twenty-five recently deceased sharks of various size and species.
The protective wear was as much to guard against cuts and bruises as to avoid possible infectious viruses the sharks might easily pass to the humans. Aron marveled at the enormity of the workload that lay ahead of them now that they’d traveled back from Key Largo, and he didn’t appreciate Lynette’s shoving him and nagging, saying, “Let’s have at it. The work won’t get done standing here staring at it. Come on, Aron…”
Aron was already tired, and he was hungry. He moved slowly, as if his muscles were atrophied.
Lynette, by comparison, seemed full of energy at all times. She was anxious to have the job behind her. Whenever they might finish downloading their third shipment onto the ramp, there would be upward of ten thousand pounds of shark flesh in the holding tanks, which were filled with a saline solution and kept at a constant thirty- two degrees Celsius for preservation purposes. The sharks would be processed, not for canning or freezing or selling to the local eating establishments, but for study of the reproductive cycles of the species in order to help determine if the U.S. government-the EPA in particular-really wanted to get involved in controlling fishing rights over sharks in Florida’s coastal waters.
The trainees knew that their work here was important, that overfishing of sharks, according to Dr. Insley’s projections, would mean a lethal break in the food chain, creating an imbalance that might subject all fish to extinction if the next link in the food chain were to suddenly have a population explosion. But according to Dr. Wainwright, an even more important reason for gathering the shark specimens at Islamorada was so that other research facilities across the nation would have ample biological samples for cancer research, for studies of the immune system with possible application to AIDS research, for cornea implants, and for a supply of skin for burn victims, not to mention for ongoing research into shark repellents.
Dr. Lois Insley’s major concern, however, was to determine if free-for-all fishing of sharks up and down the Keys and Florida would or would not lead to the extinction of certain species.
Ironically, the institute had for several years now sponsored the Shark Research Fishing Tournament in order to gain enough sharks for research purposes to enable Insley’s extinction theory experiments to continue. This year, they had solicited and obtained dual sponsorship of the popular tournament with SunFin Boats Incorporated, and this made their mother institution, the University of Florida, extremely pleased.
Now, the third and final day of the tournament had come and gone, Aron and Lynette the night before having weighed and marked each specimen for identification- and, of course, the inevitable photos with the winners in each class having been all taken, before a crowd of curious tourists fascinated by the thirty-odd fishermen, the gathered scientists and the grand prize winner, a 317-pound monster hammerhead which lay now in the back of what passed for a freezer truck at the Islamorada scientific facility.
The truck, its cargo and the weary lab workers had long since been ready for the tournament’s end, and an end to the grueling effort required to transport the bestial cargo from Key Largo to here.
This was the final trip this year for the unmarked yellow truck, which had traveled from the southernmost tip of Key Largo; the battered old machine was showing signs of wear and beginning to smell like a slaughterhouse, despite the frigid air compartment. Both Lynette and Aron had come to accept the stench along with their strenuous duty. Later on, they could do what they’d come here for: dissect and study the inner workings of the incredible animals which had netted the contestants in the tournament some fifteen thousand dollars in secondary prize money and an incredible twenty-nine-foot Sun Fin fly bridge boat as grand prize. It was a sleek sport fisherman’s speedboat with choice of gas or diesel power, twin Crusader 350 or 200-hp Volvos- also winner’s choice.
The folks out of Fort Lauderdale really knew how to spruce up a tournament. Getting Sun Fin Inc. to come on board had been the work of Dr. Joel Wainwright, and it proved an ingenious move.
As for the institute’s prize, it now had a supply of specimens of various sharks to carry it through another year and a half of research, possibly two, not to mention the profits from selling off the parts to other research labs across the states.
Inside the mammoth facility, which had been designed to blend in with the surrounding palms and palmetto brush-even the brick was a sand hue to match the white- shell sands of the Keys-research into man’s amazing cousin, the predatory sharks of the Florida coast, was always ongoing. And it was the kind of research that necessitated a great number of shark corpses. Each ponderous shark body was now shoved onto a conveyor belt- each going down into the hold like so much luggage, thought Lynette Harris, except that this luggage had eyes that simultaneously appeared as lifeless as large glass beads and so hypnotic as to appear alive. Life and death mirrored in the milky cornea of a magnificent animal laid waste to. She felt the need for science and the need for life both at once, but as she had many times before, she shoved the thought to the back of her mind in order to carry on with the work at hand. And the work was considerable. They could use both Insley’s and Wainwright’s help, but God forbid the doctors should get their hands dirty at this stage.
The sharks were incredible, even the smaller species; the average weighed in at or near two hundred fifty pounds. It took some strain and effort to move the lifeless animals from their frigid moorings in the back of the truck to the conveyor belt. The work was cold, hard and thankless.
“ Grab ‘im by the dorsal and tail fin! Yank and I’ll push,” Aron instructed Lynette from where he stood at the head of a particularly huge monster.
“ Aren’t you going about this bass-ackwards, Aron? Why not turn ‘im around, then you grab the dorsal and tail? Then you push and I’ll pull ‘im by the jaw with my hook.” Lynette held up a huge meat hook, and given her protective wear, she looked like the creature from the remake of The Thing.
“ You sure you weren’t a longshoreman in another life?” She stifled a laugh. “Just do it my way, okay? It’ll be less strain on us both.”
“ Stop squabbling, you two!” came a voice from around the truck. It was Dr. Lois Insley, head of the institute, keeper of the keys and a demanding boss who insisted on blind obedience and deference to her arrogance. She’d even been angry with Wainwright for bringing in the Sun Fin people as sponsors, at least at first. Aron had told Lynette that it was because Lois hadn’t thought of it herself.
“ Have either of you seen Dr. Wainwright about?” Dr. Insley asked, her nervous eye twitch back like a bad rash. “Think he’s in his lab, Doctor,” replied Lynette, her gloves already slick with the juices exuded by dead fish, her toes and fingers freezing.
“ I’m so furious with that man,” announced Dr. Insley. “But why?” asked Aron. “Hell, this-sis-been one hell of a tournament, thanks to Dr. Wainwright.
” Lynette immediately agreed, smiling behind her protective wear. “We’ve got all the specimens we need, and it didn’t cost the institute or the university a dime. I think Dr. W. is a… well, a genius.” Lynette knew Aron and Dr. Insley must know how she felt about Dr. Wainwright, that she had an uncontrollable crush on the older man. “Getting Sun Fin to put up the prize was certainly a stroke of marketing genius,” Aron quickly added, knowing it needled the frumpy Dr. Insley to tell her that anyone but Her Majesty had any genius. He hoped that the use of the word marketing to qualify Dr. W.’s genius would keep Insley on an even keel. “The damned fool has called in outsiders about… about what we’ve been seeing in the lab.”
“ The human body parts, you mean?” Lynette unnecessarily asked, recalling vividly how several days before, with the first onrush of new specimens, Dr. Wainwright, with her and Dr. Insley beside him, had uncovered yet another stash of undigested human body parts and bones amid the usual stomach contents. There were some gruesome intact parts, from toes and fingers to whole hands and feet. And while this wasn’t totally unusual, the sheer amount, from the very first specimens opened up, gave everyone in the lab a chilled pause.
“ Keep unloading and don’t stop till you’ve emptied the truck. We’re paying that driver for his time as well, you know. I want him back on the road for the final cache and back here by tomorrow this time. So, move!”
“ But, Dr. Insley, this is the third and last load,” Aron corrected as gently as he could. Dr. Insley, however, had angrily waddled away, in search of Dr. Wainwright.
Lynette and Aron exchanged a long look from behind their goggles, Aron finally shrugging and Lynette saying, “She may know how to work with data and statistics and her computer program, but she hasn’t got a clue about the real world, does she?”
“ Know what gets me?”
“ What’s that, Aron?” Lynette worked as she talked, but Aron took a break with each word.
“ How she ever got in charge of this place in the first place.”
“ Wrote a grant, and grant money speaks volumes in ac- ademia. Anyhow, all you’ve got to know is that she is in charge.”
“ She’s in charge… but she’s not in control…
