by E. Coulombe
“Oh, aren't we the chivalrous one. Page--where is my suit of armor? Can't find it? Oh well, then, have to go in naked myself.”
“Very funny, George. I mean it. We at least ought to keep an eye on her.”
“Oh, most definitely.”
“And the more eyes the better,” said Moki, returning from the luau and plopping down hard in the chair vacated by Emma. “Got any binoculars? I should go get Grant's night-vision goggles.” He and George both fell back into their chairs, laughing.
George grunted loudly. “Apparently you, Andrew, are the only one that could be of any use to the fair maiden. At least you can still stand, which is more than Moki and I can manage. Perhaps we'll just have another drink,” George handed the bottle to Moki, “while you swim in and rescue the fair maiden.”
“Oh, to hell with you both. She's probably better off without any of us.” Andrew sat back down. “But listen to this, Moki. This man here, George Carver, the Paleontologist from Harvard, told me he's going to rewrite the Bible. I think I have that right George?”
“No,” George answered emphatically. “I'm not rewriting the Bible. It’s just a book of children’s stories I’ve been working on. I'm not that vain!” He frowned and shook his head from side to side. “Well, I am somewhat vain, but I'm not that vain.”
“Oh, thank goodness George. Whew! I was afraid you might get up and perform a miracle right here on the front lawn.”
“Hell,” said George, lifting his head to look around, “I think just getting up would be a miracle! Besides, I don't see anything here that needs saving--it's all too perfect.” His head clunked back against the wooden chair.
Then, as if on cue, Nani came running into the yard, screaming, holding a shredded, wet shirt. Under the faint light of the stars they could see dark stains.
“They found his clothes, Moki!” she shrieked. “They found Kane’s clothes. “Where is he? Where’s my Kane?” The poor woman broke down sobbing, and Andrew tottered over to her. Moki got to her first. He held her in his arms. Kalani, who had found the shirt, headed over to the ranch in search of Grant.
“What is it?” George asked.
“It looks like you might get an early introduction to the ruthless power of nature here on Nakoa, my friend—although I do hope not. I hope this is not what it seems.” He lifted up the torn shirt and looked at it more closely. “If only you could truly perform miracles, George, I do believe now would be a good time.”
Chapter Eleven
On the western facing side of Nakoa, the steep slopes called Na Pali rose two thousand feet above the water. No trail could be cut through the undulating Pali, and Kane's favorite fishing spot, Kipono Kai, was as far as one could travel overland. The only way to get to the next valley, Popolo, was by boat -- or, as George was doing, by hiking to the top of Kahili Mountain and coming in from the back of the valley. Breathing heavily, he wrapped his arms around a gnarly old ohia tree so he wouldn't slide back down the trail on the red dirt. Nearly whining, and on the verge of turning back, he finally managed to stretch his right leg far enough to gain a foothold on the nearby ledge and pull himself up the last few feet to the top.
He collapsed on the small knoll, leaning against the ohia tree, and gazed back down the valley where he could see the tin roofs of the village of Puuwai, small and insignificant against the widespread blue ocean backdrop. It was mid-day. Grant, and most of the Nakoan men, had searched all night for some sign of old man Kane. They'd combed the shore in both directions from Kipono Kai, finding no sign of Kane, only his net drifting out to sea, empty but for a few jellyfish clinging to the sides.
In the light of the waxing moon, several of the men had ridden their pack mules to Kipono Kai and set up a camp. They'd mistakenly brought the 'poi dogs,' a mixed breed hunting dog trained to smell out pig in the thick undergrowth. They'd tried to get them to focus on the smell of Kane's clothes, but instead, the dogs kept catching scent of wild boars and tearing up the mountain slopes, baying like bloodhounds, useless the entire night. At one point the barking pack moved back across the forested mountain toward the compound, and George and the others, who were waiting for word in the kitchen, listened to the baying as the dogs got a fresh scent and chased the pig clear around the house and back up into the forest. There the barking became even more frenzied as the dogs trapped their prey, and horrific pig squeals ripped through the night. A deeper yelp sounded, as a tusk gored one of the dogs, and finally, one of the hunters caught up with the pack. He shouted, calling off the dogs, a boot slap sounded as he kicked them away from the pig; then they heard the final pig squeal as the hunter yanked back its head and slit the boar's throat.
Everyone was pretty sure what had happened to Kane, but they waited until Grant and his men returned in the early hours of the morning. They waited for Nani to say it.
“The ocean,” she finally said. “I know. We all know.” She looked up from her coffee with red-rimmed eyes. “But even still, it don't make no sense. Kane been fishin' this ocean all his life, he know what it like. He never turn his back…” She broke down sobbing.
“Yeah, but it can happen to anyone, Nani,” Moki tried to comfort her, “The ocean is way more powerful than us.”
“Kane had a good life,” Andrew added. “He was eighty-six years old. At least he had time to live it, and time to leave his legacy.” He looked at Kane's grandson, Lono.
“I'm not giving up,” Grant said in his loud voice, startling himself as well as everyone else. “Not yet. Like Nani said, it doesn't make any sense. That shouldn't have happened to Kane. Even if a wave did come and take him out, he's a good swimmer and he knows where to drift. When it's light, we'll start out again. We'll head along the shore in the outriggers, search every bay for signs. Kalani and the boys will do the same with the boat in the deeper waters. I'm not giving up, Nani. Either I find him or I find out what happened to him. And don't you give up yet either, you hear me?” By the end, Grant was practically shouting at her.
Chapter Twelve
Kerri was struck, as were all first-time visitors to the lab, by the enlarged photographs, transforming the walls into a fly freak show. Covering every niche of wall space were giant photos of Frankensteinian flies sprouting eyes on their wings, their legs, even on their antennae.
“Impressive, aren't they?” Govinda asked proudly. “Part of what makes the eye such a terrific tool for geneticists is that flies don't need eyes to survive -- at least not in a lab -- so researchers can tinker with fly eye genes and still have a living animal to work with.”
Surrounded by bottles filled with the yeasty paste of larva consommé, Dr. Govinda continued to explain his work. Andrew had planned this trip to Honolulu months earlier, and though he considered canceling it to continue the search for Kane, Grant had prevailed upon him to take the barge over and catch his flight. “We have enough people here to help without you getting underfoot,” Grant had said. “You’re just in the way.” Andrew briefly wondered why Grant really wanted him to go—did he feel freer without his older brother butting in, or rather, did Grant truly want Andrew to pursue his passion.
In any event, Kerri was delighted they had made the journey. Govinda reached behind her and took a photo off the bench. She found the small brown man with his pearly white teeth enchanting.
“Several years ago” he said, “we cloned the gene called eyeless, the gene responsible for this mutant with no eyes. We noticed that the gene carried the distinctive genetic sequence of a protein that tells body parts what they're going to be by turning other genes on and off. Our first control gene. We wondered if it could be some kind of master switch. A gene that could tell a tissue -- perhaps any tissue -- to be an eye.
Govinda pointed out one of the larger photos on the wall as he explained the procedure they had used for gene insertion. Kerri didn't need to listen; she already knew the technical aspects of the work, but she was swept up in the doctor's enthusiasm. “Things happened gradually at first. We saw only a little r
ed pigment, then a few days later the first few possible eye facets, until suddenly we saw real bug eyes appearing on the wings! We knew we had it! A master control gene to turn other genes on, prompting them to form eyes in the most unlikely places.”
“A Hox gene,” Kerri said softly. “
“Yet this represents only a small percentage of the possible mutants,” Dr. Govinda added. “We estimate that 5,000 genes act together to build up an eye; so far, we've just dealt with maybe five or ten percent of them. We're working hard to find the rest.”
Wandering the lab, Kerri discovered a family photo, presumably Govinda's wife and two teenage daughters, standing in front of an elaborate mosque.
“They are still in India,” Dr. Govinda said. “I miss them a great deal. Actually, because of them, I'll be leaving at the end of the term to take a position at the University of Delhi. The lab is not as well equipped as this one, but thanks to the mail-order houses and the global village of the Internet, I will soon be cutting edge again, even in New Delhi. And, completely anonymous, if I wish. Totally unnoticed. A scary thought, yes?” He looked at Andrew. “A plant for nuclear weaponry is obvious. Renegade chemical munitions plants the government tracks and monitors through materials trade, but a biotech engineering facility is small and easily disguised, and supplies are readily available to almost anyone.”
“Anyone with a twisted mind and the will to see it through,” Andrew grumbled.
Kerri had glided to the far side of the lab. She was peering through a scope the technician had momentarily vacated. The pattern revealed through the lens was beautiful -- stunning really. A shimmering array of striking blue hexagons--hundreds of them. But something caught her attention; it looked familiar. She adjusted the eyepiece. Yes, she had seen this before. Within each larger hexagon clustered a group of smaller cells that formed a gray-blue arrowhead. It was the same pattern she had seen Andrew drawing on his beverage napkin on the flight over; just doodling, she had thought then, until she saw it repeated under this scope.
Andrew caught the bewildered look on her face. When Govinda went to the filing cabinets to find the proofs for his most recent article, Andrew joined Kerri. He slipped in beside her to look into the scope, and she breathed in his morning shower. Embarrassed, she turned away.
Dr. Govinda reentered, uttering his apologies, “Please forgive me. My assistant must have filed it….…”
Andrew returned to the scope, this time using the knob to focus. He looked up and she saw the look of recognition on his face.
“Dr. Govinda,” Kerri said, “please, I hope you don't mind our looking, but what is this under the scope? What makes these hexagonal cells form in this arrowhead pattern?”
“Oh that--that is the eye facet. There are 750 of them in a fly eye and each one is fitted out with 19 cells. What makes it? Probably the gene called eyeless gets it started, triggers the series of signals I mentioned earlier, directing the genes to develop this particular tissue into an eye.”
“But this is it,” Andrew said excitedly. “I saw this exact same structure with the arrow-like shape when the Mutator succeeded.”
“When the what succeeded?” Kerri asked. “You were able to make an eye?”
Andrew ignored her question. “Dr. Govinda, do you know when, on the evolutionary scale, the compound eye evolved?”
“Early, very early. The neural machinery underlying the compound eye has changed little since the Cambrian Era, maybe 600 million years ago. I was just discussing this with Dr. Bergen in Switzerland. He is studying eye formation in mice and he just discovered a gene very like eyeless. Remarkably similar. And he took that gene from the mouse, inserted it into a fly embryo and fly eyes grew all over the fly's body. From using a mouse gene!”
“Wait a minute. You're saying that the gene for the development of a non-compound mouse eye initiates the development of compound eyes when inserted into a fly?”
“Remarkable, isn't it?”
“So what you're saying is that any organism, perhaps every organism, carries within it certain genes that, when properly turned on, will direct the organism to develop an eye?”
“Exactly.”
“So that must be what I did. I somehow directed the bacteria to use those genes.”
“I'm afraid I'm not following you,” Govinda said, looking confused. “What bacteria? You have discovered this gene in a bacterium?”
Andrew realized that he was thinking aloud. “Oh, um, it's nothing, Dr. Govinda, just conjecture.” He was anxious to leave. “You've been very helpful, Dr. Govinda, thank you. I didn't mean to take so much of your time. I must get back to the barge now.” It wasn't until he'd opened the lab door that he remembered Kerri. “Are you coming?” he asked almost as an afterthought as he started to run down the hall.
Chapter Thirteen
Andrew’s son, Michael, lay sprawled across the lawn fronting Kihei, his narrow, angular face pointed toward the sun, his skinny arms spread wide. He looked much like a younger version of his dad—just as pale, and with blond hair as closely cropped. Next to him, Lono lay in a straight line, his surfer shorts pulled down low, his jet black hair clumped across his dark, muscular shoulders. .
The sound of Dale's truck pulling in next to them roused Lono from his deep sleep.
“Hey, d'ya hear?” Dale asked as he jumped out of the truck.
“What?”
“It's comin' in, bra. Big surf.”
“No shit, when?”
“Maybe this afternoon.”
“What’s the time now?”
“Maybe twelve.”
“How big?”
“Big as Jaws.”
“No shit?”
Dale nodded. “But I don't know if we should, man--this is gonna be really big.”
“How big d’you say?”
“Fifty, maybe sixty-footer.”
Lono stretched, trying to slough off the fatigue left over from the long night of searching for his grandfather. After a moment of silence he stood up, and Michael followed suit.
“You're sure this is it?” Lono asked.
“Yeah, but…”
“Don't talk, man, let's just go.”
Every surfer in Hawaii knew about Jaws on Maui, but very few had tried it-- none of the Nakoans for sure. Nakoa, however, had its own version of Jaws. It was a half mile off shore of Ko`olau, on the western side of the island. An unusual underwater reef made a sloping wall, several hundred feet high, that nearly surfaced. Storms raging between Japan and the Aleutian Islands generated large swells traveling at 50 mph, and when the rushing water hit that wall it created a peaking wave with an enormous face.
“Peahi,” Dale explained to Michael. “You can hear it from miles away. The Hawaiian name means 'beckon.' It’s a sound just like thunder, clapping and calling to you.”
“Not me. No way am I ever going to try that,” Michael said. Even so, he was excited by the talk, eager to hear more.
They headed over to the boathouse where Dale stored his jet-ski and big wave rider. By the time they arrived, a small group of surfers were already crammed into the hot, dusty space, listening for the surf report on the radio.
Dale lifted the satellite phone he'd borrowed from Uncle Grant and called a friend on Kauai. “Do me a favor,” he said, “Go on the web and look up Buoy 51001. Tell me the reading.”
The buoy belonged to the National Weather Service. It lay 390 miles north of Maui. If the crest at the buoy was near a double digit, the anticipation would begin. A twelve foot reading would be interesting. Fifteen footers were compelling. Twenty, and you've got Jaws.
“Got it,” the friend announced through the speaker phone. “It’s reading twenty-two.”
Everyone inside the boathouse became dead still. Twenty-two at the buoy, in the middle of nowhere with nothing to form on. That meant the wave would be at least a sixty-footer when it hit the wall. Each of them silently measured himself against this giant. Each knew his own limits, and also knew that this wave coul
d give him the ride of his life--or leave him fighting for it.
“Jaws is the heaviest, man,” Dale said to Michael, “like you're skiing on a mountain that changes every second. It's pure existence on that face, no past, no future, just wave, now.”
“Sixty feet is crazy,” Michael muttered.
“Hey--remember Laird. He said there are no opinions in the big wave, you either make it or you don't.” Laird was the big wave guru -- the first to surf Jaws on Maui, an idol to them all, and especially to Dale, because he had been there on Laird’s first attempt.
Michael shook his head. “Shit,” he said, looking even paler than usual.
“You know that first time really took guts,” Dale continued. “We didn't know if it could be done on Jaws, but one day Jaws came in, around fifty that day. We were there for it, all sitting up on the cliff looking at that wall, hearing that thunder, wanting it so bad, but no one dared. We didn't know what would happen. Would we eat reef? The lip of that thing could snap your neck like a chicken bone if it hit you. How long could you last? No one knew – so no one tried. We just sat there looking out and then Laird, he asked me to take him out, real quiet. No announcement or nothing, man, you know that took guts.”
The guys had heard Dale tell this story before, still they stopped talking, and listened as he told it now to Michael.
“Word got out and every damn surfer on the island raced down to the cliff. They were all sitting up there, maybe a hundred guys. And I took him in. Said he didn't want to go look first, he'd seen it enough times, so we went straight out behind the wave. We were sitting on some fast-moving water out there, 50 miles an hour, and the swells alone were huge, up to eighteen foot -- and we were way behind the break! We could hear that thunder ahead of us. Man, I gotta tell you, I was scared shitless, and I had the escape hatch under me. I was the one on the jet-ski. I asked Laird if he still wanted to go. He looked out at the horizon, but that day you couldn't even see it. Only when the swell passed under us you could see, but then you'd drop way below again. Anyway, it didn't help me, but Laird, maybe it did, I don't know. He said go.