Natural Selection

by Dave Freedman

  Their boat, the Expedition, actually wasn’t half bad. White fiberglass with lacquered wood accents and a rough-hewn teak deck, the ninety-foot yacht had been converted into a floating research facility. With generous amounts of space in the front and rear decks, it featured a tiny living room; an even tinier galley; three bathrooms like those on United Airlines coach class; and a satellite for TV, phone, and data transmissions.

  They’d been out here for eighteen months. For eighteen months, they’d done nothing but try to determine why the manta rays had died in their specially designed San Diego aquarium. They’d considered everything—food, water temperature, salinity, amounts of natural and artificial light. They couldn’t figure it out. It had been a frustrating, unsolvable mystery, and everyone except Jason Aldridge, their leader, had accepted that.

  Still, frustrations aside, at least they had jobs, and Lisa had grown accustomed to the relative lack of outside intervention. She was focused on her core research now and didn’t like surprises. She slipped on some leather flip-flops and wondered again: Why’s Ackerman here? She turned to two men at the very back of the boat, a good distance away, so—

  “Darryl! Craig! You guys know what Ackerman’s doing here?!”

  “What?! Just a second, Soccer Mom!”

  Lisa shook her head. Soccer Mom. This had come from Darryl Hollis, what he swore she’d become if she ever got off the boat and actually met anyone. Lisa liked Darryl, but she didn’t care for what he was doing at the moment: shooting at skeet again. God, she hated that. Darryl and Craig were always very careful with their weapons, but it still made Lisa nervous to see arrows and bullets flying off the back of the boat. But what else were they going to do? They were as bored as she was. Finding little use for their advanced degrees, they had to do something, and needlepoint wasn’t an option. The two of them, as well as Darryl’s wife, Monique, were former ROTC members who’d met during active duty as they learned to fly Sikorsky helicopters and fire rifles. The guys weren’t “regular army” at all, more fun-loving, likable partyers. Darryl was tall, preppy, and black, with a powerful, athletic frame. Craig was a slovenly white guy with a beer gut who rarely did his laundry in the stacked machines below deck. They got along famously.

  As Lisa walked closer, Craig shook his head at a jammed skeet machine.

  Darryl just smiled at her, his customary big, toothy grin on full display. “I told ya I’ll never make any bad calls on your little ones, right?”

  Lisa paused. “I don’t have any little ones, Darryl.”

  “You will one day, and if I’m a ref, no bad calls for the Barton kids.”

  “Barton? So these kids will have my last name?”

  A nod. “As will your husband.”

  Craig looked up, annoyed. “Wait a second. I’m pretty traditional about that kind of thing. Lisa, we’re gonna have to talk about that before the wedding.”

  Lisa chuckled. Craig Summers had been lusting after her for a year.

  “Even if your kids go against the Hollis kids,” Darryl continued, “I’ll still treat ‘em right.”

  Lisa paused. “The Hollis kids? So you and Monique are expecting now?”

  “Planning, Lisa. The great ones always plan.” He looked down at Craig. “How’s it going with that, Sloppy Joe?”

  In jungle-green cargo shorts and a stained white undershirt, Craig whacked the skeet machine. “Fantastic.”

  Lisa put the binoculars back to her face. “You guys don’t know why Ackerman’s here?”

  “Got it!” Craig said suddenly.

  “Hold on, Lisa.” Darryl grabbed his hunting bow off the deck, and Lisa put down the binoculars to watch. As much as weapons frightened her, she found Darryl’s archery skills fascinating. She eyed his bow. It wasn’t some skimpy thing, but a formidable piece of equipment, nearly as thick as a baseball bat at its center, made of shiny, hard cherrywood, and four feet long fully strung. Darryl put the whole thing over his big shoulder. Darryl was one-eighth American Indian. As a kid, he’d spent eleven summers on his grandfather’s Indian reservation, owned by the Limble tribe of Hoke County, North Carolina, and was very experienced at hunting with a bow and arrow. Before she’d met Darryl, Lisa had thought of bows and arrows as archaic, almost cute devices. But when Darryl described one of his hunts, she realized there was nothing cute about seeing a twenty-eight-inch, hundred-and-fifty-mile-per-hour speeding projectile plunge into a stampeding wild boar’s chest. Bows and arrows were serious weapons, Lisa now knew. With characteristic cockiness, Darryl had assured her they were more dangerous than guns and carried far more foot-pounds of kinetic energy than bullets did. Why were guns so popular? Because any idiot could fire them. Craig Summers could fire a gun.

  “OK, gimme some skimmers, Craig.”

  “Yes, your lordship.” Craig put the machine on a sidewall and angled it out to sea.

  Darryl shook his head at Lisa. “So hard to find good help these days.”

  Craig looked up angrily. “Ready?”

  Darryl was still facing Lisa. “Yep.”

  Whoosh! A skeet rocketed away above the ocean. Then: Whoosh! Whoosh! Two more.

  In a fluid series of motions, Darryl turned and fired three arrows. Voom! Voom! Voom! In rapid succession, they sped away at truly frightening speeds. Crack! One skeet down. Crack! A second. Crack! A third.

  “Jesus,” Lisa said quietly, watching white ceramic pieces scatter over the turquoise sea.

  Darryl nodded coolly. “Don’t mess with the Big Dog.”

  “I won’t. So you guys don’t know why Ackerman’s here?”

  The two men shrugged.

  “Maybe to follow up on that talk he had with Jason earlier.”

  They turned. It was Monique Hollis, Darryl’s catwalk-pretty wife, up from below deck in cropped khaki pants and a navy polo. Monique was in her early thirties, exceedingly bright, tall, elegant, and with an easygoing down-home attitude that made her impossible to hate despite her looks.

  Lisa nodded. “What was that about anyway?”

  Monique shrugged. “Somebody came in saying they might have seen a new species.”

  “Really?” Normally, Lisa wouldn’t have cared about a new species sighting, but strange things were happening in the world’s oceans. The plankton supply had been behaving particularly oddly, and Lisa and her colleagues in the oceanic nutrition community had no idea why. Plankton were tiny, even microscopic, plant and animal organisms that drifted near the ocean’s surface in large masses. With a PhD in oceanic nutrition from UCLA, Lisa Barton had dedicated a large part of her life to studying the stuff. During the past weeks, with the aid of the Expedition’s onboard Plankton Measuring System, she’d seen levels drop alarmingly. Typically, plankton masses congregated around thermoclines, zones of abrupt temperature change between overlying warmer waters and colder, deeper waters. But recently, a number of thermoclines Lisa had personally sampled indicated levels 62 percent below normal. In addition, measures of turbidity, conductivity, temperature, and photosynthetic radiation were all way off.

  In the vast, interconnected ecosystems of the oceans, plankton were at the very bottom of the food chain. Problems with them usually led to problems elsewhere. Lisa didn’t know if it was related or not, but she’d recently read reports about several of the Gulf’s medium-depth species—the Sargassum triggerfish, medium-bill wall fish, among others—migrating to considerably shallower waters. Then, six months ago, the government’s annual midocean survey had reported that for reasons unknown, there had been a significant depletion in the Gulf’s midocean plant life, especially crinoids, a type of starfish, and gorgonians, a type of coral.

  Something significant was going on in the ocean. It had affected many animals, and Lisa wondered if it would affect more. She paused. Or had it done that already? She suddenly turned to Monique.

  “What new species?”

  CHAPTER 5

  MONIQUE HOLLIS cleared her throat. “It was sighted off L.A., I think.”

  “Wh
at was it?”

  “I only heard bits and pieces. I think it had something to do with a flying fish.”

  “Oh.” Lisa rolled her eyes. “One of those.” Then she considered the possibility more seriously. “A real flying fish or just something that leaped out?”

  “This woman thought a real flying fish.”

  “In the Northern Pacific Ocean?”

  There were fifty known species of “real flying fish,” part of the Exocoetidae family, and almost all of them were found in the tropics, a number in Barbados. Exocoetidae were basically regular-looking fish with oversize pectoral fins that could spread out and be used like wings. Lisa recalled that several species of squirrels, lizards, and snakes flew by the same principles. Typically, these fish glided just above the water’s surface for a few hundred feet, usually to escape predators. But Exocoetidae were nowhere near the Northern Pacific Ocean.

  Lisa’s eyes narrowed. “Did this woman identify the species?”

  “I think she said it was some sort of ray.”

  “A ray? Really?” Rays had nothing to do with the Exocoetidae family. “Well, what did Jason say?”

  “What could he say? He was polite to Ackerman, but you know Jason.”

  Lisa shook her head. Yes, she knew Jason. “Why would Ackerman care about something like that anyway?”

  “I guess if he really thinks it’s a new species, he might want us to go look for it. We’re doing next to nothing down here, and we’re still under contract after all.”

  Lisa shook her head. She hoped Ackerman didn’t make them go off on some wild-goose chase. “It was probably just a little bat ray that wanted to get some air.”

  Darryl shrugged. “Who cares what it was.”

  Craig looked up at the blazing sun. “Agreed.”

  “Then again,” Darryl added enthusiastically, “if Ackerman paid us more, I’d love to go look for a new species.”

  Monique eyed her husband sadly. “He won’t be paying us more money, Darryl.”

  “Yeah.” Darryl suddenly looked morose. “I guess not.”

  All soccer-mom jokes aside, the Hollises wanted to start having kids in the next couple of years, and the topic of money was a sore one. Children were expensive.

  Seeing how down they suddenly looked, Craig gently turned to them. “Take it easy, guys.”

  Darryl and Monique nodded, almost obediently.

  Lisa smiled to herself. The Hollises and Craig Summers were an odd, yet strangely copasetic triumvirate. Lisa admired their loyalty and often wished she had something like it.

  She looked down at the turquoise water, wondering where Jason was. “Jason’s been down there a long time. Do you think . . .”

  She suddenly spotted something enormous and black rising fast from the depths. She backed up nervously. . . . It continued to rise, ten feet from the surface, turned, and flapped away. She breathed again. Just a manta ray. A diver rose up right after it and climbed quickly onto the boat.

  Standing in fins, Jason Aldridge was five-ten with intense eyes and dark hair. He was male ambition in a wet suit, no interest in firing weapons, working on his tan, or anything else. A lean thirty-four, he was a single-minded workaholic, the type who liked to be busy every minute of every day and got antsy when he wasn’t. He was also more than a little depressed, but that wasn’t easily detected.

  No one turned when a second diver with a yellow underwater camera draped around his neck popped up. A chunkier thirty-four, his name was Phil Martino. He climbed up happily and grabbed a towel to dry his curly dark hair. “Hey guys.”

  There was no response. With the exception of Jason, no one liked Phil Martino. He was the only one of the six who didn’t have a PhD in ichthyology—though it wasn’t intellectual snobbery that made him unpopular. It was more that he served no purpose at all. As Darryl once put it, he was always “just hovering around, an all-around annoying dude.” Phil’s connection to the group was Jason. The two had met during an introductory marine-bio class at UCSD. While Phil later flunked out of that class, he and Jason never lost touch. Since college, Phil had held many jobs, including one as a professional photographer. So at Jason’s urging, Ackerman hired him to document the original manta aquarium’s progress pictorially. Phil Martino had been with the team ever since.

  Lisa turned to Jason, seated on the deck now. “FYI, Ackerman’s here, Jason.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. He angrily yanked off his fins. “I thought you were coming down to take that jellyfish sample.”

  “Oh,” Lisa paused. “I was, but then I saw Ackerman.”

  “You should have come down before that.”

  “Whatever.”

  He stood. “No, not whatever, Lisa. You don’t tan well anyway, and we needed a sample.”

  She faced him fully, not backing down. “Yeah, why’d we need that again?”

  “Because the only thing these mantas seem to be eating lately are jellyfish.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So if we determine jellies are safe to eat out here, they could be safe in the aquarium and—”

  “And . . . what? We can restock and try to make it all work one more time?”

  He looked at her blankly. “Yeah.”

  “You actually believe Ackerman will pay for that at this stage?”

  “If we give him something promising . . . yes, I do.”

  She shook her head. “We have five months left on our contracts, Jason, and then we are gone—do you understand that? Gone.”

  “You don’t know that, nobody knows that.”

  “Everybody knows that except you. If the job market weren’t so awful, we’d have new jobs already.”

  He hesitated, glancing at the others. “You’ve been looking?”

  She paused. “I have. I can’t speak for anybody else.”

  “Then that’s your business. It doesn’t mean Manta World can’t work.”

  “You’re not being realistic.”

  “I don’t see it that way.”

  “It doesn’t matter how you see it, it’s how Ackerman sees it.”

  “Well, I still think—”

  “Jason, Manta World is over! Don’t you get that? Over!”

  He hesitated, glancing at the others. They looked away, and he wondered if they agreed with Lisa. He didn’t care. “We still have a job to do, and taking food samples is a critical part of that.”

  “You could have done it if it was so important.”

  “You’re the nutrition expert, Lisa!”

  “And you’re the one who’s always looking over my shoulder!”

  “Because you don’t do your job! And even when you do, it’s for your own personal agenda, not the team’s!”

  Now it was Lisa’s turn to glance at the rest of the crew. Jason’s “personal agenda” comment had struck a nerve. But Lisa could play rough too. “You look over my shoulder because you’re a control freak who can’t trust anyone to do anything.”

  “I like to make sure things are done correctly.” Jason’s voice was tight.

  Lisa just shook her head. Everyone on the boat thought Jason was a control freak. He constantly checked and rechecked their work on everything. But Lisa did feel a little guilty. Jason wasn’t a bad guy, and taking jellyfish samples was indeed part of her job description.

  “I’ll take a sample after Ackerman leaves, OK?”

  “Don’t bother, they’re all gone now.”

  She was shocked. “All the jellyfish are gone?”

  “Those mantas were hungry down there.”

  Wow. A day earlier, Lisa had seen literally tens of thousands of jellies, normally enough to feed a small herd of mantas for a week.

  He eyed her curiously. “What do you make of that?”

  “Like you said, they must have been hungry.”

  “You think it’s related to the low plankton levels?”

  Darryl turned suddenly. “I thought levels had gone back up.”

  Lisa shook her head. “No, that was ver
y brief. They’ve actually gotten worse. Are the mantas still jumping out more than usual, Jason?”

  A sober nod. “A lot more, actually.”

  “Does that . . . concern you at all?”

  “I wouldn’t say it concerns me exactly, but it is kind of . . .”

  “Strange?”

  “Yeah, strange.”

  Many ray species, especially mantas, regularly leap out of the sea, and even Jason, who despite his recent failures was still considered a top-ten expert on the great creatures, didn’t know why. There were theories of course: to rid themselves of parasites, to evade predators, even just to have fun. Regardless, they had been leaping out much more frequently than usual. Within just the past two months, the Gulf’s mantas had been seen heaving their four-thousand-pound winged bodies out of the sea up to seven times per day, considerably more than the typical three times per week.

  More strangeness in the world’s oceans, Lisa thought. Then she heard the sound of a motor in the distance and put the binoculars back to her face. “Five minutes until Ackerman.”

  Craig licked his lips lecherously. “Watch for bags of money falling off the side of his boat.”

  The others chuckled, but Jason turned urgently to Phil. “Borrow your laptop real quick?”

  “Note time? Sure.”

  As Phil trotted downstairs, Lisa rolled her eyes. Jason had been using Phil’s laptop every day for months to record his notes. Taking notes was indeed an important part of a marine biologist’s job, but as with everything else he did, Jason was beyond thorough; he was obsessive. Phil handed him a sleek black IBM, the only computer on board configured to the Expedition’s satellite data link, and still in his wet suit, Jason began to type.

  Minutes later a massive hundred-and-thirty-foot yacht motored closer at the pace of a snail. In khaki shorts and a $250 silk golf shirt, Harry Ackerman stood atop the towering helm. “Ahoy, everybody!”

  They put on their best happy faces. “Ahoy, Harry!”

  “Hey, Mr. Ackerman!” Phil yelled cheerily.

  “Tie this, please.” Ackerman hopped on board, handing Phil a braided white nylon rope. “And hold this for me too.” It was a worn leather day planner. “Hey, Monique.”