Firestorm

by David Klass

  Poker game revolving endlessly around dining table. Small change and large insults exchanged. No more fights, though. Everyone’s taking the first mate’s warning seriously.

  I’m in bed, exhausted from shoveling bycatch in the hot sun. Gisco is stretched out on the floor beneath my bottom bunk. Jacques lies in the bed directly above me. I’m starting to figure out why my bunk just happened to be vacant.

  The fat cook’s been drinking Canadian whiskey for over an hour, and is blustering and raving out loud. Sometimes he shouts down to me, to make sure he has an audience. “Insult my bouillabaisse, will he? And didn’t my grandfather serve the very same to the King of England? A shame that Cyclops with the pistol stopped me. I would have cut the heart out of the leprechaun. You down there listening, boy?”

  “Still here, trying to sleep,” I call up.

  “Ah, but he didn’t know who he was dealing with. Never mess with a Newfoundland cook. Proud of our secret recipes, we are. Did you know my grandfather cooked for a giant cod boat? Seventy men freezing on the Grand Banks, and only my grandpa to keep them warm and fed.”

  He falls silent, and Gisco chimes in from beneath: Don’t tell me that buffoon is going to brag about his family’s part in the annihilation of the North Atlantic cod.

  I’m pretty confused about how I feel. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with doing a little fishing and lowering one net. But the sight of the bycatch, and the smell of it, and the needless death toll, literally made me sick. So I ask Gisco: What’s wrong with catching a few cod?

  A few cod? he thunders. Dog has his dander up. Must have been the trawling. Let me spell it out for you, beacon of ignorance. When the Grand Banks were first discovered, fishermen didn’t even need hooks. They just hauled the cod up in buckets. Even after they had been fished relentlessly for five centuries, the schools were still so great that the best scientists of the time believed they were inexhaustible.

  “Grandpa was lucky!” Jacques rumbles. “Cod made Newfoundland. Men got rich from it! Wars were fought over it.”

  So what happened to the schools of cod? I ask Gisco.

  Human ingenuity is what happened. Great factory ships set out from Europe that could catch a hundred tons of cod in an hour. In the blink of an eye the schools were gone for good and tens of thousands of Newfoundland fishermen like the grandfather of this boozing blowhard were out of work.

  The bed heaves as Jacques rolls over and continues his drunken rant. “The cod ran out, so my father became a whaler! It was man against the leviathan, boy, and man had to be fed. My pa cooked bouillabaisse for hungry crews as they fought noble battles with the gargantuans of the deep!”

  Noble battles? Gisco sputters. Now he’s bragging about his father’s role in the extinction of the great whales!

  As if in response to this accusation, Jacques farts loudly. Then, inspired by the musical qualities of his own flatulence, he breaks into a drunken whaling chantey:

  “Come all you brave fellows that’s bound after sperm,

  Come all you bold seamen that’s rounded the Horn.

  Our captain has told us and I hope he says true,

  That there’s plenty of sperm whale on the coast of Peru.”

  He pauses for another swig of whiskey.

  Listen to him crow about it, like it was something glorious! Gisco is outraged. The Annals of Dann have no more brutal example of one highly intelligent and far-flung species trying to completely wipe out another than the thousand-year war Homo sapiens waged against cetaceans.

  Jacques’s throat wetted, he pipes up again, with gusto:

  “Oh, we gave him one iron and the whale he went down,

  But as he came up, boys, our captain bent on,

  And the next harpoon struck, and the line sped away,

  But whatever that whale done, he gave us fair play.”

  This is appalling. I can’t bear it.

  Actually, I think his voice is pretty good.

  Listen to the words! Celebrating a vicious slaughter.

  No, he’s celebrating a battle, I point out. And you have to admit, there is something heroic about men with harpoons setting out on wooden boats to hunt the biggest animals that ever lived on this earth. Think of Ahab and Moby Dick.

  Gisco kicks my bunk with his paws. The tendency of your species to dramatize and extol when it should be apologizing and cringing! There was nothing noble about the slaughter of the whales from start to finish. The smaller ones were the first to be hunted to the point of extinction, the right whales, the bowheads, and the humpbacks with their lovely songs—so much better than this harmonic hash.

  As if on cue, Jacques launches into another stanza:

  “Oh, he raced and he sounded, he twist and he spin,

  But we fought him alongside and got our lance in,

  Which caused him to vomit, and the blood for to spout,

  And in ten minutes’ time, me boys, he rolled both fins out.”

  I can’t help enjoying this old saga of the sea. I tell Gisco, His song makes it sound like a heroic battle—

  It was sheer butchery, the maddened mastiff insists. Ships followed the whales to their breeding grounds and wiped out whole populations, including mothers and calves. When one type of whale was finished off, the whalers just moved on to the next.

  Other crewmen shout from their bunks for Jacques to quiet down. His voice defiantly swells even louder:

  “We towed him alongside, and with many a shout.

  We soon cut him in and begun to try out.

  Now the blubber is rendered and likewise stowed down,

  And it’s better to us, me boys, than five hundred pound.”

  I hear scrabbling—Gisco is trying to cover his ears with his paws. Will someone please stick a harpoon into that caterwauling creator of culinary catastrophes.

  Jacques takes an enormous swig of whiskey. When he speaks again he slurs his words. “Then there was my Uncle Leo, boy. Loaded Leo! Made his fortune on tuna boats, catching bluefin for the Japanese. Gold that swims, Leo called it.”

  One of the two or three fastest and most beautiful fish, Gisco contributes. The Japanese called it honmaguro. They thought it was so delicious that they ate it into extinction. The last piece of bluefin tuna will be picked up by chopsticks and popped into a mouth about five years from now.

  “Now it’s just me and my brother, Mitch. He’s a proud longliner! Braves the waters of the Antarctic for Chilean sea bass.”

  Patagonian toothfish. Became a fad delicacy in restaurants and within three decades was fished to extinction. I can’t believe this! Gisco shudders. This nitwit’s family deserve to be flensed! The longlines were hideous! Miles of baited and unbreakable lines, floating in darkness, catching and tangling and drowning anything that swims.

  “Yo ho, ye brave swordfishermen!” Jacques blurts out, and for a second I’m afraid he’s going to break into song again. “Taught me how to cook, Mitch did. Stewed up the family bouillabaisse as they hauled in the fierce swordfish!”

  Till the swordfish were gone. Not to mention the albatross and other seabirds that dived for the baited hooks and drowned, and the endangered sea turtles that got tangled in the lines and died by the thousands.

  “But I was a trawler man, from the day I could stand to piss. It’s a fine life, boy, bottom trawling. Been all around the world. Trawled for shrimp off Florida.”

  The beautiful Lophelia reefs, gone for good.

  “You name it, I’ve been there when they’ve scooped it up. Bottom trawling is fishing’s finest miracle, boy! We can reach anything! That’s the tradition I come from, that’s the salty seed I sprout from, and if any Irish potato farmer wants to pick a scrap with a proud outport cook, I’ll cleave him into ribbons, just as my pa and grandpa would have done! Now it’s time for some shuteye. Tomorrow we’re on to a virgin reef! What could be better?”

  52

  Middle of the night. Crew members asleep. Jacques snoring drunkenly above me. Each time he exhales,
it sounds like a lumberjack sawing down a thick tree with a blunt blade.

  Okay, Gisco. Let me have it.

  What?

  Why are we here?

  Because the storm blew us here.

  You stole the small boat. You have a major thing against trawlers. And you say Firestorm is linked to the oceans. Are you manipulating this whole situation? Is this another chicken-and-egg game?

  You’re giving me too much credit. How could I know we’d survive the storm? How could I predict this trawler would pick us up?

  I don’t know, but I don’t trust you.

  Maybe fate brought you here. The prophecies say that only you can save the future. Nothing was as damaging to the oceans right before the Turning Point as bottom trawling. So it makes sense that fate would send you to a bottom trawler.

  Why not a longliner? Or a whaling ship? I just listened to you condemn all kinds of different fishing boats. What was so especially horrible about trawlers?

  Aren’t you the boy who threw up after shoveling bycatch?

  I admit today wasn’t pleasant. But people need to eat. You seem to think that all fishing is evil.

  No. Wrong. The problem lies in the methods.

  Forgive me, High Dog, I’m trying to open my mind up to your futuristic wisdom, but it’s hard for me to believe a little human ingenuity directed at catching fish really doomed the world. Bigger nets? Longer lines? Better fish finders? Was that really such a big deal in the grand scheme of things?

  There’s nothing wrong with fishing. For thousands of years people fished. In the back of their minds was the notion that the oceans were bottomless and the fish were limitless. When primitive methods were used, that was true. But the methods got better and better. The lines got longer and the nets bigger, and the fish finders more sophisticated. But the fish didn’t get smarter or more elusive and the oceans didn’t get any deeper. The “earth” is a misnomer—seen from space, we live on a blue planet of oceans. The Turning Point hinged on the emptying of those oceans.

  I lie there and try to take this all in. The way Gisco says it—proclaims it—with the ring of doomsday. The way his big, wet, agonized eyes ranged around the deck during the trawl. Eko’s face on the rooftop in moonlight. The eyes of the sea turtle as I dragged it down the deck.

  I start to feel deeply guilty, even though I haven’t done anything wrong. Like I’m complicit in something horrible that I do not approve of.

  But what can I do?

  Bunkroom full of sleeping fishermen. From all different countries. None of them bent on world destruction. Just earning a living. Jacques snoring above me. Third-generation cook on fishing boats. Not a nice guy, but not exactly a destroyer of worlds either.

  Yet Gisco says it’s their fault. It’s our fault. It’s my fault. And Eko, in her own way, believed the same thing. I remember her sadness. Her guilt. Her anger.

  Directed at us. At now. At me and mine.

  That’s why they left their world and came back right now. That’s why I was sent back eighteen years ago. To prepare for this moment. This Turning Point. And I’m starting to grasp that the crucial thing about a turning point is that it can be used to tilt fate one way or the other.

  I get quietly out of bed.

  Where are you going?

  I don’t know exactly.

  Come back. They’ll catch you. If you don’t know where you’re going—if you don’t have a smart plan—get back into bed now. That’s an order!

  Screw you. I can’t listen to this anymore. Humans did this, humans did that. If you’re right, and fate has brought me here, then I’m supposed to accomplish something. Let’s find out exactly where we’re headed and what’s going on. Are you in or out? Or are you just like Cassandra, from Greek mythology, who could warn of calamities but could do nothing to prevent them?

  I would like to help, the big dog declares, but I’m weak, not to mention underfed. And it’s so warm and comfortable here.

  Being comfortable is overrated. I’m gonna go do something. Hasta la vista, hound.

  Okay. Just wait a minute. I still think this is a rotten idea, but you guilted me into it. The big dog crawls out from under the bed. Let’s not take any risks. If that first mate with the pistol catches us skulking around, he’ll probably feed us into the fillet machine.

  53

  We creep upstairs to dark and deserted deck.

  Where are we going?

  The wheelhouse. That’s where they keep the charts.

  It’s also where the night watch is likely to be.

  Don’t sweat it. We’ll crawl in through a rear window. Even if someone’s at the wheel, they won’t hear us or see us.

  That’s your plan?

  Got a better one?

  Why don’t we set a fire? When they run to put it out, we can take a quick look around inside.

  Only an idiot would set fire to his own boat.

  Your plan’s not exactly brilliant either. I don’t know if you noticed, but dogs are not great at climbing.

  So wait outside and keep watch for me. There’s the window. Let me climb on your back. Hold still.

  Unlike simple beasts of burden like the burro, the canine does not have a spine designed to support extra weight. Ouch! Your heels! You’re crippling me!

  I’ve almost got it open. Just a few more seconds …

  That window’s locked. Get down. Give up.

  No, it’s just stuck. There, got it open. Now I’m just going to bounce on you like a trampoline …

  You’re cracking my vertebrae like walnuts!

  Made it! All that weight makes you a good springboard. Stay there in case I need you to break my fall.

  Dog steps quickly away from window. I am not a leaf pile.

  I peer around tiny chart room. In the moonlight that filters through the grimy window I can barely make out a desk.

  What do you see? Gisco asks anxiously from outside.

  Nothing. Too dark. I’m going to turn on a light.

  No! There’s someone in the front. He may be asleep.

  I walk to the door. Open it a crack and peer out at the helm controls. Sure enough, a crewman sits snoozing in front of the steering wheel, his head slouched to one side.

  I pull the door closed again. Find the desk lamp. Hold my breath and switch it on. Look down at maps.

  Do you see anything useful? Gisco wants to know.

  Charts of the ocean, with underwater topography.

  Are there points of reference? Landmasses? Islands?

  Just something labeled Great Meteor.

  That’s one of the most famous seamounts, near the Azores! You must be looking at a map of the reefs of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Who prepared the chart?

  I see a five-letter acronym near the bottom. ICCAF.

  Oh my God! That’s it!

  What?

  Jack! No time. Someone’s coming! The captain and the first mate! Get out now!

  Footsteps thump up the steps to the wheelhouse. I start to clamber out the window. Stop myself. Hang there for a moment. And then climb back inside the tiny room.

  What are you doing?

  We need to know what’s going on, right? Who better to hear it from than the two guys running this ship.

  You’re crazy! They’ll catch you and flense you alive.

  They’ll hear me if I try to climb out now.

  What choice do you have? Get out!

  Chill, dog. They just probably want to make sure we’re on course.

  Voices ring out from the helm.

  I tiptoe to the door. The crewman who was napping is now trying to defend himself. “I swear I wasn’t asleep, sir. I have a bad neck, so I sit with it tilted to one side—”

  “Shut up, fool,” the first mate’s voice snaps, and I hear what I think is a punch.

  The crewman cries out in pain.

  “This’ll cost you five hundred dollars,” the captain says. “If I catch you napping again, you’re fired, and that won’t be the worst of it.”


  “Yes, sir,” the crewman responds miserably.

  “Now keep a sharp lookout,” the captain orders. “We’re going to look at some charts. And what we have to say is private.”

  I edge to the window. Too late! The doorknob is turning!

  I dive beneath the desk as the captain and first mate enter. The first mate closes the door behind them and latches it with a hook.

  “The fog will help us,” the captain says in his gentle voice. “Visibility should be less than ten meters.”

  “Do we really need to worry?” the first mate asks. “We’ll slip in, fish it out, and be gone in less than a day. What are the odds that a spotter plane will see us?”

  “True, but Dargon doesn’t want any trouble.” There’s something strange about the way the captain whispers the name. His soft voice is almost immune to inflections of weakness or fear. It’s the voice of a man who is scared of nothing. Yet his voice trembles as he whispers “Dargon.”

  “Then let’s not get into any trouble,” the first mate agrees. “The fog will serve our purpose well.”

  They walk over to the desk. I scrunch back as far as I can, so that my back is pressed to the wall. My heart starts kettledrum-ming in my chest. Will they hear me breathe?

  “Some fool left the window open,” the captain says.

  The first mate steps to the sill and closes it. “That boy, probably,” he guesses. “I told him to mop up in here.”

  “I don’t trust that kid,” the old captain mutters. “And there’s something strange about his dog, too.”

  “We had to save him,” the first mate points out. “The crew saw him in the boat. But there could be an accident.”

  “We’ll see if that’s necessary.” The desk shakes as the captain thumps it with his titanium hand. “Here’s the chart. We’ll trawl the reef in fog and we’ll sail away in fog. We can’t come in with another lousy catch.”

  “That’s for sure,” the first mate agrees.

  The captain’s heavy hand traces the route. “According to this chart, we should be reaching the reef in less than an hour. We’ll lower the net as soon as the crew wakes.”