"Acts like he don't wanna come out," said Baritz rubbing a kicked shin.
Sugden leaned over. "Can you hear me?" he shouted. Brock nodded vigorously.
"Can you speak to us?" Brock shook his head.
"Did you do this to yourself on purpose?" A violent shake.
"Accident?" Brock nodded.
"Do you want to get out?" Brock nodded and shook his head alternately.
Sugden frowned in perplexity. Then he said, "Do you mean you'd like to but can't because of your condition?" Brock nodded.
Sugden continued his questions. Brock, growing impatient at this feeble method of communication, made writing motions. Sugden handed down a pencil and a pocket notebook. But the water immediately softened the paper so that the pencil, instead of making marks, tore holes in it. Brock handed them back.
Sugden said; "What he needs is a wax tablet and stylus. Could you get us one, Sam?"
Baritz looked uncomfortable. "Cheez, Boss, what place in N'yawk sells those things?"
"That's right; I suppose we'll have to make it ourselves. If we could melt a candle onto a piece of plywood—"
"It'll take all day fa me to get the candle and stuff and do that, and we gotta do something about poor Vuinon ..."
Brock noticed that the entire staff was now lined up on the catwalk. His beloved was well down the line, almost out of sight around the curve. At that angle the refraction made her look as broad as she was tall. He wondered if she'd look like that naturally after they'd been married a while. He'd known it to happen. No, he meant if they got married. You couldn't expect a girl to marry a man who lived under water.
While Sugden and Baritz still bickered, he had an idea. But how to communicate it? Then he saw a remora lying below him. He splashed to attract the attention of those above, and sank down slowly. He grabbed the fish in both hands, and kicked himself over to the glass. The remora's nose—or, to be exact, its undershot lower jaw—made a visible streak on the pane. He rolled over on his back, and saw that he was understood; Sugden was calling for someone to go down to the floor and read his message.
His attempt at writing was hampered by the fish's vigorous efforts to escape. But he finally got scrawled on the glass in large wobbly capitals: "2 WEIGHTED STEPLADDERS—1 WEIGHTED PLANK—1 DRY TOWEL."
While they were getting these, he was reminded by his stomach that he'd had no solid food for eighteen hours or thereabouts. He glanced at his wristwatch, which, not being a waterproof, had stopped. He handed it up, hoping that somebody would have the sense to dry it out and take it to a jeweller.
The stepladders were lowered into the tank. Brock set them a few feet apart, and placed the plank across their tops. Then he lay on his back on the plank, his face a few inches below the surface, fie dried his hands on the towel, and by cocking one leg up he could hold a pad out of water against his knee and write on it.
He explained tersely about the accident and his subsequent seizure, and told what had happened chemically to his lung-tissues. Then he wrote: "As this is first experiment on living organism, don't know when effect will pass if ever. Want lunch."
Baritz called to him: "Don't you want us to take the shoks out fuist?" Brock shook his head. The claims of his stomach were imperious, and he had a vague hope of solving his problem without disturbing the fish. Then too, though he'd have hated to admit it, he knew that everybody knew that the sharks weren't maneaters, and he didn't want to seem afraid of them. F.ven a sensible man like Vernon Brock will succumb to a touch of bravado in the presence of his woman, actual or potential.
He relaxed, thinking. Sugden was ordering the staff back to its work. Dumville had to leave, but promised to be back. By and by the faithful Baritz appeared with what Brock hoped was food. Brock's position struck him as an uncomfortable one for eating, so he rolled off the plank and stood on the bottom of the tank. Then he couldn't reach the surface with his hand. Baritz thrust a lamb chop on the end of a stick down to him. He reached for it—and was knocked aside by a glancing blow from something heavy and sandpapery. The lamb chop was gone—or not quite gone, the larger shark had it over in a corner. The shark's jaws worked, and the bone sank slowly to the bottom, minus its meat.
Baritz looked helpless at Sugden. "We betta not try meat again—those shok can smell it, and they might get dangerous if we got them wuiked up."
"Guess we'll have to get the net and haul them out," said Sugden. "I don't see how he could eat mashed potatoes under water."
Brock swam up, and went through the motions of peeling and eating a banana. After Baritz had made a trip for bananas Brock satisfied his hunger, though he found that swallowing food without getting a stomachful of salt water required a bit of practice.
The crowd in front of the tank was larger, if anything. The little man with the wry nose was still there. His scrutiny made Brock vaguely uneasy. He'd always wondered what a fish on exhibit felt like, and now, by George, he knew.
If he could get out and do a few months' research, he might be able to find how to counteract the effect of the lung-gas. But how could he perform experiments from where he was? Maybe he could give directions and have somebody else carry them out. That would be awkward, but he didn't want to spend the rest of his life as an exhibit, loyal as he was to the Aquarium. A better idea might be to rig up some sort of diver's helmet, to wear out of water with the water inside—if he could find a way of oxygenating the water.
Baritz appeared again, and put his head down close to the water. "Hey, Vuinon!" he said, "God's coming down here!"
Brock was interested, though not by the theological aspects of the statement. God, better known as J. Roosevelt Whitney, was the president of the New York Zoological Society, and the boss of Minnegerode, the director of the Aquarium (in Bermuda at the moment). Minnegerode, was Sugden's boss. God, the head of this hierarchy, owned among other things a bank and a half, 51% of a railroad, and the finest walrus mustache in Greater New York.
Baritz put on his child-frightening grin. "Say, Vuinon, I just thought. We can advatise you as the only muimaid in captivity!"
Brock throttled an impulse to pull his helper into the tank, and motioned for his pad. He wrote: "The male of 'mermaid' is 'merman,' you ape!"
"Okay, a muiman, unless the gas changed more than ya lungs. Oh, good aftanoon, Mista Whitney. Here he is in this tank. Anything I can do, Mista Whitney?"
The famous mustache floated above the water like a diving seagull. "How ah you, my deah boy? Ah you making out all right? Don't you think we'd bettah get the sharks out right away? They're perfectly harmless, of course, of course, but you might accidentally jostle one and get nipped, ha-ha."
Brock, who at 32 was pleased rather than irked at being called "my boy," nodded. J. R. started to get to his feet not noticing that one foot was planted on Brock's rolled-up apron, while the toe of the other was caught in it. Brock received a tremendous impact of sound and current, and through the sudden cloud of bubbles saw J. R.'s massive rear descending on him. He caught the man and shoved him up. As the shiny pink head cleared the surface, he heard a terrified scream of "Glugg—blubb—Oh God, get me out! The sharks! Get me out, I say!" Brock boosted and Baritz and Sugden heaved. The dripping deity receded down the catwalk, to Brock's distorted vision broadening to something like a Daily Worker cartoon of Capital. He wished he knew whether J. R. would be angry or whether he'd be grateful for the boost. If he inquired about the apron it might be embarrassing.