A man in black jeans, black sunglasses and a white t-shirt interrupted Ascott’s reverie. “I couldn’t help but notice the trouble you had at the Exco and I wanted to say, that’s quite the bird you have there, my friend.”
“Tell me about it,” Ascott said, trying to breathe his anxious pulse back to a normal rate after the fiasco in the Exco
“What’s your name, bird?” The man asking had a casual air of coolness about him. He wasn’t local; his clothes, haircut and demeanour suggested that he viewed Montaban as an exotic stop-over, a mere point of interest in his otherwise busy and cool life. His arms were a rainbow of tattoos, mostly showing sailing ships being hugged by humungous squid with the same single-minded focus of a drunk seducing girls on the dance floor of a nightclub.
“Tacuth,” Tacus squawked, and then shied away as the man reached out to stroke his feathers with one ring-strewn hand.
“Tacuth?” the man said.
“Tacus. I didn’t name him. He has trouble with his esses. But he is a very intelligent bird.” Ascott wished the stranger would move on; the attention was making him uncomfortable.
“That is so true, my friend. People underestimate the intelligence of birds. Parrots live for a long time, too. They see a lot and they remember everything.”
“Bilge puppy,” Tacus said.
“He talks a lot of nonsense,” Ascott explained.
“He could live to be over one hundred years old,” the stranger said, his voice as smooth and coiling as a sea snake. “Barring accidents,” he added.
“I think he used to be a ship’s parrot. He often uses nautical terms,” Ascott said.
“Very likely. You know there have been pirates, privateers and smugglers in these waters for generations?”
Ascott nodded. He had heard the stories of legends like Noodle Basket Nung, Three-Eyed Petunia and The Bosun of Backwash, all said to be ruthless pirates who died with secret treasure buried on hidden islands somewhere in the archipelago.
“Not these days, though,” Ascott said. The revolution of empathic technology over a century ago had changed the world in many ways. Reducing the need for people to transport their valuables by woefully under-insured sailing ships was just one of the benefits of Godden’s discovery.
“Ascott Pudding,” Ascott said and set the air-tanks down before extending a hand.
“Kalim Aari.” They shook hands and smiled in that polite way strangers do for form’s sake. “My friends call me Kal.”
“Did you come on a tourist ship, Kal?” Ascott racked his mind for suitable small talk. There was no weather to speak of in the islands. Either it was warm and dry with clear skies, or it was hurricane season. Commenting on the weather was generally considered in poor taste, as it was blindingly obvious that either it was a nice day, or your house had just exploded under the onslaught of 200-mile-an-hour winds.
“Kalim,” Kalim replied.
“Sorry?” Ascott backtracked on his mental diversion to see what he had missed.
“My friends call me Kal,” the stranger repeated and smiled in an, I wish there was something I could do, but that’s how it is, kind of way.
“Did you come in on a cruise ship…? Kalim?” Ascott tried again.
“No. I’d like to buy your parrot. How much do you want for him?” Kalim reached into his shirtfront and extracted a leather pouch of soft fish-skin that bulged like the cheeks of a bulimic squirrel. He hefted it in his palm, setting the pearls inside clinking against each other.
“He’s not for sale,” Ascott said while his brain gaped at his stupidity.
“Name your price.” The bag of pearls chattered in Kalim’s hand.
“I can’t. There isn’t one.” Ascott picked up the air tanks, stepped around Kalim and started to walk away. The stranger’s hand clamped around his arm.
“Think of one. I want the bird,” Kalim said in a voice with fangs and full-moon nights spent chained up in windowless cellar rooms in its tone. Tacus made a disapproving growl deep in his throat and fluffed his plumage.
Ascott jerked his arm free. “I can’t help you. Technically, Tacus isn’t even my bird. He just lives in my house, eats my food and draws pictures on my spare note-paper.”
“What kind of pictures?” Kalim stepped closer, as if wary of being overheard.
“Amoeba, mostly.” Ascott felt relief at the flash of confusion in Kalim’s eyes. He took the opportunity to turn on his heel and push through the market crowd.
* * *
* Kebab’s Choice: when a blood-stained lunatic holds a sword to your throat and asks if you have thought about abandoning your current false dogma for the up-and-coming, one true religion of Arthurianism. It proved to be a remarkably successful crusade and Saint Kebab’s campaign ran at a conversion rate of nearly a hundred per cent. It would have been a perfect score, except due to an unfortunate cultural misunderstanding with the Took people, who lived on the wild and windswept tundra plateau of Upper Besex. The Took shook their heads when they wanted to indicate yes.
Chapter 4
Ascott scuttled along the narrow streets, paved in limestone gravel pounded flat by centuries of passing feet, and climbed towards the cliffs.
Supporting industries thrived up here in the limestone. The net weavers, the boat builders, and the seafood restaurants. Ascott followed a winding trail between the second and third tier of shops on the cliff until he came to a driftwood sign with the words Smith Dive Emprm. burned into it with a hot poker. There was no door, of course. There were very few doors in Montaban; they blocked the flow of cool air and customers.
“Hello?” Ascott said, stepping into the dark interior.
The walls of the shop cave were hung with the mummified and snarling carcasses of various monsters from the deep. Some were so cleverly done that you could barely see the stitching where mundane animals had suffered the final indignity of having their tanned hides reshaped into chimerical creations of fins and fangs. The rattle of a bead curtain announced the arrival of Palm Smith, entering the shop from the rear. She had the dark wavy hair of an Archipelago native and the blue eyes of a fertile Arthurian monk with recessive genes. Her whipcord body was wrapped in the lightweight, brightly coloured fabrics common to the islands. Over all it formed a loose skirt around the hips and a cross-over bandeau-style top half that left plenty of unobstructed access for the skin to breathe.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I wanted to talk to Shoal, please.” Ascott set the tanks on the stone floor with a clunk.
“You’re that crazy kid that Shoal is always talking about, eh?” Palm’s eyes glowed in the dim light.
“I’m Ascott. I’m studying the fish of the islands.”
“Yup, crazy as a purple pearl.” Palm bustled forward, the bright colours of her skirt amplifying the rustle of the flapping fabric. She seized Ascott in her wiry tanned arms and hugged him to her chest. “You getting enough to eat? You look too thin. You should stay for lunch and dinner too, eh?”
“I really just wanted to talk to Shoal. I have, uhh, some diving to do.” The unaccustomed hugging made Ascott glow with embarrassment.
“Sandy! Get out here and do some work, you useless fella!” Palm barked at the room beyond the bead curtain and then beamed beatifically at Ascott again. “Hubby’ll take care of that for you right quick.”
“Uhh, okay?” Ascott took a step back as Sandy Smith slipped into the shop from somewhere out back. He wore a frayed pair of cut-off shorts, a faded t-shirt, and bare feet. His long hair, the same shade of blonde as Shoal’s, was tied back in thick, dreadlocked stalks like drying seaweed. His eyes were dark and warm.
”What’s happenin’ darlin’?” He patted Palm’s behind and then noticed Ascott for the first time.
“Hey, man. Welcome to Smith’s Dive Emporium. What can we interest you in?”
&nb
sp; “He wants his tanks filled, and then he is staying for lunch,” Palm said in a tone that would brook no disagreement.
“Most excellent. Most outstandin’…We runnin’ a restaurant now?” Sandy looked around, a puzzled expression on his face. He looked as if he had been asleep for the winter and his wife’s shouting had woken him from hibernation.
“This is Ascott, Shoal’s friend from The City.” Palm said ‘friend’ in a way that might be mistaken for ‘future husband’ in some dialects. Anyone not born in Montaban was considered to be from The City. A mythical place with cars, television and telephones, plural. The City was said to be so far from the ocean that some people went their whole lives without ever seeing it.
“Excellent, outstandin’. I’m Sandy, this is my wife Palm. Shoal’s not here right now, man. She’s, uhh…not here. Right now.”
“That’s okay. I just came to see Shoal. I’m leaving Montaban.”
“Leaving? You just got here, man.” Sandy threw his hands up and sprang forward. Seizing the tanks, he twisted them and peered at the regulator fittings at the top. “We can fill these tanks with sweet, sweet, air.” Sandy inhaled a long shoulder wrenching breath through his nose and then exhaled slowly. “So sweet…we should bottle it and sell it to people. Which…” he added, realisation rising on his face like a spring tide, “…is just what we are doin’. Man, I love this job!” Sandy lifted the tanks easily and jogged out through the bead curtain. The steel tanks clanged on the stone floor and the thudding hiss of high-pressure air compressors started a few moments later.
“Shoal says you are writing a big book. You a University fella, eh?” Palm regarded Ascott with a mother’s shrewd gaze.
“Well yes, it’s an encyclopaedia. A reference guide to all the fish in the Aardvark Archipelago.”
Palm grinned. “Why?” she asked.
“Because…because no one knows about the fish. The only fish most people see are the ones they eat. There are thousands of species of life out there in the reefs and lagoons and they are all waiting to be discovered.”
“How do you know them fish are waiting to be discovered? Maybe they’re living out there in the coral and the lagoons because they don’t want to be discovered? You ever think of that, University fella?”
Ascott shook his head and took another step back towards the glaring white of the sun-struck limestone outside. He stumbled and lost his balance, almost falling into a brace of waveboards stacked against one wall. They slid aside, revealing a painted mural of a fat and happy-looking giant, brown-skinned man sitting cross-legged surrounded by milknut trees and laughing heartily.
Tacus screamed and leaped from Ascott’s shoulder.
“He’th found uth! Bithcuith!” the parrot squawked.
“Tacus, come back here.” Ascott hurried over and tried to encourage the bird back on to his hand. The bird landed on a high shelf, atop a sea urchin the size of a basketball that had shed its spines.
“Bothun! Boil my bilgeth!” Tacus scolded, hopping daintily sideways to avoid Ascott’s grasp.
“Some things, they just want to be left alone. They nobody’s business,” Palm watched Ascott’s desperate attempts to secure Tacus with apparent amusement.
“Thtow that fith!” Tacus spluttered. “Thplithe the mainthail! Turn uth about! Bumth to the hurricane boyth!”
“I’m very sorry,” Ascott said, seizing Tacus around the body and wincing as the parrot’s flapping wings knocked the balding seashell down.
“Maybe he wants to be outside, in the fresh air?” Palm suggested. Ascott hurried to the door and let Tacus take flight. The parrot beat his wings gamely and then perched on a nearby wall, exhausted from the struggle.
“Bad fith,” he scolded.
“Bad parrot,” Ascott warned. Tacus gave an indignant croak and ducked his head under a wing.
Ascott stepped back inside. Palm was gathering up the broken sea-urchin shell. “I’m really sorry. I can pay for any damage,” he said.
“It’s a blessing to see this thing get knocked down. I don’t know why Sandy insists on keeping it.” Palm regarded the thin ball of shell. “You know why the interior of these things is considered a delicacy in these parts?”
Ascott shook his head.
“It’s because even if you are starving, something that tastes like ground-up fish guts mixed with sand needs a certain mystique to make people want to eat it.”
Sandy emerged from the back room carrying the two considerably heavier air tanks.
“Here you go man, that’ll be three blues a piece.”
“Do you accept credit?” Ascott took the credit stick from his pocket. He had access to his parents’ estate, at least his half of it, in an account. Shoal was the only person to have used it in the last eighteen months, for Ascott’s living expenses like pizzas, clothes and SCRAM gear.
“Man, it’s like invisible money. You don’t see it, you don’t touch it, it doesn’t exist. Me, I like the click of pearls in my pocket, especially when they’ve got a nice glow on.”
“There’s only one place in Montaban that has a less than narrow-eyed, spit-on-your-shoe kind of suspicion about credit sticks,” Palm said. “The Exco.”
“I’m really sorry,” Ascott said, his cheeks glowing in the ebony-hued gloom. “There’s a problem at the Export Company, they don’t seem to be able to help.”
“No problem, you stay for lunch. Pay for the tank fill later.” Palm waved his apology away.
“That’s very kind of you,” Ascott said, his voice cracking.
“You haven’t tasted her cooking,” Sandy muttered and then gave a yelp as Palm cuffed him upside the back of his head.
“Nothing wrong with my cooking,” Palm declared.
Ascott found himself escorted through the back of the shop, past the air-tank compressor and dive gear repair workroom, up a set of stairs cut into the stone, and into an open-plan apartment above. The sea breeze wafted in through the open windows and stirred hanging mobiles of driftwood and wave-polished shells, which tinkled and reflected sunlight.
They ate traditional island fare of fish three ways: fried, baked and boiled. Each delicate serving came wrapped in a fragrant leaf that was peeled and used as a plate. Fruit and mashed root vegetables were the side dishes, notable for their non-fish flavours more than any differences in texture.
They drank java, a mildly fermented fizzy yeast drink traditionally made from mixing milknut juice and the tears of women mourning their men lost at sea. Nowadays the lost men could usually be found in one of the dockside bars, and the tears had been replaced by water exhumed from the Montaban reservoir through the town’s antique and utterly mysterious plumbing system. Ascott enjoyed java, or Cuppa Joe as the locals also called it. It made his lips numb and his brain fizz.
Conversation flowed around the table, the Smiths listening with the polite but reserved interest of people sharing a dining table with an escaped mental patient as Ascott explained his mission to catalogue the sea-life of the Aardvarks.
“Whatcha gonna do with this book. When you’ve finished it?” Sandy asked while peeling a red, the blood-coloured juice dripping down his hands.
“Write another one,” Ascott said. Sandy nodded, splitting the red into segments and sucking the sweet nectar from his fingers.
“What’s that one going to be about?” Palm asked, offering another leaf laden with a whole baked fish that Ascott declined with a shake of his head.
“I’m not sure. I might try writing fiction stories.”
“What kind of animal is that?” Sandy asked.
“It’s not an animal you old fool,” Palm scolded. “It’s made up stories with romance and action and adventure and villains.”
“Oh…I’d stick with the ones about fish,” Sandy said.
“What about pirates?” Ascott asked. Palm and Sandy exchanged a glance.
“No pirates around here,” Palm said firmly.
“Not anymore. Not like when we was kids, eh Palm?” Sandy grinned.
“I remember when the Seaguard went out and hunted down Captain Aarrgh. He’d been attacking boats and raiding fishing villages around the islands. They reckon he was looking for pirate treasure and went crazy.”
“He went crazy from searching for a lost treasure?” Ascott said and sipped his java.
Palm shook her head. “No, boy, he went crazy “cos he found it.”
Ascott frowned. “The treasure drove him mad?”
“It could have been heatstroke and dehydration,” Sandy said. “The stories vary.”
“There used to be a lot of pirates in the Aardvarks, right?” Ascott asked.
“Yeah. This fella was a descendent of the original Captain Aarrgh, famous pirate in these parts,” Palm began to clear the table of the empty leaves.
“People say the first Captain Aarrgh found a fabulous treasure. But his boat sank with all hands lost before he could tell anyone what he did with it, or where it was buried. People still go off looking for it and everything else that’s been buried out there. If all the stories were true, you couldn’t dig for chums on any beach without unearthing a treasure chest bursting with stolen loot.” Sandy held the small white shell of a cooked chum up between two fingers to illustrate his point.
Ascott sat back with a satisfied sigh and a contended belch. ““Scuse me,” he mumbled. “I should get going,” he added, quickly standing up and trying not to stretch too much.
“Catht off!” Tacus announced from where he had been sulking on the window sill. He bobbed up and down until Ascott lifted him up to his shoulder perch.
“I’ll give you a hand with the tanks.” Sandy climbed out from the table and led Ascott down the stairs.
Ascott trailed behind him as Sandy lifted the two tanks and walked to the door, only to stop as a shadow filled the doorway.
Pisces of Fate Page 4