The Last Island Read online

  Ol’ Joe had a hand-drawn map on his wall and while the burgers were cooking—as was my custom—I went over simply to take in the beauty of the dead art of map-drawing. The map was one of the maps from the H.M.S. Challenger.

  Ol’ Joe peered out from his kitchen and made his remarks. “The Deacon is becoming ever more interested in that map. I am going to will it to him. It’s the only map in the world that charts the waters between The Last Island and this reef.”

  "Are you serious?”

  I couldn’t believe it.

  “Know for a fact it is so. Oh, there is some maps that mark distance and some that even marks surface current but this is the only map that shows anything underwater. There was and is no need for anyone to go to all the expense and time, I guess.” Ol’ Joe explained the deal.

  “This must be worth mucho dinero,” I said.

  “What?” Ol’ Joe questioned me.

  “Sell this thing and get big bucks.”

  “Cannot spend it here, and besides, I have one more dollar than I need so I’m as rich as J.D. Rockefeller. Burgers up.”

  He chattered on about some other stuff as he began to serve the meal.

  I asked him my question. “Did the Deacon put these fine marks on the map?”

  “Yeah, he was doing some work and I said sure. If you are going to complain that he marked up an old map, don’t. It is just an old map.”

  Yes, the Deacon had nerve to write on an antique map but it was what he was computing that fascinated me. All maps are incorrect, however the Deacon had not made corrections to the surface waters or to the reef or island but with the fine line of an ultra-sharp stylus had made corrections to the deep water and had noted demarcations and markings about the bottom. The data was coded but in plain sight.

  “You and the Deacon sure must have something in common because he would rather be in front of that map than be eating.”

  Ol’ Joe continued his cooking.

  The scent, the food, and the art of the map were this and that but the mind of the Deacon was an intellectual pheromone that held me captive here and now. I pressed my eyes upon the map and focused my sight into the old black markings that the H.M.S. map-maker had marked and impressed my insight into the near-invisible code of the Deacon.

  Was the question a what question, a where question, a how question, a why question, or was the question a who question?

  The answer was before me but I did not know what to ask.

  “That map is not correct because it is not the original reef.” Ol’ Joe gave me the key in passing.

  That was it. I knew what Ol’ Joe was going to say and I understood what the markings of the Deacon meant. The Deacon had made three sets of calculations and was triangulating the deep. Why?

  “This reef is not the reef it was and not the reef it is gonna be. It is a walking reef—as one side of the reef erodes, the other side grows. Not magic, but a lot of reefs just walk across the ocean as if’n they is walkin’ on the water.”

  Ol’ Joe talked on about how the ocean had been turned into stone by microscopic life and then talked about what I had seen.

  “Some slimy stuff like big blobs, kinda like jellyfish bells, been coming up from the bottom. Jellyfish is out of season and besides they is too big to be jellyfish.” So Ol’ Joe said.

  “Petro waste of some chemicals that jelled and became ocean junk floating on the currents.” So John Henry said.

  Ol’ Joe gave his reply. “No, ain’t that.”

  “Could just be some acellular by-product or a biogenetic ocean process,” Manta said.

  “Nah,” Ol’ Joe continued, “seen it happen once out there but—but—it did not and still don’t make any sense. The water itself turned into this stuff. Damn queer.”

  I thought of my vision of the co-ed at Easy Chair Rock. What the—

  Manta and John Henry first tried to deduce a logical solution, then tried to induce a logical solution by using the tried and true methodology of the scientific method: hypothesis development. Such a fool’s game is the scientific method. I did not tell what I had seen. The one thing that the scientific method relied on most was what I did not have, substance.

  Ol’ Joe, John Henry, and Manta talked all afternoon about the ocean. I have been in Cleveland, Ohio, in February and I have been to Key West, Florida, in June and Key West in June is better than Cleveland in February by a ton. Being on Apocalypse Reef was better than being in Key West—by a ton, also.

  The three of them were sunspots on the face of the setting sun. I turned to the map and into the mind of the Deacon. This I knew. I knew that he knew everything that each one of us knew and that I did not know what he knew, maybe.

  The lines of the map became indelible lines in my brain.

  The round fullness of the sun almost filled the flat curved horizon of the prismatic deep and it, the sun, did fill the door opening and all other openings with such abundance that the excess of light pushed mightily through every opening. The floor was tiled this way and that way in trapezoid patterns of brilliance. They, those three, sat in the axis point of the day star haloed by its perfection as if they were the nuclear center. I was just a near orbiting charge and the Deacon, the Deacon was in the deep dark of his own light.

  13

  The sea is the universal level. For all, the sea levels are the same. Giant beast, gigantic contrivances, solo microscopic life, or individual man—the sea has no prejudice and is without darlings. The sea knows no name. From point north to point south, from point west to point east, the plane of the sea is an unadulterated, absolute, unqualified whole and its deep lies in unknown fathoms that are unfathomable. To dive into the black at night is perverse.

  There was the Deacon, who was with us but by himself; there was Manta, there was John Henry, and myself. The laws of physics obeyed the Deacon. Manta heard the song of the sea and danced to the sea’s song. John Henry had faith. I was a redundant diver. Double gauges and gear were my methodology of diving. I obeyed the hydrodynamic principles and the gas laws. I heard no song of the sea. I had no faith. Double everything and check it often and then check it twice again. The sea would always be there. I just wanted to be.

  I broke the surface and the phosphorescence was upon my face and I was electric blue. A blanket of photo-phosphorescent plankton had randomly floated upon the exact spot of my exit point. Looking down I could see the expanding exhaled bubbles and the ascending lights of the others. I climbed the ladder and prepared to aid the rest.

  She was first. The image was that of Electra. The sea had given life to womanhood. She was glowing a radiant blue. Her hair dropped fire as the sea water fell; her fine figure was a constellation of accented female characteristics outlined in the night and with each motion the animation became more sensual and she never realized.

  Manta was next out. His image looked as if the sea had given life to a great sphere of itself. The moon volume was pushed aside by his light mass. As he went about, great dazzling blue artifacts were recorded where he had been and indeed with him about, there was no need for any other light.

  The Deacon was last from the sea. His image had no glow. I looked into the sea and the sea was still aglow. He had passed through the sea in a cocoon of his own will free of the baptismal desire of the Deep.

  — – —

  At the LION the next morning, there was a dark stranger standing in the early light.

  “May I enter?” The voice came from behind me. It was the voice of a stranger. “I know that you are not officially open yet, but I just desire to look about.”

  “Sure. Make yourself at home. Feel free to just roam and look about,” I said

  “Thank you, sir,” he said... Sir! Was he just being polite?

  I was tired from the night-diving and just pretended to be doing some administrative work. I shuffled papers.

  I should have kept the door closed.

  There is random roaming about and there is apparent roaming about. As I casually observed
the stranger, he was roaming but not randomly. He was not looking, rather he was searching, and it was not for aquatic specimens. I really did not care. I just wanted to rest.

  He stopped and concentrated on Exhibit J-14A. There he stood peering into the exhibit—not looking at the specimen but peering at the substrate of the exhibit.

  Strange, but what the heck.

  He pulled a glass from his pocket and his gaze became ever more fixed. Then he had that eureka moment in full. He said not a word but the topography of his searching expression became the expression of extreme satisfaction.

  He approached me. What I noticed first was a gold bob, small as it was in size. The bob dangled. It caught my attention because it had caught an intense ray of sunlight and the very bright, golden, and intense ray was burning a hole into my exhausted retinas.

  The bob was one of those secret-society baubles that members wear publicly to announce that they belong to a secret society.

  In a most articulate, most precise, and most concise fashion the stranger inquired about Exhibit J-14A. He was interested in the substrate and nothing more.

  Should have kept the door shut but it was too perfect a South Sea day not to let the day into the LION—but now I have to pay for my lust.

  I could not but ponder upon the surgical method of his inquiry and his gold bob.

  As he was exiting the LION, there was Manta. As species are born to recognize that which is not their own, so it was with Manta and the golden-bob man. The body language of each was on display, the reflexive nature of the eye, the responsive nature of skin and muscle, the bolt-uprightness of the spine, and the leaking scent. There were no words exchanged. There were no words exchanged for of what value are words before such truth? The wisdom was in the silence.

  Passing Manta, the stranger stopped instantaneously.

  “Jeanette. I’ll be.”

  Manta pivoted. I woke up.

  “Jeanette,” the man said again.

  John Henry was a deer in the headlights.

  “Jeanette.” He repeated her name a third time.

  She was now the display specimen.

  “Dee, Joel Dee, what are you doing here?” John Henry began to question him.

  “What are you doing here is a better question?” The stranger questioned her. “This place has not even made it into the third world, yet.” The stranger laughed at his own wit.

  Manta’s body swelled reflexively.

  My reflex thought was what the—

  He could take his laughable and—

  Light, and thusly sight, are blocked by even the thinnest of things. Sound, not as demure, has a more infusing character. Few realize conversation does not stop at the ears of the people who are in the conversation. By means of natural selection, teachers develop teachers’ ears and thus survive. I desired to hear the conversation but I did not desire to have the conversationalist know that I was a part of their conversation so I ambled to specimen K-08R.

  “I knew that one day on some isolated point in the South Pacific, I’d find you. You were always one tough little monkey.” The stranger stared at John Henry.

  “Looking for me, really?” she replied.

  “Well, almost half-way, to be truthful,” he said.

  “If we are being truthful, I have never spent one moment looking for you,” she replied.

  “We were friends—once,” he said.

  “No, we were never friends,” she retorted.

  “You have spent too much time in the water and, to be truthful, that sand and smell of the ocean is not really a good look on you,” he said.

  “Thanks. If you do not like the way that I look, then I know that I look perfect. For how is it possible for a stone figurine such as you to have vision, I ask you?” she said.

  The stranger walked out.

  I saw and heard it all and I was pleased.

  Not wanting to show my smile, I walked back to J-14A. and flipped on the black light. There was something atypical in the illumination but it was not the illumination at all—it was the substrate that had changed. I was just looking, but with rejuvenated curiosity.

  “Vaughnie, come over here, please,” Manta called to me.

  The illuminated substrate was one thing, but respecting Manta was more important. I turned off the black light and went to my desk at LION where Manta was fitted in a very cramped position.

  Manta showed me the pictures from the dive into the black and they were dreadful.

  “Manta, these are a zero-minus-one in quality. What went wrong?”

  The earth man was shaken. Failure was not part of his life.

  “Don’t know, Vaughnie. Don’t know.”

  There was no use asking if he had checked his equipment. I knew he had done so. There was no need for asking about technique, or settings, or anything else. The images to the last were just bad.

  “They are all bad in the same fashion. Notice, Vaughnie. Whatever was in the black did it.”

  It was no use, but I was trying to make conversation.

  “Was it the plankton, or the night light, or bad exposure?” I tried suggesting.

  He looked at me as if I was a sand flea. I knew it was none of these things for Manta would not have been duped by such things and, even if he had, he would know it now. I was out of words.

  “Vaughnie, something or somebody is in the water.” Manta said.

  “Something maybe, but not someone.” I spoke aloud and most openly and foolishly to Manta.

  Manta never got mad and, with a most gracious smile, looked at me. “Well, then I guess we have to chalk it up to aliens. Welcome to Area 51 of the South Pacific, Vaughnie.”

  Manta smiled.

  Upon a revisited thought, I had just seen that illumination. It was different in quantity, but was the same in quality. That was what I had seen in J-14A as the stranger peered into its hydrospheric soul. And, that light was not a reflection at all. It, the illumination, was what I had seen as I peered into J-14A when the black light was illuminating the tank. I was secretive about my insight.

  “The spirits, demons, and devils of the sea have come alive from the depth of death, Vaughnie,” Manta said.

  “Did you say death or depth, Manta?” I asked.

  “Alive from death in the depth, Vaughnie,“ Manta repeated.

  14

  John Henry, Manta, and I were all in the LION, but each in his own cell. The Deacon was beginning to visit the LION with greater frequency. It was as if time was becoming compressed, as if he were in one of those Twilight T.V. shows in which a lifetime is played out in a day. Everything was the same except that everything was speeded up for him.

  He was making concentrated observations of the tank. He never recorded anything; neither a piece of paper nor a computer was able to hold the thoughts of his mind. As he passed J-14A, he stopped. He had seen in passing what the stranger and I needed time and devices to heed. He did not say a word but his eyes and a stiff lip howled a soul-rending silence.

  Whatever it was, it caused the Deacon to hold his breath.

  “Hey, Deac, look at these pictures that I shot.”

  Manta requested his attention in the familiar and handed the pictures to the Deacon.

  In the gulp of a glance, the Deacon viewed the pictures.

  “You took these pictures above that sunken U-Boat and old slaver.”

  The Deacon announced the site with a very sure certainty. Then he arranged the pictures in some sort of order.

  “You are correct. How did you know where and how did you know the sequence? Those are just fogged-up pictures with no detail,” Manta said, amazed.

  I was horrified, I was scared, and I was mystified—how could he have known? I had seen the pictures and had answered as a simpleton.

  As Manta and I looked at each other, the Deacon stopped in mid-stride, then turned and faced us with an expressionless expression upon his face.

  “What you captured on your photographs is the cloud of the miasma. It is his e
xpiration.”

  The Deacon walked to the tank and stared.

  I felt a shiver of fear run over me.

  “Him? Him—who? Or him—what?” Manta asked.

  “No it’s in the sea, Big Boy. It ain’t a devil, demon, or sea monster. Unless you want to classify him as one or the other or all three,” the Deacon replied.

  “Him?” Manta questioned the Deacon again.

  There was no return reply from the Deacon.

  My fear accelerated—inside where it counts.

  Here the two most principled people were talking about horrible and ungodly life forms and giving life to horrible and ungodly evil.

  I back-peddled until, without seeing John Henry, I was upon her.

  “You know, Vaughnie, I have become free but those two are trapped. The Deacon is the brick-throwing mind of reality and Manta is a mirror of reality. One wants to let it be and the other wants to kill it,” John Henry said.

  “Kill a what? Kill a sea spirit or kill a drowned man?” I said.

  “One or the other or both, I suppose. It really doesn’t matter, does it?” John Henry said.

  I had known of The Deacon’s and of Manta’s pointillistic philosophies, one the polar of the other, but now John Henry had turned and gone round the corner of reality too.

  “Have you all gone island-happy?” I questioned in a strong voice.

  The answer was silence.

  The simplicity and symmetry was so perfect on the surface of it all. The blue of the sea, the white of the sand, and transparency of the air but, looking again, the symmetry was not so simple. The sea was not blue; it started green and went to black at the horizon. The sand started white and went to black at the horizon. The air started transparent and went to black in the distance. They had their sights on the horizon and my sight had been at my feet. But now I was viewing the world through their eyes.

  John Henry came and asked, “What do you think, Vaughnie?”