"We were upside down to make the transfer?"
"Exactly. You're a smart guy. Look, these are cabins. She touched a lighted node on the wall, and a skin portal folded back on itself. Again Nate was put in mind of the blowhole of a toothed whale, but it was so big, nearly four feet across, it was just… unnatural. Lines of light pumped to life past the portal to reveal a small cabin, a bed — apparently made of the same skin as the rest of the interior — but also a table and a chair. Nate couldn't make out what material they might be made of, but it looked like plastic.
"Bone," Nuñez said, noticing him noticing. "They're as much a part of the ship as the walls. All living tissue. There are shelves and cubbyholes for your stuff in the bulkheads, closed now. Obviously everything has to be stowed for little maneuvers like the one we just performed. The motion isn't as bad as on the humpbacks. You'll find you'll get used to it, and then you can move about just as if you were on land."
"You're right. I didn't even notice we were moving."
"That would be because we're not," said Nuñez.
The sound of whaley-boy snickering wheezed down the corridor toward them.
"You guys are supposed to be working," Nuñez said to the air. "Prepare to get under way." She turned to Quinn. "Can I buy you a cup of joe? Maybe answer some of your questions?"
"You're offering?" Quinn felt his heart jump with excitement. Information, without Poynter and Poe's goofing obfuscation? He was thrilled. "That would be fantastic."
"Don't pee all over yourself, Quinn. It's just coffee."
The corridor opened up into a large bridge. The head of the blue was huge compared to the humpback's. On either side of the entry a whaley boy stood grinning at them as they passed. They were both taller than Quinn, and unlike the Scooter and Skippy of the humpback, their skin was mottled and lighter in color.
Nate paused and grinned back at them. "Let me guess — Skippy and Scooter?"
"Actually, Bernard and Emily 7," said Nuñez.
"You said they all were —»
"I said all pilots were named Skippy and Scooter." She gestured to the front of the bridge, where two whaley boys sitting at control consoles were turning in their seats and grinning. Maybe, thought Nate, they always appeared to be grinning, much like dolphins. He'd made an amateur mistake, assuming that their facial expressions were the analog of human expressions. People often did that with dolphins, even though the animals had no facial muscles to facilitate expression. Even sad dolphins appeared to be smiling.
"What are you two grinning at?" asked Nuñez. "Let's get on the way."
The pilots frowned and turned back to their consoles.
"Well, crap," Nate said.
"What?"
"Nothing, just another theory shot in the ass."
"Yeah, this operation does that, doesn't it?"
Nate felt something stirring in his back pocket and spun around to see a thin, fourteen-inch-long pink penis that was protruding from Bernard's genital slit. It waved at him.
"Holy moly!"
"Bernard!" Nuñez snapped. "Put that away. That is not procedure."
Bernard's unit drooped noticeably from the scolding. He looked at it and chirped contritely.
"Away!" Nuñez barked.
Bernard's willy snapped back up into his genital slit. "Sorry about that," Nuñez said to Nate. "I've never gotten used to that. It's really disconcerting when you're working with one of them and you ask them to hand you a screwdriver or something and his hands are already full. Coffee?"
She led him to a small white table around which four bone chairs protruded from the floor. They looked like old-style Greek saddle chairs — no backs, organic curves, and the high gloss of living bone — but more Gaudi than Flintstone. Quinn sat while Nuñez touched a node on the wall that opened a meter-wide portal that had concealed a sink, several canisters, and what looked like a percolator. Nate wondered about the electricity but forced himself to wait before asking.
While Nuñez prepared the coffee, Quinn looked around. The bridge was easily four times the size of the entire cabin in the humpback. Instead of riding in a minivan, it was like being in a good-size motor home — a very curvy, dimly lit motor home, but about that size. Blue light filtered in through the eyes, illuminating the pilots' faces, which shone like patent leather. Nate was starting to realize that even though everything was organic, living, the whale ship had the same sort of efficiency found on any nautical vesseclass="underline" every spaced used, everything stowed against movement, everything functional.
"If you need to use the head, it's back down the corridor, fourth hatch on the right."
Emily 7 clicked and squealed, and Nuñez laughed. She had a warm laugh, not forced; it just rolled out of her smooth and easy. "Emily says it seems as if it would be more logical for the head to be in the head, but there goes logic."
"I gave up logic a few days ago."
"You don't have to give it up, just adjust. Anyway, facilities in the head are like everything on the ship — living — but I think you'll figure out the analogs pretty quickly. It's less complicated than an airliner bathroom."
Scooter chirped, and the great ship started to move, first in a fairly radical wave of motion, then smoothing out to a gentle roll. It was like being on a large sailing ship in medium seas.
"Hey, a little more warning, Scooter, huh?" said Nuñez. "I nearly dumped Nathan's coffee. Okay if I call you Nathan?"
"Nate's good."
Moving with the roll of the ship, she made it back to the table and put down the two steaming mugs of coffee, then went back for a sugar bowl, spoons, and a can of condensed milk. Nate picked up the can and studied it.
"This is the first thing from the outside that I've seen."
"Yeah, well, that's special request. You don't want to try whale milk in your coffee. It's like krill-flavored spray cheese."
"Yuck."
"That's what I'm saying."
"Cielle, if you don't mind my saying, you don't seem very military."
"Me? No, I wasn't. My husband and I had a sixty-foot sailboat. We got caught in a hurricane off of Costa Rica and sank. That's when they took me. My husband didn't make it."
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay. It was a long time ago. But, no, I've never been in the military."
"But the way you order the whaley boys around —»
"First, we need to clear up a misconception that you are obviously forming, Nate. I — we, the human beings on these ships — are not in charge. We're just — I don't know, like ambassadors or something. We sound like commanders because these guys would just goof off all day without someone telling them what to do, but we have no real authority. The Colonel gives the orders, and the whaley boys run the show."
Scooter and Skippy snickered like their counterparts on the humpback ship, Bernard and Emily 7 joined them — Bernard extending his prehensile willy like a party horn.
"And whaley girls?" Nate nodded toward Emily 7, who grinned — it was a very big, very toothy grin, but a little coquettish in the way one might expect from, say, an ingenue with a bite that could sever an arm.
"Just whaley boys. It's like the term 'mankind, you know — alienate the female part of the race at all costs. It's the same here. Old-timers gave them the name."
"Who's the Colonel?"
"He's in charge. We don't see him."
"Human, though?"
"I'm told."
"You said you'd been here a long time. How long?"
"Let me get you another cup, and I'll tell you what I can." She turned. "Bernard, get that thing out of the coffeepot!"