"It's so hard to believe."
"Why, after you've seen all this? You've seen what the Goo can do. Why is it so hard to believe that I'm sixty-four?"
"Well, for one, you're so immature."
"Shut up. I'm young at heart."
"But for a second there I was so sure we were doomed." Nate rubbed his temples — trying to stretch them, maybe — to make his head bigger to hold the whole concept of Amy's being sixty-four.
"No, it's okay, we just haven't gotten to that yet. We're still doomed."
"Oh, thank goodness," Nate said. "I was worried."
Later, after they had pushed the world away for a while, made love and napped in each other's arms, Amy made a move to start another round, and Nate awoke to an immediate and uncertain anxiety.
"Are we really doomed?" he asked.
"Oh, goddamn it Nate!" She was straddling him, so she was able to get a good windup before thumping him hard in the chest with her fist. "That's just un-fucking-professional!"
Nate thought about how the praying mantis female will sometimes bite off the male's head during copulation and how the male's body continues to mate until the act is finished.
"Sorry," he said.
She rolled off him and stared up at dim strips of green luminescence on the ceiling. "It's okay. I didn't mean to bite your head off."
"Pardon?"
"Yes, we're probably doomed. We're doomed for the same reason that I look the way I do, that most of the Goos look much younger than we really are. Turn a gene on, you age; turn it off, you don't. I've even seen some people down here who seem to get younger. Flip a switch, pancreatic cancer at age twenty-two; flip another, you can smoke four packs a day and live to be a hundred. If the Goo thinks that the human race is a danger to it, it just has to flip a switch, pick a gene, make a virus, and the human race would blink out. I hadn't really thought about it as a threat before. My whole life I've worked for the Goo. Service, you know? It takes care of us. It's the source."
He didn't know what to say. Did he need to actually take the Colonel's request for help seriously? Did he need to help find a way to kill this amazing creature in order to save his own species? "Amy, I don't know what to do. Two days ago I just wanted to get out of here. Now? The Colonel and you both said I was lucky to be alive. Has the Goo killed people who were close to finding out about it?"
"Honestly, I don't know. I've never seen it or heard of it happening, but I — we — each just do our own part down here. We don't ask a lot of questions. Not because we're told not to or anything — it's just that you can live a long time without asking yourself big questions when your needs are looked after." For the first time Nate could see the experience of years in Amy's face, marked not by wrinkles but by a shadow in her eyes.
"I'm asking," he said.
"Do I think the Goo is ethically capable of killing the human race?"
"I guess."
"I don't even know if the Goo has ethics, Nate. According to the Colonel, it's just a vehicle for genes and we're just vehicles for memes and nature says that a head-on collision is inevitable. What if it's not? This battle has supposedly gone on for millions of years, and now the Colonel wants to force an endgame? What I do know is that you've got to talk him out of trying to kill it."
"But he's your leader."
"Yeah, but he didn't tell any of us about this. I think he's doubting his own judgment. So am I."
"But you said that it could kill everyone on the planet at the flick of a switch."
"Yeah." She rolled over and propped herself up on her elbow. "You hungry? I'm hungry."
"I could eat."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Necrophiliacs Anonymous,
Gooville Chapter
Amy was carrying two stoppered porcelain bottles of beer when she entered the Colonel's chambers. The ruler of Gooville came sliding out of the pink wall as if it had given birth to him. He extended his arms to hug her, but instead of returning his embrace, Amy held up a beer.
"I brought you a beer."
"Amy, you know I don't really eat anymore."
"I thought you might like a beer, for old times' sake."
"Why are you here?"
"I hadn't seen you since I got back from Maui. I thought you'd want to debrief me or something."
"I've talked to Nathan Quinn."
"You have?"
"Don't be cute, Amy. I know what's going on between you two."
"I really don't have any choice, Colonel, I am cute. It's the burden I have to bear."
"He doesn't know what you are, does he?"
"Drink your beer, it's getting warm. Why do you keep it so steamy in here anyway?"
The Colonel accepted the beer from her and took a long pull. When he came up for air, he stared at the beer bottle with a look of surprise, as if it had just spoken to him.
"My, that's good. That's really good. I'd forgotten."
Amy toasted him with her own bottle and took a drink. "Colonel, we've known each other a long time. You've been like a father to me, but you are out of touch. I'm worried about you. I think you need to come out of here occasionally, like you used to. Walk around. Have some interaction with the people in town."
"Don't try to get in the way of what I'm doing, Amy."
"What are you talking about? I'm just worried about you."
The Colonel looked at the beer bottle in his hand again, as if it had just been teleported there, then he looked back to Amy with a little panic in his eyes. "Nate didn't tell you, then?"
"Tell me what? Nate doesn't have anything to do with this. You have lost touch."
The Colonel nodded, then leaned back into the wall of Goo behind him. It cradled him and formed a chaise longue, which he sat down on as he rubbed his temples. "Amy, did you ever do anything for a purpose greater than your own ambition? Did you ever feel a duty to something beyond yourself?"
"You mean, like persuading people that I'm something that I'm not to gain their trust so they could be kidnapped or killed in order to preserve my community? Yes, I have some concept of the idea of serving the greater good."
"I guess you do. I guess you do. Forgive me. Perhaps I do spend too much time alone."
"You think?"
"Could you leave me now? I do have to think."
"So you want to be alone now? That's what you're saying? This is how you're going to address the problem of spending too much time alone?"
"Go, Amy, and please don't interfere with Nate."
"Not yet."
"What do you mean, 'not yet'?"
"There's a deposit on that bottle. I'm not leaving without it."
"Then, Nate, he's not a problem? You're sure?" Here the Colonel forced a smile that looked much more like something menacing than an actual smile. "Because I will tell him about you if I must."
"The greater good," Amy said, returning the forced smile with a real one.
"Good," said the Colonel, draining the last of his beer. "Come back. And bring me another of these."
"You got it," Amy said. Then she took the bottle from him and left the chamber. Thin line between genius and full-blown batshit, she thought. Very thin line.
For two weeks the Colonel didn't send for Nate. Cielle Nuñez had stopped by the third morning that Amy was at Nate's apartment. "Well, you don't need me anymore," Cielle had said. "I'd just as soon get back to my ship anyway, although it doesn't look like we're going anywhere soon." Nate was disappointed that she hadn't been jealous.