Free Rolling in the Deep by Mira Grant Page B

that we officially do not know are associated with this voyage?” asked Professor Harris, looking up and adjusting his glasses. He cast a wicked smile at the nearest cameramen, who were all, apart from Kevin, scowling at him. Mention of the mermaids meant immediate deletion of their footage, and a lot of manual editing to scrub the idea from the scene. “Open-sea swimming is never safe, but those women struck me as extremely professional. As long as they didn’t run afoul of a shark, they should be fine.”
    “Are there sharks in these waters, Professor?” asked Anne.
    Professor Harris hesitated. Then, apparently taking mercy on the cameramen who were waiting for his reply, he said, “There are sharks in all waters, my dear. This is their home, not ours, and we should treat it as such. Now, I have not seen the diversity of shark populations in these waters that I would have expected—but I have also not sent down the majority of my cameras yet, or chummed the waves to attract our fine, finny friends.”
    “So would you say that you’d expected to find more sharks here than you have?” pressed Anne. The rushing crewmen were forgotten in her dogged pursuit of something that actually fit the documentary’s pre-constructed narrative.
    Kevin almost envied her. He could never forget the real world as quickly as she could, and he liked those professional mermaids. No matter how hard he tried to focus, he couldn’t ignore the fact that the crew was rushing toward the spot where he had last seen the ladies in the water, and none of them seemed to be coming back.
    “Yes, actually,” said Peter. “I was definitely expecting to have picked up signs of local shark activity by now. We’re sampling all levels of the local water, and cameras have started going down, but no sharks. It’s odd. This is clean, open ocean, with very little pollution and very high levels of the protein tags and chemicals that indicate a healthy ecosystem. So where are the predators?”
    “Part of the issue with looking for sharks and other large predators in a place like this is the depth,” said Sonja, getting in on the action. The curly-haired cetologist looked bright and alert, despite the early hour. She was probably one of those people who didn’t really need to sleep, thought Anne sourly, and promptly forgot about her irritation in the face of the story. “We can’t go down to the sea floor to check for signs that they’ve been there, because we can’t actually get to the sea floor.”
    “I thought sharks hung out near the surface,” said Anne. “You know, like the shark from Jaws .”
    Professor Weinstein made a pained face. “There are a lot of things about the shark from Jaws that aren’t scientifically accurate. You can find sharks at all levels of the sea, but a surprising number of them like to swim along the bottom. It’s more energy-efficient, and there’s plenty down there to eat. Big apex predators like the Great White are relatively rare in the world of sharks. Smaller, more discriminating species are much more common.”
    “We’re sending down the fish cameras today, and we should hopefully pick up any local shark species on our monitors,” said Sonja. Then she smiled wickedly. “Who knows? We might even find a mermaid.”
    Kevin frowned. The scientists were laughing, and even Anne seemed interested and engaged, although it was hard to tell with her: so much of her job involved looking interested that sometimes he thought she hadn’t paid honest attention to anything in years. And yet he couldn’t manage to forget the professional mermaids frolicking in the water, or bring himself to ignore the passing crewmen.
    What was going on back there?
     

     
    The last of the Atargatis divers surfaced and swam back to the guard rope, shaking his head. Captain Seghers watched from the deck, her hands clenched tight around the rail. David stood beside her, his head bowed. After an hour of increasingly desperate dives, it