Merfolk

by Jeremy Bates

  Pip rolled her eyes. “My dear? He only says that when he is in a really good mood. Me, I prefer the grumpy old Marty better.” She manipulated the mouse. Several windows on the monitor disappeared before others appeared. “Here it is,” she said, opening a final window.

  Elsa bent closer and read the words on the screen:

  DNA testing result:

  Mitochondrial DNA with mutations unknown in any human, primate, or known animal.

  Elsa reread the second sentence several times. Her immediate thought was that there had been a mistake, or the DNA sample was contaminated, something along those lines.

  Because if what you’re seeing is true…

  Dr. Murdoch was grinning at her, his eyes alight.

  “It’s incredible, Marty,” she said hesitantly.

  “It’s more than bloody incredible, Elsa. This is not the discovery of a new species of frog. It’s a clearly human-like creature that is neither human nor ape! A human-like creature that, given its dramatic mutations, is very distant from Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans.”

  “How distant?”

  “I’ve always believed the closest known ancestor to merfolk to be Australopithecus. AL 288-1, commonly known as Lucy, is the best-known specimen from the genus. Do you know much about her?”

  “Only that she lived in Ethiopia about three million years ago, and she was named after a Beatles’ song. Sorry, paleontology isn’t my specialty.”

  “She was a hirsute chimp-like primate with a skull, jaws, and teeth more ape-like than human. Her arms were long and strong with curved fingers, her legs were short, and her shoulders were narrow, all of which were adapted for climbing and foraging in tree branches. But what makes her special is that she’s the oldest known bipedal hominin. Her pelvis and knees and ankles all reflect a fully upright gait.”

  “Our oldest ancestor,” Pip said, blowing a bubble with pink chewing gum.

  “That we don’t know for certain,” Marty said. “The evolutionary process that gave rise to us wasn’t linear. Numerous hominins lived side by side. There were variations amongst species, interbreeding, evolutionary experimentations, extinctions. When Lucy was discovered, about seven early hominins were known. Now there are at least twenty on record and the number keeps growing. However, Lucy’s species is certainly a good candidate for Homo sapiens’ direct ancestor—and an equally good candidate for merfolk’s as well.”

  Elsa frowned. “Because it was bipedal? What am I missing, Marty? Last I heard, merfolk had fish tails for swimming, not legs for walking.”

  Pip’s bubble popped. “I am going to the kitchen to make a sandwich,” she said, taking the gum from her mouth and sticking it to the top of an empty Pepsi can. “I will leave Marty to eat your ear off, Dr. Montero. He has eaten mine off all day.”

  “It’s talk your ear off, Pip. And forgive me for being excited about the biggest scientific discovery of the century.”

  Grinning, she sprang off her chair and left the dry lab.

  “She makes idiomatic mistakes all the time,” Marty said, “and the thing is, I think she does it on purpose. What was I saying?”

  “You were making the case that Lucy’s species was a good candidate as an ancestor to merfolk…because they were bipedal?”

  “First a little context,” he said. “During the Pliocene Epoch some 5 to 2.5 million years ago, the climate in East Africa was changing, becoming drier and cooler, reducing forested areas. For tree-dwelling species like Lucy’s, this meant less food. For them to survive, they had to adapt. Bipedalism may have evolved in the trees as a method to walk along branches that would otherwise be too difficult to traverse on all fours. Yet as you know, it proved to have many benefits on the ground as well. It allowed australopithicines to see over tall grass for predators, and it allowed energy efficient locomotion in open places such as the expanding savanna. The latter was especially important because it let them roam farther and farther in search of food. All the way—”

  “All the way to the ocean,” Elsa finished.

  Marty nodded. “You understand now. However, bipedalism not only got australopithicines to the ocean, it allowed them to thrive there. Walking erect let them keep their heads above the water as they waded in the shallows for food. Refined motor control in their hands let them use stone artifacts for cracking open shellfish.”

  “And according to your aquatic ape theory, they developed more and more aquatic adaptations over time, with one group returning to land and passing on their adaptations through their descendants all the way down the line to us, and another group remaining in the ocean and evolving into fully aquatic mammals.”

  “Exactomundo, my dear.”

  “Why did the one group return to land? If there was ample food in the ocean and less competition, why return to land where they would ultimately be driven to extinction?”

  “The main factor was likely changing environmental conditions. Another would be the control and use of fire. Warmth, light, protection from predators, a way to create more advanced hunting tools, a method for cooking food. In other words, fire made life on land suddenly a lot more attractive.”

  “Only it wasn’t Australopithicus but Homo erectus that mastered fire.”

  “Not true. Recent evidence suggests early hominins tamed fire as early as two million years ago. Australopithicus went extinct 1.9 million years ago. Which means the aquatic australopithicines that returned to land could have been using fire for quite some time before being out-competed by the genus Homo.”

  Elsa stopped playing the devil’s advocate for a moment so she could process everything that Dr. Murdoch was telling her. In the ensuing silence, her first thought was: It all makes sense. It all fits. It’s just…crazy.

  Marty was watching her closely. Clearly he didn’t think any of this was crazy, and he was waiting for her decree.

  She pressed her hands against the sides of her face, her fingertips on her temples. “I’m trying to believe all of this Marty…”

  “You don’t have to try, Elsa. This is the scientific method at work, from hypothesis to testing and analysis. The DNA result is right there!” He jabbed a finger at the computer monitor.

  “Your result, Marty. Your result is right there. You need replication, external review—”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Which is why I’m having Pip send samples to three labs in London tomorrow morning. When they confirm—”

  “There will still be skeptics,” she interrupted. “Scientists, academics, they’ll call it another Piltdown Man. Especially given—” She stopped herself.

  “Especially given, what, Elsa?” His eyes darkened. “Especially given my involvement with the Netflix documentary? Well, double fuck that! This is different. If they can’t see that, fuck them too! All of them.”

  Elsa took a step backward, surprised and a little frightened by his vitriol.

  Marty softened immediately. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I just feel—” He shook his head. “I just feel… Well, you’re right. There will always be skeptics. No matter what I publish, no matter my evidence, there will always be skeptics. I’ll always be the goddamned Merdoc, won’t I?”

  Suddenly he seemed older, tired, a beat-down scientist who had been kicked one too many times.

  “Will you be sailing back to Colombo?” she asked, to change the topic.

  He blinked. “Sailing back to Colombo? Good Lord, no! My work here is just beginning. Tomorrow I’m going to attempt to hunt down the skipper that piloted the boat that hooked the great white.”

  Elsa frowned. “Whatever for?”

  “Like us, merfolk are social creatures, or so I presume. Where there is one, there are likely many. Ergo, where the shark ate one seems like an ideal place to start looking for a live specimen.”

  “You’re planning to look for a live merfolk?” She couldn’t hide her surprise.

  “Naturally. What do you think I built this boat for in the first place? Pip and I have been searching for a live spec
imen out here for nearly three years. Up until now, rather blindly, I admit. But if we can narrow in on where the shark ate the merfolk…”

  “It’s a good spot to start looking,” she agreed. “If the great white hung around the same location after eating the merfolk. Because it could have eaten it half an ocean away from where it was eventually hooked on the fishing line.”

  “It could have, but I don’t think it did. Ask yourself why there was only a skull in its gut? Why not a body? Where did that go…?”

  Elsa did ask herself this—and the answer came immediately. A great white’s stomach lining is peppered with secretory cells, some of which produce hydrochloric acid, so it’s capable of breaking down bone. But animals that have a high bone-and-muscle to fat ratio, such as humans, are simply too much work to metabolize for too little caloric benefit. That’s why almost all great white attacks on humans are exploratory bites: the sharks realize right away that humans are not worth eating. If it is assumed that merfolk are physiologically similar to humans, then the great white likely voided the merfolk from its stomach within twenty-four hours of swallowing it.

  “The great white threw it up,” she said. “And it was still in the process of throwing up the skull when it was caught.”

  “And given that the complete voiding of undigested matter in a great white’s stomach can take up to three days, but usually no longer, I believe it’s fair to assume the great white attacked the merfolk within seventy-two hours of getting hooked on the fishing line.”

  “That’s an impressive deduction, Marty. Yet three days is still a heck of a long time. And great whites are fast swimmers.”

  “Indeed they are. But as you most certainly know, they have particular and predictable swimming habits. They will often spend months in one hunting ground before traveling hundreds if not thousands of miles through open ocean to reach another. Did you happen to measure the lipid stores in the great white’s liver during the necropsy?”

  She nodded. “They were nearly full.”

  “Well, there you go!” he said triumphantly. “Lipids fuel a great white’s migratory swim, which mean it wasn’t migrating when it was hooked but rather foraging in a hunting ground somewhere off the coast. Consequently, it wouldn’t have traveled very far at all during the seventy-two hours in question. How many fishing charter operators do you think there are along the coast here?”

  “Hundreds, most likely,” she told him. “There are at least a dozen in Mirissa alone. However, I think I can save you a lot of time.” She paused a beat. “I know where the shark was hooked.”

  Chapter 12

  MARTY

  “It was tagged!” Marty exclaimed, repeating what Elsa had just told him. It was the second-best news he’d received that day, and he couldn’t believe his luck. Over the last two years, he’d become accustomed to disappointment and setbacks in his search for merfolk. That the stars were finally aligning for him seemed too good to be true.

  Elsa said, “My colleagues at SBMC tagged it. We routinely tag several species of sharks to identify their migratory patterns, seasonal feeding movements, and daily habits.”

  “Was it an acoustic or SPOT tag?” he asked eagerly. Acoustic tags employ a basic transmitter-receiver technology, so a tagged shark has to come within range of an underwater receiver for its ID code to be recorded. SPOT tags, however, are the latest in tagging technology. They employ a much more powerful transmitter that communicates with a network of satellites each time the wet/dry sensor on the tag senses that the shark’s fin has broken the surface of the water, allowing the shark to be tracked actively, and much more precisely, over broad geographical areas.

  Elsa said, “Since 2018 we’ve used SPOT tags exclusively.”

  “Excellent!” Marty’s mind raced. “Your data—how would I go about viewing it? If it’s not too late, or too much trouble, I would happily come to your office…”

  She was shaking her head. “Not necessary. It’s all uploaded on the web. May I use this computer?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Elsa sat in the seat Pip had vacated. As her hands darted across the keyboard, she said, “The young girl who showed you to the SBMC shed earlier has a PhD in information technology from Colombo University. She’s now overhauling the digital side of our tracking program. She’s also working on a very nifty app that will allow everyday people to upload photos of shark sightings along our beaches. The goal is to crowdsource critical data points to help facilitate the peaceful coexistence between humans and sharks.”

  With a few clicks of the mouse, she summoned a map using satellite imagery of Sri Lanka and its territorial waters. Hundreds of blue dots congregated along the island country’s coastlines while others, isolated at wide intervals, were located farther offshore.

  “Each of those blue markers,” she explained, “represents the last known location of a shark that we’ve tagged. The great white that you’re interested in is…that one right there.” She clicked on a dot in one of the clusters along the southern coast. An information window sprang up on the right side of the screen, displaying a photograph of a huge great white shark thrashing alongside the hull of a boat. Below this was a name, as well as the shark’s sex, weight, and length.

  “Mary Jane?” Marty said, reading the name.

  “We name all the sharks we tag. We also put them up for adoption. Would you be interested in adopting one, Marty? The money goes toward the purchase of new SPOT tags.”

  “I’m afraid I simply don’t have the space for a shark on this boat.”

  Elsa glanced up at him.

  “It was a joke, Elsa. And sure, I’ll adopt one. But first things first.” He pointed to a button on the screen that read: MARY JANE’S TRAVEL LOG. “Can we have a look at that?”

  She clicked the button. A new window popped up:

  Mary Jane

  Date tagged: Feb 26, 2019

  Location tagged: Indian Ocean

  103 days

  7701 km

  Filter track by: All activity / Week / Month / Year / 2 Years / Specific dates

  Marty said, “Filter by all activity.”

  She clicked again.

  A yellow line appeared on the satellite map, tracing a meandering route along Sri Lanka’s southern coast. Elsa hovered the mouse cursor over the westernmost part of the line. A date and time appeared. “This is where Mary Jane was originally caught and tagged,” she said. “You can see that since then she took up temporary residency at hunting sites here, here, and here.” At the locations she indicated, the yellow line zigzagged chaotically. “Each are in relatively shallow shelf water, typically between five meters and one hundred meters deep.”

  Marty pointed to the easternmost end of the line where it turned abruptly south and crossed the shelf break into the deep ocean. “What do you make of that? There wouldn’t be much food that far offshore, and it doesn’t look as though Mary Jane was striking out on any migratory route. She’s simply swimming back west, parallel to the coast.”

  Elsa shrugged. “SPOT tracking is a relatively new technology, Marty, and we’re still trying to make sense of what we’re learning about the world of white sharks. If you want my best guess? Mary Jane was spooked from the last hunting ground. Believe it or not, great whites aren’t the ocean’s apex predator.”

  “Of course they’re not. We are.”

  “Yes, but humans aside, killer whales are king. Documented accounts of orcas targeting great whites date back decades, although the rising frequency of the attacks is a new development. Shark populations have been increasing due to restrictions on fishing, while global warming is expanding the geographical areas in which they can live. Another best guess? Sharks and orcas may simply be bumping into each other more often than they used to.”

  “Or perhaps due to overfishing, orcas are running out of their usual food source, forcing them to search for other prey such as great whites?”

  “Perhaps. But whatever the reason, orcas are bigger and smarter than
great whites, and a definite threat to them. So, yes, it’s possible an orca, or several orcas coordinating their hunting in a pack, spooked Mary Jane into deeper, uncharted water.”

  Elsa hovered over the yellow line where it terminated next to the shoreline a little east of Mirissa. “July 8, 2021, 8:44 a.m. This is the last ping received, where my colleague retrieved Mary Jane from the shark net.”

  “Which means this would be where she spent the last few weeks of her life.” He pointed to a preceding section of the line where it circled around on itself multiple times. “Can you zoom in there?”

  The section of map magnified, revealing an island in the center of the circling line.

  “Ah ha!” Marty said, the exclamation steeled with affirmation. His research was coming to life right before his eyes; one of his main hypotheses about the probable habitat of merfolk was that they lived in the shelf waters around islands.

  Elsa zoomed in further until the names of political and physical features appeared.

  “Peytivu…” he said, reading the name above the island.

  “‘Island of Demons,’” she said.

  Chapter 13

  MARTY

  “Island of Demons?”

  “That’s what Peytivu means in Tamil. Or perhaps Demon Island—”

  “Here you guys are!”

  Marty and Elsa turned to find Rad and Jacky standing at the doorway to the dry lab, their hair wet and falling in tangles over their bare shoulders all the way to the white towels wrapped around their torsos. Their cheeks were flushed, either from the champagne in the flutes they each held, or the steaming water from the hot tub. They almost looked like twins.

  “Pip told us you were down here,” Rad said. “Isn’t she a peach? So cute I want to squeeze her cheeks. Hi, Dr. Montero.”

  “Hello, Miss Gonzalez.”

  “What?” Jacky said. “Are we back being all stiff and proper already? I hate stiff and proper.”

  “Me too,” Rad said. In a snooty voice she drawled, “You must come to our country house this spring, darling. It’s absolutely divine.”