Bisson, Terry - The Reef Builders

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The Reef Builders

"The great thing about diving is the extra dimension," Burt said. "Picture yourself at the center

of a circle. That's your life on solid ground. You can move in all variations of forward or back,

of left or right. North, south, east, west. But underwater, the circle becomes a sphere.

Infinitely more possibilities. Your brain expands accordingly. That's only natural. It explains

the high degree of cortical encephalisation in dolphins. Freedom drives cortical development.

Which in turn drives the creation of more previously unimagined possibilities."

Burt was an American, a surfer, gay, and a believer in the supernatural. He was remarkably open

about all four aspects. In a subtle way, in a clever way, Cynthia thought, he was in the process

of defending each of these. As an added bonus, he was being a pain in Mark's thick neck. Mark was

an engineer from Perth. The ostensible topic of conversation was ghosts. Burt had once seen a

ghost while diving off the coast of South Africa. The ghost was male, naked, and had a cement

block chained to one foot. Race unidentifiable. His hair had been long and streamed upward like

seaweed.

"There are scientific explanations for underwater dementia," Mark said.

"Nothing to do with freedom."

"The thing is. . ." Burt was getting really excited now. A salty line was developing on his upper

lip, he slammed the table with the heel of his hand. ". . .The thing to remember is that up until

the time you begin to dive, you don't even understand how limited your choices have always been.

You've never even thought about it. Your little life."

"Birds," said Mark.

"Excuse me?"

"Low degree of cortical encephalisation. Bird brains."

"Of course, the raw potential must be there. I thought that was understood. You might as well say

guppies."

Mark and Burt were always on at each other about something. Mark was a flaming hetero, but there

was a sexual tension there of some sort. Not the obvious. Something more complicated. Cynthia

would need weeks to pick it apart. She would need lots of private time with each, lots of

unguarded conversation about families and adolescent dramas. She doubted her interest would hold

up that long. Best not to even start.

When Burt brought his hand down, he squashed a number of ants. Cynthia was the only one to notice.

She had become more partial to ants since joining the team. Ants were builders, too. You could see

an anthill, if you chose, the same way you could see a coral reef -- an oasis of life. Admittedly

a less symbiotic one. Ants looked after ants and damn the rest of us. You couldn't call them

selfish, they didn't think about themselves at all. Nationalistic, maybe, but you couldn't hold

that against them. Especially not when they were dead. You had to see the pathos. Moments ago they

had been foraging over the gouged and sticky table. They were very organized, their patterns

geometrical. Nature expressed herself in many ways. Chaos and riot. Lines and crystals.

Unrestrained and inadvisable growth. Cautious exploitation. The heel of someone's hand. Burt and

Mark. Cynthia finished her coffee quickly, although it was too hot for this, and left the

breakfast table. Surprising that Burt would have forgotten about the birds, even for a moment. The

team was surrounded by them here on the reef. Birdshit poured out of the trees, like oobleck, Burt

said, and then had to explain what that was. Someone was always being shat upon. The din was

constant. At night it was the mutton birds, howling and sobbing like lunatics. The mutton birds

burrowed and slept during the day, silent and invisible, but they were spelled by the noddy terns.

In fact there were many reasons to dive. The island smelled of salt. Today, like yesterday and

every other day, would be hot and sticky. No showers allowed until five pm and even then the water

so rationed you couldn't enjoy yourself. Everywhere was rust and corrosion. You always had the

taste of salt on your tongue, you could feel the salt on your face. Just rubbing your hand across

your skin could scratch. Salt in the air made your laptop stutter. Cynthia loved it. Salt was her

element. She was the most experienced diver on the team.

She picked her way to the bathroom. The path was littered with the dead husks, the exoskeletons,

of diving equipment. She passed Junco coming out of the bath, dressed in her bathing suit, a blue

sarong around her waist, salt whitening the corners of her mouth. Junco was from Kyoto.

"Helicopter today," she reminded Cynthia. Her tone was celebratory. They all knew what the

helicopter meant. Imogene, the pilot, would bring them pizza from the mainland.

Junco thought about food all the time. It was an occupational hazard. Junco was their expert on

bleaching. In return for protection and housing, dinoflagellate algae named zooxanthellae provide

the food coral cannot produce. Like Imogene bringing pizza. They also give coral its color.

Bleaching is when the zooxanthellae die.

In some years, bleaching events occur nearly simultaneously all over the world. Junco believed the

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cause was the el nino effect, though she would have been the first to identify this as an article

of faith. It didn't bother Mark the way Burt's ghosts did. "Unproved, but probable is an necessary

scientific category," he said, though with the air of extending a favor, which would have

irritated Cynthia, but made Junco laugh. Cynthia credited Junco's endless supply of good will to

the way she looked. Even Burt, who should have been impervious, behaved better around Junco.

Beauty worked that way.

Beauty worked in other ways, too. If Junco had merely been beautiful, someone at sometime, with no

further evidence, would have suggested that she had slept her way through an advanced degree. But

Cynthia had never heard this said. Maybe it was because Junco could go on about zooxanthellae

until your eyes crossed. Maybe it was something less easy to define. When the noddy terns shit on

Junco, it was charming. It was a tribute. On the rest of them, it was birdshit.

Sent By:Karen Joy Fowler on Tuesday, March 4, 1997 at 12:13:04.

Cynthia spent a long afternoon in the water. Diving here was so perfect that it almost wasn't fun.

The water was blue and utterly clear. They were rebuilding the reef. Part of the project involved

cloning coral. After they lay down the coral, they were seeding it with zooxanthellae from Jamaica

that was more resistant to temperature changes and therefore, theoretically made the coral less

susceptible to bleaching. Cynthia was working on the edge of a huge bleached area. Dead,

unpigmented coral stretched away from her along the reef line. A coral necropolis. A city of stone

bones. It should have been horrifying, but instead it was beautiful the way ruins are. The

zooxanthellae couldn't be seeded in the dead coral but the idea was that seeding along the edge of

the dead zones would create a protective barrier. The zooxanthellae was in a gel medium that she

squirted out of a plastic tube with a squeeze bulb. The gel hung in the water, faintly obscene.

She'd knocked her hand against the coral and had a bit of a nasty red cut but one nice thing about

her work was that she was constantly soaking in seawater. It stung, but it wouldn't get infected.

The reef was full of movement. Octopi, smart as house cats, lurked in mottled camouflage. A nurse

shark was gliding up the reefline. Nurse sharks had never been known to attack humans and Cynthia

usually liked them. Today it struck her as too solitary. Not social, like ants and coral.

Streamlined and smooth. Not fractal. No edges. Predators were elitist.

The dive team got back just before the helicopter came in. Imogene the pilot brought strange pizza

with tiny octopus laying in curlicues. She brought pepperoni and sausage pizza, too. Burt didn't

eat seafood pizza. "It's got octopus on it," he said.

"I like octopus," Mark said.

"Eating octopus is like eating a cat or a dog," Burt said, gesturing at the pizza. "Do you know

how smart an octopus is?"

"Do you eat pork?" Mark asked.

"No," Burt said. He was picking the pepperoni off his pizza.

"Pigs are as smart as dogs," Mark said, but the point was lost.

"Even if it didn't have octopus on it," Burt said, "I only eat deep water fish." He told about the

time he'd gotten ciguatoxic poisoning from a fish dinner in Cuba. Ciguatoxin was produced by

microscopic creatures that lived around coral reefs. Reef fish ate the creatures but for some

reason they didn't get sick.

"Did you see your ghost before or after you got food poisoning?" Mark asked.

Burt stopped. "I can't remember."

Junco laughed and everybody at the table smiled. The Junco Affect. A little El Nino right here at

the table, Cynthia thought.

"There are neurological effects," Mark said.

"Not hallucinations, peripheral nerve damage in some people." Burt said. "Besides, I saw the ghost

before."

Cynthia had had seafood pizza in Hong Kong working on a project laying fiber optic cable for

Nynex. She preferred the pepperoni but not eating the seafood pizza might be seen as taking sides.

She took a slice of each. She had decided to stay neutral. She always got interested in what was

going on between people and it always left everything so complicated. Glances became thick with

connections and people's bad behavior had to be explained by their childhood. Not that she would

remain aloof. She would be companionable.

After dinner they all wandered out to look for weather. Cynthia was barefoot and the uneven and

sandy ground felt good between her toes. The storm was too far out to be seen but the waves were

high. Burt was talking about surfing. Mark stood beside her. Cynthia sat down and brushed

something prickly off the bottom of her foot and Mark looked down at her and smiled. She smiled

back. Friendly. Companionable. Ant to ant.

Mark sighed heavily. It was the sign of a man with a lot on his mind. Someone looking to talk to

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