Killer

Even as the admiral adjusted to the picture, the killer’s head rose out of the water, so abruptly that he jumped. Harper pretended not to notice. “He’s thirty-nine feet long and weighs seven tons. His fin is six feet high. His flippers six feet each. Tip to tip over his back he measures nearly eighteen feet. His flukes . . . One again, sir . . .” The whale lifted the box on to the slipway. The scientist caressed the huge tongue again, and fed the killer a slab of bright red meat.

The intercom hissed. “Right,” said the commander. “Go Two. The flukes measure a little in excess of twelve feet. The flukes are his tail, sir.” The scientist gestured again. The whale vanished.

“On Five, sir.” Monitor Five abruptly showed a cannister deep on the ocean bed. “He can swim at a top speed of twenty-five point eight knots, that’s nearly thirty miles an hour, but he prefers to cruise around eighteen knots.” The killer’s black hulk loomed over the distant cannister, paused, lifted, and was gone. Seconds later it was back on Monitor One, lifting the cannister on to the slipway, the scientist going through the reward ritual.

The intercom crackled. “What? Right. Go on AP One. Monitor Four, sir.” Four showed the hull of a boat from under the water. “As an added precaution we have taught him to home in on small engines and investigate, sir.” The hulk of the whale appeared, dwarfing the boat. A body splashed down under the boat. The whale stopped, and watched. The body began to sink. It did not move. The whale nudged it. It still did not move. The whale left it, and followed the boat. Three bodies hit the water, and began to swim.

“They are dummies?”

“Almost exclusively, sir.”

“Where do you get them?”

“We . . . developed them.”

“I see.”

The whale abruptly vanished. Moments later a bell began to ring, and a red light to flash. “He’s given the alarm,” said the commander.

The whale was back on Monitor Four, but the dummies were still circling the boat. The intercom crackled. “Right. Come in now.”

The commander got up. “That’s all, sir. If the dummies approached one of the boats on the anchorage they would be attacked. We have only three dummies left now, and we don’t like taking them to destruction. As I said, sir, they are extremely expensive.” The lighting came up. The monitors went off. “Would you like to go down and see him closer, sir?”

The admiral nodded. He had come to the Facility ready to tear it to shreds, and had been impressed in spite of himself. He looked at the commander with new respect. “Yeah. I should like to see the star of your show close-to. I can’t really get to grips with its size, though. How big is thirty-nine feet?”

The commander fished around for an analogy. He had read the highly edited file on Admiral Hope which had been made available to him, and he knew the man’s ruling passion was Second World War aircraft. “He’s six feet longer than a Spitfire; the same length as the two-seater Defiant. Twice the length of your Cadillac. As I said earlier, the length of three elephants.”

They went down again in the lift. The commander took the opportunity to give the admiral a little advice. “Please be careful, sir, how you stand. Do not reach out your arms anywhere near the water. Do not go near the water unaccompanied. Please remember that down there I am the expert, I know the dangers; you must do as I say, sir, irrespective of rank.”

The admiral nodded. “Does it actually eat the dummies?” he asked.

“No, sir. We made sure that the dummies tasted unpleasant: we didn’t want him hurting his insides with bits of metal. In a real situation, however, he will very soon find out that real human flesh tastes much more pleasant. Under those circumstances he would eat anyone he attacked.”

The lift doors opened. They went out into the mid-afternoon sun. Beside the slipway he had seen on Monitor One, the admiral noticed a platform, high above the water. It was like a short diving-board surrounded with a chest-high rail. The commander gestured towards it. “You’ll see everything more clearly from the pulpit, sir.” They climbed the steps up to the stubby platform, and the admiral went out along it first, until his chest was against the rail and he was gazing out over the placid blue of the anchorage. He found he was really quite excited; that sick sort of excitement he had felt as a boy doing something forbidden and dangerous.

“Longer than a Spitfire,” he said, and shook his head.

“Call him in now,” called the commander down to the seaman and the scientist still on the slipway. The admiral shaded his eyes, and searched the sparkling surface.

There! A distant flash of movement, by one of the ships.

“There he is.” He half turned to the commander, right hand on the rail, left hand pointing . . .

And the killer beneath the pulpit saw a reaching arm . . .

“SIR!” cried the commander . . .

But the killer was out of the water now, soaring up with careless ease: ten feet, twenty . . .