The Last Island Read online

  “Bad vibe, bad mojo—something freaky happening, that’s all I know.”

  “You know Manta and the Deacon both know their stuff. They look at the same thing but see different stuff; I wish I knew which one is correct,” she said.

  “Both,” I replied.

  15

  The sea became restless out of season.

  “Strange, this is supposed to be the flat season for the sea. Maybe the Deacon is correct about the miasma,” Manta said.

  “What the—This ain’t the thirteenth century, Manta,” I said.

  “Look, the Deacon knows. And, he made sense,” Manta continued.

  “A drowned dead man who is alive is giving off evil exhales. Come on, Manta. That is from the dark side of the moon,” I said.

  “We, the Deacon and I, were in the LION the other day,” Manta said.

  “Yeah, I know. I saw you there,” I said.

  “Yeah, and he showed me J-14A.”

  “So,” I said.

  “That substrate was live. The specimens were live. And, now they are dead,” Manta said.

  “I’ve been meaning to put up a new display, but have not done it yet. That’s all. You know stuff dies.”

  “Stuff dies, sure. I know. Stuff dies. But the only stuff that’s died in the LION has come from the area above the sunken U-Boat and that old slaver,” Manta said.

  “Just one of those things, man.”

  “And, stuff in the sea is beginning to die around that U-Boat and old slaver. I know that you have seen the stuff and the Deacon has shown it to me and it is the same stuff that is in the sea,” Manta said.

  “What’s going on here?” John Henry began to question us.

  “The Deacon has convinced Manta that a drowned dead man is alive and is killing the sea with a miasma from his breath,” I said.

  “I did not say killing the sea. He is giving life to the sea,” Manta said.

  Are you flying crazy?” I said.

  Manta turned to John Henry. “First it was light. Now, it is life that cannot exist in the cloud of the miasma,” Manta said.

  “But you said that it was giving life,” John Henry said.

  “It is. It is spawning itself. It is spawning its dead self,” Manta said.

  “What! ” John Henry said in disbelief.

  “That is the Deacon’s secret?” I asked.

  “One,” Manta replied.

  “If J-14A contains a miasma, then what about his large tank?” I asked.

  “That is for the spawning miasma,” Manta said

  “What the—!” John Henry and I said at the same time.

  The entrance of the elderly Capt’n broke the tension.

  Capt’n was what passed for law.

  “What’s up, Capt’n?” We all spoke in unison

  “Nice job of rescue yous guys pulled off," he said.

  “What rescue?” I wanted to know.

  “Some school teachers. They was good ’nuff people and these guys done did good. She done given birth—cute little thing. And he is back at the high school. Man, dey sure was lucky. That storm really blew up fast. The fastest blow-up dat I ever did ever see and the way that the Deacon done did know where to go to. It ain’t nothin’ short of a miracle. But don’t say that to him, please. You know the Deacon.”

  In unison, we all said, “We all know the Deacon.”

  “That stranger that come ashore—that strange feller John Henry knew—well, he done come ashore drowned. It ain’t right to talk down the dead, but he weren’t no good.”

  We three were silent.

  “That Deacon must have a crystal ball. As a matter of fact, I said so. I told him he has a crystal ball and he said no, he just has a crystal tank. Ain’t that a hoot.”

  Capt’n began to laugh aloud.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “Just this. We were there when that stranger was about to take off and I asked, I asked where he was off to. He said that he was off to fish for tuna. Tuna. Funny, huh. Tuna this time of year, and besides, he did not have one rod, not one reel, or one anything ‘ceptin’ some dive gear and fancy-dancy do-dads. We watched as he made his way and the Deacon said that he was going to come back drowned dead and he did come back drowned dead. That Deacon’s tank sure got the spirit of Endor,” Capt’n said.

  “Was his bearing toward that U-Boat?” Manta asked.

  “Straight and true. Straight and true. You gots a crystal ball too, Manta.”

  You could see ‘What the—’ in Manta’s eyes.

  The Capt’n began to ramble and then babble on about the good ole days and such but John Henry’s eyes, Manta’s eyes, and my eyes went to J-14A. But only for a moment, for looming always was the tank of the Deacon.

  16

  As if we three were fish, our imaginations were captured in the gill net of what each one of us denied to ourselves and to each other, but which one of us was coming to realize was the fact of the water or, better put, was the water.

  “What are you doing?”

  The voice came from behind me but, nonetheless, I knew it was the voice of the Deacon.

  I did not answer at first and simply waited, but he did not repeat his question. He knew that I had heard his question and was not about to waste the energy of a second breath on a repeated action. It was one of those very long moments of eternity that lasts for part of a second.

  “I am about to redo J-14A. After all, it is about time,” I answered.

  “Not today. Not ever. I do not wish to appear to be interfering but it cannot be changed.” He spoke slow and low as he always does, but almost meekly.

  “Not to be confrontational, but LION is my design and I am autonomous in the project, as I understand,” I said.

  “You are hearing what I am not saying. I am not telling you to do anything. I am asking you not to do something. What you do under your authority is for you to do; however, what you do not do is another consideration,” the Deacon said.

  There was one aspect of the Deacon that was precious and that was his Vulcan phraseology. He spoke as if he had learned communication parented by VG-Factor 8 language computers.

  “Your request is that I do nothing rather than doing something?” I asked.

  “Look…”

  I expected to hear “Vaughnie” and would have died if he had said it, but I did not really expect to hear it. He continued.

  “What is in there is the breath of death,” he said.

  “Do not start that island loco voodoo mumbo-jumbo nonsense,” I said.

  “Island loco voodoo mumbo-jumbo does not have to be nonsense. But, in fact, in this case it is nonsense. Not in the sense that you have intended—as being without intellect or understanding—but rather in the correct sense of no sense,” the Deacon said.

  “What are you talking about? I do not want to be offensive but—”

  He cut me off and then continued.

  “With your permission, you think that I have been underwater too long and have sucked in too much nitrox mix under pressure, or perhaps you think that I have become island-happy. No, I am not crackers. It is that there is faith as you know, belief in things unseen; there is what you call nonsense, not believing in what you have not seen or have no faith in; and there is seeing what is, but is neither an article of faith nor an article of the cleverness of our understanding. It is in our sight but it is out of our insight. It is perceived but is not of our perception. It is in the light of our senses but is discerned in the darkness of our nonsense, if you will. Yes, you are correct. It is nonsense but that does not exclude it from being true. Does it? It is nonsense because it is not in the universe of what is behind our eyes and in front of our ears.”

  Unbelieving, I began to question him. “Do you believe or think or feel that your drowned dive buddy is alive?”

  He gave me an answer.

  “Your question is about him, my dive buddy. He, my dive buddy, is drowned but he is not dead—not him. What he used to be is dead. Wh
at he used to be is not what is alive.”

  “What!” I couldn’t help shouting.

  There he stood as if alone, looking through me as if he did not hear the deafening sound.

  He was a man who would not bleed if he were cut or make a sound if he were on fire. I wanted to be him; I wanted not to be him. I knew that he did not want to be me.

  Out of the silence he began speaking.

  “You have heard about Pauperes Commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici?”

  “The what?”

  He continued, not missing a beat. “Perhaps you have knowledge of the Knights Templar?”

  I affirmed that I did.

  As if I had to put myself between his words, I tried hard to concentrate.

  He continued, “Since Friday, October 13, 1307—or Friday the Thirteenth—the planet has been chasing the Holy Grail.”

  “What! You think that you have found the Holy Grail. You! You! The Grail! What the—!”

  He did not respond in any fashion. He continued: “The Holy Grail. I did not say I found the Grail—did I?”

  I motioned that he had not spoken of finding the Grail.

  “The Grail is a myth,” he said.

  I agreed with a nod.

  “The Templars found the greatest artifact. They were looking for mysterious enchantment and found the bitten fruit. They discovered it. That was the close-held secret. Not a gold falcon encrusted with jewels, not the Holy Grail, not the Book of the Dead.”

  He stopped as if eternity were to be rent if he ever spoke again. Then he looked into J-14A. His eyes were the starting point.

  I followed his laser gaze into J-14A and the view chilled me. It was not on a mindful level but on the level of pre-thought that I reacted. I responded reflexively. The reality was primordial. It was as cold and dark as the abysmal black deep’s bottom. It, the reflex, had been instilled in me when my genes were in the creature, Protopterus leviathanus. It, a perfect slime of perfect clarity, of perfect ooze, perfectly without friction and of perfect consistency was there in J-14A.

  The slime had killed the specimens in the tank and the slime had fogged Manta’s pictures. I was ready for the answer and spun toward what I thought was going to be the Deacon’s face for the resolution. He was gone.

  17

  “Manta, what about that U-Boat and old slave ship?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you. A while back it was an easy dive to the old slave ship and as matter of fact it was in free-dive range. The U-Boat sits directly on top of it and that was well into free-dive range too. For a while it was an attraction for people but not so much anymore, nowadays. Once in a while a dive magazine recycles the 411, but that’s about all. The data is kinda old and the dive network knows the truth of the ships.”

  “But the Deacon—what and why?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you the truth and—true or false—it is the truth. I have not been in the U-Boat or the slaver since they fell and I suspect that only the Deacon has been in them. Before they sunk lower down the shelf, you could swim through the U-Boat and go into the slaver and then simply swim out again. It was kind of a fun dive. The dive was not hard but it was complicated. You had to be conservative with your air and know where you were at all times in the black. It was like cave diving but it was fun. Now, it is too deep for me or anybody with good sense and that is why only the Deacon dives it,” Manta concluded.

  “Why does he dive it?” was my question.

  It was John Henry who answered. “The hole,” she said. “Once he told me about the hole. I don’t know why.”

  “The hole—which hole? You have been through both ships. What is the deal about a hole?” I needed to know.

  “The third hole,” she said

  “The third hole. What third hole and what difference would it matter if there were fifty holes?” Manta asked.

  “I asked the Deacon once about his dives and he said, ‘One hole leads to two and two leads to three and then there is he and me.’ Then he laughed out loud. Imagine, the Deacon, laughing.”

  There was a terror in her eyes.

  “I thought he had gone instantly crazy. I was scared.”

  Manta practiced slow breathing.

  I took a deep breath. Then I reminded myself.Just keep breathing.

  John Henry continued.

  “The Deacon is instantly perceptive. He saw my fear. The third hole leads into the sea floor,” she said.

  Manta, grasping for reason, said, “There must be a swim-through or cave under the slaver.”

  “No,” she said slowly and seriously, “it is the abyss of perdition, the open entrance gate of the nether sea,” she corrected him as though reciting the arcane.

  Manta practiced deep breathing.

  I kept repeating to myself, Just keep breathing.

  “He, the Deacon, is as trustworthy as the Gospels.” She was too terrified to continue and wanted to cease but the climax had not yet been reached.

  Manta and I were in a heightened state of anxiety.

  “Beneath the U-Boat and beneath the slaver and in the final hole in the Deep he saw—he saw his buddy, alive.”

  “What the—!” I yelled.

  Manta breathed ever deeper.

  I was glad that I was against a solid object. John Henry became weak-kneed and Manta put his massive head between his enormous legs to suck in gallons of air.

  “But it was not his friend as he knew him; his form had changed. It was only his buddy’s head. His buddy’s body was that of a Sarcopterygiin,” she concluded.

  Manta fell to his knees. He was not praying to his island gods. He was trying to breathe.

  John Henry concluded. “The head of his buddy but the body of a coelacanth!”

  The words just hung in the air in neutral buoyancy as if never uttered.

  18

  It was too weird and too fantastic to be true but it was also too fantastic to be an untruth. It had to be one or the other for there was simply not ground for compromise. A hybrid reality could not exist and to believe in such a mutation of reality was impossible.

  Back at the LION, there he was, the Deacon. He was always particular about specifics but as time passed he became ever more specific about this particular or that particular.

  “You know that you can never get your specifications one hundred percent perfect.” I did speak very boldly.

  “This ain’t no weak-minded mind game into the uncertainty of the uncertainty principle.” He coldly spoke without a glance. Then he continued, “One hundred percent, I am not trying for one hundred percent. I am going for absolute control. That is, from here to gone, past one hundred percent. One hundred percent; that is weak-mindedness derived from some line of a science book written by some scientist that was never near one hundred percent and quoted by some weak-minded student hoping to get a one hundred percent on a test paper.”

  He still did not look at me and continued his conversation with himself.

  “I am not part of that chaos of nature out there. No, sir. Not on your Aunt Nellie, no sirree-bobcat. I am here to stake my claim on the heart of that mess, out there.”

  He continued in silence, super-perfect in his cell of nature.

  He did not seem to know that I had exited, even though he was too aware not to know that I had, and he must have been aware of the heat of my anger even though he was as cool as the water, steel, and glass of his tank.

  19

  Manta, John Henry, and the Capt’n were looking out to sea and all three were focused on a moving point in the water. The point became a dot. The dot became a dingy. It was Ol’ Joe’s dingy and soon enough Ol’ Joe could be seen steering the craft straight and true. Ol’ Joe never utilized any navigational charts or maps for a number of good reasons: he did not require any maps for he knew the oceans, he did not have any maps, and lastly he could not read navigational literature.

  Other than the grill on his island, all that Ol’ Joe owned was in his dingy and the dingy was empty.
/>
  As if he were putting a greased burger into a bun, Ol’ Joe slipped the dingy into the slip and tied it up and, in fluid and continuous motion, exited onto the pier. The wonderment was why he was here on this island and not on his island.

  For such a calm day the ocean was filled with energy.

  It was good to see Ol’ Joe after just being with the Deacon. A warm fuzzy human interaction was called for and would be oh so very good. The four of us made merry on the beach. The three of us acted as if we had just rescued a marooned sailor and Ol’ Joe as if he were a marooned sailor just being rescued. There was only one place to go so mindlessly and without a word spoken—we three found our way to the tap. On the walk, we four—but Manta mostly—kept eyeing the ocean.

  Ol’ Joe explained about how his island had been enveloped by the ocean. The island and his enterprise were under water. They had not been relegated to the Deep but rather flooded by the tide; they were no more.

  “Strange, the nav literature and current telemetry have not and are making no note of such,” Manta said.

  “Look, Manta, I know when something is underwater without a chart or some biggity brain tellin’ me so, okay? As for the waters, maybe dey is like me—never read, can’t read, don’t read, and ain’t ever gonna read.”

  All that Ol’ Joe said before a gulp, during a gulp, and after a gulp.

  He, Ol’ Joe, sat back and began to tell the story. There was no remorse, sadness, anger, or fear in his voice. There was colorful language and reason. The ocean had come ashore and to Ol’ Joe that was the long and the short of it.

  Ol’ Joe turned to see what we were staring at past him. He made a comment as if he thought we were looking out to sea. We were looking at the Deacon. He was never happy but now there was a look of near revulsion upon his face and he was as stock still as if he were a piece of petrification.

  “Ocean come ashore and washed you out, you say. Here you sit and your island is underwater,” the Deacon said.

  “Just as true as fish swim,” Ol’ Joe answered.