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.The calf had ceased to nurse and now it fed on live prey.As they dove in the black water, propelling themselves with powerful sweeps of their horizontal tails, from their blunt foreheads they emitted the pings and clicks of sonar impulses that, on return, would identify prey.The creature hung in the dark, doing nothing, anticipating nothing, fearing nothing, letting itself be carried by the current.Its arms and whips floated loose, undulating like snakes; its fins barely moved, yet kept it stable.Suddenly it was struck a blow, and another, and what passed for hearing in the creature registered a sharp and penetrating ping.Its arms withdrew, its whips coiled and cocked.Its enemy was coming.The sonar return was unmistakable: prey.The mother thrust downward with her tail, accelerating, pulling away from her calf as she drove herself ever deeper.The calf strove to keep up, and with its striving—though as yet it had no sense of this, felt no urgency—it was consuming oxygen too fast.Though the prey was already located and had made no effort to escape, the mother’s brain fired sonar missiles again and again, for it had determined that this was to be the calf’s first mature kill.The prey was large and must be stunned by sonar hammers before the calf could set upon it.Besieged, the creature recoiled.Chemical triggers fired, nourishing the flesh, galvanizing it and streaking it with luminescence.As if in contradiction of the color display, other reflexes voided a sac within the body cavity, flushing a cloud of black ink into the black water.Blows struck it again and again, pounding the flesh, confusing the small brain.Defense impulse changed to attack impulse.It turned to fight.As the mother closed in on the prey, she slowed, permitting the calf to draw even, then to pass her.She unleashed a final burst of sonar blows, then swerved and began to circle the prey.The calf plunged downward, excited by the prospect of the kill, impelled by a million years of imprinting.It opened its mouth.The creature felt the pressure wave, was driven backward by it.The enemy was upon it.It lashed out with its whips.They flailed blindly, then found flesh, hard and slick.Automatically they surrounded it and their circles fastened to it and their hooks dug in.The muscles in the whips tightened, drawing the enemy to the creature and the creature to the enemy, like two boxers in a clinch.The calf closed its mouth on … nothing.It was perplexed.Something was wrong.It felt pressure behind its head, confining it, slowing its movement.It struggled, pumping with its tail, corkscrewing, frantic to rid itself of whatever was holding it down.Now its lungs began to send out signals of need.The mother circled, alarmed, sensing danger to her calf but incapable of helping it.She knew aggression, she knew defense, but in the programming of her brain there was no code for response to a threat to another, even to her own offspring.She made noises—high-pitched, desperate and futile.The creature held on, anchored to its enemy.The enemy thrashed, and from its motion the creature sensed a change in the balance of the battle: No longer was its enemy the aggressor; it was trying to escape.Though here in the absence of light there were no colors, the chemicals in the body of the beast changed their composition from defense to attack.The more its enemy struggled to rise, the more the creature drew water into its body and expelled it through the funnel beneath its belly, forcing itself and its enemy down into the abyss.The calf was drowning.Deprived of oxygen, the musculature in its tissue shut down bit by bit.An unknown agony coursed through its lungs.Its brain began to die.It stopped struggling.The creature felt its enemy stop struggling and begin to sink.Though it still clutched the flesh, gradually the creature released the tension and let itself fall with its kill, slowly spiraling.The whips tore away a chunk of blubber and fed it to the arms, which passed it back to the snapping protuberant beak.The mother, circling, followed her calf with sonar pings.She sent clicks andwhistles of distress, a bleat of helpless despair.At last her lungs, too, were exhausted, and, with a final sonic burst, she thrust up toward the life-giving air above.17MARCUS SHARP SAT on the beach and wished he were somewhere else.He couldn’t remember the last time he had gone to a beach, probably not since the times with Karen.He didn’t like beaches much; he didn’t like sitting on sand and watching water while his skin fried in the tropical sun.A misguided impulse, born of desperate frustration, had led him to jump on his motorbike and drive the fifteen miles from the base to Horseshoe Bay.It was a Saturday; he was off duty and had hoped to go diving with Whip Darling.But when he had called at eight that morning, Darling had told him that he and Mike intended to chip paint all day.Sharp had offered to help, but Darling had said no, they’d be working in a tight hold in the stern of the boat, nowhere near big enough for three people.Sharp had read for an hour and then, at eleven o’clock, had found himself scanning the titles in the video store.He had looked at his watch and realized, with a feeling of depression bordering on nausea, that in order to get through the rest of Saturday he would have to rent not one, not two, but at least three movies.This is your life? he had said to himself.Deciding between National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and Look Who’s Talking! Is all that’s left to you a choice between spending your time with an infantile adult or a smartass infant? What would Karen say? She’d say, Live, Marcus.Go rob a bank, fly a plane, trim your toenails, anything.Just do something!He had walked out of the video store and tried to find a tennis game, but all the tennis players he knew were playing soccer, and he didn’t like the game: It was all technique with little result; he liked high-scoring games.He had called a couple of dive-tour operators; the boats had all left for the day.He had volunteered to take a helicopter up; none was available.So he had gone to the beach, impelled, he guessed, by some vague hope that he might meet a girl worth talking to, having lunch with, maybe even making a date with to go dancing.Not that he knew how to dance, but anything was better than sitting around the Bachelor Officers Quarters watching reruns of Cagney & Lacey.It had been a mistake [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]