Being given a grant to do field work for the Department of Defensive Operations on a tiny island that you’ve never heard of might just be a ticket to unimaginable danger. You would think that this might have occurred to my parents when it happened to them, but they are head in the clouds theoretical physicists. Anyway, they thought their work was so obviously important that they couldn’t understand why no-one had thrown any money at it before.
“The Army wants to explore the particle-wave-particle nature of dreams?” I said.
“That’s right, Angus,” my Mom flicked her thick black braid over her shoulder. “Soldiers have dreams, don’t they? So the Army needs to understand them Right, hon?”
“Umm,” my Dad said, absently. He was patting himself all over, looking for his glasses or his pen.
Delicately, my Mom peeled a lettuce leaf off his salad plate, and there were the glasses. My Dad’s face brightened, and he waggled his hands with the joy of discovery.
“And we have to move to an island off the West Coast of Scotland because?”
“Well,” she looked confused for a moment, then said: “Because that’s where the critical mass is.”
“Critical mass?” I imagined a festering heap of some horribly explosive, probably radioactive substance.
“Of people. A critical mass is when you have the right number of the right people together in the same place working on an important question. All the cyberdream researchers worth the name will be on Little Snugglay this summer.”
“Why can’t they be in California?” My Mom and Dad both worked at UCSD.
“Because getting people together in a quiet remote location fosters intellectual excellence. You know, like when they did the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos.”
“Where they invented the atomic bomb you mean? Wasn’t that to protect people from the potentially devastating effects of a nuclear accident?”
My mother blinked. She was wearing a voluminous blue garment, which at the moment was a long skirt. It could be a skirt, a medium length strapless dress, or a poncho, which was why she liked it. She started fidgeting with it, pulling it up over her purple T-shirt to make the dress. Later in the day, when the temperature fell, she would pull on jeans and the skirt-dress would enter the third stage of its life, as the poncho. My Mom might look a little odd if she was not very very pretty, but she is, so I guess she can wear what she likes.
She looked sideways at my Dad, who was again patting himself for the glasses, which were now on the top of his head. My mother pushed them down to his nose, and he did the hand-waggle again, as if he had just been blessed with the gift of sight, which I guess he had.
“Whatever,” said my Mom. “There’s no work like that being done on the Snugglays. Angus, are you worried about going to Scotland because of, you know, your first parents?”
That got my Dad’s full attention and he snapped his head round to look at me.
See I was born in Scotland, and my parents adopted me and brought me to California when I was a baby. My Dads were brothers. My first Dad died in a climbing accident right before I was born, and my Mom died in the hospital right after, so I don’t remember anything about it. I have some pictures, and a diary that my mom kept when she was pregnant with me. I can ask my Mom and Dad about my first Mom and Dad anytime I want, but I don’t too often, because I don’t want to hurt their feelings. I’m their only kid. They tried, but they couldn’t have more.
“No, Mom,” I said: “That isn’t it. Well, OK, it may be a little weird, but I have to face it sometime. I can’t avoid a whole country for the rest of my life – not one I’m a citizen of, anyway.”
“You know, we won’t be anywhere near where… where you were born,” said my Mom. “We don’t have to go there. I mean, unless you want to…”
“Mom! It’s fine,” I said. “Too much information, OK.” I needed to make sense of my own feelings before I discussed this, so I changed the subject: It’s just - a whole summer away from the Pacific Ocean.”
This was true. I am a surfer. That’s a surfer of waves, not the net. I’ve been a surfer since I was four years old, and my Dad put me in Menahune surf camp and bought me my first baby surf board. When you grow up next to the Pacific, surfing is a way of life. I surf, my Dad surfs, even my Mom has been know to belly board a bit. They had bought me my first Quicksilver board for my twelfth birthday last month. I couldn’t stand to leave it idle all summer.
“Oh, you can surf Scotland,” said my Dad. He pushed some orange peel off his laptop and accessed a website called, appropriately enough, “Surfing Scotland”. There was a movie of some kids and bearded old guys in wet suits, and I had to admit it did look reasonable, if a bit gray.
“Whoa!” I said, watching a kid surf a barrel, and I was getting amped against my better instincts. “Is that the Slumber Strait?”
“Well, no,” said my Dad, it’s off the island of Mull. “You can’t film on the Snugglays without a special licence. But you can surf there.”
No overcrowding then. It suited me.
I wouldn’t give in too easily, though. “I’ll miss the Pelicans,” I said, “and the seals. I was going to help out on that seal tracking project, remember?” All my life I’ve wanted to work in the life sciences: marine biologist, if I can make the grades.
“Aha!” my Dad starting tapping on his keyboad again. “The Hebrides are a nature-lovers’ paradise. One of the few unspoilt locations in the Western World.”
Of course I knew the Scottish Islands were a bird sancturary, but..
“Whoa!” I said again, at the creature on the screen. Scorpohamster? I had never seen anything like it. There was a picture of a yellow, furry, mouse-like creature with a long, wicked looking greenish-black tail that had a spike on the end of it. I read:
The soft, furry bodies of these shy, inoffensive creatures are well defended by the crusted, black, venomous tail. Adult scorpohamsters are typically 6 cm (4 inches) in length, while the tail can easily reach 15 cm (10 inches) fully extended. The tail is carried rolled in a tight coil, but scorpohamster can unroll and extend it rapidly, and can whip it with great speed and extreme accuracy in all directions, facilitating delivery of venom with deadly precision. Supplies of an antidote to the venom are maintained at the DODO clinic on Great Snugglay, and at the Oban Infirmary.
“Whoa!” I said again. My parents looked at me, curiously. Nothing was really astonishing or exciting to them unless it was a wave-particle. Or something.
“How come I never heard of Scorpohamster?” I demanded. “Why isn’t that in the newspapers?”
“Al of this is classified,” my Dad said. “You need a special password to access the site.”
I looked again at the screen again: It said:
Department Of Defensive Operations (DODO) File.
Wildlife of the Snugglay Islands
0002: Scorpohamster
Phylum: ArthroChorda
I was practically choking. “Why did you not tell me this before? These are new species? I’d get to study new species? At the age of 12?”
They looked at each other and shrugged. “Sure, sure,” they said. Relieved that this was what it would take.
“There are more?” I almost squeaked.
My Dad pushed the screen at me.
0001: Roktopus
These shy, intelligent cephalopods have a body, with a central mouth and a hard beak, and eight tentacles. Adult male and female Roktopi are typically 4 inches in diameter, but may grow to the size of a soccer ball, with tentacles which may be up to one metre (3 feet) long. There is no internal skeleton but in health the animals are completely covered with small rocks. Sodium Carbonate and Calcium Chloride, secreted separately from ducts co-localized in the skin, react to form the Calcium Carbonate "rocks" which remain anchored to the ducts:
Na2CO3 + CaCL2 = 2NaCl + CaCO3
The calcium carbonate which forms the rocks is naturally white, but Roktopus can add pigment to the ducts, providing the opportunity for camouflage. The classic purple and green colouration of wild Roktopi allow them to blend easily with the bed of the Slumber Strait, which is rich in amethyst and chalcedony. Roktopi studied in captivity alter their colouration to match their new surroundings.
Roktopi do not surface often, due to buoyancy issues, and prefer to lie flat on the seabed, pretending to be a pile of small rocks. When threatened, they may spray a jet of rocks, which blinds and confuses the aggressor, while Roktopus makes its escape. When more aggressively attacked, the animal may separate a tentacle or two which, rich in nervous tissue, continue to crawl along the seabed, deflecting the predator's attention from the remainder of the Roktopus.
If there is no alternative, as when babies are threatened, Roktopus can be an enthusiastic fighter, whomping opponents with all eight rock-encrusted tentacles. The well-defended Roktopus is rarely hurt in such encounters, but may have to hole up for a few days after battle to regrow dislodged rocks.
Like Scorpohamsters, and most of the other creatures I read about that day, Roktopi were shy and inoffensive, endangered, and strictly protected by law.
But there was nothing shy, inoffensive, endangered or small about the first Roktopus I encountered. It was gigantic, it was angry, it was hungry for lunch, and its lunch had a name. The name of its lunch was Angus McDream.
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