by Swigart, Rob
The other hand was trapped underneath him. His shoe, not the one on the foot stretched out toward the side, but the one from the foot tucked up, had come off and rested an inch or so away. His socks were black, a sharp contrast to the white shoes.
This detail too seemed heartbreakingly poignant, but Kimiko kept her face impassive. This did not seem like a time to fall apart over a shoe, especially since she was barely keeping her own sense of panic in check.
She looked up. The ship had drifted away from the beach and was nearly parallel to the end of the cape. It was time to take action, or she would drift too far out to sea for the anchor to hold, and nearly too far to swim back. She scuttled forward.
The anchor was wound up on its chain. She examined the winch for a moment or two, peered down through the hole where the chain disappeared, and could clearly see the top of the anchor snugged up against the side.
She pulled on the winch’s lever. For a moment, nothing happened. Then with a startlingly loud roar, the anchor fell away and splashed into the water. The chain followed like a demented snake down a small mammal’s burrow. It clattered past her feet and she had to jump back.
After a few moments the slithering chain slowed, sagged, and stopped. Should she reel it back in, make the boat a little tighter? She turned the winch handle, but as soon as she let go, the chain unrolled back out again as the ship’s bulk pulled at it. She realized she had to apply the brake once she had it where she wanted it to secure it.
The sea was calm, the tide gentle. It might not stay that way. Kimiko moved to the other side and released the other anchor. Once it was secure, she thought it would be safe to leave the ship with its awful cargo.
She edged past the captain, now plunged into gloom as the sun sank behind the low rocks to port. The shore was only a hundred feet or so away. The captain’s white shoe was tinged a bloody red by the setting sun.
Perhaps the healing salt would wash away the horror. With one last look behind, Kimiko turned and dived cleanly into the ocean.
TWO
FIRE IN THE SEA
The sea was fearfully alive, frenzied.
What looked like some mythical animal made of whorls and loops, of mounds and rolling pseudopodia, of tentacles that groped bluntly along the tortured bottom, seemed to boil with an awful, demented, impossible growth. As it rolled, it twisted inside out, heaving, groaning, subsiding, and rising again.
From time to time, sheets of blue fire crackled over its surface, as if discharging electrical power over the writhing skin of the beast, as if it were dying, over and over again beneath the pressure of the water. Rings of the blue light boiled across the surface, fluttered away as the skin rolled under and turned dark, only to flash again, in jagged ripples that flashed like lightning.
The heat was appalling, but the pressure was even more so as the beast advanced, pushing all animal life before it into panicked flight. Seaweed and anemones, anchored where they were, vanished slowly into the beast’s hot maw, consumed by its voracious, unstoppable hunger.
Chazz backed away as the hot waves pushed at him. He could see, deep inside the electric blue of the shimmering lightning, a deep red glow, the eye of Satan glowering out of his rage.
The beast stretched out of sight along the coastal shelf in both directions, reaching out its arms to lap at stony mounts or coral growth, to encircle and engulf.
To his left the beast had died with a long wheezing sigh, and Chazz kicked over that direction. He let himself sink down toward the dying beast’s back, where the skin had already turned black and rounded, though he could still feel the heat radiating from it.
It was smooth like bowel, with hummocky billows on the surface, and rounded into yard-wide pillow shapes. Inside, perhaps, it was still living, but the heat was dying fast, and soon this would be merely the new sterile bottom of the sea, and then the life would move back.
The volcanic vent erupted suddenly to the north with a scream of renewed rage, and the water boiled up again as the molten rock touched it. It shimmered once more with instant steam turned blue this deep where the light is leached of all but its most aggressive reds and yellows. Steam discharged once more over the molten stone in sheets and flares of actinic light. Again Chazz backed away.
The other two divers, Jack Wellburn and Sy Eckerling, drifted a few meters away, watching him. Jack held the underwater camcorder. They were at sixty feet, only a quarter mile from shore, off the southwest coast of the big island of Hawaii, examining the volcanic eruption at close hand. Chazz had been collecting marine plant specimens that had moved back into the previous lava flows in the past couple of years, curious about the effects on plant DNA of such strange conditions. Sy, his temporary graduate assistant, was helping him collect.
He gestured and Sy kicked over to him. Twenty feet below them the sea bottom was undisturbed, its sudden plain of smooth sand broken only by a scattered forest of slender green-tinted eels stretched upright from their burrows and drifting gently back and forth with the currents. Even this close the eels were barely visible in the murky light since their pale color matched the light at this depth. Chazz tilted head down and kicked toward the sandy plain below.
There was little other life at this depth. From time to time, a bland-colored wrasse swam by as if it were off course. A few stalks of pale seaweed grew down here, and Chazz collected a couple of specimens. As he handed them to the younger of his two companions, a sudden roar behind him made him spin abruptly.
The lava face shoreward was splitting open vertically, small fragments of ancient lava shot away from the destruction, one or two hissing past Chazz to vanish in the gloom. Inside the lipless mouth of the split, the thick ooze of lava rose, welled out, and began to slide down the vertical surface, roaring and hissing. Again blue steam writhed over the pillowed surfaces as the lava oozed, rolling and turning black.
A small motion below the falling lava caught his eye. An immature octopus had panicked. One of its tentacles was snared in a rock cleft. The lava was spilling down above it, and its tentacles were twining around one another, pushing against the rock. Its burrow was visible behind it, with the small semicircle of carefully placed stones before its entrance jittering in the sudden shaking as the fracture in the lava face widened, tumbling more chunks of black fluffy rock onto the symmetrical arrangement.
Chazz dove swiftly toward the creature, reached out his arm and allowed it to curl its tentacles around his forearm and wrist. He gently worked to ease the trapped tentacle free, glancing up frequently as the glowing lava oozed toward him. One of the suckers had caught its edge against a sharp outcropping, and he was having difficulty releasing it. The frightened creature struggled against him as well.
He could feel the heat against his back and neck. Soon he would have to abandon the octopus to the lava flow. He squeezed the tentacle and milked it backwards from the cleft, kicking awkwardly to the side. Suddenly it popped free and wrapped around his other wrist in a convulsive grasp.
With his hands bound together by the panicky creature, Chazz kicked violently away from the face. A large viscous drop of rapidly cooling lava fell behind him.
When he reached the other two he saw they were shaking oddly. It took him a moment to realize they were laughing. He held up both his hands, bound together by writhing tentacles, and smiled around his regulator. Very gently then he began to unwind the tentacles, but it seemed as soon as he got two free, one of them wrapped itself around his arm again. It was a bit like trying to free himself from chewing gum. Soon his two companions were pounding each other on the shoulder, doubled over with underwater laughter. Bubbles burst out and rose, expanding in irregular clumps.
They should not have nitrogen narcosis at this depth, but perhaps it was time to start back to the surface. They would need a couple of short stops for decompression anyway. So he gave up on the octopus and began kicking toward the distant light.
The others followed reluctantly. When he looked back down at them, they collap
sed again into hysterical fits. One held his hands up toward Chazz, holding the insides of his wrists together as if he were bound. He shook them above him and mimed trying to unstick two very sticky items, which always stuck to something else— his elbow, his side, his knee— until he was twisted into a helpless snarl. The other recorded everything on tape. Later they would have a good time at parties with this sequence: Dr. Charles Koenig snared by octopus.
As they rose, the creaking and roaring of the lava gradually faded.
At forty feet, Chazz paused to take his bearings. The others hung in the water nearby and watched the octopus. It was gradually relaxing, allowing a tentacle or two to fall away from Chazz’s arm, though it still kept a tight hold of him. He had acquired a new pet.
He looked up from his compass and gestured. The others nodded, and he started off.
The water was gradually growing darker as the sediment and small volcanic particles spread. Soon visibility was down to a few feet, and for a moment Chazz worried that he would have to go to the surface just to find the boat, but just then the line snagged his arm as he swam, and he stopped, clinging with one hand. He held the other one out, hoping the octopus would take this opportunity to leave him for a new home below, but the octopus held on tight.
Jack floated into view, holding the camera to his eye as he recorded Chazz and his pet. He held the camera away from his face, pulled out his regulator and made kissing motions with his lips. Then he laughed, huge bubbles expanding out of his mouth like cartoon speech balloons. Soon Sy floated into view dragging the bag full of samples. The three of them hung onto the rope, waiting out their decompression time. Chazz could almost hear the jokes they were thinking.
Soon Chazz checked his watch and nodded to the others, and they started up again. Just below the hull of their dive boat he stopped and tried once more to disengage the octopus, but it clung tighter and finally he gave up. He pushed his head out of the water, pulled his regulator out and shouted. “Hey! Get a bucket or something full of water. I’ve got a guest.”
His wife Patria stuck her head over the side. She nodded and vanished. Jack and Sy climbed onto the platform at the back and began shedding their equipment. Hands pulled the camera and sample net aboard. After a moment, a yellow plastic bucket appeared, attached to a rope, and Chazz took it under water and once more attempted to pull off his new friend, again without success. Finally he swam to the stern, hauled himself, the bucket, and the octopus out of the water.
In the air the octopus expressed its distress. Chazz plunged his arm into the bucket and heaved a sigh of relief as the octopus finally let go, one arm at a time. It curled into a small gray-brown sack on the bottom of the bucket, almost as if it were sulking.
“We should get back,” Patria said. “Orli will be missing us.”
Chazz nodded and handed her the bucket. Then he shrugged out of his buoyancy compensator and air tanks and handed them over the stern.
“He’s really cute,” Patria said, when Chazz sagged onto the bench beside her. She was peering into the bucket between her feet.
“What makes you think it’s a he?” Chazz leaned back and stretched his shoulders.
She smiled. “What’s it like down there?” She looked across him at the distant shore. Twin ribbons of crimson lava from this latest eruption of Kilauea still flowed sluggishly into the ocean. An enormous cloud of steam and vapor writhed like angry ghosts where the molten rock met the water. They could hear, even this far away, the roar of heated water, supported by the largo rhythm of the surf.
“Eerie,” Chazz said briefly. “The rock cools then cracks open, and more lava oozes out. It looks organic, alive. Very weird.” He leaned forward and peered into the bucket. “What shall we call him?”
Patria laughed. “See, there you go. It’s a he, just as I said.”
“All right, all right I’ve never had to sex an octopus before. What’s his name?”
“You’re the one asking all the questions, Socrates. You tell me.”
“All right. If I’m Socrates, then he’s my Plato.”
“Great. Plato the Octopus.”
Chazz rubbed his salty beard where it itched. “Well, let’s get started. As you said, Orli will be missing us.”
“Actually, she’s still asleep.” Patria looked slyly at her husband. “But I have an interview later with a kahuna over near Hookena. So maybe we’d better go wake her up so I can feed her.”
Chazz nodded and waved at Sy, who was lounging in the bow. Sy waved back and started hauling up the anchor, while Jack started the engine. Soon they were headed toward shore.
It was one of those perpetually flawless days when nothing could possibly go wrong. The air was warm, the breeze was refreshing, not too hot, too cool, too brisk or too slack. The water was smooth, the swells long and languorous. The peaks of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea were free of clouds. Only the lava flow disturbed the almost surreal tranquility of the scene, and that was a distant hint of exotic color where it traced a thin red line down the blackened lava slopes. From time to time, it surrounded a living tree, which soundlessly exploded into smoke and steam, a small punctuation mark against the vivid backdrop.
They were still far enough away that the small village was invisible against the shore. Gradually, the white houses took form, small at first, but growing. Patria, leaning into the wind, her dark short hair sculpted against the fine bones of her skull, was smiling. Chazz, watching her, felt his heart lurch. She had resisted having a child, had not wanted to interrupt her career, and now they had Orli, still small as an otter and as hungry.
Chazz lowered his arm into the bucket. Plato reached a tentative tip toward it, curled around his finger and tugged gently. Chazz tugged back, and suddenly Plato let go. His tentacle rapped the side of the plastic bucket. “Did that hurt?” Chazz murmured.
“What happened to him?” Patria was leaning next to him, her head close to his.
“The rock shifted when the lava face split and he caught a tentacle. I almost didn’t make it.”
“Is he hurt?”
“I don’t know. I thought not, but he acts as if it’s tender. Perhaps it’s bruised, if octopuses get bruised.”
“He sure likes you. Look.”
Plato had reached out again and locked one tentacle around Chazz’s fingers. Another followed, softly tugging at him with his suckers. “You know, they’re supposed to be as smart as cats.”
“How smart is that?” She was laughing at him again.
“Pretty smart for somebody with no bones.”
“So. Bones are now a prerequisite for intelligence. New scientific theory, Doctor Koenig?”
“Bones do allow for most of the behavior we consider intelligent. Dancing, for example, a near-impossibility without bones. Or dipping snuff…”
“You could do that without bones.”
“All right, but bones are important, anyway, and I think it’s remarkable that Plato doesn’t have any and is still so brilliant.”
“You just think he’s brilliant because he likes you.”
“Okay, okay, enjoyable as all this jocular banter is, it’s time to get serious. What’s for lunch?”
“Hah. You’re taking us to the Sheraton.”
“Us?”
“Of course. Orli is joining us. She’s almost four months old now.”
“Oh. Of course— ready for sushi.”
They approached the beach, and Sy jumped overboard to fasten the bow line to the buoy The rest of them followed and lugged their equipment up the beach to Jack’s van: South Kona Divers was painted in international orange on the side.
“What do you want to do with this?” Jack asked, holding up Plato’s bucket.
Chazz took the bucket. “I guess we’ll either have to find a place to let him go or a way to send him back to Kauai. He might be happy in one of the tanks at the Center. Let’s just take him with us for now.”
The beach was deserted now at the height of the day. The town, a few hundred fee
t to the north, was asleep. Even the traffic up on the highway seemed to have stopped moving. The four of them sat in the van, feet dangling out, and drank cold juice from the cooler. Around the bend to the south they could faintly catch the distant roar of the lava when the breeze was right. Otherwise only the insects, and a few crabs that scuttled on the sand, disturbed the silence.
“What’re you going to do with all this stuff?” Jack asked, tossing his empty can into the big plastic trash container in back, beside the rack of empty air tanks.
Chazz shrugged. “I wanted to see the volcano myself, up close, under water. That’s a primeval environment down there, where the lava meets the water. Life may have started near deep underwater vents a little like that. There’s the right combination of heat and organic chemicals. I got some water samples and some plant and animal life too. Mostly I’m interested in the little guys, the single-celled organisms who might show some genetic effects. It’s more a hobby than anything else, really.”
“Anything useful come of it?” Jack started to stand up, ready to go. Sy snorted a quick barking laugh at the question.
“Sy is laughing because he believes science, if it’s pure science, has no useful applications, at least not right away.” Chazz was smiling. “But frankly, we find some interesting effects in enzyme and protein production with the slight genetic changes we’re looking for here.”
“What kind of effects?” Jack swung open the driver’s door and climbed in. The others found their seats, and he started up the dusty dirt road to the highway. Looking back, Chazz could see the boat, rising and falling gently on the swells.
“You worry about your boat at all?” he asked.
“Naw. There’s a guy lives in the first house down there keeps an eye on it for me when I leave it there. What kind of effects?”
“Sometimes we find something useful.” They all laughed at that. The van turned north onto the highway.
