Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

THEY DID but found nothing unusual—just more kelp. They continued north, and by late September were easing into the waters off Carmel, then Pebble Beach and Monterey. This was a truly gorgeous part of California, with stunning vistas and jagged rock cliffs everywhere. No one noticed the scenery.

The plankton supply had continued to decrease, and Lisa Barton was still baffled. Her onboard Plankton Measuring System only gave her “what” without the “why.” To get real answers, she needed the kind of equipment found only in the most sophisticated marine labs in the country. One morning she called the prestigious Okezie Marine Center, near Washington State University, then FedExed them a plankton sample in seawater. They got back to her in less than a week, on a sweltering-hot day.

“Lisa, an e-mail came for you.”

She turned to Phil Martino. Since Phil’s computer was the only one configured to the Expedition ’s satellite link, he managed all of their incoming e-mails. “From the Okezie Center?”

“Uh, I think so.”

“Fantastic. Can I see it, Phil?” She started to go below deck, but he stopped her.

“I printed it out for you already. Here…”

He handed her ten stapled sheets.

She eyed the cover page, then her eyes suddenly widened. “Holy Mother of God.”

LISA DIDN’T move. She just stood in the hot sun, reading the pages slowly and carefully. It wasn’t light material, the report’s title “Mechanisms for Planktonic Deterrence Based on North Pacific Samples.” She suddenly looked up. “Phil, where’s Jason?”

“Uh…”

“He’s still in the water with Darryl and Craig.” Monique climbed up from the sea in a tight white one-piece, not noticing Phil’s drooling over her. “God, it’s hot.” Then she noticed the papers in Lisa’s hand. “What’s going on, Lisa?”

“I’m not the only one who noticed that plankton levels are down in the Pacific. There have been reports from New Zealand to Japan, from the southern tip of Chile all the way up to where we are right now.”

“Jesus Christ.” That covered a huge chunk of the entire Pacific Ocean. “Why?”

“No one knows. But the raw data look accurate.”

“What are the raw data?”

“Plankton samples from across the Pacific. All with massive amounts of DMSP.”

“What’s DMSP?”

Lisa turned back to the report again. “Dimethylsulfoniopropionate.”

“Oh, sure, that.”

Absorbed in the papers, Lisa didn’t hear Monique’s sarcastic remark. She simply nodded.

“Lisa. What the hell is DMSP?”

“Oh.” Lisa looked up. “It’s a defensive chemical that plankton releases.”

“What do you mean ‘defensive’?”

“When plankton thinks it’s going to be attacked, it releases it.”

“I didn’t know plankton was that smart.”

“It’s very smart. You know what else it does when it thinks an attack’s coming?”

“What?”

“It cuts its own reproduction. ”

Monique was stunned. “So that’s why levels have been so low. Do they think it’s fighting off GDV-4?”

“No. Just like Craig said, there’s no evidence of that at all. Actually, I need to talk to Craig. Right now…” She quickly grabbed her fins.

DARRYL AND Jason kicked slowly, heads down, their bare backs glistening in the scalding sun. With the aid of Supra 902 magnifying masks, originally manufactured for exclusive use by the navy, they could see all the way to the bottom, a hundred and twenty feet below. Sand, sand, and more sand. There was no kelp anywhere.

Floating lazily on a giant black inner tube, Craig yawned. “God, this is boring.”

Just then Darryl and Jason popped up. “Take a break, Darryl?”

“Definitely. We’re not getting paid enough for this.”

“Really, Jason, we’re not.”

Darryl turned to the inner tube. “ We’re not?”

“I’ve been busting my ass too, Darryl.”

Darryl looked at Summers blankly. In angular, silver sunglasses that made him look like he was in a techno band, Craig held the look for a moment—then chuckled heartily.

Jason wasn’t amused. Visibly frustrated, he scanned the desolate waters. “Those rays have to be around here somewhere, right?” Indeed, they weren’t in this particular location by accident. The director of the Monterey Aquarium had called them after an oil-rig diver reported seeing a small group of “fairly large birdlike shapes” on the seafloor near one of the rig’s massive legs. Jason and company had immediately visited the hulking metal contraption. They found nothing, but clearly whatever had been there was still close—and still migrating north.

Darryl looked up at the sun. “What do you think that rig diver saw, Jason?”

“What do you mean? He saw the rays.”

“I know that. I mean adults or newborns.”

“He said they were ‘fairly large,’ right, so it couldn’t have been adults; he would have called those enormous, bigger than cars.”

Darryl nodded. “That’s my point. He must have seen the newborns, only now they’re small juveniles. These things grow fast, don’t they?”

“Not as fast as a shrew, but yeah.” Some species of shrew ate up to 1.3 times their body weights in a single day. “They could easily weigh two hundred pounds. What I want to know is what the hell have they been eating? If not plankton, what?”

“It’s the ocean, Slick, how about fish?”

“Mantas can’t catch fish, Darryl. They can’t catch anything. They swim too slowly, that’s why they just eat masses of floating stuff.”

Craig hopped into the water. “What I want to know is why haven’t we seen one of these things yet. All this time and we haven’t seen one. ”

Darryl dunked his mask. “You think that’s so unusual?”

“Yeah. Mantas are friendly, right? They like to show themselves, they like to play. Whatever these things are, they’re not doing that. In fact, it seems like they’re hiding.”

“Under the circumstances, that’s natural.”

“What circumstances?”

“Doing a migration they’ve never done before. They’re just being cautious. Even humpbacks, when they do a new migration they’re much less visible than normal. What I’ve been wondering is where are these things from? Any thoughts on that, Jason?”

A shrug. “Could be a lot of places. Mexico… Costa Rica or Ecuador… Hawaii, the Marquesas. Maybe further west like Australia or Malaysia.”

“Hey, is that Lisa?” Craig squinted. Someone was swimming toward them from the boat. “Oh man, I hope she’s wearing that bikini I like—you know, the tight one with the blue polka dots.”

Darryl shook his head. “Give it up, man. She wants nothing to do with you.”

“Some smooth lines and a night of drinking could change that.”

“You don’t have any smooth lines.” Darryl turned. “Besides, I think she might dig you, Jason.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious. You guys have that love-hate thing going on. I think there might be something there. Shut up, here she comes….”

As she swam up, she immediately smelled a rat. “Boy talk, huh, Darryl?” She shook her head at him as Craig carefully scanned her body, realizing with disappointment that there were no polka dots anywhere on it.

“Craig.” She almost caught him looking. “Is there anything new with GDV-4 lately?”

Summers’s demeanor changed. “A ton, actually. Hot off the presses. They’re beginning full-scale testing for it in the Pacific soon.”

Lisa was stunned. “They are? When the hell did that happen?”

“They announced it publicly first thing this morning.”