The Heat Islands: A Doc Ford Novel (7 page)

"Okay, okay."

She turned her face and kissed him flatly on the cheek, a real smacker, before pulling away. "See?" she said. "Asking me out isn't so hard."

Ford was in his lab beneath the gooseneck lamp that threw a wafer of yellow light over the wooden floor and onto the walls, showing the stainless-steel disseeting table, a wooden chair, shelves with books and chemical jars, and rows of larger jars containing preserved specimens: nudibranchia, brittle stars, anemones, eels, unborn sharks, and tiny tarpon, all floating motionless, adding to the night silence as he sat alone over his microscope.

But then there was a sound: the combustion ratchet of a hand-crank outboard starting, the boat getting closer and closer. Ford waited until he felt his stilt house jolt slightly—the impact of a skiff landing at his dock—before he got up and took a bottle of beer from the little refrigerator. He placed the bottle on the empty chair, then returned to his Wolfe stereomicroscope, looking and making notes.

There was the thumping vibration of someone coming up the steps, then, over his shoulder. Tomlinson's voice said, "You have company? Thought you might have some company."

Ford said, "Nope."

The screen door opened and closed. ' There's a car parked out there. By the mangroves down from your walkway, like they didn't want to be seen."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I just saw it."

"Probably a couple of kids parking, looking at the moon."

Tomlinson said. "Yeah, it's bright tonight. Bay's pure silver." Then he said. "Ho boy, my favorite refreshment," opening the bottle of beer and sitting down. "God blessed this earth with forests and oceans and plenty of brewers, huh?"

Ford looked at him, rocking back in the chair and drinking. Tomlinson wore no shirt, no shoes; his abdominal oblique muscles showing on the skinny torso, his long arms with veins, probably wearing the same ragged cutoffs he'd worn at Woodstock or Altamont.

"How'd your date go last night?"

"Nice; very nice. This woman is a truly enlightened human being. Doc. Harry, that's her name. Really brilliant, which is no big deal, but spiritually awakened. Not a bad set of dials, either."

"Dials?"

"You know, running lights. Knobs. Berks. Diddies. Love snorbs."

"Ah."

"Yep."

"Harry's the one wanted you to marry her?"

"Well, yeah—father her children, at least. It's one of those genetic deals. She considered all the guys she's ever known, and decided I was the one who had the most to offer. She's only human."

"From Boston, you say?"

"Yep. Her name used to be Musashi Rinmon. but she changed it." Tomlinson took a long drink, reflecting. "After that, it was Moontree, which I liked a lot. That was her name when I first met her, but she switched to Harry as a kind of a protest thing. Glad she didn't show up in time to see you smack Sutter. That was very ugly.
Very
ugly. I personally didn't approve."

"So I just stand there and let him knock me off the dock?"

"Why not? The guy's disturbed, man. You don't feel that in him? I do. Damn dad gets killed in the war dropping bombs on people—enough to disturb anybody. So he knocks you off the dock. So what? We have to learn to absorb indignities. Doc. You're too big a person to let the small stuff bother you."

Still looking into the microscope. Ford said. "You're wrong."

"Well,
I
think you're too big a person."

"Wrong about that, too, but Sutter's father wasn't killed in the war—at least not dropping bombs. He said his dad was in the air force. The air force didn't exist during the Seeond World War. It wasn't founded until a couple of years later, after the atomic bomb was dropped. It was the army air corps. The sons of war heroes don't make that kind of mistake."

Tomlinson said, "I'll be damned. But he was so convincing, like
he
believed it. Well, I'd rather be naive than cynical."

"I'm aware of that."

Tomlinson was watching Ford concentrate. "Find any tarpon larvae yet? Solve the mystery of where tarpon spawn?"

The tarpon was one of the most popular game fish on earth, but almost nothing was known about its life history—not even where the animals spawned, though there were indications that spawning took place far offshore.

Still looking through the microscope, his glasses balanced on his forehead like goggles. Ford told Tomlinson it was going to take more than one researcher working in one area to solve the mystery. He straightened and rubbed his eyes. "But that's not what I'm looking for. Yesterday, when I was up by the Mud Hole—just below Captiva?—I took a water sample. I saw some dead fish floating around up there, so I'm checking for red tide."

"Aw, man. I hope not. Couple years ago. I was anchored up off Sarasota. Siesta Key. and we got a real bad red tide. Man, these bloated fish floating everywhere. Every kind of fish; some real weird-looking eels, too. Like the whole ocean had died, and you take a breath, your lungs burned. This guy I talked to, this guy who'd lived there forever, told me every time oil companies started dropping sample wells, they got a red tide. Pollution, man, it's going to kill us all one day."

Ford rotated the calibrated dial on the microscope, increasing magnification, and said, "Most researchers wouldn't agree. Not about pollution, but about what causes red tide. Most say it's a natural phenomenon. It's worldwide, you know. Some are studying if maybe increased agricultural runoff—phosphates, nitrates from fertilizer—maybe catalyze increased blooms, but most think it's just something that happens."

Tomlinson said, "I don't know, man."

Ford was looking through the microscope again. "Well, red tide only describes discoloration caused by plankton bloom. It might or might not be toxic. The nontoxic blooms can still kill fish, because if it's concentrated in an area where the water doesn't flush, it depletes oxygen. Fish suffocate. Usually at night, when plant plankton can't manufacture oxygen, so has to take it from the water. See?"

Tomlinson was listening, so Ford continued. "Take the bridge they built from the mainland to Sanibel back in the sixties. The spoil islands interrupt the natural flushing of the bays. The water's shallow, so plankton blooms become even more concentrated. Result: same amount of red tides, but they're more deadly to fish. Peripheral impact—that could be an ecological science."

"Yeah," said Tomlinson, "or like an epitaph. Florida's. Died from peripheral impact. But it's the same thing, man. You see that." He was becoming animated, using his arms to talk. "It's greed. A destructive force. The progeny of light casting a dark shadow."

Ford shrugged. "I don't see it that way; I don't think you believe that, either. It's just the way we are; the way we make it as a species. Sometimes we're too successful."

"Right."

"You know—
successful."

"No, what?"

Ford said. "Like... well, say a tribe of orangutans lives in the same small valley for a hundred years. In. say, Sumatra, feeding on a few big mango trees. Then one day. one of the orangs discovers that he can knock all the mangoes off the tree using a stick. Doesn't have to climb. But the mangoes they can't cat rot on the ground. Soon they're starving."

"Uh-huhmmh," said Tomlinson. "A destructive catalyst."

"No, it's a process. We exist as a species because we adapt our environment to fit us. Ants and bees have the same ability. Nothing ugly about bees, is there? Very few species travel through history in a straight line. There are a few exceptions: horseshoe crabs, certain sharks, maybe tarpon. A few others. But most go banging back and forth, traveling blind alleys, making special mistakes, then finding new ways to survive. The orangutans leave the valley and become solitary nomads. See? We're the same way. It's not a matter of it being ugly or greedy or sinful. It's a process, a way of evolving."

Tomlinson pondered that, then looked at his empty bottle. "You want one?"

Ford said, "I meant to have a beer yesterday. So sure. Tonight I had dinner with Dewey and she's got a thing about alcohol. I think her father had a drinking problem." Ford switched slides as Tomlinson went across the walkway to the refrigerator, letting both screen doors bang behind him, thinking his way back as he handed Ford the beer. "So explain this," he said. "Thirteenth century, Genghis Kahn conquers China, and his grandson Kublai Khan, same thing in Russia. Scorched earth. At the very same time, the Seventh Crusade is preparing in

France. Same phenomenon occurs off and on throughout history. The Seeond World War; Hitler. That's fucking inimical, man, not a process."

Looking up briefly, amused. Ford said, "What the hell does that have to do with what we're talking about?"

It had become a game with them: present a single concept, then follow that concept through its various branchings, induce the narrowing arteries of thought until they exited out onto larger platforms of truth or nonsense.

Tomlinson, who spent his days reading esoteric books on world history and doing God knows what else, was prone to make intuitive leaps, forgoing linear thought; leaps that produced some interesting conclusions. Which is why Ford kept beer in the refrigerator for Tomlinson.

Tomlinson said, "Those blind alleys you were talking about. Special mistakes. Spee-shell, as in species?"

"Yeah."

"You agree that worldwide killing is a special mistake?"

"Well ... sure."

"Happens when one or more leaders takes a group down one of your evolutionary blind alleys. Right? Like Hitler led the Germans."

Ford said, "Okay."

"So replace the guns with earthmovers and replace the bullets with nuclear-waste dumps, pollution, oil spills—"

"I see what you're getting at."

"—and instead of just the population of a society following along, make it the entire world population because of advances in communication. Replace Kublai Khan with technology. Technology is the world's new dictator. And everyone following it right down a blind alley, picking up the mango stick. Trouble is, we're not just taking the fruit, we're killing the entire valley. That's not a process; it's a kind of hysteria. Like world war."

Ford said, "You're taking the analogy too far." Tomlinson said, "Nope, nope; damned if I am. A destructive force sparked by a catalyst, that's what I'm talking about. The catalyst can be a man, or an idea, or a method—like the orangutan with a stick. You don't see the parallels in nature? Introduce an unstable cell into a body of living tissue, and the result may be cancer. Introduce an unstable atom into a chain of atoms, and you have a nuclear holocaust. The microcosm and the macrocosm, man. What's true of the tiniest unit is true of the whole. A basic principle."

"All I was trying to do was explain red tide, Tomlinson—

But Tomlinson was standing now, walking around the room, flapping his arms, thinking aloud. "The reaction to the catalyst, though, can be positive or negative. Yin and yang, that's another basic principle. But it's different for man than the rest of nature. See why? Because we can consciously decide whether to be constructive or destructive. That's important."

Resigned to listening. Ford took the cold bottle in his hand as Tomlinson said, "That option implies a higher force. Absolutely; a higher consciousness. That single option is the hot line to the force of good and the force of evil." He stared at Ford for a moment. "You can't doubt that they exist."

Looking at the bottle. Ford said, "Well, actually—"

"And I'll tell you why you can't doubt that good and evil exist."

In a louder voice, Ford said, "I'm trying to concentrate on this slide."

Tomlinson said. "It doesn't seem to apply at first, but it does: The reason you can't doubt is because a body in motion has a greater mass than a body at rest. That's a fact of physics that applies to all matter. But where docs the additional mass come from? No logic can explain it. Yet it's there. The sum of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Like saying two plus two equals four, but two hundred plus two hundred equals five hundred. It's mathematical nonsense, yet it's a fundamental truth. The effects of this mysterious force can be measured, but the force itself can't be isolated. You know why?"

Ford was pushing his chair back, standing, saying, "No, I don't—here, have a look at this."

Tomlinson said, "Because it's the universal positive and the universal negative. It's an adhesive phenomenon; doesn't exist until a catalyst is introduced. We can access it positively or access it negatively ... but we need to be damn careful, because the destructive path is almost always the path of least resistance. Yeah, that's true—but why? Why the hell is that? ..."

He let the thought trail off, his mind pondering, but he was already straddling the chair, confronting the microscope. After a moment, he shook his head and said, "What're we looking for here?" as if he just woke up.

Ford said, "Dinoflagellate. I finally found the kind I wanted."

"Hum.... How'd you adjust this damn thing? My eyes must be different from yours." Tomlinson was squinting into the binocular tubes. "Oh ... okay, now I see. Tiny little animals, man. Bunch of 'em."

"There's one near the middle, a real slow mover. Kind of a yellowish green, moving with its pointed side first, and like it has ribbon wrapped all around it."

"Sure, yeah—I got it. Weird, man. The water's alive."

"That dinoflagellate is
Gymnodinium breve,
which causes toxic red tide. It doesn't suffocate fish.
Breve
dies after it blooms, sinks to the bottom, and becomes neurotoxic as it decomposes. That's the one that causes your lungs to bum. It accumulates in bivalves, like oysters, and makes them toxic to humans. Can cause massive fish kills, too."

"So it's here, huh? We got red tide in the bay ... well, crap."

"No, there's not enough of them. By my count, anyway. They're always in the water, but sometimes, for some unknown reason, they'll begin to multiply like crazy. Split asexually, billions of them, and that's when the trouble starts. That's what they call a bloom."