18mm Blues (44 page)

William came up on deck and shared the sky with them for a while. Grady had a hug around Julia and she put a hug around William so he shouldn't feel left out. William would take over the helm.

“If you want, put it on autopilot. The radar doesn't show anything ahead for a hundred miles,” Grady said. “You know how to set the auto?”

“No problem. I'll keep it on course.”

“Wake me when we get to India,” Grady quipped and followed Julia down the companionway ladder.

At four-thirty Grady came suddenly awake. He knew at once without having to reach with his legs that Julia wasn't in the bed. He got up. Nor was she in the head. He slipped on a pair of shorts and went topside.

There she was. At the helm with William. What they were having was more than a discussion, less than a disagreement. They went abruptly silent when they became aware of Grady there.

He noticed the heading was changed, now it was 275, close to due west, and William was changing it again to 250, west southwest, giving in to Julia, who'd been insisting on 250.

“Are we sailing around in circles or what?” Grady asked. He used the GPS receiver, determined their position and went below to look at the chart, returned and told them, “There's nothing out here.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a blip showed up on the radar screen. Another ship, a freighter or tanker probably, Grady thought watching it. He kept watching it and realized it wasn't moving. Could it be an island? If so, it wasn't on the chart. Nothing extraordinary about that though. There were uncharted islands all over the world, hunks of land not important enough to warrant a change by the chart makers.

Island or whatever it was, it was twenty miles ahead at Julia's bearing of 250.

They kept going right at it, and after a while the sun came orange over the horizon and struck their backs, rose higher and brought yellow. It was giving true color to everything when what had been a blip became definitely an island.

As they got closer, enough to it to make out its size and shape, Grady had the feeling that he'd seen it before. He chalked it up to déjà vu, however. If it was that it was stronger and of more duration than any he'd ever experienced.

Julia knew for certain what she was feeling wasn't déjà vu. There before her eyes was the island that had invaded her imagination when she'd painted the seascape for Grady's office. Its configuration, its hues, everything was identical with her rendering of it. Naturally, she'd painted it in her nonliteral style, underlaying, overlaying, dry brushing, overloading her brush and allowing runs. She'd made it up as she went along. Anyway, she thought she had until now.

William's memory knew the island well. As he guided the ketch around the high point of it near where twenty years ago he'd brought up that first blue pearl oyster and proceeded to circle the island, he saw it hadn't changed greatly. The reef had thickened quite a bit and grown higher in places but the lagoon and everything else looked just about the same. “Where do you want to dive?” he asked Grady.

“Makes no difference to me. How about off the reef?”

William brought the ketch close in to the reef so it was headed into the wind. Dropped anchor. Grady peered over the side to the water. “How deep do you think it is here?” he asked.

“Six to seven fathoms,” was William's estimate.

“No more than thirty feet,” Julia said with surprising conviction.

“You ought to know,” Grady grinned, “it's your island.”

She agreed.

“Are you going to dive today?” he asked her.

“I don't think so, maybe.”

“How about you, William?”

“A little later.”

“You ought to have some breakfast first,” Julia told Grady.

His stomach agreed, but he was too anxious to get in the water. He converted the transom into a diving platform, put on his gear and flopped in. The sun was hitting the water at an easy glancing angle. He followed a diagonal shaft of it downward. Knew he was bound for beauty before he got to it, as he caught a glimpse of a sea whip, its scarlet tendrils beckoning him to come look.

The reef, particularly the base of it, was a dominion of unique life and vivid color. The less animate, the corals, were dominant. They got their sobriquets from their textures, such as the leather coral, the porcelain, the brain, the lettuce leaf. They were the composers of the reef, their accumulation and obdurate fatalities providing a beautiful irregular place for whatever chose to swim, crawl, dart or hide, especially hide.

Grady's presence sent all sorts of creatures into niches. Some, either dumb, fearless or too curious to heed their sense of survival, remained around him. An angelfish, a couple of clown fish. Perhaps they just knew they were better swimmers than he. A huge green sea turtle waited until the last moment of Grady's approach before scuttling off, stirring up a trail of the cobalt blue sand.

Grady hadn't ever seen sand that color. Like ground-up blue sapphires.

He swam along the bottom close to the reef, feeling good about where he was, taking in everything, telling himself to remember it. He lost track of time, wanted to. But after a while, decided he'd go up and persuade Julia and William to dive. This was something that Julia, with her appreciation for color, shouldn't miss.

He turned to go back, and it was in his turning that he spotted the oyster, the same sort of oyster being cultured by Kumura. About the size of a dinner plate, a
Pinctada maxima
, a silver lip. It was a solitary oyster, a stray, and it was in trouble. A red starfish had attached to its shell.

Grady tried to pull the starfish from the oyster, then tried to pry it off with his knife. Didn't want to hurt the starfish, so he just took it along as a passenger to the surface.

His find was heavier out of the water, weighed four to five pounds. He handed it up to William and climbed aboard. Julia came aft and they squatted around it as it lay there on the deck in the sun, the enormous oyster and its bright red, piggybacking deadly enemy.

“Were there any more?” Julia asked.

“This was all I saw but I didn't really look. There could be more,” Grady replied. He was excited, on the verge of hyperventilating.

“There'll be more,” Julia predicted.

The sun got to the starfish. The tips of all five of its arms curled up slightly, and after a couple of minutes it let go. Julia plucked it gently off the oyster and placed it in the sea, watched it revive and swim from sight.

The oyster was also feeling the heat, more so now without the starfish to shield it from the sun. There was a slight, nearly indiscernable opening between the oyster's meshing valves.

“Should we help it along?” Grady asked.

“Be patient,” Julia told him.

The oyster responded slowly but surely and after ten minutes that seemed ten times longer to Grady it was open enough for Julia to slip a wine cork between its valves to keep it open. She picked up the oyster with both hands and held it up so Grady could look into it.

She enjoyed watching the expression on his face. His mouth went oval and his eyes went wide. Disbelief caused him to snap his head. He reached into the oyster with the first finger of each hand, pincering. Felt the slick, wet creature within, had difficulty because of its slickness, did not allow his overanxiousness to cause injury.

The size of the pearl he extracted was about eighteen millimeters.

It appeared to be perfectly round.

But most incredible, it was blue. A deep lively blue similar in shade to the natural pearl owned by Kumura. Rare nearly to the point of nonexistence and accordingly precious. Grady's gem dealer mind went right to the question of how much such a pearl was worth. A million? More. Several million? At least.

Julia and William each had a look at the pearl and shared Grady's excitement. Julia was happy for his happiness, gave him a tight, praising hug and shrieked jubilantly as she whirled him around. William beamed and congratulated, smacked Grady on the back. Grady had hit the long shot! Who said there were no more naturals to be found?

Julia looked after the benefactor, the oyster. She removed the cork from between its valves. Before placing the oyster back into the water she told it to be sure to steer clear of starfish.

“I'm going back down,” Grady said.

“Not until you get something in your belly,” Julia ruled.

“I noticed some chocolate bars. Just give me one of those.”

“You ought to have something solid.”

“I eat now I'll get indigestion,” Grady said. “Come on, Julia, dive with me. It's beautiful down there. You too, William.”

“Considering where we are someone should stay up top,” William said.

“Go find another oyster,” was Julia's pleasant way of declining. She went below and got two chocolate bars, unwrapped them for him. He stuffed his mouth with one whole bar, could barely chew, had to wait for the blob of chocolate to melt. It taxed his patience. He felt like spitting it out. He tossed the second bar back to Julia, went to the platform and, like a big, incorrigible kid, let out a whoop as he fell in.

He searched along the base of the reef, paying little or no attention now to the beauty of the underwater terrain. Not even a silvery, translucent jellyfish that looked like some extraterrestrial spaceship could distract him for more than a moment. He hunted back and forth, covering every foot of the sandy bottom there, knowing what he might overlook would be a fortune.

He came to a spot at the base where the coral pillars that formed the reef had broken way, leaving a hole more than adequate enough for him to pass through. A few undulations of his fins put him on the inner side of the reef and within the lagoon. The depth was the same there but the water was a lighter, more vibrant blue, and the bottom visibly sharper. Grady was immediately struck by how sparsely occupied this part of the lagoon was, as though it was forbidden territory. Only a few big-eyed blennies and sea horses swimming about, acting foolish. Even more pronounced was the quiet. He could barely hear the sea breaking against the outer side of the reef. Could clearly hear, louder than he could ever recall, the ascending bubbles of his exhales, the cool assuring boil of them.

He began his search within the lagoon. He was in its deepest part. From there its bottom inclined gradually to shallows. Oysters, even as fussy as they were, should love it here, Grady thought. Clean, quiet, secluded. A hell of a nice place to be a hermaphrodite. Christ, he was happy. It didn't matter if he found another oyster, another pearl. He had his.

Lime green streaked by him.

What was that? He hadn't gotten a look at it.

Shocking pink shot by on his other side!

And then came yellow, a citron yellow.

He didn't realize they were snakes until there were more of them, swimming slower, and closer. They were four to six feet long and big around as his forearm, had flat, paddlelike tails. He'd read about the species, how, unlike eels, sea snakes had to go to the surface to fill their neck-to-tail lungs with air, how venomous they were but gentle and friendly unless agitated. How the hell could anyone determine the disposition of a snake? And bet his life on that opinion? These seemed to Grady anything but amiable, the way they kept making ever closer passes at him, opening their jaws to display their fangs. How many were there? Twenty and growing in number. Others hurrying to get in on the kill. A green one and a pink one were treading in a coil only a foot above his head. He could make out the symmetry of their scales, their black eyes set mean in their heads. They hinged their mouths open and struck at the bubbles of his exhale, time and time again, lunged and disappointed their fangs. Evidently, that's what had them riled, the sound of his exhales. Perhaps, Grady thought, any kind of unusual sound turned on their anger, or was it just that the lagoon was theirs and this was the way they dealt with any intruder? That would explain the reason for the lack of sea creatures on this side of the reef. The creatures knew better, and, now, so did he.

He decided not to surface. That would be the fastest way out of the lagoon but it would also cause the most commotion. Did he dare move at all? He had to.

He turned slowly, extended his legs slowly, worked his fins slowly. The breech in the reef through which he'd entered the lagoon was about thirty feet away. It was like he was swimming in turquoise-colored gelatin. He put off exhaling his breath as long as possible. It was agonizing. Any instant he expected to feel fangs piercing his legs, venom being injected into him. If one, just one, started it, they'd probably all want to get in on him. They were swimming all around him now, at their top speed, weaving in and out of one another, keeping ahead of him, surrounding him. All the way to the hole in the reef.

Maintaining his slow motions he glided through the opening. Thought they would follow after him, but they didn't. Were satisfied with having chased him out.

He needed safety, surfaced at the stern of the boat, raised his mask and clung to the platform with tremulous hands. “Fuck!” he uttered.

“What's wrong?” Julia asked. She saw how pale he was.

“In the lagoon, nothing but snakes. Real ugly fuckers.”

“Maybe now you'll get out and have something to eat.”

“Last thing I expected was snakes.”

“Were you bitten?”

“No, just scared shitless. Good thing you didn't dive.”

“You are getting out now, aren't you?”

He considered it, decided not yet. The best place for him to get his nerves back would be down there on the bottom. “I want to have a look around the point,” he said, meaning the high end of the island about a hundred yards north. “Who knows, might be a bed full of beauties there.”

“Bed full of beauties, huh?” Julia arched. “Just one won't do, you have to have a bed full?”

“Be nice,” he teased and went under.