Tentacles

by Roland Smith

  Marty maneuvered the dragonspy toward Lost Lake, then hit the ZOOM button. A four-wheeler came into view. A chimpanzee with a teacup poodle sitting in her lap was driving it along the shore.

  “There’s the thief and her accomplice. She’s trying to bait the dolphins. The problem is, they’re not in the lake. Wolfe moved them down to the Coelacanth two days ago. We’d better hurry over there and grab her before she figures out her archfoes are gone.”

  Marty hit a button marked HOME. The dragonspy buzzed back to the Gizmo and climbed into the tiny drawer. Marty slid the drawer closed, and he and Luther jumped onto the four-wheeler and peeled out toward Lost Lake.

  * * *

  The cabins were small, but nicer than Grace had expected. They were equipped with a writing desk, bookshelves, a wardrobe, a bathroom, a comfortable bunk, and in her cabin an African gray parrot that was delighted to see her. Congo jumped from his perch to her shoulder (his injured wing still prevented him from flying), and together they explored their new living quarters.

  The walls were paneled in beautiful blond wood. With the setting sun dancing through the portholes, the overall effect was quite cheerful. It was hard to believe that such horrible things had happened aboard this ship.

  The only thing Grace hadn’t been able to find was her Frankenstein Monkey. She’d been searching for it for days. She knew she was too old for stuffed animals, but she’d had Monkey her entire life. Marty had named Monkey after Dr. Frankenstein’s monster because the fabric was covered with patches and stitches that looked like scars. Its mouth and ears were long gone, but they had recovered its left arm in the Congo and Wolfe had stitched it back on. Grace had asked Marty if he’d seen it, and he’d told her it was probably packed away somewhere she hadn’t looked yet. Duh du jour. He could be so dense sometimes that it was hard to believe they were related. She could not imagine sailing to New Zealand without Monkey, but it looked like she was going to have to.

  She put Marty’s and Luther’s things away, hoping to find Monkey stuffed in one of Marty’s bags, but it wasn’t there. Disappointed, she unpacked her own gear, saving the Moleskine journals for last. She dragged the heavy suitcase into her cabin and began sorting through the black-covered diaries, placing them on the shelves above the desk one at a time in order, like small slices of her life. The third-to-last Moleskine, #316, looked different from the others. It was swollen and battered from their adventures at Lake Télé, but it was the most important one. It was in that slice of her life that Grace had learned who she really was, who her father was, and who her grandfather was. She glanced over at the trunk with the faded rose painted on the lid, which she still had not opened. Inside is all that my mother was, she thought. Rose …

  Grace took a brand-new Moleskine out of the drawer, peeled off the plastic covering, opened it to the first blank page, and began to write with her fountain pen.

  It doesn’t seem like my birthday because I thought I had already turned thirteen on Marty’s birthday a couple of months ago. Nevertheless, I’m commemorating the day by starting a new Moleskine — my third since we got back to the island….

  No word about our Marty’s parents…. He doesn’t talk about them much except to ask me once in a while if I think they’re okay, but I know he thinks about them. I was just unpacking his things and found several drawings of them in his sketchbook. It made me sad to think of him alone in his room, drawing them from memory so he won’t forget them. The drawings are beautifully detailed. They look like photographs, almost as if he’s willing them back to life (back to us) on paper. If Wolfe doesn’t find them soon…

  But he will find them!

  He told me yesterday that he wished he was in Brazil looking for them himself, but without any real leads there’s little point in him personally hacking his way through the rain forest. He has a dozen people searching the area where the helicopter crashed and burned. And he’s paying them a fortune. This is why this expedition is so important. Most of eWolfe’s money is tied up in research and development. He and Ted Bronson are nearly broke. They had to borrow the money for the expedition. If Wolfe doesn’t bring in a live giant squid, his company will go bankrupt. They’ll lose the island and everything they own. But if they bring one in, Wolfe will get half the gate receipts from NZA for as long as the squid (singular or plural!) survives.

  Phil and Bertha Bishop drove our stuff down to the dock in one of the surplus Humvees. We had a hassle with Al Ikes’s security guards. They wanted to search everything. This would be fine normally, but there was one item I did not want them to search because I haven’t opened it myself — my mother’s trunk, which we brought back from the Congo. It took a call to Wolfe to get the guards to back off. He drove down to the dock, ordered them to leave the trunk alone, and helped me bring it into the cabin.

  Marty opened the trunk when I was kidnapped by Butch McCall. He was trying to find a clue about where I was. Instead, he found my past. He discovered that I’m his cousin, not his twin sister. That my grandfather is Noah Blackwood, and that my real father is Travis Wolfe. That my real mother’s name was Rose — and that she was the only child of Noah Blackwood. I thought about leaving the trunk on Cryptos, but realized that I could no sooner do that than Wolfe could leave the dinosaur eggs on the island. I could not leave my past behind, unprotected. Marty already told me what was inside the trunk: newspaper clippings, research notes, photos of my mother when she was my age, and photos of me when I was a baby in the Congo — before my mother was killed by a Mokélé-mbembé when I was two. And Moleskines, just like the one I’m writing in now. “Stacks of them,” Marty said.

  I’m looking at the trunk right now. Did my mother paint the rose on the lid? Will I go through the trunk on this voyage? I don’t know, but I am glad it’s here. My mother is buried beneath a mound of rocks in a small clearing near Lake Télé in the Congo, but her life is in the corner of my little cabin….

  * * *

  Bo had led Marty and Luther completely around the island twice and they hadn’t gained a foot on the marauding chimp and her accomplice, PD.

  “She’s good!” Luther shouted, clutching Marty’s waist as they jumped a log.

  “Yeah,” Marty shouted back. “This is definitely not working. Bo’s playing with us. And it’s getting dark. If we don’t catch her soon, she’ll climb a tree, build a nest, and go to sleep with PD cuddled in her hairy arms. The Coelacanth will sail without us.”

  “I can think of worse things than being stranded on Cryptos for three months on our own,” Luther said. “But I doubt your uncle will leave without us.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Marty said. “He gets distracted. He might not realize we’re not aboard until the ship gets to the South Pacific.”

  “What about our tracking tags?” Luther asked. “That Ikes guy will certainly check them before the ship sails.”

  “Yeah,” Marty said. “And he’d be delighted if you and me and Bo were left behind.”

  “We’ll catch her,” Luther said. “If nothing else, she’ll run out of gas.”

  Gas! Marty thought, glancing at the gauge. The needle was bouncing on EMPTY. He had fueled the thieving Bo’s four-wheeler just before he met Luther at the dock. They were going to run out of gas long before Bo.

  Marty skidded the four-wheeler to a stop.

  “What are you doing?” Luther yelled. “She’ll get away.”

  Marty grinned. “Turning the situation around.”

  Bo put on the brakes and looked back.

  “Just like I thought,” Marty said, his smile broadening. “She wants us to chase her.” He looked at Luther. “We’re going to run out of gas, the four-wheeler Bo’s on is faster than ours, and we’re carrying three times the weight.”

  “Not to mention she’s a better driver than you are,” Luther added.

  “Very funny,” Marty said. “Take your helmet off.”

  “Why?”

  “Bait,” Marty answered.

  “I don’t get
it,” Luther said, removing his helmet.

  Marty laughed. “You will if we don’t beat Bo down to the dock. Hang on!” He turned the four-wheeler around and twisted the throttle handle forward as far as it would go.

  The moment Bo saw Marty reversing — and Luther’s orange hair — she roared after them.

  Bo caught up to them before they were halfway to the dock and made a grab for Luther’s flaming hair. Marty jigged the four-wheeler to the right. Bo missed the hair and nearly flipped her four-wheeler. As she regained control, Marty was able to pull ahead of her again.

  “I’m the bait?” Luther shouted.

  “Duh du jour!” Marty shouted back. “I hope the security gate is open at the dock, or you’re going to be bald.”

  Marty zoomed down the hill. Bo was ten feet behind and gaining. Fortunately, the gate was open. Unfortunately, when the Bullet Heads saw the four-wheelers, they wedged their well-conditioned bodies into the opening like double iron doors.

  Marty knew that if he didn’t get Bo trapped on the dock, they might never get her onto the ship. And if he stopped, Luther was going to get plucked like a dead Rhode Island Red chicken.

  “Halt!” the Bullet Heads shouted.

  Marty wasn’t about to halt or even slow down, which must have been apparent by the look of alarm on the Bullet Heads’ faces. One dove right and the other dove left as Marty zoomed through the narrow opening, followed closely by Bo and the teacup poodle. He turned his head and shouted for the Bullet Heads to shut the gate so Bo could not escape. One of the men slammed the gate closed, then they both sprinted down the dock toward the ship.

  “What am I supposed to do when we stop?” Luther shouted.

  “Run!” Marty shouted back. “Get onto the ship and find someplace to hide until we can get Bo under control.”

  Luther was off the four-wheeler before it came to a stop. He sprinted up the gangplank with Bo right behind him, having completely forgotten her fear of ships.

  “Snake!” Marty yelled. PD jumped into his cargo pocket just as the two furious guards reached him.

  Marty looked at them. “Sorry,” he said, not in any hurry to join Luther and Bo aboard the creepy ship.

  “Sorry?” Bullet Head #1 growled. “That doesn’t quite cut it, does it? You just violated every security rule we have.”

  “And nearly killed us in the process,” Bullet Head #2 added.

  “Wolfe told me to get Bo aboard the Coelacanth, and this was the only way I could figure out how to do it,” Marty explained. “And you guys are like Olympic athletes with lightning reflexes. I knew I couldn’t hit you with a four-wheeler if I tried.”

  The flattery seemed to defuse some of their anger. “We’re supposed to search everyone going aboard,” Bullet Head #1 said.

  “Not much to search on Bo,” Marty said. “She’s naked and doesn’t have pockets. And I can vouch for Luther. He didn’t pick up anything on the island.” He looked at the Bullet Heads’ hands. They were red, as if the men had been scratching them.

  “You’re welcome to search me again if you want,” Marty offered.

  “Forget it,” Bullet Head #2 said. “You’d better get aboard. You and your friend are the last ones. We’re shipping out in half an hour.”

  “Are you sailing with us?” Marty asked.

  Bullet Head #1 smiled. “Duh du jour,” he said.

  Marty smiled back. Maybe they weren’t as bad as he had thought.

  “What are your names?” he asked.

  “I’m Roy,” Bullet Head #1 said.

  “Joe,” Bullet Head #2 said.

  Marty looked up the long gangplank to the haunted ship like it was the tongue of a demon. “Do you guys believe in ghosts?”

  They shook their bullet heads.

  “Why is that chimp chasing your friend?” Roy asked.

  “She wants to scalp him,” Marty answered. “It’s going to be a long cruise.”

  He started up the gangplank with dread.

  * * *

  Luther was not overly attached to his fluorescent orange hair, but he was not about to have it detached by a deranged chimpanzee.

  And he was going to kill Marty for turning him into Bo bait, but first he had to ditch the chimp, which was proving very difficult. Bo was fast and agile. She had already managed to pluck a few orange treasures as they dashed down narrow corridors, up and down companionways, through hatches, knocking down half a dozen startled people. Some cursed, some laughed, but none of them helped. On the bottom deck he came to a dead end and a set of doors marked with a sign:

  MOON POOL

  AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY!

  ABSOLUTELY NO ENTRY!

  A set of pneumatic doors hissed open and Luther ran through. They hissed closed behind him just as Bo arrived. Luther was trapped in what looked like an air lock. In front of him was a second set of pneumatic doors. To his relief, they opened and he ran through, colliding with a woman with a whistle clamped in her mouth and a stainless steel bucket of fish in her hands. She didn’t seem at all perturbed that he had just knocked her down and was sprawled on top of her. The collision had almost made him forget why he’d been running in the first place, but he remembered when he heard Bo go absolutely bonkers. She had made it through the air lock and was running on all fours around the largest pool he had ever seen, screaming as if she had lost her mind.

  “Excuse me,” Luther stammered, untangling himself from the woman. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to burst in here, but the chimp was chasing me.”

  The woman got to her feet, looked at Bo, and smiled. “It’s a bonobo chimpanzee,” she said. “Very rare, and smarter than your average chimp. Why was she chasing you?”

  “Uh … ,” Luther answered. “My hair.”

  “Your hair is a little unusual,” the woman said, helping him to his feet. “Do you dye it?”

  “No way,” Luther answered. “I was born with it.” He’d been asked this question a thousand times before. His science teacher at Omega Prep had told him the orange hue was not a color found in nature. His father, Luther Percival Smyth III (LPS 3), had tried to get Luther (LPS 4) to dye his hair black, saying that no one would ever take him seriously with “that mess” on top of his head. Luther had refused, saying, “If they don’t take me seriously as I am, then they aren’t going to take me seriously as I am not.” (LPS 3 had no idea what his only child meant by this.)

  “I like the color,” the woman said.

  No one had ever told Luther that before.

  “My name is Yvonne,” the woman said, offering a slender hand sprinkled with silvery fish scales.

  He shook her hand. “Luther Smyth.”

  “Marty O’Hara’s friend,” Yvonne said.

  “You know Marty?”

  “No, but I’ve heard a lot about him and his cousin, Grace. There are no secrets on a ship, or on a small island … although I haven’t been on the island this trip.”

  “At all?” Luther asked.

  Yvonne shook her head. “Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod were transferred to the Moon Pool before I arrived. I stepped from Phil’s seaplane right onto the ship.”

  “Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod?” Luther asked.

  “Wolfe’s dolphins,” Yvonne said.

  Luther looked across the vast pool and realized that there were actually two pools separated by a thick Plexiglas window that went all the way up to the ceiling. The dolphins were in the smaller of the two pools. Bo had stopped circling the smaller pool and was pacing a ten-foot area, back and forth, back and forth, pausing to slap the water every few seconds with her hairy hand. Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod watched her from a safe distance. Then one of them spit out a stream of water, hitting the chimp squarely in the face. Bo shook her head and let out an eardrum-shattering hoot.

  Yvonne laughed.

  “I guess dolphins are smarter than bonobos,” Luther said.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Yvonne said. “And they’re not really fighting.”

  Luther wasn’t convince
d. Bo looked like she wanted to fillet them.

  “We’ll have to have her come down here during the voyage and play. It will be good for all of them.”

  Luther wasn’t convinced of that, either. “So, what do you do here?”

  “I’m a freelance marine mammal trainer. Wolfe flies me onto Cryptos Island three or four times a year to work with the dolphins. I’m conditioning them for a new camera array Ted Bronson’s come up with.”

  “Wolfe’s eyes beneath the sea,” Luther said.

  “I guess,” Yvonne said. “But they’re being pretty tight-lipped about how the dolphins are going to be used to catch a giant squid. All I’ve been told is to get them accustomed to the cameras. I assume they are going to use the larger pool to confine the squid. The two pools are enclosed systems and can be pressurized separately. There’s a sealed opening between the pools, so the dolphins can get from the big pool to the smaller pool. There are also separate openings for the pools beneath the ship. What have you heard?”

  “Nothing,” Luther said, glancing at Bo. “I just got here myself, and I’ve been a little preoccupied. I know Wolfe used a flashlight to catch the little squid in his library.”

  Yvonne laughed. “I’ve seen them. I don’t think a flashlight is going to work on Architeuthis.”

  A loud rumbling started.

  “It sounds like we’re getting under way,” Yvonne said. “That means that all the tags have been checked and everyone is aboard.”