Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

“Who?”

“The Woods Hole Virus Group.”

Lisa paused. Did the virus have something to do with the plankton depletion after all? “Are they looking for anything in particular?”

“GDV-4’s origins, among other things.”

“They’re looking for that in the Pacific ?”

“Evidently, they’re not positive it originated in the Atlantic anymore. They’re testing at multiple depth levels too.”

“I thought it was a confirmed surface virus.”

“It was, but evidently they’ve been reevaluating that, too.”

Lisa realized she had work to do. She’d share her findings from the Okezie Center later. “OK, thanks…”

As she started to swim back, Darryl wearily put his mask back on. He was still exhausted but wanted to find one kelp strand—just one—to confirm that they were still on track. He ducked his head into the water and suddenly, with fresh eyes, saw something below that he’d missed earlier. It wasn’t kelp but a small pile of little white objects, lying right on the dark sand. He pulled his head out.

“Hey, Lisa.”

She continued swimming, not hearing him.

“Lisa!”

She turned back. “Yeah.”

“Stick around, I might have something for ya….” He inhaled and dove. He kicked very hard, knowing he had to reach the bottom on a single gulp of air. He reached the pile without difficulty, carefully grabbed a handful, then ascended.

At the surface, Jason didn’t even let him catch his breath. “What do you have there?”

Darryl removed his mask and handed them to Lisa. “Shark’s teeth.”

“Yeah?” Jason tried to see them over Lisa’s shoulder, but she became annoyed and turned away, blocking his view. She studied the glistening little objects. Were they really shark’s teeth? Most sharks went through tens of thousands of teeth during their lifetime, constantly replacing blunt and broken ones, some species as often as every other week. These teeth were the size of human fingertips, and slightly curved, almost like fat, stumpy S-shapes. Lisa wasn’t a tooth expert by any means, but as an oceanic nutrition specialist, she’d seen her share of them. She didn’t recognize these, but there were tons of shark species….

Darryl didn’t recognize them either. “Can I see those again?”

She handed him a few, but he wasn’t as careful as he should have been. “Damn, they’re sharp!”

They all watched as a few drops of his blood fell into the sea. Jason shook his head.

Maybe they’d been looking for an excuse, but now they had to get out of the water. If the shark that had lost its teeth was still around, it would smell the blood.

They swam back immediately.

As Jason cut through the water, he considered the teeth more carefully. Had they really come from a shark? Was it just a coincidence they’d found them in the exact spot they’d tracked the new species to? It had to be. No ray species had teeth like that. Perhaps some sharks were hunting them.

Darryl suddenly stopped swimming and so did Jason—rather nervously. “Something wrong, Darryl?”

Darryl smiled, raising a dripping kelp strand. “We’re still on track.”

“Good. Let’s get back to the boat.”

They reached the Expedition without incident. On deck, Phil immediately began photographing the teeth. Then Craig started the engine, and they motored away.

AS THE Expedition disappeared, Darryl Hollis’s blood dissipated. Just as they had feared, something did smell it. Only it wasn’t a shark.

MORE THAN a mile away, the adult rays smelled the blood. Completely unseen in the blackened waters, they were on the move again, swimming north along the ocean’s floor. All were alive but not healthy. Several thousand had recently died.

Far above them, just fifty feet below the surface, were their younger brethren, now juveniles. Unlike the adults, these animals had eaten well and their numbers were undimished. The younger animals now averaged two hundred pounds and were formidable, frightening-looking creatures. Blocks of lean, tapered muscle, they were five feet across the wings, four feet long, and as thick as a three-hundred-pound man’s stomach at their centers.

They floated listlessly in the sun-dappled waters. Strands of kelp hung from many of their mouths. They’d frozen midchew when they first sensed the boat. The boat was gone now, and nothing else was near. Still, none moved. Their attention had just shifted. Another sense—smell—had alerted them. Now they knew what their much larger brethren below had known moments ago.

There was blood in the water. They dove down and followed the others north.

THE Expedition had docked at a crowded San Francisco marina and the team was waiting for Lisa Barton to return. It would be a while.

The previous day, Lisa had researched the unusual fat S-shaped teeth using the available resources and come up empty. Sharks and anglers had been the most obvious source of the teeth, but Lisa found nothing establishing a direct link between either. Almost every species of shark has teeth that are fundamentally triangular in shape. The teeth can vary in width, some narrow and pointy, others fat and wide, but every single known species, from tigers to hammerheads to great whites to makos, possesses teeth that are in one way or another triangular. Wondering if perhaps an extinct shark species had reappeared, Lisa also checked fossil records. But from sand sharks to cow sharks, among many others, they all possessed the same triangular shape.

Anglers had been the next suspect. Anglers were vicious, roundish fish, about the size of a baby’s fist. But across the board, anglers had teeth that were slightly curved, like a tiger’s fangs. Nothing like fat, stumpy S-shapes, either.

With nowhere else to go, Lisa thought of Mike Cohen, an old friend she’d gotten to know at various oceanic nutrition conferences over the years. Cohen was the number three expert in the world on the arcane subject of animal teeth analysis and was based at the biosciences and bioengineering department at UC Berkeley. Starting today, Cohen’s department was hosting a weeklong conference at which Cohen himself was a featured speaker, but he’d still agreed to meet with her.

Before she’d left, Jason had insisted on attending the meeting, but in yet another fight, Lisa had flat-out refused. Michael Cohen was her contact, and she wouldn’t have Jason second-guessing her in front of an important colleague.

Jason had work to do anyway. While the others did chores on the boat, he spent the first part of the morning on Phil’s computer in the tiny living room below deck, writing notes and continuing with his outline. He hoped the latter would eventually become the basis for a formal report to the Species Council, the twelve-person committee in Washington, D.C., that determined what was a new species and what was not.

By late morning, thin cumulus clouds had rolled in above the marina, and everyone except Craig was on deck. In loose-fitting black sweats and a white tank top, Jason was tapping away on Phil’s laptop when Darryl sat next to him. “Craig still on that phone call?”

“I think so.”

“He’s been on for more than an hour, you know.”

Jason looked up. “I didn’t realize that.”

A nod. “I wonder what’s so damn important.”

“Let me tell you, then.” Summers walked up on deck, a strange look on his heavily stubbled face: fatigued and concerned, too.

Darryl’s eyes narrowed. “What’s up, Craig?”

“What’s up is we’ve got a major problem in the Pacific Ocean with GDV-4. Phil, I’m expecting an e-mail on it, about ninety pages. Can you print it for me?”