Ellis and Gary were looking at each other, their heated exchange apparently forgotten. “Autophagy,” Ellis said.
Gary nodded, although he was visibly repulsed by the sight. “I should have known. Let me check the other specimen.”
“Hold on a second,” Trip said to Ellis. “You’re saying you’ve seen this before?”
“Not exactly, but I’ve heard of it,” Ellis said. “Octopuses are occasionally known to cannibalize themselves. It’s called autophagy. Nobody knows what causes it, but it seems to involve a viral infection of the nervous system. It’s a disease. When you have several octopuses in a single tank, if one starts to eat itself, the others will follow. Death ensues within days.”
Gary returned to the salon. “The third octopus looks fine. It was never in contact with this specimen, so maybe—”
Ellis shook his head. “If we’re dealing with infectious autophagy, it may have spread to the entire school. For all we know, this is what brought them to the surface. The lights are coordinating their behavior. It’s a mass suicide.”
Although his voice remained calm, Ellis was clearly upset. He thrust his bleeding knuckles into his mouth. Trip looked at him, then looked back at the maddened octopus, which had finished eating its own arm. Finally, he looked at his own hands, and felt the last piece fall into place.
“We need to discuss something right now,” Trip said to the others. “Where’s Meg?”
Meg was brought from the stateroom, a fresh bandage on her inside elbow. The crew sat around the table in the salon, looking at Trip. Through the windows, the lights seemed to press against the yacht on all sides.
Trip laid his hands on the table, showing them to the others. “You see this? I’ve been biting my nails for the past couple of days. It’s something I haven’t done in years, but ever since we entered this part of the ocean, I’ve been gnawing them like a maniac. Why? I’m not sure, but I can guess.”
Before anyone else could speak, Trip turned to Ellis. “A moment ago, you punched the wall so hard that your knuckles started to bleed. Is this something that you normally do?”
If Ellis saw where this was going, he was not inclined to play along. “I was upset. I don’t think it means anything.”
“But it wasn’t the first time you’ve done it. I saw the bruises on your hands. This is part of a larger pattern of behavior, and it’s been happening to all of us.” Trip turned to Meg. “Meg, you felt the urge to cut yourself. Stavros, I saw you bite your lip until it drew blood.”
Gary was looking at him with open skepticism. “What exactly are you trying to say?”
“We’re being affected by something in the environment,” Trip said. “This octopus is eating itself for the same reason. Meg, you were a medical student. Have you ever seen a disease that could cause behavior like this?”
“Not firsthand,” Meg said slowly. “But infections of the nervous system can result in psychotic or suicidal behavior. Genetic disorders can also lead to violence. Children bite off their lips and fingers, or attack those around them as a form of displacement. In the end, they need to be physically restrained.”
“A form of displacement,” Trip said, underlining the phrase. “What does that mean?”
“They feel driven to destroy their own bodies, so they redirect their aggression toward others. The violence is often concentrated on their family and friends, which may be another way of hurting themselves.”
“What about murder?” Trip asked. “Could this displacement go far enough so that the person was forced to kill?”
“It’s possible,” Meg said. “In theory, it could lead to murder by someone who was not in control of his actions.”
“Like the octopus,” Trip said. “It climbed out of its tank to kill its neighbor, but as soon as it ran out of victims, it turned on itself. And if this disease is affecting the entire school, we’re right in the middle of it. It’s like Ray said. Every drop of seawater contains millions of viruses. If this is a disease, it must be transmitted in the sea. And where do we get our drinking water?”
“The watermaker,” Stavros said. “It purifies seawater, but won’t screen out viruses.”
“We have an emergency cache of water in drums,” Kiran said. “It’s designed to sustain the crew for two weeks. We might even be able to modify our sampling system to purify water for drinking—”
“But if we’re already infected, fixing the water supply won’t be enough,” Trip said. He turned to Ellis. “The octopus in the wet lab hasn’t displayed any symptoms. Can you think of any reason why?”
Ellis thought for a moment. “This afternoon, I wanted to examine it more closely, so I anesthetized it with magnesium chloride. It’s a standard anesthetic for cephalopods. In humans, it’s a nervous system depressant that blocks neuromuscular transmissions. And if you’re right, and this impulse to hurt ourselves is a sort of seizure, something like magnesium may inhibit the reaction.”
“It’s possible,” Meg said excitedly. “And we have a lot of magnesium salts on board. Maybe we can use it as a temporary treatment—”
Gary seemed unconvinced. “I still don’t buy it. Even if you’re right about the virus, it’s hard to believe that it could affect humans and octopuses in the same way. Besides, we’ve all been drinking the same water, and I’m fine. And you haven’t mentioned Kiran or Dawn at all.”
“That’s because he never asked,” Dawn said quietly. As the rest of the crew watched, she removed her cap and shook loose her hair. Tilting her head to one side, she pointed to an area of her scalp not far from the crown. A patch of hair, less than half an inch in diameter, was missing.
“I chew my hair and swallow it,” Dawn said, sounding embarrassed. “Trichophagia. A bad habit. I haven’t done it since I was a girl, but last night, it started up again, just before we found Ray.”
Trip turned to Kiran. He found that his heart was pounding. “What about you?”
Without speaking, Kiran yanked up the sleeve of his shirt, revealing his forearm. The marks of several recent burns were visible against his dark skin. In a few places, they had begun to blister.
“I’ve been burning myself with my lighter,” Kiran said flatly. “I didn’t know why.”
The crew looked at the burns for a long moment. Then, as if the same thought had occurred to everyone at once, their eyes turned to Gary.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Gary said. “I haven’t felt at all out of the ordinary.”
Trip was about to reply when he noticed something strange. Although the salon was comfortably warm, Gary was wearing a pair of gloves. When he thought back to it now, Trip couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Gary without them. In Ray’s stateroom, Gary had been wearing his lab gloves and smock. He had spent most of the following day in the water, wearing scuba gloves, and had suggested that they eat dinner on deck, forcing all of them to bundle up. Trip cleared his throat. “Gary, would you mind taking off your gloves?”
Gary only glared at him. “I can’t believe you’re saying this. This is totally crazy.”
“It doesn’t seem so unreasonable to me,” Kiran said. “Why don’t you want to take them off?”
Gary opened his mouth, as if to respond. Then, in a movement that caught all of them off guard, he was up and on his feet. Before he could get far, Kiran tackled him, pinning his arms behind his back. There was a brief struggle, punctuated by curses on both sides, before Gary finally surrendered.
“Let’s have a look,” Ellis said. Going forward, he took hold of Gary’s left arm. Trip seized the cuff of the glove, yanking it off, then paused. Gary’s fingers were unblemished and clean.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” Gary said. “Do we need to go through this a second time?”
Trip glanced at the others. Ellis and Kiran had lost some of their certainty, but they shifted their grip on Gary, thrusting his right arm forward. Trip seized his wrist, took hold of the remaining glove, and gave it a good tug.
As soon as the glove was off, it fell, forgotten, to the floor. Gary closed his eyes.
His fingertips were missing. All of the nails were gone, torn or gnawed away, and the first joint of his index finger had been bitten off completely, the wounds cauterized to stop the bleeding.
At the sight of the ravaged hand, Ellis released Gary’s arm, his face gray. Looking at those burnt stumps, Trip remembered the blowtorch that Gary used to sterilize his shears, and realized what should have been obvious long ago. Gary had spent the previous day in the lab, working with samples that had been taken from the water, cutting up the filters, processing them with enzymes. Whatever was in the ocean would have been concentrated by the filtration process.
And if there was a pathogen in the water, Gary had received by far the greatest dose.
“I’m sorry,” Gary said, addressing no one in particular. “I really can’t help myself.”
His ruined hand went for his pocket. There was a flash of silver, and an instant later, blood was streaming
