Natural Selection Read online

  Dave watched her warily. “You sure you wanna be doing that?”

  Her hands moved closer. “We’ll find out. . . .” Her fingernails were about to touch it.

  Suddenly it spun around and its jaws snapped open and instantly thundered closed.

  “Jesus!” Dave yelled.

  “Oh my God.” Theresa couldn’t believe it. The animal had moved so quickly! Voom! She didn’t know rays could move that fast. It was perfectly still now, and she focused on its mouth. She hadn’t noticed the mouth earlier. Its opening was a slit the size of a stapler, massive in proportion to the body. And its bite hadn’t only been vicious but powerful. Theresa hadn’t noticed any teeth—she remembered that most rays didn’t even have teeth. But even without them, its bite had been so strong it could have broken her fingers.

  Gabby stared at her hand. “Are you all right?”

  Theresa checked that all five fingers were in fact still there. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  Suddenly the creature leaped up into the air.

  “Oh my God!” Gabby slammed back into the railing, nearly falling overboard.

  But the animal simply fell back onto the deck, landing with a wet thud.

  On its back now, its underside was even whiter than the fiberglass.

  Dave Pelligro studied it anew. The mouth’s slit looked very large indeed, maybe larger than a stapler. And the stomach was slowly moving up and down, in harmony with the wheezing sound. The damn thing looks like it’s breathing to me, Pelligro thought.

  The creature suddenly leaped up again. It nimbly flipped in the air, landed rightside up, then once again, didn’t move.

  Dave, Theresa, and Gabby just stared at it, anxious to see what it would do next.

  Chad had another reaction. “That’s it, I’m killing this damn thing. . . .” He walked to the bow to find something to whack it with. But then he paused. What’s it doing now?

  The little animal was rapidly flapping its wings, whacking them hard on the deck like a loud jackhammer.

  Dave just watched it, amazed. Jesus, the damn thing’s trying to fly.

  And failing miserably. It showed no sign of lifting off.

  The animal seemed to realize the same thing and abruptly stopped.

  It’s been out of the water at least five, maybe ten minutes, Theresa Landers thought. How can it survive that? And how did it move its wings so quickly? Theresa had seen rays swim before, and they always moved very slowly, like birds in slo-mo. She supposed, however, that when their wings were only pushing against air, they could move much faster.

  The animal moved again—sort of. The muscles on the left side of its back suddenly seemed to rapidly flex, and Theresa watched them. Wow. She’d never seen muscles move like that, almost like superfast rippling waves. Boy, were they fast! Then the muscles on the left side stopped and the ones on the right began. The process repeated itself. Theresa just watched, fascinated.

  Then, very quickly, the muscles froze and the body’s front half lifted off the deck until the horned head was completely vertical. Then the animal effectively stood there, about a foot tall, its front half in the air, its back half flat on the white fiberglass.

  It looked quite menacing and Theresa got the hell away from it.

  But the ray didn’t budge. It simply remained where it was, like an upright seal or a stiff jack-in-the-box. Looking at it, Theresa remembered that many ray species didn’t have spines. Their entire bodies were made of cartilage that made them extremely flexible. A stiff jack-in-the-box indeed.

  The wind started gusting, and the horned head slowly turned.

  What’s it doing? Theresa thought. She wasn’t sure but it looked like . . . Did it sense the wind?

  The shifting head froze, and then it happened.

  In a surprisingly fluid series of motions, the creature leaped off the deck diagonally, pumped its wings, and, with a touch of luck in the timing, caught the wind and . . . flew. Flapping frantically and lacking body control, it headed straight for the guardrail, smacked into it, and tumbled into the sea.

  Everyone rushed over to try to see it.

  But there was only dark water. The animal was gone.

  Suddenly Dave squinted. Did he see a second one? No, he didn’t think so. He slowly looked up at Theresa, astonished by what had just happened. “Do you believe what we just saw?”

  Theresa didn’t answer. She just gazed at the water.

  But Dave was dumbfounded. “That thing flew, for Christ’s sake!”

  Theresa turned to him, visibly stunned. “It did. It really did.”

  “Wow,” Gabby said simply.

  Chad marched to the head of his vessel. “Yeah, really incredible. A jumping fish, up in the air for a whole second. You guys call Jacques Cousteau; I’m out of here.”

  As Chad turned on the engine, Theresa wondered if she actually should call Jacques Cousteau. Or at least the closest thing to him. Eighteen months earlier, she’d visited a brand-new manta-ray aquarium in San Diego. The visit had been a big disappointment—there hadn’t even been any mantas—but if the place was still in business, she wondered if she should discuss the afternoon’s events with someone there. She decided on the spot. She’d go. Theresa loved puzzles, and she wanted an answer to this one right away.

  What the hell had they just seen?

  CHAPTER 3

  “SO IS what I saw of interest, Mr. Ackerman?”

  Harry Ackerman, fifty-two and rail thin, looked up from a note-filled legal pad and focused on Theresa Landers, sitting on the other side of a small brown wood desk. Theresa had come to this massive complex of aquariums, once known as Manta World, to describe the ray she’d seen off Clarita Island to whoever would listen. A bored UC San Diego girl, chomping on bubble gum and obviously working a summer job, had started writing down Theresa’s statement when Ackerman had overheard and taken over.

  Ackerman was practiced at taking statements and questioning people. He hadn’t interrupted her. He’d simply let her talk and written down every single thing she’d said. He dismissed the crazy parts, about the flying and possible breathing, as exaggeration. People regularly exaggerated when they retold a story they were excited about.

  Ackerman was actually excited himself—though he didn’t look it. Harry Ackerman rarely looked excited about anything; it just wasn’t in his character. With the exception of an antique Patek Philippe watch with lots of Roman numerals and a $62,000 price tag, he didn’t look like a multimillionaire either.

  He’d started to take her statement because he’d been bored. Theresa was an attractive young woman in a too-tight all-white outfit and too much makeup. But looks aside, Ackerman had just assumed she was another loony. They regularly came into most marine facilities claiming they’d seen this fish fly, that fish breathe, or that sea monster playing cards. The statements were always outlandish and very comical. And that was why Ackerman had spoken with her. He’d been reading debt covenants, trying to find loopholes that could allow him to desert Manta World’s lenders legally, when he’d decided he’d needed a laugh. Theresa had indeed given him one, at least with the flying and breathing parts. But then a funny thing had happened. As she’d continued, she’d started to make sense. Ackerman was no expert, but the animal she described in vivid detail sounded like it might somehow be . . . significant.

  “It most certainly is of interest, Theresa. I have some questions if you don’t mind.”

  Theresa nodded. She wasn’t sure what she thought of Harry Ackerman. He sounded nice; it wasn’t that. It wasn’t his attire either. Khakis and a button-down; who could argue with that? His eyes had something to do with it. They were cold eyes, dead too—even when he was silently laughing at her. He hadn’t laughed out loud, of course, but Theresa knew he’d found her amusing. Given what she’d told him, she hardly blamed him. But he wasn’t laughing now, not even silently—Theresa could tell. Something she’d said had caught his interest. She thought he was way too corporate to be a marine biologist, yet he seemed t
o know his stuff.

  “Ask away.”

  “You said it was black on its top and white on the bottom?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Pure jet-black and pure milky white—you’re sure?”

  Theresa thought for a moment. “Yes.”

  “No shades of brown or gray?”

  “No, none.”

  “No stripes or dots or other discolorations?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  She didn’t change her story, Ackerman thought. He’d asked her the same questions several times, and she’d come back with identical answers. She had a good memory and wasn’t making this up. Exaggeration perhaps, but not outright fantasy. What had she seen out there? The coloring she’d described was classic manta ray—numerous physical traits were also—but several details didn’t fit. She’d said the animal didn’t have a tail, and mantas almost always had tails. Many other physical characteristics didn’t jibe either.

  Harry Ackerman stroked his cleanly shaven chin. He didn’t like mysteries. He preferred things to fit into neat, clearly defined packages. Frustrated, he glanced down at something.

  What’s he looking at? Theresa wondered. She could see it was something beneath the desk; it looked like—

  “Are you a marine biologist, Mr. Ackerman?”

  He glanced up, and the eyes seemed to chill further. “I’m a lawyer by training actually. Now—”

  “A lawyer? How did you get into this?”

  “I’m on the board.” This was sort of true.

  Theresa nodded and looked around. They were seated in Manta World’s massive east wing. She couldn’t believe the size of the place, with towering ceilings and wide spaces that made a shopping mall look small. Except for the two of them and the bored college girl gabbing on the phone at another small desk, the place was empty. There wasn’t even a sign out front anymore. There certainly weren’t any manta rays. Theresa stared at the biggest fish tank she’d ever seen in her life. It was literally the length of a football field and the height of a three-story building, filled with turquoise water and nothing else.

  “They all died.”

  She turned. “Excuse me?”

  “The mantas. They all died. We don’t know why, we just couldn’t keep them alive.”

  “Oh.” Theresa stared at the tank anew. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s still very sad.”

  And Harry Ackerman meant that. He wasn’t on Manta World’s board; he was the board. Ackerman was a patent lawyer by training, but at the height of the late-nineties dot-com boom, he’d done what others had. He wrote a business plan on a cocktail napkin, created an Internet company, and took it public. The goal had been to create a legal marketplace, an online subscription service that lawyers across the country could use to share information on cases. The company IPO’d for $1.8 billion, and while it went bankrupt just nine months later, the investment bankers had their fees, and Ackerman had obscene amounts of money, $500 million after taxes. Rather than buy a pro basketball team or sailing crew, he invested his money, and not necessarily wisely. He put massive chunks into a handful of the era’s other hopeful high-tech ventures, including a fiber-optic company, as well as Manta World. None had done well.

  But besides money, what Ackerman also craved was respect from a group of people who didn’t dole it out easily. Despite his success, none of the real players at the dozen charitable foundations and golf clubs that he and his wife had joined would give him the time of day. This elite group of entrepreneurs, real-estate moguls, entertainment CEOs, and hedge-fund managers hardly spoke to him. In their eyes, Harry Ackerman was nothing more than another dot-com idiot who’d gotten lucky. They were always polite but brief in that typical CEO style Ackerman despised. The message was clear: he could join all the charities and golf clubs he wanted, but he wasn’t in their club.

  Ackerman longed for the day when he would be, when he and his wife would casually stroll into a thousand-dollar-a-plate black-tie charity ball, and heads would quietly turn. Isn’t that Harry Ackerman? Then all the fancy types would jockey to meet him for a change—to ask him to dinner or discuss investments and his favorite flavor of ice cream.

  The Manta World project had been a disaster from the get-go. Five years old and counting, it was almost dead, even though Ackerman still had a handful of marine biologists under contract. They were on the ocean in tropical Mexico now, still with the nominal goal of trying to make it all work. Ackerman had been in salvage mode for months, but maybe, just maybe, this woman could help take things in another direction. But he had to be sure. “You said it didn’t have a tail.”

  “Correct.”

  “No tail of any kind, not even a little stump?”

  “No, nothing.”

  Ackerman nodded. Still sticking to her story.

  “And it wasn’t more than a foot across the wings?”

  She nodded.

  “You’re sure? It wasn’t, say, three or four feet?”

  “No. I remember it distinctly—it was as wide as a phone book is long.”

  Again, exactly what she’d said before. “And you said it was . . . stocky?”

  “Very—muscular, too.”

  “Hmm.”

  Something else that didn’t fit. Mantas could be called stocky, but only when they’d grown into adults. When they were immature, they were extremely thin, almost wispy, certainly not stocky and muscular. It didn’t fit.

  Theresa watched Ackerman closely. For the first time, he looked downright puzzled. Without a trace of embarrassment, he removed what he’d been surreptitiously studying earlier: a large coffee-table book, Circumtropical Rays of the World. He opened it on the table, and Theresa watched as he flipped colorful, glossy pages, settling on a spread about mantas. Theresa noticed a photo of a manta with a scuba diver, and her eyes bulged slightly. That thing’s enormous! The size of an airplane! Boy, did they get big!

  Ackerman turned to her. “You said its eyes were large?”

  “Very.”

  “How big were they?”

  “The size of golf balls.”

  “Golf balls?” He stared at the pictures again. “And it had horns sticking out of its head?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.” Ackerman didn’t know rays like the biologists who worked for him, but he’d still learned a great deal about them in the past years. The horned head was a very distinctive feature; very few ray species had it, only two that Ackerman knew of. They were the two he’d kept going back to, the manta and the mobula ray. But the large eyes were something else that indicated that the ray had been neither of those. Ackerman shook his head. What had she seen? He flipped another page, focusing on a marble ray. Marbles were round, unmistakably so, but she’d said this animal was shaped like a stealth bomber, the classic manta shape. He flipped again. Not a stingray either. All stingers had clearly defined spines with tails that were impossible to miss.

  He shook his head. That left only one other possibility. A new species. What if she’d actually seen a new species out there?

  “Thank you for coming in, Theresa.”

  “Oh.” Theresa hesitated then uncrossed her legs. She’d been dismissed. She stood.

  Embarrassed by his bad manners, Ackerman stood as well. “Sorry. What I meant is I really appreciate this. It could be useful. We’ll see.” He smiled warmly and shook her hand.

  “My pleasure.”

  Ackerman picked up the phone. He wanted an expert opinion. Now. As he dialed, Theresa pretended to look for something in her pocketbook. She watched as he tapped out a very long series of digits. She heard a jolt of static and guessed it was an overseas connection. “Hi, Monique? It’s Harry Ackerman calling for Jason. . . . Oh, someone just came in who may have seen a new species. Can I speak with him, please?”

  As Theresa left, she wondered who Jason was. Perhaps a marine biologist? As she entered Manta World’s massive empty parking lot, she realized she’d forgotten to mention the animal’s very
odd muscle movements. She wouldn’t bother now. She got in her car and drove off.

  Moments later, Ackerman hung up the phone and was quietly thrilled. One of the world’s premiere experts on rays had just said something fantastic: he had no idea what the woman had seen.

  Well, they were going to find out. Ackerman picked up the phone again. “Get me a car. Now.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “WHAT’S HE doing here?”

  Lisa Barton wiped a strand of dark hair away from her binoculars.

  It was another gorgeous, sunny day here in the middle of the tropical ocean. Alone at the front of a white fiberglass yacht, Lisa had been sunning herself on a lounge chair when she heard the boat engine in the distance. She was a very pretty twenty-nine, with a young face, big brown eyes, and soft white skin that never darkened thanks to heavy use of number thirty lotion. People often said she looked like something out of an animated film, the damsel in distress who’s rescued by the hero. Lisa Barton was anything but a damsel in distress. Her opinions were strong and, when necessary, so was her mouth. She was also a top oceanic nutrition specialist.

  She held her hair back, peering through the binoculars. Yes, it was Harry Ackerman, her boss’s boss and the man who was paying them. Why was he here? Ackerman was a businessman and never showed up to chitchat. They were in the Sea of Cortés on the Gulf of California in tropical Mexico. Ackerman’s yacht cut out, and Lisa guessed he’d stopped to take in the scenery or something else.

  In a bikini, she put on a bright green T-shirt and khaki shorts and realized both were wrinkled. Son of a bitch! Lisa loved clothes and was sick of living like a vagabond. She hadn’t signed up for this. Manta World was supposed to have been a land-based job. No ocean work—none. But things hadn’t gone according to plan, the aquarium had been a disaster, and now the six of them—four men and two women—were virtually living on the water, either in the five tiny bedrooms below or at junky seaside motels that went for thirty-nine dollars a night with continental breakfast included.