The Message
THE VOICE ON THE PHONE was distinct if faint: “Our call came through.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Although I had wanted this for years, had anticipated it, had worked for it and dreamed of it even when working for other things, it was still hard to believe. And harder still to explain to Janet.
“That was Beth on the phone,” I said.
“And you’re leaving.” It was a statement, not a question.
“We both knew this might happen.”
“Don’t bother coming back.”
“Janet . . .”
But she had already rolled over and was pretending to be asleep. I could almost hear the fabric ripping: the seam of an eight-year marriage that had held us together from small colleges in the Midwest to oceanic exploration centers, to the long winters at Woods Hole.
Once it started to tear, it tore straight and true. I took a cab to the airport.
The flight to San Diego was interminable. As soon as I got off the plane I called Doug at Flying Fish.
“Remember when you said you would drop everything to take me to the island if what we were trying to do came through?”
“I’ll meet you at the hangar,” he said.
Doug’s ancient Cessna was already warming up when I got there. I carried two coffees, the black one for him. We were in the air and heading west over Point Loma before we spoke.
“So the fish finally got through,” he said.
“Dolphins aren’t fish and you know it,” I said.
“I wasn’t talking about them; I was talking about Leonard. He spends so much time underwater he ought to grow gills.”
Doug flew out to the island twice a month to deliver supplies to my partners. As the mainland diminished to a smudge behind us, I thought of the years of research that had brought us to this remote Pacific outpost.
Our funding had been cut off by the Navy when we had refused to allow them to use our data for weapons research. It had been cut off by Stanford when we had refused to publish our preliminary results. Grant after grant had fallen away like leaves; like my marriage, which I now could see was only another leaf hitting the ground. Janet and I had been going in different directions for several years, ever since I had turned down tenure in order to continue my life’s work.
The Project.
“There it is, Doc.”
* * *
END OF SAMPLE
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