THE BOY WHO WAS A SEA

I adore the ocean. I love the way it feels against my skin, the way it envelops me in another medium when I'm diving, the loving yet ferocious force with which it tumbles me end over end when I wipe out while boogie boarding or bodysurfing. When asked, I'm prone to say I have saltwater in my blood.

And to think that would-be writers worry about where to get ideas...

"I think I've found the trouble. Your boy has saltwater in his veins."

George Warren turned uncertainly to his wife. Eleanor Warren put a protective arm around their son Daniel, who continued to play contentedly with his transformer robot toy while blissfully ignoring the adult conversation.

"He's always liked the ocean, but I don't see how that explains what's wrong with him."

"You don't understand. I don't mean that he's attracted to the sea. I mean that he really has saltwater in his veins. And not just plain, ordinary saltwater. Sea-water. See?" Taking a thumb-sized vial from a pocket of his white lab coat, he passed it to George Warren, who held the small glass tube close to his face and up to the light.

After a moment's contemplation he passed it to his wife. "There are things moving around in it."

Kindly Dr. Lowenstein nodded sagely. "Very unusual things. Exceptional things. One might even go so far as to say extraordinary things. Things without precedent. Tell me; when was the last time Daniel suffered a severe cut or laceration?"

Mr. and Mrs. Warren looked at one another. "Daniel's never had a bad cut, Doctor," his mother replied uneasily. "Is there something wrong with his blood?"

"Wrong? Dear me, no, Mrs. Warren. There can't be anything wrong with your son's blood because he hasn't any. Not in the conventionally accepted sense, anyway. His circulatory system is full of seawater. Ordinary, standard-issue, Pacific-normal seawater. Furthermore, it is inhabited."

George Warren was a hard worker and a devoted husband and father, but he was not an especially imaginative man. He was having some trouble following the doctor's explanation.

"You mean Daniel's veins and arteries are full of ocean water instead of blood?"

Lowenstein nodded again, solemnly this time.

"Then how can he live?" an understandably concerned Mrs. Warren inquired.

"Deuced if I know." The doctor rubbed the little patch of white whisker that clung like a paralyzed moth to his lower lip. In his spare time, infrequent as it was, Dr. Stephen Mark Lowenstein liked to play the trumpet. This in no way inhibited his work or made him less kindly. He was quite a very good pediatrician. "Along with other minerals, there's a lot of iron in seawater. In the case of your son there seems to be enough to supply adequate oxygen to his system with the aid of some as-yet-undetermined hemoglobin supplement. It's all really quite fascinating. For consultation, I don't know whether to call in a biochemist or a marine biologist."

"But will he be all right?" Mrs. Warren asked earnestly.

Dr. Lowenstein's shoulders rose and fell. "So far he acts like any ordinary, healthy boy of six. I don't see why he shouldn't continue to mature normally."

"But the chills," George Warren wondered, alluding to the reason for the office visit in the first place.

"It's not unusual for a child to have chills. Not in Chicago in January. What is unusual is the way your son's, uh, blood, seems to be responding to the change in climate. There are what appear to be tiny ice floes forming in his bloodstream. Seastream."

Mr. and Mrs. Warren exchanged another glance.

"As you might expect, they're most prevalent at what we might call his polar extremities. I suspect that's why his feet are always cold and he has these headaches when it snows. There are also definite signs of a small glacier forming in the upper region of the superior vena cava. Many of these ice floes are the result of the berg calving which is taking place in the chest cavity." At the alarmed look on Mrs. Warren's face he added, "I don't foresee any danger at this time. They appear to melt before they enter the heart. But it's certainly a matter of concern."

"What can we do?" a worried George Warren asked.

Lowenstein scratched his lower lip. "Your blood, Eleanor, is normal Type A, and you, George, are AB. Daniel appears to be type TS."

" 'TS'?" George Warren echoed.

"Tropical Sea. I would suggest that you consider a move to a warmer climate. His specialized internal biota seem more closely related to the kinds of organisms one would be likely to encounter in the vicinity of the equator. There is evidence of coral-like building from the aortic arch on downward, as well as throughout the jugular. As soon as this, um, reef building reaches maturity, growth appears to cease, thus posing no danger to the boy's general circulation. It's calcification of the arteries to be sure, but not the sort that results from an excess of bad cholesterol. The rest of his remarkable internal biota seems not only benign, but quite healthy."

"What sort of 'internal biota,' Doctor?" Mrs. Warren was still concerned, but less anxious.

"Most astonishing. I've observed evidence of schooling by more than twenty separate varieties. There is also a healthy population of sedentary forms. Everything seems to be thriving. Your son is a most beneficent host."

" 'A warmer climate.' " George Warren looked thoughtful.

"Indeed," Lowenstein murmured. "Somewhere on the ocean."

"I'm a manager for Kmart. It may not be easy to get a transfer to a place like that."

"I'll write you a prescription." Dr. Lowenstein smiled encouragingly.

"Remember when he was two?" Mrs. Warren gazed fondly down at her son, watching him reassemble the transformer. "When we went to Florida and he swallowed all that water and didn't even gag?"

"That wouldn't cause something like this." Her husband hesitated and turned back to the doctor. "Would it?"

"Nothing should cause something like this," Lowenstein replied assuredly. "But so long as the boy is healthy, why worry? Marvel, yes; worry, no."

The Kmarts in Florida were all at full strength, personnel-wise, and had no need for the services of George Warren. But the family persisted, and kindly Dr. Lowenstein (kindly being an anomaly in these days of munificent malpractice suits and individual medical corporations) was there to help at every turn.

So it was that the family came to settle in Kahului, Maui, the largest town on the second-largest island in the placid and agreeable Hawaiian chain. No longer did Daniel suffer from annual shivering. They knew they'd made the right decision the first time he splashed excitedly into the shallows at Makena. His condition had been thoroughly explained to him, and he had come, as boys are wont to do, to simply accept it.

"I'm in the sea and the sea's in me--yippie!" he said as he threw handfuls of warm water into the air. Sitting on the beach, a smiling George Warren took his wife's hand in his own and squeezed reassuringly.

Just as Dr. Lowenstein had predicted, Daniel grew into a strong, healthy young man, handsome and with an air of the faraway about him that proved very attractive to the ladies. Students at the college did term papers on the singular liquid that ebbed and flowed through his body, competing to see who could be first to identify the next new microspecies. One transfer student even qualified for her thesis by providing evidence of seasonal migration within his veins, showing that at least two Danielian species migrated from his arms to his legs every spring, returning to his arms in the winter.

Displaying an abiding interest in oceanography that understandably exceeded that of all but the most avid graduate students, Daniel did his best to assist the professors at the college, willingly volunteering samples of his life-fluid whenever it was requested for study. A serum derived from his veins helped to save the life of an especially beloved orca at Sea World in San Diego, and another dose did wonders for a sick dolphin at Honolulu's seaquarium.

Doctors decided that his heart forced water across the microscopic reefs in his system in much the same way that daily tides refreshed atolls and reefs in the Pacific and Caribbean. At the college and hospital they came to speak of the tides of Daniel, and tried to determine if his heartbeat was affected by the phases of the moon. When one day he was admitted suffering from dizziness and weak spells it was decided that his system needed the sort of replenishment supplied to normal seas by land-based rivers. Upon further analysis, a weekly dose of specified minerals matching precisely those found in the benthos were prescribed, and sure enough the spells soon went away.

It wasn't that he had no aptitude for academics. It was just that he couldn't bear to be long away from the water. So despite his more-than-adequate grades, additional college was dropped in favor of vocational studies, and in due course he received his ship captain's license and divemaster's certificate.

Desirous of seeing other seas, he initially spent some time in the merchant marine, always acquitting himself honorably and amazing seasoned sailors with his ability to pick a course through challenging waters without the aid of GPS or chart. After some years exploring the world's oceans he returned to live permanently on Maui, preferring to work as a divemaster with an established concern instead of opening his own business.

"I'd rather not have the responsibility," he told his now-retired parents when they questioned this decision, "and have more time free to dive on my own."

They understood, of course. Urged on by his mother, he gave serious consideration to marriage, but there was some concern as to the physical status of prospective children, and despite his modest fame he had a difficult time with serious dating. No spray or mint could mask his breath, which smelled now of kelp, now of sargassum, and at its worst, of a weathered planktonic bloom. So he had ample female company, especially out on the water where such things were not as noticeable, but few amours.

There came a day, fine and sunny and not at all in any way ominous, when he was working in the dive office out on the pier and Fredo came running breathlessly from town to lean exhausted against the open portal.

"Have you heard?"

Everyone, including Daniel, looked up. "Heard what?" owner John Renssalear inquired on behalf of them all.

A junior divemaster, Fredo hugged the entrance as if reluctant to let loose of it. "Come and see for yourselves!"

Some curious, some concerned, everyone in the office shuffled out of the building onto the pier. Fredo pointed them not toward the bustle and haste of nearby Lahaina but south toward Kahoolawe. In between Maui and that uninhabited source of constant contention lay the tiny volcanic crescent of Molokini, famous as a dive site and marine sanctuary. There was next to no vegetation on the rocky outcropping, which made the smoke rising from its northeast flank very puzzling.

"It's a tanker!" Fredo informed them breathlessly. "The Comco Sulawesi. She was bound for the refinery at Honolulu with sixty thousand barrels of Indonesian crude aboard when she went aground!" He swallowed, his throat dry. "I was monitoring the Coast Guard channels. She's afire, and the crew's preparing to abandon ship."

"They can't do that!" Martine Renosa exclaimed.

"What about the tug at Kahului?" Renssalear's voice was calm, but tension caused his weathered face to crinkle like brown tinfoil.

Fredo shook his head sharply. "There're no ships due in the harbor today, so the crew went over to Hilo for a break. They're sending three oceangoing tugs from Honolulu."

"They'll never get here in time," someone muttered angrily. "What the hell's a tanker doing in the channel anyway? Especially at this time of year."

"Nobody's sure," Fredo explained. "They think the captain wanted to see the islands close up." From the back of the crowd someone groaned.

"Sixty thousand barrels." John Renssalear had been a commercial diver on wells in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, working deep water under potentially lethal conditions. It took a lot to shake him.

"If she breaks up, that much crude could kill all the reefs on this side of the island, all the way from La Perouse Bay up to Kapalua. Not to mention everything around Kahoolawe, Lanai, and maybe even Molokai."

"What about Molokini?" someone asked abruptly.

"Molokini?" Renssalear barely had the energy to shrug. "Molokini's as good as dead. That oil will smother the coral and turn the diving sanctuary into an underwater desert."

"Never mind Molokini," Renosa growled darkly. "What about the whales?" No one said anything. Everyone knew it was the height of the calving season and that the channel was full of migrating humpbacks and their newborn young.

"Say, John." Renssalear turned to Daniel Warren, who was staring evenly at the rising plume of black smoke. "Can you run me out there?"

The owner of the dive operation cocked his head slightly to one side as he regarded his most valued employee. "What did you have in mind, Dan?"

"Just run me out there. Maybe--maybe I can do something."

Wide-eyed, Fredo looked from one man to the other. "Are you two crazy? That ship's on fire. She could blow at any minute!"

"Or not," Dan Warren whispered. "She might just burn until her tanks burn through."

Renssalear didn't hesitate. "Let me get my gear."

The powerful little boat crashed through the swells, heading south toward the burgeoning pillar of doom. They sped around fleeing yachties, dodged the Coast Guard cutter that had positioned itself to keep back curious tourists, shot past the two big lifeboats that looked like fat waterborne grubs and that were carrying the multinational crew of the tanker to safety.

The emergency ladder the tanker crew had left behind flapped and banged against the side of the stricken ship. Maneuvering with the skill and experience born of many years at sea, Renssalear put the dive boat close alongside. Still, it took three tries before Dan Warren was able to make the short but dangerous leap to the dangling ladder.

Renssalear backed off, watching tensely as Daniel ascended the treacherously flapping rungs.

Long moments passed. The Coast Guard was screaming at him on three different frequencies. Renssalear ignored it, acknowledging his radio only when it crackled on a prearranged channel.

"I'm in the pilothouse, John."

Renssalear murmured a silent prayer. "Nice going, Dan. What now?"

"I'm going to try and back her off the reef. I know it better than that Indonesian captain ever could. I know its bumps and ridges, where the hollows are and every twitch of the current. I know where the sand is deep and where the coral grows shallow. I can feel it, John! Its just something... I've got in me. Now, give me some space."

Renssalear waited as the immense diesels rumbled to life within the belly of the tanker. Props bigger than his dive boat churned the water, sending bottom dwellers like rays and flounder flying.

At first nothing happened. Then a deeper groaning became audible. Not many people would have recognized that noise, but Renssalear did. It was the sound of a steel keel grinding against coral and stone.

Spewing smoke like a drunken volcano, the mortally wounded Comco Sulawesi slowly backed off the eastern horn of Molokini. Once safely behind the islet, above the dive site known to locals as the Edge of the World, with 350 feet of water under the hull, Dan Warren turned the injured vessel south and headed for the open Pacific.

"Put her on autopilot and get off there!" Renssalear shouted into the radio. "I'll pick you up."

"Sorry, John," came the steady reply. "No can do. I've already tried that. The autopilot doesn't respond. Maybe I can find something to lash the wheel."

Time elapsed. Too much time. The Comco Sulawesi cleared the southern tip of Maui and then Kanahou Bay on Kahoolawe, passing through the Alalakeiki Channel on its way out to open ocean. Renssalear followed grimly, battling the rising seas in his small boat.

Finally, a response. "Got 'er!"

"What'd you use?" Renssalear shouted into his radio mike.

"Duct tape." Renssalear could almost see his friend grinning. "Advanced technology can't function without duct tape."

"I'm going to tie you up in duct tape and mail you off on a forced vacation!" Renssalear wiped a tear from one eye. "I'll come around and pull up to the ladder. The swells are pretty high. Find a life jacket or preserver and jump in if you have to. Don't worry, I'll get to you."

"I know you will, John. I'm on my way!"

Two minutes later the Comco Sulawesi blew up in a spectacular shower of hot metal, burning wood, and flaming oil, bringing to mind for a few minutes the far greater but no more terrifying eruption of Mount Saint Helens. A cursing, screaming Renssalear fought with the wheel of his wildly bucking dive boat, angling it into the backwash and somehow keeping it upright and afloat. Crude drenched his skin, his deck, his equipment, but he didn't care. He kept wiping it from his eyes as he fought his way to the place on the water where the bloated tanker had floated only moments before.

"Didn't need to worry about the damn autopilot," he muttered to himself as he searched the spreading sheet of burning debris for signs of life. "Should've got off when he had the chance. The brave, dumb son of a bitch should've got off."

It was counted a minor miracle when they found Dan Warren clinging to a piece of shattered decking, badly burned and semiconscious. The Coast Guard cutter that had been monitoring the disaster threatened to burn out its own engines as it put on speed for Kahului Harbor, the medics on board doing their best to subdue the pain and keep their patient alive. But there wasn't much they could do. They had not been trained to treat the likes of Dan Warren.

At the hospital they knew him better, but despite their best efforts he continued to lose ground. Or rather, water. While his parents and friends crowded the waiting room and spilled out into the halls and even the street, stricken physicians caucused outside the operating theater.

"There's nothing we can do," one mumbled. "The stuff is all through him. He just ingested too much of it."

"His circulatory biomass is dying," another declared sorrowfully. "He's suffering from an internal oil spill. All the specialized organisms, the unique quasi-coraline structures--the oil's killing them all. He needs a transfusion. Of blood."

"We can't do that." The head of surgery eyed his colleagues, voicing what they all knew. "You know what his system is like. A normal transfusion would kill him as effectively as the petroleum."

"I wonder why the solution didn't work?" muttered another. They had tried replacing Daniel's singular body fluid with a saline solution blended to duplicate that of seawater. Even the pH was correct to a dozen decimal points. But it hadn't worked.

"It doesn't matter." Another doctor was insistent. "We have to try real blood. There's no other way."

"Maybe one." Surprised, they all turned to the head nurse. "Wait for me." Running outside, she dialed the emergency room. Everyone there knew what had happened. Everyone knew how Dan Warren had sacrificed himself in his desperate attempt to save the island's underwater patrimony.

"Is Jimmy Wakamao there?" she asked. He was. "Jimmy, this is Gena Pukalani. I want you to go up to Point Waihee. There's a little reef there. Take the ambulance and don't let anybody or anything stop you. I want you to bring back five gallons of water off the reef, where the current is strong and the water is clear. Yes, you heard me right. Five gallons. Take Steve Portugas with you."

While they waited, the doctors continued to do what they could for Dan Warren. They were arguing over whether to proceed with a transfusion of type AB when the ambulance driver and his assistant burst into the conference room. Between them they carried the plastic container of precious seawater.

"What's this?" the chief of surgery asked. "We've already tried a saline substitute."

"A sterile saline substitute," the head nurse argued. "Dan Warren's body fluid isn't sterile. It's full of life, of living things. It's the sea in miniature. Only the sea can restore him."

"Or kill him," insisted the doctor who was in favor of trying real blood. He indicated the plastic jug. It smelled of open ocean. "Who knows what kind of toxic microorganisms are floating around in there?"

The head nurse looked back at him. She was a local, and had more confidence in the sea than did the good doctor only recently arrived from Philadelphia.

"Nothing more dangerous than has been living in him for his whole life, I'll bet."

Everyone looked to the head of surgery for a decision. If he decided wrongly, he would be accused of letting a state hero die. Finally, he said somberly to his head nurse, "Let's try it."

The clean seawater flushed out the oil. There was damage, but with time and therapy Dan Warren's system gradually rehabilitated itself. The coraline structures that lined his veins and arteries slowly rebuilt themselves; the unique microspecies once more swam and thrived in the inlets and fjords of his legs and arms.

The state gave him a medal, and the locals threw the granddaddy of all luaus in his honor. After a while all the fuss died down. There were pineapples to be gathered, and protea to harvest, and golden macs to box and ship. Tourists needed looking after, and gods old and new required the usual propitiation.

Dan Warren is still there, working out of Lahaina. You can go diving with him if you like. You can't miss him. He carries the aroma of the sea about him like a halo. His eyes are blue, of course.

But like no blue you've ever seen.