by E. Coulombe
A slight movement in the rocks ahead attracted his attention. As he moved towards it he discovered more of the odd orange cylinders and clams, dozens of them now covering the rocks, and…what’s that? Some type of star fish? It had a large green star shaped body with spongy thorns covering the crown and running down the arms. Oh yeah, that one he remembered hearing about. It’s called the Crown of Thorns, his friend had told him, a new invader of the reef from Japan. Butt ugly, he thought.
The reef made a narrow wall in front of him, jutting only a few feet towards the depths. He swam around it and stopped, surprised by an incredible complexity of colors and shapes covering the sea floor below. Small goby and colorful cleaner wrasses darted around the needle-tipped spikes of the urchins, as though teasing them with their mobility. Sea cucumbers looked like massive brown turds randomly deposited in the shallow waters, and in the depths he could see the poisonous spikes of the large black sea urchin, the vanna. These things he knew, but interspersed throughout were the odd looking clams and the orange anemones which he didn’t recognize. And not just the complexity, but the quantity perplexed him. This reef was chock full of underwater life, as though a major bloom had happened and no predator had come to take advantage.
George had to see this.
Lono looked up and visually marked his spot so that he could return to it later. Right now, he wanted to see the deeper waters. He swam away from shore, but the bottom didn’t drop as drastically as it had in Ko`olau kai. Here it remained shallow, dropping off only five or six feet. He swam above, completely mesmerized by the world beneath him.
He watched as small worm like organisms, which also were unfamiliar, swam in and out amongst the odd clam shapes. But here there were different clams – orange shells, red shells, even white shells? And more of those orange anemones stuck on top of cylindrical tubes, and some other thing with a foot – there was no other word for it – which glued it on to the reef while it filter fed, he guessed, through gently swaying arms. These too were of several different colors and shapes. Red stems with blue tops, yellow stems with green tops. What the hell is all this? He asked himself anxiously, as his dive bag quickly filled.
Used to diving for slipper lobsters in dark crevices, Lono had a sharp eye, and he caught a glimpse of something as it disappeared behind the boulder up ahead. It had moved like an eel, but had some kind of tentacle. Lono stopped. Wait a minute, where are all the fish? The convict tang, the goatfish, mullets, and surgeon fish, there were always a few of each on any Hawaiian reef and usually a school of one or the other. And with a reef this active….
They were gone.
Just then he noticed a black thing moving below. Legs like a crab but smaller, it moved quickly, scurrying on the open sea floor, almost faster than Lono could keep up as he fought the surface current. He was absorbed, unaware of the distance he traveled. He descended three feet and swam harder, the currents lessened and his speed increased. His eyes were riveted on the organism.
It was the one Ku’ulei had found.
It scurried under a rock with one leg sticking out. He surfaced for air, dove again and moved the rock to expose it. It was just like Ku’ulei’s, but bigger! It started to back away from Lono’s approaching hand, but then it stopped – a white and brown striped cone lay on the sea floor behind the adjacent boulder. Now that’s really different, he thought, and he reached for it but it jerked away. What the fuck, Lono thought. He kicked around the rock, more cautious now, with his spear raised and ready, but he couldn’t find it again. It had moved behind another rock. That things swimming fast, Lono thought, too fast. The fisherman’s instinct kicked in, he surfaced for only a second and found the tip of the cone immediately when he regained the exact same spot. But when he moved around the protective wall, the cone elongated, one, two, three – it was four goddamn feet long!
It turned.
Slowly the cone end turned away from Lono until he was facing the other end – it looked like an octopus, or a squid, with long white tentacles. Octopus doesn’t live inside of shells, he thought, this is the strangest thing. Could be a squid, but it’s too big, and thick. And I’ve never seen squid in a cone shell. Gotta get this for George.
But suddenly Lono realized what else was wrong with this thing – it was staring him down! Not hiding in a crevice, nor swimming away, but suspended in the water right in front of him. It remained still for a moment. In one tremendous burst it whipped out its tentacles and suctioned up the black crab like thing, trapping it in a powerful grasp. The beak of its squid-like mouth crushed the black shell as if it were made of paper.
Before he saw it, Lono felt a movement on his right side. Oh shit! Another one. Poised, completely still, the current rippling over its long fingerlike tentacles, it watched Lono. Two more appeared out of nowhere on his left side. That’s three down here, Lono thought. Even in the water, he could feel the hair rising on his arms. He began to panic. Turning onto his stomach, kicking his fins as hard as he could, he dropped his spear to free both arms, and swam away – imagining a hundred of those slimy tentacles latching onto his leg…..
But they didn’t.
He bee-lined it towards the beach, and fortunately, when he looked back, he didn’t see anything tailing him. But suddenly his leg was on fire. He screamed inside his tube and tried to kick free but it was an oversized jelly fish on his right leg, and the more he kicked the more its trailing tentacles wrapped around his calf. He screamed inside his head and remained still.
Lono don’t panic, he told himself, the sting won’t kill you but the panic will. He pulled out his knife and hacked at the body, and immediately he felt the pressure lessen, but the stinging remained just as intense. Slipping the flat side of the knife along his calf, he gently pried off the tentacles. The current washed them up to his chest, but he was able to dive out and kick away from the trail of fire. A bright red ring colored his leg.
He looked around for the squid things but they were gone. When he stuck his head out of the water, he was closer to shore, thank goodness, but then he remembered Michael.
Screaming Michael's name, he propelled himself on his fins and raised his body out of the water and did a three-sixty turn. George appeared on top of the sand berm, running down to the shore.
“What is it Lono? What’s wrong?”
“MICHAEL!”
“He’s there Lono,” George said, pointing towards the far side of the bay.
“Get him out of there George! Get him in now!”
George ran down the shore as fast as he could. He ran out on the reef, his sandals protecting his feet from the sharp rocks, shouting to get Michael’s attention. Michael finally stuck his head up and George waved him in. Michael started to swim in, then stopped and removed his snorkel tube.
“Lono?”
“Never mind Lono, you stupid kid, get in here!”
“Where’s Lono?”
“Dammit Michael,” George pointed to the other side of the bay. “Lono’s fine, he’s swimming in now, and he wants you in as well,” he yelled.
On shore, Lono, ripped off his gear and put wet sand on the bright red welt around his leg.
“What did that?” George asked.
“A jellyfish.”
“Jellyfish! Jeeze Lono, you scared the hell out of me for a jellyfish?”
“No, it wasn’t that,” said Lono, “I don’t know what it was. Maybe I just spooked, I really needed to get out of there.”
“Lono. What did you see?”
“Shit, George,” Lono swore, “have you ever seen a foot long squid sticking out of a four foot long cone shell?”
Chapter Forty Six
Adroitly moving through the lab, Andrew turned on the hood and the bacto-incinerator, removed a loop instrument from the small autoclave in the corner, and placed it inside the warming incinerator. He cleaned the hood bench with alcohol while Kerri reached into the swirling incubator to retrieve a flask of bacteria growing in solution.
“Do you want
the sn3 or sn4 culture?”
“It doesn’t matter, they’re the same age, and I suspect they’re dividing now.”
He prepared the slide and bent over the scope. They hadn’t said anything about the incident the night before, and watching the back of his tousled blond head, Kerri felt as though she were going to fall to pieces.
She couldn’t help it. She’d been called brilliant, gifted, Nobel Prize potential, but in truth – she was just a sucker for a pretty face. Her Achilles heel, she called it. No wonder he didn’t take her seriously half the time, she thought, why should he? She’d been arguing with Emma the virtues of career versus motherhood, and all the while she was consumed with jealousy over this absolutely gorgeous man. Was it his looks? They were good, she had to admit, but that alone? Or was it his rare ability to tell her no.
“Just as I suspected,” he raised his head from the scope. “They are dividing, but there’s no bridging between the individuals. No transfer of DNA. Do you know when that will happen?”
“Maybe one more day, or two.” Kerri walked across the room and breathed deeply. To distract herself she pulled the folder out from the desk drawer and spread the five photos out on the lab bench. Examining them closely she said, “I still don’t get it.”
“What?” he sounded tense.
“We’ve worked out three specifics that must all be operating to induce the rapid mutations seen in these pictures,” she flipped through them one more time.
“Yes.”
“First, the bacteria you started with had to be archaic, one of the first life forms on earth so it wouldn’t be pre-programmed.”
“Yes.”
“So you used the Halosalinarium bacterium that you found here, on the salt flats.” She was almost thinking out loud, but Andrew was still listening. “Secondly, the mechanism only operates during reproduction.”
“Right. That’s what I want to correct for now.”
“Finally, the offspring needs to receive a signal from the parent.”
“Yes? And your question?” He asked rudely.
“Well, we said that the signal would be a response to stress.”
“Yes,” he said sharply, impatient with people who took too long to get to the obvious, “so what don’t you get?”
“What stressed your bacteria?”
“Oh, is that all?” he said, exasperated.
“Forgive my inane stupidity! Of course ‘Your Greatness’ has already answered a question so simple that only a moron would ask it.”
“Stop it Kerri. Dammit, I thought you were different,” he said abruptly. But just as quickly, he stopped himself, and slowly pushed his chair back from the bench. “Why do women have to be so damn sensitive? I don’t have time for a cat and mouse game right now. Okay?”
He must have seen the look of shock on her face, for he started to apologize, but Kerri cut him off. “You don’t have time?” she screamed between clenched teeth. “Oh my god, I see what Emma is always harping about. I mean I thought she was exaggerating your indifference…but it’s true. You really don’t care about anything but your work!”
Kerri stopped and breathed deeply. Andrew started to speak but again she cut him off, her hand held up in front of her. “Okay, Andrew, I’m sorry to scream like that. But things are getting really stressful here now. After yesterday, I don’t know if it’s what I said about Annie or what Grant saw here in the lab, but now the entire family seems to shun me. Without saying a word this morning they all stood and quietly left the kitchen when I walked in. Taking the children with them. And they looked at me like they were afraid.”
“No way, you just imagined that.”
“I swear Andrew; I saw fear in their eyes. I think I actually frighten the Nakoan women.”
“Maybe you do.”
“What?”
“Well, you are sort of ….liberated, at least comparatively speaking.”
“Not really, it’s the opposite, they’re extremely shackled!” Andrew laughed. “It’s not funny Andrew. And to make it worse, now Annie is following me everywhere. I wanted to be alone with you in here so I had to pretend I was going to the bathroom and ditch her. She keeps asking these really strange questions like, do boys and girls go to the same university in Boston? Are they allowed to study the same subjects? If you fail what happens to you then, are you sent home?”
Kerri collapsed into her chair. Andrew came over and stood beside her. “Well, I told you Nakoa was isolated,” he said.
“You didn’t tell me they were living in the Dark Ages.”
“Some folks find that to be charming.”
“Well, I’m not one of them,” she said more slowly, somewhat mollified after sharing her thoughts with Andrew.
“Anyway, if it helps at all, I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “It’s really important to me to figure out how I did this experiment. You don’t know how important. And honestly, I couldn’t have gotten this far without you, and you had me worried there for a second that I’d missed something significant.”
He paused as though trying to read her reaction, but her face had already slipped into a form of inscrutable beauty. “The stress,” he continued with trepidation, “I’ve been thinking about that as well. What life threatening stress did the bacteria somehow sense, especially when bacteria can sense very little?”
He walked across the lab and picked up an additional lamp. While wiping it down with alcohol he looked at Kerri, raised his eyebrows and smiled, goading her to guess.
“Heat?”
“Right. An increase in temperature threatens the integrity of the bacterial cell wall.”
“So therefore the second lamp?”
“Well, I’ve tested the temperature of the droplet under the slide and it’s only slightly higher than the temperature of the medium in incubation.”
“Not exactly a life threatening stress.”
He nodded agreement. “But then I remembered,” his eyes danced. “The first time I ran this experiment the bulb under the base of the scope burned out.”
“And the light for that split second was just enough?”
“Actually, just before a bulb burns out there is a massive surge in energy. Maybe enough to cause a life threatening stress to the bacteria and initiate the process–”
“In an organism so simple, that was completely open to change.” Kerri finished. Instead of anger, she now felt embarrassed by her petty behavior. She wanted to run and hide. The heat was obvious; she should have seen it herself.
“Well, I’ve got to go anyway,” she said, “I want to find Grant and call Dr. Shapiro. He’ll be anxious for me to return to Cambridge.”
“No!” He held her arm for a second. “You can’t go now!” his words shocked both of them.
“Why not, it looks like you’ll be able to carry out your experiment again, and that’s what I’m here for, right? Isn’t that why you got me to come out?” He let go of her arm, and turned away, not knowing what to say. She slapped her arms across her chest, giving him a cold, hard stare, daring him to confess. His silence further emboldened her. “And there’s something else Andrew, something that’s been bothering me. What if George was right, that all these strange occurrences in the water aren’t coincidental, in fact what if they’re somehow related to this experiment?”
His head snapped. He looked sideways at Kerri, his eyes pulled together in a frown, moved up and down her body, as though seeing her for the first time. “I’ve thought about that,” he answered harshly.
“And yet you never told anyone. Don’t you think you should at least tell George so he can put it into the equation as he’s out there trying to figure this all out?”
“No, I shouldn’t.”
“Well then maybe I should. It’s wrong to hold it back.”
“No, don’t,” he stepped close to her. He took her arm and pulled her near, but looked only at her lips, not at her eyes. “It’s so unlikely,” he said softly, “I’m working with bacteria in test tubes insid
e this lab, those are full grown organisms out at sea.” He stroked her cheek and she felt it redden. “That sand casting is probably from a common jelly fish, but no one ever saw it’s tracings before, and that black organism George sent to UH is probably nothing but a molting gastropod.”
Finally he met her stare, and then she saw it. His eyes held her more strongly than his hands with an intensity she’d never felt before. So gripping it both frightened and attracted her, and for a fleeting moment she questioned his sanity. She felt dizzy, and had to look away.
“Andrew, what’s wrong,” she asked, genuinely concerned.
“Nothing.”
“But why is this work so important to you?”
“It just is. You see its value as well as I do.”
She agreed outwardly but inwardly she sensed Andrew had a different mission.
“That thing that attacked Lono? What was that?” She attempted to continue her argument, with his proximity melting her defiance.
“That I don’t know, again there is probably some other explanation. Besides,” he went on more emphatically, “I don’t want to tell anyone until I can repeat the experiment.”
“Just because you can’t repeat it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
“Yes. It does.”
Kerri stood up straight, once again baffled by this enigmatic man. “But there is something else,” Andrew said, then stopped and breathed deeply. She gently stroked his arm, easing his tension, encouraging him to go on.
“Look, Kerri, I didn’t mean to embarrass you or to put you down. That’s just how I sound sometimes. I’m really sorry…and…I really need you to stay.”
“For what?”
He didn’t speak. His blue eyes bore down on her. “Need me for what?” she said timidly.
“To run this experiment, correctly this time, and more so, to help me decide what to do next.”
“Is that all?” She couldn’t stop herself.
“What do you mean?”