The creatures turned as far as the chairs would allow them and made clicking and squeaking noises, then seemed to smile at Quinn. While smiling they showed mouthfuls of sharp, peglike teeth. With the teeth set against their dark gray skins and the melon above, the whaley boys put Quinn in mind of more cheerful versions of the creature from the Alien movies. Scooter saluted Nate with a hand consisting of four very long webbed fingers and only the suggestion of a thumb.
"They say hi," said Poe. "I'm Poe. This is Captain Poynter." Poynter, the older man, tipped his hat and offered a hand to shake. Quinn took it and waggled it limply.
"The whaley boys don't speak English as we know it," Poe said, "although they have a few squeaks that come out like words. They're tapped directly in to the whale's nervous system. They steer it, control all the processes at any given time. We can't do much on the whales without them. Certainly could never drive one. The whales and the whaley boys are made for each other."
Poe pushed against the back of Skippy's seat, and another seat formed out of the floor to cradle him as he leaned back into it. "I love that," Poe said.
Poynter backed up to a rubbery bulkhead, and a seat formed out of the wall to catch him as well.
"If they're paying attention, they'll never let you fall." Poe grinned. "Of course, almost everything in here is soft — child safe, don't you know — except the spine, which runs over the top, so you wouldn't be hurt if you did fall. But just the same, we're secured when they're doing maneuvers. You think you're sick now — wait until we go for a breach. Don't freak out." Poe turned to the whaley boys. "Secure the doc, boys." The arms of the seat shape wrapped over Quinn's lap. Parts came over his shoulders and fused across his chest, then around his hips and over his lap. Quinn freaked out.
"Get it off me! Get it off me! I can't breathe!"
"Prepare for breach," said Poynter.
Scooter chirped. Skippy grinned. Similar restraints extruded from all their seats, securing them.
The attitude of the whale changed, going up at a nearly sixty-degree angle — and then the angle went sharper as they moved. Quinn was looking backward at the tail section of the teardrop interior. The lurching movement of the luminescent strips was starting to nauseate him. He could feel his internal organs shifting with the acceleration, and then the whale ship went vertical and airborne. At the apex of the motion, Quinn's stomach tried to escape through his diaphragm, then shifted as they fell sideways. There was an enormous concussion as the ship hit the water. Slowly the whale came back around, and they were horizontal again.
The whaley boys chirped and clicked gleefully, grinning back at Quinn, then at each other, then back at Quinn, nodding as if to say, Was that cool, or what? Their necks were nearly as wide as their shoulders, and Quinn could see heavy muscles moving under the skin. "They love that," said Poynter.
"I kind of like it, too," said Poe. "Except when they go overboard and do twenty or thirty breaches in a row. Even I get sick when they do that. And the noise… well, you heard it."
Quinn shook his head, closed his eyes, then opened them again. The only way to deal with this experience was to accept it at face value: He was in a whale, one that was somehow being used as a submarine by human and nonhuman sentient creatures. Everything he knew no longer applied, but then again, maybe it did. What put him on the less loopy side of sanity was noticing the whaley boys' thick necks.
"They're amphibious, right?" Quinn asked Poynter. "Their necks are thick to take the stress of swimming at high speeds?" Quinn rose in his chair as far as the restraints would allow and saw that Scooter did indeed have a blowhole just behind his melon. He was a humanoid whale, or a dolphin creature. Scooter was impossible. All of this was impossible. The details, not the big picture, Quinn reminded himself. In the big picture there be madness. "They're like a whale/human hybrid, aren't they?"
"Which would be why we call them the whaley boys," said Poynter.
"Wait, are you accusing us of something?" asked Poe. "Because these guys are not the love children of us and some whales. We don't do that kind of thing."
"Well, there was that one time," said Poynter.
"Okay, yeah, just that one time," said Poe.
But Quinn was studying Scooter, and Scooter was eyeing him right back. "Although they appear to be able to turn their heads, like beluga whales. Their neck vertebrae probably aren't fused like most whales'." The scientist rising, Quinn was comfortable now, his fear taken away by curiosity. He was focused on finding out things, which was his home turf, even in this completely unreal situation. If he focused on the details, the big picture wouldn't throw him over the edge into drooling lunacy.
"Let's ask them," said Poe. "Scooter, are your vertebrae fused together, or are you just a big, no-necked gray thug?"
Scooter turned his head to Poe and made a loud raspberry sound, spraying whaley spit all down the front of Poe's khakis and increasing the odor of decaying fish in the cabin by a factor of ten.
"We don't know what they are, Dr. Quinn," said Captain Poynter. "They were here when we got here, and we got here just like you did. We've all been on this ride."
"Meep," said Skippy.
"I taught him that," said Poe.
"That's from a Warner Brothers' cartoon," Quinn said. "Road Runner."
"No, that would be two meeps. Skippy only does one. Therefore, it's original. Isn't that right, Skippy?"
"Meep."
For some reason the meep did it. Some minds, particularly those with a scientific bent, a love of truth and certainty, have limits to how much absurdity they can handle. And here Quinn found himself well over the limit.
"Skippy and Scooter and Poynter and Poe — I can't handle it!" he screamed.
He felt as if his mind were a rubber band being stretched to breaking, and the meep had tweaked it. He screamed until he could feel veins pulsing in his forehead.
"You let it out now," said Captain Poynter. "Just go with it." Then, to Poe, "You know, I wouldn't have thought the alliteration would have done it. You ever hear of that?"
"Nope, I had an uncle who used to get nauseated at Reader's Digest article titles — you know, 'Terrible Truths of Toxic Toe Jam' — but I thought it was more because he read them in the doctor's office than the alliteration. You sure it wasn't the meep that did it?"
"This can't be happening. This can't be happening," Quinn chanted. He was hyperventilating, and his vision had gone to a blur, his heart pounding like he'd been running a sprint across an electrified floor.
"Anxiety attack," said Poynter. He put his hand on Quinn's forehead and spoke softly. "Okay, Doc, here's the skinny. You are in a living ship that resembles a whale but is not a whale. There are two other guys aboard who have lived through this, so you can live through this. In addition, there are two guys who are not strictly human, but they won't hurt you. You are going to live and deal with this. This is real. You are not insane. Now, calm the fuck down."
And it was then that Poynter stepped back and Poe threw the bucket of cold seawater in Quinn's face.
"Hey," Quinn said. He sputtered and blinked seawater out of his eyes.
"I told you to go with the dead thing, but you didn't listen," Poe said.
Nothing had changed, but things, his heart, slowed down, and Quinn looked around. "Where did that bucket come from? There was no bucket in here. There was nothing but us. And where did you get the water?"
Poe held the bucket at ready. "You're sure you're okay? I don't want to freak you out again."
"Yeah. I'm okay," said Quinn. And actually, he was. He'd decided to go with the idea that he was already dead, and that seemed to make everything fall into perspective. "I'm dead."