Beast (26 page)

How long did they say it took the submersible to get to the bottom? Half an hour? He still had time to put another line down. But this time he wouldn’t leave it, he’d keep it in his fingers, and if some puppy shark wanted to make a run at it, he’d get the surprise of his life.

Mike took a new wire leader off the midships hatch cover, leaned back against the bulwark and held the eye of the swivel on the end of the leader up to his face so he could see to thread the monofilament through it. He missed on his first try. Getting old, he thought, soon be needing granny glasses.

There was a vague noise behind him, a squishing kind of noise. Part of his mind registered the noise, but he was concentrating on threading the monofilament through the eye of the swivel.

The line slid through the hole. “Gotcha,” Mike said.

He heard the squishing noise again, closer this time, and there was a sound of scratching. He started to turn toward it. There was a smell to it, too, a familiar smell, but he couldn’t quite place it.

And then suddenly Mike’s world went dark. Something had him around the chest and head, something tight and wet. Mike’s hands grabbed at it, then slipped off, as the thing that had him began to squeeze. He felt a pain as if a thousand ice picks were piercing his flesh.

As his feet lifted off the deck and he felt himself dragged through the air, he realized what had happened.

ANDY SAT AT the console in the control room. Darling stood behind him, wearing a headset, and Sharp stood beside Darling.

Because only two television cameras were in use, two of the four monitors were blank. The third showed the inside of the capsule: Eddie holding the stick and looking out his porthole, St. John testing the manipulators of the arms, Stephanie adjusting the lens of one of her cameras. The fourth monitor showed the scene outside the capsule: the bright aura from the lamps, the shower of plankton, and evanescent swirls of red as the eddying currents swept fish blood from the wire cage. Now and then, a small fish flashed before the camera, frantic with frustration at being unable to squeeze through the wire mesh and get to the source of the tantalizing spoor.

“Twenty-eight hundred,” Andy said. “They’re nearly there.”

Soon they saw the bottom rise up. The turbulence of the submersible’s propeller stirred the mud and caused a cloud that dimmed the video camera’s lens.

The capsule settled, and the cloud cleared.

Suddenly a shadow passed over the bottom, disappeared and passed again, going the other way.

“Shark,” said Darling. “Liam didn’t figure on sharks. It’ll probably go for his bait.”

The image on the monitor jiggled as the capsule shook.

“What’s that?” they heard St. John say.

“A shark, Doctor,” Andy said into his microphone. “Just a shark.”

“Well, do something!” said St. John.

Darling laughed. “We’re half a bloody mile away, Liam. What do you want us to do?”

Andy pushed a button, then grabbed a control lever. The monitor of the exterior camera seemed to track outward, then it turned and faced upward. Now they could see the wire cage.

“It’s a six-gill shark,” Darling said. “Rare enough.”

It was chocolate brown, with a bright green eye and six rippling gill slits. It was small, less than twice the size of the cage, but tenacious. It bit down on the corner of the cage and rolled its body, first one way, then the other, trying to tear a hole in the wire. Smaller fish hovered in the background, like vultures waiting to claim their share of the prize.

“Why haven’t the fish taken off?” Sharp asked. “I thought they stayed away from feeding sharks.”

“He’s focused,” Darling said, “and not on them. They can tell. He’s sending out electromagnetic signals they can read clear as day. If he gets pissed off and turns on ‘em, or another one comes by and gets jealous, then watch ‘em scatter.”

On the other monitor they saw St. John crawl forward and take the handles that operated one of the mechanical arms. Recessed in the control panel was a four-inch black-and-white monitor showing the image seen by the outside camera. Consulting it like a surgeon performing an arthroscopy, St. John pulled one handle, and the arm flexed; he pushed the other handle, and the arm rose and turned, pointing its needle toward the wire cage.

“Uh-oh,” Darling said. He pressed the “talk” button and spoke into his microphone. “Don’t do it, Liam. Leave the bloody shark alone.”

St. John’s voice came over the speaker. “Why should I let the shark take all the bait?”

“Listen. He can’t take your cage. A six-gill doesn’t have big rippers for teeth. He’ll worry it and bend it, but he can’t wreck it.”

“So you say.”

Darling sighed, searched for another tack, then said, “Look, Liam, you want to kill yourself, that’s your business, but you got two other people down there with you maybe not so eager to play harps.”

They saw Stephanie move toward St. John, and heard her say, “Doctor, if we waste one of your weapons on a shark, we’re cutting our odds in half.”

“Don’t worry, Miss Carr,” St. John said. “We’ll still have plenty left to do the job.”

On one monitor they saw St. John push a button; on the other they saw a burst of bubbles as the dart fired from the spear gun and struck the shark just behind its gill slits.

For a few seconds, the shark seemed to take no notice of the sting. Then suddenly its body arched, its tail and pectoral fins stiffened and its mouth jerked away from the cage and gaped. Rigid and quivering, it hung suspended in the water and then, like a fighter plane peeling away from formation, it banked to the right, rolled over, bounced once on the side of the capsule and fell into the mud.

The smaller fish closed in then, curiously circling the corpse before they turned back to the food in the wire cage.

One of the video monitors showed Stephanie pressing her camera against the porthole and snapping pictures.

“Won’t a dead shark just bring more sharks?” Sharp asked.

“No,” said Darling. “Sharks are strange that way. They’ll kill each other, but if one of their own dies, they stay away. It’s like they can read their own death in it.” Darling paused and looked at the monitor. “Some things can’t deal with death,” he said. “Others thrive on it.”

THE SQUID HAD fed, but after so long a deprivation, the protein it had consumed had not satisfied its hunger but rather had tantalized it, spurring a craving for more. And so the beast continued to hunt.

Suddenly, its senses were assaulted by new, conflicting signals—signals of food: of live prey, dead prey, of light, movement, sound. And so it began to charge back and forth, confused, defensive, ravenous, aggressive.

It moved upward in the water, seeking the source of the conflict, but it found nothing. And so it drifted downward, perceiving the soft bottom beneath it.

The rods in its eyes detected twinkles of bioluminescence from small animals nearby; it ignored them. Then more light flooded in, and more. Agitated, sensing both opportunity and danger, it drew water into its body and expelled it, propelling itself across the bottom.

As the beast drew closer to the source of light, the light became harsh, repellent. Reflex told it to retreat into the darkness, but its olfactory sensors began to receive strong, overwhelming waves of food spoor: fresh kill, rich and nourishing.

Hunger drove it onward.

It rose off the bottom, above the light, and let itself be carried into the darkness behind the light. It settled there, where signals of threat had disappeared, and it could concentrate on the scent of prey below.

It descended.

SHARP YAWNED, STRETCHED and shook his head; he was having trouble staying awake. They had been watching for over an hour, and there had been no movement on either monitor. It was hypnotic, like watching test patterns.

In the submersible, Stephanie, St. John and Eddie had hardly spoken and barely moved. Stephanie had taken a few pictures of the strange animals that swarmed around her porthole, but now she just knelt and watched.

St. John looked up at the video camera in the submersible, and he said, “What’s the time?”

“Ninety minutes gone,” Andy said into his microphone.

St. John nodded and resumed staring out his porthole.

The exterior camera had been readjusted, and it showed the body of the dead shark, belly-up in the mud. Earlier, a hagfish had darted in and tried to bore a hole in the shark, but the skin was too tough, and the hagfish had given up and gone in search of easier prey.

The door to the control room opened, and Darling entered, carrying two cups of coffee. He passed one to Sharp and said, “I couldn’t find any proper cream, so … holy shit!”

“What?” Sharp said, and he followed Darling’s eyes to the monitors.

“The fish. They’re gone.”

As Darling put on a headset and fumbled for the “talk” button on the microphone, Sharp realized what he meant: No abyssal creatures were patrolling the edge of darkness, no small fish hovered over the dead shark, no tiny scavengers gulped the bits of tuna that floated down from the wire cage.

“Liam!” Darling shouted into the microphone. “Look out!”

St. John started at the sound of the voice, and he looked around, but saw nothing. “Look out for—?”

There was a hollow sound then, a scraping, a crunch almost like the sound of a ship running aground. Then the capsule was jerked up and tilted forward. The interior camera showed Stephanie and St. John being hurled into Eddie, and all of them tumbling over the control panel. The exterior camera showed nothing but mud.

Eddie cursed, St. John grabbed the handles for the mechanical arm and tried to work them. “The arm’s stuck in the mud!” he yelled.

“Put power to her!” Darling said to Eddie. “That beast won’t like the propeller.”

They saw Eddie pull back on the stick and apply power, and they heard the submersible’s motor whine, then shriek as it raced.

The capsule tilted up; the mechanical arm came free.

“The camera!” St. John said.

Eddie reached for the controls for the outside camera as St. John flexed and raised the mechnical arm, his finger poised over the firing button.

The monitor showed the camera tracking out and turning: Mud gave way to water, then to a blur on the side of the capsule, then to …

“What the hell is that?” Sharp said.

The camera showed a field of circles, pinkish gray, each quivering on its own stalk, each apparently rimmed with teeth and each containing an amber-colored claw.

“Bad news, is what that is,” said Darling, and he shouted into his microphone, “Fire it, Liam!”

Then, as the camera was ripped from its mounts, the screen went blank.

The creature crushed the camera in its whip and cast it away.

Then it turned back to the shredded remains of the food, its eight short arms scratching and clawing as it searched for more to feed to the snapping beak. But there was no more.

The creature was confused, for the spoor of food was everywhere, permeating the water. All its senses told it there was food; its hunger demanded food. But where was it?

It perceived a large, hard carapace, and associated it with the scent of food. It encircled the thing with its whips and set about to destroy it.

“I can’t see!” St. John shouted. “Where did it go?”

“Fire it, Liam!” Darling shouted. “Fire the dart! The bastard’s so big you can’t miss.”

They saw St. John push the button to fire the dart. “It didn’t fire!” he cried, and he pushed the button again, and again.

Stephanie yelled, “Look!” She was pointing out her porthole. “In the mud. The spear gun. The thing tore it

off.”

The capsule shuddered then, and rolled from side to side. St. John skidded and fell on top of Stephanie; Eddie hung on to the controls. The images through the portholes flashed and changed like pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope: mud, water, light, darkness.

Again the capsule shuddered, and there were screeching sounds.

Watching the single television monitor, Sharp felt sick with helplessness. “We’ve got to do something!” he said.

“Like what?” Darling asked.

“Bring it up. Start the winch. Maybe the motion will scare it off.”

“It’d take ten minutes to reel in the slack in the cable,” Darling said. “And they don’t have ten minutes. Whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen now.”

The creature sought weakness. There was weakness somewhere. There was weakness in all prey.

The thing was less than half the creature’s size, and although it was strong and dense, it did not struggle.

The creature lifted it easily in its two long whips and turned it, probing for a soft spot, a crack. Then it drew the thing in to its eight short arms and clutched it. It opened its beak and let its tongue search the skin. The tongue traveled slowly: licking, probing, rasping.

“What’s that noise?” St. John hissed. It sounded as if a coarse file were scraping at the hull.

The capsule was upside down now, and the three of them knelt on the overhead and braced themselves with their hands.

“It’s playing with you,” Darling said over the mike. “Like a cat with a toy. With any luck, it’ll get bored and leave you be.”

St. John tilted his head, apparently listening for another sound. “Our motor’s quit,” he said.

“As soon as the critter lets you go, we’ll winch you up. Won’t be long now.”

Sharp waited until Darling had released the “talk” button, then said, “You believe that?”

Darling paused before he said, “No. The sonofabitch is gonna find a way in.”

The tongue snaked across the skin, examining texture, seeking difference. But the skin was all the same: hard, tasteless, dead. The tongue speeded up, impatient as it licked.

A signal flashed across its brain and vanished.

The tongue stopped, retreated, began to lick again, slower. There. The signal reappeared, steady.

The texture here was different: smoother, thinner.

Weaker.

Stephanie must have heard a noise behind her, for they saw her turn and look at her porthole. What she saw made her scream and back away.