“I’m going to fly with the reporter to get there as soon as possible. I don’t want anything to happen to that skull. I was hoping you’d be okay piloting the Oannes on your own?”

“Why—yes, of course. I pilot her myself on all our research expeditions, mon capitiane. Do you not have confidence in me?”

“One hundred percent confidence, Pip. I just wanted to make sure you’d be comfortable piloting her on your own.”

“I am comfortable, do not worry. If I set sail at first light, I should reach Mirissa by midafternoon. We will rendezvous then.”

∆∆∆

Marty returned to the salon, poured himself more whiskey, then sat in the chair in front of his computer. After a cursory glance at his emails (all junk mail), he found himself on YouTube, typing his name into the search bar. The top result was Part 1 of the Netflix documentary, which the streaming giant had uploaded themselves, and which had more than fifty-million clicks. Below it were spinoff documentaries and commentaries from the likes of National Geographic, Harvard University, the BBC, and Discovery Channel. He’d watched all of them, and none were flattering.

Now, as he often did against his better judgement when he’d had a few too many drinks, he clicked on the first clip of the documentary and sat back with a clenched jaw.

Yet for the first time since the show’s merfolk was discovered to be a phony, he didn’t experience bitterness and resentment at seeing himself advocating it on camera.

In fact, he felt wonderfully invigorated, if not vindicated.

He would show all those assholes in the media and academia that they had laughed at the wrong guy.

Chapter 6

Merfolk: From the Deep. The making-of the original Netflix documentary.

Marty sat on a stool in a soundproofed film studio in Central London. The small room featured a lighting grid attached to the ceiling and a green screen behind him. The air-conditioning was cranked full blast. He wore a worsted wool suit and blue-and-white striped tie. A twenty-something hipster named Gus stood behind a digital television camera on a pneumatic pedestal. A similarly aged girl named Jamie, dressed all in black, was adjusting a large white reflector to his right. The acclaimed Welsh director Fat Mike stood in one corner, talking animatedly on his phone. Fitting his sobriquet, he was an obese man with a moon face and a beard formed from manicured stubble that covered only the first of his two chins. He wore baggy jeans, a sports jersey, and a Dodgers baseball cap, the brim pulled snugly down his brow so it pooled his eyes in shadows.

Abruptly he hung up the phone and came over to stand next to the camera pedestal. “How’s everything goin’?” he asked in a high-pitched, squeaky voice that belied his size. “We ready to shoot?”

“Ready,” Gus said.

“Ready,” Jamie said.

“All righty then. How you doin’, Double M?”

“Freezing,” he said.

Mike belched laughter. “Yeah, well, you don’t want all these lights to melt you, do ya? So this is gonna be pretty straightforward. You tell us everything you know about merfolk. We’ll do the editing and cutting, mix what you have to say with our footage and some filler, and Bob’s your uncle.”