The Soul Shadow and Other Tales of Tomorrow

by Linda Talbot

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  The Mutant

  The fishermen of the Pacific returned for the fifth time without a catch. Over the centuries they had systematically emptied the waters of the life that maintained a delicate balance.

  In desperation they probed deeper, using equipment specifically developed to vacuum the ocean bed, to dredge up species marine biologists had never before encountered; grotesque and cleverly camouflaged fish as crustaceous as rocks, fish with luminous scales that sent warnings through the dark, or extended tails that thumped vibrations across the sea bed, with pumping gills and inexplicably bloated bodies.

  As the imbalance grew, mutations increased. No species emerged true to type. Most proved poisonous. On the rare occasions when some comparatively familiar fish was caught, it had to be scrupulously tested before being sold. Soon even these occasional catches were depleted.

  But the sea bed stirred; ribbons of red, yellow and green waved rubbery fronds, cushions of coral glowed lividly, their heads inverted; a maze of mad forms. Anemones, on the other hand, faded and glowered and grew increasingly voracious.

  In places, thick fronds floated with serrated suckers on the surface of the waves. Before they stopped work the fishermen's boats were sometimes entangled and capsized. While the men were seized by waiting fish, the boats were overturned, entwined and crushed by the forceful fronds.

  Now man seldom ventured on the sea. He had stopped bathing in it years ago when pollution rendered swimming unsafe. Ships were no longer used as transport but had been replaced by airborne water skimming capsules. The sea was abandoned, its great cleansing soul soiled.

  Yet some unprecedented movement stirred in the darkest depths. Among the great reeds, the encrusted coral, the unwieldy fish, a body of shimmering green and black scales took slow shape. Huge gills grew, a poised white, opaque eye appeared. Gradually, with one fine layer of tissue on another, bulbous lips sucked and pouted. Sharp teeth lined the deep jaw which opened and closed with robotic regularity.

  Five months elapsed before a holidaymaker, who had braved a comparatively unpolluted beach in the Pacific, spotted a huge dorsal fin gliding like the ribbed sail of a war vessel, not far from the coast.. The fin dived, spreading a circle wide in the weed-laden water.

  The holidaymaker assumed it to have been a trick of the sun. But two days later, several kilometres away, the fish was sighted once more, moving at lightening speed through the foam-flecked sea. As it passed, a deep call of anguish echoed from beneath the water; a hollow, haunted sound like the bleak plea of a solitary creature seeking a soulmate.

  There were few marine biologists left, but two, who would have been about to retire had they not been made redundant twenty years ago, were located in Florida and flown to the Pacific beach.

  For three weeks they waited. No shiver of new life perturbed the sea's mirrored surface. Then the great fin was seen off the coast of Mexico, cutting like a razor through the brackish water, accompanied by the desolate drawn-out call.

  There were tales of former fish that thronged the seas; one that moved with the alacrity of a spider, another that flapped on wings measuring as much as seven metres across, while there were those that flew when pursued, above water. Most marvellous were the huge mammals that "sang" with yelps, growls, high-pitched squeals and drawn-out rumbles; songs that might be repeated for hours.

  With time, the facts of a meticulous marine hierarchy became the unclear stuff of legend. No one now believed in the song of the whale.

  The experts were contacted and they hurried to Mexico. But the great fish had again moved on. "He'll be half way round the world before we catch up with him," commented Decker, the elder of the marine biologists.

  Strauss, his colleague, gazed at the placidly polluted water.

  "Look!" he indicated the huge fin, shooting through the waves about a kilometre out. In seconds they had boarded the aqua capsule and were underway. Tenacious reed clutched at the powerful hull but the craft plunged on safely above the surface.

  Back up vessels followed, fully-armed and with enough towing equipment to shift half a town. The fish moved like lightening. So did the boats; silent, buoyantly built to defy the detritus left by man.

  Near Acapulco the great fish scissored sharply closer to shore. A vast wave gathered with a roar to roll as though generated by a giant motor to the beach where it broke, sucking unsuspecting people in its massive undertow and leaving devastation in its wake.

  The fish rode the surging water, lurching with the heaving backlash, blindly meeting oscillating weed, thrashing through a kaleidoscope of livid colour. From the shattered shore, it received the waves of disruption and distress and panic-stricken, shifted direction in a futile attempt to escape.

  It headed out to sea once more. Long range weapons were fired, the great fin shuddered but the fish, slower now, swam on. Decker and Strauss reached it five minutes later. From beyond the rocking fin a hideous head reared for the first time.

  The fish could only glimpse the menace of shifting shadows with its great eye and was constantly brushed with darting small fry and the tentacles of troubled growth. Its sense of distant danger however, had developed keenly. From somewhere on land, vibrations of ill will were perceptible; some gathering threat winging through the water like the waves of an obsessive curiosity.

  Its head was a vast circular disc like that of a lamprey but over it dropped a thin thread suggesting the snare of green light used at dark depths by the Angler fish. Very slowly, in pain, the great mouth opened and shut and the head dived briefly out of sight. As the vessels positioned to ensnare the creature, it thrashed and turned and uttered its chillingly desperate call, the vibration shuddering beneath the boats.

  Then the great misshapen mouth, confronting the biologists, opened and a surging current bore them high into the cavernous expanse. The flotilla of aqua capsules barely had time to turn and accelerate back to shore.

  Inside the fish, a deep movement; a thrashing, a crying, a taste of polluted blood, of flesh too filled with fat and salt. There was hair and hard bone. An unaccountable weight slowed movement through water, a sharp pain from the dorsal wound shot through the shivering scales. The over-sated taste of Earth further soured the sea.

  Unable to swim further, the great fish, its anguished call constant now, yet weakening, was washed onto the beach at Acapulco.

  The lamprey mouth gaped and gasped, the massive body heaved with the green-grey scales and enormous gills, the dorsal fin collapsed and the bony fan of a formidable tail spread helplessly on the sand.

  This time more than a hundred marine biologists came to investigate the mutation. The fish still faintly breathed but within hours had ceased; its huge opaque eye fixed in accusation and despair on the men who had come to wonder at one of nature's aberrations.

  The great fish was dissected; its enormous body laid bare by the metre. The internal organs were grotesquely unique; a distorted network that moved with difficulty - a complex yet inefficient digestive system and some organs to which the biologists could not put a name.

  In the distended stomach Decker and Strauss lay almost comically, side by side, their flesh a sour shade of green, but otherwise in tact. A look of astonishment filled their open eyes as though, possessed by dream, they were simply sleeping.

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