Rhodes sat down at one of the tables. Beside the computer was a small pile of memory cards. He picked one up and inserted it into a slot on the Mac’s front panel. On the screen, dozens of tiny thumbnails bloomed, each one a miniature image of a larger file. Rhodes clicked on one, and it ballooned to fill most of the screen.

“Triopha catalinae,” Rhodes announced.

Caddie looked at the creature in the picture. Its sluglike white body was covered with bright orange growths that reminded her of the spots on Rhodes’s face.

“Most people call it the clown nudibranch,” Rhodes said. “I guess because its tubercles look like pom-poms.”

“It’s pretty,” Caddie said.

“Isn’t it?” Rhodes agreed. Caddie saw him looking at the nudibranch with undisguised admiration. The nervousness he’d displayed earlier was gone.

“So, what do we do with these?” Caddie asked him.

“Oh,” Rhodes replied, sounding uneasy again. “We identify them and name the files.” He pointed to a stack of books on the table. “Those are the ID books. It’s pretty easy; you just find the nudie and name it. Although, some of them look alike, so you have to be careful.”

“In other words, we get to look at nudie pictures,” Caddie joked. “How scandalous.”

Rhodes didn’t laugh. Caddie, leafing through a book, looked at him. “Nudie photos,” she repeated. “As in nude photos?”

This time Rhodes blushed. “Now I get it,” he said.

Caddie picked up a flashcard and inserted it into her computer. The thumbnails appeared as the card downloaded, and she looked at all of the different nudibranchs captured within them. “I had no idea there were so many,” she said.

“And these are just the ones in Monterey,” said Rhodes. “Pretty much every place has different ones.”

“What’s this one?” Caddie asked, pointing to a picture she’d just opened.

Rhodes looked over at her screen. “Cadlina luteomarginata,” he said. “I think. It might be Acanthodoris hudsoni. I get them confused sometimes. Check in the Behrens book over there.”

Caddie looked at the nudibranch. Cadlina, she thought. I wonder if that’s the one I’m named after. She found the book Rhodes had told her to look in, a thin purple paperback called Pacific Coast Nudibranchs. It was filled with pictures of nudibranchs. Caddie turned the pages until she found one that looked like hers. Round and flat, it was white with yellow around the edge. Cadlina luteomarginata, she read. It definitely looked like the one in the picture. Just to be sure, she looked up the other one Rhodes had mentioned. It was similar, but it also had yellow on its—she read the description beside the photo—on its papillae.

“Why do all of their parts sound like venereal diseases?” she said.

Rhodes looked at her. “What?” he said.