The Last Mutation
Page 15
Rayman scoped out the enormous thing in Tank #12. “What happened to you, number twelve?”
His answer came in the form of a wall of water that issued over the lip of the tank and soaked him from head to toe. Rayman’s first coherent thought was that a rafter or some piece of the roof had fallen into the tank. On closer inspection, though, he had to admit that he was looking at moving thing, a living thing…an animal.
Sawfish.
But that was impossible! At best, the specimen he had in Tank #12 was ten feet long, from the tip of the saw to the tip of the tail. He eyeballed the monstrosity before him, waiting for it to momentarily cease moving while it changed directions so he could get a good look. The saw stuck way out on one side of the round tank while the tail protruded far over the other. He forced himself to stop gawking at the freakish aberration before him and make the calculation. He didn’t like the number he came up with.
Thirty feet.
No sawfish has ever been recorded anywhere near that length. How on Earth…
He spun and visually checked the other tanks with sawfish, checking for more giants. But all of them were still normal size, most dozing on the bottoms of their tanks, one or two swimming in lazy circles.
“It’s just you, number twelve! What happened?”
Rayman flashed on his work day yesterday. It hadn’t been the best of days. He’d gotten a late start thanks to a traffic accident in Miami necessitating a labyrinthine detour, and then when he’d gotten in late and checked his e-mail there had been another all staff message about how their primary funding agency was making noises again about reviewing the current grant programs to see where cuts could be made, so to be sure and submit progress reports… Oops, still haven’t done that… Then he’d gotten right to work on the copepods, his bread-and-butter grant. He’d scooped a batch of the little critters out of one of the aquaria…he glanced over to the wall to check on them—were they gigantic now, too?—but no, they were normal sized. Then he’d walked them—wait! No, I remember now… I forgot the specimen box… This was a plastic, aerated container ideal for transferring the copepods. … Didn’t want to walk all the way back into the inside lab to get it so I just used the net and walked fast back into the indoor lab to take my measurements. He pictured the minuscule crustaceans popping around in the open net, most of them landing back in it, but one or two falling out onto the concrete floor by the time he reached Tank #12…
Uh-oh.
He looked back to the rim of Tank #12, then to the floor around it. He didn’t see any copepods there that he had missed. They were genetically modified organisms (GMOs), so allowing one to escape into the bay via the drain hole in the floor, for example, would be something he’d be held accountable for should anyone find out. But he’d checked very carefully yesterday and was sure he hadn’t missed any. Still, he had an uneasy feeling about what must have actually happened. One of them jumped out of the net and landed in the water of the tank, didn’t it? They didn’t all hit the floor. He thought about this for a few moments, utterly transfixed, as a realization took place.
Of course!
Some types of copepods were parasites in sawfish, living in the gills. While this fact was coincidental, meaning that he hadn’t deliberately chosen to work with sawfish and copepods because of this symbiotic relationship, he did not miss the irony. Here he was, struggling along with a grant to induce gigantism in one species, and he accidentally hits the jackpot with a different species unrelated to the grant.
I’ll be damned. He spoke to the fish. “Number twelve, you’ve got a copepod in your gills, don’t you?” The fish continued to thrash. Rayman’s mouth tugged downward at the corners. As exciting as it was, this unexpected development was a real problem. He didn’t have the facilities to care for a fish this large. He could outsource it to a local public aquarium, but that would mean explaining what happened to it, that he’d made a mistake in the lab…
No… I don’t need that kind of publicity right now, what with the funding environment… He’d already had a few student protestors over the GMO aspect of his work. Just reactionary kids, really, but this… He gazed at the monster in the tank, shaking his head as he imagined the screens full of forms he’d have to fill out and submit to try and explain what happened, and then have the accident turned into accepted new protocol. It occurred to him, now that he knew how it worked, that it would be much simpler to pretend he came up with the idea of introducing the copepod to the gills of a sawfish as a result of purposeful thought rather than by accident, and apply for a new grant, the chances for approval being boosted by the fact that he already worked with both species involved. Yes!
But first he had to do something about this sawfish. It was wild caught from local waters by specimen collectors, but Rayman knew he couldn’t just release a GMO organism of massive, head-turning proportions into the wild. He would have to destroy the fish and then he could dump the dead body into the ocean, maybe cut it up first or grind it into chum so even the body wouldn’t be found.
He retreated to the indoor portion of the lab and returned to Tank #12 with a hypodermic needle full of poison. Now how the hell am I going to do this? The big saw was still flopping around crazily, different parts of its oversized body sticking out over the round tank. Rayman walked up to the side of the tank while the huge fish’s side was there, hypo clutched tightly in his right hand, but his movements were far too tentative. By the time he brought the syringe up, the animal was mostly on the other side of the tank. Still, far be it from Dr. Mason Rayman to give up too easily. He hadn’t become a professional researcher by quitting, and he wasn’t about to start now.
Rayman was circling around the tank, the needle raised again for another go, when he heard the chime from his desktop computer inside the lab indicating that an email had just come in. Hmmm, could be news on that new proposal I submitted last week. Sure could use some good news right about now…
“Temporary reprieve, number twelve,” Rayman called over his shoulder to the fish as he entered the inside portion of the lab to check his email. He woke up the dark screen by nudging his mouse. His eyes were immediately drawn to his open email program where half a dozen bold subject new messages awaited. Most of them were from his assistants, those part timers paid to carry out the leg work of his various smaller grants. The latest mail, though it wasn’t a reply regarding his proposal, arrested his attention. His eyes widened as he read the subject line: Notice of grant termination #NSB92283002.
He recognized that number, all right, knew it by heart, he’d had to use it so many times by now to pay for various things, including his personnel wages. Still standing, he leaned on the desk with his left hand. He dropped the hypo onto the desk and lashed out with his right hand to click the mouse, opening the full message. It was long, about a full printed page, full of pseudo-legalese formalities, but he knew how to cut right through that crap and get to the point. His heart clenched as he read it. Due to increasingly rare funding opportunities…competitive environment…only most critical studies…grant #NSB92283002 has not been selected for extension…
Not been selected for extension! Rayman recoiled from the screen as if it were a venomous snake. Technically, his sawfish grant expired at the end of this week, but he had applied for an extension, meaning that he would have another year to complete the work and be able to spend the remaining funds. He had done it many times before on other grants. It was a routine process, almost a formality, and the last thing he’d ever expected was to be denied the extension.
But there it was. He read the email again to make sure he wasn’t imagining things, but of course he had gotten it right. The purse strings had not only tightened, but finally closed altogether. Rayman pummeled his desk in frustration. This meant the end. His other grants were not enough to support full-time work. And then he noticed his voicemail light blinking red on the desk phone. He hit the buttons to check the message, fairly certain of what he would find there. Sure enough, it was the
head of the Ocean Sciences Department, the esteemed Dr. Edward Reyes, breaking the news with his characteristic “personal touch” in an attempt to soften the blow he had known was coming before Rayman did.
The marine scientist listened carefully to the message, hoping against hope the man would offer some kind of a lifeline—another grant, perhaps, or even an open teaching position he might be suitable for? Rayman cringed as he recalled his outwardly vocal stance and how real scientists did research, not teaching, but surely they would overlook that at a time like this? But as Rayman heard the rest of the message, it hit home that he would have no such luck.
He looked around at the old white walls, cracked and stained yellow in places, at the rusty filing cabinets, the shelves of science books and technical manuals. He was done. The reflection of the overhead fluorescents glared off the syringe on his desk and he considered jabbing it into his neck. Then he got sick of sitting in front of the computer, knowing the sympathy emails would start coming in next as word got around. No doubt his colleagues would be losing grants, too, but most of them also taught or had a mixture of smaller grants. He had put too much faith in those damned copepods. And the sawfish—large animals that were expensive to care for. He heard the big one splashing now as it circled its comparatively tiny tank, saw sticking over the edge like a wayward chainsaw.
Sawfish is available from Amazon here
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT