The Merlin Effect (9 page)

Terry checked his watch. “What’s this got to do with your fish?”

“Now, it’s been proven that some viruses can carry a gene that can change the regulatory system of the host being. So it’s possible there is some sort of virus or other substance in the water that can rearrange the genetic material of the sea life around here.”

“In the water?” asked Jim.

“Why not?” Isabella replied. “We’re only beginning to learn about the strange things that inhabit the sea. You’ve heard about the undersea volcanic vents—smokers. They breed forms of life that can exist at temperatures above three hundred degrees Fahrenheit, that can live off of sulphur instead of light and air. Like nothing else on Earth.”

“So you’re saying,” pressed Jim, “that something in the water here is altering the genes, causing the aging process to slow down.”

“Or even stop.”

“But that would mean that creatures could go on living…indefinitely.”

“That’s right,” said Isabella calmly. “Think about it logically. Germ cells and cancer cells can reproduce endlessly, making them practically immortal. So might it not be possible, just possible, that the right genetic formula could do the same for us?”

Terry frowned skeptically. “This is ridiculous.”

“Is it? In some ways, the fish I examined is not so different from you or me. Our own bodies are constantly replacing themselves, aren’t they? Over a seven-year period, every cell in our bodies is replaced. So I suppose you could say that we have some of the same power of renewal. Maybe we just have to learn how to use it better.”

Jim considered the notion, like a gourmet savoring a rare delicacy. “You know, legend has it that Merlin somehow learned how to stay the same age. He even figured out how to live backwards, growing younger instead of older with time. The bards called him
oldest at birth, youngest at death.
”

“Hey,” piped Kate. “Maybe you should call this thing
the Merlin effect.
”

For the first time in two days, Jim Gordon smiled at his daughter. He then asked Isabella, “Could this—this
Merlin effect
of yours also slow down the deterioration of things that aren’t alive, things like wood and cloth and rope?”

“Perhaps, if they’re made of organic materials.”

“Now look here,” said Terry, his normally pallid skin flushed with color. “I’ve had about enough of this. Are we talking about science—or hocus-pocus?”

Isabella studied him with something like pity in her eyes. “For some of us, the more we learn the less we know.”

“Come on, Isabella! You’re a scientist. This doesn’t stand to reason.”

“Reason isn’t always enough,” she answered. “As a scientist named Einstein once said,
Subtle is the Lord.
”

“Let’s get back to the facts,” insisted Terry. “Couldn’t this fish be just some kind of mutant? A random, isolated case that will never happen again?”

“Sure,” answered Isabella. “But it’s possible something
more is going on here.” She scanned the faces inside the tent, listening to the sloshing and splashing of waves in the lagoon. “Have you ever wondered why this area is so rich in species found nowhere else, or thought to be extinct? Not just fish but crustaceans and porpoises and other things, too. No one, as far as I know, has analyzed their DNA structures, but there is no question now that we should.”

Kate stopped twirling her braid. “Are you saying,” she asked hesitantly, “that the whales who stay here year round might have been here for ages?”

“Could be. That whale you saved might even have been around when the
Resurreccíon
went down.”

“Sure,” said Terry, “and maybe he’s also the whale who swallowed Jonah.”

Isabella locked into his gaze. “Maybe.”

“Nonsense! I suppose the next thing you’ll tell us is that Jim’s lost ship will rise again, as the legend says.”

“Its name is
Resurreccíon
,” said Isabella softly.

“This is absurd,” declared Terry. “Do you really expect us to believe that there is some sort of fountain of youth down there?”

“Not a fountain of youth. Not exactly. More like a fountain of…creation. A place that breeds new life in things.”

“Enough.” He retrieved his tweezers. “I’m going back to work. You people can waste your time if you want to.” He dove again into the mass of cables and circuitry attached to the terminal.

Jim, deep in thought, lifted his foot off the desk. “Creation,” he muttered, rubbing his beard. “Do you really think that’s possible?”

“Theoretically, yes,” replied Isabella.

Focusing on a point somewhere beyond the walls of the
tent, he said in a hushed voice, “Imagine…a power like that. What it could do. What it could mean.”

For a time, they were silent. The tent flap fluttered in the salty breeze, snapping like a flag in a storm.

A moment later Terry tugged on Jim’s sleeve. “Give me a hand here, will you? Hold these two cables in place while I check the current.”

The historian jolted, then rose from his chair. As Isabella and Kate looked on, Jim and Terry labored to make the final adjustments and connections. They tossed questions and commands back and forth as latches clicked, hinges squealed, keys tapped.

At last, Terry straightened up, walked over to the computer, and announced, “Now or never.”

He flicked a switch on a jerry-rigged control panel and pressed
Enter
on the keyboard. The computer hummed steadily but gave no other indication that anything was happening. Then, with a subtle flash, an image started to appear on the screen.

At first a hazy patch coalesced near the bottom of the screen, looking like nothing in particular. A few wavy lines formed above, tilting at steep angles. Numberless dots appeared, then receded, along the left side, as though something was moving in and out of focus.

As the group watched, the image on the screen wavered. It seemed to grow less, rather than more, recognizable.

“What is it?” asked Kate, perplexed.

“Whatever it is, it’s useless to us,” observed Terry. “Something is malfunctioning.”

“And we don’t have time to find it and fix it,” added Jim in a somber tone. “If only we…wait a minute. What’s
that?
”

Terry started to adjust the controls, then froze, staring at the screen.

Collectively, they held their breath as the resolution on the screen swiftly deepened. The patch near the bottom took on the dense, curved shape of a great hull. The wavy lines solidified into three masts, two straight, one broken near the base. The dots grouped themselves to the left of the masts, drooping like tattered sails.

“My God.”

“It’s…the
Resurreccíon.
”

Then, inexplicably, the picture began to shimmer, like a reflection in a quiet pool that is disturbed by a stone. All at once, the lines grew fuzzier, the solid places grew lighter.

Terry immediately banged several commands on the keyboard. “What the devil?” he cursed, pounding ever more vigorously.

To no avail. The image of the ship slipped steadily away. Within seconds, it melted to a ghostly shadow, then abruptly disappeared. The screen stared at its viewers, completely blank.

“How could that happen?” demanded Jim. “Is something disconnected?”

Terry shook his head slowly. “Can’t be. The terminal is still operating.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Don’t know,” muttered the geologist, activating the computer printer. “Maybe what we saw was captured in the memory.”

After a long pause, a page emerged from the printer. It too was blank.

Terry snatched the page and crumpled it. “I can’t believe it,” he stewed. “It was almost as if…” His words faded away, much as the picture had done.

“Yes?”

“As if…something
erased
it.”

Jim shook his head. “I don’t follow.”

Terry eyed him uncertainly. “The only way it could happen is if another set of sonic waves, from another source, canceled out the signals. And there’s nothing around here that could do that.”

“Oh, yes there is.” Isabella stepped forward. “Whales. Gray whales.”

“Don’t be absurd,” said Terry. “Their echolocation isn’t nearly as powerful as my equipment.”

“What if a group of whales were to project a certain frequency together, in concert? That could do it.”

“But that would require a level of intelligence that’s never been proven.”

“Or disproven.”

“You’re saying they might be
deliberately
interfering with my sonar?”

“I’m saying it’s possible, eh?”

As Terry and Jim traded glances, Kate asked, “Why, though? Why would the whales want to eliminate the picture of the ship?”

“Only they could answer that,” Isabella replied.

Jim gazed unhappily at the blank screen. “And we won’t be around to ask them. The picture was our last chance.”

“We may have one more chance,” said a gentle voice.

Everyone turned to Isabella.

“We can try…the submersible.”

“But I thought you were worried about the whirlpool.”

“I am, believe me! We’re talking about
Remolino de la Muerté.
” She searched Jim’s eyes. “I saw the ship. So did you. We can’t leave here without trying.”

“How long will it take to get the submersible ready?”

“Several hours,” she answered. “We’ll need to check everything. Thrusters, fuel tanks, oxygen tanks, pressure housings,
the works. And I’ll need to insulate the battery pack so the pressure from the whirlpool doesn’t cause seawater to short the electrical system. We’ll work through the night if we have to.”

“I’ll be your copilot,” volunteered Jim.

“Wait,” cautioned Terry. “Are you sure about this? I’d like to stay and complete my work as much as either of you, but I don’t want anyone to get killed because of it.”

Kate felt a sudden surge of gratitude, a feeling she had not before associated with Terry. “He’s right,” she declared. “I’ve seen the whirlpool. You don’t want to risk going anywhere near it. Even for the ship. Even for the—”

Her father coughed loudly, cutting her off.

“We’ll avoid the vortex—the spinning wall of water—and try to slip underneath.” Isabella gathered in her arms a stack of nautical maps. “If the whirlpool doesn’t reach all the way down to the bottom, we might be able to hug the sea floor and avoid it entirely.”

“Not so fast.” Terry pointed at the maps. “The sea floor in this area is spotted with volcanic activity. And my seismograph has been acting strangely. There could be an eruption building. Maybe a major one. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere in the area.”

Jim pondered his warning. “What would an eruption do to the ship we saw?”

“If it’s sitting near the epicenter? Wipe it out, most likely.” Terry toyed with the rim of his glasses. “As it would anything nearby. Might even destroy the whirlpool itself, or do some strange things to it.”

Jim faced Isabella squarely. “It’s your call.”

She considered the blank computer screen for a moment. Then she planted her small hand on top of it. “Come. We have much to do before we sail.”

B
y dawn, they were nearly ready.

As amber light streamed from the east, singeing the peaks of the waves in the lagoon, the ocean breeze blew stronger. Kate stood on the deck of the
Skimmer.
She leaned against the railing, watching Isabella and her father crawl in and out of the silver submersible that floated beside the old trawler. One by one, each item on Isabella’s checklist was inspected, tested, adjusted, approved.

Navigation instruments. Depth sounder. Cable winch. Mechanical arm. Hoisting bitt. Batteries.

Watching the process under the steadily lightening sky, Kate knew she could do little to help other than load the odd case or find the occasional replacement part. Terry, meanwhile, had no need for her at all, or at least no faith in her abilities, as he labored to transfer much of his equipment to the metal stand on the
Skimmer
’s deck.

She felt deeply torn about this voyage. She wanted her father’s project to succeed. She wanted him to find the ship, to recover the lost Horn of Merlin, to put to rest forever the doubts of those who refused to believe that Merlin truly existed.
In a way, his life’s work was at stake. Yet…so was his life. To imagine him and Isabella willingly flinging themselves into the waters around
Remolino de la Muerté
…She frowned, observing the heavy clouds to the south.

Scanning sonar. Camera forward. Camera aft. Viewing ports. Batteries, again.

Kate marveled at how much equipment was crammed into the submersible. Shaped like a bulbous fish, or as Isabella liked to joke, a fat football, it was no bigger than a standard minivan. Yet it held enough gear and supplies to support two people for five days at a maximum depth of seven thousand feet.

Emergency tether. Strobe lights. Floodlights. Titanium sphere. Hatch.

“That’s it,” pronounced Isabella, pulling herself out of the submersible’s hatch and onto the
Skimmer.
She moved to the railing and gently placed her arm around Kate’s waist. “Try not to worry,” she whispered.

“I’m trying.”

At that point, Jim’s head lifted out of the hatch. Wedging his shoulders through the narrow opening, he grumbled to Isabella, “Why do you have to drive a subcompact?”

The marine biologist watched him with amusement. “Next you will be knocking my choice of color.”

“Silver is fine,” he replied, clambering aboard the
Skimmer.
“I’d just like a little more legroom.”

Terry joined them. “All set.”

Eyeing the conglomeration of hardware Terry had assembled on the deck, Jim said, “You’ve made my old trawler look more like an oil rig.”

The stocky geologist pushed back his glasses. “I’ll strike oil before you do.”

Isabella regarded him quizzically. “What are you up to?
Those are some of your most specialized instruments, aren’t they?”

Terry waved proudly at the metal stand. “I’m trying something completely new. Revolutionary, even. If it works, I’ll get a better fix on the volcanic activity on the ocean floor than we have ever had. Than
anyone
has ever had.”