Natural Selection

by Dave Freedman

  Then they detected movement far below. It was their much larger relatives, not going to the surface, but somewhere else. These animals would follow them, but when they were ready. As the skies turned black, they continued to practice.

  CHAPTER 10

  “WE COULD be onto a new species here.”

  Near Clarita’s main docks, they were at a tavern, in a huge wood booth next to a mounted TV with a Dodgers game on. Everyone was dressed casually, eating burgers and club sandwiches. No one responded to Jason at first. Darryl and Craig had just finished their mug beers and were trying to flag down a waitress. Lisa was doodling on one of those place mats for kids. Phil Martino looked visibly famished and was simply devouring his burger. Monique was the only one listening. “I agree, Jason. I think it could be something new.”

  “You do?” Craig turned irritably. “How does some manta imprint in an oil slick add up to a new species?”

  “You don’t know that imprint was from a manta, Craig.”

  “What else would it be from?”

  “How about a bigger version of what that woman saw? She saw a newborn; then an adult made the imprint. And what she saw was no manta—not with that description.”

  Summers wiped some ketchup on the thigh of his jeans. “Then maybe she described it incorrectly, Monique. Or maybe what she saw and what made the imprint were unrelated species.”

  Lisa nodded. “A manta made the imprint, then separately some bat rays flopped out of the water.”

  Chewing his burger, Phil turned to Jason with a raised eyebrow. “That’s an interesting point, no?”

  Jason pushed away the remains of his club sandwich. “No. Two different species coincidentally shaped identically in the same part of the Pacific at the same time? They had to be the same species. You ask me, that could be something new.”

  Phil turned, still chewing. “What do you think about that, Craig?”

  Summers shook his head. With his curly brown locks and cud-chewing demeanor, Phil Martino wasn’t just a moron but a gutless jellyfish who’d go any way the wind blew. “I think a shoal of mantas spawned up here, then some playful newborns flopped out of the water. That’s a simple explanation.”

  “Except it doesn’t make sense,” Darryl said.

  Summers turned. “Why not?”

  “Because massive manta shoals don’t migrate to unfamiliar waters to spawn.”

  “Is that really so unprecedented? You and Monique have never heard of that happening?”

  “I haven’t.” Darryl turned. “Monique?”

  “Actually . . . Remember that shoal in Australia, Darryl? Migrated all the way from the Great Barrier Reef down to Melbourne? Nearly half of those were pregnant females.”

  “Oh, right . . . I do remember that.”

  Craig nodded snidely. “Mystery solved. A strange off-season migration. Although . . .” He eyed Jason. “Why would one settle in an oil slick?”

  Jason shook his head. “I was wondering about that too.”

  “That’s it.” Darryl abruptly stood. “Our waitress must have been abducted by aliens. Who wants a beer?”

  Craig raised a hand.

  “I already had you, ya lush. Anybody else?” Phil held his hand up, and Darryl nodded reluctantly. “That’s it?” He walked off.

  “So is there a way we can actually find these things?” Phil asked.

  Everyone shrugged.

  Except Jason. “There’s absolutely a way.”

  “How?”

  Jason stood. “Let me tell you.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “WITH KELP.”

  No one responded for a moment, and Jason’s words just hung over the table.

  Then Phil’s face crinkled into confusion. “With kelp?”

  Jason nodded. “Monique, are you still going to check that strand with a scope?”

  Monique Hollis shook her head, annoyed. Yes, she intended to check the kelp strand. But she didn’t need Jason to remind her about it again. It was the third time he’d brought it up. Though the idea did have merit. If something had indeed brought the kelp to where they’d found it, a microscope could reveal bite marks or other slight indentations not visible to the naked eye. “Yes, Jason, I was planning on it.”

  But Phil still didn’t understand. “So . . . is kelp something we can track?”

  “It depends on the situation.” Monique turned to Darryl as he returned with three golden beers in mugs. “Can we track kelp?”

  Darryl put the beers down. “It depends on the situation.”

  Tracking doesn’t involve following animals per se but a line of bread crumbs related to them. It’s grueling work. A tracker sometimes has to search an entire coastline’s worth of ocean to find what he’s looking for. Other times, a trail can be downright easy to follow. There are no absolute answers.

  But Jason thought they could track kelp. From a hook on the wall, he removed his navy sweat jacket, then from a Ziploc produced a long kelp strand.

  “Oh, how sweet. You got Lisa a present,” Summers cooed.

  They all laughed, and Lisa blushed slightly.

  Jason stood over the table. “I think we’re onto a new species here.” He admired the long piece of seaweed. “And I think this is going to help us find it.”

  “HARRY, IT’S Jason Aldridge.”

  Outside the tavern by himself, Jason ignored the view of the distant moonlit ocean as he spoke into his little gray cell phone.

  “Jason, you sound excited.” At a massive cherrywood desk in his twenty-five-thousand-square-foot La Jolla mansion, Harry Ackerman laid down a quarterly financial statement that had put him in a sour mood.

  “I am excited, Harry. I don’t want to overstate this, but we may—may—be onto a new species here.”

  “Is that right?” A faint smile appeared. “When might you be able to say definitively?”

  “Well, that’s tough to say. If it is a new species, they don’t just sit in the ocean waiting for you. A month, a year, who knows.”

  “Very interesting. I think we should check it out and see. Now, your current contracts finish in what, five months?”

  “About that.”

  “I tell you what. I’ll write new ones for an extra year, so if it does turn out to be something new, you’ll have more than enough time to locate it.”

  “That would be great, Harry.”

  Ackerman pushed away the financials and began dreaming: Harry Ackerman, business pioneer and naturalist. “And just so everyone has the proper incentive . . . I’ll give twenty percent raises effective immediately.” He grabbed a black Montblanc pen and made a note on a sticky. “Tell the others that will start with their next direct deposits.”

  Jason paused. There was a rare hunger in Ackerman’s voice. “I’ll pass it on, Harry.”

  “Good. By the way, are you still taking your daily notes?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Would you mind if I take a look at them as you go along on this?”

  “Take a look at them?”

  “If you don’t mind, just to keep me abreast. I’m just very interested, and I thought it might be . . . an efficient way to keep me up on the status.”

  Jason paused. He didn’t think he was comfortable with that. “Is there another way we can do it, Harry? Maybe just updates on the phone? It’s just that those are my personal notes; they’re very informal, and I don’t know if I’m comfortable with—”

  “Of course. Oral updates will be fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. Now that I think about it, that will be easier than trying to read all the scientific jargon anyway. . . . One other thing. I think I left my day planner with Phil Martino. Did he mention that?”

  “Sorry. Yes, he did. We’re FedExing it to you tomorrow.”

  “Don’t bother. You need your new contracts anyway so I’ll just come to Clarita myself. Can we meet, say, first thing in the A.M. at the docks?”

  “I’ll look forward to it.” Jason
grabbed the door. “OK, Harry, so I’ll talk to you—”

  “Jason, I actually need a few of my numbers now. Can you get Phil for me?”

  Seconds later, as Phil walked off with the cell phone, Jason stood over the booth and told the others about the new arrangement. Quietly excited, Darryl’s eyes began to dance. “You said an extra year and a twenty percent raise?”

  “The raise is effective immediately. Then, if it does turn out to be a new species, the extra year kicks in, so we’ll have plenty of time to find it.”

  Darryl glanced at his wife. Her eyes were a little wet. Raises and an extra year! The Hollises’ unborn children’s savings accounts had just grown a little larger.

  They ditched the boat for the evening. The Clarita Lodge went for forty-nine dollars per room per night and had free cable and a grungy swimming pool. The next morning they had breakfast and met Ackerman on Clarita’s empty docks at seven. Aboard the Expedition, Ackerman presented them with six twenty-page contracts on nice linen paper that were promptly signed, dated, and initialed. Then Ackerman retrieved his day planner and got off the boat. As the Expedition pulled out, she scanned the massive ocean. The sea was so vast, so mysterious. What were they going to find out there?

  CHAPTER 12

  SEARCHING FOR kelp, the Hollises led a series of methodical forays off of Clarita’s perimeter waters. Scanning with binoculars from the boat was always an option, but more often than not they had to put on their wet suits, dive in, and search for strands with their naked eyes. It was painstaking work, but Darryl and Craig’s wisecracks, combined with a minimal amount of second-guessing from Jason, made it go quickly.

  For the first week, they searched due west, the second week due south, and the third week due east. They found nothing. But when they searched due north, their luck changed. Darryl turned up several strands less than two miles from the island. It was hard to believe, but this discovery had taken a month. It was the nature of tracking, and Jason told the restless Ackerman to be patient. As July began, they continued pushing north and, less than half a mile later, found another strand. Then they found hundreds, an unambiguous trail. With no forests in the vicinity, no one needed an ichthyology degree to see what was happening: something was moving north just twenty miles off the Southern California coastline and leaving kelp strands in its wake.

  Jason’s mind was constantly working. Whether they were tracking mantas or something else, after one month’s time, the little animals wouldn’t be so little anymore. They probably weighed ninety pounds or more and had to be gorging themselves on plankton. But then, to Jason’s surprise, Lisa Barton said plankton supplies here were also very low. So what were the rays eating? Jason documented everything on Phil’s laptop.

  On a gorgeous sunny day in August, Craig was stretched out on a cheapo plastic lawn chair nibbling at a turkey, lettuce, and mayo when Darryl walked up. “Long day, Craig?”

  “Oh yeah, I’m exhausted.”

  Darryl stared at his portly friend, noticing that his back and forearms were a painful-looking medium-rare shade of pink. “What the hell are you exhausted from?”

  Craig wiped some mayo on his trunks. “Thinking about the big-picture issues.”

  Darryl chuckled. “Big-picture issues.”

  “Seriously.” The others came around, and Craig looked at all of them. “Here’s a big-picture issue for all of us. Why kelp?”

  Darryl shook his head, annoyed. “What are you talking about, Burn Victim?”

  “It’s a simple question. Why kelp? Whatever we’re trailing, why the hell are they leaving kelp behind?”

  Darryl shrugged. So did Monique and Lisa.

  Craig turned. “Jason, you suggested tracking the stuff in the first place. Did you have a reason?”

  “I still do. I think they’re teething on it.”

  “Teething on it?”

  “Newborn mantas, especially in the Bahamas and Caribbean, teethe on baby starfish. As we all know, there aren’t many starfish in the northern hemisphere of the Pacific Ocean, but there’s kelp everywhere. I think these rays are teething on it.”

  “Hmm.” Impressed, Craig sat up fully on the lawn chair.

  “Interesting idea, Jason.” Lisa was impressed too. Like Craig, she’d been dubious about the whole new-species idea from the get-go, but the trail they’d been following was no mirage, and this was a very logical explanation.

  Craig shrugged. “It still doesn’t mean it’s a new species.”

  Jason turned on a dime. “Want to bet?”

  Everyone paused. Were they hearing things? Jason Aldridge never bet on anything.

  Summers hesitated nervously. “Ah, I don’t want to take your money, Jason.”

  Jason removed three bills, smacked them onto Craig’s chair, and extended his hand. “Fifty bucks says that kelp trail goes north for at least another week.”

  Craig just eyed the hand. He clearly didn’t want to, but . . . “Done.”

  They shook, and one week later, Summers handed over two stained twenties and a ten he had to borrow from Darryl. Jason wouldn’t accept a check. They’d found a sporadic trail of kelp strands floating at or near the surface and followed it for seven solid days. As they did, the markings on the strands began to change, unmistakably so. The kelp was becoming shredded, torn, and, increasingly, filled with visible indentations. There was no doubt that something was chewing on it.

  They continued moving north.

  It was a cloudy mid-August day, and they were thirty-five miles north of Long Beach, the sky filled with big white clouds that blocked out the sun. Darryl narrowed his eyes behind a pair of binoculars. Was that another strand? His eyelids felt heavy, and he couldn’t say for sure. He pointed.

  “Craig, go that way, please.”

  Summers motored the boat due east, toward the shoreline. They’d been heading northeast for more than a week. While they’d started twenty miles from the coast, they were now just five. From the boat, Darryl reached down and plucked out another dripping strand. He began studying it when from behind him Phil Martino snapped a picture. Darryl felt like cracking him. As busy as he and Monique had been, Phil’s picture-taking had been incessant. How many photos could he take of frickin’ seaweed? Darryl’s eyes were so tired he couldn’t tell if there were markings on the strand or not. He held out the strand to Monique: “May I?” Jason grabbed it first.

  Monique shook her head, but Lisa was oblivious, just staring out at the empty ocean. There were much more important things to worry about now than kelp. Real problems were mounting in the Pacific Ocean. Just as in tropical Mexico, the plankton levels here were alarmingly low, particularly around the thermoclines, where they were nearly 75 percent below normal.

  Lisa was beginning to suspect that something “of scale” might be going on. She had no idea what, and neither did Craig Summers. Spurred on by Lisa’s constant needling, Craig had increased the frequency of his GDV-4 testing, but just as in Mexico, he found no trace of the virus. What was going on with the ocean’s plankton levels? Summers had no idea either.

  As their trek continued, Jason had many other unanswered questions. Why was this alleged new species migrating north? Why suddenly closer to shore? And what were they eating? If the newborns had normal growth rates, Jason figured they could easily grow to weigh a hundred and fifty pounds or more. Perhaps they were great scavengers, adept at finding what little plankton was out there. The Expedition continued following the trail.

  AS AUGUST continued, they moved closer still to the shoreline and right up the Southern California coast, past Los Angeles, Oxnard, Ventura, and into the waters just north of Santa Barbara. Along the way, Darryl and Monique battled through many roadblocks, primarily strong surface currents. Currents could easily destroy a trail and send individual strands in every direction. Staying close was the only guarantee of not losing it, and that was exactly what the couple had done. With Jason second-guessing their every move, they worked hard for a solid month, all day every day, se
arching relentlessly. Darryl didn’t shoot at a single skeet, and Monique didn’t glance at a book or magazine.

  Lisa found Monique’s work ethic incredible. Prior to this, she’d never seen Monique do anything other than stroll around in flip-flops, drink Diet Cokes, and read. While Lisa was well aware of Monique’s military background, she’d just never pictured her getting her beautiful fingernails dirty. But every day Monique Hollis came up winded in her wet suit. She’d worked tirelessly, and without complaint. Like Lisa, she was tougher than she looked.

  Into September, the Expedition proceeded north, to Pismo Beach, San Luis Obispo, and San Simeon. Jason continued to be relentless with his note taking, even starting an outline for a formal report. Though he remained frustrated with how little the others cared about proper documentation. Darryl and Craig literally hadn’t written down their findings on anything, and Monique and Lisa’s notes, usually in little colored spiral notebooks, were often illegible.

  On another gorgeous September day, mid-seventies without a cloud in the sky, Phil headed to the bow of the boat with his cell phone open. “It’s Mr. Ackerman, Jason.”

  “Hi, Harry.” The conversation was brief. Ackerman wanted to know if it was a new species or not. “We still can’t say definitively,” Jason said. “All we can do is keep following the trail.”

  They did. But as they continued north they had no idea that someone else’s trail was about to come to a violent end.

  CHAPTER 13

  SETH GETTY was forty-five, about thirty pounds overweight, and recently divorced. He lived in a pathetic one-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of the massive Los Padres National Forest, halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and spent his personal time watching awful sitcoms on television. Heading out to sea, he was by himself. His partner had called in sick today, so he’d decided to do the job alone. Why not? The sun was out, the water was fairly flat, and it would literally be a ten-minute task. Getty’s occupation was fiber-optic maintenance and repair. Normally, this required inspecting his phone company’s central hub, a massive warehouse filled with routers and telcom switches, but twice a month Getty and his partner had to spot-check their portion of the company’s deep-sea fiber-optic cable. Invariably the cable was functioning properly, but the job was to make certain.