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didn t match their mouth movements scrambled in the flaming rubble be-
low? (It happened all the time in Japanese movies, didn t it?) Too good for
them.
He pulled on his fins and bowed to them as he backed into the water.
May your nads shrivel like raisins, he said with a smile.
They bowed back, more out of reflex than respect.
The far side of the reef and five hundred yards down: The ninjas were
going to have a fit. He d never gone to the ocean side of the reef. Inside
was a warm clear aquamarine where you could always see the bottom and
the fish seemed, if not friendly, at least not dan
198 / Christopher Moore
gerous. But the ocean side, past the surf, was a dark cobalt blue, as deep
and liquid as a clear night sky. The colorful reef fish must look like M&Ms
to the hunters of the deep blue, Tuck thought. The outer edge of the reef
is the candy dish of monsters.
He kicked slowly out to the reef, letting the light surge lift and drop him
as he watched the multicolored links in the food chain dart around the
bottom. A trigger fish, painted in tans and blues that seemed more at home
in the desert, was crunching the legs off of a crab while smaller fish darted
in to steal the floating crumbs. He pulled up and looked at the only visible
break in the reef, a deep blue channel, and headed toward it. He d have to
go out to the ocean side and swim the five hundred yards there, otherwise
the breaking surf would dash him against the coral when he tried to swim
over the reef.
He put his face in the water and kicked out of the channel until the bottom
disappeared, then, once past the surf line, turned and swam parallel to the
reef. It was like swimming in space at the edge of a canyon. He could see
the reef sloping down a hundred and fifty feet to disappear into a blue
blur. He tried to keep his bearing on the reef, let his eye bounce from coral
fan to anemone to nudibranch to eel, like visual stepping-stones, because
to his left there was no reference, nothing but empty blue, and when he
looked there he felt like a child watching for a strange face at the window,
so convinced and terrified it would come that any shape, any movement,
any play of light becomes a horror. He saw a flash out the side of his mask
and whipped around in time to see a harmless green parrot fish munching
coral. He sucked a mouthful of water into his submerged snorkel and
choked.
He hovered in a dead man s float for a full minute before he could breathe
normally and start kicking his way up the reef again, this time resolved to
faith. Whatever, whoever Vincent was, he had saved Tuck s life, and he
knew things. He wouldn t have gone to the trouble to have Tuck eaten by
barracudas.
Tuck ticked off his stepping-stones, trying to gauge how far he had come.
He would have to go out farther to see past the rising surf and use the shore
as a reference, and besides, what was above the water s surface was irrel-
evant. This was a foreign world, and he was an uninvited guest.
Then another flash, but this time he fought the panic. Sunlight on
something metal about thirty feet down the slope of the reef. Something
waving in the surge near the flash. He rested a second,
Island of the Sequined Love Nun / 199
gathered his breath, and dove, swooping down to grab the object just as
he recognized what it was: a set of military dog tags on a beaded metal
chain. He shot to the surface and hovered as he caught his breath and read:
SOMMERS, JAMES W. James Sommers was a Presbyterian, according to the
dog tag. Somehow Tuck didn t think that a thousand-yard swim was worth
finding a pair of dog tags. But there was the swath of fabric still down there.
Tuck hadn t gotten a good look at it.
He tucked the tags into the inside pocket of his trunks and dove again.
He kicked down to the swath of cloth, holding his nose and blowing to
equalize the pressure on his ears, even as the air in his lungs tried to pull
him to the surface, away from his prize. It was some kind of printed cotton.
He grasped at it and a piece came away in his hand. He pulled again, but
the cloth was wedged into a crevice in the reef. He yanked and the cloth
came away, revealing something white. Out of breath, he shot to the surface
and examined the cloth. Flying piggies. Oh, good. He d risked his life for
Presbyterian dog tags and a flying piggies print.
One more dive and he saw what it was that had wedged into the crevice:
a human pelvic bone. Whatever else had been here had been carried away,
but this bone had wedged and been picked clean. Someone wearing flying
piggies boxers had become part of the food chain.
The swim back to the channel seemed longer and slower, but this time
Tuck forgot his fear of what might lurk behind the vasty blue. The real
danger lay back on shore.
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