It didn’t take Zaidee long to see past the gnashing teeth, beyond the horror of the creature’s face, to realize what a mind-boggling, cool thing they had found. She fed it every last piece of food they had, including the Mallomars.
“It loves chocolate,” Zaidee said. “It’s really smart.”
Loch laughed. “I think it would rather snack on a nice, fat salmon.” Then, deadly serious, he continued, “You can’t tell anyone about this.”
“What about Dad?” Zaidee asked.
“Of course we’re going to have to tell him,” Loch said. “But if Cavenger finds out, how long do you think it’d be before he’d have his name on a plaque with the creature stuffed and under glass in the British Museum?”
Loch and Zaidee swam and played with the beast all after-noon, but finally the time came when they had to leave.
“We have to go now,” Loch told the creature. It was as if the moment the thought had entered Loch’s mind, the creature understood. It began to make rapid, sad sounds.
CLICK CLICK …
CLACK CLICK CLACK …
“What’s it doing?” Loch wondered.
“It doesn’t want us to go,” Zaidee said.
The creature lifted the hoods of its eyes high and stared at Loch and Zaidee.
CLICK CLACK … CLICK …
“It knows we’re going to leave it alone again,” Zaidee said, giving the creature a last gentle pat on its head.
“We’ll be back,” Loch promised.
The creature swam back and forth in the pool, lifting its head high to watch Loch and Zaidee until they disappeared over the ridge. By the time they had made it back to the boat, Loch had thought of a name for the creature. “Remember that Robert Burns poem ‘To a Mouse’?” Loch asked Zaidee. “I had to memorize it once.”
“I don’t remember.”
“It was about a mouse who ends up homeless because its nest gets dug up by a farmer’s plow,” Loch said, as he got into the boat and primed the motor. “I remember only the first line, ‘Wee, sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie …’ ”
Zaidee untied the anchor rope, pushed the boat off, and settled back into the bow seat. “That’s a long name.”
“Wee Beastie,” Loch said, leaning over the outboard and pulling the start cord. “That’s his name.”
“Wee Beastie?”
“What do you think?”
Zaidee turned the name over in her mind as the motor coughed to life. “I think I like it,” she said.
“Then it’s settled.” Loch threw the boat into gear and gave it full throttle. The boat hurtled back out onto the lake. The tall pines along the north shore cast huge shadows across the shallows, making the drift logs harder to see.
“Dad will freak when he finds out we took the boat,” Zaidee said, worried.
“Not when we show him Wee Beastie,” Loch said.
Zaidee opened the laptop and brought Crashers up on the screen. “The game picked up the sounds from yesterday’s creatures too,” Zaidee said. “How come their lines were on this before they showed on the sonar screens?”
“Look, it’s a computer,” Loch reminded her. “Maybe there’s something about having Crashers with 580 megabytes that turns it into a kind of receiver for sonar.”
“What’s a megabyte?” Zaidee wanted to know. “You said one day you’d teach me all about computers.”
“It’s going to take more than one day, but what I’m saying is maybe the creatures register on our screen because of those sounds they make, like whales and dolphins do. Maybe Wee Beastie and these guys make more concentrated and directed sounds, waves that can travel through water, then vibrate the surface and continue through the air. Who knows?”
“There are no interference lines now,” Zaidee said, keeping one eye on the edge of the deep water.
When they got back, they tied the boat at the dock and hurried up to the trailer. They tossed their gear inside and walked down the driveway to the south road to look for a lift to the base. A beat-up Toyota 4?4 headed their way. Loch waved it down. It was only after the truck stopped that they both realized it was Jesse Sanderson, the caretaker of the logging mill, behind the wheel.
“I’m not riding with him,” Zaidee whispered as Loch opened the door. “He’s probably drunk as usual.”
“Where you kids headin’?” Jesse asked, his mouth open wide, proudly revealing his gold front teeth.
Loch decided he’d get Jesse to say a few more words to see if he had been doing any afternoon nipping. “Hi, Mr. Sanderson. We were out to see you at the logging mill with our father, remember?”
Jesse took a closer look at them as he lifted his rifle off the front seat and stuck it on the shelf below the rear window. “Oh, yeah,” he said, his big belly hitting into the steering wheel. “Wanted to know what I’d seen in the lake … and I told you. Something with a head big as a barrel, yes, sir, big as a barrel …”
“He’s sober,” Loch mouthed to Zaidee as he slid into the middle seat. “Can we ride along as far as the base?” Loch asked Jesse.
“Glad for the company,” he said.
Zaidee made a face. She hopped up next to her brother and slammed the door. Jesse put the truck into gear. Its front end had a major shimmy, but Jesse was driving slowly enough.
“Seen anything in the lake lately?” Loch asked, checking to see how much Jesse knew. Everyone at camp knew he was a big creep, and he was always wandering around trying to stick his big red nose into the expedition’s business.
“Can’t say I have,” Jesse said.
“What are you doing on this side of the lake?” Zaidee wanted to know.
“Ran out of supplies. Had a little shopping to do.”
Zaidee turned to look behind her. She saw a half dozen cases of beer jiggling in the bed of the truck.
At the main gate of the base, Jesse was surprised to see the encampment swarming with new recruits and heavy equipment. The loud, steady clanking of a pneumatic driver cut through the air as a crew of sweating men completed the installation of a high link fence topped with barbed wire.
“What’s going on around here?” Jesse asked the guard. “Looks like you’re goin’ to war.”
The guard put on a phony, folksy smile. “Nothing much. Just getting ready for another sweep tomorrow.”
“No kidding,” Jesse said like he cared. The only thing that really interested him was a pile of lumber and a couple of big toolboxes. He figured he’d go home, have a couple of drinks, then come back and see what he could rip off.
Loch and Zaidee thanked Jesse for the lift, jumped down from the truck, and ran in through the gate. Construction workers were throwing up additional structures and setting up machinery. A large military helicopter made a pass along the shoreline, then stirred up a big cloud of dust as it landed on a freshly leveled pad.
They spotted John Randolph cutting across the base in a jeep. “Have you seen Dr. Sam?” Loch called.
“He’s on The Revelation,” Randolph shouted back.
Loch and Zaidee walked toward the dock. The old brown fishing trawlers were backed up to the shore with their crews feeding shiny metal netting from two flatbed trucks onto the boats’ huge, rusted spindles. To the left of the Sea-B several dozen men were helping guide a large, sleek boat into the water to join the fleet of skiffs.
“What kind of boat is that?” Zaidee wanted to know.
“Looks like a converted PT boat,” Loch said. He remembered seeing them in World War II footage on TV and knew they were famous for their speed; some were some still used by the Coast Guard for running down harbor drug traffic.
When they reached the dock, supplies were being unloaded from trucks onto the water taxis. Zaidee held Loch’s hand as he guided them through the horde and up the gangplank onto the yacht.
They found Dr. Sam in the control room with Cavenger, Emilio, and several other electronics technicians.
“Dad,” Loch called from the doorway.
Dr. Sam looked up from calibrating the graphic recorders. He was surprised to see Loch and Zaidee.
Cavenger saw them too. “Get rid of them,” he ordered Dr. Sam.
Dr. Sam moved quickly to the door, his face flushed. “What are you doing here? I told you the base was off-limits today.”
“We’ve got something to tell you-” Zaidee started.
“Not now,” Dr. Sam cut her off, sharply.
“It’s important, Dad,” Loch said.
“I told you to stay at the trailer.” Dr. Sam raised his voice, wanting Cavenger to know it wasn’t his fault the kids had shown up. Loch picked up on exactly what his father was doing. He really hated it whenever his dad was afraid to stand up to Cavenger even when it just meant taking a minute out to talk to his own kids.
“Daddy, something wonderful-” Zaidee tried to get the words out.
“Look. Just leave. And I mean on the double,” Dr. Sam yelled at them, acting like a stranger as he practically pushed them out the door.
Zaidee stared down at the deck. She wanted to cry. They had the most wonderful news in the world to tell their father, and he wouldn’t even give them a minute.
Loch put his arm around his sister. “Sorry we bothered you,” he told Dr. Sam.
“It’s just not the right time,” Dr. Sam said, guilt crawling into his voice now. “You’re going to get me fired.” He went back into the control room and slammed the door.
“He doesn’t mean it,” Loch told Zaidee.
“Yes he does,” Zaidee said.
Loch kept his arm around Zaidee as they walked along the deck. “What do you say we go down to Sarah’s cabin?”
Zaidee ducked out from under his arm and glared at him. “No thanks. She’s probably having a bad hair day. You’re not going to tell her about Wee Beastie, are you?”
“No,” Loch said. “Let’s just see how she’s feeling.”
“That’s a definite pass.”
“You used to like her,” Loch reminded Zaidee. “I don’t get it. Lately, all you do is put her down.”
“Because she’s turned into a really horrible, spoiled, rich brat, that’s why,” Zaidee said.
“How can you say that?”
“It’s easy. Her father gives her everything she wants, and she’s got too many Harrods and trendy store shopping bags.”
“What does it matter how many shopping bags she has?”
“She always has them on display in her room, with all the brand names and logos of her clothes staring at us. Remember last year I had this nice new blouse from Penney’s and it had a little fox logo on it, and she saw it and kept asking, ‘Who has the fox, oh, who has the fox?’ Remember that? Her father lets her buy so much junk, nothing means anything to her, including people.”
Loch flicked his hand up the back of Zaidee’s neck. “Zaidee, don’t be jealous.”
“Look, just don’t tell her about Wee Beastie is all I’m saying,” Zaidee pleaded. “He’s ours.”
“Okay,” Loch said.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Excellent,” Zaidee said. “In that case, I’ll wait on the rear deck. I’ll be lounging.”
Loch went down the stairway to the lower deck. What he really needed was a minute to himself to shake off the way his father had treated them. He knew the whole power play around Cavenger was very complicated, but the bottom line was that his father jumped whenever Cavenger blew his whistle. It seemed to be eating away part of his father’s very being.
The second cabin on the left was Sarah’s. Loch combed his hair with his fingers and knocked on the door.
“What?” came Sarah’s voice.
“It’s me,” Loch said.
The door opened. Sarah stood there, looking sleepy in pajamas. “Loch, what’s the matter?” she asked, when she saw how flushed he looked. She had come to know the look, and knew what caused it.
“Nothing.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Zaidee and I stopped down to see Dad,” Loch explained. “She’s up on the sundeck. How’s it going?”
Sarah brushed her hair back from her face. “All that riveting and hammering going on around here is driving me crazy,” she said. She closed the door behind them. “I really needed sack time. I had a hundred and forty-three nightmares about that horrendous monster trying to kebab me!”
“Yesterday was a nightmare” was all Loch said, knowing he couldn’t tell her about Wee Beastie. “Looks like your father’s still going to try to catch one of the creatures.”
“That’s all he talks about every second,” Sarah admitted. “I think he’s starting to go a little psycho. He knows if he gets one, it’ll be his vindication against all the people who have said he was nuts for going on crazy expeditions all his life. Let’s take a walk.”
“Okay.”
“I just have to throw on some clothes.”
“I’ll wait outside.”
“You can just turn around.”
Loch turned his back, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot while she threw off her pjs and put on a top and jeans.
“Do you remember how you used to drive me crazy pretending to eat out of dog-food cans?” she asked. “And you’d lift the cheese off a pizza and wear it on your face?”
“How do you know it wasn’t Mighty Dog?”
Sarah laughed as she slipped on multicolored leather boots. “I guess we both always liked weird things.” She led the way out into the hall and up to the sundeck. Zaidee was stretched out on a chaise longue reading a magazine. She made a face when she saw Loch had brought Sarah.
“Hi, Zaidee,” Sarah said.
“Hello,” Zaidee said. She grimaced at the sight of Sarah’s boots and went back to reading her magazine. Sarah and Loch went to the railing and looked down at the dock below to watch all the activity.
“Say, do you think you can borrow some wheels tomorrow?” Loch asked.
“Sure. Dad always lets me take one of the jeeps. What’s up?”
“I need to get a few things from town.”
An armored vehicle pulled up to the edge of the dock. The driver got out, unlocked the rear doors, and threw them open to reveal a few racks of high-caliber rifles. Randolph was on hand with a clipboard, assigning the guns and ammunition to the fleet crews. Sarah started walking to the bow. “Why all the artillery?” Loch asked, following her as the riveting started in again, vibrating through the entire yacht. “Nobody would want to kill a plesiosaur. They’d want to study them. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”
“Tell that to Erdon,” Sarah said.
Loch stopped at the railing. He stared down at the construction in progress at the front of The Revelation. A welder in a protective mask held a blowtorch, sealing a seam on a metal base. The riveters worked securing an immense steel harpoon gun to the deck. Nearby, its lethal ammunition lay in a heap-monstrous steel arrows to harvest a leviathan.
“Dad told me he doesn’t need to take a creature alive,” Sarah said. “He says even a fin or a tail, any piece of one of them, would prove they exist.”