Page 20 of Sucker For You

No seafood for either of them.

That wasn’t surprising.

Isabel’s lapse back into silence also wasn’t surprising. Before the quiet could solidify, he edged aside his water glass and pointed to the cartoon octopus. “What’re the odds that one of your subjects would suit up in an apron to work in a diner?”

“Hmm?” With a small frown, she considered the question. She shrugged. “Well, each cephalopod arm contains a neural processing center that functions as a distinct brain—a decentralized intelligence. Plus, their suckers are remarkably sensitive to taste and texture, and their musculature functions similarly to a human tongue or an elephant’s trunk:muscular hydrostat. Hydraulics. They have unparalleled flexibility and dexterity. So they wouldn’t have difficulty carrying plates or navigating a dinner rush. But. . .”

“But?”

One finger—its nail varnished but bitten short—traced the cartoon. Despite her frown, the corner of Isabel’s mouth pulled up into a barely discernible curve and she shook her head. “They’re very intelligent, and not very tolerant. They’ve been observed cooperating with fish to hunt on coral reefs, but also striking those fish for no obvious reason. They’ll blast laboratory personnel with water from their siphons if a keeper is slow to hand over a capelin at feeding time. They might treat annoying customers the same way? Though new research does suggest that siphoning could actually be a sign of acknowledgment. Evenaffection. But scientists need to be wary of attributing human emotions to them.”

“Regardless, they’re not cut out for customer service?”

“No.” When the server returned with her parfait and Wes’s French toast, Isabel nodded her thanks, then spooned up granola and blueberries. To his surprise, she continued, “Did you know they can operate puzzle boxes? Wilson Menashi’s interlocking plastic cubes require sequential steps executed in a specific order to access the food—crabs, usually—trapped inside.”

“Huh.” He raised a forkful of egg-soaked bread, chocolate, peanut butter, and sliced bananas. Wes gestured for her to go on while he chewed. He tracked the faint flush that tinged her cheeks with pink and watched the precise gestures of her hands, which she’d extracted now from her sleeves.

“Earlier, I mentioned the marshmallow test,” she told him. “Before I left my job at the Seattle Aquarium a little over two years ago, I was conducting experiments there to assess cephalopods’ memory and decision-making. I taught octopuses to recognize different symbols associated with live shrimp versus frozen prawns. Shrimp was the more desirable of the two food types. The octopuses had to wait sixty seconds after tapping the shrimp symbol to receive their live food, but they could access a frozen prawn immediately after touching the prawn sign. That was the first step in the experiment. Then I taught them that after they selected one symbol, the food associated with the second symbol went away. So I could evaluate their ability to anticipate the future. To receive the frozen prawn at once in instant gratification, or to wait and receive the live shrimp—a delayed but greater reward.”

“That worked? They figured it out?”

“Yes. After a few repetitions, the octopuses didn’t even need to see the food behind the signs. They recognized the symbols themselves, and extrapolated meaning from them. Recognition, memory—and forethought, as well.” She paused for a sip of tea. Her eyes were unexpectedly bright behind the steam. “Several tropical species have been observed carrying coconut halves while they move, to create mobile dens for defense against predators. There’s even footage of wild octopuses using broken shells and debris to create armor. Though I’ve studied their behaviors in labs, I’d hoped to work in the field someday, to observe their interaction with natural environments—like Dr. Jennifer Mather does. But then. . .”

Silence, again.

“What’s stopping you?” He swirled his fork in a pool of syrup, watching her sideways.

Her eyebrows pinched over her mug. Instead of answering, Isabel extracted her phone and placed it on the table; her screen was crowded with notifications:

Missed calls (5), Unread messages (18)

All from the same number.

She shook her head, exhaled so slowly that her breath didn’t disturb her tea, and swiped past the text clusters to retrieve a clip of grainy security footage. She tilted the screen toward him, upping its muted volume.

“What am I looking at?”

“This is C-189, one of the octopuses at the Seattle Aquarium. See the timestamp? Just past eleven o’clock. I wasn’t on shift that night. But a guard always came by on rounds at eleven-fifteen. Watch him. Not the guard—the octopus.”

The video began to play.

At first there was nothing to watch. Just a whisper of protein skimmers and a hum of red safety lights. Deep water filtered out red light. With no reason to see the color, evolution had given most of the creatures in Isabel’s lab no ocular receptors to clock it. From their own perspective, the room’s fish, anemones, and octopuses were in secluded darkness.

But then:

Movement.

Not from the lid of any cephalopod tank, heavy with dive weights and fastened with clamps, butalong the side of one. A metallic tinkle sang through the audio. A patch of protective mesh slipped loose from around a pump tube. The circular space admitting the hose into the aquarium was no larger than a golf ball, and the accessible clear area around it was smaller still. Wes couldn’t have wedged his thumb into the opening. But an octopus could slide a questing tentacle through. First one, then another. Anchoring its suckers to the glass for leverage, two more tentacles and the baggy, boneless mass of a head and mantle followed, squeezing past the gap with protean fluidity. The creature reconstituted first in the tank’s rear pump chamber and then on the exterior glass, revealing a dominant eye and bar-slitted pupil scanning the laboratory.Deserted. Four remaining arms slithered free.Plop. C-189 dropped to the concrete floor and began to crawl across the room.

“That tank opposite him holds twelve Dungeness crabs,” Isabel said.

Wes guffawed. “Not for long.”

Because the cephalopod shuffled back the tank’s unsecured mesh lid. It dipped one arm into the water. With a wet,triumphant flourish, it pried a hapless crustacean out from beneath a clump of living rock—only to freeze at the sound of approaching footsteps, at the beam of a flashlight sweeping near the door.

The night guard.

C-189 vanished.