by Jeremy Bates
After progressing for several minutes with only the torchlight to see by, Marty suddenly made out a different light source in the distance, which turned out to be sun shining through a section of collapsed ceiling. Verdant jungle rimmed the edge of the hole, which was the size of a baseball diamond. Tangles of vines dripped to the cavity floor. The light filtering through the canopy far above them was much brighter than the torchlight, revealing the solidified drips and waves the lava had scoured into the tunnel walls, as well as the many different minerals coloring the igneous rock.
Jacky and Rad oohed and aahed at the sights and seemed ready to take a break, but the chief had other plans, climbing over the scree and continuing onward.
For the next five hundred meters the lava tube remained so straight and uniform it would have been easy to believe it had been manmade. The chief pointed out several large holes in the floor, deep shafts that would connect to lower-level tunnels, and they all steered clear of them. And then light appeared in the distance again. The source turned out to be another skylight, yet unlike the previous section of broken tunnel, here the ground disappeared beneath a perfectly still subterranean lake.
“I knew it!” Marty cried triumphantly, joining the chief at the water’s edge. “The tunnel connects with the ocean! I bloody well knew it!”
The chief pointed at the water and said, “Where.”
“Yes, yes, where!” he said, clapping the old fellow on the shoulder. “Where you found the merfolk skull. You’re a linguistic genius, my good man!” He turned, intent on telling Jacky and Rad the good news—and his eyes widened in amazement.
Chapter 22
MARTY
They returned to the Oannes just past six o’clock in the evening, as the sun was dipping beneath the horizon. Pip and Elsa had been relieved to find them none the worse for wear, though Pip let loose on Marty for causing them to worry. Yet her anger quickly gave way to fascination as he described their time at the tribal village and the discovery in the lava tube.
“There were cave paintings on the walls?” Pip said.
Marty nodded. “Petroglyphs too, though not nearly as many. It was remarkable, Pip. There must have been over five hundred paintings. Geometric, zoomorphic, anthropomorphic. Some appeared to be symbolic—”
“For heaven’s sake, speak English, Marty,” said Rad. To Pip and Elsa, she added, “Most of them were silhouettes of people hunting and dancing and mating. A lot were of animals too. Deer, big birds, fish. And most notably…” She looked at Marty.
He grinned. “Merfolk.”
“Merfolk!” Pip exclaimed. “Are you pulling my legs?”
“Pulling my leg, Pip. Singular. And, no, I am most certainly not.”
Elsa was regarding him skeptically. “Are you sure the representations you saw were merfolk, Marty?”
“Upper body of a human, lower body of a fish? What would you classify that as?”
“I assume the paintings must have been old and degraded by the elements?”
“Old, yes. I can’t say how old, but some were created with bat excrement and were extremely simplistic. Bi-triangular females, T-shaped males, figures with raised and rounded arms. But degraded? Not at all. The cover of the dense vegetation and overhanging rock protected them well from nature’s vagaries, it seems.”
“And the merfolk, mon capitaine?” Pip pressed.
“They were often depicted standing side by side with the humans with no discernible connection to each other. However, in some scenes they were in swimming positions, facing away from the humans. Fleeing from hunters? Many prehistoric cave paintings depict animals in the running position for just that reason. Prehistoric hominin bragging, I suppose you might say. Then again, there appeared to be ritualistic scenes in which the humans were worshipping the merfolk. So did the people who created the paintings consider the merfolk spirits that needed to be appeased? Or prey? I can’t answer that. I wish one of us had brought a phone to take pictures. But no matter. I’ll be returning first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow?” Rad said, surprised. “You’re going to hike all the way back there tomorrow?”
“Of course! A discovery such as this needs to be thoroughly documented.”
“Good luck finding the entrance to that lava tube again,” Jacky said.
“I paid particular attention to the path we took to the beach. I’m sure finding the cave again won’t pose a problem. Of course, I wouldn’t mind a volunteer to accompany me and lighten the load of my gear.”
“How much does your camera weight?” Rad quipped.
“My scuba gear, Rad.”
“You’re going diving in that lake?”
“The majority of merfolk sightings throughout the ages have been of the creatures in terrestrial environs—tidal flats, sandbars, rocky shores, and so forth. Which means, unlike whales and dolphins, they don’t spend one hundred percent of their lives in the water. They appear to be more akin to seals, which come ashore to mate or to escape predators or to simply rest and relax. And coming ashore on remote islands rather than continental land would have offered merfolk refuge from their more technologically advanced, and landlocked, hominin cousins. The first ocean-faring ships weren’t invented by modern humans until five thousand years ago, which is yesterday in geological timescales. Which is to say, merfolk would have been able to exist and evolve in isolation and safety for nearly two million years. What am I getting at?” He lit the tobacco in the bowl of his corncob pipe. “It’s always been a pet hypothesis of mine that merfolk don’t only live in the waters around islands but—”
“In submerged caves beneath islands,” Elsa finished, nodding thoughtfully.
“It would certainly explain why they’ve been so elusive over the centuries, wouldn’t it?”
Rad said, “And you think there are merfolk in that lake?”
“In the flooded lava tubes, yes, I think it’s a distinct possibility.”
Jacky said, “It would be pitch-black down there.”
“Which they could navigate perfectly fine with echolocation.”
“It’s an interesting premise, Marty,” Elsa said. “Yet I must ask, why would a presumably intelligent species choose to live in such a bleak environment?”
“Because the ocean is the most dangerous place on this planet, Elsa. Sharks and killer whales make the fiercest land predators seem tame by comparison. Just as early humans retreated to terrestrial caves for protection against giant birds and jaguars and bears, merfolk likely sought out underwater caves for the same reason.”
“Cave diving is not open water diving, mon capitaine,” Pip said. “It is dangerous and requires different training and equipment.”
“She’s right, Marty,” Rad said. “I don’t think you’ve thought this through completely.”
“I’m flattered by your concern, both of you. But rest assured, I’ve been on my fair share of cave diving expeditions throughout the British Isles, and I have the necessary equipment on board the Oannes to safely explore the lava tubes beneath Demon Island.”
“And what if you find merfolk, Marty?” Elsa said. “Or perhaps I should say, what if they find you? I can’t imagine they’d be thrilled by a surface-dwelling trespasser in their submarine domain?”
“They might consider human flesh to be a delicacy,” Rad said.
“I highly doubt that,” Marty told her, puffing on his pipe. “The two merfolk skulls featured sagittal crests. You typically find these in animals with strong jaws and powerful bites because the ridge of bone serves as a point of attachment for the temporalis muscle, which is one of the main muscles used for chewing. Dogs and cats and numerous other carnivores have sagittal crests.”
“So merfolk are carnivores? Great. Shouldn’t that deter you from swimming into their home?”
“I didn’t say they were carnivores, Rad. Primates are the exception to the rule. Many species of early humans had sagittal crests, and they weren’t meat-eaters. Their diet consisted of leaves and gras
ses. Sagittal crests allowed for the prolonged chewing of tough and fibrous vegetation with less muscle fatigue. The crests only began to disappear during the time of Homo erectus, which was the earliest human relative to control fire. With fire, Homo erectus began to cook their food, allowing for a more varied diet and a higher consumption of meat. Merfolk, being aquatic creatures, clearly never mastered fire, which leads me to believe they’ve retained a plant-based diet similar to early, pre-fire hominins.”
“You’re saying you think merfolk are vegetarians?”
“I’m saying it’s reasonable to assume their diet consists mostly of kelp and seaweed. In other words, they’re not underwater savages that would find human flesh to be a delicacy.” Marty shrugged, tiring of defending a decision that was preordained. “Look, everyone. Either merfolk live beneath Demon Island or they don’t. Either they’re friendly or they’re not. The only way to know for certain is to investigate. Is there a risk involved in that? Certainly. But in the words of a philosopher I respect, ‘Never was anything great achieved without danger.’ Now enough of this. My mind is made up. Tomorrow I’m going to explore the submerged sections of the lava tubes. If anyone would like to accompany me to the cavern with the paintings, you’re more than welcome to do so.”
Chapter 23
ELSA
After everyone else had retired to their cabins for the night, Elsa remained on the foredeck of the Oannes, content to sit beneath the star-lit night sky and be alone with her thoughts. She had been doing a lot of soul-searching for the last hour, and she had decided to accompany Dr. Murdoch on his dive beneath Demon Island. This had been an easier conclusion than she had anticipated. After Ron’s death, she had vowed she was done with cave diving. Nevertheless, what she didn’t know up until today—or at least didn’t acknowledge—was that she had been living a lie these last few years, merely biding her time, waiting for an excuse, any excuse, to get back in the water. Dr. Murdoch had given her that excuse. The golden safety rule of scuba diving was to never dive alone—a rule that was even more important when diving beneath an overhead environment. If she allowed Marty to dive the lava tubes on his own, and he suffered a fatal accident, she would be as culpable as if she had dived with him…yet because the chances of something disastrous happening were significantly reduced when diving with a buddy, she had a moral obligation to accompany him.
It was sound—and agreeable—logic. And now that she had decided on her course of action (and her guilt at being unable to save Ron temporarily and conveniently assuaged), she could barely contain her excitement at the prospect of the dive. Much of this was for the simple thrill of once again exploring where few (if anybody) had been before. Yet she had to admit she was also cautiously enthralled about the possibility, however remote, of encountering merfolk. She would never have entertained such a thought twenty-four hours ago, but the evidence was proving to be quite persuasive—as was Dr. Murdoch himself. Reading about his merfolk theories in dry academic journals had always been interesting and amusing but little more than that. Listening to him argue them firsthand was something else altogether. His unwavering conviction that he was right and everyone else was wrong was admirable and attractive and infectious…so much so for the first time in Elsa’s career as an oceanographer she found herself accepting, or at least considering, scientific claims on faith before completing the rigorous process of verifiability and falsifiability.
And it feels damn good to finally let down your hair, doesn’t it? she thought. When was the last time you felt so free, so alive—?
“Hello there, Dr. Montero. I thought everyone had gone to bed.”
Elsa looked away from the black expanse of sky to find Marty emerging from the salon. “Hello, Marty. I’ve just been enjoying some me-time.”
“May I join you?”
“I would like that.”
He settled into the seat next to her with a sigh.
“What’s kept you up?” she asked.
“I’ve been analyzing the sonar data. The pod of dolphins has apparently lost interest in us and moved on, leaving this neck of the ocean oddly quiet. Ah, a full moon. My favorite lunar phase.”
“It makes you feel small, doesn’t it?”
“The moon? Sure. It’s a large celestial body, after all.”
“The moon, the stars, space…” They were silent for a few moments, and then Elsa added, “This might sound strange, but the moon is why I became an oceanographer in the first place.”
“You do know there’s no water up there, right?”
“Did you believe your mother when she told you there was a Man in the Moon?”
“I don’t imagine she ever told me such a thing. She is a rather sensible woman.”
“My mother told me there was a Man in the Moon, and I believed her. I used to think he could see everything that I did. When I said my prayers, I often included him in them, telling him I was sorry for doing this or that. Even when I grew older, and learned the image of the human face was just various lunar maria, the moon retained a special place in my heart. In fact, as a teenager I wanted to become an astronaut. That dream fizzled out in university when I learned that qualified applicants had less than a half-percent chance of being selected by NASA.”
“Astronomical odds.”
“Funny, but yes. I didn’t have a realistic hope in hell. So to scratch my itch for exploration, I turned my attention to the oceans. And here I am some twenty years later—cataloguing whale shit. Can you see those black dots on the moon?”
“The craters?”
“No, the much smaller pockmarks. They’re the skylights of collapsed lava tubes.”
“Must be damn big lava tubes.”
“Some are more than a mile in diameter and twenty times that in length.”
“Why are they so much bigger than the lava tubes on earth?”
“The lower gravity affects volcanism differently there. It also keeps the lava tubes in remarkably good shape. Scientists are talking about how future astronauts could use them as shelter from the harsh environment, fluctuating temperatures, and radiation. It’s interesting—prehistoric humans started out in caves on earth, and when we establish permanent settlements on the moon, we’ll be starting out in caves all over again. I wanted to ask you something, Marty. Would you consider putting off your dive beneath Demon Island for another day or so?”
He frowned. “Whatever for?”
“I would like to accompany you.”
“Accompany me?” He shook his head. “I’m sure you’re an accomplished scuba diver, Elsa. But as Pip mentioned earlier, cave diving is not your typical recreational dive.”
“I’m well aware of the dangers, Marty,” she said firmly. “I’ve logged hundreds of dives and thousands of hours in underwater caves throughout the Americas.”
He blinked in surprise. “Is that so?”
“I was researching cave animals specifically adapted to lightless, food-poor environments. Unfortunately, pollution and habitat destruction are causing many of them to go extinct.”
“I never knew this.”
“Biodiversity conservation often fails to take cave species into account. Because nobody knows much about species like eyeless crustaceans, nobody seems to care about them.”
“I meant, I never knew you were an experienced cave diver.”
“Why would you?”
“I wouldn’t. And…well, this changes everything, doesn’t it?” He grinned at her. “I would be honored for you to join me on the dive. However, why do we need to postpone it a day?”
“We need to return to the mainland so I could collect my gear.”
“No, that shouldn’t be necessary.” He sized her up. “You’re nearly my height. One of my wetsuits should fit you fine. And I have more than enough equipment to kit us both out.”
Elsa always used her own scuba gear as so many things could go wrong during a cave dive. However, Dr. Murdoch wasn’t a shady expat running a dive shop targeting tourists; his equipment
was likely top-of-the-line and properly maintained.
“All right then,” she told him. “We dive tomorrow.”
Chapter 24
Merfolk: From the Deep. The making-of the original Netflix documentary.
“Rolling,” Gus the cameraman said.
Jamie, clad head-to-toe in black for the third consecutive day, clapped the slate.
Fat Mike, stretching a New York Rangers jersey to the seams, in his director’s chair said, “Whenever you’re ready, Double M. You can pick up from where you left off yesterday.”
Beneath the spotlights in the West London studio, Marty nodded. “Thanks to the numerous eyewitness accounts throughout the ages,” he began, regurgitating what he’d rehearsed the night before, “we have a pretty good idea about what merfolk look like. It seems they bear a strong resemblance to us, which isn’t surprising given we likely share a common ancestor. But what about merfolk behavior? Do they act like us? Are they like Disney’s Ariel, all peaches and cream? Or are they like Homer’s sirens, predators that lure men to their watery graves? Some eyewitness accounts suggest the former, and some suggest the latter. Yet we must remember that, historically, the majority of merfolk sightings were by sailors long at sea. They would undoubtedly have had active imaginations, and it would be understandable if they interwove hearsay with superstition and lust and fear, ultimately creating a merfolk antithetical to the real thing. The truth, unfortunately, is that we simply don’t know, and can’t know, anything about the general behavior of merfolk without sustained scientific observation.
“Nevertheless, I believe we can make some relatively safe logical deductions. Everybody seems to agree that merfolk have two mammary glands, which means the females bear one, or occasionally two, offspring at a time. Given their anatomical base of arms and hands, they likely carry their young as well, as do all land-dwelling primates. Yet due to their relatively small size in comparison to sharks and squid and other threats, merfolk, especially the young, would be vulnerable to predation. Thus it is my opinion that they are social mammals that live together in large numbers for protection. It is improbable they would have a complex language to communicate with one another as do humans, as we only began talking in a unique and complex form some 100,000 years ago. But I would argue they have a rudimentary one. Great apes, for example, can comprehend symbols; they understand that this stands for that even though this has no resemblance to that. They can learn American Sign Language, computer language, and spoken language. They only have trouble with syntax and stringing symbols together into meaningful sentences. So, yes, merfolk likely possess a language, but one at the linguistic stage of early hominins rather than the articulatory capabilities of modern humans. Does this mean they would possess theory of mind? That is, the ability to attribute thoughts, desires, and intentions to others; to predict or explain their actions; and to posit their intentions? Human children develop theory of mind at three or four years of age. Prior to that time, they do not realize that they or others may have incomplete information. Whether merfolk have this ability or not is anyone’s guess.
