Galapagos Below

by D. J. Goodman

  Maria couldn’t concentrate on his words long enough to give him an answer. This should have been simple. Just step up off the dock, grab the railing for support, and pull herself up onto the Cameron. Yet she couldn’t. She found herself dwelling, bizarrely, on whether to lead with her prosthetic foot or her real foot. Dimly, she understood it didn’t actually matter, but some part of her brain insisted that this decision was of the utmost importance and, if she got it wrong, horrible things would happen.

  “Maria, dear, your breathing…”

  Still barely hearing him. Come on, she could do this. It was just one step. How many steps did she take every day? How much had she practiced with her new artificial leg? This moment now didn’t matter any more than all those other times.

  Except it did. Some lizard part of her brain insisted that it did.

  “Okay, that’s it,” Kevin said. “We have to call this off…”

  “No!” Maria said. “I… I can do this.”

  She had to focus. She had to do something, anything, some technique to calm herself down and bring her back into the moment. In that strange way that human brains often have, her mind brought back a song she remembered from her childhood. It was old, and silly, and of course now that she knew marine biology, the logical part of her insisted on telling her that it was completely scientifically inaccurate. Yet somehow, it seemed like an appropriate focus.

  “There’s a hole, there’s a hole, there’s a hole at the bottom of the sea,” she whispered.

  “What was that?” Kevin asked.

  “Shh. Give me a moment.” She concentrated on the lyrics in her head so that no one else would hear her and think her nuts. There’s a log, there’s a log, there’s a log in the hole at the bottom of the sea. Was that how the song went? She couldn’t remember, but for now, she didn’t think it mattered. All that mattered was that was how it went for her.

  There’s a bump, there’s a bump, there’s a bump on the log in the hole at the bottom of the sea.

  She felt her mind starting to clear. The gentle sound of the water against the dock and boat became the beat by which she recited the song, and with it went the beat of her heart. She hadn’t even realized it was racing until it came back down to something resembling normal.

  There’s a frog, there’s a frog, there’s a frog on the bump on the log in the hole at the bottom of the sea.

  With her body now feeling under her control her again, Maria lifted her left leg, the real one, up onto the Cameron. Finally, she accepted Kevin’s help, and he held her hands as she brought the prosthetic right one to join the other.

  She looked up at Kevin and smiled. He grinned right back.

  “I think we’re ready,” she said. “Let’s head off to paradise.”

  5

  The trip would have been much shorter had they come in by plane to one of the two or three airstrips on the islands, but the Cameron was just as much a cast member of Sea Avenger as any of the humans aboard, so Merchant had wanted to get footage of them cruising into the archipelago. That meant well over five hundred miles by sea, and more than a single day’s trip. The Cameron stopped at one point so they could rest for the night, especially considering they’d been going nonstop ever since Merchant had gotten the call that there was something filmable here, and resumed the trip in the morning. That meant that Maria got her first glimpse of the islands of her dreams in the early morning sun, and the view was spectacular.

  Her sleep the night before had been restless, partly because of excitement, yet also because she had to once again get used to the gently rocking boat beneath. This meant she was up before the sun and standing out on the deck as it rose. A fine salty mist blew in her face, a sensation she hadn’t even remembered that she’d missed until it was back. Standing on the deck was a little harder than she remembered, since she’d only just learned how to balance with her prosthetic leg on the land. The sea took an entirely different combination of muscles. The result was that she actually felt mildly seasick for the first time in her life, but that minor irritation was worth being back in her home element. She had to laugh at herself for how long it had taken her to get on the boat. Now that she was here, she didn’t want to leave again.

  With the sun at her back as they went westward, Maria’s first clue that they islands were almost in front of them were the black specks in the sky. There was some mist that obscured her view, but based on the specks’ movements, they were obviously birds of some sort. It had been a while since she’d done much reading on the Galápagos, but if she remembered correctly then this, the month of September, was part of the low season on the islands, a time where, despite their position at the equator, they were cooler and drier. According to Kevin, there wasn’t as much to see at this moment in the year—fewer well-known animal-mating rituals, very little in the way of blooming flora- so there wouldn’t be as many tourists as other parts of the year.

  Maria took out a pair of binoculars and watched the birds as the boat got closer. She could make out just enough to see that they were albatrosses, hunting for food not far from the island. She thought the albatrosses of the Galápagos might be waved albatrosses, but she couldn’t tell for sure from this distance. Then, slowly, like it was rising up out of the sea, she saw the first of the Galápagos Islands rising up with the horizon.

  “Isla Espanola,” Maria whispered to herself. That much she remembered off the top of her head. Not only was it one of the furthest east, but also among the oldest, having been formed millions of years earlier on the same volcanic hotspot that had created the other islands, then moving to the east thanks to plate tectonics, all while being ground down by the wind and waves until it was its current small size. Given enough time, it would wear down until there was nothing left of it above the water, and it would sink below just like countless other islands had before it.

  She was so enamored with watching the approaching island that she only barely noticed as the rest of the Cameron’s passengers and crew awoke and went about their duties, everything from taking inventory of their supplies to setting up camera equipment. She thought she heard Kevin say something in her ear about breakfast, but she mumbled something in reply that even she was unsure of and he went away, obviously knowing it was better not to bother her. After some time, she realized that Charlene was standing slightly behind her, getting footage of Maria staring out at the island. Somehow, that made it harder for Maria to appreciate the view.

  “Dr. Hoyt?” she heard Merchant say from behind her. “Perhaps you could give us a little background about the islands?”

  Maria turned to watch him as Gary got into place for the shot. A sound engineer checked Kevin’s mike, then, when the engineer gave a thumbs up, Kevin spoke.

  “Although it’s unknown for sure if anyone might have come here before them, the first recorded people to set foot on the islands was a crew taking the Bishop of Panama to Peru. They ended up off course and found themselves stuck here for a time, where they couldn’t find enough fresh water and some of them died. They left thinking that the islands they had found were worthless, little more than a hell on Earth. They didn’t even bother to name the islands. The archipelago didn’t have a name until years later, when some unknown mapmaker simply labeled them the “Insulae de los Galápagos.”

  “Which means…?” Merchant asked.

  “Islands of the Saddled Tortoises,” Maria said, joining Kevin at his side. Kevin took her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back.

  “After that, the islands were still mostly forgotten and ignored by most people,” Kevin continued. “The only people who gave it much thought were pirates and the occasional whalers.”

  “So what changed?” Merchant asked. “Why did people suddenly start to think they were important?”

  Kevin smiled. “What changed was a little ship called the Beagle. It was captained by a man named Fitz Roy, but he wasn’t the one history would remember as the most famous person on the ship. That person ended up being a young natura
list named Charles Darwin.”

  This part Maria could jump in on, considering how many times she had read the Galápagos chapters of Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle. “When Darwin first saw the islands, his reaction was pretty much like everyone else. A bunch of desolate islands, only a few of which were only close to being useful. He spent five weeks here, and even after he left, he didn’t know yet what he had seen. Famously, he didn’t even take very good or organized samples of the wildlife here. It was only when he returned to England and started looking at the specimens, along with specimens that had been collected here by other naturalists, that a radical idea started brewing in his mind.”

  “Evolution?” Merchant asked.

  “Sort of. Contrary to what some people believe, evolution wasn’t a completely new idea at the time. Some, like Lamarck, had already posited ways such a thing might be possible. But none of that was mainstream. Darwin came up with a specific type of evolution: natural selection.”

  “Explain it for our viewers,” Merchant said. “Maybe we can put some interesting graphics over your words in post.”

  “The absolute best examples are Darwin’s finches,” Kevin said. “There are fifteen specific species of finches throughout the Galápagos.”

  “Really?” Merchant asked. “I thought I saw in my reading that there were only fourteen.”

  “Maybe in some alternate reality,” Kevin said. “But here in our real universe, there are fifteen. The finches are all slightly different in size and coloring, but the most notable difference between them is their beaks. Some have very large beaks, some very small. At some point in the past, a common ancestor to these finches somehow ended up on the islands. There are plenty of different theories as to how, but considering how many different currents converge here, it’s hardly surprising that species would end up here. The ancestor finches would have ended up on several different islands, where they would have found different resources at their disposal. One island might have an abundance of small seeds, another of large seeds, another of cactuses, and so on. Even though so many of the islands are close together, the strong currents between them discourage species from going from one to the other. So the various finches are cut off from each other, preventing interbreeding. On the island with large seeds, the finches that would have the best chance of surviving were the ones who could more easily crack open the seeds, meaning the ones with larger beaks. The ones with smaller beaks get less nutrition, and therefore are less likely to survive or mate. If this happens over enough generations, you get a large-beaked finch that is genetically distinct.”

  “Same goes for smaller seeds,” Maria said. “Smaller, easier to open seeds mean the finches that thrive are the ones with smaller beaks shaped for picking up tiny objects. On those islands, the large beak becomes a problem.”

  “Do that enough times, on enough different islands, with enough different available resources and enough generations, then viola,” Kevin said. “The result is fifteen distinct species of finch where there was originally only one.”

  “Alright, cut,” Merchant said. “I think that’s good. I’ve got to say, though, that I’m not sure how well all that talk about evolution is going to go over at the network.”

  “Um, isn’t the network called The Education Channel?” Maria asked.

  “Sure, but it doesn’t jive with the opinions of a certain demographic of the American public.”

  “We’re not here to give them an echo chamber about their unfounded opinions,” Maria said. “We’re here to give them facts.”

  “Actually, I’m sure the network would say we’re here to give them scary things in the ocean,” Kevin said.

  “Look, I agree with both of you,” Merchant said. “I’m just letting you know that I’m going to have to fight to get certain things past them. Too many executives would look at what you were just talking about and would only see a snooze-fest.”

  “And where do you stand in that?” Maria asked. “Are you really going to fight to make this show everything it should be?”

  “I already told you. I’m not Doug Vandergraf.”

  “That didn’t actually answer the question.”

  “All I can do is show you through my actions, okay?” Merchant said, then turned around and walked away in a manner that clearly told them she thought this conversation was over.

  “You’re not going to let this conversation be over, are you?” Kevin asked.

  “If I have to have my name first in the credits of this show, then I’m going to do everything I can to make it something I’m proud of. You’re still with me, right?”

  “All the way, honey,” Kevin said. They both turned back to look at the islands as more came into view, tall dead volcanoes and round ridges of rock rising up out of the sea. It was gorgeous, and Maria couldn’t wait to take her first step on them.

  6

  The first thing Maria had to do when stepping off the dock in Puerto Ayora was sidestep a pile of animal shit. Under other circumstances, she wouldn’t have taken that as a particularly inauspicious sign. She was a biologist, after all, and a major part of biology, whether anyone wanted to admit it out loud or not, was dealing with the leavings of all manner of creatures. It was the size of the turd, though, that gave her pause. It was big. Not quite big enough to belong to a human. More like that of a large dog that had had a healthy lunch. Dogs weren’t endemic to the Galápagos Archipelago. They’d been brought here with humans, obviously. Anywhere else, she would have simply walked around dog shit without giving any more thought to it, but here it struck her as an ill omen.

  As for an ill omen of what, she had started to feel it the instant the Cameron had come close enough to Puerto Ayora to see it from the open sea. She’d had to do a double take, and for an instant, had even thought to wonder if she was even in the Galápagos at all. Because this was not how she had envisioned them.

  “I thought you said we weren’t coming in at the height of the tourist season,” Maria remarked to Kevin.

  “We’re not.”

  “But, uh, just look!” She gestured out at the harbor. She had almost expected a sleepy-looking fishing village. Instead, the first thing she saw, before she could even see beyond to the village itself, was a harbor jam-packed full with yachts, cruise ships, and boats of every size in between. Most of the cruise ships had very noticeable logos on them of big-name cruise lines.

  “From what I’ve been able to gather about the way things are around here now, this actually looks worse that it usually would specifically because we are in an off month,” Kevin said. “During the height of the tourist season, you’re not going to have all these docked at Puerto Ayora at the same time. They’d be spread out throughout the islands, doing their tours. Instead, most of them are taking advantage of the slow time to dock for cleaning and repairs.”

  “But this is…”

  “This is what?”

  “This is too many. The Galápagos are supposed to be remote islands separated from the rest of the world and…”

  “And frozen in time?”

  “I guess. I suppose it sounds naïve when you say it like that. Instead, this is more like a new Disneyland. Wait, is that…?”

  Neither of them had commented as the Cameron cruised in past a very large cruise ship with a very familiar cartoon mouse painted on the side.

  And now that they were walking into the village proper, the picture of a pre-fab resort town only became easier to see. She’d known enough in advance to be aware that Puerto Ayora, situated at the southern end of Isla Santa Cruz, was the largest of a small number of human settlements on the islands. What she’d been expecting was a tiny fishing village. What she got instead might have been a tiny village at some point in the recent past, but now was on its way to something bigger. And, perhaps, gaudier.

  There were still plenty of small buildings, but they were dwarfed by the multiple hotels with bright new paint jobs that were obviously run by major hotel chains. The main street was full of sou
venir shops, selling everything from stuffed versions of Lonely George, the most famous animal to ever live on the islands, to shirts featuring—yes, it was really true—Disney characters. She noticed a number of small businesses, dingy but well-loved, advertising tours and diving trips. Nearby there were other buildings, much flashier in nature, advertising the same things but also offering stranger and shadier experiences, everything from parasailing to tortoise rides.

  “Is that even legal?” Maria asked, pointing to a picture of a child on a saddled tortoise. It was a cartoon, so the tortoise looked inordinately pleased to have someone on top of it. Darwin himself had told of riding a tortoise in The Voyage of the Beagle, but she doubted it was something he would have done given their current endangered and protected status.

  “Nope. Don’t think so,” Kevin said.

  “So how are they getting away with advertising it?” Maria asked.

  “Because they paid off the right people,” someone said nearby. Maria, right along with all the cameras that had been following her, turned to see a young man in clean khaki pants and an aloha shirt coming toward them from one of the smaller buildings advertising tours.

  Kevin held out his hand. “Are you Ernesto Padilla?” he asked.

  “That I am. You must be Kevin Hoyt.” He took Kevin’s hand and shook it before turning to Maria. “Which must make you the world famous Maria Quintero?”

  Maria did her best to hide her grimace from the cameras, instead concentrating on Ernesto. He was younger than her by a couple years and well-built, the body of a man who had grown up doing his share of hard work. He also seemed a little shy and sad as he took Maria’s hand. For some reason, that endeared him to her. Merchant had gotten her up to speed on as many details at possible during the hours between mainland Ecuador and the islands, including Ernesto’s brief role in tourist Debbie Schmidt’s death. He carried himself like he thought he might be to blame for this, and all he wanted was for someone to punish him and get it over with. They would perhaps find out whether some neglect on his part had been to blame, but Maria doubted it. She suspected Ernesto was just being too hard on himself.