White Shark (16 page)

"I don't know..."
 
Brian hesitated, kicking slowly to maintain a
position six or eight feet above the box.

"C'mon, Brian... don't you want to be
famous?"

14

In the sealed box the ambient pressure was
constant, but in the electromagnetic field nearby, there was a change.
 
It sensed this.
 
There was life nearby, life of size and
substance.

And then a sound —
though it did not recognize sound as sound but only as a miniscule compression
of the tympanic membranes on either side of its head.

Then the sound stopped.

It was ravenous with hunger.
 
When all the nourishment it had derived from
the meal it had had in the alien and threatening surroundings above had been
used up, it had left its box and hunted.

It had found that there was no food
here.
 
It had emerged and sought to feed
on some of the countless tiny animals to which it had become accustomed, but
had found nothing.
 
Confused, it had swum
up and down the water column, seeking life — any life — that would give it
sustenance.

It had seen living things, but they had
been too swift, too wary,
too
elusive.
 
It had struck one or two, but been unable to
catch them.

Increasingly desperate, driven by signals
that it knew only as need, it had swum further afield.

It had found food —
some, not much,
barely enough to maintain life.

There had been a small thing that had suddenly appeared above, thrashing
in panic, and it had grabbed the thing and taken it down and consumed it,
collecting indigestibles — fur and gristle — in the side of its mouth, like a
cud, and then spitting them out.

There had been a larger thing, almost as large as itself, also above, not
at home here, and it had seized it form below and dragged it down and tried to
consume it.
 
But it had been too big to
consume at once, and the uneaten part had drifted away.
 
It had followed the body until a wave had
carried it out of the water, out of range.

Then another living thing, slow and clumsy, had fallen into the water,
almost within its grasp, but had escaped.

Its programming told it that it must hunt soon, and successfully, or
surely it would cease to exist.

It knew there was a living thing nearby now.

It would eat it.

15

"Straddle the box," Buck said,
"like a horse."

"I can't, it's too wide."

"Then sit sidesaddle.
 
Pose for me.
 
Pretend you're in
Playgirl
."

Tentatively, awkwardly, Brian swung his
legs over the side of the box.
 
To steady
himself
against the current, with one hand he gripped
the heavy black wire that led up to the surface.

He's spooked, Buck thought as he watched
Brian through the viewfinder.
 
In another
minute,
he's
gonna bolt for the boat.
 
To distract him, Buck asked, "How's your
air?"

Brian reached for his gauge, raised it to
his mask.
 
"Fifteen
hundred.
 
How long we been
down?"

"We got another ten, fifteen minutes
anyway."

Brian leaned over the edge of the box and ran
his hand along the lip of the lid.
 
"How you gonna open the thing?" he said.
 
"Don't look to be a latch
anywheres."

"If we have to, we'll go up and get a
pry bar."

"S'pose it's alive in there... a
specimen, like."

Buck laughed.
 
"That box coulda been here years.
 
What the hell could be alive?"
 
He finished shooting, turned off the camera
and let it hang from the thong around his wrist.
 
"Now, let's see if we can crack that
sucker open."

Brian slid down off the box, and as he
landed, his flippers disturbed the fine sand, kicking up a cloud of milky
silt.
 
He saw something fly upward in the
cloud, then settle again a few feet away.
 
"What's that?" he said.

"What'd you see?" asked Buck,
and he kicked slowly over toward Brian.

Brian dropped to his knees and ran his
fingers along the surface of the sand until they touched something solid.
 
He picked it up and looked at it.
 
"A bone," he said.

"What kinda bone?"

Brian held it up.
 
It was about five inches long, and
curved.
 
"Looks like a rib
bone.
 
I dunno what from."

"Size of it, I'd say a dog."

"What's a dog bone doing down
here?"

"Beats me," said Buck.
 
"See if there's any more."

He dropped down beside Brian and together
they began to dig.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

It sensed faint sounds from the sand
nearby.

Prey.

It felt for the release button.
 
It pressed the button.
 
Slowly the lid began to rise.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

"Look here," Buck was
saying.
 
"A
jawbone.
 
It's a dog for sure, and
something ate it."
 
He held up the
jaw and pointed to the slashes in the bone.
 
"Tooth marks."

Buck saw something dark in the ashy silt,
and he reached for it.
 
It was round and
blackish and hard, roughly the size of a plum.
 
He ran his fingers over its surface, first one way then the other.
 
"I'll be damned, Brian, it's a fur
ball... like what a cat pukes up."

Buck rose to his feet and took a step
backward.
 
He raised the camera and
switched it on.
 
"Two shots, Brian,
then
we're gone," he said.
 
"Hold up a couple bones and the fur
ball.
 
You can go back up to the boat if
you want, while I open the box."

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

It swam out of the box and landed on the
sand.
 
Because its body contained no air
spaces, it was not weightless in water, it was negatively buoyant:
 
it would sink.
 
But because, like all of its kind, its
chemical composition was more than ninety percent water, it was only a few
pounds negative.
 
It could hover with
almost no
effort, and —
thanks to the webbing on its
extremities — it could swim very fast, it could actually fly through the water.

Now it propelled itself off the bottom and
veered toward one end of the box.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Buck had composed a perfect shot.
 
Brian filled the frame, on his knees, holding
two bones in one hand and the fur ball in the other, all nicely contrasted
against the white sand.
 
Buck pushed the
“record” button.

"Good job, Brian," he said.
 
"Now smile, like you're selling
something in a commercial."
 
He saw
Brian try to smile, then look up at the camera.

Suddenly Brian's eyes opened wide, and he
dropped everything and shouted something.

"Brian!
"
Buck
said.
 
"Goddamnit!"

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

There were two things, not one.
 
They were big and slow and very close.

It pushed off the bottom and lunged
forward, thrusting porpoise-like with its posterior webs.
 
It covered the short span of open water in
less than a second.

From somewhere in its numbed brain came a
recollection of these beings, a familiarity, and with the recollection came a
sense of purpose:
 
its mission was to
kill these things.

As hungry as it was, as satisfied as it
would have been with eating only one of them, it was programmed to kill both.

It seized the first, and buried its claws
in soft flesh.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Brian reeled backward on the sand and
watched, paralyzed, as a cloud of blood — dark green at this depth —
exploded
from Buck's carotid artery.
 
Buck's legs
jerked, throwing up a cloud of silt, and his hands flew upward.

Brian couldn’t see what had Buck, but it was big, and whitish, and it had
come from somewhere near the bronze box.

Through the murk he saw silver flashes tearing again and again at Buck's
throat, until his head was connected by nothing but bones and sinew.

Brian scuttled backward, and then he realized that safety lay not
horizontally but vertically; he pushed off the bottom and kicked upward,
reaching frantically for the rubber-coated black wire that led up to the buoy
on the surface.
 
He found it and began to
pull himself upward.

But the wire had bowed in the running tide, and Brian's weight merely
consumed the slack in the bow:
 
instead
of pulling himself up, he was pulling the wire down.
 
Relieved of tension from
above, the sensor that had snagged beneath the box slid free and bounced along
the sand.
 
Now the boat above was
drifting free, carrying the sensor, and Brian, with it.

Brian looked down and saw Buck's body sag to the sand, still spilling
blood.

Then the thing turned toward him.

It had eyes, chalky white, hueless eyes.

It pushed off the sand like a rocket.
 
It seemed to be flying up at him.

Still kicking, still pulling with one hand, Brian reached for the knife
strapped to his calf.
 
His fingers
scrabbled at the rubber safety ring that held the knife in its sheath.
 
It stretched, snapped back, stretched again
and flopped away.
 
Brian yanked the knife
from its sheath.

The thing continued to soar upward, kicking like a dolphin, making no
sound, blowing no bubbles.
 
Its claws
reached for Brian — ten of them, each curved like a little scythe.

Brian glanced up; the surface wasn't far, he could see the sun.
 
Rays of brilliance slashed downward through
the green water.

Then he looked down, and the thing was upon him.
 
Its mouth opened, and a flash of sunlight
struck row upon row of triangular teeth and made them glitter like silver
stars.

Into his mask Brian screamed, "No!"
 
But there was no one to hear him.

Claws dug into his ankle, puncturing the flesh and dragging him down.

He raised the knife and swung it blindly.
 
Something grabbed his wrist, and steel slivers cut through the veins and
tendons.
 
The knife fell away.

He released the wire and flailed with his other hand, but it, too, was grabbed,
and his arms were forced wide and his head thrust backward.

He tried to scream, but as he opened his mouth, something thudded against
his mask, stunning him.

And then he felt the teeth at his throat.

His last sight was of a cloud of his own blood billowing up against the
rays of yellow sun, a mist of orange.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

It sensed the thing was dead.
 
It held on with claws and teeth, and spiraled
downward with its prey in a slow ballet of death.

Once on the bottom, it carried the prey
over to where the other one lay on the sand, rolling back and forth in the
current.
 
And then it began to feed.