Cry of the Sea (29 page)

I remembered what the mermaid had looked like
when we first brought it to the center. Her skin was a deep navy
blue from suffocation. Most of the mermaids in the tank were that
color now. I stood up and faced Schneider.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he begged. “I
asked to have some of them moved into different tanks but was given
nothing but negatives. This is the only lab in the facility that
locks, and it has the biggest tank. Affron couldn’t afford to put
the mermaids anywhere else. The risk of exposure was too high.

“So I dared to suggest, ‘Why don’t we stop
collecting them?’ Bill—Mr. Cortlandt—just laughed at me and said,
‘Have you seen the madness out there? They’ll be discovered before
too long.’ I reminded him, ‘They’ve been discovered. The Sawfeather
family has seen to that.’” Schneider sighed. “He didn’t think you
and your family were too much of a threat. ‘It’ll blow over,’ he
told me, ‘if no one finds any more of them.’”

“Why didn’t you let them go?” I asked. “If
you thought it was wrong, why didn’t you do something about
it?”

“I couldn’t,” he said desperately. “They
threatened my job.”

“You can get another job,” Haley said.

“Not without references and not after my name
has been slandered as the crackpot who believes in mermaids.”

“They threatened to shut down the center,
too, didn’t they?” Carter asked.

Schneider nodded. “I was ordered to study the
mermaids like lab animals, and if they died, so be it. This was not
what I expected when I got the call to come up here and work. I
sincerely thought they wanted me to, oh,
make the world
better
. That is their slogan, isn’t it?”

Haley’s voice came from behind Dr. Schneider.
She was standing at his computer pressing buttons. “What is this
graph showing?” I got up and moved with Carter over to the
computer. Dr. Schneider wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and
joined us. I noticed how his hands shook as he took the mouse from
her and guided the cursor across the screen. He sat down and
refused to raise his eyes to us as he found the work he wanted to
show us. The man was truly wrecked.

“Don’t think this was easy for me, kids,” he
said quietly. “When I first got here all I wanted to do was find
our mermaid to make sure she was okay, but a lot of them wear the
necklaces, and I couldn’t pick her out.”

He was right. The overpowering frailty of
them had taken all my attention, but now that I looked closer, a
lot of them wore the shell jewelry that Juarez Peña had told me
about. I’d have to study the mermaids for a long time to find my
girl, and I didn’t have that kind of time. All I could hope was
that she was in the tank, and that she knew I was here to help and
not hurt her like Dr. Schneider had.

Dr. Schneider was still talking. “By the end
of the first day all I’d managed to will myself to do was read the
files about what they like to eat, discover that there were indeed
male mermaids, and establish that they were dying. I kept putting
off the autopsy of the dead mermaids, leaving them packed in ice. I
didn’t have the heart to pull any living ones out of the tank to
study their reflexes or behaviors either.

“According to the papers I’d gathered from
the other scientists who had been working on this project, the
first mermaid had been discovered less than two years ago off Port
Alberni just above Vancouver. Since then they’d popped up randomly,
usually beached from oil spills or pollution. Most of the time they
were in pairs or threes. Maybe they didn’t like traveling alone. Or
maybe the others got trapped while trying to rescue the first oil
spill victim.”

Carter interrupted, “Which is evidence that
they are social creatures. Do you know any fish that would help
each rescue each other?”

“Only people do that,” I said.

With a sheepish grin, Haley said, “The fish
do that in
Finding Nemo
.”

I hit her and she mouthed “Sorry.”

Dr. Schneider nodded and went on, “I wondered
how long these creatures had existed. If they’ve been out there all
these years, why were they starting to show up now? And why weren’t
they going away now that things were dangerous for them?” He
pointed to a map that showed where the majority of the mermaids had
been found. “It’s almost like they’re coming here on purpose to
look for their missing relatives.”

I walked over to the tank, searching the eyes
of the mermaids for the one that might recognize me. “I’m kind of
surprised you didn’t jump into the biology and experiments, Dr.
Schneider. Weren’t you curious?”

“Sure I was curious,” he said. “But I didn’t
want to do what they were asking of me. This work for Affron won’t
get my name written up in history. Who remembers the debunkers?
When would there ever be a class taught in a college or university
where the professor would ask, “Tell me the name of the man who
proved that mermaids were nothing but over-sized halibut?”

“True,” Carter said.

“Juniper Sawfeather’s name is all over the
news for discovering mermaids. You have fame now for that little
thing, and if Affron hadn’t taken the mermaids away, I could have
expanded that discovery all the way to the cover of
Scientific
American
. My name would have been in the annals of history. But
that’s all been taken away!”

He stabbed a button on the computer and a
horrible squeaking and groaning came from speakers around the room.
It sounded like whales. I covered my ears because it was so
loud.

Dr. Schneider stood up, yelling over the
noise. “This morning I was told that I had to start the experiments
or think about flipping hamburgers for the rest of my life. I
started with sound sensitivity and recognition. Whale and dolphin
soundings. Mating calls and nursing coos at first. I got a reaction
from them, but it wasn’t significant. Then I switched it up and
tried cries of distress. The mermaids reacted immediately and with
much more demonstration. Watch them.”

I had been staring at Dr. Schneider and the
speakers, so I pivoted to take in the vision of the mermaids. Their
heads were all up on stiff necks, and their strange, black eyes
were open as wide as possible. They squirmed around as if they
wanted to back away from this horrible sound. Some of them began to
make their own calls, as if they were answering the voices they
heard.

“Interesting, right?” Dr. Schneider yelled.
“They’re behaving like fish now, aren’t they? Does this mean they
don’t think? No. But it does mean that they may not necessarily
think like a human.”

He switched off the noise. Tension fled from
their bodies immediately and the relief in their demeanor was
clear. Though now sadness filled the tank. Their heads drooped, and
they brought their hands to their faces as though ashamed or
devastated that they couldn’t do anything to help the creatures
they had been hearing.

I thought of my dad’s Chinook tale of the
killer whale and the mermaid’s attachment to it. I recalled the
legend Juarez Peña told me about the drowned sailors becoming
killer whales. The island I was on was called Orcas. Now I know
those weren’t just silly legends or made up folklore. They were
true accounts. The mermaids and the killer whales were linked in
love and history. And they were linked to my people, the American
Indians of the Pacific Northwest.

“Do you have a recording that is specifically
of killer whales?” I asked. Honestly, I didn’t want to hurt them,
but I had to know if I was right.

“Yes, I do.” Dr. Schneider hit a button and a
horrible keening came out of the speakers.

All at once the mermaids began thrashing
about. Slamming into each other. They frantically searched for a
way to get out of the tank but couldn’t find one. Some of the
mermaids smashed their tales against the glass so hard I worried
the five-inch thick glass might crack and jumped away.

“What’s happening?” Haley screamed. “Why are
they doing that?”

“Turn it off!” I shouted to Dr.
Schneider.

“Fascinating,” the scientist said, moving
away from the computer and walking toward the tank. “Even more
dynamic than last time.”

“Hayley, turn it off!” I shouted, but she was
panicking. I saw Carter push her to the side and frantically search
for the way to end the recording. More slamming against the glass
caught my attention. I shifted to look at the chaos and squeezing
through the silver bodies was a face I recognized—my mermaid. I
knew her big eyes, and I could tell she knew me. She pressed her
hands up against the glass, and stared at me.

Noise crowded around me. The whale calls, the
mermaids slamming against the glass, the sloshing of the water,
Carter and Haley yelling at each other, and Dr. Schneider having
some weird epiphany. I tried to tune it all out and focus on my
mermaid. I locked eyes with her and stepped forward to put my hands
over hers. All the noise became dulled, like I had stuffed cotton
in my ears. What came through clearly was a voice that I couldn’t
understand at first. I focused harder. Nothing but the mermaid.

“Help them.”

It wasn’t quite words like that, but somehow
I understood what she was telling me. I tried to respond to her
with my mind, but I didn’t know if I could send my thoughts to her
the same way. “These whale cries aren’t real. It’s just a
recording.”

“Help them!”

“Ah ha!” I heard somewhere behind me—Carter’s
voice. The whale sounds stopped and the silence buzzed in my ears.
I tried to stay concentrated on my mermaid.

“See? It stopped.”

She nodded at me, but her eyes were still so
sad.

“Help us.”

“I’m trying.”

“Is that her?” Haley asked, walking toward
me.

“Yes.”

“She’s beautiful.”

“Oh my God.” That was from Carter. I tore my
eyes away from the mermaid to find out what was upsetting him. “Did
you know this would happen?” he yelled at Dr. Schneider.

“I... yes,” the scientist stammered. “I tried
it once before.”

“Then why did you push that button?”

That’s when I realized that there was
something wrong even though the panic had stopped. Inside the tank
several mermaids had been pressed so hard against the glass they
were smothered to death. Five more were floating at the top of the
tank lifeless.

“This is my fault,” I said weakly.

“No, it’s not,” Haley said, putting her hand
on my shoulder. She pointed at Schneider. “It’s his.”

I ran over and pushed Dr. Schneider in the
chest. “So you knew that they would freak out like that? Why didn’t
you say, ‘No, June, we can’t play those sounds, it’ll kill
them’?”

“It wasn’t so extreme last time. I didn’t
think.”

I screamed at him. “You never think! You are
the stupidest scientist I’ve ever met!”

“June, look!” Carter yelled over me. He
yanked my hand and pulled me away from Dr. Schneider. He wrapped
his arms around me tightly as we faced the aquarium. It wasn’t
until I felt the pressure of his arms around me that I realized I
had been shivering. I leaned my head back against his chest and
took in the sight in front of me.

Inside the tank, the mermaids were now
rushing up and toward the back where part of the top of the tank
was opening up. I got as close to the glass as I could to be able
to see what was happening. Four men in wet suits and scuba gear
were there, pulling the mermaids up and over the top of the tank
out to the open water. Mermaids hoisted their torsos up with their
arms and flipped over the top, with a push from the men to get them
going.

“What’s happening?”

Dr. Schneider laughed. “They’re being
released. Cortlandt must really be in a jam up there with the
reporters you sent.”

“That’s good, right?” Haley checked.

“Of course it’s good,” I said. “For the
mermaids. But now there won’t be any evidence that they were here
or that they exist. When the reporters get down here, they’ll all
be gone. Right, Dr. S.? Guess you really won’t be in
Scientific
American
now, will you?”

My mermaid banged with her fist on the glass.
I went back to her and put my hands over hers again. Her eyes were
much brighter, and she had a wisp of a grin on those thin lips. I
could almost see that dimple in her cheek. “You’ll be safe now,” I
thought to her.

“Come with us,” she shared with me.

“I can’t.”

Her silver forehead wrinkled. “You—in the
water—with me—before.”

“I can’t live like that.”

The brightness in her eyes fled again. Nearly
all of the living mermaids were out of the tank now. She had to
go.

“I will find you again,” she thought to
me.

“I will be looking.”

She swam away from me and hauled herself over
the opening. Then the two men dove into the tank to start removing
the dead mermaid bodies. They lifted them up and over the glass and
dropped them far enough away that the murky water obscured them
from vision. All this happened in minutes.

As the last mermaid vanished with a diver, I
heard a commotion in the hallway outside. A lot of voices. A key
turned in the lock, and a second later Dr. Cortlandt entered
followed by his secretary, Peña, Regina, and a whole lot of other
reporters and cameras. Mr. Boyle, the thug who stole my mermaid
from the Center in Aberdeen stepped in behind the crowd and made
his way to Schneider’s desk.

I motioned to Carter to keep an eye on the
man, and he nodded.

“Juniper Sawfeather,” Mr. Cortlandt said,
approaching me with an outstretched arm and a smile. “Here you are.
We have been looking all over this building for you.”

A dozen microphones poked toward me.

Juarez Peña asked the first question, “So,
where are the mermaids, Juniper?”

“They’re gone,” I answered. “There were close
to a hundred in that tank until two minutes ago. Mr. Cortlandt
ordered them released before you could get down here to see
them.”