White Shark (22 page)

"Sure," Chase said.
 
"But mind your manners, introduce
yourself.
 
We've never met Dr.
Macy."

Max nodded, hopped out of the Whaler and
ran up the path.

Mrs. Bixler glanced down into the
boat.
 
"Somebody been on a killing
spree?" she said, gesturing at the dead animals:
 
two gulls and a juvenile bottlenose dolphin.

"Or
something
."
 
Chase picked
up the little dolphin.
 
It was less than
three feet long; its slick skin, which in life had been a lustrous steel gray,
was now dull and flat, like charcoal ash.
 
There were deep slash marks on its back; its belly had been torn
open.
 
"I brought it back for Dr.
Macy to have a look at.
 
She knows more
about mammals than I do."

"What can she tell you that anyone
can't?
 
Something slaughtered it."

"Yeah, but
what?"
 
Chase returned the dolphin to the bottom of
the boat.
 
"I'll pack it in ice till
we can do a proper autopsy."
 
He stepped
out of the boat, tied it fore and aft and climbed the steps to the dock.
 
"Did you get Macy settled in?" he
asked.

"I showed her around;
Tall
showed her stuff."

"What's she like?"

Mrs. Bixler shrugged.
 
"Seems to be full of
enthusiasm, dresses like she's going on safari.
 
But at least she doesn't parade her degrees
like most of them do."

Chase started up the hill, and when he
reached the crest, he heard Max's voice — screaming, he thought at first, but
then realized what he was hearing wasn't screams but laughter.

He looked down and saw Max splashing in
the shoulder-deep water in the tank Chase had built for the sea lions.
 
Four dark shapes zoomed around him, streaking
by him underwater, paddling behind him on the surface,
deftly
avoiding him as he lunged at them.

A woman stood on the lip of the tank,
gesturing to the sea lions and laughing with Max.

Because neither she nor Max had noticed
him, Chase was able to study her as he walked down the hill.

Tall and sturdily built, Amanda Macy
looked like either a model for the Lands' End catalog or the ambassador from
the court of L.L. Bean.
 
She was wearing
Top-Sider moccasins, knee-length hiking shorts, a khaki shirt with epaulets, a
Croakie to secure the sunglasses that hung around her neck, and a stainless steel
diver's watch.
 
Her legs were tan and
muscular, her hair sun-bleached and short.

She looked younger than he had imagined,
though why he had assumed she would be his age or older he didn't know.
 
He tried to see her face, but her back was to
him.
 
Suddenly an alarm sounded in his
head, an alarm he had not anticipated.
 
Oh Lord, he thought as he drew
near,
don't let
her have a pretty face.

Some men were fixated on women's breasts,
some on their buttocks or their hands or legs or feet.
 
Chase had always been a sucker for a pretty
face.
 
All his life he had fallen for
faces, irrationally — and fully knowing it was irrational — ignoring the
neuroses, personality disorders, stupidity, greed and vanity that often lay beneath
the skin of those faces.

He would have to work with this woman for
three months.
 
The last thing he needed
was the added complication of being smitten.

Then Max saw Chase and shouted,
"Dad!" and waved, and Dr. Macy turned around.

Chase blew out a breath of relief.
 
Her face was nice, and well proportioned,
handsome, even, but not a heart-stopper.
 
He held out his hand and said, "Simon Chase."

"Amanda Macy," she said, taking
his hand with a firm, confident grip, and smiling with lips that wore no
lipstick.

"I see Max wasn't exactly shy."

"Oh, he was very polite," Amanda
said.
 
"It was me that cut off the
small talk.
 
I told him that if he wanted
to get to know the sea lions, the best way was to jump right into the water
with them.
 
He's a natural in the water,
by the way, and seems more gifted with animals than a lot of kids.
 
They took to him right away."

"Dad!
"
Max
shouted.
 
"Watch!"

Chase looked into the tank.
 
Two of the sea lions were facing Max, their
heads out of the water.
 
Max splashed one
of them, and suddenly both sea lions exploded in a blur of flippers, splashing
Max like playground bullies.
 
He shrieked
with laughter and ducked underwater, and the sea lions dashed after him,
brushing him with their silky bodies, spinning him in circles.

"Amazing," Amanda said.
 
"They usually take a long time to trust
someone.
 
They must sense
a benevolence
, a kind of innocence, in children... or in
this
child, anyway."

"They never bite?"

Amanda laughed.
 
"That's a parent asking, right, not a
scientist?"

"Right," Chase said.

"The only reason an intelligent
mammal like this will bite anything or anybody
are
food, fear and aggression.
 
These four
are all females, so there's no problem with sexual aggression.
 
They're well fed.
 
And they don't have anything to
fear."
 
She paused.
 
"They're not at all like sharks."

Chase's eyes followed Max as he frolicked
with the sea lions.
 
"So I
see," he said.

"To me, these animals are a lot
closer to people than to sharks.
 
They
need attention and affection, from each other and from me.
 
They like to have their teeth brushed and
their coats stroked.
 
I've raised them
since they were pups."

Max popped to the surface, laughing, and
Chase waved him to the side of the tank.
 
"Come on out of there," he said.
 
"You're turning blue."

"But Dad..."

Amanda said, "The sea lions need a
rest, Max, same as you.
 
You've given
them quite a workout."

Max hauled himself out of the tank, and
Chase rubbed his shoulders and back.
 
"You feel like a Popsicle," he said.

Max pointed at the sea lions, which, as
soon as he had left the tank, had scrambled up onto the rocks and were sunning
themselves
.

"They're called Harpo,
Chico
, Groucho and
Zeppo," Max said.
 
"I don't
know which is which, but Dr. Macy told me that when I get to know them better,
I can pick one to be my special friend."

Chase felt Max shivering under his hands,
and he said, "Go take a shower and put on some warm clothes."

Max started away, then turned back and
said to Amanda, "Later can I play with them some more?"

"Sure," Amanda said with a
little laugh, "but only when I'm here with them.
 
You have to learn the signals, just like they
did."

Chase had constructed a shed against the
rocks behind the tank, and Amanda ducked inside and came back with a bucket of
fish.
 
"Lunchtime, ladies!" she
called as she approached the edge of the tank.
 
The sea lions slid off the rocks and into the water and, barking
impatiently, swam over to her, lined up in a row and waited.

She fed them each a fish, then another and
another, and when they had all had their allotted
five,
she rubbed each on the head and behind the ears.

She replaced the bucket in the shed,
then
said to Chase, "This is a wonderful place.
 
Were you brought up around here?"

"Not on the island... in
Waterboro."

"Where did you go to school?"

"All over the place," Chase
replied, thinking.
 
Here it comes.
 
Briefly, he debated planting a lie, but
because in his experience lies tended to grow until they became unsustainable,
he told the truth.
 
"The last place
was URI —
Rhode Island
."

"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 back her head 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 behavior 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."