White Shark (25 page)

One of the hands grabbed the gaff hook.

Puckett screamed, and tried to pull the gaff hook away, but it was yanked
from his hand, and he stumbled backward, still screaming.
 
His shoulder hit the throttle and knocked it
forward, into gear, and he fell on it, and the weight of his body pressed it
all the way down.

The engine shrieked and the stern sagged as the propeller cavitated and
then bit into the water.
 
The boat leaped
ahead.
 
The rope whipped off the winch,
its coils fell into the water and the buoy caromed off the A-frame and
disappeared.

Puckett didn't move until he heard himself screaming.
 
Then he rolled off the throttle and
straightened out the wheel.

He kept the boat at full speed, looking aft as if expecting whatever it
was to come over the stern and into the cockpit.

When he had traveled perhaps five hundred yards, he throttled back and
steered the boat into a wide circle around the buoy.
 
Keeping the engine revs at fifteen hundred,
which gave him a constant speed of twelve to fifteen knots, he approached to
within a hundred yards of the buoy, and he stared at it.
 
It was floating now, not bobbing, yielding to
the pull of the tide.

Puckett's mind was a jumble; thoughts and images and questions ricocheted
aimlessly like a ball in a pinball machine.

After a few moments, he felt a chill, then a rush of nausea.

He pushed the throttle forward and headed for home.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

From the spot on the beach where they had emerged from the water, the
couple watched the boat roar away in a cloud of exhaust.

"I wonder
what's the matter with him
,"
the girl said.

"Maybe he fouled his prop," said the boy.
 
"I've done that.
 
You want to get home before the shear pin
breaks."
 
He looked up and down the
beach.
 
"Hey, guess what, we're
alone."

"So?"

"So what do you say we go skinny dipping?"

"You just want to cop a feel," the girl said, smiling.

"I do not."

"Yes, you do.
 
Admit it."

The boy hesitated, then grinned and said, "Okay, I admit it."

The girl reached behind her and pulled a string, and her bra fell
away.
 
"See?" she said.
 
"Honesty's the best policy."
 
She pulled a knot at her hip, and the bottom
of her suit dropped to the sand.
 
She
turned and bounded over the little waves and dove into the water, while the boy
struggled to step out of his trunks.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

It swam aimlessly over the sand, searching for signs of life.

Though it had no understanding of time, no knowledge
that
cycles
of light and darkness signaled the passage of time, it sensed
that the intervals between the maddening urges to kill were growing shorter.

Responding to increased activity, its metabolism, which for years had
functioned at a level barely adequate to sustain primitive life, was speeding
up, restoring sentience to its brain and burning calories faster and faster.

It heard little movements somewhere ahead, beyond its range of vision,
and it followed the sounds until it came upon another of the wood and wire
boxes.
 
There were two small living
things inside; it destroyed the box and ate them.

It started down the sand slope into deeper water, when suddenly it sensed
motion above.
 
It stopped moving, willed
its gills to cease their rhythmic pulsing; it focused the sensitive receptors
in the sides of its skull on the source of the pressure changes in the water.

It could not isolate the location, but it did perceive a direction, and
so — opening its cavernous mouth, letting its teeth spring forward,
flexing its claws —
it flew silently toward the prey.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The boy caught up with the girl and, from behind, reached around her and
cupped her breasts with his hands.

She shrieked and spun to face him, and raised a hand to slap him.
 
He grabbed her and put it around his neck,
and leaned forward and kissed her.

Clinging to each other, they sank until their heads dipped underwater,
then they parted and surfaced.

"How deep is it here?" she asked, gasping for breath.

"I don't know, fifty feet, maybe more."

"It's creepy, not being able to see the bottom."

"You think something's gonna eat you?"
 
The boy laughed.

"I want to go in."

"Okay."

"Just
to
where we can touch."

"So let's go."
 
The boy
took a couple of strokes toward the shore.
 
Then he started, and said, "What was that?"

"What was what?"

"Something underneath us.
 
Didn't you feel it?"

"Shut up," the girl said.
 
"You're not funny."

"I'm serious.
 
Like a little
pressure wave.
 
It's gone now."

"I hate you, Jeffrey... you're not
funny
."

"I tell you..." the boy began, but the girl had already passed
him and was churning the water, swimming toward shore.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

It could see them now, far above, two living things — large, weak,
awkward
.

It swooped upward.

Suddenly it felt itself struck from above, bumped, but not damaged.
 
Disoriented, it whirled around, looking for
the thing that had struck it.

At the limit of its vision was something huge, bigger than itself, of a
dull color almost indistinguishable from the surrounding water, with fins on its
back and its sides.
 
A crescent tail
propelled it in a slow circle.
 
Its mouth
was ajar; its blank eye stared.

A word for this thing occurred to the creature, a word from the dim
past.
 
The word was
Hai
— shark — and with the recognition came a perception of
danger.
 
The creature turned with the
shark, prepared to defend itself.

The shark flicked its tail and charged head-on, opening its mouth.

The creature dodged, backing up and swerving to the side, and the shark
sped by.
 
Immediately it turned and rushed
again, and the creature ducked beneath it, reaching up with its claws.
 
The claws found flesh, and slashed it, but
the flesh was hard and thick.
 
No blood
flowed.

This time the shark did not turn, but kept going, roiling the water with
its tail and vanishing into the gray-green mist.

The creature let itself slip to the bottom.
 
It oriented itself,
then
searched the surface for the two large living things.

They were gone.
 
The water was
undisturbed by sounds or pressure variations.

The creature turned toward deep water, to hunt again.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Ashore, the girl wrapped herself in her towel, gathered up her bathing
suit and stalked away, leaving the boy to search for his trunks in the dune
grass where she had thrown them.

23

The boat was anchored in two hundred feet
of water; the cage floated twenty feet behind it, tethered by a rope cleated on
the stern.
 
For an hour, Chase and Tall
Man had been ladling chum overboard, and the still air in the cockpit reeked of
blood and fish oil.
 
A slick fanned out
behind the boat, carried by the tide, its rainbow flatness easily discernible
against the calm water.

Two scuba tanks had been rigged with
harnesses and regulators, and they lay on the deck beside flippers and
masks.
 
Amanda and Chase had pulled wet
suits on up to their waists, letting the tops hang down.
 
Sweat glistened on their arms and shoulders;
Amanda's back was turning pink with sunburn.

She walked forward, dipped a bucket in the
clean water, returned and gently doused the sea lions, which lay together in a
heap, sleeping.
 
"I'm going to have
to put the girls in the water pretty soon," she said.
 
"They can't take this heat."

"The radio said it might reach a
hundred today," Tall Man said, wiping his face, "and I'll bet—"

"Shark!
"
Max
suddenly shouted from the flying bridge.
 
"I see one!"

They looked aft.
 
Fifty yards away, a triangular dorsal fin
sliced through the slick; a tail fin followed it, thrashing back and forth.

"It's a blue," said Chase.
 
"I knew we'd raise them."

"How can you tell from this far away?
"
Amanda asked.

"Short, stubby dorsal... sharp caudal
fin... dark blue."

"How big?"

"Gauging the distance between the
dorsal and the tail
...
I'd say ten, eleven
feet."
 
He looked up at Max.
 
"Good for you.
 
Keep a sharp eye, there'll be others."

"There!
"
Max
said, pointing.
 
"Behind
the... no, two!
 
There're two
more!"

As if sensing the excitement in Max's
voice, the sea lions stirred and rose up on their flippers, sniffing the air.

"Let's get ready," Chase said to
Amanda, and he dropped the ladle into the chum bucket.

By the time Chase and Amanda had pulled up
their wet suits, put on their tanks and rinsed their masks, six blue sharks
were crisscrossing the chum slick, moving closer to the cage with each pass.

"Toss ‘em a fish or two now and
then," Chase said to Tall Man, "just to keep ‘em
interested."
 
He opened a hatch
between his feet, reached down and pulled out two pieces of white plastic, each
about the size of a shirt cardboard, sewn together face-to-face.
 
A piece of rope was braided into one corner.

"What's that?
"
Amanda said.
 
"A
plastic sandwich?"

"Exactly."
 
Chase smiled.
 
"But we world-class scientists, we call
it a gnathodynamometer."

"You're kidding."

"Nope.
 
Simple but effective.
 
This is sensitized laboratory plastic.
 
And inside here," Chase said, prying the pieces apart, "is a
ripe mackerel.
 
Once Tall gets the sharks
feeding, I'll hold my sandwich out through one of the camera ports; a shark'll
sniff the mackerel and bite down on the plastic.
 
I'll let him gnaw the hell out of it,
then
take it away from him.
 
When I get the plastic back to the lab, I'll use a micrometer to see how
deep he bit, and a set of tables will tell me how much pressure he
exerted."

"Amazing," Amanda said.
 
"The whole thing must have cost about
three dollars."

"Ten dollars,
actually.
 
But add the cost of the cage, the boat, the
fuel and the crew, and now you're talking about a hundred thousand."
 
Chase paused, watching the sharks circling
close to the cage, then said, "Are you sure you want to put those sea
lions in the water?"

"You watch," she said with a
smile.
 
"They'll make fools out of
your sharks."
 
She opened the door
in the transom, stepped down onto the swimstep, pulled a bucket of fish to her
and called each sea lion by name.
 
One by
one, they waddled over to her, received a fish and, when she swung her arm and
thrust her hand toward the water, flopped down onto the swimstep and into the
sea.

Chase watched their brown bodies flash
between the gunmetal backs of the sharks, then dart away into the blue water.

"Ready?
"
Amanda
said.
 
She reached inside the door for
her video camera.

Chase didn't answer.
 
He kept watching the water, even after the
sea lions were out of sight.
 
He was
excited, as he had expected to be; what he hadn't expected was the vague unease
that shadowed his excitement — not fear, nothing specific, but rather a sense
of foreboding.

"Don't worry about my sea
lions," Amanda said.
 
"They'll
be fine."