Gargantua (11 page)

Paul nodded. Alyson’s first priority was treating Jimmy and the people who were injured on the beach. There certainly wasn’t a rush on checking the casts—it’s not like the monster was going anywhere.

“In any case,” Jack continued, standing upright, “the big guy here is certainly strong enough. I fired enough tranquilizer darts to knock out a killer whale. Of course, its metabolism could be unbelievably slow—or its blood vessels constricted.”

Also standing upright, and grinning, Paul said, “Or maybe it’s just one tough mother.”

Returning the grin, Jack said, “Right.” He turned back to the creature. “Beautiful coloring, for a male. Superficially, it looks like a member of the order
urodela
—which includes about three hundred different species of salamanders.”

Paul was startled by an Australian-accented voice from behind him, “How the hell did it get so
big?”
He turned to see Hale, along with Manny, Joe, and Brandon, approaching them from behind.

Jack, for his part, didn’t seem at all startled, but simply answered the question: “There are salamanders that reach a length of six feet—but they’re exclusively aquatic. Terrestrial salamanders, or amphibious ones like this thing, are rarely longer than a few inches—and none has ever been observed walking on its hind legs, which is what makes this thing so unique.”

“And dangerous,” Joe added.

Paul sighed.
Leave it to the chief to find the cloud in the silver lining.

Jack looked like he was about to reply, but Manny came to the diplomatic rescue before the marine biologist had a chance to put his foot in it. “This poor creature does not seem capable of much harm at the moment.”

Jack seemed content with that answer, and turned his attention back to the lizard. The chief, for his part, still looked angry, but said nothing more. Paul couldn’t entirely blame him, though the latest word was that Jimmy would survive.
Still, as far as he’s concerned, the only thing that matters is that the big guy mauled one of his men.

Brandon wandered closer to the cage, standing next to his father and in front of Paul. “Can’t you just turn him loose? Maybe he’ll go home.”

Paul blinked in surprise at the question.
Brandon hadn’t struck me as being that naïve before.

“Maybe he can’t go home,” Jack said. “Maybe he came onto the island because he was having trouble surviving. We’ve never seen anything like him. He might be the last of his species—or one of a kind.”

“What if—” Brandon hesitated. “What if he
isn’t
one of a kind? What if, like, another one came along? Then would you let ’em go?”

Jack shook his head. “No. Certainly not right away. I wouldn’t be much of a scientist if I did
that,
Brandon. C’mon, you know the drill as well as I do. We’d need to find out what they are and where they come from.” He smiled. “If it’s a new species, maybe I can name it after you: a Brandonomadon.”

That got a rise out of the kid, and he, too, smiled. Paul, though, was curious as to why Brandon was asking these questions—especially in light of what he said, and didn’t say, the previous night in the jungle.
Methinks the boy knows more than he’s saying,
Paul thought.
Of course, it could just be twelve-year-old weirdness. Still, I’d better keep an eye on him.

“That day,” Brandon said, “what I was trying to tell you—”

“If there are
more
of these monsters,” Joe interrupted, having listened in on the conversation, “we must prepare a defense.”

Brandon whirled on the chief. “What does that mean? Does that mean you’d kill ’em?” The boy sounded anguished, like Joe was talking about murdering the kid’s pet cat or something.

Joe had the good grace to soften his expression when he replied, “I would do what was necessary for public safety.”

“Dad,” Brandon said, turning back to his father, “you wouldn’t let ’em be killed, would you?”

Jack hesitated, and spoke very slowly. “I’d do everything I could to prevent it. But it might be beyond my control.”

Just then, Alyson approached. Paul took the fact that she had the time to leave the clinic as a good sign.

“How’s Jimmy, Doctor?” Joe asked.

“He’ll survive. He’s lost a lot of blood, but we had plenty of B-positive on hand, and a few donors for backup. I wouldn’t put him back on duty for a couple of weeks, but he should recover.”

“Good,” Joe said, with a pointed look at Jack.

“The others,” Alyson continued, “have only minor cuts and scrapes.” She turned to Jack. “I shipped the casts off to Kalor, so they can check it against Dak. I don’t have the equipment for a proper comparison here, though my gut tells me it’ll be a match.”

Alyson then looked down at Brandon, who, Paul noticed, looked a bit distressed.
All this forensic-evidence talk can’t be good for a twelve-year-old,
Paul thought.
Then again, when
I
was twelve, I would’ve thought it was cool, so what do I know?

“You okay, Brandon?” Alyson asked with what Paul, to his surprise, would swear was a maternal tone.

“I’m okay,” the boy assured her.

“I been thinking,” said a voice from behind Paul. He turned to see Derek Lawson approaching the cage.
Christ on a crutch, what did we do to deserve this? I thought the chief’s guys were supposed to keep the riffraff
away
from the lizard.

Derek continued: “We could build a nice little enclosure right over there.” He pointed to a spot near the pier on the edge of the beach. “Charge five dollars for adults, children under twelve half-price . . .”

I don’t believe this,
Paul thought.
He’s already got the amusement park built in his head. “Big-Lizard Land.”

Jack looked at Derek with something like revulsion. “A freak show isn’t really what I had in mind.”

Derek laughed derisively. “What
you
had in mind? It’s all about you again, innit, mate?”

“Look,” Jack said angrily, “no freak show. Got it?”

Paul had only known Jack Ellway for a couple of days, but the impression he had gotten was of an even-tempered, if occasionally absent-minded, man. He’d only gotten angry twice that Paul had seen—both times at the instigation of Derek Lawson.
That’s our boy,
he thought,
always bringing out the best in people.

For his part, Derek turned to Manny. “What’s going on here, mates? The creature wandered onto our island. We should be calling the shots.”

“Putting it in your terms, Derek,” Paul said, “Jack’s the guy who bagged the thing. He’s got the claim. Kinda like that huge swordfish you got last year that you insisted on hanging on your wall instead of selling to Manny.”

If Derek had a reaction to Paul’s dig, he didn’t show it, much to Paul’s disappointment. Instead, the fisherman turned to the president. “C’mon, Manny, exercise some authority. Think about tourism.”

Manny was his usual phlegmatic self as he calmly responded. “I shall exercise
moral
authority and think of this creature and what is best for the people of this island. As long as public safety is not an issue, I will defer to the scientists.”

This time, Derek’s facial expression did change—to one of disgust. He turned and walked off, pausing to crouch down on the pier next to the cage. “I could’ve made you famous.”

Then—in one of those moments that Paul would spend the rest of his life regretting that it happened too fast for him to capture it on film—the lizard made a lunge toward Derek, crashing futilely against the bars of the cage. Derek jumped back, startled, tried to stand up, lost his balance, and fell backward off the pier and into the ocean.

Joe, kind-hearted person that he was, went over to help Derek out of the water, to the tune of the laughter of the assembled multitudes. Not surprisingly, Derek refused the help, clambering out of the shallow water on his own and stomping off toward his trawler, on which he also lived.

“By the way, Jack,” Hale said after everyone’s guffaws at Derek’s expense had died down, “I got those satellite prints in from the Institute. Now that we got somethin’ a little better to go on . . .” He trailed off.

“Right,” Jack said.

The wheels started turning in Paul’s head. “Listen, Jack, I was hoping to talk to you guys about this for the special edition of the paper I’m doing.”
Now he’s going to tell me that he and Hale are too busy.

“I’m sorry Paul, but Doctor Hale and I have a lot of work to do, and—”

Paul held up a hand. “It’s okay, I kinda figured that. How’s about I talk to Brandon instead?” He turned to the boy. “It’ll give you a chance to see how an actual newspaper works.”

Hale grinned. “How an actual small-town newspaper run by one bloke works, anyhow.”

Shrugging, Paul said, “Well, yeah. And it’ll give me a chance to get some factoids for the paper without disturbing your Dad from his work.”

“Whaddaya say, Brandon?” Jack said. “This is the sort of thing scientists tend to fob off on their assistants anyhow.”

Brandon smiled. “Yeah, okay.”

“Great,” Paul said.
And maybe I can find out just what, if anything, the kid’s hiding.
He indicated the way toward town. “Shall we?”

“Yeah, okay,” Brandon repeated.

“I’ll come get you in a couple of hours, Brandon,” Jack said.

Brandon nodded as Paul led the boy away from the pier and in the direction of the
Malau Weekly News
offices.

The small wooden building that housed Paul’s newspaper used to be the local dive shop. Surrounded by trees and off the main road, the owners of the dive shop had decided to move to a more visible locale, leaving the space available. Initially, Paul had also lived in the small building, until the
Weekly News’s
revenues were at the point where he could afford his own place.

He unlocked the front door and led Brandon in. Paul grabbed a tape recorder and started asking Brandon a few technical questions about what the Ellways did generally.

“Didn’t you ask us this stuff at lunch the other day?”

Paul smiled. “Yeah, but I didn’t have my tape recorder then.”

“Okay,” Brandon said, and proceeded to answer all of Paul’s questions by rote.
The kid knows this stuff pretty well,
Paul thought.
Either that, or he’s
real
good at making it up and sounding convincing.

As they talked, Paul took Brandon into the dark room and gave the kid a crash course in picture developing. Brandon expressed surprise at how low-tech it all was, but Paul just shrugged and said that some things didn’t require high-tech.

They talked for a few hours, first about his and Jack’s work in general, then about some of the other trips they’d taken together in the last year. Paul avoided the subject of Brandon’s mother, which he assumed to be a sensitive subject. By the time he had selected and made prints of the captured monster, they had moved on to talking about the events of the last couple of days.

“Do you think Derek’s gonna get to do what he wants?” Brandon asked.

“Not too likely,” Paul said. “Derek still labors under the delusion that people respect him. He’s got great fishing instincts, and his catches are generally worth it, but as a person, he’s regarded somewhere below the plankton.”

Brandon laughed at that. “I guess. What about what Dad said?”

Paul frowned. “What do you mean?”

“If there was more than one of these guys around, what do you think would happen?”

Paul thought about that for a moment, looking down at the print of the nine-foot lizard.
God,
he thought,
imagine a whole family of these things.

“Well,” he finally said, “I’d say that whenever humanity has power over nature, nature’s usually the big loser.”

Brandon sat quietly for a moment after Paul said that.

The kid knows something.
“Why do you ask?”

“I’m just curious,” he said much too quickly. “I mean, the police chief kept talking about how he might have to kill it.”

“Well, the thing
is
responsible for three deaths, Brandon. I mean, when a dog gets rabid and is in danger of hurting people, they shoot it. Our Ghidrah lookalike out there has already proven to be dangerous. They may not have a choice.”

“Ghidrah?” Brandon asked, sounding confused.

Paul smiled. “Old Japanese monster movie.”

“Oh.” Brandon looked over at Paul’s computer. “So what do you do with the pictures, paste ’em up?”

“Thank God, no,” Paul said, noting that Brandon had quickly changed the subject. “I used to before I could afford the upgrade, but I do it all on the computer now.”

I won’t push now, Brandon, but you know something, and I’m gonna find out what it is.

In the bungalow Ralph Hale had rented, Jack watched as the older man spread a large map of the area, a smaller topographical map that included geological referents, and several satellite photos on his dining room table. The previous contents of the table—piles of papers and books, mostly—had been dumped unceremoniously on the floor. At once, Jack noticed that the resolution on the satellite photos was of much greater quality on the prints than they were on the JPEG computer files he and Hale had looked at the previous day. There were also several photos he didn’t recognize.

“What’s with the extras?”

“My techies at the Institute came through for me,” Hale said with a grin. “They got their hands on some shots taken by the Topex Satellite over the last couple of months. So, what’re we looking for?”

“Well,” Jack said, “salamanders aren’t all that common around these parts, but the most likely breeding ground for aquatic salamanders would be a submerged mountain range—” he peered at the topographical map “—like that one.” He pointed to an undersea strip labelled
IOZIMA RIDGE
that, relative to Malau, ran northeastward into the Pacific Ocean.

Hale peered at the map. “That ridge runs for two thousand miles.” He looked up at Jack. “Uninterrupted.”

Nodding, Jack said, “Which would explain why no one’s spotted our creature or any like it.”

As Jack spoke, Hale started rummaging through the satellite photos. “C’mon,” he muttered, “where is it? A-ha!” He liberated first one, then a second photo from the pile and laid them out side by side over the map. “Look at this, Jack.” He pointed to the one on the left. It provided an image that matched the basic structure shown on the geographical map of the westernmost part of the Iozima Ridge, but had the darker, negative-image—type look of most satellite photos. “Here’s the ridge at its closest proximity to Malau. Topex took this shot last month.” He pointed to the photo on the right, which was superficially similar, but for the Hale Institute logo on the edge—and the hairline across one part of the ridge, which Hale ran his finger down. “This little artery wasn’t there a month ago. I suspect it’s a fault line created by all the recent seismic activity. It leads directly from the ridge to the shallow waters off Malau.”