by Laura Wylde
“Yes.” Macy leaned over the guard rail; hands clasped in front of her. “They packed all my things and brought them to the apartment.”
“Is everything accounted for?”
“Yes. That’s not the point. It’s a little presumptive.”
“They thought it would save time.”
“What are you hiding from me, David?”
I gave a short, nervous laugh and leaned over the guardrail with her. “What makes you think I’m hiding anything?”
“You work for the government. The government always has secrets.”
“You’re still here, aren’t you? The government could have had you deported.”
“Which would have raised a lot of uncomfortable questions.”
“Which would have been answered. We’re not your enemy, Macy. You’ve got your own lab. You’re still on the project. It’s just that the world isn’t ready for four-foot seahorses and Greece isn’t ready to handle the invasion.”
“Are we going back out tomorrow?”
“I was thinking we could go out on the boat. There are bound to be more underwater disturbances.”
“That’s true. I suppose the cove doesn’t have anything you haven’t seen before.”
“Not really.”
She seemed satisfied. She talked a little about her work with Green Lite. They bio-formed ocean fronts for greater marine life productivity. “It helps the fishermen and it’s also great for tourism,” she told me. “It’s the new trend. People want to see the wildlife.”
She was idealistic, which was nice. It made it easy to relax around her. When the sun dropped so low, it brought down a curtain of stars behind it, she sighed and said dreamily, “this is what I like about Greece. The feeling that you are right next to a source. You don’t get this view in Florence, Oregon. You get a different star sky. It almost seems to tell a different history?”
“Are you into astronomy too?” I asked her.
She shook her head and turned to go in. “No, I’m lousy at it. I don’t track them well, but I still feel the stars. They seem to sing sometimes, or whisper.”
I walked beside her, reluctant to say goodnight. “I’ll bet you imagined you were a princess with a unicorn when you were a kid.”
“I imagined many things, but I wasn’t good at imagining myself as a princess.”
“No?” I asked, a little surprised.
“No,” she answered firmly. She was at her apartment door. “Good night, Mr. Gowen.”
Good night, Macy. Not that she noticed. The door slammed shut. I was speaking to an empty panel. Unable to shake the feeling it had been a big mistake to let her join us, I returned to my own apartment. It was decorated and planned out the same as Macy’s, except the lab was bigger and the apartment contained four bedrooms. Kazan was examining some fish scales under a microscope. “What do you have?” I asked him.
“Mer people scales. I hope Miss Latimar didn’t find any. They form a distinctive pattern that can’t be compared to any other fish.”
I crossed my arms and sighed. “I don’t know what she will find in her soil sample. I’m thinking we could swap it out while she’s sleeping. Reuben, look over your charts and find a nice place to take her diving. Something that will show a bit of color without giving up the colonies.”
“There’s still a lot of fighting down below,” Reuben said. He chewed up one end of his cigar and spit it out. “I found two injured nymphs in the shoals last week.”
“Stay away from the shoals. We’ll go around to the south side of that tiny island near the port. It’s peaceful there.”
We had it all figured out. We would minimize the significance of everything we could and swap out the evidence for less exciting finds when possible. I felt far more confident when I got up the next morning than I had the day before. I slapped my hands together and walked cheerily into the room where they were all gearing up to go out on the boat. “Where’s Macy?”
Reuben shrugged. “Haven’t seen her.”
“I think she went down to the beach,” said Kazan. “I went by her place earlier to wake her up and she wasn’t there, but her backpack was gone.”
“How much earlier?” I asked with a feeling of dread.
“About two hours earlier. I guess she’s an early riser.”
I wanted to give Kazan a double thump on the head to see if I could penetrate his extreme density. It wouldn’t do any good. Kazan would just roll up in a ball and bounce off the ceiling. “Alright then, let’s go,” I said, pushing him out the door. “Maybe she won’t find anything.”
She was at the cove, crouched over the bank, watching the fish dart around in the receding waters. “I thought you understood we were going out in the boat today,” I told her a little angrily.
She was as calm as an iceberg. “I know you did. I just wanted to catch as much as I could from here before the it’s gone. Look at these pieces of kelp. They appear to have been cultivated. Do you see how even the formation is? It’s curious.”
I thought quickly. “I think there’s a kelp farm around here. The Greeks are very resourceful.”
The more inventive I am, the more she sees through me. “I’m taking these samples back to my apartment and then I’ll be ready. I didn’t know you were so anxious to get going. Oh. I almost forgot.” She searched inside her pack and brought out an object wrapped in a handkerchief. “Look at this. It’s the strangest of all.”
“An oyster shell,” I said, then amended. “A pearl oyster shell.”
“Yes. But the oyster was removed a long time ago. The shell opens and closes on hinges. Inside….” She opened the shell. It contained a flawless blue-white pearl. “It’s mounted in some kind of gunk,” she said. “It feels kind of like Jell-O. Smells fishy. Where did it come from?”
Even to me, my fabrications were starting to sound lame. “Probably the shipwreck,” I muttered.
“That ship has a lot of strange items.” She rewrapped the oyster shell and slipped it into her backpack, along with other samples she had collected while we were sleeping. “I wonder why there weren’t any notices about it on the news.”
Her discovery nagged at me more than the four-foot seahorse. I recognized the shell’s craftsmanship. It was the type of work the followers of Eurynome, the former goddess of the rivers and streams, fashioned as small gifts. Eurynome had fought against Cronos and lost. She had been banished eons ago but there were still the faithful; an artistic group of mer people who lived in the Aegean Sea. I shrugged and kicked at little tufts of earth as we hiked back up the trail. “We don’t know for sure if there has been a shipwreck yet. The boats took harbor wherever they could during the storm, and we have dozens of islands yet to cover. Besides, if there is a shipwreck, the next of kin will be notified before the newspapers. That’s policy.”
She gave me that friendly smile that said I wasn’t fooling anyone. “Of course. It’s only been six days. You say the boat is all ready to go? Let’s not waste anymore daylight, then.”
Just like that. She began talking to Reuben about wet suits and air pressure and to Kazan about sea turtles. I wondered just who was at the helm because for some reason, it didn’t seem to be me.
3
Kazan
I’ve never seen David in so much trouble. He’s got the look of authority. He sends college kids scampering when they’ve been snooping around too much in ancient tombs. I’ve seen him stare down treasure pirates hoping to rob underwater archeological digs and send them packing when they were lucky. When they were unlucky, they ended up cooling their heels in the tank.
He’s the guy that usually has all the answers, but Macy Latimar was turning him into marshmallow topping. She was a tough little cookie, yet I felt I understood her. She wasn’t interested in treasure or disturbing the dead. She wanted to know about life, itself. What sparked it. What made life flourish. It made her feel a little like Darwin in front of a court of his peers to go up against David. Her resentment was a low, suppressed current. She was still s
tewing a bit as we chugged out into the water. I stood beside her at the stern, watching the wake trail back toward shore. “You know, Macy. David has a good reason for not wanting you to dig around in the cove on your own. Greece has a lot of poisonous snakes. And spiders. What would you do if you got bitten?”
“I know. It’s not that. Why does he have to pretend the things I find are not important?”
I looked down to keep from looking into that valentine face and tried to sound casual. “Everything you’ve found has already been recorded in our archives. These are rare and delicate creatures. We can’t afford to disturb them too much.”
Her body stirred close to mine, making it hard to think about anything except jumping her bones. “Does he think I’ll harm them?”
“Maybe not you. Maybe your company; the people you worked for. If they knew.”
“Green Lite? Our purpose is to increase healthy production for all marine life. But we can’t do that if we’re missing some information.”
“Won’t you be terraforming the coastline?” She nodded.
“Those creatures live out in the deep. You won’t be disturbing them.”
She leaned over so I had to look at her. “You know that much about them?”
“We dive a lot.”
“And all this time you haven’t shared with anyone?”
I shifted uncomfortably away from her. “Government rules.”
She gave me a flirting, side-long glance and chuckled in her throat. “Somehow, you don’t look like someone who follows a lot of rules.”
The chug of the engine slowed and creaked to a halt. Rueben clamored down the steps from the pilot cabin, the stub of a cigar sticking from his mouth, his cap pulled low to shield his eyes from the sun. “Suit up, mates. Kazan, you and Kauris are going out on the first dive.”
I was glad it was Kauris and not David. David would try too hard to keep her from seeing things like water dragons, sprites and mer people. He would arouse her suspicions, making her search harder. Kauris would just observe. I could flirt my mad head off without any interference.
She did a nice drop; rolling into her dive so that her own momentum carried her down twelve feet before she had to thrust for more depth. Reuben had dropped anchor in an area that was filled with brightly colored fish. There were so many, and they were so bright, it was like a hallucinogenic experience. Even through her goggles, I could see her eyes light up with pure joy. They crinkled at the corners. She flapped her hands and twirled around a little, watching the fish twirl around her, then joined the school darting in a jagged line as they scooped up tiny shrimp, insects, and algae.
There wasn’t much in this part of the ocean’s floor if you were looking for sunken treasure. Most of the shipwrecks were close to the shoals or found among the clusters of islands. It was a bonanza for a marine biologist, however. The floor was matted with ocean grasses and coral, shellfish, shy octopi, and squid. Some dolphins were playing in the water, chasing the fish and each other. They broke up their game to greet us, their eyes staring into ours, their lower lips stuck out, pouting.
I lost all track of time. Macy was having so much fun, it rubbed off on me. I saw the wonders of this rainbow- colored world with new eyes. I was eager to show her all that she was meant to see, and she was just as eager to see them. It wasn’t until Kauris tapped his watch and pointed upward that I realized we were running low on air. With a nod, I began swimming toward the surface, Macy just inches ahead of me.
I could see the sun glinting, but it had not yet broken the surface of the water. Through the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow flickering toward me. I turned to confront my pursuer. In the next second, I began paddling toward the boat as fast as I could go. Shit. Oh shit. It was a nymph. If she caught me while I was in man form, she would hang on to me like a leech. The last thing Macy needed to see was a water nymph trying to hump me.
I hated to do this to a nymph, but drastic times call for drastic measure. I removed my electric shocker from my belt, waited until the nymph was just a few feet away and gave her a jolt. She cried and doubled up. The look of pain on her face made me feel like a monster. Nymphs aren’t violent but they are dangerous. I’ve seen two-hundred-pound strongmen turn into ninety-four- pound weaklings after seven days of living with a nymph. They don’t even give you time to smoke a cigarette before the next round.
It had only been a mild shock. The nymph would come around quickly. With a final burst of speed, I swam to the deck and heaved up over it. Rueben was chortling his head off. “Barracuda? Or did a cat walk over your grave?”
“Something like that,” I mumbled and glanced at Macy.
She had taken off her diving gear, but she was still in her wet suit, her marvellous dimensions standing out in shiny, black perfection. “What was that?” She demanded. Her eyes looked large and startled. “It was too slim to be a barracuda. I saw a glimpse. It almost appeared human.”
I took off my helmet and shrugged out of my diving gear. “It was just a sea snake. The water here distorts your perception.”
Reuben laughed boisterously and spat out a piece of his cigar. “Kazan here, is afraid of snakes. He’d rather walk the plank than look at a snake.”
It wasn’t true but it was better to let Macy think I had a phobia for snakes than to tell her what she had really seen. She defended me! “Well, sea snakes are venomous,” she said. “And it was coming straight for Kazan. It would scare me, too.”
“I think we’d better not go back out today,” said David. “It’s too dangerous.”
Macy scoffed. “Because of one snake? I thought you could man-up better than that.”
“It’s the coral reefs,” I said hastily. “The storms stirred the nest. We should go out where there isn’t so much coral.”
“The deep,” said Reuben. “That’s where the giant seahorses are.”
David folded his arms and leaned against the cabin wall supporting our standing shelter. “She’ll get the bends. We don’t have the equipment for her to dive that deep.”
“Then I’ll dive as deeply as I can go. Let me be my own judge, please,” Macy wheedled.
“It will be nightfall before we reach the deep.” This was offered up by Reuben.
She sniffed and shrugged. “Then we spend the night. Your boat looks pretty stocked to me.”
“Aye, mate,” growled Reuben cheerfully. “Three days provision and gasoline.”
She looked brightly at David. “Then there is no problem, is there?”
He couldn’t really answer. He signalled to Rueben to take the boat out. You could always tell when things were going on inside David’s mind because of the way he walked. He trudged. He behaved as though his feet were so heavy, he could barely put one in front of the other. He stumbled over to a hammock and fell into it. He crossed his arms over his head, letting the hammock sway. I felt bad for him. The Greek government wanted us to detour Macy, but we couldn’t remove her. AMP wanted updates on the underwater war, yet we couldn’t make a move without her noticing.
The boat engines chugged under a hot, sleepy day. I brought out some beers from the cooler and passed them around. Reuben took his gratefully and nodded beyond the wheel to where Macy was sunning on the forward deck. “Now there’s a sight you don’t get to see often on this rig. Usually, it’s your butt-ugly face taking up the scenery.”
To be able to look at Macy at all, I had to guzzle down half the beer. She had stripped down to one of those teensy bikini’s that barely put out an effort to cover her intimate parts. Her curves careened dangerously into more curves. She was broad-shouldered but those warrior shoulders were necessary to keep the two Georgia peach breasts upright and perky – and they were perky. They swelled against the cloth fabric, the nipples pressing into the middle of the triangle.
The golden flesh spread flatly below her breasts, curving into a waist so small, you could wrap around it with your two hands. She had swimmer’s legs, muscular and shapely, and small, high-arched feet. Her b
ody was no stranger to the sun. There didn’t appear to be untanned flesh anywhere, unless it was under three small triangles of cloth.
Reuben slapped the side of my head. “Don’t go panting like that. It ain’t gentlemanly.”
I winced. “Did you know you are supposed to smoke a cigar, not eat it?”
“I smoke it enough. I like to make the flavor last.”
I finished my beer with my eyes still straying to our passenger. “Did ye offer a beer to the ly-dee?” Asked Reuben.
“I was going to.” I swallowed hard. “I forgot.”
“Bah,” he sneered. “You’d better let me do it. You’ll be slobbering all over her.”
I watched him snatch up the extra beer, then blinked. “That reminds me. David wants to hold a meeting, but he doesn’t want Macy listening in.”
“Blimey!” Reuben slapped at me again but this time, I ducked. “I don’t know who is scrambled more, you or David. You should have taken up the nymph’s offer when you were down below. At least your mind would be clear.”
“You’re the one who let her know we’re good for three days.”
“I ain’t too good at lying.”
I shrugged. “It’s just as well. AMP has been ragging at us. If we go out to the deep, we can do a bit of diving while Macy sleeps.”
“Hmm,” said Reuben, squinting into the sunlight. “It’s going to be dark soon. A lot of people, when they are sunbathing out on deck like that, just fall asleep, they are so warm and comfortable. You tuck a blanket around them, and they’ll stay asleep right through the night.”
I looked at her out there, as sweet a morsel of temptation as ever walked the earth. “I don’t think she should be out on the deck all night. Not when we’re out in the deep.”
“We’ll bring her inside before then.”
He opened the beer and poured it into a glass. He made a partial dragon face and touched the tip of the beverage with his lizard tongue. I looked at him with disgust. “What are you doing?”
“Just a mild sedative. She’ll sleep through the night. She’ll be relaxed and dream of rosy, psychedelic things and she won’t even have a hang-over in the morning.”
