Natural Selection

by Dave Freedman

  “Hey, Mr. Ackerman, how are you?” Monique wondered why he was holding a yellow legal pad.

  “I’m fine, thanks.” Ackerman had always liked Monique Hollis. She had such an easygoing nature. Lisa Barton was also quite attractive but considerably rougher around the edges. The man’s expressionless gaze swept past Darryl and Craig, then settled on Jason.

  “Harry, we weren’t expecting you.”

  “Hey, Jason.”

  They shook hands, and Ackerman noticed Phil’s laptop on a seat. Ackerman smiled to himself. Jason was no doubt typing his notes again, before he’d even changed out of his wet suit. Ackerman loved Jason’s obsessive side, such a hard worker. Though Jason certainly wouldn’t love the reason that Ackerman was here.

  “I want to discuss that sighting near Clarita further. Have you had any thoughts on that?”

  Jason didn’t answer at first. His eyes simply shifted. But he looked like he had quite a few thoughts indeed.

  CHAPTER 6

  JASON ALDRIDGE didn’t change gears easily. He was great at focusing, at working on one subject, but change had always been problematic. The five-year quest to make Manta World a reality had been his life, and the notion of ending it in failure wasn’t even conceivable. So he simply didn’t respond to Harry Ackerman’s question. He was a smart, intense guy, but the implications of the answer were beyond his comprehension.

  Ackerman cleared his throat. “I said, I’d like to discuss the sighting near Clarita Island. What are your thoughts?”

  The question hung in the heated, tropical air for a second time. Lisa Barton, Phil Martino, and the Hollis-Hollis-Summers triumvirate all waited. Jason just stood in his wet suit, eyeing the empty plain of blue water, his intense eyes shifting slightly. “I’m still processing it.”

  Ackerman grinned. “Still processing it, huh? That sounds like double- talk to me.” He turned to Phil Martino. “You agree, Phil?”

  “I sure do, Mr. Ackerman.”

  Ackerman smiled wider. Phil Martino reminded him of a new puppy, the dumbest one in the litter. Darryl and Craig shook their heads in disbelief, and Ackerman continued. “Come on, work with me here, Jason. You’re an expert, and I’m trying to understand this. What do you think of the idea of a new species of ray?”

  Jason looked him in the eye, respectful but not afraid. While his workaholic tendencies hadn’t given him success or riches, they had given him confidence. He feared no one. “I don’t think much of it.”

  Ackerman nodded. He’d always liked Jason’s directness and total lack of fear. Sure, there were those who said he was an unambiguous failure after the aquarium debacle, but Ackerman had always thought the guy had balls. At the moment, he didn’t care.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you and I went over this ray’s description in great detail, and you said you didn’t recognize it. Is that still the case?” Ackerman held up his yellow pad. “Because I have my notes right here if you want to go over them.”

  “That’s OK.”

  Jason didn’t need notes. He remembered the ray’s description well, if only because it wasn’t familiar: stealth-shaped and very thick, black on one side and white on the other, with large black eyes, a huge mouth, and horns on the mouth’s sides. And aggressive behavior. Apparently, the ray had snapped at someone.

  Jason doubted it was a new species, and yet if the description was accurate, he didn’t know what known species it belonged to. Ackerman had correctly nixed several candidates, and Jason later eliminated half a dozen more, the Raja binoculata and the Torpedo californica among others. There were additional possibilities, but they were all remote.

  “You think it could have just been a newborn manta, Jason?” Craig Summers asked.

  “Near Clarita? Highly unlikely.”

  Jason turned to the water. But it was strange, wasn’t it? Because what had been described—the horned head, the wide mouth, the black top and white bottom—were all classic signs of the manta ray. But not only were mantas much thinner, they were also tropical and lived in warm locales near the equator. Sure, they migrated to cooler waters in the summer, and a wayward manta from Mexico could easily have strayed into Southern California waters. But only if it had been an adult. A newborn never would have strayed that far. Unless—he turned to Darryl and Monique.

  “Any way a pregnant adult would have migrated up from Mexico?”

  Darryl readjusted his polo’s collar. “To spawn in Clarita?”

  “Yeah.”

  “By itself?”

  Jason shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “Highly unlikely.”

  Jason nodded. “Monique?”

  “A pregnant animal migrating that far from familiar waters to spawn? No way.”

  “What about a group of pregnant mantas, then? Could they have migrated up together?”

  Monique raised an eyebrow. “It’s technically possible, but I doubt it.”

  So did Jason. While mantas regularly spawned in groups, he’d never heard of them doing so in strange locales. He pulled his dark hair back with one hand. What had that woman seen off Clarita Island? He looked out over the water again. If the physical description was accurate, perhaps it was a new species. But so what? What the hell did a new species have to do with his manta rays?

  Ackerman stared at him coldly. “So could it have been a new species?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Does possibly mean likely?”

  A glimmer of anger flashed in Jason’s eyes. He had work to do here. They still had to find a group of mantas capable of surviving in the aquarium—find them, transport them to San Diego, get the aquarium prepared, then perform countless other tasks that could easily take five months. He didn’t have time for this.

  “Jason, does possibly mean likely?”

  “Possibly means possibly.”

  “Well, that’s enough for me. I think you should go to Clarita and find out for sure if it’s new or not.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because we need to do something, we need to make some kind of progress here.”

  “We are making progress, Harry.”

  “Not the way I define it.”

  “How do you define it?”

  The eyes turned colder. “In dollars and cents. I’ve lost millions on this, do you understand that? This entire project was a disaster from the get-go.”

  “Harry, we can still fill that aquarium with manta rays. I promise we can do it.”

  “No, we can’t.”

  “I’m telling you, I really think we—”

  “I’ve been patient; you know I’ve been very patient.”

  “And we appreciate that, but if you’d just let us—”

  “Jason, Manta World is over.” This was said matter-of-factly and without emotion. “I’m not capable of financing it any further and . . . that’s it. You know this isn’t what I wanted.”

  Jason didn’t move. Under the beating sun, he suddenly felt light-headed in his wet suit, like he’d fall off the boat. He became aware of his feet on the teak and steadied himself on a guardrail.

  “I see,” he managed to say. He couldn’t believe it. He was numb.

  Lisa sighed inwardly. She felt bad for Jason, though she wasn’t entirely sympathetic. It would always be painful for a guy with his driven personality to adapt to change. Not only was it impossible for him to trust anyone to do his or her job, he also couldn’t see when something just wasn’t working. He didn’t have an off switch. But even Jason couldn’t ignore this. The plug had just been pulled, and it was time for the man who had once been called “the next Jacques Cousteau” to finally move on.

  Lisa shook her head. The next Jacques Cousteau. She’d first heard the nickname before she even met Jason, six years before, when Ichthyology Journal had run a cover story on him in an entire issue dedicated to mantas. In an article filled with glossy pictures, the magazine had chronicled everything, from his typical boyish obsession with the great fish, to his PhD in ichthyology at UCSD,
to his then ranking as the number one manta ray expert in the world. The whole thing generated an incredible amount of hype and put Jason’s professional expectations through the roof. Then Ackerman had come calling.

  The original idea for the aquarium had actually been Ackerman’s. A lawyer who suddenly had obscene piles of money after his IPO, Ackerman hired a consulting firm that determined that a new manta aquarium in San Diego could triple another famous water park’s already booming attendance. The primary reason for such a prediction: nothing like it existed anywhere in the world. While existing marine facilities had exhibits featuring smaller ray species, none was anywhere near the spectacle that a warehouse-size aquarium filled with creatures as big as planes promised to be. Kids loved mantas, absolutely loved them, and across the globe, their parents said they’d pay handsomely for the privilege of seeing them. The consultants determined that if the “right aquarium” were constructed, it could become an attraction on a global scale. Big enough to give Ackerman the respect he so craved. And big enough to put him in the billionaires’ club.

  A manta aquarium had made sense for its research potential too. Ichthyologists, and all animal researchers, tried to analyze their subject in their natural habitats whenever possible, but the reality was that studying large, wild creatures swimming freely in the open ocean was extremely difficult. By comparison, in captivity, animals could be studied extensively and around the clock. Indeed, most of what was known about dolphins—the most analyzed ocean-dwelling species on earth—had been learned from studying specimens in captivity. That had been the aquarium’s precise research objective: to allow Jason Aldridge and others to analyze manta rays as thoroughly as dolphins had been.

  Construction of the aquarium, which Jason himself had designed, had been completed in two years. Financial pro formas predicted the $95 million cost would be paid off in eighteen months. On every front, hopes had been sky-high for the aquarium’s opening. It never happened. The opening was delayed, rescheduled four times, then scrapped entirely. For more than three years, it had been one disaster after another. And through everything, including his own fall from grace, Jason had been nothing but optimistic, a fighter with a fantastic attitude who never gave up.

  The biggest problem had been the mantas themselves. For reasons unknown, they simply wouldn’t stay alive. Forty-seven died throughout a thirty-two-month period, and neither Jason nor any of the experts hired to support him could determine why. Anything and everything was done to save them. Nothing worked.

  Finally, Ackerman decided that Jason, then barely ranked in the top ten in his field, and the few members of the team who still had contracts should get back to working with mantas in the wild, nominally with the goal of still trying to make the aquarium work. They’d been in tropical Mexico ever since.

  Ackerman shrugged. “Anyway, it’s done. Unless something else comes up, we’re turning the aquarium into a home for killer whales.”

  Jason glanced at Lisa, swallowing an entire humble pie. “I see.”

  “And I certainly don’t want to go this way, but I’ve already checked with my lawyers, and I have the legal right to terminate your contracts right now. Or you can investigate this. My hope is the latter might lead to something significant.”

  Jason eyed the grooves in the teak deck. He couldn’t believe it. It was over. Just like that, a glass of ice water to the face. He’d just wasted five entire years of his life. He could hardly think. But he somehow managed to consider what Ackerman was proposing. A stockier version of a manta with large eyes? Possibly a new species? So what. Jason hadn’t tested the job market in years, but he wondered if UCSD had any new research grants. Or maybe another university. He wasn’t wasting more time on Ackerman’s wild-goose chase.

  He looked out at the ocean, the tropical blue plain. He’d miss it. Then he noticed Monique. She looked . . . different, not laid-back at all. She had tears in her eyes, a dab of black mascara dripping onto her shirt’s collar, and was clutching her husband’s hand tightly. Son of a bitch! Money had never been Jason’s primary motivation, but his coworkers . . . They had bills to pay, rent checks and lease payments for apartments and cars they never used. And the Hollises wanted to start a family soon. While the concept of family was foreign to Jason—he didn’t even have a girlfriend—Monique and Darryl were very much planners, and they’d been socking away large portions of every direct deposit to provide for their unborn kids. They were highly educated, both with PhDs in oceanic migration from USC, but if Lisa was right . . . if the job market really was that tough, and they both suddenly lost their jobs . . .

  Darryl smirked at Craig. “Are there any American unemployment offices in Baja?”

  Craig started to return the crack when Monique glared at him through wet eyes. He shut up. So did Darryl.

  Jason exhaled. He wanted nothing to do with this new project, not a goddamn thing. But the Hollises were his friends. . . . “Monique, what do you want to do here?”

  “Oh.” Monique wiped her eyes and gathered herself. “Excuse me. Well, I’ll do whatever you want, Jason, you know that. But if Mr. Ackerman thinks we should look for this new species near Clarita, than I think we should seriously consider it.”

  “Me too.” This had come from Craig now, with as stern a look on his face as Jason had ever seen, a look that said, Don’t fuck my friends. Then Craig’s cell started ringing, and he answered.

  Jason turned. “You too, Darryl?”

  “Yeah.” Darryl’s face was blank, his normal joviality gone.

  “Lisa?”

  “Definitely.”

  Ackerman eyed the happy puppy. “How about you, Phil?”

  “Absolutely, Mr. Ackerman, I’d love to.”

  They all turned to Jason.

  And Jason felt like screaming. One dull pain was about to be replaced by another. He nodded, his face as blank as a cement wall. “We’ll get started right away.”

  Just then, Craig hung up and Jason immediately noticed that he looked a little stunned. “What is it, Craig?”

  “There was another sighting off Clarita Island.”

  “Of what?”

  “Little rays trying to fly. Thousands of them.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “THOUSANDS?”

  Summers nodded. “Some Santa Cruz colleagues of mine are doing a project up there, testing crustacean breeding habits. An elderly couple from Europe said that’s what they saw.”

  Jason narrowed his eyes. “They said they were flying?”

  “Trying to. Leaping from the sea anyway.”

  Jason paused. This sounded like another version of the phenomenon he’d seen right here in Mexico. “What did they look like?”

  “They just said small rays. It was from a distance with binoculars.”

  “Can we talk to them?”

  “They left today, and my friends didn’t get their names.”

  Lisa shrugged. “It was probably just a bunch of the same bat rays.”

  It had to be, Jason thought. Though he’d never heard of that many bat rays leaping from the sea. Thousands?

  “Whatever they were, this sounds promising.” Ackerman turned. “So you’ll get started right away, Jason?”

  The blank stare returned. “Of course.”

  “Excellent.” Ackerman wondered if it was just bat rays up there. But if it was something else . . . Financing the discovery of a new species could be significant. As trophies went, it could be sophisticated, too, considerably more so than, say, winning the America’s Cup and dumping overpriced champagne into the sea with bought-and-paid-for professional sailors. The backer of a new species discovery. That had panache. “Hopefully, it will be a new species. We’ll see. Phil, give me a hand, please?” A minute later, the rich man was gone.

  “Damn it.” Phil Martino still had the leather day planner in his hands. “Jason, he forgot this.”

  Jason nodded distantly. “Hold on to it. Darryl, you and Monique chart the course to Clarita. We’ll go when it’s dar
k. . . .” He turned to go below deck but—

  “Sorry I lost my cool there, Coach.” Monique hugged him. “I know this is the last thing you wanted. I’m very grateful, Jason.”

  “No problem. I’m sorry we had to go through it.” He broke the hug. “Take it easy, OK?”

  As he started to go below deck, Darryl slapped him on the back. “Future generations of Hollises thank you too.”

  The couple chuckled, but as Jason went downstairs he was unable to focus on their relief. What he’d been dreaming of every waking moment for the past five years was suddenly over. Justify the failure with a philosophy, he told himself. Something like “it wasn’t meant to be” or “things happen for a reason.” He felt like crying. Was this happening for a reason? Maybe there really was a new species out there, maybe even a significant one. Yeah, right. He went below deck and disappeared.

  “YOU GUYS chart the damn course yet?” As the dipping yellow sun neared the horizon Craig Summers was anxious to get going.

  Seated on a molded seat, Monique looked up from a map, dumbfounded. Charting a course the old-fashioned way would take all of ten minutes, but the Hollises had waited since Jason had said they’d travel at night, when people could sleep. Still, Monique couldn’t believe Craig had the stones to pester them while he did absolutely nothing. “Just about, Craig. Why don’t you just take it easy and get another beer.”

  Craig drained the can of Bud in his hand, missing every trace of sarcasm. “Good idea. Want one, Darryl?”

  “Yeah, I—”

  “No, he doesn’t.” Monique turned pleasantly. “Do you, my loving husband?”

  Darryl hesitated. “No, dear, I don’t. I like being stressed out. Craig, I’ll just have a mineral water, please.”

  Craig chuckled. Thank God I’m not married. Wives, even cool ones like Monique, told you what to drink, what to wear . . . Marriage could wait—maybe forever. He started going down the steps when he noticed Lisa, seated near Phil and writing notes on a little yellow spiral pad.