“ ERRRrrrrrr! ”
“What?”
“Oh, nothin’. What do you mean, ‘is it over’?” He shook his still groggy head, deciding to answer Sandra’s first question before pondering the second. “The squirt wants a new pet. The bloom’s wore off poor Larry, I guess.”
“That’s not true!” Rebecca scolded. “And Lawrence is not a pet!”
“What is a pet?” Lelaa asked.
“A dog,” Lawrence said, a little wistfully.
“Pets ain’t all dogs,” Silva retorted, “but dogs can be pets. A pet’s just about any critter that likes it when you pet ’em on the head.”
“My God, Mr. Silva, you are a philosopher!” Sandra exclaimed, still muzzy herself.
“Yep. All I need’s a Navy-issue Greek suit.”
“Hand me a piece of biscuit, if you please,” Rebecca demanded. Half asleep, Rajendra grumpily fished in a canvas bag and produced a mildewed cracker. Snatching it away, Rebecca held it up to the creature, near the falls. “Here you are, little fellow!” she entreated. “Won’t you come down and eat? Show yourself! That’s a good little creature!” Tentatively, perhaps coaxed by her pleasant voice or the smell of food, the little vandal eased back out of the shadows.
“Why, it looks like an archaeopteryx!” gushed Abel Cook. The young midshipman/naturalist-in-training had improved considerably over the last few days. He was still weak, and like them all, literally covered with mosquito bites, but the lightly feathered creature sniffing its way skeptically down the falls had stirred his interest. It wasn’t much bigger than a cat, with a long neck and a toothy head just like any other lizard bird they’d seen, but its abbreviated wings and long, feather-vaned tail looked more suited to gliding than flying. Silva chuckled as the light improved because the thing was colored predominantly greenish blue and yellow. The creature retreated at the sound, hissing at Silva with an open mouth full of small, razorlike teeth.
“Sure looks like one o’ your relations, Larry,” Silva prodded.
Lawrence hissed at him too. Rebecca gave them both withering stares.
“Come on, little fellow!” Rebecca cajoled again. “Wouldn’t you like something to eat?”
“Eat?”
“Yes!” Rebecca teased it with the cracker. “Eat!”
“Eat!” the creature mimicked doubtfully.
“Yes, eat!”
Quick as a shot, the little thing raced down the falls, snatched the cracker, then disappeared again in the canopy above. Rebecca checked her fingers to make sure they were all there while Silva laughed. A moment later, they heard another querulous cry from above.
“Eat?”
It was immediately echoed by others. “Eat? Eat? Eat!”
“Uh-oh, now look what you’ve done!” Silva said, turning serious. In a blurry streak, what looked like the first creature bolted down the falls and bounded around the boat shrieking, “Eat! Eat! Eat!”
It bounced off Dennis’s leg and dug in its claws-which hurt-but it wasn’t even as heavy as it looked. Lawrence took a swipe at it with his sword, but it was just too fast.
“Well… give it something to eat!” Rebecca commanded. The entire canopy above was beginning to thrum with the chant “Eat! Eat! Eat!”
“You feed that thing, it’ll never leave!” objected Silva. “Them other bastards’ll be down in a instant and eat us too!”
“Feed it!” Rebecca ordered, and Rajendra obeyed, tossing another biscuit at the creature.
“No!” Sandra almost shouted. Dennis was right, she thought, but it was too late. Seizing the morsel, the creature stuffed it in its mouth, showering crumbs in all directions. Lawrence was trying to get close enough to take another swipe with his sword when another, similar creature swooped down into the boat and defiantly demanded, “Eat!” To their amazement, the first one launched itself at the second, spewing crumbs and shrieking, “Eat! Goddamn!” It struck the stationary “intruder” like a bullet and, as quickly as that, in a shower of feathers and blood, the intruder was dead. Frizzed out now, its meager plumage standing on end, the first creature scampered back up the falls almost to the limbs above and spread its long arms, feathery, membranous wings taut. With formidable claws bared at the ends of long fingers, and its neck stretched out, teeth exposed, it gobbled thunderously like a tom turkey. All protests of “Eat!” ceased in the branches above, and triumphantly, the little creature strutted warningly back down the falls. Finally, hopping the distance to its dead cousin, it clutched the corpse and tore away a feathery gobbet. “Eat!” it chirped contentedly. “Goddamn!”
“Goddamn!” echoed Dennis Silva approvingly. “Little guy’s got the basics down!”
“Look,” breathed Sister Audry, pointing at the brightening world around them.
Sandra gasped. For nearly the last week, while they swayed between the tree trunks, living a miserable, virtually seagoing existence with all the attendant hardships and inconveniences (particularly on the ladies), Yap Island had worked with shiksaks. It had been almost like watching maggots in meat, except these maggots were nearly as voracious toward one another as they were intent on their primary goal. Mating pairs coupled everywhere, briefly and violently, and the act ended, as often as not, with the death of at least one of the participants. Abel speculated the fighting was the natural outcome of cramming so many highly territorial carnivores together in one place for any reason, but it seemed utterly senseless and unnatural to everyone else. Males died, females died, shiksaks of both sexes died fighting over the carcasses of the slain. When a clutch of eggs was laid, almost as casually as defecating, they were often eaten or crushed by their own mothers. Despite Abel’s speculation, he was at a loss to explain this aspect of their behavior, this utter disregard for their offspring.
Apparently, once laid and forgotten, the eggs were safe unless a creature just happened upon them, so maybe they exuded no attractive scent or maybe, as they’d speculated before, shiksaks just didn’t have a welldefined sense of smell out of the water. There was no telling. Abel and Brassey had calculated that despite this apparently self-destructive behavior, there would still be a net increase in the ultimate number of shiksaks. Even given the inevitable infant mortality, this annual smorgasbord/ orgy might be the only way the creatures had to keep their numbers at a sustainable level. At sea, they had no (known) natural enemies except mountain fish and one another. Sandra was surprised that even Sister Audry allowed that, sickening as it was, God may have allowed shiksaks to sort this hideous arrangement out for themselves, since she was incapable of believing he’d designed it thus. Secretly, Sandra reflected that Courtney Bradford would have felt somewhat vindicated after Audry had so violently attacked his faith in a partnership between creation and natural selection. She was glad he wasn’t here to crow about it.
That morning, however, when the day began to break upon the virtually denuded, devastated… battlefield… that Yap now resembled, all that remained of the great infestation was the destruction left in its wake-and the wake of something else that had happened in the night they still didn’t understand. Bloated, festering carcasses lay scattered among fallen trees and sandy, almost rippled soil. The whole place looked like reels Sandra had seen of Poland after the Nazis bombed whole areas into desolation, except that instead of dead livestock, dead shiksaks were littered about. She was fascinated to see green kudzu shoots already bursting forth from some of the dead, and wondered if those that had eaten of them had been infected as well. In all her view, there remained only a single, badly wounded shiksak, and it was determinedly dragging itself toward the sea.
“They’re gone,” she murmured in wonder.
“Gone,” Rajendra agreed. Until last night, he’d still maintained that Silva’s scheme of “riding things out” had been a mistake. Now he seemed as relieved as anyone else.
“Gone and washed away, by the look of things.” Silva said. “I would’ve expected even more bodies… and look, there’s puddles all over the place, with junk all tangled up like after a flood.” Silva looked at Sandra. “Say, what did happen last night? I musta been… preoccupied.”