colonel was the one controlling the shape of the chamber they were in.
    "Someplace to sit would be good."
    The Goo behind Nate shaped itself into a chaise longue. Nate touched it tentatively, expecting to pull his hand back trailing strings of slime, but although the Goo glistened as if it were wet, on the chair it felt dry. Warm and icky, but dry. He sat down on the chaise. "Everyone thinks you're dead," Nate said.
    "You, too."
    Nate hadn't thought about it much, but, of course, the Colonel had to be right. They would have thought him long dead.
    "You've been here since you disappeared, what, twelve years ago?"
    "Yes, they took me with a modified right whale, ate my whole Zodiac, my equipment – everything. They brought me here in a blue whale. I went mad during the trip. Couldn't handle the whole idea of it. They kept me restrained most of the way here. I'm sure that didn't help." Ryder shrugged. "I got better, once I accepted the way things are down here. I understood why they took me."
    "And that would be…?"
    "The same reason they took you. I was about to figure out their existence from what was hidden in the signal of different whale calls. They took both of us to protect the whale ships and, ultimately, the Goo. We should be grateful they didn't just kill us."
    Nate had wondered about that before. Why the trouble? "Okay, why didn't they?"
    "Well, they took me alive because the Goo and the people here wanted to know what I knew, and by what path I came to suspect the content in the whale calls. They took you alive because I ordered it so."
    "Why?"
    "What do you mean, 'why'? Because we were colleagues, because I taught you, because you're bright and intuitive and I liked you and I'm a decent guy. 'Why?' Fuck you, 'why?' "
    "Growl, you live in a slime lair and maintain an identity as the mysterious overlord of an undersea city, you command a fleet of meat dreadnaughts with crews of humanoid whale people, and you're currently reclining in a pulsating mass of gelatinous goo that looks like it escaped from hell's own Jell-O mold – so excuse the fuck out of me if I question your motives."
    "Okay, good point. Can I get you something to drink?"
    Like many scientists Nate had known, Ryder had plodded on only to realize midcourse that he'd forgotten certain social niceties practiced by other civilized humans, but in this case he was completely missing the point. "No, I don't need anything to drink. I need to know how this happened. What is this stuff? You're a biologist, Growl, you have to have been curious about this."
    "I'm still curious. But what I do know is that this stuff makes up everything in Gooville, everything you've seen here, the buildings, the corridors, most of the machinery – although I guess you'd call it biomachinery – all of it is the Goo. One giant, all-encompassing organism. It can form itself into nearly any organism on earth, and it can design new organisms as the need arises. The Goo made the whale ships and the whaley boys. And here's the kicker, Nate: It didn't make them over thirty million years. The entire species isn't more than three hundred years old."
    "That's not possible," Nate said. There