Breakthrough(22)

“I don’t think so,“ Alison replied. “Besides our translation capabilities are still much too-”

“Gentlemen,” Frank interrupted with a raised, yet professional tone. “Could you give us a moment please?”

Clay and Caesare nodded and turned toward the door. They stepped politely around Alison and closed it quietly behind them.

Outside they crossed the hall and leaned against the white wall with hands in their pockets.

“I don’t think she likes you,” Caesare said.

Clay laughed. “She certainly seems to have some strong feelings about the military.”

“Kinda cute though,” said Caesare. He took a few steps and studied a framed picture. It was an old black and white photograph of the aquarium’s groundbreaking ceremony. He guessed the number of people in the small crowd to be about eighty, dressed in suits and gowns forming a half arc around a few people in the middle; one of them holding a shiny shovel. The tiny plaque below the picture read 1925. “This place has been around a long time.”

Clay nodded coming over to see the picture. “I’ve been here before,” he said. “I was a boy, maybe seven or eight. My dad brought me when I was visiting him in Miami.” He leaned in for a closer look at the picture. “It was a lot smaller then.” Clay stared silently at the picture. He still remembered that trip clearly. It was the same weekend that his father told him of his parent’s pending divorce.

Caesare looked back at the door. A small plate in the middle read Dr. Frank Dubois, Director. “So what do we do if they say no?”

Clay shrugged. “Break out our snorkel and fins, I guess.”



Frank stepped forward and sat on the edge of his large oak desk. His face appeared tired. He hunched his shoulders for a moment and then dropped them with a sigh and looked up at Alison.

“I think we should do this.”

“What?” she scoffed. “You’re not buying this are you? This is the Navy Frank! They’re not here to help us, they’re here to find out how they can leverage the technology!”

“Look, Ali. I know how you feel about these guys and I know what happened before-”

“And you think it’s different now? I guarantee you they’re outside right now talking about how they can turn this into a military advantage. All they want-”

“Who do you think is funding this Alison,” Frank suddenly blurted with a wave around the room. “Santa Claus?! It doesn’t matter whether it’s NASA, the Navy, or the goddam IRS, government money is the only reason we’re here! Do you have any idea how hard it is to raise this money?” He took a deep breath and dropped his tone. “Look, we’re losing money, you know that, and the ticket sales are still declining, even with the surge we got after that press release. The plain fact is that we need more time. We have so much more to do but without our grants we’ll be lucky to keep the aquarium open until the end of the year.”

Alison unfolded her arms and frowned. He was right. Without the money all of this would come to an abrupt end sooner or later.

“Listen,” Frank went on. “I know how you feel about these guys, I do. I know what happened.” He watched Alison tense up, knew he touched a soft spot, but he had to. He had always known that someday, it would eventually come down to this. “We have to play the game. At least for now. We have no choice. We have a big lead in this field but if we get closed down all of our information will be made available to everyone and they’ll be where we are in a matter of months.”

Her shoulders relaxed slightly. “You think they would cut us off just like that?” He made no effort to answer. He didn’t have to. Alison could not believe that she’d even uttered the words.

She walked slowly to the window and stared out at the palm trees jutting into the air from the next street like a row of towers. It was amazing how mad she still was. It was almost ten years ago and she still hated to think about it. Her first serious research project, her first meaningful project was in Costa Rica and the world’s first serious attempt to map and document the complete breeding and migration patterns of ocean tortoises. They had spent three years tagging, tracking, and caring for thousands of tortoises, sleeping in tents with virtually no money, and in the end they had accomplished something that no other ocean biology team had been able to do. God, they were so idealistic. And at the time they considered the Navy, and the US government for that matter, a godsend. They provided the equipment, the computers and the tracking devices. Without their grants, Alison’s team would not have been able to track the mammals off the damn beach let alone across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.