Fragment

1:37 P.M.

Geoffrey entered the office he shared with Angel carrying a few bags of sandwiches from Jimmy’s sandwich shop. “Lunch is ser-”

He was shushed by a cluster of colleagues from down the hall who had gathered to watch Angel feed his mantis shrimp.

Watching a stomatopod, or “mantis shrimp,” hunt was truly a spectacle not to be missed.

Geoffrey aborted his greeting immediately and set down his helmet and the sandwich bags. In the large saltwater tank, Angel had placed a thick layer of coral gravel and a ceramic vase decorated with an Asian-style depiction of a tiger. The vase rested on its side, its mouth pointed toward the back of the aquarium.

Angel pinched a live blue crab in forceps. “Don gave me one of his blue crabs. Thanks, Don.”

“I think I’m already regretting it,” moaned Don as he nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“Whoa!” several exclaimed as Angel’s pet emerged.

“Banzai!” Angel dropped the unfortunate crustacean into the tank. Morbid fascination compelled everyone to watch.

The ten-inch-long segmented creature moved like some ancient dragon. Its elegant overlapping plates rippled like jade louvers as it curled through the water. A Swiss Army knife’s worth of limbs and legs churned underneath. Its stalked eyes twitched in different directions. The colors on its body were dazzlingly vivid, nearly iridescent.

“Here it comes,” Don groaned.

The blue crab sculled its legs as it sank through the water, and halfway down it saw the mantis shrimp. It immediately swam for the far side of the vase but the mantis lunged up and its powerful forearms struck, too fast for the human eye. With a startling pop, the crab tumbled backwards. The carapace between the crab’s eyes was shattered and the crab hung limp in the water.

The mantis shrimp moved in and dragged its quarry back into its vase.

The audience “wowed.”

“And that, my friends, is the awesome power of the stomatopod.” Angel sounded more like a circus barker than a stomatopod expert. “Its strike has the force of a.22 caliber bullet. It sees millions more colors than human beings with eyes that have independent depth perception, and its reflexes are faster than any creature on Earth. This mysterious miracle of Mother Nature is so different from other arthropods it might as well have come from an alien planet. It may even replace us someday…Bon appetit, Freddie!”

“Speaking of which, Jimmy’s has arrived,” Geoffrey said.

“Yay, Jimmy’s,” said a female lab mate.

“Glad you’re here,” Angel told Geoffrey. “I’ve got something to show you.”

Everyone took sandwiches. A computer monitor on the lab counter showed a cable newscast with the volume turned down. The SeaLife logo flashed behind the newscaster.

“Hey, turn it up!” someone called, as Angel simultaneously cranked up the volume.

“It’s only two miles wide, but if what the cable show SeaLife aired last night is real, some scientists are saying it might be the most important island discovery since Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos nearly two centuries ago. Others are claiming that SeaLife is engaging in a crass publicity stunt. Last night the show gave a tantalizing live glimpse of what appeared to be an island populated by horrific and alien life that viciously attacked the show’s cast. Network executives have refused to comment. Joining us is eminent scientist Thatcher Redmond for an expert opinion on what really happened.”

Everyone in the room groaned as the camera focused on the guest commentator.

“Dr. Redmond, congratulations on the success of your book, The Human Effect, and your Tetteridge Award which you received just yesterday, and thank you for giving us your insights today,” gushed the newscaster. “So, is it for real?”

“Photosynthesis in action,” Angel said. “The man grows in limelight.”

“Come on now, Angel,” Geoffrey said facetiously. “Dr. Redmond knows all.”

Thatcher smiled, showing a row of recently bleached teeth in his ruddy face. He wore his trademark cargo vest and sported his famous red mustache and overgrown sideburns. “Thank you! Well, Sandy, I only hope that life on the island can withstand discovery by human beings, to be perfectly frank.”

“He’s got a point there,” muttered one of the female researchers, as she bit into her sandwich.

Thatcher continued. “So-called intelligent life is the greatest threat to any environment. I don’t envy any ecosystem that comes in contact with it. That’s the thesis of my book, The Human Effect, as a matter of fact, and I’m afraid if this SeaLife show isn’t a hoax of some sort, I’ll soon have to add another tragic chapter to illustrate my point.”

“Oh brother,” Geoffrey groaned.

“Gee, I wonder if he wrote a book or something,” muttered Angel.

“But do you think it is a hoax? Or the real thing?” persisted the newscaster.

“Well,” Thatcher said, “I wish it were true, of course-as a scientist, that is-but I’m afraid that, as a scientist, I have to say this is probably a hoax, Sandy.”

“Thank you, Dr. Redmond.” The newscaster turned as the camera cut away from Thatcher. “Well, there you have it…”

“No way,” Angel insisted. “It’s not a hoax!”

The others chattered about the controversy as they carried their lunches back to their offices.

“OK, Geoffrey, you’ve got to see this. I’ve got the clip right here.”

“OK, OK.”

Sitting beside Angel in their cramped office overlooking Great Harbor, Geoffrey watched the chaotic images of the last minutes of SeaLife that Angel had recorded.

If someone were trying to stage a schlocky horror film on a very low budget it would probably look something like this, Geoffrey decided. Frankly it looked like that movie The Blair Witch Project, as though the cameramen were deliberately trying to avoid taking a good look at the cheap special effects.

“I can’t make out much of anything,” Geoffrey said.

“Wait.” Angel punched the PAUSE button on the remote and then stepped the image forward. “There!”

He froze the frame as a group of sweeping shadows nearly blackened the screen. Angel pointed a pencil at a shape that looked like a crab leg.

“OK,” Geoffrey said. “So?”

“That’s a toe-splitter! That’s a stomatopod claw.”

Geoffrey laughed and reached for his sandwich. “That’s a Rorschach test, Angel. And you’re seeing the species you’ve been studying for the past five years, because you see it in your dreams, your breakfast cereal, and the stains on the ceiling tiles.”

Angel frowned. “Maybe. But I don’t think so.”

Then Geoffrey noticed something. He stopped eating. As Angel advanced the frames, red drops splattered the camera lens-then a single light blue drop appeared, seconds before the camera went dark.

Angel opened a mini-fridge that had a sign taped to the door: FOOD ONLY. He took out a carton of milk and sniffed it. “So, are you going ahead with the Fire-Breathing Chat tonight?”

Geoffrey turned away from the screen and clicked off the video. “Uh, yep. The Fire-Breathing Chat will go on, despite the intense competition from reality TV shows.”

The Fire-Breathing Chat was a tradition Geoffrey had carried on since his Oxford days. It was a forum for heretical ideas, with which he could outrage his colleagues on a semi-regular basis. Afterward they could pummel him with derision to their hearts’ content. The public was invited to enjoy the spectacle and to join in.

“Everyone’s going to ask you about SeaLife, you know.”

“Yes, you’re probably right.”

“You should thank me for preparing you.”

“Duly noted.”

“Are you really going with the ontogeny-recapitulates-phylogeny thing tonight?”

“Yep. Fasten your seat belt, Angel, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

“When are you going to take home one of your groupies, Geoffrey? Everyone already thinks you’re a Don Juan, so you might as well cash in on your reputation. The girls are right there waiting after every talk, my man, but you always get into a ridiculous scientific argument with a bunch of geezers, instead.”

“Maybe tonight I’ll get into a ridiculous scientific argument with one of my groupies. That’s the kind of foreplay that would really turn me on.”

Angel frowned. “You’ll never get laid, my friend.”

“You’re a pessimist, Angel. And a chauvinist. Don’t think about it. I don’t.”

“But I do. And you don’t. Life isn’t fair! You need to get laid even more than I do, my friend. There’s more to life than biology. And there’s more to biology than biology, too.”

“You’re right, you’re so right.”

Whatever “Don Juan” reputation Geoffrey had was quite unearned. The scientist lacked the patience for friendly, mindless banter. He remained incorrigibly oblivious to traditional romantic signals. Ideas excited him, but he found the rituals of flirtation degrading and inexplicably obtuse.

He’d had nine sexual partners in his thirty-four years. All were short-lived romances, with long gaps in between. Geoffrey attracted would-be rebels, but when the women inevitably tried to force him into some orthodoxy, he had moved on.

While he worried sometimes that he might be lonely at the end of the day, he refused to trade his sanity for companionship.

This was not vanity, or some noble sacrifice in the name of principle. It was simply a fact he had come to acknowledge about himself. As a result, he knew he might well end up alone.

So, love was the one mystery he’d had to approach with faith-faith that he would meet someone, faith against evidence, a necessary irrationality that kept him going, kept him looking toward the next horizon with open-ended hope. Because he had to admit to himself he was lonely… and Angel had an irritating way of reminding him of that.

“So what’s the ceremonial garb for tonight’s riot?” Angel asked.

The Fire-Breathing Chat tradition required the speaker to wear a random piece of clothing of exotic or historical origin-a Portuguese fisherman’s hat, an Etruscan helmet, a Moroccan burnoose. Last time Geoffrey had worn a fairly pedestrian toga, and the crowd had loudly expressed their disappointment.

“Tonight… a kilt, I think.”

“My friend,” Angel said, “you’re crazy.”

“Either that or everyone else is. I haven’t figured out which yet. Why does everyone wear the same thing at any given place and time? We all have minds of our own, and yet we’re afraid to be unfashionable. It’s an example of complete irrationality and fear, Angel.”

“Uh, sure. That sounds good.”

“Thanks. I thought it sounded pretty good, too…”

Geoffrey reversed the video clip. He paused the image as they spoke, pondering the single drop of pale blue liquid at the right edge of the frame.

Someone clever might have added two compelling clues-a stomatopod claw and a splash of blue blood-simply to fool the scientific community and keep a publicity stunt simmering, he mused. But somehow it didn’t seem likely that such sophisticated clues would be known to the producers of a trashy reality TV show. Or that they would count on such subtle evidence being picked up by the handful of experts who would notice.

Geoffrey shrugged and put the puzzle away, unsolved.