He

                                                 By Alan Dean Foster





He came out of the abyss and out of the eons, and He didn't belong. His kind had passed from the world long ago, and it was better thus for the world, for They were of all Nature's creations the most terrible.
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But still He survived, last of His kind, a relic of the time when They had ruled most of this world. He was old, now, terribly old, but with His kind it showed little. He'd stayed to Himself, haunting the hidden kingdom of darkness and pressure. But now, again, something impelled Him upward, something inside the superb engine of Himself drove Him toward the light, something neither He nor anyone could understand.
Two men died. The reason was basic.
The rain had worked itself out and the sun was shining by the time Poplar reached the station. The building was as unspectacular as the simple sign set into the white stucco.
UNITED STATES
OCEANOGRAPHIC
RESEARCH STATION
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
AMERICAN SAMOA
He pushed through a series of doors and checkpoints, occasionally pausing to chat with friends and coworkers. As station director, it was his obligation as well as a pleasure.
The door to his own offices was hah* ajar. Long ago he'd lost the habit of stopping to admire the gold letters set into the cloudy glass.
DR. WOODRUTH L, POPLAR DIRECTOR
He paused in front of Elaine's desk. She'd arrived some six months ago, the first crimp in a routine otherwise unbroken for the past five yeafs-His first reactions had been confused. He still was. She swiveled around from her pile of books to face him.
In her mid-twenties, Elaine Shai had tiny, delicate features that would keep her looking childlike into her forties and fifties. Long auburn hair fell loosely in
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back, framing small blue eyes, a tiny gash of a mouth, and a, dimpled chin. In contrast, her unnervingly spectacular figure was enveloped in print jeans and a badly outflanked white blouse. She had a fresh yellow frangi-pani behind one ear. She looked great.
The elfin illusion was blurred only when she opened her mouth. Her accent was pure Brooklyn. It had disconcerted Poplar only once, when he'd greeted her on her arrival at the airport. From that point, for all it mattered, she could have chattered away in Twi. But she bothered him. "Well, what are you staring at, Tree?" "You must be using a new shampoo," he said easily. "Your follicles are in bloom."
She grinned, touched the flower lightly. "Pretty, isn't it? He's in your office. I got tired of him staring at the door. Strange old bird. Never took his hands off that package. But you know these small-island Matai better than I do, Doctor. Stuffy." "Proud, you mean."
She popped her bubblegum at him. That was her one disgusting habit. He pushed open the door to his
office.
As always, his first glance was reserved for the magnificent view of the harbor out his back window. He was always afraid he'd come in one day and find a view of downtown New York, the one from his old office at Columbia. Reassured, he turned to greet the man seated in front of his desk.
Standing in front of his chair, he managed to take a fast inventory of the papers and envelopes padding his desk while at the same time extending a greeting hand.
"Talofa," he said.
"Hello, Dr. Poplar. My name is Ha'apu." The oldster's grip was firm and tight. He sat down when Poplar did.
The director stared at the man across from him. On second and third glance, maybe he wasn't so old. That Gauguinish face, weather-beaten and sunburnt, could
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have as well seen forty summers as seventy. The few lines running in it were like sculpture in a well-decorated home, placed here and there strategically, for character, to please the eye. The hair was cut short and freckled with white.
The Matai retained a taut, blocky build. Ropes of stringy muscle flexed when his arms shifted. He matched Poplar's 175 cms. in height.
"I've come a distance to see you, Dr. Poplar."
"You sure have, all by yourself, if what they tell me is true. I'm flattered." He changed to his best fatherly-executive style, which was pretty sad. "How are things on Tafahi?"
The old chief shook his head slowly. "Not good. Since He came."
"I'm sorry to hear that," replied Poplar in what he hoped was a convincing display of sincerity. Privately he didn't give much of a damn about daily life on Tafahi. "Uh ... who is 'He'?"
"I have heard over the television that you are a Doctor to the Sea. Is this true?"
Poplar smiled condescendingly. "I can't cure storms or improve fishing, if that's what you mean." Educational television had performed miracles in reaching and teaching the widely scattered Polynesian and Mel-anesian peoples throughout the Pacific.
It was Ha'apu's turn to smile. "I still think we may be better at that than you." He turned somber again. "By Sea-Doctor, I mean that it is your business, your life, to study what the ocean is, what lives in it, and why Tangaroa does the things he does."
"That's a very astute summation," replied the director. He felt the sea-god himself would have approved, and his estimation of this man's intelligence went up a notch.
Ha'apu seemed satisfied. "So I believed. I wanted to make certain I understood. My mind takes longer to think things than it once did. What I have brought to show you . . ." he indicated the small package in his
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lap, *'. . . could be understood and believed only by such a person."
"Of course," said Poplar, sneaking a fast glance at his watch. He wished the chief would come to the point. Then Poplar could haggle, politely refuse, kindly suggest the chief try the usual tourist markets downtown and wharfside, and he could get to work. He'd found one new shell this morning that . . . But he didn't want to be rude by hurrying the conversation. Some Matai were easily insulted. And he wasn't famous for his diplomatic manner.
Ha'apu was working at the small package. It was tightly bound in clean linen and secured with twine.
"But first you must promise me you will be careful of whom you speak to about this. We have no wish to endure an assault of the curious."
Poplar thought back to the moaning jetliner that had passed overhead this morning, crammed to the gills with bloated statesiders eager for a glimpse of the quaint locals betwixt brunch and supper, and applauded the Matai's attitude. He wasn't all that naive.
"I promise it will be so, Matai."
Ha'apu continued to work deliberately with the knots. "You are familiar with Niuhi?"
"Yes, certainly." He peered at the shrinking pile of cloth and twine with renewed interest. A good carving of Niuhi would be something of a novelty. At least it wasn't yet another dugout or tiki.
"Then you will know this," said Ha'apu solemnly. He removed an irregular shaped object and placed it carefully on the desk in front of the director.
Poplar stared at it for a long moment before he recognized it for what it was. The realization took another moment to penetrate fully. Slowly he reached out and picked it up. A rapid examination, a few knuckle taps convinced him it was real and not a clever fake. It wasn't the sort of thing one could easily fake. And besides, even the simplest islander would know he couldn't get away with it. He brought it up to eye level.
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"Ye gods and little fishes," he murmured in astonishment.
It wasn't a carving.
It was a tooth. And it was quite impossible. The tooth was almost a perfect triangle. He reached into his desk and brought out a ruler, laid it alongside the hard bone. Slightly under 18 cms. long, about 14 cms. wide at the bottom, and over five thick. The base was slightly curved where it fit into the jaw. Both cutting edges were wickedly serrated, like a saw. He stared at it for a long, long time, running his fingers along the razor-sharp cutting edges, testing the perfect point. A magnifying glass all but confirmed its reality. That failed to temper his uncertainty.
"Where did you get this, Ha'apu? And are there any more?" he asked softly.
"This was taken from the wood of a paopao." The Matai smiled slightly. "There is another."
It took Poplar about thirty seconds to connect this with what the chief bad told him earlier. Einsteinian calculations aside, he could still add up the implications. He leaned back in his chair.
"Now Ha'apu, you're not going to try and convince me that this tooth came out of the mouth of a living Great White!"
The chief began slowly, picking his words. "The doctor is very sure of himself. About three weeks ago, two young men from my village were out fishing an area we rarely visit, rather far from Tafahi. There is better fishing in other directions, and closer to home, but they wished also a little adventure. They did not return to us, even hours after nightfall.
"All of the men of the village, including myself, set out to search for them. We were not yet worried. We knew where they had gone. Perhaps their boat had been damaged, or both had been injured. There was no moon that night. One cannot see far onto the ocean at night by only torch and flashlight. We did not find them.
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anchored to the coral, was the rear half of their pao-pao. It had been snapped in two, Dr. Poplar, That tooth you hold now in your hand was buried in the side of the wreckage. Television and great jet airplanes admitted, Doctor, old beliefs still linger on most of the islands. I am the most educated man in my village and proud of my learning. But this frightened me. We have lived with the sea too long to doubt what might come from it. We put on an exhibition of rowing that could not be matched, Dr. Poplar, in any of the Olympic games.
"It was very quiet on Tafahi the next day. Fishing, a daily task for us, had grown suddenly unpopular. I pointed out there was still a chance to recover the bodies or . . ." he winced, ", . . parts of them. But no one would return to that reef.
"I went alone. It is a small atoll . . . very tiny, not on any but the most detailed of your maps, I should guess. That was where our two men had gone to fish. To the northeast of it, I believe, the ocean bottom disappears very fast."
Poplar nodded. "The northern tip of the Kermadec-Tonga Trench runs across there. In spots the sea floor drops almost straight down for, oh, 3500, 3600 fathoms ... and more."
"As you say, Doctor. The sun does not go far there. It is where He dwells.
"I anchored my paopao behind the protection of the little reef, safe from the breakers on the other side. It was where the men had anchored. Swimming was not difficult, despite a slight current."
"If you thought you might encounter a big Great White prowling around down there, why'd you go in?" asked Poplar shrewdly.
The chief shrugged. "My family have been chiefs and divers for enough generations for my genealogy to bore you, Doctor. I respect Niuhi and know him. I was careful. Anyhow, someone had to do it. I did not swim too long or too deep. I had only mask and fins
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and did not use the weights. I also have respect for age, including my own.
"The small lunch I had brought with me did not take long to eat. The afternoon was long, the sun pleasant. I dove again.
"I had given up and was swimming back to the boat when I noticed a dark spot in the water to my left. It was keeping pace with me. The water was clear, and so it must have been far away to be so blurred. It paced me all the way back to the boat. Despite the distance I knew it was Him."
"Mightn't it have been . .. ?" Poplar didn't finish the question. Ha'apu was shaking his head.
"My eyes, at least, are still young. It was Him. I could not be absolutely certain He was watching me. I doubt it. Faster or slower I did not swim. A sudden change of stroke might have caught His attention. But I was glad when I was in the bottom of my boat, breathing free of the sea.
"I waited and watched for a long time, not daring to leave the small shelter of the reef. Once, far away, I think I saw a fin break the surface. If it was a fin, it was taller than a tall man, Doctor. But it might not have been. It was far away and the sun was dropping.
"I have only been truly afraid, and I say this honestly, a few times in my life. To be alone on the sea with Him was terrible enough. To have been caught there in the dark would have frozen the blood of a god. Then I knew the legend was true."
"What legend?" asked Poplar.
"Whoever sees Him is forever changed, Doctor. His soul is different, and a little bit of it is stolen away by Him. The rest is altered forever."
"In what way?" Poplar inquired. Better to humor the old man. He was interested in the damn tooth, not local superstition.
"It depends so much on the man," the Matai mused. "For myself, the sea will never again be the open friend of my youth. I ride upon it now and look into its
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depths with hesitation, for any day, any hour, He maybe come for me.
"My people were surprised to see me. They had not expected me to return."
Poplar considered silently. "That's quite a story you want me to swallow. In fact, it's pretty unbelievable."
"A strange thing for you to say, Sea-Doctor," smiled Ha'apu. "But I do not blame you. Come back with me. Bring a good boat and your diving tools. I will show you what remains of our young men's paopao. And then I will take you to the spot where I saw Him, if you dare. He may have returned to the deeps. Surely this is a rare thing, or He would have been seen before. There must be a purpose for it."
B.S., M.S., Ph.D., he thought hard for a moment. The legend stuff was all bushwah, of course. But the tooth ... he tried to visualize its owner, and a little shiver went down his spine. This business about soul-changing . . . ridiculous! . . . he, frightened of another fish?
"This tooth could be very, very old, you know. They've been found before, like new. Although," he swallowed and cursed himself for it, "not quite of this size. According to the best estimates these creatures became extinct only very recently."
"Creatures? There is only one of him," said Ha'apu firmly.
"You could fake the ruined outrigger," persisted Poplar.
"To what end?"
"I don't know!" He was irritated at his irrational terror. Goddammit, man, it probably doesn't exist! And if it, by some incredible chance, did, it was only another fish.
"Maybe you want to attract those tourists you profess to dislike. Or want to try and wangle some free diving equipment. Or simply want to draw some attention to yourself. Who knows? But I can't take that chance." He took another look at the tooth. "You
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know I can't, damn you. Where are you staying while you're on Tutuila?"
"With friends."
"Okay, we have a couple of cruisers here at the station. They're not in use just now. Down at the very end of Pier Three. The one we'll use is called the Vatia. You can't mistake it. The other, the Aku-Aku, is longer and has a flying bridge. Meet me at, oh, ten tomorrow morning, on the pier. If you get there ahead of me, tie your boat to the stern." He stopped turning the tooth over and over, feigned unconcern. Inside, he was quivering with tension.
"May I keep this?" He knew what he was asking. Did the chief?
"There is another still set in the paopao. Yes, you may have this one. For your children, to remind them of when you were young."
"I have no children. I'm not married, Ha'apu."
"That is sad. The other tooth must remain with us. It will not. . ." he said, in reply to the imposed question, '*... ever be for sale."
Poplar was seeing his name blazoned across the cover and title page of every scientific journal in the world. Below the name, a picture of himself holding the largest tooth of Carcharodon megalodon ever found. He might even manage to include Ha'apu in the picture.
He leaned over the desk, began shuffling papers.
"Good-bye till tomorrow, then, Matai Ha'apu."
"Tofa, Sea-Doctor Poplar." The chief gathered up his wrappings and left quietly.
He began going over the supplies they'd need in addition to what was standard stock on board the Vatai. Plan on being gone at least a week, maybe two. Get him out of the office, at least.
Elaine walked in, strolled over to the desk and leaned across it. That finished any attempt at paperwork. When she noticed the tooth in front of him, she almost swallowed her gum.
'My God, what's that?'
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"You're a master's candidate in marine bio. You tell me." He handed it to her.
She examined it closely, and those pixie eyes got wider and wider.
"Some gag. It looks like a Great White's tooth. But that's absurd."
"So was the coelacanth when it turned up in 1938," he replied evenly.
"But it can't be Carcharodon!" she protested. "It's three times too big!"
"For Carcfarodon carcharias, yes. Not for Carcharodon megalodon." He turned and dug into,the loosely stacked books that inhabited the space between desk chair and wall. In a teacher-student situation, he was perfectly comfortable with her.
"You mean the Great White's ancestor? Well, maybe." She took another look at the unreal weapon in her hand. "I found one in Georgia about half this size. And there was a six-incher turned up just a few years ago. Extrapolating from what we know about the modern Great White, carcharias, that would mean this tooth came out of a shark ninety fee—"
"Ah-ah," he warned.
"Oh, all right. About, urn, thirty meters long." She didn't smile. "Kind of hard to imagine."
"So are sharks attacking boats. But there are dozens of verified incidents of sharks, often Great Whites, hitting small craft. Happens off stateside waters as well as in the tropics. The White Death. The basis for a real Moby Dick, only ten times worse. Not to mention a few thousand years of sea-serpent stories."
"You think one of these might have survived into recent times?"
Poplar was thumbing through a thick tome. "That's what that chief thinks, only to him it's a god and not a shark. The Great White prefers ocean-going- mammals to fish. Probably this oversized ancestor of his fed on the earlier, slower-moving whales. First the whales grew more streamlined, and then man began picking off the slower ones. The sea couldn't have supported
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too many of these monsters anyway. A megalodon would have a killer whale for breakfast."
"A man-eater as big as a blue whale." She shook her lovely head. "A diver's nightmare."
"The Matai who brought this one in says he knows where there's another, and maybe more."
"Far out. You think I might get my thesis out of this?"
"Well," he smiled, "the chief did say that according to legend anyone who sees Him is forever changed. All you've got to do is spot Him."
"Very funny."
"We leave first thing tomorrow morning, on the Vatai. Tenish. Now go and pack." But she was already out the door.
She was not so happy for the reasons Poplar thought
Tourists waved from the hotel balcony. It had been built at the point where the open sea met Pago Pago's magnificent harbor. Elaine slid her lava-lava down a little lower on one shoulder and waved back coquet-tishly. Poplar looked up from the wheel disapprovingly.
"Just because naked native maidens went out of fashion forty years ago is no reason for you to feel any obligation to revive the tradition for the benefit of overweight used-car salesmen from Des Moines."
"Oh, foo! For what they charge the poor slobs to stay in that concrete doghouse they're entitled to a little wish-fulfillment."
"Courtesy of downtown Brooklyn, hmm," he grinned in spite of himself. He swung the wheel hard over and they headed south-southwest. The powerful twin diesels purred evenly below deck.
Wreathed in gold-gray clouds, Mt. Rainmaker, all 530 meters of it, watched them from astern long after Tutuila itself had vanished into the sea.
The trip was uneventful, except that Elaine insisted on sleeping stark naked. She also had what Popfar felt was a childish habit of kicking her sheets down to her feet. He considered going over and replacing them,
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but hesitated. He might wake her and that would be awkward.
Ha'apu was clearly pleased at the situation, and there wasn't anything Poplar could do about it. Well, if she wanted to expose herself, he'd simply ignore her. Clearly she was looking for attention, and he didn't intend to give it to her.
So until he fell asleep, he spent a lot of time staring at the sterile cabin wall that separated him from the sea.
And the other wall remained equally unbroken.
Like most small, low-lying Pacific islands, Tafahi was nonexistent one moment and a destination the next, popping out of the blue ocean like a cork. The white sand beach sparkled in evening sun, devoid of the usual ornaments of civilization . . . beer cans, dogeared sandals, plastic wrappers, empty candy papers, beer cans.
There was a broad, clear entrance to the small lagoon. Poplar had no trouble bringing the Vatai inside. Ha'apu climbed into his paopao, its little sail tightly furled, and paddied ashore. Poplar and Elaine followed in the Vatai'?, powerful little runabout.
"We're not here just to look for teeth, Elaine," he said abruptly. She stared at him expectantly.
"Ha'apu really thinks—I know it sounds absurd— that this monster is still swimming around somewhere to the east of here. Supposedly it's taken two fishermen along with the front half of their boat. Probably a cleverly faked fraud the villagers have made up, for what purpose I don't know yet. Commercial, probably."
"I see," she replied easily. "Be careful you don't run over any of the local craft when we hit the beach."
For all the surprise she'd shown you might have thought they were here for an evening feast and a casual swim in the little lagoon.
They were on the best of terms with the islanders right from the start. Poplar had rammed the runabout into a beached paopao, spilling them both into the shal-
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low water. Being men of the sea, the villagers thus felt the same sort of sympathy for Poplar that they'd have given any idiot.
When Ha'apu had finally managed to separate himself from his immediate family and Poplar and Elaine had dried out a little, the Matai beckoned them inland.
"The remains of the dugout are in front of my fale, Doctor."
Tafahi was far from being a major island, but it was large enough to support a fair population. A televiskm-FM antenna poked its scarecrow shape above the tallest coconut palm. It jutted from an extra-large fale that served as combination school, church, and town hall.
If the damage to the outrigger had been faked, it was the product of experts. Poplar knelt, ran his hands over the torn edges of the opened hull. Great triangular gashes, each larger than his fist, showed clearly around the shredded edges. Apparently it had been hit —or the hit had been faked to indicate an attack from an angle slightly to port.
"The first tooth was in here . . ." Ha'apu knelt beside Poplar to indicate a narrowing hole in the bottom of the craft, ". . . and the other, here." He pointed, and Poplar saw the other tooth, as large as the one back in his office, still embedded in the side of the outrigger.
"He lost them, as Niuhi and his cousins often do when they attack hard objects," commented Ha'apu in a helpful tone.
"Yeah," agreed Poplar, absorbed in his examination. "Always carries plenty in reserve, though. I wouldn't think his ancestor would be any exception." He squinted up at the sinking sun. It had begun the spectacular light-show sunset that was an every-evening occurrence in the South Seas.
"It's getting late. No point in hurrying to reach that reef tonight. About two hours to get there, you said?"
Ha'apu nodded. "In your boat, yes."
Poplar was a bit surprised. Now was the time the
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Matai should have begun his excuses, his hedging. He stood, brushed sand from his pants. "Then if you can put us up, I'd just as soon spend the night here. We've been doing enough shipboard sleeping and well be doing more."
"I agree!" said Elaine, rather more loudly than was necessary.
The Matai nodded. "Of course there will be a fale for you."
"With two mats," Poplar added.
"Why should it be otherwise, Dr. Poplar?" agreed Ha'apu. If the old chief was being sarcastic, he covered it well. But as he walked away, muttering in Samoan, he was shaking his head slowly.
It wasn't the strange surroundings, nor the hard floor beneath the mat of woven tapa cloth that made Poplar's sleep uneasy. He'd enjoyed some of the deepest sleeps of his life in similar situations. And when he was awakened about midnight by a sudden bumping, he drew a startled breath. His dreams had been full of dark arrow-shapes with mouths like black pits. But it was only Elaine. She'd rolled over in her sleep and was resting against his shoulder, breathing softly. Courteously, he didn't push her away, but it made it harder for him to get back to sleep, which displeased him.
When he awoke the next morning he was covered with sweat.
"This may not be the exact spot, but it is very close," breathed Ha'apu. "I know by the trees."
Since the single minuscule "island" harbored barely six or seven small palms, with but two of decent size, Poplar felt confident the old chief had found the spot he wanted.
They'd anchored in the lee of the atoll. It was small enough so that you could see the surf booming against the coral on the far side.
Poplar kept an eye on Ha'apu while he helped Elaine into her scuba gear. Still no sign of an attempt to keep
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him from diving. He thought the hoax was beginning to go a little far.
The tanks they'd brought were the latest models. They'd have an hour on the bottom with plenty of safe time. Elaine checked her regulator, he checked his. They each took up a shark stick, but Poplar gave his to Elaine. He wanted both hands for his camera, and she could handle anything likely to bother them.
There was a diver's platform set just below the wa-terline at the stern of the Vatai. Elaine jumped in with a playful splash. He followed more slowly, handling the expensive camera with care.
Both wore only the upper half of a heat-retaining wetsuit. The ocean flowing around his bare legs told him it was a good thing he had. It wasn't cold, but cooler water flowing from the depths of the oceanic trench obviously found its way up here. The thermo-cline would rise nearer the surface. That would permit deep-sea dwellers to rise closer to the top. Still, it was comfortable and refreshing after the trip on the boat
Ha'apu watched them descend, and worried.
The water inside the lagoon would be clear as quartz. Even out here, visibility was excellent in all directions.
The underwater world held as much fascination for him now as it had on his first dive, years ago. Much of the mystery was gone, but the beauty of his refuge was ever-present.
For the first few minutes, as they swam parallel to the reef, he couldn't stop himself from turning to look anxiously in all directions. He gave up that nonsense after five minutes. Nothing more impressive than a fair-sized grouper had trundled clumsily across their path. His shark prod now dangled lazily from his belt.
They stopped often for pictures. Even if this were only a pleasure jaunt, it would be nice to bring back something to justify the expenditure and time.
They returned to the Vatai ten minutes early. Poplar was feeling hungry and a little discouraged. The tiny reef had been exceptional in its mediocrity. He'd
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seen hundreds of identical spots during his trips throughout the Pacific and the Caribbean. And he didn't feel like staying another five or six days.
In sum, he was being took. If Ha'apu's plan was to use the two teeth to get a free estimate of the fishing grounds (probably been in the village for years, he thought), it was working admirably. Poplar was definitely being used.
"Did you see anything?" asked Ha'apu politely as he helped Elaine doff her tanks.
"I got a couple of shots of a pretty good-sized Moray. Otherwise, Ha'apu, there's more sea life to be found outside the harbor at Pago Pago or Apia."
"He has frightened them all away," commented the chief knowingly. "Perhaps you will have better luck on your next dive."
"Sure," replied Poplar drily, helping himself to a glass of tea.
By the third day, the attractions of the un-unusual reef had long since paled for Poplar. Even the attraction of swimming through the brilliantly lit water was beginning to feel like work again. Elaine seemed to thrive on it, but, then, there was still something in every crevice to delight her. But he'd seen enough angel fish, brain coral, giant mollusks, trumpet fish, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum, to last him another year. And nothing he couldn't see with much less trouble right in the station's backyard.
In fact, except for a peaceful encounter with a poisonous stonefish, the last three days had been about as exciting as a dive in one of Pago Pago's hotel pools.
"Possibly He willl come this afternoon," said Ha'apu.
"I know, I know," Poplar replied irritably. It was just about time to tell the old chief off, find out what he wanted, and return home.
In the many-times-three dives, they'd sighted exactly three sharks. Two small blues and one pelagic white-tip, a seven-footer that had turned and run for
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the open sea even before Poplar could set his camera for a decent shot. To him they were just three more fish.
They'd go home tomorrow. True, he'd sort of promised the Matai a week. But the longer he stayed away from the office, the more work would be piled up for his return. Although he'd left the pressures of extreme paperwork back in the States and settled into the more agreeable Samoan mode, old habits died hard. As director, he still had certain responsibilities.
He was drifting along just above the sea bottom about hah* a mile from the boat. His camera had lined on a gorgeous black and yellow sea worm, flowerlike body fully extended. It was the first really unusual thing he'd seen since they'd arrived. A perfect picture ... his light meter shrank by half.
Damn and hell, that was the last straw! Poplar whirled angrily, expecting to see a playful Elaine floating just above and behind him. He'd warned her at least half a dozen times to stay out of the light when he was taking pictures. She'd seemed to think it was fun.
But something else had swallowed the sun.
For a second Poplar, training, degrees, and experience notwithstanding, stopped thinking. He went back to his childhood. When he'd lain in bed at night, the covers up around his chin, staring at where his clothes lay draped over the back of his chair. You wouldn't know the kind of terrifying shapes clothes and chair and night can combine to make in a child's mind. Fear squeezed his spine and his heart pumped madly.
Above him, Carcharodon megalodon glided majestically through the clear water, its seemingly unending tail beating hypnotically from side to side, the great pectoral fins cutting the current like hydrofoils.
He turned, saw Elaine drifting alongside. He tugged at her arm. She ignored it. He tugged harder. As though in a dream, she turned to face him. He pointed in the direction of the boat. She nodded, sluggishly following him, half swimming, half towed.
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A line from Cousteau ran through his mind, and he tried desperately to swim faster.
"Sharks can instinctively sense when a fish or animal is in trouble."
She shook free from him, nodded at his concerned gaze, and began swimming steadily on her own.
For a while the monster seemed not to notice them. It swam slightly ahead, moving effortlessly. A single gigantic stretch of cartilage, tooth, sinew, and muscle. Poplar stared at it and knew that what Ha'apu had said was true. This was more than a fish, more than a shark. You could feel it in yourself and in the water.
Lazily, it banked like a great bird and came at them.
He turned frantically, gestured to Elaine. The shark was between them and the boat. Trying to outswim it would be like trying to outrun lightning. He'd spotted a long crack in the battlements of the reef. Usually such breaks harbored morays, powerful clams, and poisoners like the stonefish. Right now they seemed like the best of friends, harmless as puppies.
There was no subtlety, no attempt to deceive, in their retreat. They swam like hell.
Maybe He was disinterested in such small prey. Whatever the reason, His pursuit remained leisurely. They attained the safety of the rift. Wedged back in the deep, wide crevice, they still had room to swim freely.
-'   He came straight at them. Poplar had to fight down the urge to scrape frantically at the coral behind him. For the moment, he was afraid the monster would try to bite them out, coral and all. It looked big enough to take half the atoll in one gulp.
At the last moment, He swerved to His right. There was a brief glimpse of a half-open mouth, a cavern big enough to swallow a truck. It was lined with multiple rows of 18-centimeter-long teeth. A wide black eye passed, pure malignancy floating in a pool of red-hot venom. Then there was a long, endless wall of iron-gray flesh rough as sandpaper—darker than the
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skin of a Great White, some part of him noted—and it was past.
He floated. Elaine prodded him and he could see the terror behind her mask. He wondered if he looked as bad. The great bulk had circled and was beginning a slow patrol of the reef. Not that it was smart enough to consider bottling them up. Clearly it liked the area.
Anyhow, they were stuck.
If the rift had been a chimney, open all the way to the surface, they could have swum upward. Despite the battering of the light surf, they'd have been safer on the reef's jagged top than in the water with Him. But it was closed overhead. To reach the surface, they would have to leave their small fortress.
Minutes passed. They looked at each other without seeing. Each was wholly absorbed in personal thoughts. They'd encountered a terror whose psychological effect was even more overwhelming than its reality. It did not belong to the world of men, this perfect, unmatched killing machine. How puny man seemed, how feeble his invented efforts at destruction.
How frightened he was.
He looked down at his watch. At the rate they were using air, in a few minutes they'd be down to their emergency supply. Elaine prodded, moved her hands in diver's argot. He remained frozen. She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. But there was no way he could tell her in sign language of this new problem.
Woodruth "Woody" Poplar was a coward. A physical and moral coward. He knew it, buried it beneath work and joking.
Elaine started tugging at her own tanks. It unfroze him. He grabbed her arms, held them at her side until she finally nodded slowly, calmed.
It took every ounce of courage he possessed to look outside that cranny. He blinked, drifted out further. He had disappeared. Poplar glanced in all directions. Nothing.
He beckoned to Elaine. Carefully he made his intentions clear. Megalodon, being as stupid as any
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modern shark, had doubtlessly drifted off in search of prey that behaved like such and didn't melt into hard, unappetizing coral.
Poplar armed his shark stick ... a terribly futile-seeming gesture. Elaine did likewise. He had to try twice with his shaking hands before he got the shell armed. The monster was a good 30 meters long and must weigh more tons than Poplar cared to think about. The shark stick might tickle Him. But it was comforting to hold in the crook of one arm.
He pushed away first and they headed for the Vatai. Moving fast, they hugged the reef as tightly as they could. He let her get a little ahead, as arranged. That way they'd make less of a blur against the reef. The smaller shapes would be harder for the shark's eyesight to detect against the dark coral.
As they rose gradually toward the surface, leaving the protection of the reef wall, he tried to watch five directions at once. Inside he was oddly calm. What an animal! Nearly a hundred feet of sheer grace and power.
He missed a stroke. Hell, he'd forgotten to take a single picture! Not one lousy shot! AH he had by way of proof was the corroborative statement of Elaine— worth nothing in such august publications as the Journal of Marine Biology—and a couple of teeth that they'd treat as he first had. He would have cried, but it would have ruined his vision.
The curved bottom of the Vatai became visible just ahead and above, its anchor cable hardly moving in the calm sea. The platform occasionally broke the surface. He looked regretfully down at his camera.
An unmistakable shape, a slate-gray torpedo, was coming up fast behind them. This time it wasn't a lazy chase. The attack was as sharply defined as death. Sunlight flashed on teeth that could snap through steel plate.
They swam for their lives. Panic filled him, terror made jelly of his muscles. Only adrenalin pushed him through the clean glass water.
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They weren't going to make it. He wasn't a fish. He was the devil himself, Beelzebub, all the things that go bump in the night, the terrors of childhood and of little-boy darkness.
Elaine was falling behind. He slowed.
Goddammit, it was only a fish.
He turned and waited. Elaine paused only to give him a stricken look in passing and then was gone. Perfectly calm, he was. Relaxed and peaceful in the cool water. Inside, his one major concern was that no one would be able to record this for the Journal. Pity. Then there was no sea bottom, no reef, no sunlight. Only He and me, thought Poplar,
He kicked with every bit of energy in his legs, exploding to his right. He had a brief glimpse of an obscene eye as big as a saucer, a black gullet as deep as a well. It touched him. Consciousness departed as he jabbed with the shark stick.
He doubted, along with the best Biblical referents, that the sky in heaven was blue. But he wasn't going to argue. There was a constriction, a tightness in his throat, that wasn't caused by fear. Elaine was hugging him and crying. It felt like he'd swallowed a cork.
"For Christ's sake let me get some air!" he finally managed to croak. She backed off.
"Damn you, damn you. You scared the hell out of me, you insensitive, you . . . !" She sniffled. Her hair was wet and stringy and she was totally beautiful. "I ran away and left you." The crying broke out again in full force, and she fell onto his chest, sobbing.
"I'm sorry, I apologize for my inconsiderateness. Tell you what, I'll marry you. Will that make up for it?" He rolled over, felt the softness of the mat they'd slipped under him. Someone had removed bis tanks and mask.
She pulled away, stared at him in stunned silence. For some reason, this started her crying all over again. They'd removed his fins, too. He wiggled his toes.
Only one set moved.
He sat up slowly and looked down at himself. His
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right foot ended at the ankle in a swath of bandages and dried blood. His voice was so even it shocked him.
"What happened?" he asked the old Matai, who had been watching him carefully. He was aware the question lacked brilliance, but at the moment he didn't feel very witty.
"He did not take you, Sea-Doctor Poplar. Perhaps so close to the surface, the sun blinded it at the last moment. Perhaps He lost you against the bottom of the boat."
"You don't believe any of that," said Poplar accusingly. He searched for pain but there wasn't any. Someone had made use of the Vatat1^ medical kit.
"No, Dr. Poplar, not really. Tangaroa knows why."
Poplar thought of something, started laughing. Elaine looked at him in alarm, but he quickly reassured her.
"No. I'm still sane, I think, 'Laine. It just occurred to me that I can't go stalking around the office like Ahab himself, with only a lousy foot taken. What a cruddy break."
"Don't joke about it," she blubbered, then managed a weak smile. "It will ruin your rhythm at the wedding."
He laughed, too, then slammed a fist against the deck. "We're going back to Tutuila. I'm going to get a ship from the Navy base, somehow, and harpoons. We'll come back here and ..."
"Poplar," began Ha'apu quietly, "no one will believe you. Your Navy people will laugh at you and make jokes."
"Well, then I'll get the funds to hire a bigger ship, someway. One big enough to haul that thing back on. My God, one day I'll see it stuffed and mounted in the Smithsonian!"
"They'll have to build a special wing," Elaine grinned tightly.
"Yeah. And don't you go putting out any fishing
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lines on the way back, you hear? I don't want to lose you on the trip in."
"How about after we get back?" she replied, staring at him.
He looked at her evenly. "Not then, either. Not ever. Hey, you know something? I'm famished."
"You've been unconscious for five hours," she told him. "I'll fix you something." She rose, moved below decks.
"And now you are as I, Doctor, for you have gazed upon Him. He has changed you, and you are no longer yourself as before, and He has taken a piece of your soul."
"Listen, Ha'apu, I don't want to offend you by attacking your religion, but that was just a fish, that's all. A monstrous big fish, but no more. I'm the same sea-doctor, and you're the same Matai, and we're just lucky all I lost was a few toes and such. Understand?"
"Of course, Dr. Poplar." Ha'apu turned, went up to the bridge.
Changed indeed! He crawled over to the low railing near the stern, looked down into the waters. Small fish swam down there, magnified and distorted by the sea. He shivered just a little.
He would have married Elaine anyway, of course. And if she'd been threatened by anything, he'd have stepped in to defend her, wouldn't he? Ha'apu fired the engines and the Vatai started to move.
Well, wouldn't he?
Maybe He knew.
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