Peter Benchley's Creature (7 page)

His job description listed no specific duties, so he did whatever Chase wanted done and whatever else he saw that needed doing, from maintaining the boats to hydro-testing the scuba gear. He loved working with animals, and seemed to have an almost mystical gift for communicating with them, calming them, getting them to trust him. Seabirds with fishhooks embedded in their beaks would allow him to handle them; a dolphin whose tail had been snared and slashed by monofilament netting had approached Tall Man in the shallows, and had lain quietly while he removed the strands of plastic and injected the animal with antibiotics.

He had freedom and responsibility, and he responded well to both. He arrived early, left late, worked at his own pace and took great, if unspoken, pride in being a partner in keeping the Institute running.

When the coil of wire was secured to the buoy, they tossed both overboard and watched for a few moments to make sure that the wire didn't foul and that the buoy would support its weight. The wire was heavy, but in water it was nearly neutral—one pound negative for every ten feet—and the buoy was designed to support a dead weight of more than two hundred pounds.

"No sweat," Tall Man said.

"If nobody steals it. ..."

"Right. Why would anybody want three hundred feet of wire?"

"You know as well as I do. People are ripping carriage lamps off houses to get the brass; they're torching light poles down for the aluminum; they're stealing toilet fixtures for the copper. In this economy, specially thanks to the crowd your blood brothers have brought in with their casino up in Ledyard, a smart man walks down the street with his mouth closed so no one can steal his fillings."

"There he goes again," Tall Man said to Max, grinning, "the racist blaming the poor Indians for everything."

Chase laughed and walked forward to put the boat in gear.

10

"BIRDS," Tall Man called down from the flying bridge, pointing to the south.

Chase and Max were on the foredeck—Max out at the end of the six-foot wooden pulpit that extended beyond the bow, from which he had been looking down into the water in hopes of seeing a dolphin. Chase had told him that dolphins sometimes frolicked in the bow wave of the boat.

Chase shaded his eyes and looked to the south. A swarm of birds-—gulls and terns—was wheeling over half an acre of water that seemed to be aboil with living things. The birds dove and splashed in a flurry of wings and rose again, their heads bobbing as they hurried to swallow a prize so they could dive for another. The southwest breeze carried the sound of frenzied screeching.

"What are they doing?" Max asked.

"Feeding," Chase said. "On fry . . . tiny fish. Something's attacking the fry from underneath, driving them to the surface." He looked up at Tall Man. "Let's go have a look."

Tall Man swung the boat to the south, leaving the distant gray hump of Block Island to the north and the closer, but smaller and lower, profile of Osprey Island to the east.

As the boat drew near the turmoil in the water, Tall Man said, "Bluefish."

"You're sure?" said Chase. He hoped Tall Man was right: a big school of hungry bluefish would be a good sign, a sign that the blues were making a recovery. Recently, their numbers had been dwindling—they were victims of overfishing and pollution from PCBs, pesticides and phosphates from agricultural runoff— and many of the survivors were manifesting tumors, ulcers and even bizarre genetic mutations. Some were being born with stomachs that ceased functioning after about a year, so the fish starved to death. The Institute and various environmental groups had helped clean up the rivers that fed the bays that led to the ocean, and the amount of pollutants had been reduced significantly though by no means completely.

If the bluefish were breeding successfully again . . . well, it was a tiny step, but it
was
a step forward, at least, and not back.

"Gotta be blues," Tall Man said. "What else kicks up a shower of blood like that?"

A bird veered away from the flock and soared over the boat, and Chase saw the telltale signs of bluefish carnage: the white feathers of the bird's belly were stained red from fish blood. The blues were running amok in a vast school of panicked bait, chopping and slashing with blind fury, dyeing the water crimson.

Tall Man throttled back, letting the boat drift in relative silence so as not to drive the school away. "Big bastards, too," he said. "Five-, six-pounders."

The bluefish rolled and leaped and lunged, their gunmetal bodies flashing in the sunlight, and the birds dove recklessly among them, plucking fry from the bloody water.

"Gross!" Max said, mesmerized. "Can we go have a look?"

"You're having a look."

"No, I mean, can we put on masks and go down there?"

"Are you crazy?" said Chase. "No way. Those fish would cut you to ribbons. You didn't want to bring me home in a box . . . how'd you like me to send you home to your mother in a doggie bag?"

"Bluefish attack people?"

"In a frenzy like this, they attack
any
thing. A few years ago, a lifeguard in Florida was sitting on a surfboard when a feeding school came by. He lost four toes. They've got little triangular teeth as sharp as razors, and when they're feeding—"

Tall Man interrupted, "—they're one mean-tempered son of a bitch."

"Cool," Max said.

As if on cue, a large gull swooped down, reached for a baitfish, missed, braked with its wings and landed on the water. It snatched up the fish and began its takeoff run, when suddenly a blue body rolled beside it. The gull stopped, jerked backward and shrieked—a blue-fish had it by its legs. The bird flapped its wings futilely and arched its neck forward, trying to peck at the tormentor.

   Another bluefish must have grabbed it then, for the bird lurched to the side, submerged and popped back to the surface. It shrieked again, and beat with its wings, but now other fish sensed savory new prey, and they flung themselves out of the water, onto the blood-soaked feathers.

The bird's body was pulled below the surface tail-first. A final tug snapped its head back, and the last they saw of it was the yellow beak pointing at the sky.

Chase looked at Max. The boy's eyes still stared at the spot on the water where, the bird had been, and his color had faded to a greenish gray.

They continued toward the island, Max and Chase on the foredeck, Tall Man driving from the flying bridge. Now and then, Chase would signal Tall Man to slow down, and he would take a net and dip it into the water and bring up something to show Max: a clump of seaweed in which tiny Crustacea—shrimps and crabs—took shelter until they were mature enough to fend for themselves on the bottom; a fist-sized jellyfish with a translucent purple membrane on its topside that looked like a sail, and long dangling tentacles that, Chase explained, stung its prey to death—a Portuguese man-o'-war. Fascinated, Max touched one of the tentacles and recoiled with a yelp as it stung his fingertip.

"It's early for them to be around," Tall Man remarked. "The water must be warming up fast."

When they were half a mile from the island, Chase pointed to a small Institute buoy bobbing off the starboard bow. Tall Man took the boat out of gear, letting it coast up to the buoy, as Chase picked up the boat hook and held it over the side. Chase snagged the buoy and brought it aboard. It was attached to a length of rope.

"Pull," he said to Max.

Max grabbed the rope and began to haul it aboard. "What is it?" he asked.

"An experiment," Chase said, dropping the boat hook and helping Max pull on the rope. "A big problem around here is lost lobster pots. Boat propellers cut the buoys off, or storms carry them away or the ropes just rot and fall apart. Anyway, there are pots lost all over the bottom."

"So?"

"They're killers. All sorts of creatures, not just lobsters—fish, crabs, octopuses—go inside after the baits and can't get out. They die and become bait themselves, so more and more creatures come in and die. The pots keep killing for years and years."

The pot bumped against the side of the boat, and Chase leaned overboard and heaved it up onto the gunwale. It was a rectangular wire cage, reinforced with wooden slats. On one end was a wire funnel—the way in; on the other, a square door made of a flimsy mesh material and secured with twine.

"What Tall and I've been trying to do," Chase said, "is design a biodegradable door. Pots should be pulled at least once a week, preferably twice, so we've been looking for a cheap material for the door that'll degrade after about ten days. The lobsterman can change the door every week, but if the pot's lost, the critters can get free before they die."

Max bent close to the pot and peered inside. "It's empty," he said.

"We didn't put any bait in it," Chase explained. "We're not trying to catch things, we're trying to save 'em." He tugged gently at the mesh in the door, and several strands broke. "This cotton blend may be the thing," he called up to Tall Man. "It's breaking down real well."

When Tall Man didn't reply, Chase looked up at the flying bridge and saw him bend down, his hand cupped over one ear, listening.

Suddenly Tall Man straightened up. "We got trouble, Simon," he said. "A couple of yahoos are yammering over channel sixteen that they've just hooked Jaws."

"Damn!" Chase said. "Can you tell where they are?"

"About three miles to the northeast, sounds like, just this side of Block."

"Let's go," Chase said. He shoved the lobster pot overboard and tossed the rope and buoy after it.

Tall Man put the boat in gear, pushed the throttle forward and, as the boat leaped ahead, turned it in a tight arc and headed toward Block Island.

Max held on to the railing and bent his knees as the bow of the boat thumped into the waves. "Do you think it's our shark?" he shouted to his father.

"I'd bet on it," Chase said. "She's the only one we've seen."

The boat rose up onto a plane and skimmed over the surface. The hump of Block Island grew swiftly larger, and as they watched, a small white dot took shape on the surface of the sea and soon became the hull of a boat.

"What are you gonna do?" Max asked. "What
can
you do?"

"I'm not sure, Max," Chase said, staring grimly ahead. "But something."

*    *    *

"They're two kids," Tall Man said, looking through a pair of binoculars. "Sixteen, eighteen, maybe . . . fishin' from a twenty-foot outboard. Stupid bastards. They better
hope
they don't land the shark; it'll turn that boat into splinters."

Tall Man throttled back as he approached the outboard, then took the boat out of gear and let it idle thirty or forty yards off the outboard's port side.

One boy sat in a fighting chair in the stern, the butt of his rod snugged into a socket between his legs. The rod was bent nearly to the breaking point, and the line led straight out behind the boat: the shark was near the surface, but still fifty yards or more away. The other boy stood forward, at the console, turning the wheel and using the gears to keep the stern of the outboard facing the shark.

"Can he really catch a shark that big?" Max asked. "On a fishing rod?"

"If he knows what he's doing," Chase said. "He's using a tuna rig, probably sixty- or eighty-pound test line with a steel leader."

"But you said the shark weighed a ton."

"He can still wear her out. Great whites aren't great fighters, they're not true game fish. They just pull and pull and finally give up."

As they watched, the boy with the rod tried to reel in some line, but the weight was too great, and the drum of the reel skidded beneath the spool of line. So the boy at the console put the outboard in reverse, backing down toward the shark, giving the angler slack to reel in.

As Chase had feared, the boys knew what they were doing.

"Get closer," he said to Tall Man. "I want to have a talk with them."

Tall Man maneuvered so that the stern of the boat was within ten yards of the side of the outboard. Chase walked aft and stood at the transom.

"What've you got there?" he asked.

"Jaws, man," the boy at the console said. "Biggest damn white shark you ever seen."

"What're you gonna do with it?"

"Catch it ... sell the jaws."

"How're you gonna get it aboard that little boat?"

"Don't have to ... gonna kill it, then tow it in."

"Kill it how? That's one big angry shark."

"With this." The boy reached under the console and brought out a shotgun. "All we have to do is get close enough to him for one clean shot."

Chase paused, considering, then said, "Did you know he's a she?"

"Huh?"

"That shark is a female, and she's pregnant. We've tagged her, we've been studying her. If you kill her, you're not just killing her, you're killing her and her children and her children's children."

"It's a fish," the boy said. "Why should I give a shit?"

"Because white sharks are very rare... endangered, even. I'll make you a deal. You cut that shark away—"

"Fuck you!" shouted the boy with the rod. "I been busting my hump—"

"—and I'll get your names in the paper for helping the Institute. You'll get a lot more mileage than if you just kill her."

"Not a chance." The boy with the rod yelled over his shoulder, "Come back some more, Jimmy. He's takin' line again."

The boy at the console put the outboard in reverse, and Chase saw the angle of the line increase as the boat neared the shark.

"Dad," Max said, "we've gotta
do
something."

"Yeah," Chase said, leaning on the bulwark as he felt rage rise within him. The problem was, there was nothing he
could
do, not legally anyway, for the boys were breaking.no law. And yet he knew that if he let this happen, he would never forgive himself. He turned away and went below.

When he returned, he was carrying a mask and a pair of flippers, and a pair of wire cutters was stuck in the belt of his shorts.

"Jesus, Simon . . ." Tall Man said from the flying bridge.