Chapter 13 #3
The binoculars came around to her (“You’re the new volunteer?
Welcome to MORI! Let me show you the trick to getting these ancient things to focus.
. .”) and Isabel successfully located the calf and its scars.
Then she tilted the dual magnified lenses back toward the shore.
Closer, scanning through the kelp forest. But no humanoid seals breached the water.
Wes and his camera were likely submerged.
He’d stay under for longer than she could claim the binoculars, so she passed them on, before extracting her phone from her pocket.
She retreated from the group to shield her screen while she typed.
Isabel Wright
A pod of orcas is passing through the canyon. They’re ninety meters beyond the kelp.
She didn’t warn him to be careful. There were no documented attacks of wild orcas on humans in the open ocean. The apex predators weren’t cruel or vindictive without biological cause.
Unlike whoever was secretly experimenting on octopuses at MORI.
She edged back into the lab. Weaving between biofarm tanks and trays of kelp starts beginning their growth in sunlight by the windows, she scanned a maze of abandoned research stations.
Which of the scientists exclaiming over the calf’s injuries outside had sliced off their octopus’s arms? Which of them had hurt her?
She sent another message to Wes.
Isabel
I haven’t observed any unusual research practices at MORI so far. Have you noticed anything in the bay?
His response arrived half a minute later.
Wes Monaghan (voice-to-text)
Nothing bad. Plenty good. One thing that’s weird. Tell you at lunch? Meet back at the Jeep in 15 minutes if you’re finished?
Wes
(Didn’t spot the orcas. Lots of nutrients in the water today. I could hear them, though.)
She confirmed the time. Then, with those last few minutes remaining to her in the facility while most of MORI’s personnel were distracted on the deck, she moved to the cephalopod hatching tank.
Dr. Solomon wasn’t hovering over its squirming paralarvae.
The octopus scientist hadn’t been on the deck with the other whale watchers, either.
Where was she? Regardless, Isabel wouldn’t waste this precious opportunity.
She advanced on the red-lit aquarium glass.
(“Days Since Hatching: 29”)
The semi-transparent two-spots wriggling in the water were no larger than her ragged thumbnail.
But they’d already begun to anchor themselves against the tank’s simulated currents, to fix suckers smaller than pinpricks to the live rocks and pump equipment.
Shadows of color flickered across their mantles.
Not camouflage, but still: normal behavior.
Counting arms was finicky work with the tiny subjects in their hundreds, though of the dozen or so she assessed, eight limbs seemed standard.
Unlike the migrating orca calf, none of these little cephalopods were scarred.
Her sigh of relief misted the glass. She smiled at an octopus dangling like a trapeze artist from a filter nozzle, its skin shimmering abalone-pink with curiosity about this strange object, about the mysterious capabilities of its own body, and—
“What are you doing?”
Drying her hands after a trip to the bathroom, Dr. Solomon was back.
“Oh. . . I—”
“No. Stop harassing the animals.” The scientist elbowed past to position herself between Isabel and the aquarium.
“I’m sorry.” Rocking onto the heels of her too-large boots, Isabel raised her palms as proof. “But I haven’t touched anything and I—”
“Keep out of my business.”
“I wasn’t, I was just—”
“Keep out.”
“—but. . . yes, sorry. I’m sorry.” She retreated to the lobby under Dr. Solomon’s scowl.
Brianne’s blonde eyebrows lifted over her computer when Isabel edged crabwise through the lab’s industrial door, flushed and awkward. “Oh, no. Your first shift was that bad? I warned you about the fish guts.”
“No, the—the effluvium was fine.” She brushed at damp splotches on her jeans. She swallowed and tried to retrieve her smile. “I enjoyed the work. The animals.”
Even the people hadn’t been too difficult.
“Then don’t tell me. Was it Dr. Solomon?”
Most of them, anyhow. . . She hesitated over something sticky on her right knee.
“Don’t take it personally. She’s territorial with everyone. You probably got too close to her tank. Or what she considers to be too close. Then she snapped at you like you were committing corporate espionage.”
It wasn’t a question, so Isabel didn’t answer.
“No one at MORI is supposed to work more than six days in any week, but she’s here for all seven with those octopuses most of the time.
Even when there’s facilities maintenance happening in the lab and my contractors need the space, when there are safety compliance trainings for the staff, when—well, you understand. ”
“Yes.”
What Isabel also understood was this: MORI’s facilities manager was monitoring Dr. Solomon too, even if Brianne’s watchfulness was rooted in irritation rather than Isabel’s own suspicions.
A kilogram of tension lifted from her shoulders while she acknowledged the other woman’s complaints.
This was good.
Despite her failure to identify the source of their octopus’s injuries within her first four hours at MORI, she could be satisfied with what she’d learned today. Murmuring a goodbye to Brianne, she pushed through the institute’s exterior doors and walked down to the parking lot.
Wes was there.
With the sleeves of his dripping rash guard pushed up over his elbows, he was bent over and toweling off his calves.
Ink and jellyfish striations gleamed on his water-slick skin.
The dueling black and red-flushed lines were stark beneath the sunlight beating across his neck and forearms. His hair had slipped loose from its elastic, and it tumbled into his eyes like bronze-burnished seaweed.
When he glanced up through that golden straggle and grinned, waving at her, she missed a step.
But he was busy chucking his towel through the Jeep’s rear window and didn’t see. “Ready for lunch? I think I smelled fajitas earlier today, when we drove through Moss Landing.”
Her mouth watered.
Breathless, she just nodded.
He navigated them back along Sandholdt Road to the Haute Tamale, a bright and tiny restaurant overlooking the Old Salinas River.
They washed their hands, then pulled out chairs under an awning of wind-rumpled but defiant paper flags that fluttered near a speaker playing cheerful Mariachi tunes.
Isabel ordered a plate of beans and rice with a tortilla on the side.
Wes pointed to an item on the menu marked by a chili pepper.
He chatted to their waiter about it in casual Spanish, and bobbed his head emphatically at the man’s hesitation.
“He said he’s going to bring me an horchata on the house.”
“What did you order?”
“No idea. But it’s Mexican and spicy, so it’ll be good.”
He’d picked a Guadalajaran sandwich drowned in a chile de árbol sauce.
It arrived steaming and on a ceramic plate bluer than an octopus’s eyespots.
When Isabel inhaled too deeply through the straw in her water glass, its vibrant, sizzling smell sparked tears in her eyes.
Wes pushed his horchata across the table.
Then he sawed off a bite of his sandwich. He chewed. She watched. He smirked.
“Delicious.” His breath was a flame. “Want to try it?”
She drew a long pull from the horchata.
“Smart. I should warn you, though: you’ll need to keep an eye on whatever deep-fried monstrosities we eat when we meet up with Erin and Adrian. He wants to see the Santa Cruz boardwalk. That means funnel cakes and corn dogs and churros. Plus, secret dipping sauces.”
“Why?”
Wes rolled his eyes and took another bite.
“Adrian and I gave Ethan a trial by fire—or Scoville scale?—over the holidays. We had a hot-sauce competition. He held his own. But it got heated, and Erin’s always given as good as she gets.
Once we spill the beans on. . . us, she might try something similar with you.
Not because she doesn’t like you, but because she’s getting back at me. ”
Maybe Isabel should have asked for a nibble of his spicy lunch then, to prove herself.
She didn’t.
(It doesn’t matter. This isn’t real.)
“Anyhow, that’s for us to worry about next week. Tell me about MORI.”
Over another sip of horchata and a few spoonfuls of rice, she toured him through her observations in the wet lab, from mackerel chopping with Mehar and the other volunteers, to bat-ray enrichment, to spotting orcas in the bay—and the staff exodus that had given her an opportunity to assess the octopus tank.
“Dr. Solomon was in the bathroom for a few minutes, so I could study the condition of the paralarvae. They were healthy and growing, with no signs of physical deformity or experimentation. But I didn’t have much time, and she saw me.
She told me to stop interfering with the octopuses.
She warned me to keep out of her business. ”
“She yelled at you?” Wes put down his fork.
“No,” she assured him, and he relaxed. “She didn’t want me there, though.
Or anyone else. Brianne seems to be monitoring her, too.
” Considering the implications of the data she’d collected on Dr. Solomon, as well as Brianne’s irritated comments, Isabel pushed the horchata glass back toward Wes.
She’d finished the drink, however. She winced. “Sorry.”