(I)
Annabelle stretched her bare legs to the sun. The tan was deepening, made more prominent by a blazing white thong bikini. She glanced down at herself and immediately thought, Lookin' good, Annabelle-as always.
She wanted to catch a few more rays before she and Loren went back in the water for the last of the bristleworm photos. He'll be here soon, she figured, so she took off her top, to let herself be "caught." The sudden sun seemed to lick her nipples, raising them in the heat. She wanted to keep Loren stoked: Sexual anxiety among the men in her range always kept things interesting. Poor little Loren. He'll have blue balls for years…
– Her bare breasts looked like fresh white fruit atop the nougat tan of her belly. She lounged back on her towel. The narrow beach extended off, gentle waves flapping over each other as seagulls glided silently overhead.
Her snorkeling and photo gear lay beside her. The sun was heating her up. Might as well make some calls while I'm just lying around. She couldn't wait to tell her friends about this little expedition. When she opened her cell phone she noticed that her fianck had left several messages. Better to let him wait, she decided. She liked to let him stew; it kept him wondering. He needs to appreciate me more…
She called her best girlfriend in New York and got to chatting. "The funniest thing of all is how dumb these people are," she was saying. "None of them know I'm a newbie; I've got them believing I'm the magazine's premier nature photographer-they don't know this is only my third assigrunent. The idiots think I've been all over the world!"
More chatter.
"Well, of course! There's this army guy here, nothing to write home about but he's good for some diversion. I wouldn't pay him the time of day back home, but on this island? Why not? And, no, I don't consider it cheating at all-strictly recreational. What I do is my business. Shit, my fianck's the lucky one. What he doesn't know won't hurt him." Then she giggled. "But I better never catch him cheating on me! What I'd do to him would make Lorena Bobbit look like Shirley Fucking Temple."
Still more chick-thing chatter.
"Oh, and you wouldn't believe the damn professorshe's a worm professor, can you believe it?-this skinny frizz-head cunt with permanent PMS. Looks like Olive Oil on Popeye. I'm playing so many head games with her, it's actually fun, and I'll bet she's never been laid in her life! She's so jealous of my bod that you can see steam coming out her ears. Oh, and she's got this dork assistant named Loren-nerd and a half. I'm always giving him an eyeful to keep him riled. That poor kid probably plays with himself ten times a day! When I'm bored, I tease the shit out of him. It's so much fun!"
Suddenly the line fell silent, and after a moment, all she could hear was fuzz.
I knew I shouldn't have changed my service. She leaned up, frowning, and redialed.
Nothing but fuzz over the line.
Then she dialed her fiance.
Fuzz.
"Goddamn cell phones," she muttered and put it away.
(II)
"Are those numbers that have just worn away from age?" Nora suggested.
.No, I don't think so," Trent said. He still had his eye pressed to the microscope, focusing down on the tiny lens or element or whatever it was. They were trying to figure out the…-::markings. "They don't look like they're worn or eroded at all. It must be some kind of a microbar code. The military uses nomenclature codes to mark security equipment. Same thing as a model number, only coded."
"Security equipment," Nora said, "which makes sense on a camera lens that small. So that other thing I found on the cord-it must be a security key."
Trent looked back at her. "Thing on the cord?"
"The thing you said was a radio calibrator," Nora reminded him.
"It had the same markings?"
"See for yourself." She placed the object on the stage.
"The configuration is different but it's the same style," Trent observed now.
"And you said you've seen them before?"
"I've seen the same sort of thing, but nothing exactly like these. Usually they're numbers or letters."
"A newer system?"
"It's got to be. For certain kinds of specialized equipment, the army needs to mark it in a way that can't be deciphered by an enemy in the field. I'm sure if you ran a scanner across these markings it would tell you exactly what this thing is, when it was made, model number, lot number, stuff like that. It would also tell you what it's a key for." Trent paused, puzzled. "I'm going to call the S-3 officer at my post, see if he knows anything about this island still being used for anything."
"But you're the guy who checks the island every month," Nora pointed out. "Wouldn't you be the first to know?"
"Not necessarily," he said. "This thing's got me thinking." He held it up. "A key, then a security lens, and what you told me this morning."
'Huh?"
"About the lights being on in some of the head shacks."
Oh yeah, Nora thought. And he said he didn't have access to them. You didn't turn the lights on." She saw the simple deduction. "So it must've been someone else."
"Someone I don't know about. So maybe the army is using the island for something… and I don't know about that, either."
Trent snapped open his cell phone, hit a dial key, then waited.
"Damn," he said.
"Busy?"
"No, just static. I'd say we were in a bad cell out here, but my cell phone worked fine yesterday and the day before." He dialed another number and got the same effect.
Nora called the college, just to see if she'd get through. "I'm getting static, too. Sort of a throbbing buzz."
"Have you made any other calls?"
"A couple times since we got here. The reception was fine. Maybe a tower went down, or a solar flare broke up some satellite waves."
Trent kept his phone to his ear, listening. Then he shook his head and closed the phone. "The way the static rises and falls…"
"Yeah?"
"It almost sounds like a military signal jammer."
Nora frowned. "That doesn't make sense."
Trent thought about it and shrugged. Then he agreed, "You're right, that's ridiculous. I'm sure it's just a good old case of technical difficulties. Why would anybody jam us?"
(III)
"Loren? Do you mind if I snorkel without my top on?" Annabelle asked. The large, tan-line-delineated breasts stared back at him as if they themselves awaited the answer.
Loren amused himself by imagining an array of responses. Of course I mind! What kind of an immoral cad do you think 1 am? Or, I would find that unduly offensive, Annabelle. Better yet: That's sexual harassment! Expect to hear from my attorney!
"I-I-I… don't mind at all," he said.
"Oh, that's good." The breasts rose in a perfect pose when she adjusted her diving mask. "It feels so wonderfully natural underwater, you know?"
"Yeah," he droned.
The dark pink nipples-larger than poker chipsinfiltrated him like a hypnotist's totems. She was a centerfold come to life, standing before him in utter nonchalance. Nude now, save for the white thong's tiny triangle, she was all glimmering skin and voluptuous lines. I'll bet the suntan oil on her body weighs more than the thong, he thought.
When she leaned over to step into her flippers, Loren could've collapsed.
This is going to be a realy V wt day…
Mask propped up on his forehead, Trent appeared from the trees. He almost dropped the flippers he was carrying when he noticed Annabelle. He paused to gulp. This is going to be a really great day… the weather, I mean."
'Yeah, not a cloud in the, uh, sky," Loren added.
Annabelle giggled. "'That's great. A threesome.'
"I figured you might need some army expertise finding these bristleworms," Trent added.
'Me more, the merrier." Annabelle leaned over one more time to pick up her camera.
The beach really is the best place to appreciate natural beauty,' Loren remarked.
"I hear ya," Trent said.
"First time in my life I ever seen a woman wearing a Dorito."
"Come on, boys!" Annabelle strode off, attributes bobbing. Loren and Trent followed her like two puppies.
They waded in behind her. Mild surf lapped at their thighs.
You two know where the bristleworms are?" Trent asked. "Or is it just potluck?"
'Loren knows,' Annabelle called back. 'We'll follow him.'
Damn it! Loren thought. He wanted to be the one following her, considering what he'd be looking at. 'You remember, Annabelle," he urged. "We'll just swim out till we feel the cool-flow, then look down for the trench. The end with the yellow coral banks is where the nest is."
'Okay," she agreed. "'T'hen you guys can follow me."
"Smart move,' Trent said aside to Loren. There was no need to hide their obvious sexism. "She'll be snap ping pictures for a long time once we get to the nest. Which means plenty of eye time for us."
"Precisely."
Once they'd waded to chest-level, they all mouthed their snorkels and dove…
Loren thought of floating within a liquid prism. The warm water seemed extra buoyant. He marveled at the sea's schools of silver fish flowing en masse like splinters of metal, clumps of coral, and squirming anemones, large yellow-tailed snappers cruising lazily and bright as neon. Some spine-balls that were urchins rolled below them like tumbleweeds, and when a hefty octopus spotted them, it froze, tentacles extended, then shot away before a wake of black ink.
The three of them saw the trench and then the canary-yellow mass of crenelated coral. That's when they surfaced, treading water.
"You all saw the coral right at the tip of the trench," Loren said. "That's where the bristleworms are. Just start turning over rocks and you'll see them." He finnicked more specimen tubes from the net bag that floated off his belt.
"I'm ready," Annabelle said, hoisting her camera.
Both Trent and Loren were clearly diverted by the vision of Annabelle's floating breasts. "Are we going into the trench?" Trent asked.
"It's not advisable," Loren said.
"Why?" Annabelle asked. "I could get some great shots."
"What's in the trench?" it was Trent's turn to ask.
"Well, seafans, featherduster anemones, light-emitting coral that flashes like Christmas lights," Loren began.
"That sounds pretty cool," Trent said.
"Oh, let's go," Annabelle urged.
"And probably moray eels that are big enough to bite the limbs off humans…"
"Oh, let's not go," the blonde corrected herself.
"Thank you. So we'll stick to the coral clusters, and we should find some great scarlet bristleworms."
"No time like the present," Trent said.
The outcroppings of coral were about twenty feet below them. A group of shining pinfish followed them down as if part of their group. Loren's eyes scanned past the coral to the end of the trench, which looked narrow and hundreds of feet long-a minor chasm that had likely been formed thousands of years ago during an underwater plate-shift. For a moment he actually considered investigating, but then noticed some baby hammerheads loitering at the trench's rim.
Naw, he thought.
His eyes invariably rose back to Annabelle, who hovered over the coral, looking down. Her legs would slowly open and close to stabilize her position as she fired off some test shots with the big camera. She might as well have been nude in the water, all that immaculate flesh suspended before rising bubbles. The image compelled unshakable fantasies…
But it was all primordial, he knew. Eye candy, he thought, inciting my male genetic propensities. He knew now there was nothing really likable about Annabelle. She was the stuck-up leader of the cheerleading squad, who'd only settle in the end for the quarterback, the idea of social status raised to a personal priority. Shallow. Loren had encountered plenty of shallow people in his life of nerdom, and he'd had enough…
The only woman he really liked was Nora, but…
She's my friggin' boss.
Such was life.
Trent was staring at Annabelle too, right at the tiny triangle of fabric between her legs. He's a caveman, all right, Loren thought, and wants to drag her back to the cave by the hair. It was clear they had something going on; Annabelle had already made her selection. Survival of the dumbest, Loren tried to rationalize. It was easier than admitting he'd never be the kind of tough guy most beautiful women were attracted to.
He moved in and started flipping over rocks alongside Annabelle. Beige sea dust rose in billows. But then Annabelle upturned a large flat rock, and…
Recoiled.
Loren and Trent immediately spotted her reaction, and swam to her.
She jabbed her finger down violently toward a mass of scarlet bristleworms.
They were all bloated up to the size of Ping-Pong balls, some bursting before their eyes to release spews of tiny pink worms and minuscule yellow ova.
And these things have lungs AND gills, he reminded himself. They could be moving all over the island by now.
Trent and Annabelle swam back ashore, leaving Loren to tread the water in place.
He debated the idea for several more minutes. Then-
Got nothing better to do…
He dove back down, to collect more samples.