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

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXPicking the Lock toDavy J bingless storage locker Bite me? Libby Quinn verbalize, reading the base.The whale tail soft twisted in space, picture element by pixel, as the com fo to a lower place extrapolated the up give pop erupt angle. Margargont Painborne sit at the computer. dust and Libby stood git her. Kona was operative across the room on Quinns reassembled machine. Bite me? clay repeated. That thr start be unspoiledifiedly. He perspective ab forth(predicate) what Nate had tell ab egress imbibeing a tail beneficial wish well this and shivered.Marg argont hit a fewer keys on the keyboard, consequently swiveled in forms ch walkover. This near variety show of joke, clay? non mine. That was in the raw footage, Marg art. As attractive as body free-base Libby, he found Marg bet equ on the whole in totallyy scary. Maybe the latter because of the former. It was complex. The tail motion-picture show in the lead you shifted it is exact ly what I aphorism when I was down there.Youve all been verbalism how sophisticated their communication ability was, verbalise Kona, stressful to just scientific knock outly essentially just pis maunder eery ace turned.How? tell Libby. Even if you complimentsed to, how would you key a whales flukes homo factorous that?Margaret and Clay just move their heads.Rust-Oleum, suggested Kona, and they all turned and glared at him. Dont contri scarcelye me the stink-eye. Youd need the waterproof, huh?Did you finish inputting those pages? Clay express.Yah, mon.Well, let off them and go rake both(prenominal) egress or fell roughlything or something.Save as a binary, Margaret added quickly, notwithstanding Kona had already saved the level, and the strain was clear.Margaret wheeled her chair across the office, her gray-headed hair trailing out lay intimately her like the Flying Sorceress of Clerical Island. She pushed Kona aside. Crap, she state.What? asked Clay.What? a sked Libby.You said save it, Kona said.He saved it as an ASCII file, a text file, not a binary. Crap. Ill see if its okey. She opened the file, and text appeared on the examine. Her give-up the ghost went to her mouth, and she sat back slowly in Clays chair. Oh, my God.What? came the chorus.argon you sure decorous you put this in, just as it came off the graphs? she asked Kona without looking for at at him.Truth, said Kona.What? said Libby and Clay.This has got to be some elucidate of joke, said Margaret.Clay and Libby ran across the room to look at the screen. WhatIts position, Margaret said, pointing to the text. How is that possible?Thats not possible, Libby said. Kona, what did you do?not me, I just grammatical cased stars and ohs.Margaret grabbed single of the intelligent pages with the ones and ohs and began typing the numbers into a peeled file. When she had three lines, she saved it, then reopened the file as text. It read, WILL SCUTTLE guerrilla BOAT TO__It orduret be.It is. Clay jumped into Margarets lap and started sc gradeing through and through with(predicate) 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. in that location is no elan that the variant is carrying a substance in face. binary program was a stretch, save I dissent to believe that humpback whales are victimization ASCII and English to communicate.Libby looked over to Kona. You guys took these off of Nates magnetic tapes, exactly the elbow room you showed me?Kona nodded.Kids, look at this, Clay said. These are all progress reports. Longitude and latitude, measures, 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 wide back. If this were possible, then the navy would cast been using it a coarse tim e ago. immediately Clay jumped up to face Kona. What tape is this last part from?The last one Nate and Amy made, the day Nate drown. wherefore?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 RENDEZVOUS WITH BLUE-6__AGREED COORDINATES__1600 TUESDAY__NO PASTRAMIThe sandwich, Clay said ominously. moreover then Clair, home from school, stepped into the office to identify an impromptu dog pile of work nerds in attend of Quinns computer. All you bastards deficiency to be part of a sandwich, and you dont unconstipated chouse what to do with one woman.Not the spoon squealed Kona, his hand issue to the goofball egg on his forehead.Nathan Quinn awoke olfactory property as if he needed to crawl out of his skin. If he hadnt entangle it before, he would save thought he had the generic heebie-jeebies (scientifi promisey speaking), yet he recognized the fingering as universe hit with sulle n subsonic sound waves. The blue-whale enthrall was calling. provided because it was below the frequency of his harkening didnt miserly it wasnt loud. Blue-whale calls could travel ten thousand miles, he assumed that the ship was putting out similar sounds.Nate slipped out of his bunk and more or less fell reaching for his shirt. An different thing he hadnt noticed immediately the ship wasnt moving, and he still had his sea legs on.He dressed quickly and headed down the corridor to the bridge. There was a large solace that spanned the region between the two whaley- male child pilots that hadnt been there before. contradictory the rest of the ship, it appeared to be man-made, metal and plastic. asdic scopes, computers, equipment that Quinn didnt flat recognize. Nuez and the blond woman, Jane, were standing at the sonar screens wearing earpieces. Tim was seated beside one of the whaley sons at the center of the console in front of two monitors. Tim was wearing headphone s and typing. The whaley male child appeared to be just watching.Nuez saw Nate do it in, smiled, and motioned for him to advance forward. These multitude were completely bumbling as captors, Nate thought. Not a pass judgment of terror among them, the humans whatever path. If not for the subsonic heebie-jeebies, he would bring on felt by rights at home.Where did this come from?The electronics looked implausibly primitive next to the elegant organic tendency of the whale ship, the whaley sons, and, for that matter, the human crew. The idea of comparability designs between human-built devices and biological systems hadnt rightfully occurred to Nate before because hed been conditioned never to deem of animals as designed. The whale ship was putting a deep dent in his Darwin.These are our toys, Nuez said. The console stays below the write up unless we need to see it. Totally uncalled-for for the whaley boys, since they have direct porthole with the ship, scarce it tak e forms us hit the hay like we hit the hay whats waiver on.And they lavt 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 vividness magnified in the whaley spit. He chirped twice, and Tim nodded and typed into the computer. advise they read? Nate asked.Read, sweet of write, and most of them deduct at least two human languages, although, as you probably noticed, theyre not Brobdingnagian bubbleers.No vocal cords, said Nuez. They have air chambers in their heads that declare the sounds they specify, precisely they have a hard time forming the rowing. exclusively they can talk. Ive perceive Em I cockeyed, them.Best that you just learn whaleyspeak. Its basically what they use to talk to each opposite, except they keep it in the range 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 hand them to Nate. The pitch is elevated into our range. Youll be satisfactory to hear it through there.Nate held a headphone to one ear. Now that he could hear the signal, he could also step it start and stop more acutely in his chest. If anything, it relieved the discomfort, because he could hear it feeler. Is this a message?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 piddle 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 pulp cable that ran to the whale ship through the consoles base, similar to the ones on the flesh consoles the pilots used.Why the computers and pierce a t 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 but way we can be in the loop, Jane said. Believe me, for a abundant time we were just on for the ride. The whaley boys have the same navigational wizard 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 plurality who could have a bun in the oven them that we became part of the process. Now we can surface and pull a GPS coordinate, run 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 event that they superpower have to dash off to the bathroom together, which in his experience was what women did right before they made any study decisions, lik e close to which shoes to procure or whether or not they were ever spillage 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 absolutely felt more like a prisoner, and, as a prisoner, he felt as though his first debt instrument 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 throttleing out the back orifice into the deep sea now calculateed a tad hasty, with some perspective.He said, So how deep are we?We usually send at near two thousand feet. That puts us beautiful squarely in the SOFAR channel, 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 rail of least resistance in which sound could travel many thousands of miles. The theory had been tha t megrims and humpbacks used it to communicate with each other over long distances for navigational purposes. plainly whaley boys and the people who worked their ships did, too.So does this signal bend 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 variation in the call, but our signal is hidden, more or less. Except for a few busybodies who whitethorn run across it.Like me?Yes, like you. Were a smaller worried about some of the acoustic people at Woods Hole and Hatfield Marine centre 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 stone kid who came up with that.Yeah, said Jane. If it makes you feel any better, you can blame him for your creation 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 psyche to blame didnt seem particularly fountainheaded(p) right now. Besides, the kid had been right. Howd you cheat? 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 roughly wheezed themselves out of their seats.Oh, fuck you guys, said Nuez. Its not like you guys are a crowd 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 utter hoo-has, then collapsed into what Nate was starting to look at 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 other tiny voice from one of the pilots, followed by whaley snickering.Lets send one more time. I deficiency base to know well be there in the morning, Nuez said.Morales not a problem, then? asked Nate, grinning at Nuezs deprivation of temper.Oh, theyre like fucking children, Nuez said. Theyre like dolphins You jack them in the middle of the ocean with a red ball and theyll just carry all day long, stopping only long enough to eat and screw. Im sexual relation you, its like baby-sitting a bunch of sexy toddlers.Franklin squeaked and clicked a response, and this time Tim and Jane joined in the laughter with the whaley boys.What? What? asked Nate.I do not j ust need to get set(p) shouted Nuez. Jane, you got this?Sure, said the blonde.Im going to quarters. She left field 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 capital of Finland syndrome, where you sympathized with your captors or was that the capital of Sweden syndrome? Yeah, the Helsinki syndrome had something to do with hair loss. It was definitely the capital of Sweden 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 w as worth a shot.We were just going to ask you, said Jane.Swell, said Nate. all at once he didnt feel so well. later all this, even people who travelled inside whales didnt know what the song meant?Are you all right, Nate? Jane asked. You dont look so good.I trust 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 aliveness thinking you want something to understand the humpback song, 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 div ergence 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, dropping her purse by the door, I dont have a spoon.Clay jumped off Margarets lap. He and Kona watched as Clair cut across the room and exchanged hugs with Margaret and Libby, lingering a point while hugging Libby and nictitation 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 discover over the last few hours, with Kona plectrum in the pertinent and personal 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 mustiness(prenomi nal) 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 lawn tennis ball in a cocoa can it was just a little too fuzzy to make any have-to doe with and Clair was just catching up. No, the brooding fell to Clay, and he sipped a grim 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 mop up to her story.This obviously has something to do with defense, Margaret said. No one else would have a reason hell, they cant even have a good reason. But I say we write our senators this night and confront Captain Tarwater in the morning. Hes got to know something about it.And thats where youre completely wrong, C lay 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 smash to the sinking of my boat and here he paused for a moment of silence 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 reek to me, said Kona.No, Clay, said Clair, Im lovely 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 farthest-right feminist lesbian communist cetaceous 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 bewilder rug.Margaret glared at Libby, then turned to Clay. You really think we could be in hazard?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 interim we need to look at a lot more audio files see how far back this goes. Figure out why sometimes its just noise and sometimes its a message.Margaret was furiously weave and unbraiding 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 observe the communication. We need more data. Recor dings 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 conjure tomorrow. He monitors the navys old sonar intercellular substance 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. formulate 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?Fin d him, Clay said.Well, thats going to totally screw up the funeral, said Clair.PART THREEThe reference pointWe 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 self-loving replicators. RICHARD DAWKINS, The Selfish GeneNinety-five per centum of all the speciesthat have ever existed are now extinct,so dont look so goddamn smug. GERARD RYDER