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  What was the stupid creature thinking, if anything? Roth admired ambition. He loathed quitters. But at the same time, he strongly believed that every living creature, no matter how brainless or genetically depraved, should somehow instinctively know its limits.

  He watched the shark as it squirmed and wriggled around his foot. It was smaller than he’d thought. It was only about eighteen inches long and kind of anorexic. Even so, it’d probably have tipped the scales at eight pounds easy. Fortunately Dr Roth swam two miles a day and had the legs of a dray horse. He effortlessly lifted the shark clear of the water, raised it so high that it dangled right in front of his face, only a few inches away, all splayed fins and white belly and tiny little puckered anus.

  Dr Roth cocked his fist and hit the shark in the eye with a thundering overhand right.

  The fish held on to his toe as if it was the last toe in the world.

  Blood trickled down Roth’s leg and into the water, each drop exploding like a little bomb. The shark had cut him. He was bleeding. Temper rising, Dr Roth wound up and slugged the shark again, putting his upper body into it, achieving excellent leverage and doing serious damage, he was sure of it.

  The shark made a kind of desperate gurgling sound and defecated all over his genitals.

  But refused to let go.

  Roth lost his temper. He resorted to the kind of language he didn’t normally approve of, and when he’d finally run out of wind, grabbed the shark in both hands and gave it a tremendous yank. His toe appeared to have been rubbed down with a sheet of number eight sandpaper. Now he was really pissed. He gripped the fish in both hands, so tightly that he squeezed all the air out of its bladder. It made a noise like a mortally wounded bagpipe. Standing, he swung the shark at the painted cinderblock wall three times, turning his wrists over the way his baseball coach had taught him so many years ago. As the unfortunate denizen of the deep repeatedly impacted against the unyielding cement, its dull yellow eye unflinchingly held his gaze.

  God, it was staring at him the way mother used to, when he’d filled the toilet and then forgot to flush.

  Roth caught his breath and then resumed slamming the wise-ass fish into the wall, smearing the painted surface with a slimy residue of blood and fish scales and tiny bits of inedible flesh. Eventually the force of the blows knocked the shark’s offending eye right out of its head.

  Gasping for breath, Roth tossed the corpse behind a potted palm.

  His hands were dripping with blood and slime. It was a gimme that fish didn’t sweat. But his hands were sure as hell covered with some kind of sticky, horribly repugnant, semi-liquid gunk. Dr Roth knelt at the lip of the tank and washed his hands as best he could and then ministered to his genitals.

  Fish poo dried amazingly fast.

  He tried to winkle the last of the stuff out of the intricate folds of his foreskin, accidentally gave himself a nasty pinch and uttered a shrill yelp of pain.

  Bath time.

  Dr Roth — Gerard to his superiors — slipped on his swim fins, which were roughly the equivalent of size forty-eight shoes, had more than two hundred and fifty square inches of surface area and allowed him to propel himself at near warp-speed through a liquid environment. He grabbed his mask and cannonballed into the pool in a frothy white maelstrom, causing a shock wave duly noted and filed away for extremely short-term future reference by every living organism within the confines of those two-inch-thick, reinforced clear acrylic walls.

  Not only was Gerard Roth the largest fish in that relatively small pond — he was also the meanest. He allowed himself to drift to the surface, kicked himself into an upright position and rinsed his mask, freed a few strands of grey hair from the rubber strap.

  When he had the mask adjusted to his satisfaction, he took a deep breath, lowered his head beneath the surface and grabbed his dick and shook it energetically.

  Tiny fragments and tendrils of shark poo clouded the water, drifted away on the currents.

  Dr Roth, penis in hand, suddenly had a creepy-crawly feeling that he was being watched.

  Maybe Susan had finally showed up.

  He raised his head, pawed at the water with the big blue fins as he turned slowly around, hitting every point on the compass, all three hundred and sixty degrees. But spotting no one.

  Probably it was the surviving black-tailed sharks watching him, wondering what had happened to good old cousin Ralph. When the dying shark had evacuated its bowels perhaps it had released some kind of chemical — something that served to alert its buddies.

  Or maybe it was the human blood that had fallen into the water, that had them watching him.

  What in Heaven’s name would Susan think of him if she knew he’d dipped his dick in fish doo-doo? He gave himself another shake, adjusted his grip and worked his foreskin back and forth like a tiny mute accordion. The current had carried him up against the viewing area. A covey of snails worked methodically but without visible effect at a field of bright green algae.

  Not for the first time, but perhaps for the last, Dr Roth pondered the fact that there wasn’t any cushy unemployment insurance or social assistance in marine-land. He believed the oceans were the last parts of the world where the work ethic still prevailed. No room down there for floaters. Either you worked your ass off, or you died. Fin.

  Dr Roth pressed his evenly tanned butt against the acrylic, wiping out several square feet of algae and throwing the snails into a panic, making them scatter as best they could.

  Next he mooned the school of rainbow trout swimming eternally against the current in the artificial stream on the far side of the dimly lit aquarium corridor.

  Sometimes during working hours, especially when a bunch of schoolkids on a field trip were running around feeling each other up or making disconcertingly accurate fish-faces by the simple expedient of sucking in their cheeks, Dr Roth liked to insert himself into their midst and then imagine himself paddling starkers in the big tank. Imagine what he’d look like from the perspective of a grade sixer’s close-set eyes.

  Was this a little… perverse? He liked to think so.

  A lady friend, following orders, had once taken a Polaroid of him cavorting naked in the tank, but the flash had reflected off the glass so it looked as if she’d taken a slightly out-of-focus shot of an empty mirror.

  Kind of a Zen thing, she’d said. Now what the hell was that supposed to mean?

  Shortly after that incident Dr Roth had given her the old heave-ho. Who could blame him?

  Despite the warm temperature of the water, Dr Roth began to feel a slight chill. He decided to swim a few laps to warm up and kill time. There was a pint-sized moray eel he always kept an eye out for, that hung out under the rocks at the far end of the pool. He had named the eel Mr Vinegar, because of the sourpuss look on its ugly face. Other than the eel, which was still too small to do him any serious damage, nothing in the tank was worth worrying about.

  You had to remember to keep moving, though, if you didn’t want some damn thing to settle on you, and start grazing.

  Dr Roth picked up the pace as he swam over the pile of rocks Mr Vinegar called home. He swam the length of the pool and back three times, and then broke his rhythm to take a quick look at his faithful stainless steel TAG Heuer.

  It was quarter to ten. Susan, bless her young heart and lots of other parts as well, was due any time now. He was always early for his dates. He couldn’t help it. A woman he’d known had made a joke about him always coming early. That was it for her. Another of his lady friends that he’d had a brief — but not brief enough — affair with had told him he was insecure.

  Ha! He was as secure as Fort Knox.

  Why, he’d even written her a letter and told her so, although of course she probably hadn’t bothered to read it.

  Dr Roth rolled over on his side, the better to admire the reflected image of his marvellous physique as he swam along parallel to the glass. Part of the thrill of these watery evening sessions was the risk that one of the many
porcine security guards who roamed the premises might suddenly appear in front of him.

  Whenever Roth managed to arrange one of his little adventures — what it amused him to think of as a game of water pogo — he told the guards that he was doing some vital research and that the entire wing of the building was strictly off-limits; trespassers would be fired for just cause, terminated without notice.

  The threat of losing their six dollar an hour jobs seemed without exception to strike unadulterated terror in the hearts and souls of the aquarium’s grey-uniformed monoliths.

  Or maybe, come to think of it, it was the thought of lost uniform privileges that frightened the brutes. Fair enough, no? Because otherwise what was the point of shaving one’s empty head and spending all day pumping heavy, heavy iron and gobbling anabolic steroids if you had no spiffy uniform to wriggle into, come the midnight shift? Where were the babes, if you lost the Sam Browne and badge?

  Gone, thought Gerard dispassionately. He was a scientist. He knew how things worked. Archimedes used a lever. Okay, fine. Back then, it was the only tool that was available to him. But this was the modem era. Archimedes was dead and buried. So was Charlie Chaplin. Nowadays psychology was all the rage. You wanted to get a handle on what cranked your date, psychology was the only way to go.

  Dr Roth jack-knifed, pumped hard and powered his way down to the sandy bottom of the pool. A dead fish that looked like an anchovy with measles lay half-buried in the golden sand. He tried a handstand. The old magic was still there. If the watch could be believed, it was thirteen minutes to ten.

  A platoon of drab khaki-coloured fish marched past. Left fin, right fin, left fin, right fin. Wasn’t it amazing, how deceptive they were. The tricky little devils actually looked as if they had a purpose, knew exactly where they were going, and why. Their compact bodies had a unnatural rigidity, as if they were doing their very best to swim to attention. Their tiny, sleek faces seemed incredibly intent and their pinched, beady little eyes stared straight ahead, unwavering and to his way of thinking faintly psychotic.

  He waited until the school had swum past and then tailed along behind. The fish seemed bound together by invisible wires. They moved as one, with the stifling predictability of a clockwork mechanism or a bank clerk. Their purpose in life was apparently to display a total lack of interest in anything. Losing interest himself, Dr Roth swam down to the bottom of the tank, snatched a ghost crab off the sandy floor, ripped off its shell and disembowelled it with a twist of his thumb, then swam an interception course and tossed the greasy bundle of guts into the path of the fish.

  The platoon homed in on the remains of the crab like a dozen cruise missiles. In a few brief, violent seconds they had torn it to shreds and consumed every last bit of it.

  Dr Roth began to hunt for another crab.

  When he grew tired of this boring game he checked his watch again and saw that he had killed approximately two minutes. Time sure crawled by, when you were looking forward to a session of hot sex.

  Though he would never have admitted it — not even to himself — Gerard Roth was an extremely vain fellow. He was fifty-seven years old, but had what he liked to think of as a goatish constitution. Inevitably, his head swelled with pride whenever the rest of him managed to puff up with lust.

  Sometimes that made straight thinking a difficult business. Too much trouble to bother with, in fact.

  Staring admiringly down at himself, Dr Roth swam slowly around in a tight circle. As a consequence of the magnifying effect of the water, the doctor’s head was so enormously swollen that he could hardly think at all.

  So when the flat calm of the pool’s surface was disturbed, and a rolling wave splashed over his back and shoulders, Roth didn’t — wasn’t capable of — giving it a moment’s thought. So he was caught completely by surprise when, a few moments later, a slim arm encircled his neck, a weight settled upon him from behind and a hand slid down his belly and gave him an encouraging squeeze.

  Dr Roth tried to rotate in the water to look behind him. His new playmate turned with him.

  My, but she was agile.

  In the swirling water, a drift of long blonde hair obscured his vision.

  Susan.

  Who else could it be? When he’d invited her to the pool for a starkers late night swim, he’d certainly made his carnal intentions clear. In fact the language he’d chosen to use would have made the devil blush, because his experience had taught him that talking filthy really turned women on. Either that or they threw up all over his shoes. Either way, no time was wasted.

  The hand on him seemed to know exactly what to do next. He tried to turn around again, but the woman behind him had a leech-like grip, and all he managed was to bump face masks. He reached up behind him and managed briefly to cup a breast.

  The thing was, even though he was enjoying himself, he had planned something a bit more intimate than a handshake.

  He reached down, tried to free himself from Susan’s grip.

  She clung to him tenaciously as a barnacle.

  Roth checked the TAG. Ten o’clock.

  Normally it took him a minimum of three hours to fully recharge his sexual batteries, but he happened to have suffered through an exceptionally long and arduous day. A woman in Maui who owed him one and was eager to cancel her debt had called him first thing in the morning with the news that she’d lined up a hell of a deal on a couple of tiger sharks. He’d pitched the sharks to Tony Sweeting and got into a very ugly shouting match, both of them getting so angry they actually said things to each other that they really meant.

  Tony was such an asshole. He’d sit there at his desk in his purple-coloured velvet three-piece suit and yellow tie, smoking a goddamn pipe for chrissakes, and mumble on forever and a day about budgets and priorities and all that crap.

  Gerard kept telling him, sharks were the new wave, all the rage.

  The damn killer whales were killing the aquarium. They brought in schoolkids by the thousands, and plenty of tourists from the prairies, too. But the public was slowly learning the truth about exactly how limited life in an aquarium really was. And the cost of feeding the ravenous bastards was completely out of hand.

  The phrase completely out of hand brought Dr Roth crashing back to the moment. He was getting pretty dam agitated. Susan’s hand had the grip of a leech and the soul of a metronome. His breathing was more than a little ragged and he was so out of control that he was wriggling and squirming like a rabid puppy.

  The disembodied hand picked up the pace.

  The veins in Dr Roth’s neck popped out as if small moles were burrowing just beneath the surface of his skin.

  Susan — surely it was Susan — grabbed his right buttock with her free hand, pulled herself down and, never missing a beat, spun him around. He saw that she was naked except for her mask and fins, air tanks and a weight belt.

  Pump, squeeze, pump, squeeze.

  It was odd, but somehow she seemed a little bulkier than she should’ve been. Could it be the foreshortening effect of the water? He ran his fingers through her silky hair. She pulled him closer.

  Pump, squeeze, pump, squeeze.

  She removed her breathing apparatus.

  Roth watched wide-eyed as his genitals disappeared in a huge cloud of silvery bubbles. His body shuddered from stem to stern, apocalyptically, like a huge ship that has foundered on a mythic reef. He threw back his head and howled, emptied his lungs in a long, orgasmic cry.

  His lover replaced her mouthpiece and violently spun him around. She released him for a moment and then reached up between his legs from behind.

  Dr Roth’s lungs emptied and his orgasmic cry faded to a whisper. Timing it perfectly, his lover yanked him under, pulled him down.

  If the lever’s long enough, it can be used to end a man’s world.

  The woman kicked out. Dr Roth felt himself being pulled backwards through the water, down and down. By now his penis no longer afforded much of a handhold, so naturally she’d shifted her gri
p to his balls.

  Roth clutched desperately at her but her body was coated with some kind of grease or gel, and his hands kept slipping away. Jeez, it was like trying to get a choke hold on a sea cucumber.

  The seconds that had so recently oozed past were now racing along at full gallop.

  Because he was a professional scientist, a small part of Dr Gerard Roth’s feverish mind remained icy calm and continued to monitor his progress, even as he died.

  He noted that his lungs felt as if they’d been filled to the brim with high-octane gasoline and set alight. He clinically observed that he had a terrible headache and absolutely no interest whatsoever in sex. He could not help notice that he was losing strength with terrifying rapidity, or that he had the eyesight of an earthworm and the reflexes of a garden gnome, and that his bladder was killing him.

  Gerard finally wised up. He stopped struggling and concentrated on the only thing that mattered to him any more — positively identifying his tormentor.

  By God it was…

  The name slowly formed in his mind, vowels and consonants jouncing about as they struggled to arrange themselves in a meaningful order. It was something like a three-dimensional game of musical chairs. The last of the letters were about to fall into place when Dr Roth’s thought processes were interrupted by nothing less than a high and lowlight package from his entire life, each scene zipping past like a brightly illuminated window in a passing train.

  With a tormented squeal of brakes, the train came to an abrupt stop.

  Dr Roth had an out-of-body experience.

  His perspective was that of an angel, or perhaps a hovering sparrow. He watched himself float limply two or three feet beneath the surface of the salty water.

  He was pleased to see that he had achieved neutral buoyancy.

  The names of all the men and women he had known and abused or otherwise taken advantage of scrolled through the water in chronological order. The letters that made up the names were flat and extremely thin, in a variety of florescent colours, and translucent. As the letters drifted slowly through the water they were gobbled up by curious, voracious fish.