Beast (17 page)

He walked into Shilly’s and stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He smelled stale beer and cigarette smoke and the spicy, sweet aroma of marijuana. A dozen men crowded around the snooker table, shouting and placing bets. A few others argued over an ancient pinball machine. They were hard men, all of them, with short fuses. Every one was black.

There were several empty tables near the door, but Talley and Manning were standing together in a corner, as if they had been sent there as punishment by a teacher.

An enormous man, black as a Haitian and broad as a linebacker, slid off a barstool and ambled over to Darling. “Whip …” he said.

“Shilly …”

“They with you?” Shilly tipped his head toward the corner.

“They are.”

“Good enough.” Shilly lumbered to the corner and let his face crack into a grin. “Gentlemen,” he said, “please be seated.” He pulled a chair out from the nearest table and held it for Manning.

When they were seated, Shilly said, “What’s your pleasure?”

Manning said, “I’d like a Stolichnaya on the—”

“Rum or beer.”

“Make it three Dark and Stormys, Shilly,” Darling said.

“You got it,” Shilly said, and turned back to the bar.

Darling looked at Osborn Manning, who appeared to be in his early fifties. He was impeccably tended: His nails were polished, his hair perfectly shaped. His blue suit looked as if it had been pressed while he waited to be seated. His white shirt was starched and spotless, his blue silk tie held in place by a gold pin.

But it was Manning’s eyes that Darling couldn’t stop looking at. In the best of times they would have seemed sunken: His forehead stopped in a shelf of bone over his eyes, and his brows were thick and dark. But now they looked like two black tunnels, as if the eyes themselves had disappeared.

Maybe it’s just dark in here, Darling thought. Or maybe that’s what grief does to a man.

Manning noticed Darling staring at him, and he said, “Thank you for coming.”

Darling nodded and tried to think of something civil to say, but couldn’t come up with anything better than, “No problem.”

“Do you live nearby?” Talley asked, making conversation.

“Close enough.” Darling nodded at the north wall. “Across Mangrove Bay.”

Shilly brought the drinks, and Talley took a gulp and said, “Splendid.” Darling watched Manning’s reaction as he took a sip: He winced but suppressed a grimace. To a mouth used to vodka and ice, Darling thought, rum and ginger beer must taste like anchovies with peanut butter.

There was an awkward silence then, as if Talley and Manning didn’t know how to begin. Darling had a fair notion of what they wanted of him, and he had to force himself to resist the temptation to tell them to cut to the chase, get to the bottom line. But he didn’t want to seem eager; over the years, he had made quite a few dollars by keeping his mouth shut and listening. At the very least, he always learned something.

Manning sat stiffly, his suit coat buttoned, his hands folded in front of him, and stared at the light of the single candle on the table.

What the hell, Darling thought, no harm in being polite. He said to Manning, “Sorry about your youngsters.”

“Yes,” was all Manning said.

“I can’t imagine what … we have a daughter … it must be …” He didn’t know what else to say, so he shut

up. Manning looked away from the candle and raised his head toward them. His eyes still seemed hidden back in their caves.

“No you can’t, Captain. You can’t imagine. Not till it happens to you.” Manning shifted in his seat. “You know the worst feeling I ever had up to then? It was when they were applying to college. It was the first time my children were ever threatened by something I couldn’t protect them from. Their lives, their futures, were in the hands of strangers I had no control over. I’ve never felt so frustrated in my life. One day I found I was losing the sight in one eye. I went to doctors, had all manner of tests, nothing was wrong. But I was losing the sight in that eye. Then I was playing squash with a friend, and I told him about it—an excuse, I suppose, for why I was losing so badly—and he said that when his kids had applied to college, he had developed ulcera-tive colitis. What I had was hysterical blindness. As soon as they were accepted into schools, it went away. I swore then that nothing like that would ever happen again.” He squeezed his hands together and shook his head. “You want to know what the feeling is like? I feel like I’m dead.”

Talley took another gulp of his drink and said, “Captain Darling, we liked what you said at the meeting.”

“You were there? Why?”

“In the back of the room. We wanted to see how people are reacting to all this.”

“That’s easy,” Darling said. “They’re scared to death. One step short of panic. They see their world being threatened by something they can’t even understand, much less do anything about.”

“But you’re not … scared, I mean.”

“You heard what I said back there. It’s like anything else big and awful in nature. You leave it alone, it’ll leave you alone.” He thought of Manning’s children, and added, “Generally … as a rule.”

“That doctor back there. St. John … he’s a fool.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“But there is something I disagree with you on. What’s happening here is not an accident.”

“What is it, then?”

Darling saw Talley glance at Manning, then Talley said, “Tell me, Captain, what do you know about Architeuthis?”

“What I read, what you wrote, other stuff. Not a whole lot.”

“What do you think about it?”

Darling paused. “Whenever I hear talk about monsters,” he said, “I think about Jaws. People forget Jaws was fiction, which is another word for … well, you know, B.S. As soon as that picture came out, every boat captain from here to Long Island and down to South Australia started fantasizing about thirty-and forty-and fifty-foot white sharks. My rule is, when someone tells me about a critter as big as a tractor-trailer truck, I right away cut a third or a half off what he says.”

“Sound,” said Talley, “very sound. But—”

“But,” Darling said, “with this beast, seems to me when you hear stories about him, the smart thing to do is not cut anything off. The smart thing to do is double ‘em.”

“Exactly!” Talley said. His eyes were bright, and he leaned toward Darling, as if pleased to have discovered a kindred spirit. “I told you I’m a malacologist, but my specialty is teuthology … squid … specifically Architeuthis. I’ve spent my life studying them. I’ve used computers, made graphs, dissected tissue, smelled it, tasted it—”

“Tasted it? What’s it taste like?”

“Ammonia.”

“Ever seen a live one?”

“No. Have you?”

“Never,” Darling said. “And I’d like to keep it that way.”

“The more I studied, the more I realized how little anybody knows about the giant squid. Nobody knows how big they grow, how old they get, why they strand sometimes and wash up dead … not even how many species there are: People say three, some say nineteen. It’s a classic example of the old saw: The more you know, the more you realize how little you really know.” Talley stopped, looking embarrassed, and said, “Sorry. I get carried away. I can cut this short if you—”

“Go on,” said Manning. “Captain Darling has to know.”

They’re setting me up, Darling thought: They’re trolling for me, teasing me like I was a hungry marlin.

“I have a theory,” Talley said, “as good as most and better than some. Up to the middle of the last century, nobody quite believed in the existence of Architeuthis, or of any giant squid. The few sightings were dismissed as the rantings of sailors gone mad. All of a sudden in the 1870s there was a rash of sightings and strandings and even attacks on boats, and—”

“I read about them,” Darling said.

“The point is, there were so many witnesses that for the first time people believed them. Then it all stopped again, until the early 1900s, when, for no reason, there were more sightings and strandings. I wondered if there was a pattern, so I collected reports of every sighting and every stranding, and I fed them into the computer with all the data on major weather events, current shifts and so forth, and I told the computer to find some rhyme or reason to it.

“The computer’s answer was that the pattern of sightings and strandings coincided with cyclical fluctuations in branches of the Labrador Current, the big cold-water funnel that sweeps up the whole Atlantic coast. For most of the cycle, Architeuthis is never seen, alive or dead. But in the first few years of the change, for whatever reason—water temperature, food supply, I don’t pretend to know—the beast shows up.”

“How long are the cycles?” Darling asked.

“Thirty years.”

“And the last one began in …” He knew the answer before the words were out of his mouth.

“Nineteen sixty … ran through sixty-two.”

“I see.”

“Yes,” Talley said. “You do see. It’s here because it’s time.” Talley leaned forward, his hands on the table. “But the truth is, I can give you a volume of facts, and document them for you, and not for a second can I tell you why they’re so. Some people think Architeuthis may get trapped in warm-water currents and suffocate for lack of oxygen and die and wash ashore. Other people think it could be cold water that gets him, water less than, say, minus ten degrees centigrade. Nobody knows.”

This man, Darling thought, is in love with giant squid. “Doc,” he said, “this is all very interesting, but it doesn’t say a lick about why the beast is suddenly eating people.”

“But it does!” Talley said, and he leaned farther forward. “Architeuthis is what we call an adventitious feeder. He feeds by accident, he eats whatever’s there. His normal diet—I’ve looked in their stomachs—is sharks, rays, big fish. But he’ll eat anything. Let’s say that cyclical currents are bringing him up from the two-, three-thousand-foot level where he usually stays. And let’s say he’s finding that his usual food sources are gone. You’d know about this, Captain. From what I hear, Bermuda’s almost fished out. And let’s say all he’s finding to eat is—”

There was a sharp snap! that sounded like a rifle shot, and something flew past Darling’s face.

Osborn Manning had been clutching his plastic swizzle stick so hard that it shattered. “Sorry,” he said. “Excuse me.”

“No,” said Talley. “I’m sorry. Lord …”

“Doc,” Darling said after a pause, “there’s one thing you haven’t talked about—Nature’s number one rule, balance. When there get to be too many sea lions, up jump the white sharks to keep ‘em down. When there get to be too many people, up jumps some plague like the Black Death. Seems to me, this critter being around here is saying nature’s out of whack. Why?”

“I have a theory,” Talley said. “Nature’s not out of whack, people have put nature out of whack. There’s only one animal that preys on Architeuthis, and that’s the sperm whale. Man has been killing off the sperm whales—they could already be practically extinct. So it’s possible that more and more giant squid are surviving, and now they’re showing up. Here.”

“You mean you think there’s more than one?”

“I don’t know. My guess is not, because there’s not enough food to support more than one. But I could be wrong.”

More questions crowded into Darling’s mind, more theories swam around and tried to coalesce. Suddenly he realized that he was taking the bait, and he forced himself to back off, to prevent Talley from setting a hook in him.

He made a show of looking at his watch, then pushed his chair back from the table. “It’s late,” he said, “and I get up early.”

“Ah … Captain … .” Talley said, “… the thing is, this animal can be caught.”

Darling shook his head. “No one ever has.”

“Well, no, not a true Architeuthis. Not alive.”

“What makes you think you can?”

“I know we can.”

“Why in God’s name do you want to?”

Talley started. ” Why? Why not? It’s unique. It’s—”

Manning interrupted. “Captain Darling,” he said, “this … this creature, this beast … it killed my children. My only children. It has destroyed my life … our lives. My wife has been sedated since … she tried to—”

“Mr. Manning,” Darling said. “This beast is just an animal. It—”

“It is a sentient being. Dr. Talley has told me … and I believe … that it knows a form of rage, it knows vengeance. Well, so do I. Believe me. So do I.”

“It’s still just an animal. You can’t take revenge on an animal.”

“Yes I can.”

“But why? What good will it—”

“It’s something I can do. Would you have me sit back and blame fate and say, ‘That’s the way it goes’? I will not. I will kill this beast.”

“No you won’t. All you’ll succeed in doing is—”

Talley said, “Captain, we can. It can be caught.”

“If you say so, Doctor. But leave me out of it.”

Manning said, “How much do you charge for a day’s charter?”

“I don’t—”

“How much?”

Here we go, Darling thought. I never should have come here. “A thousand dollars,” he said.

“I’ll give you five thousand dollars a day, plus expenses.”

When, after a moment, Darling hadn’t replied, Talley said, “This isn’t only personal, Captain. This animal must be caught.”

“Why? Why not just let it go away?”

“Because you were wrong about another thing back at the meeting: It won’t stop. It will go on killing people.”

“Five minutes ago that was a theory, Doc. Now it’s a fact, is it?”

“A probability,” Talley acknowledged. “If it’s found a food source, I see no reason why it will move on. And I don’t believe there’s a living thing out there that can stop it.”

“Well, neither can I. Get someone else.”

“There is no one else,” Manning said. “Except that jackass St. John …”

“… with his master plan,” Talley broke in. “Does that man truly think he can catch Architeuthis by throwing explosives in the ocean? It’s ridiculous … a game of blindman’s bluff!”

Darling shrugged. “He’ll get his name in the papers. Look, Mr. Manning, you’ve got all that money, you can hire yourself some big-time experts, bring in a ship.”

“Don’t think I didn’t try. You think I want to work with you … with locals? I know islanders, Captain, I know Bermudians.” Manning put his elbows on the table and leaned toward Darling. His voice was low, but its tone had an intensity that made it seem like a shout. “I’ve had a house here for years. I know all about small islands and small minds; I know how you people strut around and bray about your independence; I know what you think about foreigners. As far as you’re concerned, I’m just another rich Yankee asshole.”