Free The Heat Islands: A Doc Ford Novel by Randy Wayne White

I just stand there and let him knock me off the dock?"
    "Why not? The guy's disturbed, man. You don't feel that in him? I do. Damn dad gets killed in the war dropping bombs on people—enough to disturb anybody. So he knocks you off the dock. So what? We have to learn to absorb indignities. Doc. You're too big a person to let the small stuff bother you."
    Still looking into the microscope. Ford said. "You're wrong."
    "Well, I think you're too big a person."
    "Wrong about that, too, but Sutter's father wasn't killed in the war—at least not dropping bombs. He said his dad was in the air force. The air force didn't exist during the Seeond World War. It wasn't founded until a couple of years later, after the atomic bomb was dropped. It was the army air corps. The sons of war heroes don't make that kind of mistake."
    Tomlinson said, "I'll be damned. But he was so convincing, like he believed it. Well, I'd rather be naive than cynical."
    "I'm aware of that."
    Tomlinson was watching Ford concentrate. "Find any tarpon larvae yet? Solve the mystery of where tarpon spawn?"
    The tarpon was one of the most popular game fish on earth, but almost nothing was known about its life history—not even where the animals spawned, though there were indications that spawning took place far offshore.
    Still looking through the microscope, his glasses balanced on his forehead like goggles. Ford told Tomlinson it was going to take more than one researcher working in one area to solve the mystery. He straightened and rubbed his eyes. "But that's not what I'm looking for. Yesterday, when I was up by the Mud Hole—just below Captiva?—I took a water sample. I saw some dead fish floating around up there, so I'm checking for red tide."
    "Aw, man. I hope not. Couple years ago. I was anchored up off Sarasota. Siesta Key. and we got a real bad red tide. Man, these bloated fish floating everywhere. Every kind of fish; some real weird-looking eels, too. Like the whole ocean had died, and you take a breath, your lungs burned. This guy I talked to, this guy who'd lived there forever, told me every time oil companies started dropping sample wells, they got a red tide. Pollution, man, it's going to kill us all one day."
    Ford rotated the calibrated dial on the microscope, increasing magnification, and said, "Most researchers wouldn't agree. Not about pollution, but about what causes red tide. Most say it's a natural phenomenon. It's worldwide, you know. Some are studying if maybe increased agricultural runoff—phosphates, nitrates from fertilizer—maybe catalyze increased blooms, but most think it's just something that happens."
    Tomlinson said, "I don't know, man."
    Ford was looking through the microscope again. "Well, red tide only describes discoloration caused by plankton bloom. It might or might not be toxic. The nontoxic blooms can still kill fish, because if it's concentrated in an area where the water doesn't flush, it depletes oxygen. Fish suffocate. Usually at night, when plant plankton can't manufacture oxygen, so has to take it from the water. See?"
    Tomlinson was listening, so Ford continued. "Take the bridge they built from the mainland to Sanibel back in the sixties. The spoil islands interrupt the natural flushing of the bays. The water's shallow, so plankton blooms become even more concentrated. Result: same amount of red tides, but they're more deadly to fish. Peripheral impact—that could be an ecological science."
    "Yeah," said Tomlinson, "or like an epitaph. Florida's. Died from peripheral impact. But it's the same thing, man. You see that." He was becoming animated, using his arms to talk. "It's greed. A destructive force. The progeny of light casting a dark shadow."
    Ford shrugged. "I don't see it that way; I don't think you believe that, either. It's just the way we are; the way we make it as a species. Sometimes we're too successful."
    "Right."
    "You know— successful."
    "No, what?"
    Ford said. "Like... well, say a tribe of