The Shell Collector (28 page)

I follow Ryan and Stewart down the stairs to the back entrance, through the locked door held fast by Holly’s birthday. Ness follows. Inside, the others kick off their shoes and don white booties. I take a pair from the cardboard box and pull them on too, realizing that only Ness and I are barefoot, that he must’ve kicked off his booties in pursuit. Twice I catch Ryan shooting Ness an
Are you sure about this?
look. And I catch him nodding almost imperceptibly. There is great risk in bringing me here, I realize. And it’s a risk he had planned on taking a week ago. With or without me, he has decided to blow the lid off his work here.

“We do most of our research on this floor,” Ryan says as we head down to the vast space I ran through earlier. “Genetic sequencing takes place over there. We examine samples from the vents, looking for base pairs that confer temperature and acidic advantages—”

“So they’re real,” I say. “These shells grow themselves. They’re not, like, transplanted in.”

It occurs to me that this might’ve been where Dimitri Arlov worked. Maybe he took the murexes home because he was proud of them, or simply because they were beautiful, or as a memento.

“Yes, they … grow themselves,” Ryan says, hesitating as though she’s reluctant to say more.

Ness interrupts. “Maya knows enough of the science to understand how this works,” he says. “Just explain it.”

Ryan shrugs at Ness and then turns to me. “They’re real, but we designed them. We have complete DNA samples of hundreds of extinct species. We use their nearest living ancestor to breed the first generation. And then we create enough genetic diversity for the species to become self-sustaining. Technically, it’s a new species, never seen before. But it looks the same. And it should fill the same niche. Should give us the biodiversity we’ve lost, which may trickle up the food chain.”

“Show her the murex,” Ness says.

Stewart nods and leads us down the next flight of stairs.

“What makes you think these animals will survive in the wild?” I ask.

“We have tanks on the lower level with live rock and water samples taken from various offshore locations,” Stewart explains.

“What about—?”

“Predators included,” Ness says behind me. He then pardons himself. He’s dying to talk, I can tell, but seems to want all this to come from someone else. He’s trying to be an observer, and I can tell that’s hard for him. While Stewart takes me toward the rows of tanks, I watch Ryan inspect Ness’s gashed cheek.

“I’ve seen the murexes,” I tell Stewart. I spot some knobby whelks in a tank a few rows down. Large shells. “What about those?”

“The whelks,” Stewart says. I follow him to the tank. He reaches inside and pulls one out. I watch the slug’s foot retract and swell to plug its home. “These were the fourth species we revived. They can already handle acidity levels plus eighty.”

“Plus eighty?”

“Eighty years out,” he explains. “Where we project the levels to be eighty years from now, anyway. It should give them plenty of time to adjust on their own. But if not, we can help them along again. Our command of this is only getting better.”

He passes me the shell. I touch the slug’s foot, feel it react to the stimulus, stiffen under my finger. I place the shell back in the water, lowering it to the bed of sand rather than dropping it. There are several tanks of this species. The digital thermometers against the glass show different temperatures, and notes are written in black wax right on the glass. I turn to ask Ness something and see Ryan dabbing Ness’s cheek with a rag, cleaning the wound I made. A pang of guilt laced with a twinge of jealousy courses through me.

“Why me?” I ask. And I realize that this is the question that has haunted me all week, from the guest house to the helicopter to the depths of the ocean floor to the beach.
Why me?
I wipe my wet hand on my shorts and close the distance between Ness and myself. “Why not show this to the scientific community? Publish a paper? Do a TV special on Discovery? Why would you show
me?
”

“We need to win public support before any legal campaigns start,” Ness says. “We need the whole world on our side.”

“Who would be against this?”

I know as soon as I ask. Ness answers anyway.

“The same people who were against me before,” he says. “The same people who burned one of my father’s oil platforms. The ones who see any tampering with nature as bad, who have given up, who won’t be happy until
we’re
the ones who go extinct. And they’ll have people they normally hate on their side, the people who don’t believe in playing God. And of course, there are those who love shell collecting for the money and not the shells. They won’t support this either. Neither will those who get paid to crack down on operations like this.”

He’s right, of course. He’s absolutely right. About all of it. It’s just what he told me on the beach an hour ago.

“So who
will
support this?” I ask. “Politicians?”

All three of them laugh, and I hear how ridiculous this sounds. The lobbying will be fierce. And when did reason ever stand a chance in that game?

“The people who love the sea are our only hope,” Ness says. “And they tend to love quietly. They love in the middle of the night with their flashlights. They keep their love from others. But we need them to be loud. We need to win this all at once or we don’t stand a chance.”

I shake my head. Making my way to the stairs, I lower myself to the treads and sit down. “No,” I tell him. “No.”

Ness sits beside me. I can sense his desire to put a hand on my knee, realize that somehow this sort of gesture has become natural between us, but he resists the urge.

“You never stood a chance,” I say. “Not with me. Oh, Ness, what did you think I’d be able to do? Work a miracle for you? Get people to agree on this? Help get policies written by force of will, by some lyrical appeal to nature and love and life?”

The way he’s looking at me, I can tell that he did believe this. And the way Stewart and Ryan look piteously upon this man I think I love, I can tell that they told him so, that this was a fool’s errand from the start, the errand of a hopeful, romantic fool.

“That’s your grandfather,” I say. “Your grandfather had the right words, and he lived in the right time. He could have convinced his generation to undo what they’d done—“

“The science wasn’t ready,” Ness says.

“Well the people of our time won’t be ready. You’ll have the majority of hearts, Ness, but you won’t have much else.”

“Write the story,” he tells me. “Write the truth, and the rest will come.”

“It won’t,” I promise him. “Ness, listen to them.” I indicate Stewart and Ryan. “They’re right. They aren’t hopeless romantics like us. They deal in the concrete, in the knowable—“

Ness leaps up and takes two angry steps away from me. His body is rigid, his fists clenched. I think for a moment that he’s angry with me, but consider that he might just be angry at the world. He must know that I’m right. Without realizing it, I’m behind him, one hand on his shoulder, the other lacing between his knuckles, coaxing that angry fist into an open and then interlocked hand. My mind is whirring, with ways to soothe him, with ways to take the bubbling vats of wonder in that room and bring my childhood to life once more—with ways to heal what I’ve wounded, what all of us have wounded.

“There is another way,” I whisper, even as it comes to me, even as I realize what we have to do. I don’t want anyone but him to hear, so I say it with a whisper. “Ness, there is another way.”

The bow of the boat undulates with the sea, rising and falling, rising and falling, a hiss of foam forming along the fiberglass sides and then sighing back into the ocean with the rhythmic and hypnotic grace of a swell rolling toward the beach. I watch the spray, enjoying the small rainbows that materialize and disappear like a mirage, and consider this illegal cruise of ours.

My father used to take me on boat rides like this. Late in the day, after pinky-swearing that we would not be skunked, after snorkeling every shell-hole we knew and casting lead sinkers and plastic lures until our arms were tired, we would race off with the setting sun on our starboard side to shell from the rich.

Just south of our home inlet, past the private beaches, there was a resort with hundreds of blue lounge chairs and umbrellas, a place where you were chased off if you didn’t have on the right colored wristband, where the towels and foot showers and the very sand itself were only for the well-to-do. My father and I would anchor beyond the swim buoys after the sun had set and snorkel ashore to steal a shell or two that had been carefully set out by the night staff for the early risers to discover.

We didn’t keep these shells. Nor did we take them for any reason other than to
not-be-skunked
. We simply took those shells because they didn’t belong there. Because they were paid for, as much a part of the resort package as the slices of fruit on the buffet table, carefully parceled out at all times of the day so every guest got their allotment, but so that every guest secretly felt that maybe, due to their industriousness or skill, they got just a
little more
than their share.

Some were perhaps even clever enough to fool themselves into thinking the shells they discovered had washed up of their own accord.

Father and I would secret these shells away, disappearing into the foam, and kick and laugh and swim back to our anchored boat. The shells would be deposited on the public beach across the narrow strip of road from our boat ramp, for someone else to chance upon.

An illegal boat ride on the edge of day and into deep water. I wonder if my father would be proud of what I’m doing this morning, all these many years later. It’s a different sort of law I’m breaking, but the moral code feels the same. Only this time, the shells that could get me into trouble are already in the boat.

Ness kills the motor and lets the boat glide along, the last of the wake fizzing and becoming part of the rising and sinking Atlantic. I open one of the great plastic tubs that line the bow of the boat. The shells inside writhe and crinkle. The shells are
alive
.

I feel Ness’s hand against the small of my back. We rock together, knees bent, studying his work. I turn to Ness and wrap a hand around the back of his neck, pull him close for a moment, breathe in the sunscreen and sweat and salt sea. He kisses me on the top of my head. “You sure?” he asks.

“I’m sure,” I say.

We each grab a side of the first bin, which has dozens of species in it, and hoist it to the top of the gunnel. A pause, a moment to reflect, and then we tip it over. The shells tumble out by the thousands. They plop and hiss and throw up bubbles on their way down, like little exhalations of freedom and joy. Ryan guessed that four out of every ten will end up food for something else. The rest will survive. And breed. And die. And one day be discovered on a beach.

Someone will pick up the pretty dead things, and see the worth there, but Ness and I will know the truth.

We grab another bin. And I’ve never felt more alive.

Hey. The story isn’t over yet. Keep reading.

But first, I want to thank my mom, Gay, and my late grandmother, Cutie, both of whom got me hooked on shelling. It was at Figure Eight Island in North Carolina that I decided olives were my favorite shells and where I spent my summers hunting for sand dollars. To this day, I remain on the lookout. And while I hunt, I think of my family, and all the ways that shelling is like relationships.

I’d also like to thank the amazing group of authors who took pity on my Y chromosome and offered me their friendship and their wisdom: Barbara, Bella, Candice, CJ, Jasinda (both of you), Liliana, Stephanie, and Tina. You all inspire me and have taught me so much. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Finally, the readers. Thank you for your time, your emails, your tweets, your reviews, your friendship, and your feedback. And thank you for being as brave in reading outside your comfort zone as I’m trying to be in writing there. See you at the next wild place we find ourselves. Because you know this isn’t over yet. There’s always another page to turn in order to discover a little more …

The best memories I own—the ones I choose to travel back to when I’m at my desk and should be working on my next article—are the beach trips my parents took me on as a kid. I travel back to the days when both of them were young, alive, and in love. Back to when my sister was my best friend in the world, my playmate, my fellow sandcastle architect. We would play a game in the car, seeing who could spot the ocean first. It was a parent’s ploy to keep us quiet, to keep us staring intently down the road ahead. And then someone would spot a glint of the summer sun on that wide blue, and all of us would erupt at once, fingers pointing, a family laughing.

My mother loved seashells, my grandmother as well. My father was into sharks’ teeth, and he had a knack for finding them. Some were fossilized and millions of years old. Those teeth will continue to wash up long after all of us are gone. They are glimpses of another time, when the sea was full of life.

I used to think my happy memories lay in the past because I’d never be happy like that again. Young and carefree. Surrounded by people I love. Still shells to uncover here or there that careless others overlooked. I thought we were destined to get old like the Earth does, for all that lives is bound to decline.

But that’s not right. Life is what we make of it.

When Michael and I lost our child, I thought there was something wrong with me, that I was dead inside, that Michael was right to call me an empty shell. But some of the beautiful things in life are grown and others are discovered. Some are made and some wash up and tumble into our lives. Entire generations of people have forgotten that we have a choice. Ness has shown the world what it means to grow beautiful things. Someone else showed me that a life can be found just as well as made.

“I saw it first!” Holly yells, leaning between us and pointing through the windshield.