communist cetacean biologist, weren't you, dear?" Libby Quinn grinned at her partner.
"I'll 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 wouldn't know this without your help, but I just don't want anyone hurt. We may already be in trouble."
"We can keep it quiet if you feel that's 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. Figure out why sometimes it's just noise and sometimes it's a message."
Margaret was furiously braiding 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 don't detect the communication. We need more data. Recordings from other populations of humpbacks, out of American waters. Just to see how far they've gone with this thing."
"And we need to look at blue-, fin-, and sei-whale calls," said Libby. "If they're using subsonic, then it only makes sense that they'll imitate the big whales. I'll call Chris Wolf at Oregon State tomorrow. He monitors the navy's old sonar matrix that they set up to catch Russian submarines. He'll have recordings of everything we need."
"No," said Clay. "No one outside this room."
"Come on, Clay. You're 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 don't know. I'm 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, that's going to totally screw up the funeral," said Clair.
PART THREE
The Source
We are built as gene machines and
cultured as meme machines, but we have
the power to turn against our creators.
We, alone on earth, can rebel against
the tyranny of selfish replicators.
- RICHARD DAWKINS, The Selfish Gene
Ninety-five percent of all the species
that have ever existed are now extinct,
so don't look so goddamn smug.
- GERARD RYDER
Chapter 27~28
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Found World
The whale ship opened its mouth, and Nate and the crew spilled out onto the shore like sentient drool, which was some coincidence, since that's exactly what lay beneath the hard shell of the landing. They were met by a group of whaley boys, one of whom handed Nate a pair of Nikes, then went off to trade clicks and squeals and greeting rubs with the returning crew. It was so bright after nearly ten days in the whale ship that Nate couldn't immediately tell what was happening. The rest of the human crew were wearing sunglasses as they sat down on the ground to put on their shoes, only a few feet from the ship's mouth. From the rigid feel of the ground, Nate thought they might be on a dock of some kind, but then Cal Burdick took off his own sunglasses and handed them to Nate.
"Go ahead. I've been looking at all of this for a lot of years, but I think you'll find it interesting."
With the dark glasses, Nate was able to see. His eyes were fine, but his mind was having a hard time processing what they were telling him. It was as light as daylight (on an overcast day, at least), but they were not outdoors. They were inside a grotto so immense that Nate could not even make out the edges of it. A dozen stadiums could have fit inside the space and still left room for a state fair, a casino, and the Vatican if you snipped off a basilica or two. The entire ceiling was a source of light, cold light, it appeared - some sections yellow, some blue - great blotches of light in irregular shapes, as if Jackson Pollock had painted a solar storm across the ceiling. Half of the grotto was water, flat and reflective as a mirror, the smoothness broken by small whaley boys porpoising here and there in groups