Read Online Fragment by Warren Fahy - Free Book Online

to hold!
    Dr. Lastikka signaled
OK.
    “Thanks, that was really cool,” Geoffrey told the technician.
    “Doing your lecture tonight, Dr. Binswanger? Er—Geoffrey?”
    “Oh yes.”
    “I’ll be there!”
    “I won’t be able to recognize you.”
    “I’ll wear the mask.”
    Geoffrey nodded. “OK!”
    This was why Geoffrey loved Woods Hole: everyone was fascinatedby science, everyone was smart—and not just his fellow researchers. The general public, in fact, was usually smarter. Woods Hole, he confidently believed, was the most scientifically curious and informed population of any town on Earth. And it was one of the rare places, outside a few college campuses, where scientists were considered cool. Everyone showed up for the nighttime lectures. And then everyone adjourned to various taverns to talk about them.
    Geoffrey exited the clean room through two sealed doors. As he tugged off his cap and mask, a lab assistant pointed him to a phone. The front desk patched him through. “This is Geoffrey.”
    “There you are,
El Geoffe!”
    It was Angel Echevarria, his office mate at WHOI. Angel was studying stomatopods, following in the footsteps of his hero, Ray Manning, the pioneering stomatopod expert. Angel had been out of the office that morning and had left a message saying he was going to be late. Now the researcher was practically jumping out of the phone.
    “Geoffrey! Geoffrey! Did you see it?”
    “See what? Take it easy, Angel.”
    “You saw
SeaLife
, right?”
    Geoffrey groaned. “I don’t watch reality TV shows.”
    “Yeah, but they’re scientists.”
    “Who go to all the tourist spots, like Easter Island and the Galapagos? Come on, it’s lame.”
    “Oh my God! But you heard about it, right?”
    “Yeah…”
    “So you know half of them got
slaughtered?”
    “What? It’s a TV show, Angel. I wouldn’t be too sure about that if I were you.” Geoffrey stepped out of the cleansuit as he spoke. He nodded as a technician took it from him.
    “It’s a
reality
show,” Angel insisted.
    Geoffrey laughed.
    “I recorded it. You’ve got to see it.”
    “Oh brother.”
    “Get back here! Bring sandwiches!”
    “All right, I’ll see you in half an hour.” Geoffrey hung up the phone, and looked at the technician.
    “Did you see
SeaLife
last night, Dr. Binswanger?” she asked.
1:37 P.M.
    Geoffrey entered the office he shared with Angel carrying a few bags of sandwiches from Jimmy’s sandwich shop. “Lunch is ser—”
    He was shushed by a cluster of colleagues from down the hall who had gathered to watch Angel feed his mantis shrimp.
    Watching a stomatopod, or “mantis shrimp,” hunt was truly a spectacle not to be missed.
    Geoffrey aborted his greeting immediately and set down his helmet and the sandwich bags. In the large saltwater tank, Angel had placed a thick layer of coral gravel and a ceramic vase decorated with an Asian-style depiction of a tiger. The vase rested on its side, its mouth pointed toward the back of the aquarium.
    Angel pinched a live blue crab in forceps. “Don gave me one of his blue crabs. Thanks, Don.”
    “I think I’m already regretting it,” moaned Don as he nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
    “Whoa!” several exclaimed as Angel’s pet emerged.
    “Banzai!”
Angel dropped the unfortunate crustacean into the tank. Morbid fascination compelled everyone to watch.
    The ten-inch-long segmented creature moved like some ancient dragon. Its elegant overlapping plates rippled like jade louvers as it curled through the water. A Swiss Army knife’s worth of limbs and legs churned underneath. Its stalked eyes twitched in different directions. The colors on its body were dazzlingly vivid, nearly iridescent.
    “Here it comes,” Don groaned.
    The blue crab sculled its legs as it sank through the water, and halfway down it saw the mantis shrimp. It immediately swam for the far side of the vase but the mantis lunged up and its powerful forearms struck, too fast for