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 of fish 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 at 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 out 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 one side; the nictating 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 is 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 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 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 stuff's been happening.  They haven't had a lesson to learn yet."

Chase said, "Do you want me 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 in 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 underweighted — 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 the two other valves, squirting air into the tanks until the cage achieved neutral buoyancy.

The shark and the sea lion were clearly visible now, two dark bodies against a canvas of blue.  A few bubbles floated up as the sea lion let air leak from its mouth.

Then, abruptly, the sea lion broke away from the shark and shot upward.  At first, Chase thought the animal had tired of the game, or needed to breathe, but there was something about its movements, an urgency, that told him he was wrong.  The sea lion sped past the cage and rushed toward the boat.  As Chase's eyes followed it upward, he saw the other sea lions — two together, one alone — swimming at the boat with the same frenzied speed.

For God's sake, Chase thought, now what?

 

*          *          *          *          *

 

"I guess they've had enough," Tall Man said as he watched the sea lions struggle onto the swimstep.  They were barking, shoving one another, desperate to get aboard.

"No," Amanda said, alarmed.  "Something's frightened them.  Something's out there."

"Like what?"  Tall Man looked overboard.  He could barely see the cage, for as it had sunk it had drifted into the shade of the boat.  Holding the rope, he walked from one side of the boat to the other, then returned to the stern.  "Nothing," he said.  "I can't see anything out there."

"It's there, though," Amanda said.  "Something... somewhere."

"Then whatever it is has gotta be deep.  Either that, or... shit!"

"What?

"Under the boat."  He pulled on the rope.

 

*          *          *          *          *

 

The cage shuddered as the rope tugged it.  Chase reached to turn the air valves.

A shadow passed overhead, so huge that it cast the entire cage in darkness.  Chase started, and looked up.  A flash of sunlight blinded him for a moment, disorienting him; by the time his eyes had adjusted, he was unsure of the direction the shadow had been traveling.  He turned.

Ten feet away, emerging from the shade of the boat, swimming at the cage with a mighty gracefulness that Chase had once admired but now found horrid, was the great white shark.  It did not slow or hesitate.  Its eyes rolled backward in their sockets; its mouth opened; its gums rotated forward; serrated white triangles stood erect.  It bit down on the cage.

Reflexively, Chase ducked and flung himself on top of Max.  The boy turned his head, his eyes widened in shock.

There was the sound of teeth scraping on metal, then a crunching of metal collapsing, then a sudden his of air and an explosion of bubbles.

The cage yawed crazily, swinging under the boat and slamming against the keel, and Chase knew instantly what had happened.  The shark had destroyed one of the flotation tanks.

 

*          *          *          *          *

 

"Goddamn you!" Tall Man shouted.  The sinews in his arms and shoulders stood out like wires as he strained at the rope.  He had seen the shark only a second before it had struck, charging out from beneath the boat like a gray torpedo.

Amanda reached over, grabbed the rope and helped him pull.  "I thought sharks never—"

"Yeah," Tall Man said.  "But guess what:  this one did."

"Why?"

"Christ knows."

They could hear the cage thumping against the keel, could feel the impact through their feet.

"Can you put the rope on the winch?" Amanda asked.

"I don't dare.  The bastard weighs better’n a ton; the weight could tear the rope away from the cage."

"What do we do?  We have to—"

"If he comes out from under the boat, I'll shoot the son of a bitch," Tall Man said.  "Till then, let's just pray he goes away."

 

*          *          *          *          *

 

Chase and Max huddled in the far corner of the cage, holding each other, holding the bars, as the cage swung wildly beneath the boat.

The shark had locked its jaws, and it twisted and thrashed its massive body as if trying to beat the cage to pieces.

Chase saw bubbles flowing from Max's regulator in a continuous stream.  The boy was hyperventilating.  He made Max look at him, pointed to his own regulator, then to Max's, and gestured for Max to slow his breathing.  Terrified, Max nodded.

Suddenly the shark released the cage, and the cage swung downward, hanging askew.  Chase saw the sharks' wide white belly slipping slowly before his eyes as the animal let itself fall.  There were five parallel slash marks in the flesh forward of the genital slit.

 

*          *          *          *          *

 

"Pull!" Tall Man said.  He and Amanda brought the rope in hand-over-hand.  Looking overboard, they could see the top of the cage as it cleared the bottom of the boat.  The shark was a gray form, hovering nearly motionless beneath the cage.  Tall Man dropped down onto the swimstep and held the rope out over the stern.  "Another five feet and we've got—"

"No!" Amanda screamed, pointing.

There was a flash of a scythelike tail, a rush of water, and the conical head of the shark broke the surface.  The mouth barely opened; it struck the swimstep, skidded, and fastened on the rope.  With a single shake of its head, the shark tore the rope from Tall Man's hand and sheared it from the cage.  Tall Man fell backward into the stern.

The shark swam away; the cage began to fall.

 

*          *          *          *          *

 

Chase lurched to his feet, grabbed the air valve on the intact flotation tank and twisted it all the way on.  There was a hiss of air, and the cage's descent slowed.  But it was still falling.

Chase inflated his buoyancy vest and Max's, hoping that removing their weight and adding buoyancy would stop the cage, make it neutral, until Tall Man could lower a rope to them.

The cage continued to fall.  Chase looked at the  depth gauge on the tank:  the needle passed thirty feet, then thirty-five, forty...

He looked quickly in every direction.  The shark had vanished.

Fifty feet...

Chase knew he had no choice, they could not ride the cage to the bottom.  They would both run out of air, probably before they reached the bottom, certainly before Tall Man could reach them.

He pulled Max to his feet and pushed open the hatch.  He put his hands on Max's shoulders and looked into the boy's eyes, willing him to recall the lessons he had learned, praying that the boy had listened.  He took his mouthpiece out and shouted the word, "Remember!"

Max understood.

Sixty feet...

Chase propelled Max up through the hatch and followed immediately.  He took the boy's hand, and faced him so he could monitor Max's breathing.

They were rising too fast, faster than their own bubbles; the air in their vests was expanding, seeking the surface, dragging them upward.  They had to slow down; if they kept rising at this pace, they were risking a ruptured lung or an embolism or the bends.

Chase vented the vests, and they slowed.  Now their bubbles were preceding them.  Good.

Chase looked at his depth gauge:  forty feet... thirty-five...   He didn't look down, he kept his eyes on Max's face.  He didn’t see the shark rising beneath them.

Twenty feet... fifteen...

Suddenly there was a splash above them, and a roil of water, and Tall Man swam down at them, carrying a speargun.

Now Chase did look down, and he saw, rising like a missile through the gloom, the yawning mouth and prolapsed jaw of the great white shark.

Tall Man pulled the trigger.  There was a puff of bubbles from the carbon-dioxide propellant, and the spear shot from the gun.  It struck the shark in the roof of the mouth, and stuck.  The shark hesitated, shaking its head to rid itself of the annoyance.  It bit down, bending the spear, crushing it.

Chase broke through the surface, pulled Max after him and shoved him onto the swimstep.  Amanda grabbed Max and hauled him into the boat as Chase swung his legs up, rolled onto the swimstep and reached down for Tall Man's hand.

But Tall Man stayed just beneath the surface, watching.  At last, he kicked upward and, in a single motion, flung himself onto the swimstep.

Chase shrugged himself out of his harness, dropped his tank on the deck and crawled forward to Max, who lay on his side as Amanda helped him out of his tank.  "Are you okay?" Chase asked.

Max's eyes were closed.  He nodded, managed a faint smile and said, "Jeez..."

"You did great... you followed the rules... you didn't panic.  You did great!"  Chase felt guilty and stupid and relieved and proud; he wanted to express all those feelings, but he didn't know how, so he simply took one of Max's hands in his, rubbed it and said, "What a hell of an initiation to open-water diving."  He saw Tall Man walking forward, toward the cabin, and said, "Hey, Tall... thanks.  I wasn't looking, I didn't see it coming."

"I know," Tall Man said.  "I thought I better give the bastard something else to chew on other than you.  That was our shark, y’know.  She's still got the tag in her."

"I've never seen behavior like that, never heard of it.  She was berserk!  It's weird, like the blue sharks, only opposite:  the white was nuts with aggression instead of fear."  Chase paused.  "But whatever's causing this behavior, it's the same creature:  there were five slashed were five slashes on that white shark's belly."

 

*          *          *          *          *

 

They raised the anchor, turned to the west, heading for home.  Chase stood at the wheel on the flying bridge; Max lay on a towel behind him, warming himself in the high afternoon sun.  Amanda was feeding the sea lions.  When she had settled them in the stern, she climbed the ladder to the bridge.

The low silhouette of OspreyIsland was just coming into view when Tall Man appeared at the foot of the ladder and said to Amanda, "Your pilot's on the radio; he's got whales."

"How far away?"

"Not far, couple miles to the east."

Amanda hesitated.  She looked at her watch, at the sea lions, then at Chase.

Chase said to Max, "How do you feel?"

"Fine," Max replied.  "I'm fine.  Let's go; I've never seen whales."

Chase turned to Amanda.  "It's up to you," he said.  "Do you think the sea lions will work?"

'Sure, till they're tired, then they'll stop."

"They're not spooked?"

"No, I don't think so.  If they see the white shark, they'll get out of the water, just like before.  Besides, sharks usually stay away from pods of big, healthy whales."

"Uh-huh," Chase said.  He swung the wheel to the left and headed east.  "I wasn't thinking only about the white shark."