Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

Jason drummed his fingers. “The Audubon people don’t think it’s anything else?”

“They have no idea what it is.”

“It’s the rays.” Darryl eyed the crushed birds. “I’m telling you, they’ve got to be flying.”

Jason could almost dream it. “Maybe they really are.”

“You don’t actually believe that, do you?” This was from a calm, rational voice behind them.

They all turned. It was Harry Ackerman, near the entrance, in a surprisingly cheap-looking gray suit, with a laptop slung over his shoulder.

“Harry, what a surprise.” Jason walked over to him.

“Nice to see you, Jason. My assistant mentioned you were up here.” They shook hands.

“What brings you to the neighborhood?”

“Actually, I’ve had more… challenges with my businesses. So I scheduled meetings in San Francisco and the Valley to raise capital.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s nothing dire—I assure you.” The voice was as cool as ever. “I thought I’d stop by. Oh, excuse me….” He grabbed his laptop just before it fell from his shoulder.

“You should be careful with that, Mr. Ackerman,” Phil warned.

“Is that new, Harry?” Jason tried to see the machine. “I’m tired of borrowing Phil’s all the time, so I’ve been thinking about buying one myself. What kind is that?”

“Toshiba. I don’t know computers at all, but I was told this is a good one.”

Phil nodded. “Are you backing it up, Mr. Ackerman?”

“On rewritable CDs.” Ackerman said the words almost officially, as if it was his first time using them in a sentence. Then he noticed the cut-up ray and forgot about the computer. “This is nothing short of a miracle, a true evolutionary miracle.” He thought of how much it would impress the bigwigs on the black-tie charity circuit—a prize so vastly superior to the traditional trophies of success that it would smack the smug looks off their faces faster than they could cash out a stock option. But only if they actually knew about it. Ackerman was tired of the project being sidetracked by what he regarded as unrealistic scientific speculation. “Tell me, Jason, do you think this animal actually flying is realistic?”

“We don’t know, Harry. There’s evidence it might have flown, so—”

“ Evidence? You consider crawling a few feet from shore and eating some birds as they float on the ocean evidence of flying?”

Exactly what I said, Summers thought.

Jason gave Ackerman a look. “It’s just a possibility at this stage.”

Ackerman chuckled. “Who knows? Maybe they really will fly. In twenty million years. Right, Phil?”

Phil Martino suddenly laughed so hard he could barely speak. Watching him, Lisa and the triumvirate were genuinely amused. But Jason looked like he was going to blow a gasket. Phil was laughing in his face, and in front of the boss.

Ackerman discreetly leaned into Phil’s ear. “OK, calm down.”

“Oh.” Suddenly aware of Jason’s anger, Phil shut up. “Sorry, Jason. I don’t know why I found that so funny.”

Jason relaxed. “Yeah, sure, Phil. No problem.” It was forgotten.

“Either way,” Ackerman continued, “your progress has been spectacular. All of you. I just wanted to see this specimen in person and say good luck.” He quickly shook everyone’s hand, checked to make sure his laptop was still slung over his shoulder, then went outside to a waiting limo.

Through a filthy window, Monique watched as the car pulled away. “So what’s next?”

Whether it was the result of being the butt of Ackerman’s joke or not, Jason suddenly looked extra motivated. “What’s next is we’re going to find another one of these things….” He started pacing. “We’ll set up more sonar. And radar, too. We have the equipment, so we’ll put it onshore in case another tries flying to land. And we’ll track the seagulls. These rays will have massive appetites, could put on two hundred pounds a week, so we’ll follow the birds.” He continued to pace. “Lisa, you said some gulls went missing right here in Point Reyes?”

“Yes, but there’s another data point here I didn’t see before….” She was looking at the report’s last page, at something handwritten and initialed on the very bottom. “Apparently some more birds went missing just”—she checked her watch—“two hours ago.”

Jason halted. “Two hours ? Where?”

“Bodega Bay.” It was the sight of a well-known Hitchcock movie, thirty-odd miles north of their current position.

“Let’s get up there.” Jason glared at all of them. “We’re gonna find another one of these things. Whether it flies in twenty million years or tomorrow.”

“NOTHING HERE.”

They were a mile offshore of an ugly Bodega Bay beach of mud and rock. They’d set up sonar buoys at sea, tripod-mounted radar guns on land, and kept their eyes open.

Two monitors were set up on the Expedition’s back wall, and Craig shook his head at them. “What do you want to do, Jason?”

Jason scanned the ugly terrain, the pathetic little trees behind the beach, the tiny breaking waves. “The rays were just here… they couldn’t have gone far.” He looked around some more. “We’ll wait.”

THEY DID wait. One week, then five. There was no sign of the rays.

It was a cold, drizzling December night, and they were half a mile off a desolate Schooner Gulch state beach. In gray gym shorts and grungy flip-flops, Craig was crouched beneath a blue tarp covering the monitors. There were still no readings of any kind. “They’ve gotta still be swimming the canyons.”

Behind him in a hooded yellow slicker, Lisa looked around. “How big do you think they are now, Jason?”

“Big. Fifteen hundred pounds, maybe eight feet across the wings.”

Summers stood. “I wonder if they’re still trying to fly.”

“According to the Audubon reports, they are.” Lisa had been reading them regularly. Seagulls had continued to disappear in vast quantities right up to their current location.

“Lisa, those birds could be missing for other reasons entirely.”

“Like what?”

“Like… maybe GDV-4 really did go airborne. Or maybe some other virus. It just doesn’t make sense that animals that big would still be feeding on seagulls.”

“It makes perfect sense.” Monique walked forward in her own slicker.

“How do you figure?”

“Because adapting to hunt yet another type of prey is hard as hell. Now that these rays have learned to successfully hunt seagulls, they’ll feed on them for as long as they possibly can. If they’re putting on as much weight as Jason thinks, they must have enormous appetites. They can’t afford to experiment right now.”

Lisa eyed the desolate seascape. “So where are they, then? If they’re still eating seagulls, how are we not picking them up?” She eyed the monitors. “Is this equipment still working, Craig?”

“It’s working fine. But it’s not infallible. Sonar and radar signals don’t cut through land, so if the rays are only coming up where there’s a bend in the coastline or where we don’t have a buoy or tripod… we wouldn’t pick them up and—” His phone started ringing and he checked the ID. “York. Excuse me.”

As Craig went below deck, Lisa shook her head. “But how are they consistently finding the exact locations where we can’t detect them? Dumb luck?”

“I don’t think it’s luck at all.” Monique scanned the dark waters suspiciously. “They’ve got to be evading us intentionally.”

“How the hell are they doing that?”

“The same way they caught the dolphin, Lisa. Only now they’re using those senses defensively.”