Just wait ’n see, he thought. When I get used to all this, I’ll be tougher ’n anybody.
That wouldn’t be anytime soon, though. First week out, he’d foolishly accepted a dare to wrestle a very small Bantu sailor wearing a speckled bandanna. The speed of his humiliation brought home how useless years of judo lessons were in the real world. There were no rubber mats here, no coaches to blow time out. The jeers and pain that followed him to his hammock proved this dream was going to take some time coming true.
Crat remembered Quayle High and that lousy tribal studies class he and Remi and Roland had to take. Hardly anything spoken by the teacher stuck in memory, except one bit—what old fathead Jameson had said one day about chiefs.
“These were clansmen who won high status, respect, the best food, wives. Nearly every natural human society has had such a special place for its high achievers … even modern tribes like your teen gangs. The major difference between cultures has not been whether, but how chiefs were chosen, and by what criteria.
“Today, neither physical power nor even maleness is a principal criterion in Western society. But wit and quickness still make points …”
Crat remembered how Remi and Roland had grinned at each other, and for an instant he had hated his friends with a searing passion. Then, surprisingly, the prof also let drop a few words that seemed just for him.
“Of course even today there are some societies in which the old macho virtues hold. Where strength and utter boldness still appear to matter.…”
Each of them had taken to the Settler style for different reasons. Remi, for romance and the promise of a new order. Roland, for the honor of comradeship and shared danger in a cause. For Crat, though, the motive had been simpler. He just wanted to be a chief.
And so, a month ago, he had bought a one-way ticket and begun what he was sure would be his great adventure.
Some fuckin’ adventure.
“I think maybe the admiral will give up these fishing grounds now,” Schultheiss commented as he looked up toward the bridge. Congo’s officers could be glimpsed, pacing, arguing with the other captains by the flicker of a holo display.
Soon they heard the bosuns shouting—all hands to the nets in five minutes, for hauling and stowing. Crat sighed for his throbbing muscles. “D’you think we’ll be goin’ to town?” he asked.
It was his longest speech yet. Schultheiss seemed impressed. “That is likely. I hear one of our floating cities is heading this way, north from Formosa.”
“Soon as we dock,” Crat said suddenly, “I’m gonna transfer.”
Schultheiss raised an eyebrow. “All Sea State fleets are the same, my friend … except the Helvetian units, of course. And I doubt you’d—”
Crat interrupted. “I’m through fishin’. I’m thinkin’ of goin’ to the dredges.”
The old man grunted. “Dangerous work, fils. Diving into drowned cities, tying ropes to furniture and jagged bits of rusty metal, dismantling sunken office buildings in Miami—”
“No.” Crat shook his head. “Deep dredging. You know. The kind that pays! Diving after … noodles.”
He knew he hadn’t pronounced it right. Schultheiss looked puzzled for a moment and then nodded vigorously. “Ah! Do you mean nodules? Manganese nodules? My young friend, you are even braver than I thought!”
From that brief look of respect Crat derived some satisfaction. But then the old man smiled indulgently. He patted Crat’s shoulder. “And Sea State needs such heroes to take wealth from the deep, so we can take our place among the nations. If you would be such a man, I’m proud to know you.”
He doesn’t believe me, Crat realized. Once, that would have sent him into a sputtering rage. But he had changed … if only because nowadays he was generally too tired for anger. Crat shrugged instead. Maybe I don’t believe it myself.
The main winch was out again, of course. That meant Congo’s section of the great seine net would have to be hauled aboard by hand.
Now Crat remembered where he’d seen the old Helvetian before. Peter Schultheiss was a member of the engineering team that kept the old tub and her sister vessels, Jutland and Hindustan, sailing despite age and decrepitude. Right now Schultheiss was immersed headfirst in a tangle of black gears, reaching out for tools provided by quick, attentive assistants.
Nearby, the forward wing-sail towered like a tapered chimney. No longer angled into the wind to provide trim, it had been feathered and would remain so unless old Peter succeeded. Apparently it wasn’t just the winch this time, but the entire foredeck power chain that depended on the fellow’s miracle work.
Now that’s a skill, Crat admitted, watching Schultheiss during a brief pause in the hauling. You don’t learn that kind of stuff on the gor-sucking Data Net.
“Again!” the portside bosun shouted. The barrel-chested Afrikaaner had long ago tanned as dark as any man on his watch. “Ready on the count, ver-dumpit! One-and, two-and, three-and … heave!”
Crat groaned as he pulled with the others, marching slowly amidships, dragging the sopping line and its string of float buoys over the side. Scampering net makers busied themselves caring for the damaged seine as fast as it came aboard. It was a well-practiced cadence, one with a long tradition on the high seas.
When next they paused to walk forward again—Crat massaging his throbbing left arm—he sniffed left and right, perplexed by a sour, sooty odor. The sharp sweat tang of unbathed men, which had nearly overwhelmed him weeks ago, now was mere background to other smells, drifting in on the breeze.
At last he found the source over on the horizon, a twisted funnel far beyond the Sea State picket boats, rising to stain the shredded, striated clouds. Crat nudged one of his neighbors, an unsmiling refugee from flooded Libya.
“What’s that?” he asked.
The wiry fellow readjusted his bandanna as he peered. “Incinerator ship, I think. No allowed go upwind anybody … UNEPA rule, y’know? But we not anybody. So upwind us jus’ fine okay.” He spat on the deck for effect, then again onto his hands as the bosun ordered them to take up the hawser for another round.
Glancing at the smokey plume, Crat knew what Remi would have said. “Hey, you got priorities, I got priorities. All the world’s got priorities.” Getting rid of land-stored toxic wastes rated higher to most than worrying about one more carbon source. Protecting onshore water supplies outweighed a few trace molecules escaping the incinerators’ searing flames, especially when those molecules wouldn’t waft over populated areas.
Hey, Crat thought as he heaved in time with the others. Ain’t I population? Soon, however, he hadn’t a thought to spare except on doing his job … on keeping jibes about clumsy dumb-ass Yankees to a minimum, and keeping the others from trampling him.
Because Crat was concentrating so hard, he never noticed the captain come out on deck to test the brush of the wind, his brow furrowed in concern. Poor as it was, Sea State owed its very existence to computers and to other nations’ weather satellites. Regular forecasts meant life or death, enabling rusty fleets and floating towns to seek safety well in advance of approaching storms.
Still, weather models could not predict the smaller vagaries … mists and pinprick squalls, microbursts and sudden shifts in the wind. While Crat strained on the line, wearily aware they were still only half done, the captain’s eyes narrowed, noticing subtle cues. He turned to call his comm officer.
While his back was turned a pocket cyclone of clear air turbulence descended on the little fleet. The micropressure zone gave few warnings. Two hundred meters to the east, it flattened the sea to a brief, glassy perfection. Men’s ears popped aboard the Dacca, and blond seamen on the Pikeman’s starboard quarter briefly had to turn away, blinking from a needle spray of salt foam.
The zone’s tangent happened to brush against Congo then, sending the wind gauge whining. Gusts struck the feathered wing-sail, catching the vertical airfoil and slewing it sharply. The brakeman, who had been picking his teeth, leapt for his lever too la
te as the sail swung hard into the gang of straining laborers, knocking several down and cutting the taut cable like a slanting knife.
Tension released in a snapping jolt, hurling sailors over the railing amid a tangle of fibrous webbing. One moment Crat was leaning back, struggling to do his job despite his aching blisters. The next instant, he was flying through the air! His quivering muscles spasmed at the sudden recoil, and yet for a moment it seemed almost pleasant to soar bemusedly above the water like a gull. His forebrain, always the last to know, took some time to fathom why all the other men were screaming. Then he hit the sea.
Abruptly, all the shrill tones were deadened. Low-pitched sounds seemed to resonate from all directions … the thrashing of struggling creatures, the glub of air from panicked, convulsing lungs, the pings and moans of Congo’s joints as she slowly aged toward oblivion. A destination that loomed much more rapidly for Crat himself, apparently. His legs and arms were caught in the writhing net, and while the float buoys were gradually asserting themselves, that wouldn’t help men who were snared like him, only a meter below.
Strange, he pondered. He’d always had dreams about water … one reason why, when all other emigration states had spurned his applications, he finally decided to go to sea. Still, until now the possibility of drowning had never occurred to him. Wasn’t it supposed to be a good way to go, anyway? So long as you didn’t let panic ruin it? Judging from the sounds the others were making, they were going to have the experience thoroughly spoilt for them.
Something about the quality of the sound felt terribly familiar. Maybe he was remembering the womb.…
Sluggishly, with a glacial slowness, he started working on escape. Not that he had any illusions. It was just something to do. Guess I’ll be seein’ you guys soon, after all, he told Remi and Roland silently.
His left arm was free by the time one of the thrashing forms nearby went limp and still. He didn’t spare the time or energy to look then. Nor even when a gray figure flicked by, beyond the other side of the net. But as he worked calmly, methodically, on the complex task of freeing his other arm, a face suddenly appeared, right in front of him. A large eye blinked.
No … winked at him. The eye was set above a long, narrow grin featuring white, pointy teeth. The bottle jaw and high, curved forehead turned to aim at him, and Crat abruptly felt his inner ears go crazy in a crackling of penetrating static. With a start, he realized the thing was scanning him … inspecting him with its own sophisticated sonar. Checking out this curiosity of a man caught in a net designed to snare creatures of the sea.
This dolphin was much larger than the little spinners the fleet had been killing only hours ago. It must be one of the big, brainy breeds. Certainly it looked amused by this satiric turnabout.
Damn, Crat cursed inwardly as his right arm came free at last. No dumpit privacy anywhere. Not even when I’m dying.
Accompanying that resentment came a dissolving of the peaceful, time-stretched resignation. With a crash, his will to live suddenly returned. Panic threatened as his diaphragm clenched, causing a few bubbles to escape. He must have been underwater only a minute or two, but abruptly his lungs were in agony.
Ironically, it was the dolphin—the fact of having an audience—that made Crat hold on. Damn if he’d give it the same show as the others! Now that his mind was working again—such as it was—Crat began recalling important things.
Like the fact that he had a knife! Sheathed at his ankle, it was one of the few items ship rules wouldn’t let you hock. Bending, grabbing, unfolding, Crat came up with the gleaming blade and started sawing at the strands clasping his legs.
Funny thing about the way water carried sound—it seemed to amplify his heartbeat, returning multiple echoes from all sides. Counterpoint seemed to come from the spectator, his dolphin voyeur … though Crat avoided looking at the creature as he worked.
One leg free! Crat dodged a loop of netting sent his way by the rolling currents—and in the process almost lost the knife. Clutching it convulsively, he also squeezed out more stale, precious air.
His fingers were numb sausages as he resumed sawing. The sea began filling with speckles as each second passed. Infinite schools of blobby purple fishes encroached across his failing vision, heralding unconsciousness. They began to blur and the feeling spread throughout his limbs as his body began quaking. Any second now it would overcome his will with a spasmodic drive to inhale.
The last coil parted! Crat tried to launch himself toward the surface, but all his remaining strength had to go into not breathing.
An assist from a surprising quarter saved him … a push from below that sent him soaring upward, breaching the surface with a shuddering gasp. Somehow, he floundered over a cluster of float buoys, keeping his mouth barely above water as he sucked sweet air. I’m alive, he realized in amazement. I’m alive.
The roaring in his ears masked the clamor of men watching from the Congo, only now beginning to rush to the rescue. Dimly, Crat knew that even those now bravely diving into the water would never be able to cross the jumbled net in time to reach some still-thrashing forms nearby.
As soon as his arms and legs would move again, Crat blearily turned to the nearest struggling survivor, a stricken sailor only a couple of meters away, churning the water feebly, desperately. The fellow was thoroughly trapped, his head bobbing intermittently just at the surface. As Crat neared, he spewed and coughed and managed to catch a thin whistle of breath before being dragged under again.
Belatedly, Crat realized his knife was gone for good, probably even now tumbling down to Davy Jones’s lost and found. So he did the only thing he could. Gathering a cluster of float buoys under one arm, he stretched across the intervening tangle to grab the dying man’s hair, hauling him up for a sobbing gasp of air. Each following breath came as a shrill whistle then … until the poor sod’s eyes cleared enough of threatening coma to fill instead with hysteria. Good thing the victim’s arms were still caught then, or in panic he’d have clawed Crat into the trap as well.
Crat’s own breathing came in shuddering sobs as he kicked in reserves he never knew he had before. Just keeping his own head above the lapping water was hard enough. He also had to tune out the fading splashes of other dying men nearby. I can’t help ’em. Really can’t.… Got my hands full.
Nearby, Crat felt another form approach to look at him. That dolphin again. I wish someone’d shoot the damned …
Then he recalled that shove to the seat of his pants. The push that had saved his life.
His mind was too slow, too blurry to think of anything much beyond that. Certainly he formed no clear idea to thank the one responsible. But that eye seemed to sense something—his realization perhaps. Again it winked at him. Then the dolphin lifted its head, chattered quickly, and vanished.
Crat was still blinking at strange, unexpected thoughts when rescuers arrived at last to relieve him of his burden and haul his exhausted carcass out of the blood-warm sea.
A new type of pollution was first noticed way back in the nineteen-seventies. Given the priorities of those times, it didn’t get as much attention as, say, tainted rivers or the choking stench over major cities. Nevertheless, a vocal opposition began to rise up in protest.
Trees. In certain places trees were decried as the latest symbols of human greed and villainy against nature.
“Oh, certainly trees are good things in general,” those voices proclaimed. “Each makes up a miniature ecosystem, sheltering and supporting a myriad of living things. Their roots hold down and aerate topsoil. They draw carbon from the air and give back sweet oxygen. From their breathing leaves transpires moisture, so one patch of forest passes on to the next each rainstorm’s bounty.”
Food, pulp, beauty, diversity … there was no counting the array of treasures lost in those tropical lands where hardwood forests fell daily in the hundreds, thousands of acres. And yet, take North America in 1990, where there actually were more trees than had stood a century before—many pl
anted by law to replace ancient “harvested” stands of oak and beech and redwood. Or take Britain, where meadows once cropped close by herds of grazing sheep were now planted—under generous tax incentives—with hectare after hectare of specially bred pine.
Trash forests, they were called by some. Endless stands of uniformity, stretching in geometric lattice rows as far as the eye could see. Absolutely uniform, they had been gene spliced for quick growth. And grow they did.
“But these forests are dead zones,” said the complainers. “A floor covered with only pine needles or bitter eucalyptus, leaves shelters few deer, feeds few otters, hears the songs of hardly any birds.”
Even much later, as the Great Campaign for the Trillion Trees got under way—losing in some places, but elsewhere helping hold fast against the spreading deserts—many new forests were still silent places. An emptiness seemed to whisper, echoing among the still branches.
It’s not the same, said this troubled quiet. Some things, once gone, cannot be easily restored.
• MESOSPHERE
The most pleasant thing about the new routine was that it finally gave Stan Goldman a chance to take some time off and go argue with old friends.
The next several Gazer runs would be ordinary. The program was on schedule, slowly nudging Beta, beat by beat, into its higher orbit. At last Stan felt he could leave his assistant in charge of the resonator and take an hour or so off to relax.
In fact, it was really part of his job—helping maintain their cover. After all, wouldn’t their hosts get suspicious if he didn’t stay in character? The paleontologists at the Hammer site would find it odd if old Stan Goldman didn’t come by on occasion to talk and kibitz. So it was with a relatively clear conscience that he made for the nearby encampment to partake of some beer and friendly conversation.
All in the line of duty of course.
“We ought to have an answer in a few years,” said Wyn Nielsen, the tall, blond director of the dig and an old friend of many years. “We’ll know when the Han finally launch that big interferometer of theirs. Until then talk is pointless.”