Gargantua Page 10

  Probably at the sound of her patient shouting, Doctor Hart came dashing into the room. “What’s going on?”

  Jimmy was trying to sit up now. “Chief, you gotta kill that thing!”

  The doctor put her hands on Jimmy’s shoulders, gently guiding him back into a prone position. “Take it easy,” she said.

  “It’s caged up, Jimmy,” Joe said. “It can’t harm anyone right now.”

  “But what if there’re more of ’em? Jesus, Chief, it—”

  Doctor Hart spoke more forcefully this time: “I said take it easy, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy closed his eyes and took a breath. Then he opened them again and looked at Joe. “You gotta promise me, Chief—if that thing gets loose, you’ll take it down.”

  Joe Movita thought about the father he never met. When the war started, the Japanese administrators—who had always been viewed as authoritarian but fair—were recalled and replaced with a military government, led by a unpleasant colonel named Takeshewada, who turned the island into a police state. When Kile Movita tried to object to the conditions, tried to buck the authority on the island, Colonel Takeshewada had him killed.

  Joe wondered, if it came to that, if he could do the same in order to fulfill a promise to one of his people.

  “I’ll do what I can,” was what he finally said.

  Then he turned on his heel and walked out of the clinic.

  As soon as Dad was out of sight of Manny’s—having gone off to meet Doctor Hale at the pier for their little underwater trip—Brandon gulped down the rest of his orange juice, took a final bite of scrambled egg, and dashed out of the restaurant. (Dad had already covered the tab.)

  On his way to the lagoon, he passed a candy store, and decided to splurge and get himself a bag of cheese puffs. He just had to remember to wash his hands when he was done, so Dad wouldn’t notice the orange residue on his fingers. Dad hated it when Brandon had cheese puffs right after breakfast, but to the boy’s mind it was one of the essentials in life.

  After paying for the cheese puffs—only fifty cents for a bag that would’ve cost a dollar back home—he continued into the jungle, hoping that the jar of bugs and leaves and such were still there.

  He hadn’t been able to get away from Dad the previous day, except when he was with Paul. He couldn’t really run off then, either, without raising suspicion—especially with all those weird looks Paul had been giving him. After dinner, Dad had taken Brandon back to the hotel and told him to stay there, just in case. Brandon had toyed with the idea of sneaking out to try to feed Casey, but then Dad had said he and Doctor Hale were going to investigate the jungle, see if they could figure out what it was the big guy wanted there.

  Based on what Dad had said at breakfast that morning, they hadn’t found Casey—thank God, he thought, remembering both Chief Movita’s words about protecting the island and Paul’s comment about humanity and nature—which meant that it was more imperative that Brandon try to feed the little guy.

  Besides, if I find out what he eats, I can help Dad feed the big one.

  When he arrived back at the lagoon, he was grateful to find that the pile of branches and leaves he had hidden the sample jars under remained undisturbed. He pulled them out, then went to his usual spot on the shore of the lagoon. He upended the jar, and various bugs and leaves fell onto the ground in front of him.

  Then he sat cross-legged in front of his second attempt at a lizard buffet, ripped open the bag of cheese puffs, and waited.

  After about a minute, Casey popped his head up from the water. Good, he hasn’t gone anywhere. But he also looked real bad. The dog for whom Brandon had named Casey always looked like that after going through the dog run for an hour. He’s all low on energy. Geez, hasn’t he eaten anything?

  As Casey approached, Brandon set down the bag of cheese puffs, wiping his hands on his shorts.

  “C’mon, little guy. Please eat.”

  Casey inspected the food, then once again rejected it, letting out a pitiful whine.

  “Great. What am I gonna do? If I tell anybody about you, you could end up in a lab, or dead. Please, you gotta eat.”

  Casey looked down at the bag of cheese puffs. Brandon noticed that a few had spilled out onto the ground. He was about to pick them up and drop them in the sample jar to throw away later—

  —when Casey went over and nibbled on a puff. Then he gobbled one down.

  Then another. Then another.

  “Wow,” Brandon muttered. He dumped the bag’s remaining contents onto the ground. Casey attacked the puffs with gusto. “Wherever you come from, they’ve got junk food. This is amazing.”

  He wondered how he was going to convince Dad to feed cheese puffs to Superlizard.

  It had been a couple of years since Jack Ellway saw the demonstration of the submersible Deep Flight, but he didn’t remember it at all resembling a scorpion fish. Such fish spent most of their time lying on reefs pretending to be rocks—indeed, they were sometimes referred to as rockfish or stonefish. One of his colleagues once joked that the preferred scientific term for them was “ugly buggers.” Deep Flight had looked a lot more like a manta, so he was curious as to why Hale had chosen the name Scorpion Fish for his own submersible.

  When he saw it bobbing in the water tethered to the pier opposite the nine-foot lizard, he understood. The submersible was the same proportional shape as a stonefish, the same basic color, and even had portholes where the eyes would have been. He could see the outlines of mechanical arms but, retracted as they were, they seemed to be part of the smooth surface.

  What really worried him was the size. The thing looked barely big enough to hold one person, let alone three.

  Hale, Paul, and a tall man approximately Jack’s age were waiting for him at the pier. “Ready to go, Jack?” Hale said, all smiles.

  “Guess so.”

  “Glad to hear it, mate. Oh, this is Grant Wilhoite. Grant, Jack Ellway.”

  Wilhoite simply grunted as he shook Jack’s hand. He didn’t look especially happy to be here. Based on the half of his conversation with Hale that Jack had heard the previous day, he suspected that Wilhoite had postponed a project near and dear to his heart in order to keep his boss happy. Jack knew how he’d feel in the man’s place. But then, there may well be lives at stake—not to mention finding a new species. I’d say it’s worth it.

  “So,” Paul said, “you guys headed to the Iozima Ridge?”

  “That’s the plan,” Jack said.

  “Well, don’t forget to bring me back a souvenir,” he said with a grin, as he brought his camera up to his eye. “Say cheese.” He snapped one picture, then another.

  Wilhoite tapped his foot impatiently. “Can we get a bleedin’ move on?”

  Hale grinned at Paul. “I think you’d better stick with candid shots from here on in, mate.”

  “Right,” Paul said.

  After the reporter took a few more pictures and said his goodbyes, Hale climbed into the Scorpion Fish, then Jack followed—Wilhoite came a moment later after untethering the submersible from the pier. Jack’s fears about the Scorp’s capacity were, he realized quickly, justified. Hale had said the vessel was made of titanium, and the thing’s skin was thick enough to make the inside even more cramped. The seats barely managed the width of the average human rear end and they had no leg room to speak of. Hale helped Jack harness himself in while Wilhoite strapped himself. Then Hale got himself secured while the pilot started things up.

  “Whenever you’re ready, Grant,” Hale said, and within moments, the view outside the porthole next to Jack’s seat changed from one of Malau’s beaches to blue water.

  The sea life he saw initally pretty much matched his expectations. First there were bits of kelp and plankton, plus the usual collection of mud crabs and mollusks. As they went deeper, and Wilhoite activated the Scorp’s external halogen lamps, he saw dozens of lionfish, their plumes of blue fins rippling in the water; tiger groupers; flounders; he even caught sight of a silvertip sha
rk off in the distance. When they neared a reef, he saw a genuine scorpion fish, pretending to be a rock, as expected; the amber and brown beauty of a flatworm; the festive colors of nudibranchs crawling along; angel fish of all varieties. The rainbow of colors never ceased to amaze Jack—nothing on land could compare to the beauty of the world under the sea.

  He recalled the first time he took Diane scuba diving. It was at UCSD, after they’d been dating for a month. She said she’d always loved sitting and staring at the ocean, and Jack just laughed. “Sitting and staring at the surface of the ocean,” he said, “is like going to a museum and only looking at the picture frames.” She was dubious, but she took the certification course and then went with Jack on a dive. Within a month of that first dive, she’d switched to a marine biology major. A year after that, they got married.

  And thirteen years later, she died.

  Hale brought him out of his suddenly melancholy reverie. “We’re at Iozima now, Jack,” he said, then turned to the pilot. “Just keep a steady course along the ridge.”

  Wilhoite acknowledged with an “okay” gesture.

  “Doesn’t talk much, does he?” Jack stage-whispered to Hale.

  “He’s just cheesed off ’cause I took him off his project. He’d been waiting months for access to the Scorp, so I can’t say as I blame him.”

  Smiling, Jack turned back to the porthole. This deep, the only illumination came from the Scorp’s lamps, and the natural fluorescence of some of the fish. He saw an angler fish, its needle-sharp teeth in search of something to munch on, the red and orange shape of a dumbo octopus, and a mess of tomopterids.

  His left leg started to cramp, and he shifted as much as he could within the harness—only to discover that his right leg had fallen asleep. Wonderful.

  Hale noticed his discomfort. “Comfy, Jack?”

  “Yeah, now that my legs have gone to sleep.” He turned back to the porthole and remembered both the mechanical arms and Superlizard’s dietary problems. “Let’s collect some water and soil samples. If our amphibian is from around here, it’ll feed on the sea life we bring back.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Hale said as he pushed a few buttons, then grabbed a pair of levers. These presumably controlled the mechanical arms, confirmed by the fact that Jack could see the arms moving in tandem with Hale’s manipulations of the levers.

  The levers flanked a video monitor that Jack hadn’t noticed before. It appeared to feed from a camera mounted to the Scorp’s top, and it gave a better view of the arms’ movements as it gathered samples from both the soil of the ridge and of the surrounding sea life.

  “I’ve got a pretty fair sample,” Hale said after about five minutes’ worth of gathering. “Let’s move on, shall we? Arms are—” he maneuvered the levers into their original position “—in place. Let’s be off.”

  Again, Wilhoite made the “okay” gesture, and the Scorp started to move.

  Then, suddenly, the vessel was jostled and came to a stop. It felt just like a car hitting the brakes, and Jack was grateful for the harness that kept him in place. “What the hell?” he said.

  The engines were still running, though. Wilhoite said, “We’re going full speed—at a dead stop!”

  Jack peered out the porthole, trying to see what had happened. Maybe they were caught in something, or maybe a large fish had come down to block their path.

  Suddenly, the Scorp was turned upside down. Jack was even more grateful for the harness. The map, satellite photos, and a few other odds and ends Hale had brought along weren’t so lucky, and they clattered from the floor to the ceiling—which now was the floor.

  Just as suddenly, the vessel was flipped back rightside up, and the jostling stopped.

  Letting out the breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding, Jack looked around to make sure the others were okay.

  Then the lights flickered and went out.

  Sunlight did not penetrate this deep—the only illumination one got was either artificial or came from the phosphorescent aquatic life. The former had been disabled, and the latter didn’t seem to be around at the moment.

  The Scorp was now in a darkness so complete and total, Jack felt like he was being smothered by a thick blanket.

  “Oh my God,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound as panicked as he was starting to feel. His heart pounded so hard he was sure his ribs would crack.

  “Hang on, Jack.”

  “Give it a moment.”

  He had no idea who spoke what phrase, or if either Hale or Wilhoite said both.

  Then the interior lights flickered back on. They were only a bit dimmer than they had been before. Thank God.

  Wilhoite said, “We’ve got maybe ten minutes of air left. We need to surface.”

  “No argument from me,” Jack muttered.

  “Go,” Hale said.

  Jack peered out the window, but the outside was as black as it was before the power was restored. “Damn—I can’t see anything.”

  “We stirred up a lot of silt,” Hale pointed out. “ ’Sides, the external lamps are out as long as we’re on emergency power.”

  “All right,” Wilhoite said, “as you yanks say, we are outta here.”

  Jack fell back in his seat as the Scorp accelerated upward at a much faster rater than it had going on the way down. But then, with only ten minutes of air left, they couldn’t afford to dillydally.

  So what the hell was that that tossed us around like that?

  He had his suspicions, and he didn’t like them, not one bit.

  Paul Bateman saw Ralph Hale’s jeep approaching just as he was walking over to Manny’s for lunch. He hadn’t expected to see Hale and Jack so soon—Hale had said that he expected the trip to last well past lunch. Curious, he approached them as they parked it near Hale’s bungalow.

  Jack hauled a sealed container out of the jeep. Paul arrived right in the middle of a friendly, if heated, discussion.

  “—don’t know what the hell was happening out there, but we got batted around like a Ping-Pong ball. Whatever it was, it didn’t like us.”

  “Jack, take it easy,” Hale said. “It wasn’t a creature. A creature that size couldn’t spin a submersible around like a top. No, those quakes cause a lot of underwater turbulence.”

  “What happened?” Paul asked.

  “The Scorp got knocked for a loop,” Jack said. “Conked the power for a minute, then twirled us around like a dervish. I think it was one of Superlizard’s relatives.”

  “And I still say it was another quake,” Hale insisted.

  Paul said, “We did get nailed with a pretty nasty quake while you were gone. One of my reference books fell over onto Mak’s head while he was bringing the mail.”

  “See?” Hale said.

  “I don’t know.”

  Paul shook his head as the three of them started walking toward Hale’s bungalow. Figures. The marine biologist says it’s aquatic life, the geologist says it was an earthquake.

  Aloud, he said, “Well, whatever it was, I’ve got an interesting tidbit for you guys. I checked the Internet for facts about the Iozima Ridge. In the 1960s, when a lot of pesticides were banned, an international group of chemical companies dumped thousands of concrete containers into the Pacific—over the Iozima Ridge. Concrete can leak, you know.”

  Jack stopped walking. Paul turned to face him; Hale did likewise. Jack had an expression that made Paul want to look for the light bulb on top of his head.

  “What’re you thinkin’, Jack?” Hale asked.

  “I’m thinking about frogs.”

  Paul raised an eyebrow. “This a common thing with marine biologists, or is it just you?”

  “No, I’m serious,” Jack said. “You’ve got Internet access, right?” he asked Hale.

  “Yeah, ’course.”

  “Good. I want to show you a particular web site.”

  “Why don’t we do this in my office?” Paul said.

  Hale asked, “What difference does it make?”


  “I know for a fact that you just have a 28.8 modem and your ISP’s in Melbourne, so the phone charge is probably an arm and a leg. I, on the other hand, have a T1 line and free access.”

  Hale’s eyes widened. “How the hell’d you manage that one?”

  Paul grinned. “Friends in low places. C’mon.”

  Still carrying the container—Jack said it contained fish and soil samples from Iozima—they walked at a brisk pace to Paul’s office. Paul sat at his computer—which he never turned off—and tapped the mouse button, clearing the screensaver of a nude centerfold, then clicked over to his web browser. Jack rolled his eyes at the screensaver; Hale just grinned. The pair of them flanked Paul as he said, “Okay, shoot.”

  Jack gave him the URL, which Paul dutifully typed in. Within seconds, he was looking at pictures of mutated frogs.

  “Yuck,” was Paul’s first comment.

  “Mutated frogs,” Jack said, “with extra eyes and extra limbs. Discovered in contaminated ponds—first in Minnesota, then in Vermont, California, Québec . . .”

  Hale rubbed his chin. “So our poor big friend could be some kind of mutation?”

  Jack shrugged. “Frogs and salamanders are part of the same biological order. Which means they could have similar biochemical reactions to ingesting pesticides.”

  “I can do a preliminary analysis,” Hale said, looking down at the container. “Enough to detect chemical traces, anyhow.”

  Jack blinked. “You have that kind of equipment?”

  “Mostly. Between my gear, and the stuff Alyson’s got in her lab at the clinic, I should be able to do it.”

  “Okay. Hey, Paul, where’s Brandon? He’d enjoy being part of this.”

  Paul shrugged. “I haven’t seen him. Been cooped up here all day.”

  “All right—I want to take a shot at feeding the beast with what we collected. Once the good doctor takes his sample, you wanna give me a hand with the feeding?”

  “Sure,” Paul said with a smile. What the heck, he thought, it’s a photo op.

  Within half an hour, Paul and Jack had rigged a metal trough full of what Jack said was a representative sample of the general vicinity of Iozima to a pulley. “In theory,” Jack said, “it should treat this stuff like a home-cooked meal.” He sighed. “Certainly, it hasn’t liked anything else we’ve thrown at it.”