Peter Benchley's Creature (8 page)

"Where is she, Tall?"

Tall Man pointed. "About twenty yards thataway, but you don't—"

"She's so worn out and confused, she won't pay any attention to me. Last thing she wants to do is eat anybody."

"You know that, do you?"

"Sure," Chase said, forcing a smile and pulling on his flippers. "At least, I
hope
that."

"Dad!" Max said, as Chase's intent suddenly dawned on him. "You can't-—"

"Trust me, Max." Chase pulled the mask over his face and rolled backward off the bulwark.

The driver of the outboard saw the splash as Chase fell into the water, and he shouted, "Hey! What the hell's he up to?"

"What you shoulda done way back when," Tall Man said.

The boy picked up his shotgun and cocked it. "You get him back, or—"

"Put that away, you little prick," said Tall Man, in a voice as flat and hard as slate, "or I'll come over there and make you eat it."

The boy looked up at the huge dark man towering over him on the flying bridge of the much larger boat, and he lowered the shotgun.

Chase located the line feeding down from the outboard and followed it with his eyes until he saw the shark. He took three or four deep breaths on the surface, held the final one and thrust himself downward with his flippers.

The shark had stopped fighting, for in its initial thrashing it had rolled up into the steel leader and then into the line itself, and now it was circled with monofilament strands that pressed into its flesh. It lolled on its side; perhaps resting for a final, futile attempt to escape, perhaps already resigned to death.

Chase swam to it, staying away from the snarls of line until he was within arm's reach of the tail of the shark.

He had never before swum in the open with a great white shark. He had seen them from the safety of a cage, had touched their tails as they swept by the bars in pursuit of hanging baits, had marveled at their power, but he had never been alone in the sea with this ultimate predator.

He permitted himself a moment to run his hand down the steel-smooth skin of the back, then backward against the grain of the dermal denticles, which felt like rubbing sandpaper. He found his tagging dart and its tiny transmitter, still securely set in the skin behind the dorsal fin. Then he leaned over the shark; its eye gazed at him with neither fear nor hostility, but with a blank and fathomless neutrality.

There were six loops around the shark—one of steel, five of monofilament—starting just forward of the tail, ending just forward of the pectoral fins. Chase hovered above the shark, nearly lying upon its back, took the wire cutters from his belt and cut the loops one by one. As each muscle group in the torpedo-like body sensed freedom, it began to shudder and ripple. When the last loop was gone, the shark swung downward, suspended only by the wire in its mouth that led to the hook deep in its belly. Chase reached his hand into the mouth of the shark and snipped the wire.

The shark was free. It began to fall, upside down, and for a moment Chase feared that it had died, that the lack of forward motion had deprived it of oxygen and it had asphyxiated. But then the tail swept once from side to side, the shark rolled over and its mouth opened as water rushed over its gills. It turned in a circle, its eye fixed on Chase, and rose toward him.

It came slowly, relentlessly, unexcited, unafraid, its mouth half open, its tail thrusting it forward.

Chase did not turn or flee or backpedal. He faced the shark and watched its eyes, knowing that the only warning he would have of an imminent attack would be the rotating of its eyeballs, an instinctive protection against the teeth or claws of its victim.

He heard his temples pounding and felt arrows of adrenaline shooting through his limbs.

The shark came on, face-to-face, until it was four feet from Chase, then suddenly rolled onto its side, presenting its snow-white belly distended with young, and angled downward, like a banking fighter plane, disappearing into the blue-green depths.

Chase watched until the shark was gone. Then he surfaced, snatched a few gasping breaths and made his way back to the boat. He pulled himself out of the water, and as he sat on the swimstep to remove his flippers, he noticed that the pulpit of the Institute boat was hovering over the hull of the outboard. He heard Tall Man say, "So, we got a deal, right? The story is, you hooked the shark, saw that it was tagged and reported it to us. We tell the papers what fine citizens you are."

The sullen boys stood in the stern of the outboard, and one of them said, "Yeah, okay. . . ."

Tall Man looked down, saw that Chase was aboard, then put the boat in reverse. "Thanks," he called to the boys.

Chase passed Max his flippers and climbed up through the door in the transom.

Max looked angry. "That was really dumb, Dad," he said. "You could've—"

"It was a calculated risk, Max," Chase said. "That's what dealing with wild animals is. I was pretty sure she wouldn't bite me; I made a judgment that the risk was worth taking, to save the life of that mama shark."

"But suppose you'd been wrong. Is a shark's life worth as much as yours?"

"That's not the point; the point is, I knew what I had to do. The Bible may say man has dominion over animals, but that doesn't mean we've got the right to wipe them off the face of the earth."

*   *   *

Max was standing at the end of the pulpit, Chase behind him on the foredeck, as they passed through a stretch of deep water between the islands.

Suddenly Max shouted, "Dad!" and pointed down into the water.

A dolphin had appeared from nowhere and was riding the bow wave of the boat, coasting effortlessly on the bulb of water created by the boat's forward motion. They could see its shiny gray back, its pointed snout, the puckered blowhole in the top of its head. They could hear sounds—faint clicks and trills—coming from somewhere within the animal.

"He's talking!" Max said excitedly. "That's how they talk! I wonder what he's saying,"

"Probably just jabbering . . . maybe calling his buddies over, maybe saying something like 'Whee!'"

For several moments, the dolphin's body barely moved; it let the momentum of the boat carry it along. Then, for some reason, it accelerated, thrusting its horizontal tail up and down, and pulled ahead of the boat. It slowed, waited for the boat to catch up and resumed its ride.

"Look at that tail," Chase said.

Max leaned over the pulpit. "What about it?"

"The left fluke. Look at the scars."

Max looked, and saw five deep white slashes, an inch or two apart, in the flesh of the tail fluke. "What did that?" he asked.

"This dolphin was attacked by something," Chase said. "I'd say he was lucky to get away."

"A shark?"

"No, not a shark, no shark did that. A shark bite would be semicircular."

"A killer whale?"

"No, you'd see punctures or drag marks from the conical teeth, not sharp slashes like those." Chase frowned. "They look like claw marks, like a tiger's or a bear's."

"What lives in the ocean and has five claws?"

"Nothing," Chase said. "Nothing I've ever heard of."

11

THE dock had been built in a cove on the northwest corner of the island, and as the boat puttered up to it, Chase nudged Max and pointed overhead and smiled: a pair of ospreys were flying high over the water, searching for food for their young, which were sheltered safely on nesting poles that Chase had built.

"Once ospreys were almost wiped out," he told Max. "For some reason, their eggs had become so weak they were cracking before the chicks could hatch. A scientist got to wondering what was doing it, and he found out: DDT. The pesticide was leaching into the water and poisoning the food chain, and the fish the ospreys were eating were destroying their eggs. That discovery was the beginning of the Environmental Defense Fund. Once they got DDT banned, the ospreys started coming back. They're in pretty good shape now."

A one-winged blue heron stood sentinel over his tidal pool by the dock.

"Hey, Chief," Tall Man called to the bird, then he looked at Chase and said, "The Chief is pissed. His lunch is late."

"That's Chief Joseph;" Chase explained to Max. "Some kids found him over at the borough beach. He had a broken wing; the vet they took him to said the wing was too badly smashed to fix, he wanted to put him to sleep, but I said no, just amputate the wing and let us have him. He's become a real prima donna. Twice a day he walks around in the shallows, the rest of the time he stands there and complains that we don't feed him enough."

"Why'd you name him Chief Joseph?" Max asked.

"Tall named him that, after the Nez Perce chief . . . you know, the Battle of Bear Paw Mountains. He said that with only one wing the heron reminded him of what Chief Joseph said after the battle: 'I will fight no more forever.'"

"Is the Chief friendly?"

"If you've got food he is. If you don't, he's a perfect pain in the ass."

Max grinned. "Maybe
I'll
find some special animal, something I can take care of and name."

"Sure," Chase said. "Maybe you will."

Tall Man guided the boat into its slip between two smaller craft-—a Whaler and a Mako—and Chase hopped onto the dock and retrieved the lines. He tossed the stern and spring lines to Tall Man and returned aboard to show Max how to cleat the bow line.

Then, while Tall Man went to find food for the heron, Chase and Max went on up the hill.

Osprey Island had been a private family compound for nearly a hundred years, but over four generations the family had outgrown the five houses that local zoning permitted. Periodically, family members had tried to buy one another out, but they had found themselves caught in a paradox.

Technically, because it consisted of thirty-five acres of waterfront property, the island was worth a fortune, and the state and township had taxed it accordingly. Over the past two decades, taxes had doubled, and doubled again, until finally the cost of running the enclave had approached a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. One by one, family members had discovered that for their allotted two weeks on the island every summer, they were paying more than the cost of renting a decent house on Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard for two months.

They had tried to sell the island, and discovered that, in fact, it wasn't worth very much at all because nobody—including the family members themselves— wanted to pay its assessed value.

And so, in a calculated act of revenge against the local "taxocrats," the family corporation, an entity that existed solely to run the island, had taken out as large a mortgage as the local bank would permit—half the assessed value—had split the proceeds among the twelve families within the family . . . and had then dissolved itself and abandoned the island, leaving its liens, its taxes and its upkeep in the hands of the bank.

Simon Chase had been welcomed by the bank and the town as the new owner. He had deep roots in the local community, and though as a nonprofit entity the Institute might not pay local taxes, some of Chase's projects might generate substantial revenue for the townspeople. For example, he might find a way to bring the shellfishing industry back. For years, the beds of clams, scallops and mussels around Waterboro had been so badly polluted that no one was permitted to dig, eat or sell any of the mollusks. Perhaps Chase could find a way to clean up the beds.

Local merchants knew, furthermore, that the Institute wouldn't be competition for any of them. And finally, Chase's grand plans for the island promised to bless the area with what it needed most: jobs.

Defense cutbacks had slashed jobs from the largest employer in southeastern Connecticut, Electric Boat in Groton, and the ripple effect from EB and other damaged companies had decimated service industries. Restaurants and grocery stores, saloons and gift shops had shut their doors, to be replaced here and there by antique stores and art galleries. Waterboro was being gentrified and ossified, and it was hoped that the Institute would be able to restore life to the community. Hundreds of people would be employed to build it, wire it and plumb it, and when it was completed, dozens more would find full-time jobs there or in one of the many businesses that serviced it.

For a year, it had seemed that the dream might come true. Chase had taken a course in preparing grant applications, and he had received a hundred-thousand-dollar grant to buy boats and basic scientific equipment. He had also received preliminary approval for grants for projects involving endangered species, commercial fishing and medical research from the federal government, the state of Connecticut and several private foundations. One of the grants would have enabled him to study the curious fact that sharks, which had no bones, were immune to both cancer and arthritis and could exert phenomenal bite pressure— as much as twenty tons per square inch—with a jaw made entirely of cartilage. Another would have let him contribute to studies testing the remote possibility that powdered shark cartilage contained cancer-killing properties. Doctors working with a control group in Cuba had claimed a 40 percent reduction in tumors among patients who were given high doses of the cartilage.

And then, in late 1995, the bottom had fallen out of the economy. The national debt had grown to six trillion dollars; the President and the Congress, obsessed with reelection, had refused to make the hard decisions necessary to deal with the budget deficit. The Germans and the Japanese and the Arabs, who had supported the vaunted American way of life for more than a dozen years, looked across the water and, disgusted at long last, proclaimed the United States effectively extinct as a world power and pulled their money out.

Inflation had begun to soar; interest rates were reaching double digits; the stock market had dropped a thousand points and so far showed no signs that it had bottomed out; unemployment nationwide was 11 percent; one family in four now lived below the poverty line.

In the space of a single week, every one of Chase's grants had been refused. New construction was the last thing he had money for. He could barely pay his staff of three, could barely feed himself. Had he not been successful in obtaining tax-exempt status for the Institute, he would already have had to follow his predecessors and abandon the island.