“I thought you said you weren’t expecting company,” he whispered. He looked pissed.
Bill adjusted his grip on the pistol and went into the hall. The thump came again. I heard his steps moving down the hall toward the door. There was a moment of absolute silence and then the door creaked open.
“Jesus!” I heard from across the cabin.
Rapid footsteps thumped back down the hall. Bill came racing back into the room, slamming the door shut behind him. His eyes were wide, his face white as the freshly-painted walls of a state penitentiary. He was scared out of his mind.
Bill just stared at me, too terrified to even speak. I could hear lumbering footsteps approaching the door. Bill tucked his gun into the back of his pants and ran to the window. He pulled himself up with both hands and launched himself through, crashing to the grass on the other side.
The bedroom door banged open and the Fish-Man stuck in his head, hissing like an enraged dragon.
Chapter Twenty
I never thought I’d be relieved to see the Fish-Man.
The beast shambled over to the window and stuck out its head, turning it this way and that. A moment later, satisfied that Bill was no longer a threat, it came around to my side of the bed and examined me, looking me up and down with curiosity.
I was utterly helpless.
It tugged at the extension cord that Bill had used to tie up my ankles. Then it took the cord in both hands and snapped it like a piece of licorice. It pulled the loose end out, untying the knot. Then it hovered over me, examining the bungee cord binding my wrists. It hooked a claw underneath the cord and pulled, snipping it like a ribbon.
I reached up and peeled the tape off my face and spat out my underwear. Timidly, I rolled over and sat up, staring at the Fish-Man. It stood beside the bed, regarding me placidly with its big eye, its gills fluttering, its great chest and shoulders rising and falling gently.
“Thank you,” I said.
I was being foolish, of course. The creature didn’t understand a word I was saying, and for all I knew it would end up killing me; but I felt like it needed to be said. And, to be honest, the more time I spent with the Fish-Man, the less afraid of it I was. It was too intelligent for me to think of it as merely an animal.
The creature turned and shambled back out of the room. I listened as it ambled back down the hall, floorboards creaking in its wake. I didn’t know how it knew I was in danger, but I was glad that it had come when it had.
I rubbed my wrists, restoring the circulation, and picked up the plate and the empty beer can. The butterfly was crawling up the side of the empty window frame. I nudged it out, took one last glance out the window to make sure Bill was nowhere in sight, and then gently closed the shutters and locked them. I might have been in jail, but at least I had a good warden.
Had I not lost my phone, I would have called the police. Given them an anonymous tip, at least, that Bill was in the area. But I couldn’t risk having them come to the cabin with the Fish-Man around. I felt like I should warn other people, but I had no way of getting hold of anybody.
I went down the hall. The Fish-Man was gone. The door to the porch was open, but appeared undamaged. I’d forgotten to lock it. Apparently, it had figured out how to use the handle.
My stomach growled. Suddenly, I was famished.
I went to the kitchen. Bill had taken the time to close the bag holding the bread and to cover the open can of tuna with plastic wrap and put it back in the fridge. I shook my head. I guess old habits die hard.
I pulled out two slices of bread and the mayo and then paused. I took a second plate out of the cupboard and put a second pair of bread slices on it. I put mayo on one sandwich and then divided the rest of the tuna between the two sandwiches. I cut the one with the mayo in two. Then I took both plates outside onto the porch. The Fish-Man was squatting in the front yard. I had no idea what it would do if Chet suddenly pulled into the drive and I didn’t want to find out. I wished there was some way I could have warned him, but I didn’t have a landline at the cabin. Nobody had landlines anymore.
I went down the steps cautiously, uncertain how the Fish-Man would respond. It watched me intently, but made no move as I approached. I sat down in the grass beside it, setting the plates down in front of me. I picked up one half of the sandwich with mayo and took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. Then I set the rest down and picked up the second plate and held it out toward the Fish-Man.
The Fish-Man regarded it placidly.
I set it down and took another bite from my sandwich. The Fish-Man watched me eat. When I’d finished the first half of my sandwich, it stretched out one of its long arms and plucked the second sandwich from the plate. It regarded it suspiciously, examining it with first one eye then the other. It sniffed it, then tentatively extended its tongue and licked between the slices of bread. It made a soft croaking sound and swelled up its throat, then it placed the whole sandwich in its mouth and swallowed.
I laughed. I found the Fish-Man’s reactions delightful.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s called a sandwich.”
The Fish-Man regarded me skeptically, as if trying to determine if I was making fun of it. Then it reached down and pushed its finger into the soft mud. It pulled its finger back toward itself and then raised it. It pushed its finger back into the dirt a second time and made a second line, crossing the first.
I stared in astonishment at the mark. Was it ... trying to communicate?!
My heart thumped in my chest, and my mind started racing.
Impossible! Incredible!
All this time I’d never quite believed that the Fish-Man was anything but a highly evolved animal. I’d never really believed that it was intelligent in the way that humans were intelligent. But here it was, drawing signs in the sand. Unless these marks were some kind of freak behavior — which seemed incredibly unlikely — I was staring at incontrovertible evidence that the Fish-Man was as smart as, or smarter than, the most intelligent primates on the planet. Certainly as smart as a dolphin; perhaps even as smart as a primitive human.
But what did the symbol mean? It was like a crooked “t”. The crossbar was slanted, almost making an “x”.
I reached forward and stuck my own finger into the mud and tried to duplicate the creature’s symbol.
The Fish-Man leaned closer, trilling softly. It drew another symbol, this one a sort of crescent, but also with a slanting crossbar, like a round “t”.
I copied this one as well. The Fish-Man croaked somewhat excitedly and began to draw more symbols: circles; semi-circles; lines with one dot or two, on opposite sides or the same side of the bar; boxes; boxes with dots; diamonds; diamonds with dots. There was one of each, as if it wanted to show me every symbol that it knew. It was undeniably a written language of some sort, though whether pictographic or alphabetic I couldn’t immediately determine. I needed a linguist to make sense of it.
“Wait here,” I said excitedly.
I jumped to my feet and ran into the cabin. I found a notebook of lined paper and a pen and ran back outside. I sat down beside the Fish-Man (almost touching its knee) and began to copy all of the symbols into my book. The Fish-Man watched me as I duplicated the marks on the paper with my pen, clearly fascinated. When I was done writing down all the symbols — over fifty of them — I looked at the Fish-Man, hesitating.
How intelligent is this creature, really?
I flipped over a few pages to a clean sheet and held out the pad and the pen.
The creature took the pen gingerly, as if it were made of glass, and held it awkwardly between its fingertips. It couldn’t quite figure out how I had held it and held the tip in a sort of vise grip, then it pushed the pen down against the pad and pulled, leaving a blue line.
It made excited croaking and creaking sounds and began to draw. Its characters were much larger than mine, and the symbols were shaky and distorted, but it had understood the concept of the pen and paper immediately. This creature, whatever it was, was incredibly int
elligent, and a very fast learner.
The Fish-Man filled all the space on the page with a series of symbols and then turned the book over, trying to figure out where it should continue. I flipped the page for it, and watched in amazement as it continued to write. Finally, with two pages full of its symbols, it finally stopped and pushed the pad and pen back into my hands.
“This is amazing,” I said breathlessly, running my fingers over the characters.
It was an unprecedented scientific artifact. Short of finding actual proof of alien technology, nothing in the history of the world even came close to the value of the obscure message this wonderful creature had written in my notebook.
“What does it mean?” I said wistfully, looking at it. “And what should I call you? I can’t keep calling you ‘the Fish-Man’, can I?”
I tapped my finger against my lips.
“I know. Jacques. Like Cousteau. Yes, you’re Jacques the Fish-Man. That’s what I’m going to call you from now on.”
The creature regarded me with his big eyes, absorbing the sound of my voice as I spoke. With his unusual anatomy, it was unlikely that he would ever be able to speak, but if he had his own language it wasn’t impossible that he could one day be taught to understand what I was saying. I felt like I’d just won the lottery. Ten lotteries. A hundred. This was the best thing that could have possibly happened to me.
The creature suddenly got up and turned toward the lagoon.
“Wait! Where are you going?” I said, perplexed.
Jacques shambled across the grass down to the water.
“Jacques? Where are you going?” I got up and began to walk after it.
Not now, Jacques! We’re just getting started!
Jacques ignored me and dove into the water and disappeared.
Chapter Twenty-One
For a minute or two, I simply stood there, staring at the fading ripples in the water.
I didn’t know what to do.
An hour ago I would have used the opportunity to make a break for the lighthouse. But that was before the symbols. Before I had proof that the Fish-Man — that Jacques — was a member of an intelligent species. Perhaps even as intelligent as a human. Everything had changed.
But intelligence didn’t necessarily imply benevolence. Humans weren’t exactly famous for their kindness. Humans killed each another. Humans kept slaves.
Was that all I was to him? Some kind of plaything? A sex slave? What would he do with me once he tired of me?
If I was going to be objective, and not get carried away on romantic notions of a grand meeting of minds across two species, I had to look at the cold, hard, brutal possibilities. Despite Jacques’s previous behavior, I had no proof that he wasn’t going to kill me. Humans took care of their livestock, too ... right up until the moment they ate them.
What should I do? Should I try to run?
It was rational, but it also seemed somewhat preposterous now. I’d just made the most important scientific discovery since ... well, fire, or the wheel. What could compare to the discovery of another life form that was as intelligent as a human? The implications were staggering. When I published my results, the international scientific community was going to be in an uproar. There was going to be chaos.
If I can prove it.
I looked down at the symbols scrawled in the notebook in Jacques’s alien hand.
I smacked my head with my palm, groaning.
They were just scribbles. I had no proof that he’d written them. I had no idea what they even meant. Everyone would just think that I’d written them myself, that I was making it all up. I had the semen sample in the freezer, but without any other evidence, it would just be dismissed as corrupted DNA. I had to gather more proof. If I left now, I might never get another chance to collect evidence. The world might never get another chance. Wasn’t it worth the risk? Was my life really worth more than this epoch-making discovery?
I can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t run away. Not now. Not when I’m so close.
I picked up the plates and turned and went back inside the cabin. I had to at least try to decode the symbols.
I put on a pot of coffee and spread out the notebook on the kitchen island, hopping up on one of the stools. My dad and I used to sit side by side like this in the mornings. He would spread out his newspaper and I would open a book, one of those brightly illustrated children’s stories, or a coloring book, and we would have breakfast together side by side, rarely speaking, but in perfect harmony. It was my dad’s keen engineer’s mind that I needed now, someone who had a knack for understanding complex abstract systems. I was good at biology, at understanding the principles of cell division and genetic diversity and population dynamics, but the spartan lines of an alien alphabet was a beast of a different sort.
Henry wouldn’t doubt his ability to decode this. Henry’s good at this sort of thing. Numbers and formulas and mechanical systems.
I wasn’t going to let Henry be better than me at anything ever again. If he could do it, so could I.
I set to work, but after an hour I still hadn’t made any progress. The symbols stared back at me mutely, with no more meaning than they’d had when I’d begun. I wished there was some way I could communicate with Jacques so that he could explain what the symbols meant. But the symbols were his only means of communication.
I heard heavy footsteps on the porch and the Fish-Man’s massive, lumbering form appeared in the doorway.
Speak of the Devil.
Jacques was holding a large gray and silver fish. A bluefish. It must have been close to twenty pounds. He held it out in front of me for my inspection.
“Is that ... for me?” I asked apprehensively, getting up from the stool. The fish was still twitching. Drops of water plonked onto my floor.
Jacques raised the fish to his mouth and bit off the head, crunching the bones in what must have been powerful molars. Apparently he had more than just pointy teeth.
“Jesus Christ.” I turned away, disgusted.
Jacques made a trilling sound and I forced myself to turn back to him. He was holding out the fish again. Or what remained of it. Like a cat presenting a dead mouse.
This is because I gave him the tuna sandwich. It’s some kind of exchange.
I took the carcass of the fish and carried it over to the counter. I stared at the bluefish nervously, then took the large cleaving knife from the knife block and cut off the end that Jacques had bitten into. I cleaned and gutted the fish and put the entrails aside. Jacques seemed to understand intuitively that I had no use for them and scooped them up with his hand and slurped them into his mouth.
I cringed.
That was going to take some getting used to.
I turned on the oven and took a pan from the cupboard and rinsed it out and cut up the fish. I hadn’t really planned on doing a lot of fancy cooking, so I didn’t have much to choose from. It was going to have to be a minimalist meal.
Jacques watched me intently, following all of my movements with his big eyes. He seemed especially curious about the oven and held his hand flat against the top, feeling the warmth. This technology much have seemed like magic to him, and my actions preparing the fish like some kind of occult ritual. I opened the oven door and put in the fish.
“Thank you, Jacques,” I said, turning to him and smiling.
Jacques stared at me, uncomprehending, and then flashed his teeth.
Jesus Christ, I thought, taking half a step back.
It would have been nothing for Jacques to bite my head off. Literally. I could practically hear him crunching my skull between his teeth.
And yet here you are, standing in the kitchen with him, cooking dinner for him like a housewife from the 50s.
I felt like I’d walked through a portal into another dimension.
And yet, how dangerous was he, really? I’d been in danger when Bill had been here. And Jacques had saved me. I’d been in danger when the alligator had come after me, and he’d saved me from
that as well. I couldn’t be entirely certain about Jacques’s intentions, but if he was protecting me, I might very well be the safest person in Florida.
Jacques turned and began exploring the cabin, apparently having lost interest in the oven. I watched him as we moved around the living room. His behavior wasn’t that different from the behavior of any other stranger. He paused and looked at things, touching them with his fingers and occasionally sniffing them or tasting them with the tip of his tongue.
On an impulse, I walked over to my stack of textbooks. I found one with full-page color photographs of fish and flipped through until I found one of a bluefish. I carried it over to him, holding the book open so that he could see.
Jacques reacted as if jolted with an electric shock. He stared intently at the book, cocking his head first one way then the other. He ran a finger very gently over the surface of the book, leaned in to sniff the paper, and then lightly flicked the image of the bluefish with his tongue.
I flipped the page, showing him a picture of a blue marlin. He went through the same series of stages and then tried to hook one of the pages with his claw. I grabbed the corner of the page and turned it for him.
I found Jacques’s interest fascinating. I wished that I had a video camera so that I could record him.
The goggles!
I’d left them on the boat. Would he let me go back for them? What had they recorded after I’d been knocked unconscious? Did I already have proof of the Fish-Man’s existence? If nothing else, assuming they hadn’t been damaged in the fall, I could use them to record my interactions with him. I could even connect the goggles to my laptop and use them like a camcorder.
Jesus, Kate! There’s a camera built right into your laptop!
I metaphorically smacked my head, put the book in Jacques’s hands, and rushed over to my laptop, which was sitting on the coffee table, right beside my textbooks.
I flipped it open and powered it on, waiting impatiently for Windows to load. I could barely contain my excitement.
Of course, I couldn’t very well show the world a video of Jacques’s reading a textbook in my living room. People would certainly wonder about that! It didn’t matter that he was an intelligent creature, perhaps as intelligent as myself. It wouldn’t be very good for my professional career to take the equivalent of Facebook selfies with the most important scientific discovery on Earth. People expected a certain amount of ... propriety from their scientists. A certain calm sobriety. And at the moment, all I wanted to do was jump up and down like a schoolgirl.
Tamed by the Creature from the Lagoon Page 14
