Peter Benchley's Creature (19 page)

This time the shark did not turn, but kept going, roiling the water with its tail and vanishing into the gray-green mist.

The creature let itself slip to the bottom. It oriented itself, then searched the surface for the two large living things.

They were gone. The water was undisturbed by sounds or pressure, variations.

The creature turned toward deep water, to hunt again.

Ashore, the girl wrapped herself in her towel, gathered up her bathing suit and stalked away, leaving the boy to search for his trunks in the dune grass where she had thrown them.

23

THE boat was anchored in two hundred feet of water; the cage floated twenty feet behind it, tethered by a rope cleated on the stern. For an hour, Chase and Tall Man had been ladling chum overboard, and the still air in the cockpit reeked of blood and fish oil. A slick fanned out behind the boat, carried by the tide, its rainbow flatness easily discernible against the calm water.

Two scuba tanks had been rigged with harnesses and regulators, and they lay on the deck beside flippers and masks. Amanda and Chase had pulled wet suits on up to their waists, letting the tops hang down. Sweat glistened on their arms and shoulders; Amanda's back was turning pink with sunburn.

She walked forward, dipped a bucket in the clean water, returned and gently doused the sea lions, which lay together in a heap, sleeping. "I'm going to have to put the girls in the water pretty soon," she said. "They can't take this heat."

"The radio said it might reach a hundred today," Tall Man said, wiping his face, "and I'll bet—"

"Shark!" Max suddenly shouted from the flying bridge. "I see one!"

They looked aft. Fifty yards away, a triangular dorsal fin sliced through the slick; a tail fin followed it, thrashing back and forth.

"It's a blue," said Chase. "I knew we'd raise them."

"How can you tell from this far away?" Amanda asked.

"Short, stubby dorsal. . . sharp caudal fin ... dark blue."

"How big?"

"Gauging the distance between the dorsal and the tail . . . I'd say ten, eleven feet." He looked up at Max. "Good for you. Keep a sharp eye, there'll be others."

"There!" Max said, pointing. "Behind the ... no, two! There're two more!"

As if sensing the excitement in Max's voice, the sea lions stirred and rose up on their flippers, sniffing the air.

"Let's get ready," Chase said to Amanda, and he dropped the ladle into the chum bucket.

By the time Chase and Amanda had pulled up their wet suits, put on their tanks and rinsed their masks, six blue sharks were crisscrossing the chum slick, moving closer to the cage with each pass.

"Toss 'em a fish or two now and then," Chase said to Tall Man, "just to keep 'em interested." He opened a hatch between his feet, reached down and pulled out two pieces of white plastic, each about the size of a shirt cardboard, sewn together face-to-face. A piece of rope was braided into one corner.

"What's that?" Amanda said. "A plastic sandwich?"

"Exactly." Chase smiled. "But we world-class scientists, we call it a gnathodynamometer."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. Simple but effective. This is sensitized laboratory plastic. And inside here," Chase said, prying the pieces apart, "is a ripe mackerel. Once Tall gets the sharks feeding, I'll hold my sandwich out through one of the camera ports; a shark'll sniff the mackerel and bite down on the plastic. I'll let him gnaw the hell out of it, then take it away from him. When I get the plastic back to the lab, I'll use a micrometer to see how deep he bit, and a set of tables will tell me how much pressure he exerted."

"Amazing," Amanda said. "The whole thing must have cost about three dollars."

"Ten dollars, actually. But add the cost of the cage, the boat, the fuel and the crew, and now you're talking about a hundred thousand." Chase paused, watching the sharks circling close to the cage, then said, "Are you sure you want to put those sea lions in the water?"

"You watch," she said with a smile. "They'll make fools out of your sharks." She opened the door in the transom, stepped down onto the swimstep, pulled a bucket offish to her and called each sea lion by name. One by one, they waddled over to her, received a fish and, when she swung her arm and thrust her hand toward the water, flopped down onto the swimstep and into the sea.

Chase watched their brown bodies flash between the gunmetal backs of the sharks, then dart away into the blue water.

"Ready?" Amanda said. She reached inside the door for her video camera.

Chase didn't answer. He kept watching the water, even after the sea lions were out of sight. He was excited, as he had expected to be; what he hadn't expected was the vague unease that shadowed his excitement—not fear, nothing specific, but rather a sense of foreboding.

"Don't worry about my sea lions," Amanda said. "They'll be fine."

"I'm not," Chase said. "I'm not worried about blue sharks, either. I just can't help wondering what the hell else is out there."

"Forget it, Simon," said Tall Man. He took the rope tied to the cage and pulled on it, drawing the cage up to the stern of the boat. "Nothing's gonna mess with that cage."

Chase said, "You're right." He dropped down onto the swimstep, leaned to the cage and opened the hatch in the top. A blue shark nudged the cage, then whirled away.

As Chase straightened up, put on his mask and put in his mouthpiece, he heard Max call, "Dad . . ."

He looked up to the flying bridge. The boy looked small and far away.

"Be careful," Max said.

Chase shot Max a thumbs-up sign, pulled down his mask, held the plastic sandwich to his chest and stepped through the hatch into the cold, dark water.

Amanda followed immediately. When Tall Man saw that she was safely inside the cage and had pulled the hatch closed, he let go of the tether; the cage drifted back till the rope went taut. He made sure the knot of the cleat was secure, then tossed a few mackerel overboard and resumed chumming.

It took a moment for the bubbles to dissipate and the water to clear. Chase glanced at Amanda, saw her adjusting her video camera and gazed out into the surrounding blue.

A mackerel plopped into the water overhead and sank in front of the cage, yawing like a leaf. A sea lion swooped around the side of the cage, snatched the fish in its teeth and hovered for a beat, as if posing for Amanda's camera. Then it bit down on the mackerel, blood puffed from the sides of its mouth and, chewing, it swam away.

Chase looked for the sharks. He saw three, fifty or sixty feet away, at the limit of his vision: dark shapes cruising unhurriedly back and forth. It won't take long, he thought, they're just being cautious; in a minute they'll get used to us, and they'll come in to feed.

Three more mackerel fell before the cage, one on each side, one in front. A sea lion grabbed one; the other two continued to fall.

Two of the three sharks swung around and swam at the cage, their movements no longer slow and sinuous but quick and jerky; now they were not cruising, they were hunting.

A mackerel was directly in front of Chase, no more than three feet away. Like a fighter plane locked on to a target, one of the sharks closed in on the mackerel. Its mouth opened; it rolled on its side; the nictitating membrane that protected its eye slid downward. . . .

Suddenly the shark halted; its body arched. It turned in a tight circle and fled into the gloom. The mackerel continued to fall, untouched.

Chase looked at Amanda and spread his hands: what was
that
all about? He knew that while blue sharks rarely attacked human beings, they were not afraid of humans; and yet it certainly seemed to Chase that the shark had suddenly panicked when it had seen him and Amanda. She shrugged and shook her head.

Chase pushed the plastic sandwich out through the camera port, squeezed it to force fish juices into the water and waved it tantalizingly.

A sea lion approached and sniffed it, but Amanda signaled for it to move away, and it obeyed.

Between the bars at the bottom of the cage, Chase saw a shark rising from below. It had caught the scent, was seeking its source. He held the plastic as far as possible from the cage, letting it dangle from the rope. The shark rose, and turned, homing.

Come on, baby, Chase murmured in his mind, come on.

The shark opened its mouth, showing rows of small white triangles. It was five feet from the bait, then three. . . .

Chase gripped the rope as tight as he could, knowing he'd have to fight to keep the shark from tearing the entire rig from him. As the shark rolled on its side, he could see its eye.

The shark froze, as if it had struck a wall. Its mouth closed, and with two thrusts of its powerful tail it disappeared into the deep.

Chase turned to Amanda and gestured upward with both thumbs. He kicked off the bottom of the cage, pushed the hatch open and hauled himself out of the water till his elbows rested on the top of the cage. He removed his mouthpiece and raised his mask.

"What's spooking them?" Tall Man asked. He had seen it all from the surface.

"Damned if I know."

Amanda squeezed up through the hatch and joined Chase in the opening.

"I've never seen that in my life," said Chase. "Blue sharks are not afraid of people."

"These sure are," Amanda said. "Did you see the scars on that last one?"

"No, where?"

"All down one flank. Not mating scars, either, I've seen mating scars. These weren't random, they were five big slashes, all pretty much parallel. And fresh."

"Five?" Chase said. "You're sure?"

"Positive. Why?"

"About a week ago, we saw a big dolphin with five deep cuts on its tail."

"From what?"

"That's the question." Chase looked up at Tall Man. "What d'you think?"

"Give it one more shot," Tall Man said. He emptied a bucket of chum into the water, and followed it with a dozen mackerel. "If that don't bring 'em around, nothing will."

They waited for a moment, letting the blood and guts disperse in the water, then dropped back into the cage.

Clouds of red billowed in the water; bodies of fish floated down like debris. Through the haze Chase saw two sharks, twenty or thirty feet away, but by the time he had reached up and secured the hatch above them, they were gone. He checked his watch, then gripped the bars and gazed out through the camera port. After five minutes, the blood had disappeared, the fish had sunk to the bottom. The only life Chase saw was the sea lions, which passed by the cage in ones and twos, playing.

He signaled for Amanda to go up.

*    *   *

When they had boarded the boat and shucked their tanks, Chase said to Amanda, "It doesn't make sense; something's wrong. It's almost as if they're passing the word: 'Stay away, humans are bad news.' But that can't be . . . unless there's some electromagnetic anomaly in the water that they're all sensing at once, and it's somehow connected to humans."

"You'd think my sea lions would pick it up first," Amanda said. "I don't mean to insult your sharks, but my ladies are a little higher on the chain of brains."

"Could be," Tall Man said, "but your sea lions haven't been around here when the bad stuffs been happening. They haven't had a lesson to learn yet."

Chase said, "Do you want to call them back, bring them aboard?"

"I can, if we're moving on," Amanda said. "Otherwise, they'll come back when they're ready."

"I thought we might try another spot, just for the—"

"Dad . . ." Max said from his perch on the flying bridge. "Can I go into the cage?"

"You mean with a tank on? I don't—"

"There're no sharks around."

"Yeah, but I don't think two hundred feet of water with a five-mile chum slick running is exactly the time to start—"

"Please? . . . Hey, I'd be in a cage. With you." Max smiled, teasing his father as he pleaded. "What're you worried about. . . that we'll get struck by lightning?"

Chase looked to Tall Man for support, then to Amanda, but neither would come to his rescue. Parenting time, he thought; these decisions always seem to come when you least expect them. At last, he said, "Okay."

Max didn't have a wet suit, so Amanda lent him hers. It was too big for him, probably wouldn't keep him warm, but it would prevent him from cutting or bruising himself on the cage. Chase rigged a tank for him and, when they were both dressed and ready, ran through the diving drill with him.

"The
most
important thing," Chase said finally, "is not ever to—"

"I know: hold my breath. But we won't be down too deep."

"We won't be deep at all, the cage'll be right on the surface, but you'll still be four or five feet below the surface. You can get an embolism in two feet." Chase paused. "Set?"

"Set."

"I'll go first; Tall'll tell you when to come; Amanda'll give you a hand." Chase glanced prayerfully at the sky, then stepped through the hatch into the cage.

A moment later, Max slipped through the hatch, landing on his feet. He cleared his mask and purged his regulator.

Chase saw that the boy was slightly under-weighted—the buoyancy of the wet suit tended to lift him off the bottom of the cage—so he gestured for Max to grip the bars. Max nodded and obeyed, and together they looked out at the empty sea.

They saw no sharks, no sea lions, nothing at all. Then Max dropped to his knees, looked down, tugged at Chase's leg and pointed. Far below them, barely visible, was a single small shark. A sea lion swooped around it, hassling it. Max pressed his face to the bottom of the cage, trying to see better.

The animals were just beyond the range of clear vision. If only they'd come up, Chase thought, even ten feet, Max could get a good look. Then he remembered the flotation tanks, and realized that if the animals wouldn't come up to him, he could take the cage down closer to them. He bent down and checked the air gauge attached to Max's regulator: two thousand pounds. Plenty. Then he reached up and opened the flood valves on both flotation tanks.

The cage began to sink. It jerked for a moment, then fell smoothly as Tall Man paid out slack from the rope on the boat. When the depth gauge on one of the tanks told Chase that the top of the cage was fifteen feet below the surface, he shut the flood valves and opened two other valves, squirting air into the tanks until the cage achieved neutral buoyancy.