小说下载尽在http://bbs.txtnovel.com---书香门第【冷泉泓薇】整理
附：【本作品来自互联网,本人不做任何负责】内容版权归作者所有!
A Fish Called Krycek
Bernice (ex Sarah Bellum)
Jung said that every man has a mermaid inside of him,
and every woman a merman
As soon as the call came through, Mulder had the entire team together; the helicopter, the car – everybody involved was mobilised within minutes. This was the call he’d been waiting for his entire adult and working life.
"Please, please, let it be alive", he whispered urgently under his breath.
The young couple hadn’t said if what they had found was a mermaid or a selkie, but they did know that the animal washed up on the beach had been badly injured, either by a shark attack or, more likely, the propellers of a pleasure craft. The aquarium where Mulder worked was getting an increasing number of calls to pick up injured dolphins and other large marine animals. They were trying to put back together the shattered bodies of turtles, and anything else that got in the way of the fun of assholes with fast boats.
Two years ago he’d come so close; he'd found the remains of a merman on a beach, though torn to pieces, partially eaten by smaller fish, and barely recognisable. They’d found out a lot about this mysterious species from the skeleton and tissues of the specimen, one of only four found over the past 100 years, but nothing like the information they could gather from a living specimen. A mammalian creature that almost perfectly mimicked the characteristics of fish, rather like the cows that went back into the sea to become whales. The mer-creatures were certainly more fish-like in appearance than dolphins and whales, at least in some areas, yet more human-like than even apes - a wonderful puzzle for many areas of science.
Mulder’s sandals flapped loudly against the white sands as he ran down the last dune, too frantic to care when he tripped and rolled the last few feet.
The couple who had phoned in their find were hovering near the creature, using a tee shirt to keep it wet, but nevertheless standing well clear of it. These things were rumoured to have drowned many humans during history, although Mulder felt that the humans had probably deserved it for whatever they had been doing to these wonderful animals.
He knew all the precautions to take, to avoid spines, to avoid claws and teeth, but the blood splattering across wet sand, plus the creature’s distressed breathing, sent all thoughts of his own safety out of his head. His headlong rush down the beach ended only when he was beside the creature, pulling its head onto his lap, pushing its sharp spines down out of the way so he could pet, soothe, and whisper to it softly.
"Hey, you," he spoke as if to any injured animal, "Shhh, everything will be fine. Just stay still and we’ll take good care of you..." one of the creature’s hands came towards him, and he captured the hard, bony fingers between his own before he could be clawed. He could feel warm blood pulsing beneath cold flesh. The pulse was regular, but thready. "You’re going to live, aren’t you! You hang in there. Strong specimen like you, we’ll fix you up and you’ll be just fine..." he stroked the creature’s face and... well, it wasn’t hair. Almost hair, in appearance – a cross between hair and membranous fin – but it was closer to the chitinous material of a bird’s feathers, than either fish or mammal fibres. It carded through his fingers, wrapping around his hand like seaweed. The same with the eyebrows and long dark lashes, which he also caressed with gentle fingers, keeping the animal as calm as he possibly could while the helicopter was brought to his position.
"Yeah, you’re gonna live. When they see you, alive and swimming, they’ll stop laughing at me. They all laughed at me, specialising in mer-marine life. They kept saying you were all finally extinct, no more homo-aquarius, but when they see you, you beautiful creature, they’ll eat their words. The new coelacanth. Even the zoo, with their flock of griffins and mated pair of unicorns can’t top a real live merman! We can stop showing Attenborough’s films now!" He tried to keep his excited ramblings to a soothing rumble. "We can get rid of the old blurry films of your species, now people can see the real thing!"
The animal was rattling deep in its throat. Mulder ceased his rant, worried that it was a death rattle. But the creature kept making the noise, on and off, and Mulder wiped a thin mucus line away from its mouth, avoiding the sharp teeth, "You’re not choking, are you?" There was no injury near the throat or chest, and he kept massaging and rubbing, keeping the creature as quiet as possible.
"Hang on there, fella, you hear that noise? That’s a helicopter. I know it sounds horrible, but it’s going to take you somewhere we can help you."
The other team members poured out of the ‘copter and ran down to Mulder, stopping a few feet away at his hand signal. "Approach quietly," he gave them advice he himself had ignored, and they slowly circled the injured animal, wrapping a wet tarpaulin around it, keeping it damp and stopping any unwanted movements.
"How did you get here so fast?" the Director asked, flicking her red-dyed hair out of her eyes. "By the time we got the ‘copter loaded and ready..."
"I ran."
"All the way from the centre?"
"Yup, no way was I waiting for this one. He’s still alive. He’s badly injured, but he’s got a good chance."
"He’s a beautiful specimen, Mulder."
"Sure is. Looks like all the myths about these creatures could be true. Every one I’ve ever seen, either in the flesh or on camera, has been good looking. Do you think it’s genetic, or do they just kill the ugly ones?"
"Mulder!"
"Sorry, Scully, I’m just over excited," he said, his voice as atonal as ever. "Do you know, this is the first time one of these creatures has ever been taken alive? I wonder where his mate is..."
"His mate? What makes you sure he has a mate?"
"They are always in pairs. They have a matriarchal society, the females choosing between mated pairs of males to father their offspring. A mature male... he looks to be in his late 20s – they mature at about the same rate as humans – he should have a mate somewhere around here. Another male about his own age most likely. Perhaps he was injured or killed in the same accident..."
"Mulder, I don’t need a lecture. He’s loaded on the ‘copter, go with him back to the centre. I’ll walk back and meet you there."
-oo0oo-
The surgery took the best part of the day. Trying to repair delicate tissues made more difficult by not knowing whether to treat their find as either mammal or fish, trying to sew up hideous wounds on something they had never operated upon before. Further complicated by the accountant leaning in to suggest they do their best to stop scars. A scarred star attraction would not be as popular or profitable.
Mulder would have popped the guy, if he hadn’t been so big. Or right. The Aquarium had carried Mulder for years, funding his empty promises that he’d bring in a homo-aquarius for their displays. This was not only his chance to study a merman, it was his obligation to try to recoup some of the centre’s outlay.
Of course, the merman probably wouldn’t want scars either. From what he’d been able to gather through his studies, it seemed appearance was their main way of attracting mates. If they wanted to release this one into the wild again sometime, they wanted him as whole and complete as possible. Of course, a release wouldn’t be until the accountants decided they’d made plenty of money out of it.
They loaded the merman into a small tank of shallow water. About 10 foot long, one foot deep and one and a half foot wide, it held the merman easily but restricted its movements. Mulder released some of the straps they’d used to hold it during the surgery, but left its hands in leather mittens that he clipped to one side of the tank, holding the animal on its side. The animal was too weak to fight, but sharp claws like that could disembowel a fully grown man, or tear at itchy, newly inserted stitches.
Mulder looked down into its pain-misted eyes. "Hey there, big fella, you’re going to be all right, aren’t you?" he returned to the nonsense jabbering. He had no way of knowing if it could even understand the concept of words, but dolphins responded positively to the sound of a human voice, and it couldn’t do any harm.
"You’re trembling... I guess you’ve gotta be in a lot of pain right now. And frightened. I wish there was some way I could tell you we don’t want to hurt you." Mulder’s fingers kept a soothing rhythm across its shoulders and neck, tracing the fine pale features. "I can’t give you any drugs for the pain. We don’t know what affect they would have on you. Being hurt like that, dragged off the beach by... well, I guess we probably look like monsters to you. Having major surgery, and getting stuffed into a box. But it’s going to be okay from now on. I’m going to look after you. You’ll be just fine."
Mulder stayed there for hours, just talking, making sure no one came close who didn’t need to be there. The merman slipped in and out of consciousness, rousing slightly when someone new came near, so Mulder kept any interruptions to a minimum, put a tarpaulin over the tank to keep it dark, and waited until it finally slipped into a deeper sleep.
"Why don’t you take a break, Mulder," one of the other centre vets squatted down beside him, "You’ve been here for hours."
"No, that’s okay, Frohike. I’ll stay here a while longer."
"Somehow I knew you’d say that. I brought an inflatable mattress and a blanket. You can sleep right here. I’ll wake you up if there’s any change."
"Do you think he’ll be okay?"
"Sure, I mean, I’m not the expert here. Crustaceans, that’s my field. But I’ve seen animals come in with worse wounds and pull through."
"But he’s also... well, not human, but if he responds to this type of surgery, like a human would..."
"Humans go through worse and survive all the time. Field amputations, major surgery without anaesthetics, it’s part of our history. He’ll survive, I’d bet a good porno mag on it."
"Fishes and Fannies?"
"Well, maybe not that one..."
"Didn’t think so." Mulder sighed. His heart was still racing, even after all these hours. "It’s just that we have no idea. What little bits of information we’ve been able to gather on these things aren’t enough to guide me. I don’t know what level of intelligence we are dealing with here. Is it as smart as a dolphin? Does it just have a fish’s intelligence?"
"Maybe it’s like a human? I mean, all those old legends..."
"Are precisely that. The tall tales of drunken sailors are not going to be a lot of use when dealing with this guy."
"Well, now you have the chance to learn. Someone had to be first."
"I can't afford to make a mistake though. It could be years before we even get another body, never mind one that’s still alive."
"How many do you think are out there? There can’t be that many, not if they are so rare."
"I think they hide from us."
"Why? We're not going to hurt them."
"Those drunken sailors we were talking about - you know they believed if they managed to catch one of these, they had to rape it then kill it to stave off bad luck. The same thing would happen if they caught dolphins or dugongs. The dolphins forgave us; maybe these things don’t. Maybe they teach their young to avoid us. Whalers used to kill everything they came across. If the mer-people learn, and if they pass that knowledge on to their young..."
"That’s supposing an awful lot, Mulder. Even whales and dolphins change their culture and language every year. They don’t pass things down."
"Chimpanzees do."
"Do you think the merpeople have a culture anything like chimpanzees?"
"No... No, I don’t think so. They seem closer to dolphins than anything else from what I’ve been able to find out. But they are still one of our great unknowns."
They sat in companionable silence through the rest of the evening, Mulder every now and then lifting the tarp to check if their find was still breathing. It gave him chills to watch the swirls of water breathing pushed in and out of the almost human mouth. Lips exactly like a humans, but teeth more like a sharks. Even and white, but sharp, and replaceable if lost. Nose even and straight, just like an air breathing human. Only the eyes seemed odd. No human being had eyes that beautiful. Enormous eyes that gave a false impression of taking up half the creature’s face, dark green, maybe blue, framed in thick black... lashes? For lack of a better word, lashes would do.
If it had been human it would have been... an actor, a model, some rich man’s pampered pet. Someone's heart break and trouble. Someone that would be adored and cosseted. Mulder smiled slightly to himself. Well, fish-guy, looks like you’re going to be adored and cosseted now!
He ran his fingers over the delicate membranes of the dorsal fin, from the point it blended with the almost-hair, down to the torn edges at the base of the creature’s spine. Beautiful turquoises, blues, greens, all shimmering together like the feathers of the peacock. Darker blues of the tail blended with the pale, almost silver tail fins. Shimmering perfection was marred by ugly wounds, swollen, red tissues peered through the deep blue scales, travelled onto pink skin. Despite the best of care, tiny bits of flesh were loose in the water, and Mulder wondered if they should keep the healing wounds dry. So many things he didn’t know, couldn’t even guess at.
"Okay, Frohike, I’m going to take a break. I’ll be right here though. Any noise, any movement, if his eyes open, anything, wake me up, okay?"
"Okay. Try to rest." Frohike knew Mulder was still too excited to really sleep. Mulder was as excited as Langly had been the time he’d found the baby Kraken. Of course, that would have to be released once it got past 20 feet in length, but right now it was small enough to be quite a crowd pleaser.
The sounds of the pumps keeping the tank water pure blended with the sound of surf and snores, and Mulder snoozed.
-oo0oo-
"Has it eaten anything yet?" Scully leaned over Mulder’s shoulder to peer at their patient.
"No, nothing yet."
"It’s only been a few days, give it time. This has got to be pretty upsetting."
"I know. But it needs to regain some energy. I’ve tried pasting up a variety of fish. I’ve brought in strips of kelp – we have film of them eating kelp. I’ve even tried Alaskan Salmon, but he’s shown no interest in anything."
