White Shark (29 page)

Instantly alert, it willed adrenaline into
its veins and lactic acid into its musculature.
 
It stayed as still as possible, moving its limbs barely enough to keep
it from falling.

Another animal passed
by, slowing briefly but not stopping.

It did not give chase, sensing that any
attempt at pursuit would be futile.
 
It
waited, feeling strength suffuse its body.

Another animal appeared, and this one came
close, circling slowly and gazing curiously.

The creature hung motionless, wanting to
appear harmless, dead.

The animal drew closer, shaking its head,
expelling a stream of tiny bubbles.

The creature waited... and waited... and
then there came an instant when the neurons in its brain formed a conclusion
that possibility had become opportunity.

It struck, lashing out with steel
claws.
 
The claws found softness.
 
The plunged deep into adipose flesh and
curled in upon one another, fashioning a grip.

The other arm sprang forward, and its
claws, too, found pinguid tissue.

The animal lurched backward.
 
Its mouth opened with an explosion of
bubbles.
 
Its appendages thrashed, its
body contorted as it struggled upward.

The creature expected the animal to retaliate,
to defend itself, but it did not.
 
Now the creature knew that the animal was an alien here, could not
survive here, so success could be achieved simply by holding it here.

After a few moments, the animal stopped
struggling.
 
Its head lolled, and blood
gushed from its torn flesh.

The creature began to feed.
 
The animal was covered with a thick layer of
fat — nourishing, energizing, warming fat — and so it was positively buoyant,
it would not sink.
 
Predator and prey
were bonded together in still suspension.

As it ate, its peripheral vision detected
other animals — larger animals, predators — attracted by the scent of blood and
oil drifting in the current.

It surrounded its food and consumed it
ravenously.

Most of the animal was edible.
 
Bones fell away into the abyss, and were
surrounded by scavengers; bits of flesh escaped and were swarmed upon by
schools of little fish.
 
There was a hard
inedible object, which the creature tore free and cast away.
 
It floated upward, toward the surface.

26

"How long till dark?
"
Amanda asked.
 
She sat on the bulwarks, stroking the heads of the three sea lions.

The late-day sun cast long shadows on the
sea, and as she turned her head, Chase saw shadows on her face as well — in the
lines of grief that etched the skin beneath her eyes.

"An hour," he said, "But we
don't need light to get back.
 
We can
stay here all night if you want."

"No," she said softly.
 
"There's no point."

They had not talked much during the past
couple of hours; they had sat and watched until their eyes were red with strain
and fatigue.
 
Max had tried to entertain
the three sea lions, had tried to feed them, but they seemed to sense something
was wrong, and they had refused to respond.

Chase had offered no more theories, though
he had one.
 
Theories wouldn't help,
especially if the one he harbored was correct.

"Okay," he said finally.
 
He stood up and looked to the west, at the
silhouette of
Block Island
.
 
They had drifted at least two miles.
 
He walked forward to start the engine as Tall
Man climbed to the flying bridge.

"It could've been the white
shark," Amanda said, as if continuing an interrupted conversation.

Chase started, for that had been his
theory, the only one that made sense.
 
The sea lions had escaped from the shark before, but they had been near
the refuge of the boat.
 
Alone in the
open ocean, a sea lion — especially one tired and distracted — might well be
ambushed by a big, fast great white shark.

"Yeah," he said.
 
"It could've."
 
He pushed the starter button and flicked the
switch that turned on the boat's running lights.
 
He rapped the overhead with his knuckles, to
tell Tall Man to head for home.

"Maybe the others picked up
something," Amanda said.
 
"Let's look at their tapes."

As Tall Man swung the boat around to the
west, Amanda took the video monitor from one of her boxes, placed it on the
table in the cabin and switched it on.
 
She connected a VCR to the monitor and inserted one of the tapes.
 
When she had rewound it, she pushed the
‘play’ button, and sat on the bench seat.
 
Max sat across the table from her; Chase stood at the end of the table.

She fast-forwarded through a couple of
minutes of blank ocean blue,
then
slowed the tape as
the first image of a whale came onto the screen.

"The whale looks so small," Max
said.

"It's a wide-angle lens," said
Amanda.
 
"It has to be, or all you
would see would be a lot of shots of blubber."

As they watched, the whale grew until it
filled the frame.

"How close is she now?" asked
Max.

"Sixty, seventy
feet.
 
She'll close in,
then
she'll stop at about thirty feet."

The image continued to grow, traveling
along the side of the whale, passing an enormous fin,
then
slowing as it reached the head.
 
When the
eye came into view, Amanda pushed the ‘pause’ button, and the image froze.

"Look at that eye," she said to
Max.
 
"Tell me that's not an
intelligent being."

"It's different from a shark's
eye," Max said.
 
"It's
...
I don't know... just different.
 
Not as flat."

"Richer
deeper."
 
Amanda smiled, enthusiasm for the moment
erasing her loss.
 
"You know why?
 
Humpbacks have a brain the size of a
basketball.
 
They say the eye is the
mirror of the soul.
 
Well, there's a heck
of a soul behind that eye."

She pushed the ‘play’ button, and the
image moved again.

There were shots of the whale from all
angles, as the sea lion had swooped around it, playing with it, riding in its
slipstream.
 
The whale had ignored the
sea lion, never altering its predestined course.

Amanda fast-forwarded through ten or
fifteen minutes of tape, until through the jiggly scan lines she saw the
whale begin
to undulate more vigorously and plunge into a
deep dive.
 
She slowed the tape then and
watched the image grow dimmer as the sea lion had followed the whale down into
the benthic darkness.

When the whale was no more than a dark
blob against the inky blueness, the camera angle suddenly swung upward and
rushed toward the light far above.

She broke off," Amanda said,
"I'd guess at about five hundred feet."

The tape ended, and she replaced it with
another.

The second sea lion had followed a large
female humpback, and as the image on the screen grew, Max suddenly shouted,
"Look!
 
A
baby!"

A calf, probably twenty feet long, was
nestled under its mother's left pectoral flipper.

"They always ride there," Amanda
said.

"Why?" asked Max.

"Partly to learn.
 
Watch, you'll
see that he does everything she does, imitates every move."

Indeed, the calf duplicated exactly his
mother's every movement.
 
When she rose
to breathe, he breathed; when she dove, he dove; when she rolled on her side to
look up at the sea lion, he rolled with her.

"See her looking?
"
Amanda said.
 
"She's
protecting him, too.
 
If there's a big
shark around, we'll see her snuggle him really close and get pretty
agitated.
 
She'll probably take him down
into the deep."

But the mother didn't get upset.
 
Evidently satisfied with her identification
of the sea lion, she rolled back onto a level plain and continued her leisurely
journey near the surface.

"Nothing," Amanda said, and she
fast-forwarded through the rest of the tape.

Two minutes into the third tape, Amanda
laughed and said, "This is Harpo's."

"How can you tell?
"
Max said.

"She's a chicken.
 
Look" — she pointed at the screen —
"she comes up behind a whale, and as soon as the tail flukes flap, she
skirts away."
 
The image on the
screen went to empty blue, broke the surface and angled down onto another
whale.
 
"It takes her about ten
minutes to figure out that they're not gonna eat her.
 
She's learning
,
she's just not as quick as the others.
 
"They've all got quirks."

"Like what?"

"Groucho likes to get too close, so
she gives me a lot of soft tape, out of focus.
 
It's as if she doesn't feel she's made contact unless she touches the
whale.
 
Chico
likes to hassle the whales, especially
the small ones.
 
She's just playing, but
sometimes she upsets them."

"What about Zeppo?
"
Chase asked.

Amanda hesitated, as if abruptly yanked
back to reality.
 
"As I said, she's
lazy.
 
What worries me is
,
she's also the most curious.
 
She'll swim right up to something, just to
see what it is."

The image on Harpo's tape zoomed from
whale to whale.
 
There were a few good
close-ups, and one spectacular shot of a whale breaching — roaring to the
surface, exploding through to the sunlight above and crashing down again with a
cataclysmic splash — but the last few minutes of the tape were blank ocean
blue.
 
Amanda fast-forwarded through it.

She had turned away from the screen to say
something to Chase, when Max yelled, "Hey!
 
Look!"

She returned to the screen.
 
"What?"

"Go back."

Amanda scanned the tape backward, and
after a few seconds she saw something — vague and blurry, but definitely
something — on the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
 
She passed it, pushed the ‘play’ button, and
the tape spooled forward.

Something was there, a shape, and then it
was gone, and the image shuddered and zoomed away toward the surface.

"What the hell was that?
"
Chase asked, leaning forward on his elbows, staring
at the monitor.

"I don't know," Amanda said,
"but whatever it was sure scared poor Harpo.
 
Did you see how fast she took off?"

Suddenly the engine slowed, and Tall Man's
foot stomped three times on the overhead.
 
Chase walked aft, out into the cockpit, and called up to the flying
bridge.
 
"See something?"

"A red blinker ahead," Tall Man
said.
 
"Like an emergency
flasher.
 
The light's so tough this time
of day, I can't tell."

Chase leaned over the side and looked
forward.
 
It was almost dark, the water
was like a sheet of black steel; against it, a tiny red light was blinking at
one-second intervals.
 
He grabbed the
boat hook, braced his knees against the bulwark and waited for Tall Man to
guide the boat to the light.

As the light slipped along the side of the
boat, Chase reached for it with the boat hook.
 
It was attached to something hard, about twelve inches square, and Chase
twisted the hook till he snagged it, then brought it aboard and set it on the
bulwark.

"It's
a camera
housing," he called to Tall Man.

"Ours?"
 
Tall Man
pushed the throttle forward and resumed his course for the island.

Chase heard footsteps behind him, then a
short, sharp gasp.

"That's Zeppo's," said Amanda.