He came closer and gently held her arms. “I’ll do my part. You just better be careful.”
“Wait, isn’t everyone here still forgetting something?” Simon asked. “Maria’s not going to survive for five seconds once she jumps in the water, no matter what equipment she might have. The hammerheads are still going to swarm and shred her.”
“No, I think we can prevent that,” Kevin said. “As long as we’re within a certain distance of the transmitters, we can still control what kind of signal they’re putting out. They won’t switch over to a preprogrammed signal until they’re out of our range. So as long as Maria stays close, we can alter the magnetic frequencies from the transmitters she’s carrying so they repel the hammerheads rather than control them.”
“So they’ll act as a shark repellent?” Simon asked.
“Up until a certain point, yes,” Kevin said.
“Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t she, you know, need to actually get close to the sharks to do anything?”
“I’ll just have to turn it off when she gets deep enough to attract Teddy Bear.”
“And I won’t be able to communicate with anyone on the Cameron once I’m in the water,” Maria said.
“So let me see if I’m completely understanding what’s about to happen,” Boleau said. “Maria is about to jump into waters infested with an uncountable number of very angry hammerheads, looking for one big enough to sink a ship. She’ll be unable to get anywhere near them, which she absolutely has to do, until Kevin, who won’t be able to see or hear anything she’s doing, flicks a switch. At that point they will probably swarm her and she’ll need to find one specific one, stick it with a tiny transmitter, all the while trying not to get eaten. Do I have that correct?”
“No,” Maria said.
“No?” Boleau repeated.
“No, I won’t need to stick it with a transmitter. I’ll need to stick it with two, one on each side of its head in order for us to be sure they’ll work effectively.”
“Oh, of course,” Simon said. “Silly us. That’s going to be sooooo much easier.”
“Maria, this really sounds like a suicide mission,” Boleau said. “You can’t possibly think this is going to work.”
“We might be able to figure out something safer if we had a shark cage on board,” Kevin said. “But we didn’t load it today because we didn’t think we would need it.”
“Look, there’s nothing anyone is going to say that will stop me. I’m going to do this.”
“And it’s going to make for excellent television,” Vandergraf said.
Kevin turned to Vandergraf. “Doug, I regret to inform you that we will not be doing any reality show with you. Sorry.”
Despite all the terrible things that had happened today, Maria was tempted to say that the gobsmacked look on Vandergraf’s face almost made it all worth it. Almost, but not quite.
17
With everyone capable doing their part to help, they estimated that they could have Maria ready to go in the water in less than fifteen minutes. That gave Maria and Kevin about ten minutes to be alone as Maria got ready.
“We can still wait,” Kevin said. They were together in the small bedroom they shared when they took the Cameron out for longer periods of time. It was cramped, considering it had originally been intended as crew quarters while the original master bedroom had been converted into a lab. Despite the small space, they had spent some wonderfully intimate and sensuous times in this room, making love with the sounds of the waves buffeting the boat from outside. Maria got naked in front of Kevin now, but there was nothing sexual about it. She needed to change into her wetsuit and prepare for the chilly waters above El Bajo. Kevin likewise found nothing exciting about the moment, his eyes staying away from her bare skin and instead focusing on her face.
“No we can’t,” Maria said. “Not from a scientific perspective. You’re the one with a doctorate here. I’d think you’d be all for risking my life in order to preserve a possible new species.”
“You may love marine biology as much as I do, Maria, but sometimes I think you watch too many movies right along with Simon. I’m not a mad scientist here willing to sacrifice everything for a few results. You’re more important to me than any shark will ever be.”
Maria paused at that. There had been plenty of declarations of love between them by now, but this particular awkward admission felt like the most sincere she’d ever heard from him.
She also had to force herself not to smile because, despite his insistence that this was real life, his wording had sounded exactly like something written by a desperate screenwriter trying to shove a last moment of character development into the script before the final action sequence.
“I’m not going to die, Kevin,” she said. “I have you watching my back.”
“Except I can’t actually watch it. You’re going to be completely out of sight. I’ll be able to use the transmitters to track the positions of you and any hammerhead you might tag, but that’s an awfully limited field of vision. I’ll be activating the transmitters based on guesswork.”
“Speaking of which, shouldn’t you be working on any final programming needed for the transmitters?”
“I told Gutierrez what we needed. He’s better with electronics than I am.”
“So it’s not just you watching my back. It’s him, and anyone else on the Cameron helping in every way they can. I’ll be fine.”
“For God’s sakes, Maria. How are you able to be so calm about this? This is not a calm situation.”
“Who said anything about calm? Kevin, I’m petrified right now,” she said as she zipped up her suit and stretched to make sure the fit was right.
“You’re not acting like it.”
“What do you expect me to do, curl up and cry? I’ll do that later when we’re back at your house and snuggled up together in your bed. For now, I don’t have the time or the energy for that. I need to remain focused. Probably more focused than I’ve ever had to be in my life.”
“I just feel so helpless watching you get ready while all I have to do is watch. I feel like I’m doing nothing to contribute.”
“Then don’t do nothing. Do exactly what I need you to do.”
“And what’s that?”
Maria grabbed him tightly by the shoulders, her fingers looking pale as they pressed into his flesh. “Tell me I’m going to come back.” She tried to say it smoothly and calmly, but her voice had an unexpected hitch.
Kevin held her shoulders right back. “You’re going to come back.”
They hugged each other tightly for several more minutes, not needing to say anything. The warm touch of the other person said it all for both of them.
By the time they both made their way back on deck, word of what Maria was going to do had spread to the rest of the crew as well as the refugees of the Tetsuo Maru. The young man they’d talked to downstairs, who’d finally introduced himself as Kyo, had spent the last fifteen minutes going around to his crewmates and explaining what was going on. While a few were still too shell-shocked by their experiences to be much help, most of the other helped in whatever way they could, including checking the scuba gear and ensuring that the remaining Zodiac was still sea-worthy. Boleau and Gutierrez had spent the time testing the transmitters and separating the ones that no longer appeared to work. To Maria’s dismay that only left five for her to do her task. The Gutsdorfs, despite a healthy amount of whining on Simon’s part, agreed to pilot the Zodiac so that it was directly over El Bajo, giving Maria the best possible starting point. Gary did nothing but film the entire proceedings while Vandergraf gave an inane running commentary. At least they both managed to stay out of everyone else’s way.
“You have the equipment ready for the transmitters?” Kevin asked Gutierrez.
“Boleau’s bringing it out from the bridge so you’ll have a better view of the Zodiac from the deck,” he said. “Not that the view will make you any less blind to what’s going on down t
here, but I figured maybe it would make things a little easier for you psychologically.”
“Thank you,” Kevin said. He nodded in Kyo’s direction. “Could you get everyone who’s not going to actively be doing something during this back below? Not only are we going to need to keep the distractions to a minimum, but the last thing we want is for anyone to go flying if Teddy Bear suddenly decides to ram the Cameron after all.”
As Kyo cleared the deck, the Gutsdorfs gingerly climbed into the Zodiac along with Maria’s scuba gear. Kevin gave her a small pouch with the transmitters in it that went around her waist.
“You’ll need to keep calm as you’re handling those,” he said. “If you drop any, it will be pretty much impossible to get back.”
“Right,” Maria said. Despite her best efforts her voice was shaking even more now.
“Hey, you can do this,” Kevin said. He grabbed her by the arms again, which immediately had a grounding effect on her.
“Right. I can.”
“Since we can’t see anything you’re going to be doing, it will all be about timing.” He pulled out a waterproof watch and showed it to her. “Start the stopwatch function immediately before you go into the water. I’ll have the transmitters set to repel the hammerheads for the first five minutes. That should give you some time to scout around and get your bearings. Then I’ll turn them off completely. From then until you surface again, there’s not going to be anything protecting you, so that’s your window to stick Teddy Bear with the transmitters. Remember, it has to be at least two, one on each side, or else none of this is going to work.”
“Right. I remember.”
“As soon as you tag Teddy Bear, you need to get to the surface. When I see you that will be my signal to trigger the transmitters. We don’t know if the effect will be instantaneous or not. It might take a moment for the magnetic signals to mess with Teddy Bear’s control, so there might not be any time to wait. Get out of the water ASAP. You shouldn’t be going down deep enough that you’ll have to worry about getting the bends when you come up, but we’ll have med supplies ready back on the Cameron if you need them so don’t let that be something to worry you.”
“Got it.”
“Okay then. Last chance. I can still do this instead. Or we still might be able to get away with not doing it at all.”
Maria glanced out over the water looking for dorsal fins. She saw a few. There shouldn’t have been any. The hammerheads should have been gone, and she was risking her life to keep them here. When put like that, this really did seem like a crazy scheme. If she hesitated any longer, she suspected that she would in fact give in to temptation and back out.
“No. I’ve got this.”
“Alright. See you when you come back up.” He kissed her, long and sweet and sensuous. The feel of it lingered with her long after he backed away and took his place at the transmitter equipment.
She got in the Zodiac with Simon and Cindy, not allowing herself to look back at the Cameron as they motored out over the center of El Bajo. Maria put on the rest of her scuba equipment and prepped her tagging pole, putting one of the transmitters at the end before making sure the remaining four were secured in her pouch. It was entirely likely that the amount of time it took just to put on a transmitter underwater was all it would take for one of the hammerheads to kill her. As she worked she couldn’t help but feel like there was something strange about the situation, but she couldn’t place her finger on it until they were about halfway out.
“You two aren’t bickering,” Maria said.
Simon looked away. Cindy shot him an angry look.
“What?” Maria asked. “What am I missing.”
“Don’t,” Cindy said, although Maria couldn’t be sure if that was directed at her or Simon. Simon looked up at Maria with the expression of a dog who had just chewed up the sofa cushions.
“No really, what?” Maria asked.
“It’s just…” Simon started, but Cindy cut him off.
“Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it. If you say it, little brother, I will give you noogies for the complete entirety of our likely short remaining lives.”
“I’m lost here,” Maria said.
“It’s just that this is always the point that something goes wrong,” Simon said. “We have a plan which we’ve discussed openly. We’re now on our way to execute it and everything is relatively calm. It’s all a recipe for something terrible to happen.”
“And I was trying to tell him earlier,” Cindy said, “that’s all well and good, but in those stupid movies the one thing that always sets the bad things off is people talking about how this is where things would go wrong. Or not go wrong. Any sort of open acknowledge of the formula is a guaranteed way to set things off.”
“But we’re not in a movie,” Maria said.
“No, but…” Simon started. Maria cut him off.
“This is real life, not fiction. This is not a movie showing on Saturday night on SyFy. You know how I can tell? Not nearly enough blonde bimbos.”
“Uh, there’s Mercer,” Cindy said.
“And Monica’s sort of blonde,” Simon said.
“Whatever. I’m Hispanic and Kevin is trans. Between the two of us, we’re not nearly white and cis-normative enough to make it to SyFy. If this were fiction it’s more likely that we’re some hack pulp fiction writer’s attempt at diversity. He’s going to self-publish this on Amazon and tweet a little about it before the rest of humanity promptly forgets about it. But that’s not going to happen either. Do you know why? Because this is not fiction.”
They were both quiet for several moments before Simon murmured. “You can’t really know that.”
“I’ll prove it to you,” Maria said. “If we were in some badly written movie or novel, the writer wouldn’t be able to resist a shark jumping out of the water and eating one of us right… now.”
Cindy looked around, trying to be casual about it as though she didn’t really expect anything to happen. Simon actively cringed. After several seconds of quiet, they both visibly relaxed.
“See?” Maria asked. “Real. This is reality with actual lives involved. So would the two of you please just focus?”
Absolutely nothing else happened for as long as Maria was in the Zodiac.
18
It wasn’t until Maria was ready to plunge into the water that it occurred to her that the fact that nothing was happening was extremely worrisome.
Occasionally they would see some dorsal fins at a distance but there was nothing like the water-churning frenzy that had accompanied previous trips in the Zodiac. Maria wasn’t the only one disquieted by the calm. As she did a final check of her equipment, Simon and Cindy softly bickered to each other, Simon complaining that any writer doing this story must have gotten it into his head to subvert genre norms just to mess with them and Cindy getting annoyed that he assumed the writer had to be a male.
“She probably has to write under her initials to hide the fact that she’s a woman writing in a predominantly male genre,” Cindy said.
“That’s a pretty big assumption,” Simon said.
“No bigger than assuming that we’re all completely fictional. Here, does this feel fictional to you?” She pinched him.
“Ow! Hey, what the hell, are you twelve?”
“Would both of you please stop it?” Maria asked. “You’re giving me a headache, and I kind of doubt I’ll be able to take a Tylenol down there.”
“Sorry,” Cindy said. “Old habits for us. We fight when things are no longer exactly in our control.”
Maria looked in the direction of the Cameron. She thought she could see the glint of sunlight on binoculars as Kevin watched her. She gave them a thumbs up and then, not allowing herself any more time to think about it or second guess herself, dove over the side.
She stayed at the surface just long enough for the Gutsdorfs to hand her the tagging pole. Then she let herself sink. She hadn’t gotten up this morning with the intention of doing a di
ve, but she never passed up the opportunity to go down below and, despite their horrifying and precarious situation, Maria allowed herself just a few seconds to revel in the thrill. The entire world around her was a rich deep blue that would never be matched by anything in the world above. The water, even though it was cold, surrounded her and gave her a deep sense of warmth, of caressing her entire body and sensuously flowing over her.
Then the memory of everything she had seen today came back to her, and along with it came the terror. She was in a hostile environment where humans had never been intended to go. She had heavy equipment strapped to her back that existed for the sole purpose of keeping her from dying by breathing the wrong thing. If she went far enough down, the weight of the water would be enough to crush her fragile body. Also, if she went down too far and came up too fast, nitrogen bubbles would form in her blood, crippling her in agony.
And all that was just the dangers of the ocean before she factored in the giant homicidal hammerhead whipping its brethren into a feeding frenzy.
Maria gave herself just a moment to feel all that fear before forcing it to pass through her. She would allow herself to feel the terror later, once she had emerged from the ocean alive and able to talk about it. For now, that horror would do nothing more than distract her at a critical moment. If she ever wanted to again feel dry land beneath her feet, she had to stay focused.
The first thing she had to do was get her bearings and assess the situation around her. She had five minutes (or now closer to four and a half, according to the watch on her wrist) before Kevin would switch off the magnetic pulses of the transmitters. Looking straight down, Maria could see the shadow of El Bajo Seamount, that geological formation that had so attracted the hammerheads for time beyond human imagining. She had been in these waters before and knew she could dive deep enough to reach the mount itself with minimal effort, probably even being able to come up without taking the time to depressurize if she needed to. According to Kevin, there had once been a time where, when looking down at the seamount, divers would have been able to see a beautiful and delicate dance as hammerheads swam all in one direction around the underwater mountain, hundreds of them moving in and out of the concentric circles in a show of mating prowess that was completely alien to human minds. Maria had never seen it. Those days when marine biologists had first discovered the wonders of El Bajo had been before she was even born, possibly even before her parents had met. Kevin himself would have only been a child. By the time Maria had joined up with Kevin and first seen El Bajo for herself, it had been nearly barren, schools of fish patrolling it now with no regards for the safety hazard this area had once provided for them. If she’d been lucky she could still see a small handful of small sharks, not large enough to cause a human to so much as slightly fret. Hammerheads by then had been a rarity, a special treat that was usually only glimpsed from afar. Like Bigfoot, they would be gone before she could be certain that it hadn’t been an illusion.
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