Peter Benchley's Creature (17 page)

"They're really good in oceanography. Is your degree specifically in sharks, or all the elasmobranches?"

"No." Chase paused, then said, "It's in process."

She started. "You mean you don't have your degree? You're director of an institute and you don't have a doctorate?"

"That's right . . . Doctor," Chase said. "Can you live with that?" Before the words were out of his mouth, he felt like an ass.

Amanda blushed. "Of course . . . I didn't . . . I mean . . . I'm sorry. . . . It's just . . ." She threw her head back and laughed.

For a moment, Chase thought she was laughing at him, and he tried to think of a snappy put-down. Before anything came to him, however, something in her expression told him she was laughing not at him but at herself.

"It's great!" she said. "I love it!"

"What?"

"I spend four years in college, two years getting my master's, five years getting my doctorate. I'm
somebody!
My Ph.D. is my armor. I could be a jerk, a turkey, a fool, but I've got a Ph.D. It's the official label of my exalted status." She laughed again. "And then I meet someone who doesn't have his doctorate, can't be anywhere near as exalted as I am, but he's done more than I've ever done, set up an entire institute of his own. And what's my first reaction? 'Impossible!' I love it!"

They started up the hill together. "Let me take the topic from the top," Amanda said. "If you ever do a dissertation, what'll it be on?"

"Territoriality in white sharks," Chase said. "Which reminds me: there's been a white around here in the last week or two. We were tracking it for data till we lost our sensor. A couple of divers were killed, but I don't
think
the white's connected to it. Still, it's out there."

"You think you could find the shark again?"

"I'm going to try, but . . ." Chase stopped. "You mean you
want
to find it? A great white shark? What about your—"

"My sea lions are savvy about white sharks," Amanda said. "There are whites all over California, they know how to stay away from them. Sure, I'd love to find it. I've always wanted to do a study of the interaction between marine predators: mammals that prey on mammals, mammals that prey on fish, fish that prey on mammals."

"I thought you worked exclusively on whales."

"So far, yes, but the images the sea lions are bringing back on videotape are so extraordinary, the behav
ior they're recording is so remarkable, that I don't see why we can't expand our research."

"I don't get it," Chase said. "What can a sea lion with a video camera on its back see that a scientist in a boat, or even in a submersible, can't?"

"Nature," said Amanda. "Nature in action. Whales, sharks, other animals, most everything will stay away from a boat or a submersible because it's alien to them, and possibly threatening. It's a big, strange, noisy intruder, and if it does get close to them, the animals' behavior will be anything but natural. On the other hand, they're completely accustomed to having sea lions swim around them, so they go on about their business—feeding, mating, whatever, and we get it all on tape. Besides, a submersible's slow and clumsy, and it costs a fortune. A sea lion can keep up with a whale, and they're cheap—they work for a few pounds of mullet."

"How do they know to do what you want them to do?"

"Conditioning, plus native intelligence. When it comes to smarts, sea lions are in the league with dolphins and killer whales. We built a full-size model of a gray whale and fit it over an electric-powered submersible, to use to train them. From a boat, I give them a series of hand signals: swim alongside it, swim beneath it, circle around it. It doesn't take long to teach them things; they want to learn."

Chase thought for a moment, then said, "Do you think you could teach them to take pictures of something they're
not
accustomed to, something that maybe isn't natural, behavior they've never seen?"

"Like what?"

"I wish I knew," Chase said. "But things aren't right in the ocean around here. Either something new is in the area, or something's gone berserk." He told Amanda about the random slaughter of birds and animals, and about the mystery surrounding the deaths of the Bellamys.

"I can try," said Amanda, "once I get the sea lions used to the water around here, and to the humpbacks. My first priority, though, has to be to find the whales. I've chartered a spotter plane, starting this afternoon."

"A
plane
!"
Chase whistled. "That's some kind of grant you got yourself. For that kind of dough, I'd strap on wings and fly myself."

"The grant? The grant's a joke, seventy-five hundred a year for three years. It keeps me in fish, but that's about it." She hesitated, looking embarrassed, then continued. "Basically, I'm my own angel."

"How do you manage that?" Chase asked.

"How do you think? The luck of the gene pool. My great-great-grandfather was one of the whaling Macys—sometimes I think my career is penance for what he did—and he saw the collapse coming in whale oil and put all his money in petroleum. We've been loaded ever since." She smiled. "Can you live with that?"

"Hell," Chase said, laughing. "I did." He told her about his marriage to Corinne. "If I'd had any brains, I'd've taken her up on her offer and let her finance the Institute. But no, I was too proud."

"Never mind. You got something even better out of the marriage."

"What's that?"

"Max."

"Oh," he said. "Yeah. I'm just now learning more about that."

They had reached the small house on the top of the hill, in which Chase had prepared living quarters for Amanda: a bedroom, a kitchen and, because the living room had been taken up by the decompression chamber, another bedroom furnished as a sitting room.

"Are you hungry?" Chase said. "We've got sandwich fixings in the big house."

"Later," Amanda said. "First, I want to show you the present I brought you."

"Present? You didn't have to—"

"My parents always told me never to go for a visit without a house present." Grinning, she took his arm and led him beyond the house, where the land sloped down to a cove in which the bottom had been dredged to permit the approach of deep-draft boats. "There," she said, pointing at the cove. "I wanted to wrap it, but ..."

Chase looked and, when suddenly he realized what he was seeing, stopped walking. "My God . . ." he said.

On a slab of ledge rock at the edge of the cove sat something Chase had longed for ever since he had begun his graduate work: an anti-shark cage. It was a rectangular box, roughly seven feet high, five feet wide and eight feet long, made of aluminum bars and steel mesh. There were entrance hatches on the top and one end, and foot-square openings—camera ports—on each side. Two flotation tanks had been welded to the top of the cage, and even from this distance Chase could see gleaming brass fittings that told him the tanks contained their own air supplies, which meant that the cage could hover well beneath the surface.

Cages were a prime research tool for shark scientists, for they permitted safe underwater access to the animals in the open ocean. Most sharks couldn't bite through the aluminum bars, and those that probably could, like big tiger sharks or great whites, didn't. They might bite
at
the bars—testing them, determining if they were edible—but none had ever bitten through them.

From the moment he had opened the Institute, Chase had tried to acquire a cage—a discarded cage, a used cage,
any
cage—so he could perform experiments in deep water. He had found, however, that used cages were never available: there was so much demand for shark films from cable-television companies that rental houses snapped up every cage they' could find and charged usurious rates for them. Derelict cages were derelict for a reason: they were battered and broken beyond repair.

And the price for a new cage, a good cage, started at around twenty thousand dollars.

This cage looked brand-new and very good indeed. "It's beautiful," Chase said, starting down toward the cove. "But how did you—"

"It was part of my divorce settlement," Amanda said. "My ex-husband had it built three years ago; he was going to be a macho shark photographer, but he discovered a lot of competition, and switched to sea otters." She paused, then added with a wry smile, "He couldn't make a go at that either, so he decided to concentrate on bimbos. He got the Toyota; I got the shark cage. I figured you could use it."

"I sure can. I've been hoping to—"

"I know, I read your paper on bite dynamics and arthritis research. From the cage, you should be able to do some productive work with your gnathodynamometer."

"You pronounced it!" Chase said with a laugh.
Gnathodynamometer
was a ten-dollar word for a simple concept, a method of testing the bite pressure exerted by a shark's jaws. "I've never met anybody else who could pronounce it."

"No sweat," Amanda said. "Just don't ask me to spell it."

When they reached the cage, Chase ran his hand over the aluminum bars and examined welds and fittings. "It's perfect," he said, smiling. "I can't wait."

"Why wait? What's wrong with today?" . "Today?" Reflexively, Chase looked at his watch.

"There are still seven or eight more hours of daylight," Amanda said. "How far offshore do you have to go to raise sharks?"

"Not very, not for blue sharks. An hour, maybe less."

"The sooner I put the sea lions in the water," Amanda said, "the better. They can swim with blue sharks; they
like
to. They love to tease them. Have you got bait . . . and chum to bring the sharks in?"

"Uh-huh." Then Chase remembered, and he said, "But what I don't have is air. The compressor's—"

"It's fixed," said Amanda. "I asked Tall Man. He's pumping tanks now. I tell you, he's jazzed at the thought of the trip."

Chase was impressed. More than impressed. Awed. He looked at her, and saw her smiling at him, a smile not of triumph or condescension, but of confidence. He shook his head and said, "I guess I really do have to get my degree."

"What? Why?"

" 'Cause you were right the first time." He grinned. "Lady, you
are
somebody. You are
something
!"

21

THE Institute boat sat low in the water, for it had been filled with fuel and fresh water and loaded to the bulwarks with scientific, photographic and diving gear. In addition to the two-hundred-pound cage, which Chase and Tall Man had swung aboard into the stern with a block-and-tackle rig hung from a davit on the starboard side, there were four camera cases; a videotape recorder; eight scuba tanks; fifty pounds of mullet for the sea lions; three ten-gallon cans of chum—minced mackerel and tuna—to create a smelly slick that would ride the tide and lure sharks from miles around; two twenty-pound boxes of frozen bait-fish, now thawing in the sun; three dive bags packed with wet suits, masks and flippers; and, finally, a cooler full of sandwiches and sodas prepared by Mrs. Bixler.

Amanda had led the sea lions down the path to the dock, and they had willingly waddled aboard the boat. Now they huddled together in the stern, their heads bobbing and whiskers twitching with excitement. Amanda stroked them and cooed to them.

Max knelt beside her. "Are they okay?" he asked.

"Oh, sure," Amanda said. "They know the boat means work, and they can't wait. They love to work; they get bored very easily."

Max reached out a hand, and one of the sea lions bent its head toward him to have its ears scratched. "Which one is this?" he said.

"Harpo."

"I think she likes me."

Amanda smiled. "I know she does."

On the flying bridge, Chase put the boat in reverse. Tall Man stood on the pulpit and used the boat hook to fend the bow away from the rocks. When the boat had cleared the cove and Chase had turned toward deep water, Tall Man came aft and went into the cabin.

He returned a moment later and said to Amanda, "Your spotter pilot just radioed, said to tell you he'll be up in the air and looking for whales in an hour or so. I said we'd monitor channel twenty-seven." Then he looked up at the flying bridge. "There's a bulletin on sixteen," he said to Chase. "We're supposed to keep an eye out for a kid in the water."

"Who?" Chase asked.

"Bobby Tobin, the mate on Tony Madeiras's boat. They say he fell overboard. Tony swears he did a bunch of three-sixties, looking for him, but never saw a thing."

Amanda said, "Falling overboard seems to be epidemic around here."

"Why?" said Tall Man. "Who else?"

"Before I left California, I got a call from my cousin. A week or ten days ago, her boyfriend disappeared from a research ship just inside Block Island.

He was a photographer for the
Geographic.
They never found him."

The boat was still moving slowly, the engine rumbling softly, so even from ten yards away, up on the flying bridge, Chase had heard what Amanda said. He called down to Tall Man, "See if you can find a life preserver for Max."

"Dad . . ." said Max. "C'mon . . . I'm not gonna fall overboard."

"I know," Chase said. "And I bet Bobby Tobin never thought he would, either."

As they passed to the south of Block Island, Amanda gave Max a few mullets to feed to the sea lions; she climbed the ladder to the flying bridge and stood beside Chase. Rounding a point of land, they could see a couple of dozen people on a sheltered beach. Children wearing inflatable water wings played in the wavewash; two adults wearing pastel bathing caps swam back and forth twenty yards beyond the surf line, and a teenager lolled on a surfboard.