White Shark (23 page)

"How do they know what you want them
to do?"

"Conditioning, plus
native intelligence.
 
When it comes to smarts, sea lions are in the
league with dolphins and killer whales.
 
We built a full-size model of a gray whale and fit it over an
electric-powered submersible, to use to train them.
 
From a boat, I give them a series of hand
signals:
 
swim alongside it, swim beneath
it, circle around it.
 
It doesn't take
long to teach them things; they want to learn."

Chase thought for a moment,
then
said, "Do you think you could teach them to take
pictures of something they're
not
accustomed to, something that maybe isn’t natural, behavior they've never
seen?"

"Like what?"

"I wish I knew," Chase
said.
 
"But things aren't right in
the ocean around here.
 
Either something
new is in the area, or something's gone berserk."
 
He told her about the random slaughter of
birds and animals, and about the mystery surrounding the deaths of the
Bellamy's.

"I can try," said Amanda,
"once I get the sea lions used to the water around here, and to the
humpbacks.
 
My first priority, though,
has got to be to find the whales.
 
I've
chartered a spotter plane, starting this afternoon."

"A
plane?
"
 
Chase
whistled.
 
"That's some kind of
grant you got yourself.
 
For that kind of
dough, I'd strap on wings and fly myself."

"The grant?
 
The grant's a
joke, seventy-five hundred a year for three years.
 
It keeps me in fish, but that's about
it."
 
She hesitated, looking
embarrassed, then continued.
 
"Basically, I'm my own angel."

"How do you manage that?
"
Chase asked.

"How do you think?
 
The luck of the gene pool.
 
My great-great-grandfather was one of the
whaling Macys — sometimes I think my career is penance for what he did — and he
saw the collapse coming in whale oil and put all his money in petroleum.
 
We've been loaded ever since."
 
She smiled.
 
"Can you live with that?"

"Hell," Chase said,
laughing.
 
"I did."
 
He told her about his marriage to
Corinne.
 
"If I'd had any brains,
I'd've taken her up on her offer and let her finance the Institute.
 
But no, I was too proud."

"Never mind.
 
You got
something even better out of the marriage."

"What's that?"

"Max."

"Oh," he said.
 
"Yeah, I'm just now learning more about
that."

They had reached the small house on the
top of the hill, in which Chase had prepared living quarters for Amanda:
 
a bedroom, a kitchen and, because the living
room had been taken up by the decompression chamber, another bedroom furnished
as a sitting room.

"Are you hungry?
"
Chase said.
 
"We've got
sandwich fixings in the big house."

"Later," Amanda said.
 
"First, I want to show you the present I
brought you."

"Present?
 
You didn't have to—"

"My parents always told me never to
go for a visit without a house present."
 
Grinning, she took his arm and led him beyond the house, where the land
sloped down to a cove in which the bottom had been dredged to permit the
approach of deep-draft boats.
 
"There," she said, pointing at the cove.
 
"I wanted to wrap it, but..."

Chase looked and, when suddenly he
realized what he was seeing, stopped walking.
 
"My God..." he said.

On a slab of ledge rock at the edge of the
cove sat something Chase had longed for ever since he had begun his graduate
work:
 
an anti-shark cage.
 
It was a rectangular box, roughly seven feet
high, five feet wide and eight feet long, made
of
 
aluminum
bars and steel mesh.
 
There were entrance hatches on the top and
one end, and foot-square openings — camera ports — on each side.
 
Two flotation tanks had been welded to the
top of the cage, and even from this distance Chase could see gleaming brass
fittings that told him the tanks contained their own air supplies, which meant
that the cage could hover well beneath the surface.

Cages were a prime research tool for shark
scientists, for they permitted safe underwater access to the animals in the
open ocean.
 
Most sharks couldn’t bite
through the aluminum bars, and those that could, like big tiger sharks or great
whites, didn't.
 
They might bite
at
the bars — testing them, determining
if they were edible — but none had ever bitten through them.

From the moment he had opened the
Institute, Chase had tried to acquire a cage — a discarded cage, a used cage,
any
cage — so he could perform
experiments in deep water.
 
He had found,
however, that used cages were never available:
 
there was so much demand for shark films from cable-television companies
that rental houses snapped up every cage they could find and charged usurious
rates for them.
 
Derelict cages were
derelict for a reason:
 
they were
battered and broken beyond repair.

And the price for a new cage, a good cage,
started at around twenty-thousand dollars.

This cage looked brand-new and very good
indeed.
 
"It's beautiful," Chase
said, staring down toward the cove.
 
"But how did you—"

"It was part of my divorce
settlement," Amanda said.
 
"My
ex-husband had it built three years ago; he was going to be a macho shark
photographer, but he discovered a lot of competition, and switched to sea
otters."
 
She paused,
then
added with a wry smile.
 
"He couldn't make a go at that either, so he decided to concentrate
on bimbos.
 
He got the
Toyota
; I got the shark cage.
 
I figured you could use it."

"I sure can.
 
I've been hoping to—"

"I know, I read your paper on bite
dynamics and arthritis research.
 
From
the cage, you should be able to do some productive work with your
gnathodynamometer."

"You pronounced it!
"
Chase said with a laugh.
 
Gnathodynamometer
was a ten-dollar word
for a simple concept, a method of testing the bite pressure exerted by a
shark's jaws.
 
"I've never met
anybody else who could pronounce it."

"No sweat," Amanda said.
 
"Just don't ask me to spell it."

When the reached the
cage, Chase ran his hand over the aluminum bars and examined welds and
fittings.
 
"It's perfect," he said,
smiling.
 
"I can't wait."

"Why wait?
 
What's wrong with today?"

"Today?"
 
Reflexively,
Chase looked at his watch.

"There are still seven or eight more
hours of daylight," Amanda said.
 
"How far offshore do you have to go to raise sharks?"

"Not very, not for
blue sharks.
 
An hour, maybe less."

"The sooner I put the sea lions in
the water," Amanda said, "the better.
 
They can swim with blue sharks; they
like
to.
 
They love to tease them.
 
Have you got bait... and chum to bring the
sharks in?"

"Uh-huh."
 
Then Chase remembered, and he said, "But
what I don't have is air.
 
The
compressor's
—"

"It's fixed," said Amanda.
 
"I asked Tall Man.
 
He's pumping tanks now.
 
I tell you, he's jazzed at the thought of the
trip."

Chase was impressed.
 
More than impressed.
 
Awed.
 
He looked at her, and saw her smiling at him,
a smile not of triumph or condescension, but of confidence.
 
He shook his head and said, "I guess I
really do have to get my degree."

"What?
 
Why?"

"
‘Cause
you
were right the first time."
 
He
grinned.
 
"Lady, you are
somebody.
 
You are
something!
"

21

The Institute boat sat low in the water,
for it had been filled with fuel and fresh water and loaded to the bulwarks
with scientific, photographic and diving gear.
 
In addition to the two-hundred-pound cage, which Chase and Tall Man had
swung aboard into the stern with a block-and-tackle rig hung from a davit on
the starboard side, there were four camera cases; a videotape recorder; eight
scuba tanks; fifty pounds of mullet for the sea lions; three ten-gallon cans of
chum — minced mackerel and tuna — to create a smelly slick that would ride the
tide and lure sharks from miles around; two twenty-pound boxes of frozen
bait-fish, now thawing in the sun; three dive bags packed with wet suits, masks
and flippers; and, finally, a cooler full of sandwiches and sodas prepared by
Mrs. Bixler.

Amanda had led the sea lions down the path
to the dock, and they had willingly waddled aboard the boat.
 
Now they huddled together in the stern, their
heads bobbing and their whiskers twitching with excitement.
 
Amanda stroked them and cooed to them.

Max knelt beside her.
 
"Are they okay?" he asked.

"Oh, sure," Amanda said.
 
"They know the boat means work, and they
can't wait.
 
They love to work; they get
bored very easily."

Max reached out a hand, and one of the sea
lions bent its head toward him to have its ears scratched.
 
"Which one is this?" he said.

"Harpo."

"I think she likes me."

Amanda smiled.
 
"I know she does."

On the flying bridge, Chase put the boat
in reverse.
 
Tall Man stood on the pulpit
and used the boat hook to fend the bow away from the rocks.
 
When the boat had cleared the cove and Chase
had turned toward deep water, Tall Man came aft and went into the cabin.

He returned a moment later and said to
Amanda, "Your spotter pilot just radioed, said to tell you he'll be up in
the air and looking for whales in an hour or so.
 
I said we'd monitor channel
twenty-seven."
 
Then he looked up at
the flying bridge.
 
"There's a
bulletin on sixteen," he said to Chase.
 
"We're supposed to keep an eye out for a kid in the water."

"Who?
"
Chase
asked.

"Bobby Tobin, the mate on Tony
Madeiras's boat.
 
They say he fell
overboard.
 
Tony swears he did a bunch of
three-sixties, looking for him, but never saw a thing."

Amanda said, "Falling overboard seems
to be epidemic around here."

"Why?" said Tall Man.
 
"Who else?"

"Before I left
California
, I got a call from my
cousin.
 
A week or ten days ago, her
boyfriend disappeared from a research ship just inside
Block
Island
.
 
He was a
photographer for the
Geographic
.
 
They never found him."

The boat was still moving slowly, the
engine rumbling softly, so even from ten yards away, up on the flying bridge,
Chase had heard what Amanda said.
 
He called
down to Tall Man, "See if you can find a life preserver for Max."

"Dad..." said Max.
 
"C'mon
...
I'm
not gonna fall overboard."

"I know," Chase said.
 
"And I bet Bobby Tobin never thought he
would, either."

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