Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

Dave watched her warily. “You sure you wanna be doing that?”

Her hands moved closer. “We’ll find out….” Her fingernails were about to touch it.

Suddenly it spun around and its jaws snapped open and instantly thundered closed.

“Jesus!” Dave yelled.

“Oh my God.” Theresa couldn’t believe it. The animal had moved so quickly! Voom! She didn’t know rays could move that fast. It was perfectly still now, and she focused on its mouth. She hadn’t noticed the mouth earlier. Its opening was a slit the size of a stapler, massive in proportion to the body. And its bite hadn’t only been vicious but powerful. Theresa hadn’t noticed any teeth—she remembered that most rays didn’t even have teeth. But even without them, its bite had been so strong it could have broken her fingers.

Gabby stared at her hand. “Are you all right?”

Theresa checked that all five fingers were in fact still there. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Suddenly the creature leaped up into the air.

“Oh my God!” Gabby slammed back into the railing, nearly falling overboard.

But the animal simply fell back onto the deck, landing with a wet thud.

On its back now, its underside was even whiter than the fiberglass.

Dave Pelligro studied it anew. The mouth’s slit looked very large indeed, maybe larger than a stapler. And the stomach was slowly moving up and down, in harmony with the wheezing sound. The damn thing looks like it’s breathing to me, Pelligro thought.

The creature suddenly leaped up again. It nimbly flipped in the air, landed rightside up, then once again, didn’t move.

Dave, Theresa, and Gabby just stared at it, anxious to see what it would do next.

Chad had another reaction. “That’s it, I’m killing this damn thing….” He walked to the bow to find something to whack it with. But then he paused. What’s it doing now?

The little animal was rapidly flapping its wings, whacking them hard on the deck like a loud jackhammer.

Dave just watched it, amazed. Jesus, the damn thing’s trying to fly.

And failing miserably. It showed no sign of lifting off.

The animal seemed to realize the same thing and abruptly stopped.

It’s been out of the water at least five, maybe ten minutes, Theresa Landers thought. How can it survive that? And how did it move its wings so quickly? Theresa had seen rays swim before, and they always moved very slowly, like birds in slo-mo. She supposed, however, that when their wings were only pushing against air, they could move much faster.

The animal moved again—sort of. The muscles on the left side of its back suddenly seemed to rapidly flex, and Theresa watched them. Wow. She’d never seen muscles move like that, almost like superfast rippling waves. Boy, were they fast! Then the muscles on the left side stopped and the ones on the right began. The process repeated itself. Theresa just watched, fascinated.

Then, very quickly, the muscles froze and the body’s front half lifted off the deck until the horned head was completely vertical. Then the animal effectively stood there, about a foot tall, its front half in the air, its back half flat on the white fiberglass.

It looked quite menacing and Theresa got the hell away from it.

But the ray didn’t budge. It simply remained where it was, like an upright seal or a stiff jack-in-the-box. Looking at it, Theresa remembered that many ray species didn’t have spines. Their entire bodies were made of cartilage that made them extremely flexible. A stiff jack-in-the-box indeed.

The wind started gusting, and the horned head slowly turned.

What’s it doing? Theresa thought. She wasn’t sure but it looked like… Did it sense the wind?

The shifting head froze, and then it happened.

In a surprisingly fluid series of motions, the creature leaped off the deck diagonally, pumped its wings, and, with a touch of luck in the timing, caught the wind and… flew. Flapping frantically and lacking body control, it headed straight for the guardrail, smacked into it, and tumbled into the sea.

Everyone rushed over to try to see it.

But there was only dark water. The animal was gone.

Suddenly Dave squinted. Did he see a second one? No, he didn’t think so. He slowly looked up at Theresa, astonished by what had just happened. “Do you believe what we just saw?”

Theresa didn’t answer. She just gazed at the water.

But Dave was dumbfounded. “ That thing flew, for Christ’s sake!”

Theresa turned to him, visibly stunned. “It did. It really did.”

“Wow,” Gabby said simply.

Chad marched to the head of his vessel. “Yeah, really incredible. A jumping fish, up in the air for a whole second. You guys call Jacques Cousteau; I’m out of here.”

As Chad turned on the engine, Theresa wondered if she actually should call Jacques Cousteau. Or at least the closest thing to him. Eighteen months earlier, she’d visited a brand-new manta-ray aquarium in San Diego. The visit had been a big disappointment—there hadn’t even been any mantas—but if the place was still in business, she wondered if she should discuss the afternoon’s events with someone there. She decided on the spot. She’d go. Theresa loved puzzles, and she wanted an answer to this one right away.

What the hell had they just seen?

“ SO IS what I saw of interest, Mr. Ackerman?”

Harry Ackerman, fifty-two and rail thin, looked up from a note-filled legal pad and focused on Theresa Landers, sitting on the other side of a small brown wood desk. Theresa had come to this massive complex of aquariums, once known as Manta World, to describe the ray she’d seen off Clarita Island to whoever would listen. A bored UC San Diego girl, chomping on bubble gum and obviously working a summer job, had started writing down Theresa’s statement when Ackerman had overheard and taken over.

Ackerman was practiced at taking statements and questioning people. He hadn’t interrupted her. He’d simply let her talk and written down every single thing she’d said. He dismissed the crazy parts, about the flying and possible breathing, as exaggeration. People regularly exaggerated when they retold a story they were excited about.

Ackerman was actually excited himself—though he didn’t look it. Harry Ackerman rarely looked excited about anything; it just wasn’t in his character. With the exception of an antique Patek Philippe watch with lots of Roman numerals and a $62,000 price tag, he didn’t look like a multimillionaire either.

He’d started to take her statement because he’d been bored. Theresa was an attractive young woman in a too-tight all-white outfit and too much makeup. But looks aside, Ackerman had just assumed she was another loony. They regularly came into most marine facilities claiming they’d seen this fish fly, that fish breathe, or that sea monster playing cards. The statements were always outlandish and very comical. And that was why Ackerman had spoken with her. He’d been reading debt covenants, trying to find loopholes that could allow him to desert Manta World’s lenders legally, when he’d decided he’d needed a laugh. Theresa had indeed given him one, at least with the flying and breathing parts. But then a funny thing had happened. As she’d continued, she’d started to make sense. Ackerman was no expert, but the animal she described in vivid detail sounded like it might somehow be… significant.

“It most certainly is of interest, Theresa. I have some questions if you don’t mind.”

Theresa nodded. She wasn’t sure what she thought of Harry Ackerman. He sounded nice; it wasn’t that. It wasn’t his attire either. Khakis and a button-down; who could argue with that? His eyes had something to do with it. They were cold eyes, dead too—even when he was silently laughing at her. He hadn’t laughed out loud, of course, but Theresa knew he’d found her amusing. Given what she’d told him, she hardly blamed him. But he wasn’t laughing now, not even silently—Theresa could tell. Something she’d said had caught his interest. She thought he was way too corporate to be a marine biologist, yet he seemed to know his stuff.