Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [9]
There was no time for anthropomorphizing. Others crowded the deck behind me, anxious and awaiting their turn. I was the first to step forward, and I was holding up the increasingly restless procession. What the devil am I doing here? The hell with it. Putting a hand over my face mask to keep it from being pushed off, I stepped out and down.
Into an instant Jacuzzi. A mad froth of bubbles exploded around me, obscuring my vision. My booted feet slammed into the grillwork bottom of the cage. A hasty check of my regulator showed that it was working fine, feeding me air from my tank, and I hoped I was not breathing too fast. Moving clear of the overhead opening, I grasped the metal webwork of the cage and dug my toes into the open bottom in order to steady myself upright in the rocking current. My head swiveled wildly.
There was no need. It was right there, coasting like a heavy bomber flying in slow motion, half obscured by the poor visibility and dark water. I heard the rush of bubbles and felt the momentary displacement as another diver entered the cage behind me, but I didn’t turn to look in his direction or check his condition. I was intoxicated beyond words by what I was seeing—an awkward condition for a writer.
The shark turned and came around for a leisurely look at this new bait. Heading straight at you, a great white shark flashes the most unexpected and perverse frozen smile, sort of a cross between Bela Lugosi and the Cheshire Cat. Porpoises also possess a natural smile. This was different. Carcharodon sits at the top of the food chain and knows it. Warm-blooded it may be, but it’s no mammal.
I realized that I was being inspected and evaluated as potential food.
The nine-foot shark looked twice as big underwater as it did from the safety and perspective of the Nenad’s deck. In the half-open mouth, teeth gleamed, each one as sharp as a double-edged razor. No other shark, no other living creature has teeth like that. The extinct Tyrannosaurus rex did. You can describe but not amplify upon them. A newspaper ad for a special shark exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History may have said it best: “Come see the first Cuisinart.”
There is nothing flip, nothing frilly about the great white. Unlike many fish, it is neither gaudy nor brightly colored. It does not choose to advertise its remarkableness. In Charcarodon’s case, Nature has seen no need to elaborate, no justification for adding meretricious physical adjectives. Unlike fictional monsters with their horns and frills and iridescent hues, the great white is all business. Any drama inherent in its appearance is incidental to its single-minded task of feeding.
The shark gently bumped the cage with its snout and turned away, gliding weightlessly past. Reaching out, I let the tips of my fingers caress it as it swam by. “It’s perfectly safe to touch them,” Rodney had told us, adding without a hint of irony, “Just wait for the mouth to go past.” The flesh and skin feels much like the unyielding head of a rubber mallet. Not rough at all. I started to extend my arm to try and grab the tail, then remembered the presence of the other shark and quickly drew my hand back into the cage.
For two days, we dove and marveled and photographed. The weather remained uncooperative; the seas rough. One night, I stood a two-hour watch alone on the stern deck as thousands of foot-long