The Beast of Cretacea

by Todd Strasser

  It takes hardly any time for their uniforms to dry under the broiling sun. When the nippers have collected themselves, Flask speeds away with the bright-red towline tied behind his wave racer. In the chase boat, Gwen and Ishmael let the line stream through their gloved hands from a large yellow tub on the floor. As skipper, Billy is supposed to keep a steady pace behind the pretend beast, but he bumbles at the chase boat’s controls. Gwen has trouble keeping the line from catching on oarlocks and cleats. And more then once Ishmael gets tangled up trying to deploy the big orange float.

  After several hours of bungled maneuvers, the chase-boat crew is tired and dejected. Flask sits on the wave racer nearby with a sour look on his face. “Yer gonna have to do an awful lot better than that.”

  “We just need more practice,” Ishmael suggests.

  “Or maybe yer just a bunch a’ green nippers wastin’ everyone’s time.” Flask gazes back at the Pequod, seemingly trying to decide what to do next. It’s nearly lunchtime, and while they have meals stowed in the chase boat, they could just as easily return to the ship and eat in the mess.

  Ishmael feels disappointment spread over him like the Shroud over Earth. To make the kind of money Old Ben said he’d need to save Joachim and Petra, it’s crucial that he be part of a successful chase-boat crew. “Why don’t we take a break, eat lunch, then practice some more this afternoon?”

  Flask gives him a skeptical look. “I can only bang my head against a wall fer so long, mate.”

  “Just a few more hours,” Ishmael implores.

  “Yeah, come on, friend,” Queequeg joins in. Even Gwen and Billy start pleading for more practice.

  Flask presses his lips tightly together, then speaks: “Waste a’ time, but . . . oh, all right.”

  They’re in the middle of lunch, floating under the sweltering midday sun, when there’s a splash behind them. Twenty yards away, a huge shadow moves slowly below the surface. It must be eighty or a hundred feet long, by far the largest living creature the nippers have seen yet.

  “Well, I’ll be.” Flask chuckles. “It’s a big ol’ hump. ’Scuse me while I see if any stick boat’s close enough to put a stick in it.” He starts to lift a two-way to his ear.

  “What about us?” Gwen asks.

  Flask snorts. “Get real, Red. That’s serious weight down there. And a good chunk a’ coin fer a pot what dearly needs it.”

  “But wouldn’t it be the perfect way for us to practice?” Gwen persists.

  The third mate ignores her. Meanwhile, the huge creature drifts lazily past as though the chase boat weren’t even there. The nippers can hear only the third mate’s side of the conversation over the two-way: “Well, how long till he can get here? . . . Naw, it’ll be gone by then. Humps don’t stay this close to the surface fer long. Come on, there’s gotta be someone. Where’s Fedallah? . . . A hundred clicks? Blast it. . . . Oh, sure, great, thanks.”

  Flask lowers the two-way, his sun-chapped lips pressed together in frustration.

  “Come on, let us take a shot,” Gwen cajoles. “Otherwise, all that money’s just going to get away.”

  “Grow some brains, Red,” Flask snaps. “If yer crew can’t manage with me on a wave racer, what makes ya think ya could ever handle a great big wild creature like that?”

  By now the hump is forty yards away.

  “Oh, come on!” Gwen begs. “There’s nothing to lose from letting us try!”

  Flask casts his eyes up at the clouds dotting the blue sky. A moment passes, and then he shakes his head and spits into the ocean. “Aw, what’s it matter? You’ll never come close. Go on, knock yerselves out.”

  Gwen wheels around. “Start her up, Billy!”

  While Billy gets the chase boat running, Queequeg pulls the tarp off the harpoon gun, and Ishmael checks the spools of red towline to make sure they’re clear. Gwen hooks the big orange float to the line’s end.

  “Ready?” Billy asks, trying to sound brave.

  By now the hump is fifty yards off and several fathoms deep. Gradually steering the chase boat nearer, Billy positions them about twenty-five yards away, at which point he starts to run parallel with the hump.

  Flask motors beside them on the wave racer, coaching. “Suppose it surfaces, Queequeg. Gonna aim the harpoon gun straight at it?”

  “No, sir,” Queequeg answers. “If I do that, the stick’ll fall short.”

  “So what’s yer plan?”

  “Got to fire on an arc, sir.”

  All the while, the dark shadow of the hump continues along languidly.

  “Can’t we get closer?” Gwen asks.

  “We might spook it,” says Billy.

  “But Queek’s never practiced from this far.”

  Queequeg kneels in the bow, his hands on the harpoon gun, making minute adjustments to the angle at which he hopes to fire. The sea around them sparkles, rising and falling in gentle swells. Sometimes in the trough of a wave, they lose sight of the hump. But when they rise back up on the next swell, the creature is there, swimming slowly, oblivious to the threat so close by. Still, sooner or later Ishmael expects to come to the top of a swell and discover that it’s gone.

  “The other boats ever try to stick a hump from this far away?” Queequeg asks Flask.

  “Not if they can help it,” the third mate answers. “I was a harpooner fer years, and I can tell ya from experience, it’s too easy to miss at this distance. There’s ways to approach on the sly, distract and trick ’em. Only ya ain’t had time to learn that stuff yet.”

  “So tell us,” Gwen says.

  “Easy does it, Red. I told ya, ya ain’t ready.”

  The chase boat dips down into a trough and starts to climb out. At the top of the swell, Gwen lets out a gasp.

  The hump has changed course.

  It’s crossing their bow a mere fifteen feet ahead!

  Not only that, but it’s coming up for air!

  “Well, mother of terrafins, will you look at that!” Flask mutters.

  As it reaches the surface and lumbers past the chase boat’s bow, Ishmael feels like he’s watching a slow-moving coal transport. The hump is so close it will be impossible to miss with the harpoon gun. But Queequeg, as startled as the rest of them, looks back quizzically, uncertain if he should really fire. Gwen hisses urgently: “Go on! Before it gets away!”

  Queequeg takes aim.

  “Wait!” Flask cries. “Ya ain’t —!”

  Ker-bang! Too late. With a big puff of white smoke, the harpoon rockets from the gun and into the hump’s flank.

  In a flash, the creature sounds. Length after length of red towline whips away at blurring speed. Now that they’ve scored a hit, Billy is supposed to accelerate and follow the hump, but he flounders at the controls, and when he guns the engine, the boat lurches backward!

  The crew tumble forward. Billy reacts too quickly, shifting out of reverse and into forward so abruptly that the RTG stalls. The chase boat dies in the water.

  “Clear the line!” Flask shouts while the crew stagger to their feet and Billy tries to restart. The harpoon line is still whipping out, and there’s hardly any left in the tubs. Suddenly Ishmael realizes what’s going to happen and cries out to Queequeg, who has just enough time to duck before the last of the coil disappears and the big orange float shoots toward the bow.

  Whack! The boat takes off with such dispatch that they’re all thrown back into the stern. Ishmael hears a cry and a splash and knows someone’s gone overboard, but in the tangle of bodies, arms, and legs, it’s impossible to see who. In no time the chase boat is bumping and slapping across the ocean swells, being pulled by the hump while in the bow the big orange float is jammed tightly against the harpoon gun.

  Groping for a handhold, Ishmael pulls himself into a kneeling position on the stern thwart and catches a glimpse of Flask far behind them, hauling Billy out of the water and onto the back of the wave racer. By now Queequeg and Gwen have also managed to get handholds and kneel.

  “Cut the lin
e!” Ishmael shouts. Each of them carries a knife for just such emergencies and Queequeg starts to inch forward, always with a tight grip on a thwart or gunwale to keep from being thrown out of the boat. He’s almost reached the bow when the chase boat suddenly stops.

  Ishmael, Gwen, and Queequeg share mystified glances. Have they caught a lucky break? Queequeg is reaching for his knife to cut the line, when the bow is suddenly yanked down with such force that the stern flies up —

  And Ishmael and Gwen are catapulted into the air.

  Ishmael smashes face-first into the ocean, then bobs to the surface in his PFD, dazed and coughing up salt water. The seawater is nearly as hot as the Pequod’s showers, and with a jolt he realizes that he’s in the middle of an ocean and has no idea how to swim. His body goes stiff with panic. Will the PFD keep him afloat?

  A wet head of dark-red hair pops up a few feet away. It’s Gwen, coughing and spitting.

  But where’s Queequeg?

  One day, when Ishmael was around seven, he was playing on the floor with some children. On the other side of the room, a door opened and Ms. Hussey, the sour-faced woman who was always yelling at the children, came in with a boy on crutches, his legs strapped into long metal braces. Ishmael and the others stopped what they were doing and stared.

  The two boys grew close, often playing games with a handful of parts they’d scavenged from the insides of broken tablets, navigating the pieces over a landscape of old circuit boards and touch-screen assemblies spread out on the floor.

  Sometimes Ms. Hussey accompanied grown-ups into the playroom. And now and then, the grown-ups left with a child. While no one had ever wanted to adopt Archie, the boy with the leg braces, couples had often expressed interest in Ishmael, and on three occasions he’d been placed with families. Each time, he’d run away and found his way back to the home.

  One day while he and Archie played, they became aware of two men, a woman, and Ms. Hussey standing a dozen feet away, observing. They’d seen one of the men before, watching them through the window from the street. He was stocky, with a broad forehead, thick black hair, and a beard.

  The other man and the woman were new. They appeared to be a couple, the man tall but stooped, with a lined, wizened face and the thick hands of a laborer. The woman was petite, with bright, watchful eyes.

  “We’ve tried to separate them,” Ms. Hussey was saying, “but no matter where we place the younger one, he always finds his way back here. He’s got an uncanny sense of direction, I’ll say that for him.”

  “Does he say why he keeps coming back?” asked the man.

  “He doesn’t say anything,” said Ms. Hussey. “Both boys could speak when they came here, but now they refuse. We don’t know why.”

  The couple whispered to the man with the broad forehead, and then the woman turned to Ms. Hussey. “What about the other boy?”

  “Archie?” Ms. Hussey shook her head. “You don’t want him.” She gestured to the leg braces propped against the wall.

  In the past that had been enough to end the conversation, but when the three visitors began to whisper again, Ishmael and Archie eyed each other uneasily. Then the tall, stooped man said, “What if we took them both?”

  Archie’s eyes instantly widened with hope. No one had ever suggested that before. But Ms. Hussey looked down at her tablet and shook her head. “As much as I’d love to get them both off my hands, it appears that you were fortunate to be approved for even one foster child given how small your home is. But why don’t you follow me? There are some excellent candidates in the room next door.”

  She started away, but the couple and the stocky bearded man lingered for several moments more, speaking in low voices. When they’d gone, Ishmael and Archie shared a disheartened look. Being taken together would have been a miracle, but they were old enough to know that there was no such thing.

  Fifty feet away, the chase boat bounces wildly as the hump tries again and again to dive. Somehow Queequeg has managed to remain aboard and is being tossed around inside the boat like a doll. Ishmael can’t imagine how he’s able to hold on and keep from being flung off. Why doesn’t he just let go and jump overboard?

  Then Ishmael sees why: Queequeg’s not holding on — he’s being held. The back of his PFD is caught on something, and in the mayhem he can’t reach around to free himself.

  Flask rushes up on the wave racer with Billy riding on the back. “What in the universe is he doin’?”

  “He’s caught!” Ishmael yells from the water.

  Crack! A plank of the chase boat’s flooring breaks off, sails into the air, and smacks down into the water near them. The hump is pulling the boat to pieces. Sooner or later it’s going to jerk down hard enough to yank the hull right off the pontoons, and when that happens, what’s left of the chase boat is going straight to the bottom — and Queequeg with it.

  A loud ripping sound fills the air as one of the pontoons tears free of the hull. The chase boat cants to one side, and Queequeg is slammed silly.

  “Can’t we do something?” Ishmael shouts at Flask.

  “Like what?” the third mate yells back.

  Ishmael doesn’t have an answer, but he’s not going to bob around and watch his friend perish. His fear of drowning momentarily forgotten, he begins mimicking the movements of Fedallah swimming. He lacks the grace of the older sailor, and the PFD slows his progress, but even so, he’s able to propel himself forward.

  “Stop!” Flask shouts. “You’ll get yerself killed!”

  Ishmael ignores him.

  “Come back! That’s an order!”

  As Ishmael splashes closer to the chase boat, a burnt-chemical smell hits his nose and the water’s surface becomes oily. The chase boat is being pummeled so violently that it’s spilling lubricants.

  Strangely, when he’s about ten feet away, everything goes still. The remains of the chase boat float peacefully, and Ishmael can see that this would be the perfect moment for Queequeg to free himself. But his friend hangs limp and stunned, thanks to the beating he’s taken.

  Ishmael splashes closer. Five feet away . . . three feet . . . He can almost reach out and touch Queequeg.

  “Get back!” Flask bellows behind him. “It’s breaching!”

  Ishmael doesn’t know what “breaching” means, but there’s no retreating now. He’s reached Queequeg. A loop of fabric on the back of his friend’s PFD is caught on the float hook.

  “Ishmael, it’s going to surface!” shouts Gwen.

  Deep below them, a dark spot is rapidly growing larger.

  “W-watch out!” Billy shouts from the back of the wave racer.

  The water around the chase boat begins to roil. Ishmael gropes for his knife.

  “Leave him!” Flask shouts.

  Ishmael reaches up and slices through the fabric loop — just as something slams into them from below.

  In the morning, the couple and the man with the beard were back with Ms. Hussey. Ishmael and Archie were in the exercise room, swinging on overhead bars. As soon as Ishmael spotted the grown-ups, he felt anxious. Usually when people came back for a second look, they ended up taking him with them, at least temporarily.

  Sensing that a child might be chosen, the youngsters in the room stopped playing. Ishmael and Archie crept toward the playhouse near the wall, Archie walking with his hands, his legs dragging behind. They slipped inside, hoping the visitors would forget about them and leave.

  Footsteps echoed in the silent room, and then Ms. Hussey’s sour face appeared through the playhouse window. “I’d cooperate if I were you,” she warned Ishmael under her breath. “The people who come here looking for children want the ones who are young, cute, and cooperative. The longer you play these games, the more likely it is that you’ll never be chosen.”

  But that, of course, was exactly what Ishmael and Archie were hoping for. The boys stayed inside and huddled close to each other. Exasperated, Ms. Hussey said, “It’s no use. You’ll never separate them. If you insist on trying
, all you’ll do is create a great deal of trouble for all of us.”

  The tall man eased himself to his knees and gently pushed open the playhouse door. “You two must be pretty good friends, huh?”

  Ishmael and Archie remained silent.

  “My wife, Petra, and I would like a foster child,” the man said. “But we’re only allowed to take one of you.”

  The boys backed farther into the playhouse. Now the petite woman with the bright eyes kneeled down beside her husband. “We would so love to have you both in our family. We tried to get them to change their minds, but they just won’t.”

  Archie squeezed his eyes shut. Ishmael watched the grown-ups warily. No one had ever spoken to them like this before, and he didn’t know what to make of it.

  Ms. Hussey harrumphed loudly. “I really don’t see the point in going through all this. You’re just wasting everyone’s time.”

  The tall man looked over his shoulder at her. “Just a few more moments.” He turned back to the boys. “What if we let the two of you decide who comes with us? Would that make it easier?”

  “Oh, for Earth’s sake!” Ms. Hussey blurted out in exasperation.

  Ishmael held the man’s gaze. Had he understood him correctly? Slowly, he began to creep forward. Archie stared at him uncertainly but didn’t resist.

  “Well, well, isn’t this interesting,” Ms. Hussey clucked. “The younger one must really like you two. Either that, or he’s gotten tired of having that little cripple around all the time.”

  Leaving the playhouse, Ishmael crossed the room and collected Archie’s leg braces and crutches . . . which he brought back and offered to the couple.

  The woman drew a loud breath. Her husband took her hand in his. Ishmael crawled back into the playhouse and pressed his forehead against Archie’s.

  “Pay them no mind,” Ms. Hussey told the couple. “I’m sure it’s just a trick meant to make you feel even guiltier about separating them.”

  “Have they ever done it before?” asked the man.

  “Well, no,” Ms. Hussey admitted. “But there’s always a first time.”