Title: Fish for Fallen Light Author: nevdull Category: X Posted: February 22, 2000 Archive: Yes, but link to http://nevdull.tripod.com/fallen-light.txt Notes: At end. Summary: I started early, took my dog, and visited the sea. "It may be necessary to remark, that previous to the period I beheld this object, I had heard it frequently reported by several persons, and some of them persons whose veracity I have never disputed, that they had seen such a phenomenon as I have described, though then, like many other, I was not disposed to credit their testimony on the subject. I can say of a truth, that it was only by seeing this phenomenon, I was perfectly convinced of its existence..." . . February, 1999: "The sea" . . 90 MILE BEACH NORTHLAND, NEW ZEALAND Toma and Eric ran ahead of their mother, dragging the hapless puppy behind them across the sand. The dog, unharmed, yelped excitedly and tried to right itself by pulling on its own rope tether, but young Eric veered unexpectedly. Christina Kohatu, sighing an eternal parental sigh, waved for the boy to return to her so she could untangle the poor animal. Eric ignored her and continued his ungraceful run down the beach. Toma pulled at her leg. "Can I go down to the water?" "Of course, dear," Christina said absently. She was watching the puppy, who had righted itself and begun running with determination after her son. She followed his path with her eyes, and realized with a start that her son too was moving towards someone. He was a tall, thin man she hadn't seen before -- a foolish pakeha who had failed to put on his sunscreen and was already beginning to peel. Even if he'd been Maori, she would've been alarmed -- he was a stranger headed directly for her child. "Eric!" she cried in warning, dropping their beach items and breaking into a run. The puppy slowed; Eric did not. The man met up with him and rather than snatching him or grabbing him or noting him in any way, the pair squatted down opposite each other and stared with equal fascination at something half-buried in the sand. Christina dropped to a jog, sensing he was not a threat to her family. Nevertheless, she wasted no time and swung her boy up into her arms in a single motion, then turned away and moved back up the beach. Something about the shape told her not to get involved. Or perhaps it was the way the man with the American accent was repeating over and over again, "I got you, I got you." . . July, 1999: "Smiles from far off" . . MALIBU, CALIFORNIA PACIFIC HIGHWAY Bridget Lurie staggered out of the warehouse, eyes blinking involuntarily against even that soft dawn light. It seemed like years since she'd seen the sun, moved freely, been spared the relentless pounding inside that decrepit building. "That shit is phat," Tyler twitched. His oversized ninety-dollar pants were filthy, but his oversized forty-dollar pupils registered only a beautiful internal vista. "Yeah," Bridget said, because no one else said anything. Ann was digging through her backpack looking for keys. Finding them should've been easy; like all her accessories, the backpack was made of clear plastic, but it was so overflowing with empty water bottles, Blowpop wrappers and party fliers that locating anything important was unlikely. "Did you check your pockets?" Bridget asked wearily. She slumped against the car, uncaring that cold morning dew began to penetrate her tight, sweat-soaked tank top. She wasn't thinking of much besides sleep, and whether the two and a half tabs had worn off sufficiently to let Ann drive safely. Bridget silently berated herself for never learning stick, leaned her head against the passenger side window, and napped out still standing. When she awoke she was lolling about in the backseat, her face pressed against the same cold glass but now from the inside. Ann was driving, and in Bridget's initial sleepy assessment her friend seemed to be handling the wheel just fine. Tyler, in the passenger seat, was rubbing his shaved head and watching himself in the side mirror. All seemed normal enough. Then Ann asked whether that was a monkey swimming in the Pacific, and Bridget snapped out of her daze into full alarm. "Man, the best part of a rave is driving home and watching the sun rise," Tyler added, apropos of nothing. "It's so spiritual." "Ann, what did you say?" Bridget leaned forward between the Corolla's seats, studying her friend's face. "Over there." Ann jerked her head. Bridget, despite herself, peered curiously out the driver side window. At first she saw only the thing's wake -- to her eye no different from the small furrows in the water made by countless dolphins, jet skis, and well-tanned lifeguards. Then it surfaced, just for a moment. She pressed her face harder against the cool glass until her breath and the passing trees obscured the sight. FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONS Scully was talking to herself. "What the hell?" She turned the paper on its side, which failed to help. Was there a Rosetta Stone for his hieroglyphic scrawl somewhere in this office, or was she stuck transliterating Mulder's appalling chicken scratch all on her own? Her cell phone rang and she jumped. 9am was a bit on the early side for a Monday crisis. "Hey Scully," Mulder said. He sounded perky. "Did I wake you?" "Already at the office." "Didn't finish up the filing on Friday?" "I went through all the old cases, but I haven't put back '98 through '99. I can't say your handwriting has expedited the process much since there's no way I'm closing these cases without properly transcribing the notes into the system. Next time you want to evaluate your 96% hit ratio, put the files back yourself, okay?" "98%." "Whatever." "Scully, admit it. You've been dying to re-file that office for years." "I _did_ re-file it. And then it burned down, and I re-filed it again. My estimation is that it takes you four point five days to obliterate any organizational system." She heard the sound of air whistling past the phone -- he was outside. "Mulder, where are you?" "Sunny Cal-ee-forn-eye-aye. You should be here too. Surf's up, humidity's down, feelin' fine." She leaned back in the desk chair and closed her eyes. Which was more headache-inducing, the sound of the overwrought air conditioner or Mulder's voice? "I didn't know you were taking a vacation," she said. She was afraid he wasn't. "I'm not. Wait, hang on." He seemed to put the phone down, speak to someone, and return. "Listen, I gotta go, but I'm faxing over some papers you should probably look at." She assumed he meant later in the day and was duly surprised to hear the sound of the machine's start-up wail from across the office . "You're faxing it to me now? Mulder, I thought you were outside." "Who needs an office? These are the mobile nineties, Scully -- home is where the technology is. Jim hooked me up with a laptop and a wireless modem." His voice was getting distant; she recognized the tell-tale signs of an imminent hang-up. "Wait, Mulder, who's Jim?" "It's all in the papers, Scully. I'll call you later, promise." "Mulder! What about transcribing all these notes? Mulder!" Like a bewildered character in a film, she stared at the phone after he hung up. MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA After Logan and SFO, the tiny Monterey airport was laughably quaint. There hadn't even been a jetway; they walked with their bags across shimmering tarmac. "The name of the primary driver?" "Vince Riley." The programmer produced his driver's license after dropping it and half-a-dozen video rental cards, ticket stubs and ATM receipts. He smiled sheepishly at his travel companion and stuffed the lot back into his pants. The bleached-blond behind the counter compared, with obvious distain, the haircut in his license photo (dated 1987) to the identical one on Vince's head. "Is there a second driver on the vehicle?" His companion leaned forward, handing over her own blurry but more contemporary identification. "Katherine Liederman. Eye before ee." The attendant nodded and circled a billion and a half places on the rental agreement. "Sign everywhere I've marked," she said to Vince. Katherine checked the time on her pager and bounced back and forth in place. "Registration closes in half an hour," she whispered. He looked pained and he frantically scribbled his signature on the last form. Oops, Katherine thought, I'm sorry. She touched his arm lightly, hesitantly, and the last flourish of his pen carved a gash across the counter. "It's okay, Vince, we can just register tomorrow." It wasn't hard to add a smile -- it was honest. "I'm looking forward to everything -- I'm really glad we're here." He smiled back at her with optimistic trepidation, hoping for hope. MALIBU BEACH, CALIFORNIA Mulder was standing ankle-deep in dead fish. "Surf's up, huh?" Jim Tilson asked, tapping the final keystrokes on the laptop. Mulder shrugged and wrinkled his nose simultaneously; the net effect was a painful-looking facial contortion. "The point is to convince her to fly out here." He looked around. "I don't suppose photos like this make it into California Board of Tourism brochures much." "No, but I hear there's a slot opening up on America's Funniest Home Videos." Mulder thought Scully would find their senses of humor difficult to tell apart, but there was no mistaking the physical dissimilarities between him and Tilson. For one thing, only one of them smelled like a cannery. "It seems like 'surf's up' is part of my problem here," Mulder murmured, stepping away from the crescent-shaped swath of silvery seagull fodder. Tilson pushed his sunglasses up onto his head; fine black hair sprayed off behind it in several directions. He scanned the beach in both directions and checked up at the sun. "Tide's just about ready to go back out, so we probably won't see more of these. At least not for a few hours." "What kind of fish are they?" "Queenfish," the biologist answered immediately. "These are a little immature -- they tend to be closer to two, three feet. Common in these waters but don't usually hang out close enough to the shore to wash up." Mulder brushed his pants off, hesitated, and smelled his fingers. "Speaking of washing up..." "Go ahead. I'm going to finish the count for this morning before Fish and Game show up." He checked his watch. "6am is about when I'd expect them to get the call and head down." Mulder was halfway up the beach before Tilson called after him. "Think she'll show up?" The agent turned back towards the sea, squinting. "Yeah," he said, after some thought. "She always does." MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA "You wanna skip the afternoon session, too?" Vince kicked off his shoes and danced down towards the tide pools, his conference badge fluttering behind him in the sea breeze. It was colder here than on the bay side, but it was considerably less overrun with computer programmers. Katherine leaned back against the hood of the rental car. "You bet." Long hours, bloodshot eyes, carpal tunnel syndrome. The payback came in the form of summer conferences and expense accounts. A warm Ford Taurus and a cool California breeze would keep her planted in the office for an average 11-hour day, no problem. Anything to forget Chicago's freezing winters and humid summers. Maybe the company would let her move out here. She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the surf. It was especially loud here near the rocks; it helped to drown out the pressured sensation she'd had all day, like there was a headache on her horizon. "You gotta come here," Vince called suddenly. Katherine covered her face with her hands. She liked her co-worker, she did, but this pounding sensation was getting worse. Maybe if she just lay there he'd go away, just for a few minutes. She jumped at the touch on her shoulder. It was Vince, wide-eyed. "Look," he mouthed, and pointed. Katherine caught only a glimpse -- of streaming slivery hair, of smooth grey arms and legs, of skillful northward movement. She sat up immediately. The pounding in her head had ceased. "Get the camera," she said quietly. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA FBI FIELD OFFICE "Mulder, you have got to be kidding." "Are you saying you're refusing to do this autopsy?" Scully held up the tongs. The fish dangled sadly from one end. "Guess that isn't the one that got away," Mulder said. "Mulder, I'm not remotely qualified to perform an autopsy on a fish, and if I were, I imagine I'd have better things to do." She paused. "Like reconsidering my career." He stepped around the metal gurney, moving closer to her until rebuffed by waves of odor. He settled for leaning against a cabinet near the wall. "I wouldn't stand next to the waste disposal unit." Scully smiled. "Unless you want to drop him in and save me the trouble?" Mulder moved away from the wall, then took a step back from the fish, and finally settled on standing with his arms folded. "That's a she," a voice said. The man shut the door behind him and weaved through empty gurneys to greet them. Tallish, dark hair, fair- skinned but with some Asian in his lineage. Too goofy for academics, but the glasses which hung low on his nose suggested a lot of hours behind a CRT. He put his hand out to Scully, looked down at what she was holding, and then reconsidered with a disarming smile. "Jim Tilson, ichthyologist." Employing a technique she rarely used on her partner, Scully let the fish down gently. She snapped the latex gloves off, tucked them under her arm, and extended a hand. "Agent Dana Scully, fish pathologist." To Mulder, she asked, "I suppose this is the man responsible for freeing me from D.C. weather?" Tilson answered first. "Indeed. Agent Mulder was kind enough to fly out here on the basis of my hunch alone, but he suspected you'd need a bit more convincing." "Frankly, this week nothing could've been more convincing than relief from D.C. ninety-eight percent humidity." Mulder cleared his throat. "I was about to suggest to Agent Scully that we begin the examination of the evidence, and all the better now that you're here, Jim..." "Whereas I was about to suggest that you explain to me again the significance of this particular avenue of investigation." Her voice was pleasantly dismissive, but she'd begun to slip into the gloves again. Mulder sighed. "Dr. Tilson has been tracking a series of sightings up the California coast, sightings which are... or rather appear to be... related to unexplained fish deaths but which actually may..." "It's a mermaid," Tilson said. During the ensuing long pause, Scully looked back and forth between the two men. Only Tilson received an expression that suggested surprise. "Possible mermaid," Mulder added lamely. Scully settled her gaze on the biologist. "So, you're a friend of my partner's, then?" MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA The sun-bleached photo booth attendant took nearly all of the "guaranteed one hour development time" just to locate the envelope of freshly minted prints. Vince pushed rumpled bills across the high counter and didn't wait for change. Katherine registered the disappointment in Vince's posture even before she grabbed the fuzzy photographs away from him and saw them for herself. "What the hell is this supposed to be?" They were taken in such haste that the first six were barely in focus. It could've been a dolphin, or a seal. Or even a tire. They flipped to the last photo together. Vince's shoulders squared up immediately. "Looks like seven is our lucky number." "No shit," she whispered. She held the print up into the midday sun like a vacation slide, or a trophy. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA "We're going to your office?" Scully asked as Tilson pulled her up into the poorly-lit van. She could stand upright but not by much. "So to speak," Tilson was saying, and then looked past her into the branch office lot. "Where's Mulder?" "He's trying to upgrade the rental car. Something about a new gizmo he can't live without." Her eyes adjusted to the eccentric lighting scheme and she frowned. "And what is all this?" "My office," he explained. "It's by necessity mobile." He sensed her hesitation. "I've got your standard windowless research facility back at the college, but that doesn't do a lot of good here." "Which college did you say that was?" He hadn't, of course. "Northeast Iowa Community College." Scully took in the haphazardly-arranged electronics, coffee-ringed journal articles, and discarded fast food containers. Bubbling exotic fish tanks with blue-white fluorescents were the only lighting, and cast an unpleasant pallor over all the junk. "They have much of a marine biology department at a community college in the Midwest?" She was goading him, but he refused to be offended. Like Mulder, disbelief only seemed to fuel his excitement. Tilson stared at her over his oval-shaped glasses and talked with his hands. "Look, I'll admit my CV could use a little polish. My research methods are unconventional, my goals are off the academic map. I use my standing, such as it is, to pursue my own ends which rarely coincide neatly with the latest trends in my field." He jerked his thumb out the sliding door of the van, to indicate her partner who was supposedly bringing their car around. "I'm surprised you'd have a problem with that kind of technique." She glanced down briefly, and then out into the field office lot. "I don't have a problem with it." She coughed a little. "Not coming from him, anyway. It's different -- he's not ostensibly a scientist." Tilson pulled up a sealed bucket marked "live bait" which he used as an impromptu seat. "I'm not _ostensibly_ a scientist, either. Community college credentials don't get me published in the hottest journals, but frankly there aren't enough peers qualified to review the kind of research I do. If you want to play that game, though, I can tell you all about my six years in the Boston University Marine Program at Woods Hole where I made significant advancements in watershed-estuary couplings." "No, I--" "Do you doubt Mulder's abilities as an FBI agent just because he has extracurricular extraterrestrial activities?" Scully shook her head but didn't care to expand on this particular can of worms. Especially not when her opponent was actually sitting on one. "How did you first get in touch with Mulder, anyway?" "We travel in similar online circles." Scully thought along one track and answered along another. "Mermaids.com?" "Something like that." She sighed and glanced outside the van again; the rental car was nowhere in sight. Mulder had probably lost the requisition form and was off somewhere filling out another. She turned back to the biologist. "You really believe this is a mermaid?" "I'm not the only one. The Aboriginal Australians feared the cow-sized bunyip. The Celtic selkie was part seal rather than part fish. Slavs believed that vodniks were waterdemons who arose after the death of a child. The Japanese Ningyo myth tells of a fish-human mermaid which, if eaten, would grant eternal youth and beauty, and so on." "But doesn't the fact that such a variety of myths exists invalidate the proposition that they are all based in fact? If a 'mermaid' actually existed, why wouldn't the mythology show some continuity?" "Legends are told and re-told. I would expect some distortion of the facts as a natural consequence of their recitation. It's more important, I think, to consider the possibility that these myths represent a fundamental, undocumented life form that if discovered could have radical repercussions on the way we view life on earth." "You're sure your name isn't Mulder?" He laughed quietly and pushed his glasses a bit up his nose. "I guess just telling stories isn't going to convince you." "I always preferred the 'show' part of show-and-tell." "I think I can handle that." She pulled up a milk crate. "I'm ready." He smiled again -- he did that a lot -- and she had to like him. She just did. MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA By the time Katherine and Vince drove up to the beach late that evening, there was nowhere to park. It seemed like the entire peninsula had gone out for an evening stroll on the beach -- minus the strolling and plus several hundred cameras and video recorders. They waded through two miles of parked cars, occasionally trailing their hands along the ticking hoods with their fading warmth. Vince was unaware that he was still wearing his conference badge, although discussing the standards issues related to the IP v.6 Internet protocol was no longer anywhere in his mind. He was gaping at the transformation that had occurred on the beach since that morning -- the publication of their photo, the dozens of corroborating sightings. Spotlights from the Coast Guard vessels created a pool of artificial daylight almost half a mile wide, just outside the perimeter of a great array of nets. The slick, black bodies of reconnaissance scuba divers with their head-mounted lamps appeared and disappeared beneath the dark water. Orders were barked out of PA speakers affixed to the boats. Silent police cars with rotating colored lights marked off the edge of the ocean from the front of the enthralled crowd. The creature was nowhere to be seen, but if the whispers of onlookers were to be believed, the Guard had isolated it in their nets. They were just attempting to capture it safely. Katherine sighed quietly. "This was a mistake." "What?" Vince asked. She just shook her head. A balding man standing near Vince craned his paradoxically hairy neck up and over the crowd. "Why don't they just tranquilize it or something?" he said, to no one in particular. "If they don't know what it is, they won't know how much to give it," Katherine answered. "Too much anesthesia could kill it." "What's happening?" a woman's voice yelled from the front of the crowd. Another voice echoed it. They seemed to be directing their comments to the ships which had erupted into a flurry of activity. Spotlights were hastily trained on a cluster of divers who had just surfaced. "What is it?" Baldy asked. Katherine couldn't contain her sudden relief, but she spoke so quietly that only Vince heard her. "It's gone," she said. "It got away." She turned to him, handed him her keys. "You drive. It's going north." -- "What am I looking at?" Scully asked. She tilted her head in the opposite direction, on the off-chance it made more sense that way. "It's a mermaid corpse." "That looks like roadkill." Tilson adjusted the focus on the frame. His ineptitude with the slide projector was sadly familiar. "More like beachkill, I suppose. This photo was taken six months ago, not far from Auckland, New Zealand. I had hoped to get there sooner after I received the report, but it's not like you can just fly around the world at a moment's notice." "Not ordinarily, no." "Anyway, I managed to snap these few photographs on my arrival date, but when I returned later that evening with my gear to collect the corpse, it was gone. The guys I'd paid to watch the thing swore no one had come by, but there it was. Or wasn't." Scully laughed. "Dr. Tilson, I don't know whether to call that all terribly convenient, or to ask you if you want a job." "Should I take your mirth to mean that I'm making headway in convincing you?" "Convince me with _what_?" He held up his hands, slide pointer sweeping around the room. "Fair enough. Would tissue samples help?" Scully shifted position on the uncomfortable makeshift seat and crossed her arms. "Try me." "Great." He danced around her, flicking off the slide projector with audible relief. "Come 'ere." Scully moved to the well-lit shelf along the length of the van which seemed to pass for a "laboratory". At best, it was a receptacle for a microscope and some smudged and dirty petrie dishes. At worst, it was really, really cramped. He gestured and she stood on her toes to peer in. "What am I looking at besides some necrotic tissue?" she asked. He leaned in closer, speaking into her ear as she studied the sample. "What kind of necrotic tissue?" She paused, considering. "Mammalian. Subdermal." She increased the magnification. "There's an awful lot of fatty tissue here. Are you suggesting this is from the creature you found?" "The percentage of fat cells there is consistent with aquatic -- not terrestrial -- mammalian life. Fat is an insulator that..." "Yes, yes I know," she snapped. Scully looked up from the eyepiece and controlled a small start at his unexpected proximity. "So it's from that creature you found? I thought the specimen disappeared." "It did, but I recovered this tissue from the rocks on that same beach." Scully folded her arms again. "_Presumably_ from an organism you were unable to study. And there's no guarantee this isn't just some unfortunate seal that died there days or even weeks earlier." The biologist grinned from behind his reflective lenses. "Oh, that I can guarantee." He leaned over her suddenly, reaching up and over her head. Another fluorescent light jumped to life, and Scully turned to face a familiar series of short horizontal black bands. "DNA analysis I ran on the issue," Tilson explained. "This should convince even Dr. Scully." -- Mulder heard the report on the news as he filled out the second car rental form. If they didn't make the damn things so small, he wouldn't lose them all time. Buried in the low din of anxious tourists and indifferent clerks was the sound of the radio, but a few choice words emerged clearly enough to draw his attention. He leaned over the counter to hear better and after a moment hit the first entry on his speed dial. "Scully! Are you and Tilson in the van?" She made a strange surprised noise. "It's not a-rockin', if that's what you're asking." This gave him pause. "Do I have a reason to be jealous?" "Only if you're attracted to dead fish." He could only imagine the biologist's version of her half of this conversation. "Put on the radio," he said, glancing towards the portable on the clerk's desk. "109.9 FM." Scully's voice, muffled, echoed his words. He heard Tilson curse, no doubt looking for the misplaced knob from the old van's radio. He heard the sound of shifting clothing, no doubt his partner re-crossing her legs in impatience. Then, finally, he heard the doubled signal from the radio -- just in time. "And in the weird and wacky department, how about the Monterey Mermaid? That's what locals are already beginning to call what could be the biggest discovery, or biggest fraud, of the century. Local authorities claim nothing more remarkable than travelling dolphin pods and ask that no one visit the beaches in question as ecologists are already voicing concern about overcrowding in these fragile ecosystems. But if you've just gotta see what everyone's talking about, head down to Monterey." Mulder nearly forgot the rental's keys. MARINA, CA There was no need for hallucinogens on this beach, the sky black and lit by rising embers from the bonfires that surrounded her. Outside, the music was freed of its characteristic ominous warehouse reverberation; instead it poured out across her body as the sea poured over the sand and evaporated away as easily as the same water under a hot sun. Bridget closed her eyes and twirled, no longer bothering to keep pace with the frantic, repetitive beats. "This is what it's all about," repeated the sample. "This is what it's all about. This is what it's all about. This is what it's all about." Yes, she thought. Yes. The sample faded away; the DJ was working her magic, aligning not just the beats of the next song, but -- it seemed to the delirious crowd -- aligning the very planets overhead. Sparks from the fires became stars, the stars rained down and became life. "What were the skies like when you were young?" asked the music. Bridget knew her thoughts made no sense, but like the song enveloping her it had its own logic, its own beauty, greater than the sum of its simple parts. Electronic noises or the philosophies of a young girl -- on the dark summer beach surrounded by strange friends and friendly strangers, it was truth. "The sunsets were purple and red and yellow--" She was twirling, twirling, her feet now touching damp sand, touching water, and she lost her balance and was falling on her ass and laughing with the crazed wonder of being alive. She looked back towards the beach and saw hundreds worshipping the roaring fires, the monolithic speakers, bowing before the dreadlocked DJ who'd gone topless hours ago. "--on fire--" A white-capped wave rose up and Bridget swallowed a mouthful of salt water mid-laugh. She staggered to her feet, spitting and giggling at the same time, and began to twirl again -- three hundred and sixty degrees of overwhelming visuals, repeating and repeating. "--and the clouds would catch the colors everywhere." On the beach, the dancers were waving their arms in unison, like sea fronds buffeted by waves. The sea was dark. On the beach, someone threw driftwood into a bonfire, and the fire flared into the sky. The sea was dark. On the beach, the party raged. The sea was dark but now lit by bright new eyes. Bridget spun to a halt and stared. The eyes sank into the water. "Burning, burning," the sample repeated. "The earth is burning." LOS ANGELES, CA Scully did the autopsy on the fish anyway, and was just finishing up when she was interrupted. "When the hell is he going to call?" Mulder stormed, sweeping past the examining table and moving halfway across the room before noting the odor. He spent the rest of the conversation with his hand covering his face. "Why?" she asked. "Need a date to the prom?" Her partner folded his arms as much as was possible while simultaneously blocking his nose. "I'm not that much of a narcissist." Scully removed her surgical mask with precise impatience. "He does bear a certain resemblance to you." "He does not." "He does." "I'm taller," Mulder pointed out. "I didn't mean a physical resemblance." "I