“Lynda will be worried if we’re not here when she gets back.”
“We’ll leave her a note.” Howard began handing out diving gear, and I gave up. Although Howard has a placid nature, once he’s made up his mind about something there’s no stopping him. In short order we were in the dark, cold water, heading down.
Howard swam ahead of me, deep into the pool, and I followed, letting him lead the way. I’d only been down here a couple of times, but Howard dove here regularly, playing with the monsters; he knew his way around. All the tunnels in the watery labyrinth looked the same to me, but Howard headed straight toward one of them and swam into it, and I swam after him. We maneuvered through the maze of tunnels, twisting and turning, until I was completely lost. But Howard knew where he was going, and finally we reached Stranger’s vast home cavern.
She was waiting for us, floating in the weird blue bioluminescence that lit her home. When she saw us approaching, she spun about in a great arc and began to swim deeper into the cavern. Howard followed her, and I followed him. We were very deep now, past the three-martini level, and I was feeling fairly giddy by the time Stranger came to a sudden stop, swinging her head around to gaze at us. I simply stared at her, admiring her enormous blue eyes that so closely matched the luminescence around us, until she moved her head toward the wall behind her in what seemed to be a look-at-this gesture.
Clinging to the wall was a cluster of bright yellow plants with fluorescent-orange tendrils that waved in the current. They were terribly pretty. I reached out to touch one, and Stranger smacked my hand with her snout, nearly sending me into a cartwheel. I stared at her in confusion, then belatedly remembered that brilliant colors in marine life often indicate a toxic nature. Undoubtedly the pretty little plants were poisonous. Why was Stranger pointing them out to us? It took another minute for my nitrogen-fogged brain to realize that she was telling us that Curious had eaten one. Yet why would Curious eat one? The sea monsters ate fish and other swimming things; they didn’t graze on plants that grew on the walls.
I was puzzling through this when Howard caught my arm and pointed. One of the yellow-and-orange plants had launched itself from the wall and was swimming, propelling itself rather like an amoeba. An odd thing for a plant to do. Perhaps it wasn’t a plant? Stranger waved her streamers at it and the yellow thing selected a new spot on the wall and attached itself. I gazed at it in fascination until I noticed Howard tugging at my arm. It was time to start back up.
When we finally reached the surface, the sun was up, and Lynda and Tegan were waiting for us. I blinked at Tegan in surprise as I pulled off my mask, noting that her hair was almost as bright as the plant-creatures below.
“I thought we might need more help,” Lynda said, “so I brought Tegan. Kami’s going to cancel your appointments and take care of the animals in the clinic.”
Tegan looked rather glassy-eyed, which wasn’t surprising since she’d just met the monsters, but she was already tentatively reaching out to touch Caddy’s fin. Caddy swam closer and blew a spume of water from her blowhole; Tegan smiled in delight. All in all, she seemed to be handling her introduction to the monsters rather well. I supposed that I shouldn’t be surprised; after all, the woman kept lizards in her hair.
“What did the x-rays show?” I asked Lynda.
“It’s hard to see much, but the barium stopped about halfway along. It didn’t move at all on the last three films.”
“Let me see.” I hurried back out to the bank, and Lynda handed me the films. She was right; the barium had definitely come to a stop, but it was damned difficult to tell where. Details simply didn’t show up on the films.
“What did you find out down there?” Lynda asked.
“I think Curious ate something. A plant or an animal, I’m not sure which. Something like an anemone.” I glanced at Howard; he nodded confirmation.
“Something poisonous?” Tegan asked.
“Yes. Poisonous.”
Lynda handed me the blood results and I scanned them quickly. Almost everything was out of the monsters’ normal range; the liver and kidney values had skyrocketed, and the electrolytes were way out of balance. The values looked remarkably like those of a snakebitten dog. Everything was fitting together in a rather horrible fashion, leading to one inescapable conclusion.
“I brought a full surgical kit,” Lynda commented.
I was going to have to do surgery on a sea monster.
“Surgery?” Howard said frantically. “Surgery?”
I knelt in the shallows with Lynda, putting an IV catheter into Curious’s tail fluke vein. “Surgery,” I said. “It’s the only way. We’ve got to take that thing out.”
The IV was in place; Lynda hefted the three-liter bag and hung it from an IV pole that she’d rammed into the mud. I was nervous about giving Curious fluids; aquatic creatures have a very delicate fluid and electrolyte balance. But Curious’ balance was so far off already, the fluids would more likely be beneficial than harmful. And what about temperature regulation? Would keeping him mostly in the water be sufficient?
“But,” Howard said, “but what if we misunderstood Stranger? What if it’s something else altogether?”
“Either way, I’ve got to go in and look! He’s losing ground too fast; we can’t be conservative any more.”
“But surgery!” Howard cried.
“And I need you to calm down. I need you to keep Curious calm, not scare him to death.”
“Keep him calm? But aren’t you going to use an anesthetic?”
Everything I’d read about cetacean general anesthesia suggested that it was all too often catastrophic, and sea-monster anesthesia was undoubtedly even more dangerous. “Of course I’ll use anesthetic,” I told Howard, trying to sound soothing. “A local block.”
“A local? That’s all?”
“Anything more would probably kill him, Howard. A local will do the trick as long as he stays still and quiet. You know how sensitive he is to us—all you’ve got to do is hold him and stay calm yourself.”
“I—I don’t think I can do calm right now,” Howard stuttered. “Lynda, could you?”
Lynda glanced at me; I shook my head. “I’ll need Lynda to assist in surgery,” I said. “Come on, Howard. Take a deep breath.”
Howard took a deep breath, but it didn’t help; he still looked positively frantic. If he touched Curious while in this emotional state, Curious would be terrified, and that was exactly what I didn’t need. Perhaps if I gave Howard a tranquilizer…
Tegan spoke up then. “I can do it,” she said calmly. She slipped into the water alongside Curious and reached for a tentacled fin. Gently she took the fin into her hand, settled herself comfortably in the muddy shallows, and closed her eyes. At her touch, Curious visibly relaxed. I blinked in amazement and relegated Howard to fetching and carrying.
We coaxed Curious into rolling on his side, and got him positioned. I injected the local under his skin with some trepidation, hoping it wouldn’t be toxic to him. When I had finished the block, Lynda prepped the site, and I set up for surgery as well as I could, considering that we were going to have to operate in the water. I laid the packs out on the bank, donned my mask and gloves, and waded out to my patient with scalpel in hand.
I took a deep breath, hoping it would work better for me than it had for Howard. Curious lay quietly before me, his eyes closed, his tentacles wrapped around Tegan’s fingers. Tegan sat in the shallows like some fantastic spike-haired water nymph, a trancelike expression on her face. Howard paced nervously on the bank, and out in the pool the other sea monsters floated with barely a ripple, watching. I made the first incision.