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Institute — his institute — was teetering on the
brink of insolvency.   He had been tempted
to reconsider, to call Corinne and offer to accept that last beneficence.   But he couldn't bring himself to do it.
    What mystified him, what he could not
fathom, was the fact that somehow, over the years and the thousands of miles,
his son had been able to see through the sheltering veil of private schools and
country clubs and trust funds, and to maintain an image of his father as a
figure of adventure... someone not only to long for, but to emulate.
     
    *           *           *           *           *
     
    As Chase followed Max outside onto the
open stern of the forty-eight foot boat, he slid his sunglasses down from the
top of his head.   The day was bound to be
a scorcher, 95-plus degrees even out here on the ocean, one of those days that
used to be rare but in the past few years had become more and more common.   Ten summers ago, there had been only eight
days when the temperature had reached 90 degrees in Waterboro; three years ago,
thirty-nine days; this year, meteorologists were predicting fifty days over 90
and as many as ten over 100.
    He used the zoom lens as a telescope and
scanned the surface of the glassy sea.   "See anything?" he asked Max.
    "Not yet."   Max rested his elbows on the bulwark, to
steady the binoculars.   "What would
she look like?"
    "If she came up to bask on a day like
this, her dorsal fin would stand out like a sail."
    Chase saw a tire floating, and a plastic
milk jug, and one of the lethal plastic six-pack holders that strangled turtles
and birds, and globules of oil that when they reached the beach and stuck to
the soles of children's feet would be cursed as tar.   At least he didn't see any body parts today,
or any syringes.   Last summer, a woman at
the town beach had had to be sedated after her four-year-old son presented her
with a treasure he had found in a wavewash:   a human finger.   And a man had
taken from his dog what appeared to be a rubber ball but turned out to be a
perfect orb of sewage sludge.
    He looked over the stern at the
rubber-coated wire that held the tracking sensor, and checked the knot on the
piece of twine that held the sensor at the prescribed depth.   The coil of wire on the deck behind him was three
hundred feet long, but because the bottom was shoaly and erratic, they had set
the sensor at only fifty feet.   The twine
was fraying.   He'd have to replace it
tonight.
    "You still see the shark?" he
called forward to Tall Man.
    There was a pause while Tall Man looked at
the screen.   "She's up to about
fifty," he said.   "Just
hangin’ out, looks to me.   Signal's nice and strong, though."
    Chase spoke to the shark in his mind,
begging her to come up, to show herself, not only for him but for Max.   Mostly for Max.
    They had been tracking her for two days,
recording data on her speed, direction, depth, body temperature — eager for any
information about this rarest of the great ocean predators — without seeing
anything of her but a white blip on a green screen.   He wanted them to see her again so that Max
could enjoy the perfection of her, the beauty of her, but also to make sure the
shark was all right, had not developed an infection or an ulcer from the
tagging dart that contained the electronic signaling device.   It had been perfectly placed in the tough
skin behind the dorsal fin, but these animals had become so scarce that he
worried about even the remote possibility of causing her harm.
    They had found her almost by accident, and
just in time to save her from becoming a trophy on a barroom wall.
    Chase maintained good relations with the
local commercial fishermen, carefully staying out of the increasingly bitter
controversy over limiting catches because of depleted stocks.   Since he couldn't be everywhere at once, he
needed the fishermen to be his eyes and ears on the ocean, to alert him to
anomalies