Tentacles

by Roland Smith

  “I wouldn’t think of throwing Ted’s brilliant invention into the sea. By the way, is Ted aboard? I would love to talk to him.”

  Finally catching on to what Noah was doing, Wolfe said, “You know as well as I do that Ted hasn’t left Cryptos in years. And he certainly wouldn’t travel all the way out here. He hates the ocean and doesn’t even know how to swim.”

  “That’s right,” Noah said. “I forgot. Tell him I’d like to drop by Cryptos when we get back to the States and talk to him face-to-face. I’d love to see him again.”

  * * *

  Wolfe cut the connection and killed the tags.

  “That went well,” Al said sarcastically. “Noah Blackwood could sell venom to a rattlesnake.”

  “He probably has,” Wolfe said glumly.

  “Joe is still out there,” Al said. “He could be on and off the Endangered One in ten minutes with the Gizmo in hand.”

  “Blackwood has men aboard both ships.” Wolfe held his hand up. “And don’t start, Al. I know that Joe is better than Blackwood’s men. But we’re not in the covert ops business anymore. Right now, we’re playing defense all the way. Get Joe back on board, and guard the perimeter the best you can.”

  Al spoke into his radio. “Party’s over, Joe. Come back to base.”

  * * *

  Theo Sonborn left Marty outside the door to Lab Nine, where Roy was standing guard disguised as a research scientist. The bulge of his pistol under the white lab coat was a dead giveaway.

  “The kid can go in,” Roy said to Theo. “But you can’t.”

  Belligerent Theo puffed out his chest. “Oh, yeah? Who says?”

  “I say,” Roy answered.

  “And who are you?”

  “I’m a guy over a foot taller than you.” Roy opened his lab coat. “With a gun.”

  Very subtle, Marty thought. And mature.

  “Big deal,” Theo said.

  Ted took his idiot Theo role seriously, but Marty thought he was pushing it a little too far with Roy.

  “Go on, Theo,” Marty said. “I’m just going into the lab to check in on Grace and Luther and see what they’re cooking up.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Theo said. “I got things to do. But try to get some sleep tonight. You and me are going fishing at o’dawn-thirty tomorrow.”

  Marty and Roy watched him swagger down the hall.

  “What’s going on?” Marty asked.

  “I guess someone’s trying to kill you and kidnap your cousin, so now you’re under twenty-four-hour security watch. Where’d you come from?”

  “From the Moon Pool.”

  “And they let that moron escort you up here?” Roy said. “You’d be safer by yourself.”

  “He’s tougher than he looks,” Marty said. “And smarter.”

  “Whatever,” Roy said. “What’s his name?”

  “Te —” Marty stopped himself. “Theo Sonborn.”

  Roy took a three-by-five card out of his pocket and read it. “He isn’t on the safe list. Who said he could bring you up from the Moon Pool?”

  “I don’t know,” Marty answered. “Wolfe, I guess.”

  “I’m going to have to call Al on this. It’s a breach of security.”

  “Fine. While you’re taking care of that, can I squeeze by you and go inside?”

  “Yeah. You’re on the cleared list for Lab Nine.”

  “Thank goodness,” Marty said.

  Marty stepped into the clean room, showered, and put on a set of disposable scrubs.

  The nursery was crowded with Grace, Luther, Laurel, and two hungry dinosaurs. The hatchlings were gulping down fist-sized hunks of raw meat as fast as Luther and Laurel could get them to their snapping mouths.

  Bertha was there, too. She was standing in the corner in XXL scrubs, cradling a twelve-gauge shotgun. Clipped to her belt was a military radio like the ones Al and his men carried, and she had a throat mic around her neck and an earpiece stuck in her ear. Marty wondered how she’d managed to disinfect the weapon and the radio.

  The lab reeked.

  “What is that smell?” Marty asked, trying not to gag into his disposable mask.

  “Dinosaur poop,” Luther said, with a ball of meat in his hand. “And don’t worry, you won’t get used to the smell. At least it’s clear now why dinosaurs went extinct — and where that term comes from. It must be a derivative of the word stink. The dinosaurs gassed themselves to death. Guaranteed.”

  “Extinct does not come from the word stink,” Grace said.

  “Well, it should have,” Luther said, holding out the lump of meat to One. “This is what they mean by greenhouse gas.”

  Snap!

  The meat disappeared down One’s long neck.

  “Jeez, that was close,” Luther said, checking to see if he still had all of his fingers.

  “Are you all right, Marty?” Grace asked with concern, ignoring Luther. She was holding a clipboard, presumably trying to keep track of the amount of meat going into the hatchlings’ gaping purple maws. “Wolfe told me what happened to you up on deck.”

  “The deck was fine,” Marty said. “Being flipped over the rail was the problem.”

  Luther went over to grab another handful of meat. “I hear it was ol’ Butch McCall that tried to give you the heave-ho. That will make a good panel in our next graphic novel.”

  “Wrong hemisphere,” Marty said. “Different story. Butch isn’t here.”

  “He’s the one who pushed you,” Bertha said.

  “Butch is on the Coelacanth?”

  Snap!

  “Not anymore,” Luther said. “Bertha just got word that he and another guy did their own header over the side and stroked out to Grandpa’s yacht.”

  “We think there were two of them,” Bertha clarified. “And we think that one of them was Butch. But he might still be on board, which is why Roy is at the door and I’m armed.” She proceeded to summarize everything that had happened in the past few hours with a half-dozen crystal clear sentences that only an ex–Army general could compose.

  Snap!

  Snap!

  “So, where the heck have you been?” Luther asked Marty.

  “Copiloting a nuclear sub,” Marty answered.

  “Right.”

  Snap!

  Marty had not seen the hatchlings since he’d been banished to the galley. They looked like they had doubled in size, and they’d been moved out of the incubator to a makeshift cage on the floor of the lab.

  Snap!

  Snap!

  “I think they’re done,” Luther said, wiping his bloody gloves on his scrubs. “Get ready.”

  “Get ready for what?” Marty asked.

  Everyone but Marty had already backed away from the cage and were covering their masks with both hands, including Bertha, who had set her shotgun down.

  “Ohhh … ,” Marty said, staggering backward.

  “Goes through them as fast as it goes into them,” Luther said.

  “We need gas masks.” Marty gagged. “These disposable surgical masks are worthless.”

  When the hatchlings finished their business, which seemed to take an impossibly long time, they plopped down and promptly fell asleep.

  Laurel turned the exhaust fan to full blast, which had little effect.

  If Ted had really wanted to test me, he should have left me in the nursery, Marty thought.

  “When we write our next graphic novel, it’s going to be hard to illustrate that olfactory sensation,” Luther said.

  “Maybe we can put in a scratch-and-sniff panel,” Marty suggested.

  “Yeah,” Luther said. “But what do you put under the scratch? There’s nothing in nature that smells like that. At least not anymore.”

  * * *

  Laurel volunteered to watch the dinosaurs while Marty, Grace, and Luther returned to their cabins to get some sleep. None of them offered to stay with her.

  Bertha exchanged the shotgun for an automatic pistol in a shoulder holster and a knife, big en
ough to gut a Tyrannosaurus rex, hanging in a sheath next to her radio. Outside their cabin doors she gave each of them a hug, wished them sweet dreams, then took up a position between the two doors, ready to kill anybody who tried to enter.

  Inside they opened the connecting doors between the cabins, and Marty caught up Luther and Grace on what had happened since Butch had tried to toss him overboard. He also revealed the real identity of Theo Sonborn, who had given him permission to tell them.

  “You’re lying,” Luther said. “There is no way that Theo is Ted Bronson.”

  “You’ll believe me when you see him,” Marty said. “The disguise is real Hollywood stuff, and as soon as he puts it on he becomes Theo. It’s kind of creepy. Wolfe, Bertha, Phil, and us are the only ones who know — oh, and Al Ikes and Ana Mika.”

  “The reporter who puked on your shoes?” Luther asked.

  “Yep.” Marty told them about the long Moon Pool kiss.

  “That sounds awkward,” Luther said.

  “It was,” Marty admitted.

  “Okay,” Luther said. “I’ll buy that Theo is actually Ted and I’ll buy the sickening lip-lock, but the nuclear squid bobber is a bit much. Even if it were true, why would Ted pick you as his copilot? No offense, but you’re only thirteen years old.”

  “Because Wolfe’s too big to fit into the Orb. Ted is small. He’s been testing me ever since I got to Cryptos.”

  Marty went on to explain the test, ending with the chicken-and-egg question.

  “I totally get that,” Grace said when he finished.

  “I totally don’t get that,” Luther said.

  “You can ask Ted about it yourself tomorrow morning,” Marty said. “You’re both invited to the launch of the Orb at dawn.”

  Marty took his Gizmo out of his pocket and handed it to Luther.

  “I think you’re going to make it,” Luther said. “If you survived Butch McCall twice, you should have no problem with a giant squid.”

  “That’s not why I’m giving it to you,” Marty said. “I asked Ted if you could pilot the dragonspy. He said yes, as long as your parents pay for it if you crash it.”

  “Of course they’ll pay for it,” Luther said.

  “I’m just kidding. Ted didn’t say that. He just said yes.”

  “Thanks for asking,” Luther said, punching in the code and bringing the dragonspy to life.

  There were actually a couple of reasons Marty had asked Ted. He knew that when Luther saw him in the gold suit and black helmet going where no man had gone before, his best friend was going to feel left out. (And now that Marty had seen — and smelled — what raising baby dinosaurs was really like, he was really happy he’d asked.) The second reason Marty had asked was to test Ted’s test. If the point of letting Marty fly the dragon-spy was to see if Marty would obey the rules, then there was no reason for Ted to say no. Marty had passed the rule test with flying colors. Not only had Ted said yes, he’d offered to loan his transparent dragonspy to them whenever they wanted so they could fly them in tandem.

  Right out of the drawer, Luther had the dragonspy in a perfect hover in the center of the cabin. He had been playing video games since he was two years old. His parents and nannies had used the games to pacify the wild-haired child. He circled the dragonspy around the small cabin without even looking at the controls, as if his thumbs had brains of their own.

  Marty was a much better artist than Luther, and certainly a better cook, but Luther was the Michelangelo of video games. Marty realized that if Ted had seen Luther’s natural ability, it would have been Luther in the aquasuit and Marty in scrubs scooping up dino poop.

  “I can’t understand how anyone could crash this thing,” Luther said. “It’s a lot more stable than those RC helicopters I have back at Omega Prep that you were always wrecking.”

  “I didn’t always wreck them,” Marty said. “And the controls should be easy to use, considering the dragonspy costs about as much to produce as a corporate jet.”

  Marty looked over to the chair where Grace had been sitting and saw she was no longer there. He walked into her cabin and found her on her bed next to the Frankenstein Monkey.

  “I see you found Monkey,” Marty said.

  “No thanks to you,” Grace said.

  “I all but told you where he was.”

  “It was mean to hide him in the last place I wanted to look.”

  “It was one of those ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg’ things.”

  “You hadn’t had that conversation with Ted when you hid Monkey in the trunk.”

  “I must have intuitively understood the theory before he mentioned it to me. That’s why I didn’t think he was completely crazy when he brought it up. What else did you find in there?”

  “A mess.” Grace got up and opened the trunk.

  “Whoa,” Marty said. “It didn’t look that way when I put Monkey inside. I guess it all got mixed up in the move to the ship. You’ll get it untangled. You’re good at that.”

  “If I have time,” Grace said, closing the lid. “I’ve barely been in my cabin since the dinosaurs hatched. All I’ve looked at are a few old photos.”

  “Pretty weird, aren’t they? When I saw them I thought they were photos of you when you were little.”

  “I know,” Grace said. “But what’s even stranger are the photos of Noah Blackwood as a father. Looking at them, it’s hard to believe that he’s the same man Wolfe’s portrayed. When you were rummaging through it, did you happen to see any photographs of my grandmother?”

  Marty had to think about it for a moment. He did have a photographic memory, particularly for visual images, but when he’d gone through the trunk back in the Congo he’d been in a panic over Grace and his mental camera lens was a little out of focus.

  “I don’t think I saw her,” he finally answered. “I would have noticed that.”

  “But you didn’t notice the lack of a grandmother,” Grace said.

  Marty shook his head. “You’re right. I was thinking about what was there, not what was missing. That might be another one of those chicken-and-egg things. There are a lot more photos at the bottom of the trunk, and memory sticks with either photos, video, or maybe digital recordings on them. And then there are the Moleskines. I bet they have stuff in them about Wolfe.”

  “At this point, I’m more interested in who my grandmother was, or is,” Grace said. “She might still be alive. We know all about Wolfe.”

  Marty shook his head again. “I think we know what Wolfe wants us to know, and one thing we don’t know is how he and Ted ended up with their own personal island that’s so secret it doesn’t show up on a map.”

  “The government gave it to them,” Grace said.

  “Right, but why did they give it to them? What did they do for the government that would make them hand over an island?”

  “Something important, I suppose,” Grace said, walking over to the porthole.

  She looked out at the lights of her grandfather’s ships, then turned back to Marty with an expression on her face that he hadn’t seen since they were in the Congo — an expression he’d hoped to never see again. He’d thought that after she discovered her night terrors were actually memories of her forgotten past, Grace wouldn’t have any more premonitions; they were about eighty percent accurate, and they creeped Marty out.

  “Promise me something,” Grace said.

  “What?”

  “If something should happen to me, I want you to go through this trunk and find out whatever else is inside.”

  “What do you think is going to happen to you?” Marty asked, alarmed.

  “I don’t know. I just feel something big is coming my way. Something unpleasant.”

  “You’re probably just tired from dino duty,” Marty said, trying to reassure his cousin.

  Grace shook her head and picked up Monkey. “Promise,” she repeated.

  Marty felt like there were ants crawling up the back of his neck. He shuddered, and gave M
onkey’s arm a squeeze.

  * * *

  Noah Blackwood was making sure that every detail of his plan was in place. His helicopter had just landed on the helipad of the Endangered Too. The captain was there to greet him. He shook the captain’s hand, thanked him for his speedy crossing on such short notice, and promised that he would be amply rewarded for his diligence.

  “I have everyone you requested gathered down in the mess,” the captain said.

  “And you know what to do tomorrow,” Blackwood said.

  The captain nodded. “Those not directly involved will be confined to their quarters with windows sealed.”

  “Was there any grousing?” Blackwood asked.

  “Negative. They’ve been through this before and know the routine. And of course the cash bonus helped.”

  Blackwood smiled. “It always does. And our other friends?”

  “The trawler just arrived. It sailed without lights or communication. I doubt Wolfe’s radar or satellite would have picked it up. And even if they did, they’d only think it was a harmless fishing boat, which in fact it is, though the men on board are not fishermen. We tied it to our portside. Even in daylight the Coelacanth won’t be able to see it. Butch is still aboard?”

  Blackwood nodded. “And we have another person aboard as well. They’ve done an outstanding job.”

  Blackwood meant this. He was close to forgiving Butch for losing Grace and the eggs in the Congo. In a way it had worked out better for Blackwood. Instead of having two dinosaur eggs, he was going to have two living dinosaurs. Wolfe and Ted had incubated and hatched the eggs for him.

  And the Gizmo? Wolfe might have turned the tracking tags off, but he couldn’t destroy the wealth of information inside the device. Blackwood’s technicians had hacked it within minutes, and it had turned into a tiny treasure chest. Between the data from the Gizmo and Butch’s notes, Blackwood had everything he needed.

  “Do you have the digital projector and laptop set up?” Blackwood asked.

  “It’s all ready to go,” the captain answered.

  Blackwood handed him a flash drive. “Open the PowerPoint called Coelacanth and cue it up.”