The Raw Shark Texts (28 page)

I sat cross-legged on the deck next to the printer, watching it chug and whine and mechanically cough up pages from my story – the bedroom floor, Dr Randle, the First Eric Sanderson, my journey, the Willows Hotel, Clio Aames, Mr Nobody, the yellow Jeep, un-space, Mark Richardson, the red filing cabinet, the Yellow Pages dome, Fidorous and the samurai and the glass of words, Scout, lots about Scout – bright paper pages flutterfalling over the stern and down into the ocean. As the
Orpheus
grumbled forward, the waterlogging pages rolled and curved in the swell as we left
them behind. They clung to the underside of the ocean’s surface, floating and dipping, bright in the sun. The trail of pages stretched away from us, a swaying path of white into the distance. I watched the water for any other movement, but there was nothing else at all.

We’d been going like this for about four hours.

Scout came down from the flying bridge to check on Nobody’s laptop. She’d done this twice already.

“We don’t have forever with this, you know.”

“It takes as long as it takes,” Fidorous said from under his cap.

“But if Ward notices this connection we’ll be locked out for good.”

Fidorous didn’t answer.

Scout turned away, scraped her fingers through her hair and turned back. “Doctor.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

Scout stared at him. “I don’t know. More paper? Go faster? You’re the expert, you tell me.”

Fidorous knocked up the peak of his cap with a thumb and turned around in his chair. “If we put more chum in the water, the tide will take it and in a few hours it’ll cover half the sea. If we go faster we risk breaking the trail. You’re just going to have to be patient, Dorothy.” He turned back and pulled down the cap.

The air took a breath just like it does before a lightning strike.

“Patient? What the fuck happened to
this is a serious business, Scout?
We’ve only got one shot at this and time isn’t on our side.”

The doctor ignored her.

“How long do you think we have?” I asked.

Scout went from staring at Fidorous to staring at me. My words didn’t register at first and when they did I could see her struggling through her anger to decide whether she should answer.

“I don’t know,” she said in the end. “Ward could shut us out at any second and then, it’s over. Every minute we waste
sunbathing
puts the odds against us.”

“Doctor,” I said.

“We’re doing what we’re doing.”

Scout gave an exasperated sigh and turned away, heading back up to the flying deck.

Far back along the stretching, spreading trail of paper and ink, a single white page curls and hangs several feet under the surface of the ocean.

The slipstream under-pull of something huge and fast suddenly drags the page down, twisting and corkscrewing it into a pulpy knot of fragments which spin and swirl, caught and carried along in the wake of the dark, powerful shape before losing momentum, unravelling, coming apart. As the water settles, the remains of the page begin their slow and final spiral down into the deep black.

I blinked, squinted out at the waves, the trail of white paper disappearing into the distance, the seagulls, the empty ocean. Had I been asleep? I couldn’t tell.

Onboard the
Orpheus
time passed slowly, the minutes rolling and bobbing to hours as the sun made its slow way through the sky.

Ian and the doctor snoozed, Scout kept herself to herself up on the flying deck and I kept myself awake by picking splinters from the old wooden floor, listening to the
chunk whiiirr
of the printer and scanning the swells and dips of the ocean for any shadow, any movement. I looked and looked until my eyes lost all sense of perspective. The sun shone down hot. My skin smelled tangy and the deck smelled of last summer’s seaweed and salt.

Eventually, doctor left his fishing seat. He came back with some badly made sandwiches, beers and pieces of meat for Ian. Scout came down to eat and I thought there might be another explosion, but she took her plate and can without speaking and sat next to the cat in the shade of the cabin’s back wall. All my missed meals caught up with me at once and I bolted down the sandwich in quick and hungry gulps. Fidorous took his plate and beer back to his fishing chair. I watched him eating slowly and thoughtfully, his eyes drifting between the distant seagulls dive-bombing the paper trail, and the fishing line bobbing just beyond the gentle churn of our engines.

“I didn’t realise how hungry I was.” Hours had passed without anyone saying anything and I needed to talk.

The doctor nodded vaguely, staring out to sea.

The sun sat lower now, absently going about its gentle sink from bright white towards deep red.

“But that wasn’t real food, was it?” I tried again to bump a conversation to life. “Just the idea of food. But what I’m wondering is, if the idea of food tastes like food and feels like food when you eat it, where does that put us?”

Without taking his eyes off the sea, Fidorous brought a hand up in a slow
quiet
signal towards me.

“What?” I whispered, stretching my neck. I stood up carefully and looked out over the stern but I only saw white wet pages rolling in the swell. “What’s wrong?”

The doctor’s fishing reel burst to life with a high-speed ticking, fast unwinding as the line snapped taut and raced away like a cheese cutter through the waves.

“
Whoa!
” Fidorous put his feet against the backboard and pulled back hard, the heavy-duty rod bending under the strain like a toy bow.

“The Ludovician?” I found myself stepping back “You’ve caught the Ludovician with a
fishing rod
?”

The doctor fought against the pull from under the waves, hauling and straining the hidden something in with a few hard-fought reel clicks at a time. The line sliced left then right, the whole thing a complicated dance of tension and manoeuvring.

“I don’t think so.”

I turned to see Scout behind me.

“Scout,” the doctor hissed through clamped teeth, “what the hell are you doing? Get up there and cut the engines or we’ll lose him.”

“That’s not the shark. I’ve seen it and an animal as big as that wouldn’t just –”

“Scout, do as you’re told and
cut the damn engines
.”

She turned on her heel and stalked across the deck.

I looked to Fidorous. “What can I do?”

“Wet down the reel. That bucket there, tip some water on the line or it’s going to overheat.” He heaved and the rod tip dragged forwards, the line slicing angles into the sea. I grabbed the bucket and doused the cable and the reel. “That’s it,” the doctor strained to speak as he fought against the rod. “We’ll wear him out and get him to the surface. Spear. Where’s your spear?”

I’d left it next to Nobody’s laptop.

“I’ll get it.” I crossed the deck as the engine stopped. Scout came down the steps and past me, calling out to the doctor as she headed for the stern.

“
Honestly
, it’s not our shark. It’s going to be a big something else, some sort of – what are they called – some sort of Remora. You’re not –”

I’d almost made it back with the spear as she stopped talking.

“What’s going on?” I jogged up to see Fidorous’s fishing rod stretched straight and still over the back of the boat, the line hanging loose in the water. “Has it got away?”

Scout looked at me and rolled her eyes.

“This isn’t right.” We both turned to the doctor.

The line hung loose in the water, not giving anything away.

Scout folded her arms and Fidorous turned the reel handle an experimental couple of clicks. This time there was no resistance from under the waves. The doctor wound the reel faster until the severed end of the fishing line came dripping up into the air. He uncoupled the rod from its fastenings and pulled the whole thing in.

“Look – high-grade heavy duty cable and it’s sliced right through.
Some sort of Remora
?”

Scout took the line and inspected it.

“Well, I’ve been known to be wrong,” she said, “from time to time.”

“So that was it?” I asked. “The Ludovician?”

Fidorous untangled himself from the fishing chair and stood up, stretching out his arms and shoulders. “I’d say so, wouldn’t you?”

I laid the spear carefully on deck and covered the couple of feet to the back edge of the boat. With one hand placed securely on the laserprinter for balance, I leaned out over the stern and looked down – just the blue of the ocean and two white, waterlogged paper pages.

“So where is it now?” I said, still looking down. “Is it still here?”

“I don’t know,” Fidorous said. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Probably. Eric, I’m going to need another line and fresh bait. I want you to –”

Thud
. The entire deck lurched with momentum and I was thrown forwards, smashing my knees into the back of the printer. A shock of hard
cracking pain and my weight breaking the machine free of its fastenings, sending me and it tumbling out and down over the side. Me in the air, upside down, falling head first. The ocean rushing up and hitting the back of my neck with a hard splash and then –

The surface receding in hiss and bubbles below my feet.