Night of the Jaguar jp-3

by Michael Gruber

  She was not pleased when a wrong one turned up, for in the week or so that she had been keying out for the professor she had come to expect that the little wasps would behave themselves and fall properly into either one of the two species they were studying. Finding ringers offended her sense of order, which was as strong as it was recent, perhaps strong because recent. Prior to this, Jennifer had not devoted three brain cells to any contemplation of nature’s diversity more complex than the one expounded in “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”

  Along with her knowledge about the taxonomy of the fig wasps, she had absorbed the faith that every living thing had to fit neatly into the immense ragged bush-structure of life-phylum, class, order, superfamily, family, genus, species-all connected by evolution. It boggled her mind; in fact, it was her very first boggle. So every living thing had to go somewhere, and the odd little wasps displeased her for that reason. She understood that her preliminary sorting would be confirmed by mitochondrial sequencing in the lab later on (not that she had any clear idea what that was), but she wanted to get it right, to please Cooksey. That was something new as well. Although she had always tried to please-given her background, she would hardly have survived otherwise-pleasing Cooksey was different. Cooksey did not seem to be pleased because what she did was good for Cooksey as much as because doing something well was good for her and also good for…here she was uncertain, because she lacked the concepts, but she sensed that for Cooksey doing things right was a form of worship. God is in the details, my dear, something he said often. It was her very first contact with true parenting, and it went to her head like crank.

  On the other hand, she had begun to comprehend the difference between what she was doing and what real biologists did, going into the field and being surrounded by millions of species and figuring out what went where and the pattern of relationship, how the substance of life poured through the depths of time in an unending and ever-varying stream. That kind of understanding would be forever beyond her, she knew, but the mere idea that there were such people (and Cooksey was one of them) made her feel better about herself than she ever had before. It was like being the worst player on a world championship team: still pretty great.

  And she had discovered she could lose herself in the microscope as well as she had in the fishpond. As now: therefore, she did not hear Geli Vargos come in, did not register her greeting, did not respond until a hand touched her shoulder, when she yelped and jumped and nearly toppled the stool.

  “Wow, you must have been deep in it,” said Geli.

  “Yeah, I was. Anyway, where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you for I don’t know how long.”

  “Oh, you know, family stuff. My cousin’s getting married. My grandfather’s going crazy. The usual Cubano twenty-four-seven nonsense.” This was said in a tone that did not suggest a willingness to go into detail, which Jenny thought a little funny, because Geli was usually delighted to expatiate on the doings of her family, and she had in Jenny, whose own life was void in this area, a devout listener. Geli pointed to the microscope setup. “What’re you doing with the mike?”

  “I’m keying out species of Agaonidae for Cooksey.”

  “You’re what?”

  “What I said. It’s for his work on the evolution of mutualism and precision of adaptation. He showed me how to do it.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, this is a step up from making breakfast. How did all this happen?”

  “I don’t know. They were going to kick me out on account of I lost Moie, and Cooksey said I could work for him and I’m doing it. I’m a research assistant, how about that? And I still make breakfast.”

  “I’m impressed,” said Geli, although Jennifer detected something in her tone that was not pleased, was a little put off, in fact, and she wondered why.

  “Can I see what you’re doing?”

  “Sure,” said Jenny, and set her friend up at the other eyepiece while she tweezed a tiny wasp onto the stage and keyed it, and then another, both P. insularis, explaining the differences, proudly using the technical terms, like a real person.

  “So does Cooksey check on your work?” Geli asked after this demonstration.

  “He did when I was starting up, but not anymore. He says I can do it as good as him, almost.”

  “Well, good.” A pause, and then, “I guess this means you won’t be going out on runs with me anymore.”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to speak to Luna about that. Kevin and Scotty’ve been doing it while you were gone and since I started all this.”

  “Oh, that’s an effective team! Scotty mumbling and Kevin fomenting the revolution. What does Kevin think about all this?” She gestured to the microscope and specimen boxes.

  “I don’t know. I moved out on him after he gave me grief about it. We haven’t talked much, since then. He, like,mopes at me.” She fiddled with the focus knob and swiveled on her stool. “I still sort of love him, though. We were together like a long time, almost two years. And I get lonely at night, you know?”

  Geli actually did not know, but she was not about to reveal this to Jennifer. Nor did she comment on the semibreak with Kevin, which Jenny thought was also a little strange, since she used to go on so about it.

  “I’ve got to go talk to Luna,” Geli said. “Will I see you at lunch?”

  “If you don’t, there won’t be any,” replied Jenny cheerfully, and returned to her specimens.

  She worked steadily for the next two hours and was surprised and delighted to discover that she had come to the end of the series, which was a sample of one hatch from trees of two different species of Ficus. She put the last vials back in their specimen boxes, and these back on their shelves, all except the vial of wasps she couldn’t identify from the key. Then she stretched her stiff back muscles and went into the kitchen to help Scotty make tuna salad for lunch. Tuna salad at La Casita was made with fresh tuna. Jenny had not realized before coming to the Forest Planet Alliance that tuna was an actual fish that you could buy in fish stores and cook. She thought it was a made-up substance that, like Spam, only came in cans. Nor had she understood that mayonnaise could be manufactured in a kitchen out of eggs and oil, instead of being something that was elemental, like gasoline, that you had to buy retail. She made the mayonnaise as she had been taught, and hardboiled half a dozen eggs while Scotty washed the greens and peeled avocados and then seared the tuna. They worked together almost silently but well, not getting in each other’s way. It used to bother her that Scotty never talked to her, but now that she had a little something in her own head, she didn’t mind it that much, she was less bothered by the absence of chatter. Also, she had Cooksey.

  Talking with Cooksey was different from talking to the rest of them, different indeed from talking to anyone else she had ever met. Geli, for instance, was always willing to tell you stuff, about science and politics, but it was like she was the teacher and you were the pupil and you had to sort of be admiring and oh, wow, I didn’t know that, how smart you are! But it never occurred to Cooksey that everyone didn’t know everything he did and so he just zoomed on, assuming she would understand, like she’d been to college in England, too, and when he would pause and say “Eh?” to see if she had understood, she would say right out she hadn’t. At which a peculiar expression would come over his face, as if she really did understand, say, sex allocation theory or whatever and was pretending not to as a joke, and then he would demonstrate, by means of skillful questions, that she really did understand the stuff. There is no idea in all science that can’t be grasped by the persistent application of the second-rate mind, said Cooksey, quoting Whitehead. He quoted Whitehead a lot, also Yeats, and a bunch of other people Jenny had never heard of. Not, he said on that occasion, that you have a second-rate mind, my dear, for since it is almost perfectly empty, we have not had a chance to rate it at all. And you are in any case persistent, as I have often observed.

  They had a large colorful platter shaped like a fish, which the household invariably used to se
rve fish. Rupert liked it so. Scotty piled the creamy smooth salad in it and added chopped scallion, lettuce leaves, capers, radishes, and other garnishes in such a way that it looked like a Japanese painting of a real fish. Jenny picked up the warmed bread and a chilled bottle of chardonnay and followed Scotty and the tuna platter out to the terrace.

  Jenny didn’t know whether the changes she had observed recently in the group owed more to her new status or if something else was going on. She was not, as she told Geli often, all that good at figuring stuff out, but she was real good at vibing when something was off, and here there was. She recalled well that before Moie disappeared, Rupert would usually talk to Luna and Cooksey, and Luna would talk to Rupert and Scotty, and Scotty would talk to Luna and Kevin, and Kevin would only occasionally talk to her, mainly to slip a snide comment sideways under his breath. When Geli came to lunch, she always sat next to Jennifer and talked to her and to Luna. Now everything seemed turned around. Geli and Luna were sitting on either side of Rupert. Kevin was right up there on the good end of the table with them, and now the Professor and Scotty were sitting on either side of Jennifer, at what Kevin always used to call the peasant end of the table. No one commented on these changes. When she sat down, Jenny told Cooksey that she had finished the series. “Really? That’s wonderful, my dear. We’ll have to find you something else to do.” And then he launched into a discussion of orchid pollinators with Scotty, pausing every so often to include Jennifer in the conversation, and after a while, Scotty began to do the same. Normally as silent as a cat, he could talk a blue streak about plants and fish, although he had never done so with Jennifer before this. It sort of made up for Kevin treating her like she was invisible. And what was all this with Kevin and Luna? They hated each other, but here they were, chatting away like nobody’s business. It was very strange; even stranger, Jenny didn’t mind it one bit.

  After lunch, Jenny came back from cleaning up in the kitchen to find Cooksey perched on a stool near the microscope station checking through the lab notebook.

  “Did you record all of them on this page?” he asked. “These columns seem to show different numbers.”

  “Yeah, but there were some that didn’t fit. I must’ve screwed up some way. Sorry. The ones I couldn’t figure out’re in here.” She held up the vial and Cooksey peered at the indeterminate black mass within. “‘Didn’t fit’ meaning that you couldn’t classify them as either gemellus or insularis?”

  “Yeah. And I couldn’t find them in the key, either.”

  “That’s odd. Well, let’s have a look, shall we?”

  He sat at the microscope and placed a wasp on the stage. He peered for some time and then examined another and a third, muttering to himself. He rose and pulled a reprint file down and studied several reprints. He consulted the key, looked in the microscope, checked another reprint. Mutter, mutter, and then, “Well, I’ll be blowed!”

  “What? Did I make a mistake?”

  He looked her in the face, and she saw that his eyes were shining. He was beaming like a two-year-old with a fresh cookie. “Oh, not at all. Oh, no! I believe you’ve discovered a new species of Pegoscapus. ”

  “Is that good?”

  “Good? It’s splendid! Epochal! I myself have been studying these little blighters for over twenty years and I’ve only discovered one new species.”

  It had never occurred to Jenny, having only recently learned about species and that they each had a name, to imagine that there were animals that didn’t have one. It made her feel peculiar, and she asked, “But, um, what do we call it? I mean, in the notebook.”

  “Whatever we bloody well please!” crowed Cooksey.

  “Really? You mean just make something up?”

  “Indeed. Of course there are certain traditions. Species are usually named for some aspect of the organism, like its shape or habit, or its native heath, or to honor someone in the trade. In Pegoscapus alone, as you know, we find Hoffmeyer and Herre so distinguished. I myself named my Tetrapus after my late wife.”

  At this, something seemed to deflate in Cooksey, the light that had just shone from his eyes dimmed, and he appeared to shrink a little. Jenny observed this and found it dreadful.

  Into the silence now she blurted, “What was her name?”

  “Portia,” said Cooksey dully.

  “Like the sports car?” asked Jennifer. She was startled to see the look on his face after she’d said this, a stunned expression akin to one following a blow to the base of the skull, and she began to worry that maybe she had said something insulting, because you could never tell with English people, they thought a lot of weird stuff, and now he looked like he was going to have a heart attack, his face going pink and strange sounds issuing from deep in his chest. She was about to say something when the first unmistakable laugh burst forth. This was even more startling because she had never heard such a sound from Cooksey before, a dry chuckle was more his style, and she knew that he was not really laughing at her, so it was all right, if a little strange.

  She watched him as the laughter poured out, tears squirted from his eyes, and his knees wobbled. “Oh God Oh Christ,” he expostulated at intervals, and after a while she started laughing, too, just to join in and for happiness and delight that her own dumb remark (because, although she had known a girl named Chrysler once, obviously a high-class guy like Cooksey wouldn’t have married a girl named after a car) could have caused such a gush of exhilaration.

  Cooksey was still in the paroxysm, eyes tight shut and completely out of control now (Oh Christ Oh God); he bounced off the microscope table and would have collapsed on the floor had she not caught him in her arms. She sank down with him under the table, cradling his upper body. He smelled of tobacco and guy. Jennifer’s laughter slowed, then stopped, because what was coming out of Cooksey wasn’t laughter, or not entirely laughter anymore.

  After some time and a few long whooping breaths, he opened his eyes and looked at her. His cheeks were slick with tears. “Oh, God,” he said. “How utterly disgraceful. Please forgive me.”

  “It’s cool. I guess it was pretty funny to you. And, like, not just funny.”

  “No. It was a sort of private joke and it just…I suppose it rather unleashed some…things. It’s hard to explain. I imagine one had to be there.” He made no move to rise but continued, “We were at a conference in Bellagio; it’s a lovely place in Italy, with a palace they use as a conference center. And one of the participants was a young woman named Maserati. I think she actually might have been related to the famous automobile dynasty, but in any case, she was quite pretty in an Italian way, and she appeared to set her cap for me, I can’t imagine why, and of course I was flattered. I’m such a fool at that sort of thing. There’s a good deal of naughtiness that goes on at such affairs, and Portia and I hadn’t been together all that long. Well, Portia was mad with jealousy and being Portia she made no bones about how she felt and we had a row, and in the midst of it, all I could think of to say was ‘How could anyone who has a Portia desire a Maserati,’ and it just stopped her cold, and then I said ‘and she probably leaks oil as well,’ and we both went absolutely mad with laughter. I imagine it was the tension breaking, because it was a very poor sort of joke. Anyway, every time we saw the wretched woman after that, we were positively weak with it, spurting wine through our noses and so on.”

  A long sigh and a brief silence ensued. “I suppose I’ve been half dead myself since she died. And then when you said that, it just took me over. I hope I didn’t frighten you with that display.”

  “No, it’s totally cool. How did she die?”

  He laughed, his usual short bark. “Asks the American girl. You all fly your sorrows like flags, don’t you? And expect everyone else to do the same. Perhaps you’re right. Keeping it all packed away hasn’t done me much good. Well, since you ask, she was bitten by a fer-de-lance.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A snake. Bothrops atrox. The deadliest reptile in the American tropics.
We were in Colombia desperately collecting from a stand of forest scheduled to be clear-cut, a lovely little valley full of the usual richness, and of course since the edge of the cut was advancing, the place was full of refugee creatures, including snakes. We were working too hard at it, exhausted, becoming a trifle careless, which is something one must never do down there, but it was so vital, there might have been dozens, hundreds of species that lived nowhere else and the swine were going to extinguish them to make furniture and to let some peasants grow a few pathetic crops before the soil was exhausted. One evening, far too late, she ran off to check her traps one last time. She failed to return, and I took a torch and went to look for her, and found her lying on a trail a few hundred yards from our camp. It was perfectly clear what had happened. We’d both seen it before. The ants and beetles were already on her. I haven’t been back to the forest since.”

  “Oh, that’s awful,” Jenny said.

  “Yes. She had hair much like yours, that red-gold color, although she wore it short.” He curled a loop of her hair around his finger. She thought he was going to kiss her then and wondered what it would be like to be kissed by an old guy, but instead he closed his eyes for a moment and a shudder passed through his long frame. Then he cleared his throat and clambered to his feet and was regular Professor Cooksey again. As if nothing important had happened, he began to fuss with the insects, placing the tiny things carefully back into their vial. “We’ll have to publish, of course, and it’s up to the international nomenclature people to confirm it, but I don’t expect much of a problem. Now, as for the name-I propose P. jenniferi. How does that sound?”