Invasive species for dinner

A chapter from the Tusker adventure, "Icebound"

Author’s note: Earlier this year, I published the prologue from my unpublished (and unfinished) novel, provisionally named Icebound. I’ve been noodling on the idea of serialized fiction for some time, and thought it would be a fun and challenging exercise to occasionally publish further chapters, and perhaps continue to write more, here on Swimpruf. The risk with serialized fiction, and writing forward, as it were, is that I can’t go back and edit or change details later since it will have already been put out into the world. A bit like removing your climbing anchors as you go up a rock wall. But there’s something thrilling in that challenge. So I’m going to give it a try. So here is the next installment. I hope you enjoy it. — JH

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The Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory on Manhattan’s Upper East Side bears little resemblance to its former life as an assembly area for the National Guard’s Seventh Regiment. But it was in this cavernous room, with its soaring arched ceiling and vast acreage of wooden flooring, that the country’s first volunteer militia trained in 1861 for the looming war with the South. The gilded architecture and elegant reception rooms hinted at the upper class members of the so-called “Silk Stockings Regiment,” that included such prestigious names as Vanderbilt and Roosevelt.

Tonight the hall was artfully lit and festooned with decorations befitting the theme of this year’s Adventurers Club Annual Dinner: the Deep Ocean. Blue and black was the prevailing color theme and there were video displays playing looped video feeds of strange bioluminescent creatures. Table centerpieces were faux coral structures from the avant-garde artist, Damien Hirst’s installation, “Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable.” A huge aquarium occupied one corner, backlit and pulsating with dozens of live jellyfish and in another, a full sized replica of a deep sea submersible hung suspended from a derrick. Tusker stood in front of it, alone, studying its bulbous hull.