Jurassic Waters Read online

  Jurassic Waters

  E. Johnston Coulombe

  Jurassic Waters

  Published by Cambrian Publishing House

  Copyright © E. Johnston Coulombe 2014

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1499361988

  ISBN 10: 149936198X

  This is a work of fiction. References to people, events, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. Characters and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination and are not intended to be construed as real.

  This book is dedicated to Bruce, Carter, Mary, and Kaia

  “All evolutionary phenomena are fundamentally inexplicable. We see all these mysterious rabbits come out of a magic hat. That is all. The sequence and the source are the only clue… The amazing performance proceeds, openly and regularly, yet no one can see how the trick is done. But we suspect there is some sort of collusion between the Magic Hat and all these goddamn Rabbits.”

  William Patten 1932

  Jurassic Waters

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty One

  Chapter Forty Two

  Chapter Forty Three

  Chapter Forty Four

  Chapter Forty Five

  Chapter Forty Six

  Chapter Forty Seven

  Chapter Forty Eight

  Chapter Forty Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty One

  Chapter Fifty Two

  Chapter Fifty Three

  Chapter Fifty Four

  Chapter Fifty Five

  Chapter Fifty Six

  Chapter Fifty Seven

  Chapter Fifty Eight

  Chapter Fifty Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty One

  Chapter Sixty Two

  Chapter Sixty Three

  Chapter Sixty Four

  Chapter One

  At first, everything appeared normal. Andrew Collier swirled the test tube and withdrew a single drop, placing it surgically on the slide. Then he moved the slide onto the stage and fitted the lens to his eyes, adjusting the mirror. The image fuzzed in and out of focus until it jumped into bright clarity.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. Several rod-shaped, rose-colored halo-bacteria floated from one end of the view to the other. With the back of his hand, he wiped away the sweat that had gathered on his forehead and continued to search the slide carefully, his heart pounding as he looked for an aberration. Then he saw it—a cluster of cells in the corner, dividing too fast.

  “Damn!” he muttered, his brows deeply furrowed as he reached up and clicked the camera shutter. He peered through the lens. The colony had become several hundred cells larger - already. How fast can Archaea replicate? His long fingers twisted and turned the knob. The structure was no longer just a colony of cells: there was a banding pattern across the left end of a larval-like structure. As he watched, it mutated into what could only be described as a worm.

  Now those cells on the right were becoming a tail; and there, in the middle, what was that? He could have sworn he saw an alimentary canal - a gut - developing. He shifted the base back to the left. The anterior end divided several more times. Can this be it, Andrew thought, can this be the primordial ancestor?

  A loud knock at the door startled him. Andrew looked up at the wall clock. Six minutes? Damn! In six minutes, a single cell had mutated into a complete annelid worm. Another knock shook the door. Oh, go away, he thought, but the door creaked open. He glanced through the scope once more, expecting to see the annelid – but it had changed, on the right end one of the cells appeared to have divided into eight equal parts, clustered around a central axis in the form of an arrowhead. Just next to that cell was another, going through the same transformation. He watched, belief suspended, as the right end of the annelid developed into…

  “What?” Andrew looked up to see the housekeeper grab her chest with fright as she realized someone was there in the dark.

  ““Oh - Doctor, it's you. I think lab empty. I going to clean -”

  “Not now, go away!” Andrew barked, the last word falling on a door closing behind the retreating Hawaiian woman.

  He looked back into the scope. Blackness. Shit, the bulb must have burned out. He yanked open the table drawer beneath the scope, and with reflexive movements, replaced the bulb, deftly refocusing as he did so. He wanted to see that octagonal structure again--whatever it was--but he couldn't find it. In fact, he couldn't find any complete structures now. All he saw beneath the scope was a mass of de-differentiated cells, tissue parts ruptured. It looked as if he'd squashed it under the lens, yet he knew he hadn't. Whatever it was had self-destructed right under his nose, and he'd missed it! Dammit!

  Frustrated, Andrew discarded the glass slide and pulled another sample from the test tube. He tried to recreate the mutations again, being careful to duplicate each detail. But the new slide showed no unusual growth, just normal bacterial divisions. He tried all afternoon, and finally, exasperated, turned off the laminar-flow hood, replaced the scope on the bench and removed the film. Anxious to develop it, he shucked off his lab coat and headed for the darkroom.

  Once he left, the housekeeper returned. She had been waiting outside on the lanai, anxious to finish her job. Quick, she thought, I'll be in and out before he returns. She certainly didn't want another encounter with him. As she entered the lab, she was grateful that he was tidy. The lab was clean, except for ten skinny tubes filled with murky liquid that he'd left in a basket. She took them out, careful not to let them spill onto the counter, and poured their contents into the sink, watching the cream-colored fluid swirl around the basin and finally down the drain - naïve and unaware of the profound consequences of her actions.

  Chapter Two

  Six Months Later

  Andrew leaned back in the handmade koa wood chair. The smoothed contours molded around his lanky frame in a perfect fit. This must have been my father's chair, he thought. It had been more than 20 years since Andrew last sat in that chair–he had stayed away from his island home for almost two decades. A momentary chill swept over him. He closed his eyes. The ever-present trade winds tickled his neck, rustled the tall grasses and the palms, and muffled the sound of the children's laughter as they ran along the shore trying to catch the sand crabs before they scurried sideways back into their lairs, narrowly escaping the senseless deaths the children had planned for them.

  With great effort, Andrew
opened his eyes. Light blue sky and dark blue ocean etched a perfectly straight line at the end of the lawn, at the end of the land-locked world. Sometimes things that appear as ends are really beginnings, he mused. Whitecaps disturbed the water. Windy out there today. Not a good day for a crossing.

  He sat very still, his arms draped one on each side of the chair. The palm fronds wrestled in the wind above his head -- whoosh, slap, slap, whoosh, slap, slap -- his familiar, his madeleine, bringing forth a slew of dusty memories. Not the crackling sound of the deciduous forests on the mainland, of drying oak-hickory leaves stirred by autumn breezes. That was Emma's familiar. But this sound, the gentle brushing, scraping, followed by the slap -- this was his. Why did I stay away so long, he wondered. Leaning his head back, he felt the warm sunlight on his closed eyelids, and drifted away again.

  His wife, Emma, sat down in the chair next to his. Through the slits of his half-closed eyes he could just make out her graceful movements, her tan, shapely legs, crossed at the ankle. He felt comfortable sitting next to her; the tension between them, which had become too familiar in Boston, now gone.

  “The barge returns from Kauai today,” she said, “and George happens to be on Kauai; I'd like to get him over here if possible.”

  Andrew sat up, as she knew he would. They hadn't seen their best friend George in two years, since leaving the Mainland. He was Andrew’s colleague, and closest friend at Harvard, a paleontologist. “That would be fantastic,” but you'd better ask Grant first,” Andrew said, referring to his brother. “That'd be up to him, you know.”

  She stood and stretched, showing him her profile. Her hands swept down and pressed her loose dress against her frame, accenting the slight bulge of her stomach. His eyes followed, studying her. She looked older than when they’d first met, wrinkles more pronounced around her mouth. Even though she had been smiling less and less over the years, the wrinkles still had come. But he loved those wrinkles, new and old, and the slight coloration of skin round her eyes. Her hair was thinner, but still thick and glossy as it fell down her back like a Hawaiian's. He loved everything about her -- in a different way than when they were younger. Now she gave him a feeling of security, warmth, like a well-used and beloved coat.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Good. Better than good.” She nodded. “Happy.” His smile encouraged her. “I know we didn't plan to have this child, but now that we are, it's like…” She shrugged her shoulders as she spoke, as if acquiescing to a larger force. “I feel as though it's all I ever wanted.” She gently stroked his arm. “I’m really grateful to you, Andrew, for everything. For coming here, this house, this island. I know what you had to give up.”

  Andrew placed his hand over hers, leaned back and closed his eyes again.

  She turned to leave, but stopped suddenly. “Hey, when did you say your colleague was arriving? Kerri? Will she be on the barge today?”

  “She might, I’m not sure exactly which flight she was able to get. I told her to contact Grant’s family over on Kauai when she got here. That they’d arrange for her to get to Nakoa.”

  “Perhaps George and Kerri will be here at the same time, then?” The tender skin around Emma’s lips wrinkled in response to her elfish grin.

  Andrew laughed and shook his blonde head. He could read her match-making mind.

  “No, I don't think so, honey.”

  “Why not? George is still a bachelor. How old is Kerri?”

  “I'm not really sure. I've never actually met her.”

  Emma raised her eyebrows. He felt her do it—felt her tense up--even though his eyes were closed.

  “I've only spoken with her on the phone,” he said.

  “Well, anyway,” Emma mumbled as she walked away, “I’d better go find Grant.”

  Chapter Three

  Andrew shifted his weight in his chair as he watched Emma disappear down the trail. She’ll be fine, he thought. His eyes closed again. So out of character for me to be sitting here resting -- hell, napping -- in the middle of the day. Is this Polynesian paralysis? But he was tired. In fact, he felt completely wrung out. He'd tried unsuccessfully for half a year to recreate what he'd seen under his scope that day, and for nothing. A hundred times he'd tried and failed. He couldn't make it happen again.

  But make what happen again? What had actually happened? That was what haunted him. In retrospect, it seemed unreal, thank god he had the photos to prove it, or he wouldn't believe it himself.

  He sighed and reached down to pick up the Science magazine lying on the ground next to his chair. The magazine reminded him again of Kerri’s impending visit. Maybe it’s just as well Emma didn’t want to know more about my conversation with Kerri. The encounter came back to him—how he had called Kerri and her lab assistant had answered, but he could hear Kerri in the background.

  “If he's over thirty, I won't talk to him,” she had quipped. “Oh, never mind,” she continued, without waiting for a response. “Tell him to wait. Maybe I am in the mood for another argument.” She picked up the receiver. “Hello, this is Kerri Shapiro.” He cleared his throat.

  “Hello, my name is Andrew Collier. I'm calling about the article in Science.”

  “Yes, well, I've already had it pointed out to me that the lack of a control for gene linkage between the lactose and the amino acid valine factors doesn't discount the possibility that the linkage exists.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And I've already discussed, several times over, the fact that mutation rates increase with stress, meaning I found what I was looking for simply because I was looking.”

  “Possibly.”

  “And, no, I am not planning on submitting a retraction of my results.”

  “A retraction?” Andrew was puzzled. “Why would you? Have you been unable to repeat the experiment?” He halted, half expecting to hear yes because of his own recent failures.

  “No. I've repeated it, twice, and both times with identical results. It was in this month's Science. Haven't you seen it?”

  “This month's? No, actually, I only just received last month's issue. Mail is a bit slow out here.”

  “Oh, in the boondocks, hey?”

  “The mail boat only crosses the channel once a week.”

  He heard her put down what he guessed was a petri dish. “Excuse me, where exactly are you calling from?”

  “Nakoa, Hawaii. Ever hear of it?”

  There was a sharp intake of air on the other end of the line, a pause. When Kerry spoke, her voice was softer. “Just the thought of that warm sand and blue sky makes me feel better than I have all day… actually, all month, since that first damn article appeared.” She sighed. “But Nakoa? The island north of Kauai…I'm sorry, your name again…?”

  “Andrew Collier.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “Now you have my attention. Yes, I've heard of Nakoa and the name Collier as well. Your family's somewhat legendary in Hawaii, as I recall.”

  “Legendary?” Andrew laughed. “If running a few head of cattle and raising a couple of acres of cane is worth remarking on, I'd be surprised to hear it.”

  “A humble celebrity; what an unexpected surprise. And what can I do for you, Mr. Collier?”

  “It has to do with some work I’m doing here. Let me give you the background.” He told Kerri a bit about his connection to Harvard, haltingly at first, but he soon found it surprisingly easy to talk with her. He explained that he'd spent most of the past twenty years at Harvard, first as a student, finally as a full professor. He'd only recently returned to Hawaii for his family's sake, he said, leaving out the part about Emma threatening to divorce him if he didn't.

  “Well, Doctor Collier, what can I do for you?” she said when he finished.

  “Call me Andrew, please, Miss Shapiro.”

  “Okay, okay, call me Kerri,” she laughed.

  “Well, Kerri, as I mentioned, I'm interested in your work.” Cautiously, without giving specific information, Andrew told
her how something of his research in his makeshift lab on Nakoa. He then questioned her in detail.