Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 26

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXPicking the Lock toDavy Joness Locker chip me? Libby Quinn give tongue to, reading the tail.The whale tail slowly depraved in space, pixel by pixel, as the computer extrapolated the new angle. Marg atomic number 18t Painborne sat at the computer. Clay and Libby s to a faultd behind her. Kona was working across the room on Quinns reassembled machine. bunko game me? Clay repeated. That cant be mature. He thought ab push through what Nate had express about seeing a tail just corresponding this and shivered.Margaret hit a a few(prenominal) keys on the keyboard, then swiveled in Clays chair. This some kind of joke, Clay? non mine. That was raw footage, Margaret. As attractive as Clay effectuate Libby, he found Margaret equally scary. Maybe the latter because of the former. It was complex. The tail image before you shifted it is scarce what I saw when I was down there.Youve all been saying how sophisticated their talk ability was, express Kona, nerve-wracking to sound scientific still essentially just pissing e reallyone off.How? give tongue to Libby. Even if you deficiencyed to, how would you paint a whales flukes like that?Margaret and Clay just shook their heads.Rust-Oleum, suggested Kona, and they all sprained and glared at him. Dont give me the stink-eye. Youd need the waterproof, huh?Did you finish inputting those pages? Clay said.Yah, mon.Well, save them and go rake some topic or trim down something or something.Save as a binary, Margaret added readily, only when Kona had already saved the file, and the screen was clear.Margaret wheeled her chair across the office, her gray hair trailing out behind her like the Flying Sorceress of Clerical Island. She pushed Kona aside. Crap, she said.What? asked Clay.What? asked Libby.You said save it, Kona said.He saved it as an ASCII file, a text file, non a binary. Crap. Ill see if its okay. She open(a) the file, and text appeared on the screen. Her hold went to her mouth, and she s at bottom slowly in Clays chair. Oh, my God.What? came the chorus.Are you trustworthy you put this in, just as it came off the graphs? she asked Kona without looking at him.Truth, said Kona.What? said Libby and Clay.This has got to be some sort of joke, said Margaret.Clay and Libby ran across the room to look at the screen. WhatIts English, Margaret said, pointing to the text. How is that possible?Thats not possible, Libby said. Kona, what did you do?Not me, I just typed ones and ohs.Margaret grabbed one of the legal pages with the ones and ohs and began typing the numbers into a new file. When she had three lines, she saved it, then reopened the file as text. It read, WILL skip SECOND BOAT TO__It cant be.It is. Clay jumped into Margarets lap and started scrolling through the text from Konas transcription. Look, it goes on for a while, then its just gobbledygook, then it goes on some more.Margaret looked back at Libby with Save me in her eyes. There is no way that the numbers is carrying a content in English. Binary was a stretch, but I refuse to reckon that hunchbacks are using ASCII and English to communicate.Libby looked over to Kona. You guys took these off of Nates tapes, exactly the way you showed me?Kona nodded.Kids, look at this, Clay said. These are all progress reports. Longitude and latitude, times, dates. There are instructions here to sink my boat. These fuckers sank my boat?What fuckers? Margaret said. A humpback with Bite me on his flukes? She was trying to look around Clays broad back. If this were possible, then the navy would go been using it a long time ago.Now Clay jumped up to face Kona. What tape is this last part from?The last one Nate and Amy made, the daylight Nate drown. why?Clay sat back on Margarets lap, looking stunned. He pointed to a line of text on the screen. They all leaned in to read QUINN ON BOARD__WILL get together WITH BLUE-6__AGREED COORDINATES__1600 TUESDAY__NO PASTRAMIThe sandwich, Clay said ominously.Just then Clair, home from school, stepped into the office to discover an impromptu dog pile of action nerds in introductory of Quinns computer. All you bastards want to be part of a sandwich, and you dont even k at present what to do with one woman.Not the spoon squealed Kona, his hand overtaking to the goose egg on his forehead.Nathan Quinn awoke timber as if he needed to crawl out of his skin. If he hadnt felt it before, he would have thought he had the generic heebie-jeebies (scientifi hollery speaking), but he recognized the feeling as being hit with heavy subsonic sound waves. The blue-whale ship was calling. Just because it was below the frequency of his hearing didnt mean it wasnt loud. Blue-whale calls could locomote ten thousand miles, he assumed that the ship was putting out similar sounds.Nate slipped out of his bunk and nearly fell range for his shirt. Another thing he hadnt noticed immediately the ship wasnt moving, and he still had his sea legs on.He dressed quickly an d headed down the corridor to the bridge. There was a large comfort that spanned the area between the two whaley-boy pilots that hadnt been there before. Unlike the rest of the ship, it appeared to be man-made, metal and plastic. Sonar scopes, computers, equipment that Quinn didnt even recognize. Nuez and the blond woman, Jane, were standing at the asdic screens vesture headphones. Tim was seated beside one of the whaley boys at the center of the console in front of two monitors. Tim was wearing headphones and typing. The whaley boy appeared to be just watching.Nuez saw Nate cope in, smiled, and motioned for him to come forward. These people were completely incompetent as captors, Nate thought. Not a measure of terror among them, the humans some(prenominal)way. If not for the subsonic heebie-jeebies, he would have felt right at home.Where did this come from?The electronics looked incredibly crude next to the elegant organic design of the whale ship, the whaley boys, and, for th at matter, the human crew. The idea of comparing designs between human-built devices and biological systems hadnt unfeignedly occurred to Nate before because hed been conditioned never to think of animals as designed. The whale ship was putting a cloudy dent in his Darwin.These are our toys, Nuez said. The console stay below the floor unless we need to see it. Totally unnecessary for the whaley boys, since they have direct interface with the ship, but it readys us feel like we know whats overtaking on.And they cant type for shit, said Tim, tucking his thumbs under and making a slamming-the-keys gesture. Tiny thumbs.The whaley boy next to him trumpeted a raspberry all over Tims monitor, leaving large dots of colouring material magnified in the whaley spit. He chirped twice, and Tim nodded and typed into the computer.Can they read? Nate asked.Read, kind of write, and most of them understand at least two human languages, although, as you probably noticed, theyre not big talkers.N o vocal cords, said Nuez. They have air chambers in their heads that produce the sounds they make, but they have a hard time forming the words. further they can talk. Ive perceive Em I mean, them.Best that you just learn whaleyspeak. Its basically what they use to talk to each other, except they keep it in the represent of our hearing. Its easier to learn if youve learned other tonal-sensitive languages like Navajo or Chinese.Im afraid not, Nate said. So the ship is calling?Tim pulled off his headphones and handed them to Nate. The pitch is raised into our range. Youll be subject to hear it through there.Nate held a headphone to one ear. Now that he could hear the place, he could also feel it start and stop more aggressively in his chest. If anything, it relieved the discomfort, because he could hear it coming. Is this a sum?Yep, said Jane, pulling up a headphone. Just as you suspected. We type it in, the computer puts the message into peaks and troughs on the waveform, we play the waveform for the whaley boys, and they make the whale sing that waveform. Weve calibrated it over the years.Nate noticed that the whaley boy at the metal console had one hand in an organic socket fitted into the front of the console like a flesh cable that ran to the whale ship through the consoles base, similar to the ones on the flesh consoles the pilots used. wherefore the computers and stuff at all if the whaley boys do it all by what? Instinct?The whaley boy at the console grinned up at Nate, squeaked, then performed the international signal for a hand job.Its the only way we can be in the loop, Jane said. Believe me, for a long time we were just along for the ride. The whaley boys have the same(p) navigational sense that the whales themselves do. We dont understand it at all. Its some sort of magnetic vocabulary. It wasnt until the Dirts thats you developed computers and we got some people who could run them that we became part of the process. Now we can pop and pull a GPS coordinate, transmit it, communicate with the other crews. We have some idea of what were doing.You said for a long time? How long?Jane looked nervously at Nuez, who looked nervously back. Nate thought for a moment that they might have to dash off to the bathroom together, which in his experience was what women did right before they made any major decisions, like about which shoes to buy or whether or not they were ever going to sleep with him again.A long time, Nate. Were not sure how long. Before computers, okay?By which she meant she wasnt going to tell him and if he pressed it, shed just lie to him. Nate suddenly felt more like a prisoner, and, as a prisoner, he felt as though his first obligation was to escape. He was sure that was your first obligation as a prisoner. Hed seen it in a movie. Although his earlier plan of leaping out the back orifice into the deep ocean now seemed a tad hasty, with some perspective.He said, So how deep are we?We usually send at ab out two thousand feet. That puts us pretty squarely in the SOFAR line, no matter where we are geographically.The SOFAR channel (sound fixing and ranging) was a natural combination of pressure and temperature at certain depths that cause a path of least resistance in which sound could stumble many thousands of miles. The theory had been that blues and humpbacks used it to communicate with each other over long distances for navigational purposes. Evidently whaley boys and the people who worked their ships did, too.So does this signal double up a natural blue-whale call? Yes, said Tim. Thats one of the advantages of communicating in English within the waveform. When the whaley boys were doing the direct communication, there was a lot more sportsman in the call, but our signal is hidden, more or less. Except for a few busybodies who may run across it.Like me?Yes, like you. Were a under size worried about some of the acoustic people at Woods Hole and Hatfield Marine Center in Oregon . People who spend way too much time looking at spectrograms of underwater sound.You realize, said Nate, that I might never have found out about your ships. I didnt make any sort of intuitive leap to look at a binary signal in the call. It was a stoned kid who came up with that.Yeah, said Jane. If it makes you feel any better, you can blame him for your being here. We were on hold until you started to look in the signal for binary. Thats when they called you in, so to speak.Nate sincerely wished he could blame Kona, but since it appeared that he might never see civilization again, having someone to blame didnt seem particularly pertinent right now. Besides, the kid had been right. Howd you know? I didnt exactly put out a press release.We have ways, said Nuez, trying not to sound spooky but failing. This evidently amused the whaley boy at the console and the two pilots no end, and they nearly wheezed themselves out of their seats.Oh, fuck you guys, said Nuez. Its not like you guys ar e a bunch of geniuses.And you guys were the nightwalkers that Tako Man was talking about, Nate said to the pilots. You guys sank Clays boat.The pilots raised their arms over their heads in a menacing scary-monster pose, then bared their teeth and made some fake growling noises, then collapsed into what Nate was offset to think of as whale giggles. The whaley boy at the console started clapping and laughing as well.Franklin Were not done here. Can we get the interface back?Franklin, obviously the whaley boy who had been working the console, slumped and put his hand back in the socket. Sorry, came a tiny voice from his blowhole.Bitch, came another tiny voice from one of the pilots, followed by whaley snickering.Lets send one more time. I want base to know well be there in the morning, Nuez said.Morales not a problem, then? asked Nate, grinning at Nuezs loss of temper.Oh, theyre like fucking children, Nuez said. Theyre like dolphins You dump them in the middle of the ocean with a red ball and theyll just play all day long, stopping only long enough to eat and cope. Im telling you, its like baby-sitting a bunch of horny toddlers.Franklin squeaked and clicked a response, and this time Tim and Jane joined in the gag with the whaley boys.What? What? asked Nate.I do not just need to get laid shouted Nuez. Jane, you got this?Sure, said the blonde.Im going to quarters. She left the bridge to the snickering of the whaley boys.Tim looked back at Nate and nodded toward the sonar screen and headset that Nuez had vacated. Want to stand in?Im a prisoner, said Nate.Yeah, but in a nice way, said Jane.That was true. Everyone since hed come on board had been very kind to him, seeing to his every need, even some he didnt want seen to. He didnt feel like a prisoner. Nate wasnt sure that he wasnt experiencing the Helsinki syndrome, where you sympathized with your captors or was that the Stockholm syndrome? Yeah, the Helsinki syndrome had something to do with hair loss. It was definitely the Stockholm syndrome.He stepped up to the sonar screen and put on the headset. Immediately he heard the distant song of a humpback. He looked at Tim, who raised his eyebrows as if to say, See.So tell me, Nate said, whats the singing mean? It was worth a shot.We were just going to ask you, said Jane.Swell, said Nate. Suddenly he didnt feel so well. After all this, even people who traveled inside whales didnt know what the song meant?Are you all right, Nate? Jane asked. You dont look so good.I think I have Stockholm syndrome.Dont be silly, said Tim. Youve got plenty of hair.You want some Pepto? asked Jane, the ships doctor.Yes, he thought, escape would seem a priority. He was pretty sure that if he didnt get away, he was going to snap and kill some folks, or at least be incredibly stern with them.Funny, he thought, how your priorities could change with circumstances. You go along for the greater part of your life thinking you want something to understand the humpback s ong, for instance. So you pursue that with dogged single-mindedness at the expense of everything else in your life, only to be distracted into thinking maybe you want something in addition to that Amy, for instance. And that becomes a diversion up until the time when circumstances make you realize what it is you really want, and that is strangely enough to get the fuck out of a whale. Funny, Nate thought.Settle down, Kona, Clair said, drop her purse by the door, I dont have a spoon.Clay jumped off Margarets lap. He and Kona watched as Clair crossed the room and exchanged hugs with Margaret and Libby, lingering a human action while hugging Libby and winking over her shoulder at Clay.So nice to see you guys, Clair said.Im not going out to get the pizza, mon. No way, said Kona, still looking a bit terrified.What are you guys doing? Clair asked.And so Margaret took it upon herself to explain what they had discovered over the last few hours, with Kona filling in the pertinent and private details. Meanwhile, Clay sat down in the kitchen and pondered the facts. Pondering, he felt, was called for.Pondering is a little like considering and a little like thinking, but looser. To ponder, one must let the facts roll around the rim of the minds roulette wheel, coming to settle in whichever slot they feel pulled to. Margaret and Libby were scientists, used to jamming their facts into the appropriate slots as quickly as possible, and Kona well, a thought rolling around in his mind was rather like a tennis ball in a cocoa can it was just a little too fuzzy to make any cushion and Clair was just catching up. No, the pondering fell to Clay, and he sipped a dark beer from a sweating bottle on a high stool in the kitchen and waited for the roulette ball to fall. Which it did, right about the time that Margaret Painborne was reaching a conclusion to her story.This obviously has something to do with defense, Margaret said. No one else would have a reason hel l, they cant even have a good reason. But I say we write our senators tonight and confront Captain Tarwater in the morning. Hes got to know something about it.And thats where youre completely wrong, Clay said. And they all turned. Ive been pondering this here he paused for impact and it occurs to me that two of our friends disappeared right about the time they found out about this stuff. And that everything from the break-in to the sinking of my boat and here he paused for a moment of conquer has had something to do with someone not wanting us to know this stuff. So I think it would be reckless of us to run around trying to tell everybody what we know before we know what we know is.That cant be right, said Libby. Before we know what we know is? quoted Margaret. No, thats not right.Is making perfect sense to me, said Kona.No, Clay, said Clair, Im fine with you and the girl-on-girl action, and Im fine with a haole Rasta boy preaching sovereignty, but Im telling you I wont stand for that kind of grammatical abuse. I am a schoolteacher, after all.We cant tell anyone Clay screamed.Better, said Clair.No need to shout, Libby said. Margaret was just being a radical hippie reactionist feminist lesbian communistic cetacean biologist, werent you, dear? Libby Quinn grinned at her partner.Ill have an acronym for that in a second, mumbled Clair, counting off words on her fingers. Jeez, your business card must be the size of a throw rug.Margaret glared at Libby, then turned to Clay. You really think we could be in danger?Seems that way. Look, I know we wouldnt know this without your help, but I just dont want anyone hurt. We may already be in trouble.We can keep it quiet if you feel thats the way to go, said Libby, making the decision for the pair, but I think in the meantime we need to look at a lot more audio files see how far back this goes. approximate out why sometimes its just noise and sometimes its a message.Margaret was furiously braiding and unbra iding her hair and staring blankly into the air in front of her as she thought. They must use the whale song as camouflage so enemy submarines dont detect the communication. We need more data. Recordings from other populations of humpbacks, out of American waters. Just to see how far theyve gone with this thing.And we need to look at blue-, fin-, and sei-whale calls, said Libby. If theyre using subsonic, then it only makes sense that theyll imitate the big whales. Ill call Chris Wolf at Oregon State tomorrow. He monitors the navys old sonar matrix that they set up to catch Russian submarines. Hell have recordings of everything we need.No, said Clay. No one outside this room.Come on, Clay. Youre being paranoid.Say that again, Libby. He monitors whose old sonar matrix? The military still keeps a hand in on that SOSUS array.So you think it is military?Clay shook his head. I dont know. Im damned if I can think of a reason the navy would paint Bite me on the tail of a whale. I just know that people who find out about this stuff disappear, and someone sent a message saying that Nate was safe after we all thought he was dead.So what are you going to do?Find him, Clay said.Well, thats going to totally screw up the funeral, said Clair.PART THREEThe SourceWe are built as gene machines andcultured as meme machines, but we havethe power to turn against our creators.We, alone on earth, can rebel againstthe tyranny of selfish replicators. RICHARD DAWKINS, The Selfish GeneNinety-five percent of all the speciesthat have ever existed are now extinct,so dont look so goddamn smug. GERARD RYDER