From the Deep

Pleas and Petitions

And now he knew, he knew that she was doing this on purpose. The expression on her face whenever he walked by her in the lab wasn’t one of a dumb animal; it was knowing and intelligent and it held a secret that only he knew and he knew it and she knew it and it was getting very hard to stay sane.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked her once, quietly, so that nobody else would find out. “What do you think I’ll be able to change? What do you want me to do?”

Andersen swam in a slow lazy circle and her hair swirled gently behind her.

“What do you want me to think?” Ian whispered with his head against the glass, his voice so quiet he could barely hear it himself. 

Once, when most of the team was around, she swam up close to the glass. She pressed her face right up against it and stared at them until they took notice and, confused, gathered around. 

She opened up her mouth. It was the first time any of them had gotten a good look. Inside was the last remaining stub of her tongue, surrounded by pointy teeth. 

Sara almost had a fit. She shouted, "Stay there, Andersen, stay there!" and scrambled across the lab in search of her photo camera. Andersen couldn't have heard her -- it must have been impossible through that glass -- but she didn't budge. She kept her position, hanging there with her mouth patiently open, until Sara made it back and began snapping photo after close up photo. 

Nigel whispered to Monica, "She's showing us her tongue."

She was. It was the first time any of them had gotten a good look at it. The inside of her mouth looked huge and cavernous and empty with the organ missing, but it wasn't big enough for the entire team to see easily, so they had to crowd around it. 

What was left of her tongue was way back at the back of her mouth. It was just barely visible, just barely recognizable, as a squarish bit of gray muscle. Across the edge that was nearest to them was something that was quite clearly a healed wound. Something had sliced her tongue off, and it had bled, but then it had scabbed up and scarred and healed as well as something like that ever could. 

That was something Ian noticed. "It looks remarkably healthy for such a... severe wound," he said. "Nice and clean healing. No sign of any infections or anything."

"It's not just that," said Monica. "The original cut itself looks pretty clean, too. See how it goes straight across her tongue? That wasn't any animal biting it or tearing it off."

"I think I've got all the photos now," Sara announced, and stood up straight.

Immediately Andersen shut her mouth and backed away. She turned around with a motion that was remarkably matter - of - fact and swam off to the top of the tank to pass her time.

"Wow," said Sara. "She understood."

NIgel shook his head. "I'm never going to get used to how smart she is."

But Ian was already used to it, and that was a fact that scared him. 

It had always been Ian's job to write up reports, but this time it was Sara -- and the others -- who analyzed the photos of Andersen's mouth and Sara who wrote all the information down and put it all together with pictures and diagrams and hypotheses on what could have happened. 

Ian didn't read it. And he didn't want anybody else to, either. 

"Really, Ian?" said Sara when he brought this up. "What on earth is the problem this time?"

"Do we really need to publish photos of the inside of her mouth?"

Sara cast her gaze about the room as if somewhere she would find a logical way to respond to Ian's question. "We're supposed to be studying every inch of this creature and trying to figure out what her life was, what her ecosystem was, what... everything! And, yes, Ian, if something in her ecosystem cut her tongue off, then we do need to figure out what that was! That is what we do! And --" She shook her head, at a loss for words. "-- And you, sir, know that!"

Ian shifted uncomfortably. 

"Seriously. What is your problem?"

"Nothing. It just seems... invasive."

"Invasive."

"Yeah."

Sara stared at him like he was speaking another language, which, in a way, he was. Scientists did not worry about "invasive." The only time they considered the word was when asking whether a study would interfere with the function of an organism or a habitat, which taking photos of a mouth would certainly not do. "Invasive" as a matter of personal space was not a thing. That was -- that was -- ridiculous.

"We've already published plenty of photos of the first two mermaids, Ian," she said slowly. "You know. Photos of ribcages and skulls and genitals and such."

"Yeah," said Ian, "I know."

"And Andersen wanted me to take those pictures, Ian. You saw her asking."

Ian sighed. "Yeah. I guess. Fine. Whatever, fine, go ahead. I'm not sure what I was worried about anyway. Never mind. Go on." He left the office.

Sara tried to go back to her work, but now she was distracted. She may have accepted Ian's apology for all his weird behaviour before, but it was still going on, and that was unsettling. And now he'd only left her alone after she'd said that Andersen "asked" her to take the photos. Because that was ridiculous, Andersen was in no way smart enough to have figured out that they wanted to study photographs of her mouth, even if she was smart enough to know they were curious. Andersen hadn't "asked" for anything. But Ian seemed to be fully convinced that she had. 

He was way, way too attached to this study, Sara decided.