by Sage Walker
[Signy] Janine, it’s Paul who makes Itano tighten up. You take him, girl. He’s warming to you.
“The agreement didn’t last,” Janine said. “Countries with no fisheries invoked the Law of the Sea agreement; ‘sea resouces are the common heritage of mankind,’ and all that. Several landlocked countries threatened to claim their share of the catch. The fishermen got upset and delivered some of the disputed share to a protesting country’s embassy. A couple of truckloads of fresh fish can make quite a mess on a hot day.”
Itano returned Janine’s smile. “The Sardine Solution. Yes.”
“You seriously suggest we propose opening such a can of … worms … again?” Itano asked.
“I seriously do.” Janine’s eyes were as big as saucers, as innocent as bluebells. “But I would not suggest that protests be met in the same way.”
“Our time is limited,” Itano said. “You are suggesting that we change our proposed strategy entirely.”
“Our best recommendation, Mr. Itano.”
Itano’s hands pushed against the edge of the desk. “Difficult,” he said.
“Possible. Possible, Mr. Itano.” Janine’s voice stayed low and she began to use a slower, more deliberate cadence. “For a company willing to maintain a long-term view.”
[Signy] I can’t be sure he will catch the change in emphasis, but give it a try.
Itano let his elbows rest on the desk and cupped his palms in front of him, as if he kept guard on some invisible object on the table, something that might scurry away. Paul crossed his arms and waited.
“Tanaka reported a catch of one hundred thousand tonnes of krill last season. Of Nototheniops larseni, of Champsocephalus gunnari, and related bony fishes; fifty thousand tonnes. Tanaka’s fleet is by no means the largest in Antarctic waters.” Janine’s tongue had no problems with the fishy names. Itano stayed intent on her words; Janine continued. “Other fleets report their catches to the Antarctic authorities on an honor system. The catch is variable by year, and a decrease in reported catches has been occurring each year for the past four years. This is considered alarming in some quarters. Arbitrary restrictions on all catches are being considered.”
“You have done your homework, Dr. Hull. Have you calculated the changes attributed to decreasing salinity at the Antarctic upwelling? Ice-cap melt is increasing, but some researchers maintain that the productivity will increase, not decrease, because of it. We may be just seeing an adjustment in speciation, not a true decrease.”
“Parameters are still in question,” Janine said. “In many areas. Isn’t that what people say when they don’t know what’s really happening, but they’re afraid they’re wrong?”
“The decreases cause us concern,” Itano said. “We might like to manage the harvest differently. I am scheduled to arrive in Lisbon tomorrow. Time prevents us, unfortunately, from discussing the changes we would like to make.”
Security concerns, Signy thought, prevent us … but Itano wasn’t insisting that Edges go ahead and sell the proposed treaty language.
“But if you could come to Lisbon…”
[Signy] Aha! Your fish is nibbling the bait. You knew he might ask. I think you should go, Janine.
“… we could perhaps discuss this further,” Itano said.
“I—would be honored.” Janine didn’t look honored, she looked not very happy at all.
[Signy] Smile, damn it.
Smiles and bows finished the discussion. Itano’s secretary followed Itano’s goodbyes with promises of travel arrangements and guest housing for Janine. The secretary’s round face vanished, and Signy waited for Janine’s response.
“You did it, Janine. Itano’s responses were negative to my comments, pretty much, from the few tension parameters I could read of him,” Paul said.
“You’re Harvard. He’s Stanford. What did you expect?” Signy asked, voice this time, since the conference was over. Relief relaxed her shoulders. Relief was a comfortable, warm feeling. The contract, which had seemed so tenuous, felt real, felt doable.
“More friction than I got, actually. You’ve got to do it for us. Fleshtime, my dear Ms. Hull,” Paul told Janine. “It is said that blue-eyed blondes get the highest prices in the better houses in Tokyo.”
“Really?” Janine asked. “Paul, you are so low.”
“Just information. Just information.”
“We’re on an open line, Paul,” Signy said. Just this once, she was happy to catch him in a relative security goof.
Paul vanished.
Janine cut away into a carrier wave. Signy stretched and got up and sat down again. She looked in on Jared. He had finished his game, and he sat in Kihara’s cabin, working at the flat-screen. Signy started to download some of the meeting to him, but then she figured Jared could just as well ask her for it. He would want a precis, anyway, and Signy didn’t want to do one just now.
The Seattle cameras responded to motion, and Signy saw Janine at the doorway of the studio. Janine looked in at Pilar, who seemed unaware of her.
“I thought it went pretty well,” Signy said.
“It seemed to,” Janine said. “Is there anything to see in Lisbon in January?”
Signy had expected outrage, not resignation. “Oh, babe. I don’t know.”
Janine’s formal tunic contrasted with the clutter, the room’s cameras showing unadorned Seattle walls, and Pilar in a paint-stained caftan, fingering her way through a box filled with wrinkled tubes of acrylic pigments.
“You’re through?” Pilar asked. “I’ll use the tulips, then.”
“Yeah, I’m through.” Janine pulled the tunic’s high collar open and rubbed at her neck. “I’m going to Lisbon.”
“Yeah.” Pilar squeezed a blob of cadmium yellow on her palette and frowned at it.
“You going to paint tulips?” Janine started for the door, to get the tulips, Signy figured. She waited on Pilar’s every whim, and Signy hated that she did.
Janine didn’t leave; she sat down on a battered tapestry cushion and stared up at Pilar.
“Maybe. You know those knitted hats the sailors wear on the Siranui? I think they’d sell in L.A.,” Pilar said.
“They’re ugly.” Janine frowned and picked at something on her cushion.
“That’s why they would sell,” Pilar said.
Signy pulled her headset off. The Taos house sat warm against the winter cold. She added a couple of logs to the corner fireplace and nudged them into place. Why didn’t Pilar act pleased, or happy, or give some sort of human response? We all worked on this, sweated through this conference, and now Pilar chooses to ignore Janine, who needs a few strokes. Damn her for an insensitive …
Loud and insistent, Signy heard a siren whoop on the Siranui. The noise alarmed her, hit a deep vein of fear that she’d shoved aside. Running back to her station, she realized she was primed for this, that she had been waiting, all through Itano’s call, waiting for something ominous to surface. Her headset felt sweat-slick when she pulled it on. Signy disappeared the Seattle inputs and scrambled to find Jared’s signature in the Siranui’s virtual architecture. An accident? A medical alert? Jared was not in sick bay, but Signy hadn’t expected to find him there. In Kihara’s cabin, she found the familiar sense of Jared’s body, awakening. Signy punched the volume control and heard Alan Campbell’s voice.
“… distress signal coming from a submersible.”
“Anna’s got the crash kit. I’ll be right up,” Jared said. He swiveled away from the cabin flatscreen.
Jared’s body language felt alert, not alarmed, but he was tense enough to startle Signy as she felt him get to the cabin door and head for the lift.
Seen through Jared’s cameras, the Siranui’s deck took shape before her, Alan’s freckled neck visible for a moment above his collar, glimpses of Jared’s feet in bulky moonboots. Crew members in bulky parkas pushed a helo into position for takeoff. The deck’s granular black surface was rimed with ice, slippery, and Signy felt herself jerk as Jared s
kidded.
Anna’s hand caught his elbow in a grip as strong and sure as a longshoreman’s.
“Thanks!” Jared shouted above the helo’s engines.
“Move it!” Anna yelled.
ELEVEN
Warm in contrast to the deck’s intrusive cold, the helo’s windows clouded with their breath. The pilot wiped his gloved hand back and forth across the front windscreen in short, measured arcs. The line of black hair above his ear was cut with surgical precision, and he looked no older than twenty-five. Anna pulled down jump seats, a row of three on the cabin’s right side, and sat in the rearward one. She motioned Campbell and Jared to their places and harnessed herself to the seat.
Jared fought with a buckle but got it fastened. Campbell seemed to have no trouble working in his gloves, but Jared’s seemed far too bulky and he stripped them off. The copilot held his cupped hands over his headphones, listening to instructions obscured by the helo’s roar. His curly brown beard moved as he answered some comment.
The helo was set up for rescue operations. A pair of stretchers hugged the left wall of the cabin; supplies and oxy lines were Velcroed to the tan padding of the bulkheads. Jared looked over the space, locating equipment so he could reach it if he needed it, and giving visuals for Edges to sort through later. The back of the helo looked like the inside of an angular cornucopia, and Jared wondered what Pilar would do with that idea if he told her about it. Anna strapped the crash kit into place. The helo lifted away from the deck and turned left.
“Signy?” Jared asked. If she had managed to patch into the helo’s nav system, she might hear him. Nothing. Well, okay; Signy, or Paul, would get access to his transmissions or they wouldn’t. No big deal. “I’ll put a save on this, in case you want it,” Jared said to no one.
Anna noticed his lips moving. She pointed to a padded headset clipped to the bulkhead above him. Jared pulled down the phones and fitted them over his ears. Alan Campbell copied his motions. Chatter from the Siranui’s bridge came in loud, voices directing the helo toward coordinates north and west of the ship’s location.
“We are still getting transmissions from the Gojiro,” a clipped voice said. “Voice contact is garbled. There are three crewmen listed on board and they report injury of some sort. The Kasumi is heading for the submersible’s location.”
The copilot turned back to look at his passengers. In front of him, ranks of instruments glowed green in hazy twilight. “Hi. I’m Trent.” Last name? First name? Jared couldn’t tell. “Welcome aboard. Your pilot today is Mr. Uchida, and we’re tracking the Kasumi. We anticipate a pleasant flight of about one hour.” Trent’s accent was Midwestern. “If you want, I’ll put you on intercom so you can talk to each other.”
“Yeah,” Campbell said. Jared nodded.
“Gojiro?” Jared asked.
“That’s the sub that’s in trouble,” Trent said. “Your hostess today…”
“Shut up, Trent,” Anna said. “No cabin service. I have my limits.” Anna yawned, folded her arms, and leaned back against her harness. An outsider, a visitor, Jared felt suddenly alone. What intimacy, what interactions bridged these two? They teased each other with easy familiarity, and Jared assumed a history from that observation. What they were to each other might be something unfamiliar, hostile or dear or strange. Jared used the conventions of assumption; he imagined these two as friends or lovers. What assumptions did he make of this Campbell?
“What’s the Kasumi?” Jared asked.
“She’s a traveler.” The copilot did not turn around again. The pilot hadn’t said a word yet. “The Kasumi is fair-sized,” Trent said. “She carries the fleet’s three-man subs, both of them. She may have sent the second one down after the one that’s in trouble.”
“The Gojiro is down?” Campbell asked. “What’s the other one called?”
“Smogu,” the pilot said. He made a quick motion with the corner of his lip, a half smile.
“Has McMurdo Search and Rescue been called out?” Jared asked.
“No,” Trent said.
“Expensive.” Anna stared across the cabin, seemingly fascinated by the accordion folds in a length of translucent blue respirator tubing. “The fleet must pay expenses to lift a search-and-rescue operation and we know where this sub is.”
“But if someone’s closer…” Campbell said.
“No one’s closer.” Trent wiped condensation from the righthand window. The defrosters had kicked in and the front screens were clear. Jared could see hazy sky that looked brighter now than it had when the helo left the Siranui’s deck. The rear section of the helo had no windows. Jared’s view of the outside world was limited to squares of clouded sky and the shadowed backs of the two airmen. Sorry about the visuals, kids, he thought. And the noise. “Nothing’s happening,” Jared whispered. “I’m turning us off for a while.”
“Huh?” Alan asked.
“Oh. I’m talking to my suit.”
“Oh, right. I’m used to seeing masks when people are recording. The headbands work as well as the masks?”
“I’m not using facial sensations, so I can get by with it, yeah.” Jared turned his head, bringing the curve of the plastic sensor that rested against his cheek into Campbell’s view.
“It looks better than those ski-mask outfits,” Campbell said. “I met a woman last week in Houston who wore a rig like yours.”
“Yeah,” Jared said. “She told me.” How was it for you? What did Signy see that had her in bed with you so fast? And what did you learn from her?
“Signy?” Alan asked. “You work with her. She told me.”
“She’s a partner.” I live with her, Campbell, and I’m going to give you every chance I can think of to fuck up this conversation.
“She’s one of the most intriguing women I’ve ever met.”
Not bad. A neutral comment on the positive side. Not bad, Campbell, and also cautious. “Signy was surprised to see you here,” Jared said.
“See me?”
“Yeah. What I record gets home real fast.” Home, I said. Did you pick it up?
Campbell leaned back in his chair. Snug in her harness, Anna had tucked her chin down and gone to sleep.
“She mentioned she was doing a job for Tanaka. I looked up the company and looked at the specs on their submersibles. Keeping vacuum out, keeping water out; there are similarities.”
“Keeping air in,” Jared said.
“Yeah, it just could be that I think we build a better scrubber system than the ones they’re using now.” Campbell grinned.
“So that’s why you’re here?”
“That’s why I’m here. Maybe we’ll get some work for Houston out of this. Thank her for me, will you?”
“I’ll do that,” Jared said.
* * *
Signy saw Jared’s gloved hand reach for a grip beside the helo’s door and then he disappeared in static. She switched to the bridge speakers and heard chatter about a ship named Kasumi and tried hooking in to it, but no go.
[Signy] Paul?
He didn’t answer. “I don’t fucking like this,” Signy said. She hooked into Seattle and said it again.
“It’s Jared’s job.” Pilar looked up from her console and ran her forefinger across her nose, smearing it with mint green acrylic as she did so. “Rescues and stuff.”
“Yeah. But.”
“But what, Lioness?”
Pilar wasn’t worried about Jared, no. She was at her screens and working frantically with the Siranui’s programs.
“What are you doing?” Signy asked.
“I’m trying to get a different address for a trawler called the Kasumi,” Pilar said.
“Any luck?”
“No better than yours.” Pilar leaned back and folded her arms. “Signy, I found McKenna.”
“Distract me, go ahead. Where did you find him?”
“In Seattle. While you were talking to Japan.”
“And?”
“And he swears there was nothing on th
at chip but music, and it isn’t his. Something he heard on the net, he says, and he copied for me.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Believe, hell. I don’t have a feel for him. He’s just print on a screen. He says there’s no way that a music sequence could do what I told him got done, and he wants to talk to me.”
Another address for the Kasumi; Signy hadn’t thought of that angle. Maybe, maybe somebody was tracing Alan. Key in Gulf Coast and ask them; it might be worth a try. She opened a channel to them, and half-heard Pilar say—
“So okay, I said, and he’s coming over here.”
“Yeah,” Signy said. Then, “What?”
“We can’t really kill him.”
“Tell that to Paul,” Signy said. “I’m going to try to trace Jared through the Gulf Coast net.”
The New Hampshire screen came alive.
[Paul] I have contact. Will monitor. Jared is in the helo and he just turned us off. Nothing happening.
“Well, fine, then,” Pilar said.
“Paul, can you send his stuff through to me?” Signy asked.
Paul sent his face and voice to the screens in Taos. He’d stripped out of the suit and tie and replaced them with thermals and an Aran sweater. “Yeah, sure, if anything gets interesting. Signy, you’re too anxious about all this. It’s just a job, you know.”
“The hell,” Signy said. Paul would watch Jared, she knew that. But Signy had felt something close to terror in Jared’s lurching slip on the deck. He sent tensions and body uncertainties that were new to her, a cellular fear, as if some big predator breathed down his neck. “There’s something wrong in that fleet, Paul. I want to pull us out. Get Jared out of there.”
“Bullshit,” Pilar said. “The major thing wrong is that if we don’t get this one together, we go tits up. My fault, of course. Don’t get on my case, Signy, and then blame it on Jared’s case of the willies.” Above the loose neckline of her caftan, the sharp angle of Pilar’s collarbone stood out, high relief on shadow. Pilar lifted her hand toward her throat. It was shaking.