A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  Vic shrugged and began patching a small hole in the net before him, his expression registering surprise and pleasure with the realization that his hands still knew what to do.

  “The Council of Advisors put Gelk Co together so the planet could deal on the interstellar market as a corporation.”

  “Since when do you work for the C of A?”

  “Since my fishing career came to an abrupt halt eleven years ago.” His eyes sought Albie’s. “I went into civil service then. Been on a research and development panel for the Council.”

  “Civil service, eh?” Albie squinted against the reddening light. “So now you get taxes put into your pay instead of taken out.”

  Vic looked visibly stung by the remark. “Not fair, Albie. I earn my pay.”

  “And what’s this corporation supposed to sell?”

  “Filet of chispen.”

  Albie smiled for the first time. “Oh, really? You mean they’ve still got chispies on their minds?”

  “That’s all they’ve got on their minds. And since I spent a good number of years with the best chispen fisher there is, it seemed natural to put me in charge of developing the chispen as a major export.”

  “And that ship’s going to do it?”

  “It has to. It must. Everything else was tried before they came to me—”

  “Came to me first.”

  “I know.” Vic gave a crooked smile. “And your suggestions were recorded as not only obscene, but physically impossible as well.”

  “That’s because they really aren’t interested in anything about those fish beyond the price per kilo.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, Albie. But that boat out there is unique and it’s going to make you obsolete. You won’t get hurt financially, I know. You could’ve retired years ago . . . and should have. Your methods have seen their day. That ship’s going to bring this industry up to date.”

  “Obsolete!” The word escaped behind a grunt of disgust.

  Albie seriously doubted the C of A’s ability to render anything obsolete . . . except maybe efficiency and clear thinking. For the past few years he had been keeping a careful eye on the Council’s abortive probes into the chispen industry, watched with amusement as it tried every means imaginable to obtain a large supply of chispen filet short of actually going out and catching the fish.

  The chispies, of course, refused to cooperate, persisting in migratory habits that strictly limited their availability. They spawned in the southern gulf during the winter and fattened themselves on the northern feeding shoals during the summer, and were too widely dispersed at those two locales to be caught in any significant numbers. Every spring they grouped and ran north but were too lean and fibrous from a winter of mating, fertilizing and hatching their eggs.

  Only in the fall, after a full summer of feasting on the abundant bait fish and bottom weed indigenous to their feeding grounds, were they right for eating, and grouped enough to make it commercially feasible to go after them.

  But Gelk’s Council of Advisors was convinced there existed an easier way to obtain the filet than casting nets on the water. It decided to raise chispen just like any other feed animal. But chispies are stubborn. They won’t breed in captivity, nor will they feed in captivity. This held true not only for adult fish captured in the wild, but for eggs hatched and raised in captivity, and even for chispen clones as well.

  The Council moved on to tissue cultures of the filet but the resultant meat was nauseating.

  It eventually became evident to even the most dunderheaded member of the Council that there weren’t any shortcuts here. The appeal of chispen filet was the culmination of myriad environmental factors: The semiannual runs along the coast gave the meat body and texture; the temperature, water quality, and bottom weed found only on their traditional feeding shoals gave it the unique euphorogenic flavor that made it such a delicacy.

  No, only one way to supply the discriminating palates of Occupied Space with filet of chispen and that was to go out on the sea and catch them during the fall runs. They had to be pulled out of the sea and flash-frozen alive before an intestinal enzyme washed a foul odor into the bloodstream and ruined the meat. No shortcuts. No easy way out.

  “I didn’t come to gloat, Albie. And I mean you no ill will, In fact, I may be able to offer you a job.”

  “And how could a lowly old gaffer possibly help out on a monstrosity like that?”

  He turned back to his net repair.

  “By bringing fish into it,”

  Albie glanced up briefly, then down again. He said nothing.

  “You can’t fool me, Albie. Maybe all the rest, but not me. I used to watch you . . . used to see you talking to those fish, bringing them right into the net.”

  He couldn’t hide his amusement. “You think I’m a psi or something?”

  “I know it. And what I saw on the tracking screen this morning proves it.”

  “Crazy.”

  “No. You’re a psi. Maybe you don’t even know it, but you’ve got some sort of influence over those fish. You call them somehow and they come running. That’s why you’re the best.”

  “You’ll never understand, will you? It’s—”

  “But I do understand! You’re a psi who talks to fish!”

  Albie squinted at him and spoke in a low voice. “Then why did I have such a rotten season eleven years ago? Why did I have to fire the best first mate I ever had? If I’m a psi, why couldn’t I call the chispies into the net that season? Why?”

  Vic was silent, keeping his eyes focused on the dark ship off shore.

  As he waited for an answer, Albie was pulled pastward to the last time the two of them had spoken.

  It had been Albie’s worst season since he began playing the game. After an excellent start, the numbers of chispen flowing into the freezers had declined steadily through the fall until that one day at season’s end when they sat in their boats and watched the final schools race by, free and out of reach.

  That was the day Albie hauled in the net out there on the water and personally gave it a close inspection, actually cutting off samples of net twine and unraveling them. What he found within sent him into a rage.

  The first mate, a young man named Vic who was wearing a bandage on his right ear, admitted to replacing the usual twine with fiber-wrapped wire. As Albie approached him in a menacing half-crouch, he explained quickly that he thought too many fish had been getting away. He figured the daily yield could be doubled if they reinforced the net with something stronger than plain twine. He knew Albie had only one hard-and-fast rule among his crew and that was to repair the net exclusively with the materials Albie provided—no exceptions. So Vic opted for stealth, intending to reveal his ploy at season’s end when they were all richer from the extra fish they had caught.

  Albie threw Vic into the sea that day and made him swim home. Then he cut the floats off the net and let it sink to the bottom. Since that day he had made a practice of being present whenever the net was repaired.

  A long time passed before Albie started feeling like himself again. Vic had been in his crew for six years. Albie had taken him on as a nineteen-year-old boy and watched him mature to a man on the nets. He was a natural. Raised along the coast and as much at home on the sea as he was on land, he became a consummate gaffer and quickly rose to be the youngest first mate Albie had ever had. He watched over Vic, worried about him, bled with him when a chispie wing took a piece of his ear, and seriously considered taking him in as a partner after a few more years. Childless after a lifelong marriage to the sea, Albie felt he had found a son in Vic.

  And so it was with the anger of a parent betrayed by one of his own that Albie banished Vic from his boats. He had lived with the anguish of that day ever since.

  “There’s lots of things I can’t explain about that season,” Vic said. “But I still think you’re a psi, and maybe you could help turn a big catch into an even bigger one. If you want to play coy, that’s your business. But at lea
st come out and see the boat. I had a lot to do with the design.”

  “What’s in this for you, Vic? Money?”

  He nodded. “Lots of it. And a place on the Council of Advisors.”

  “That’s if everything goes according to plan. What if it fails?”

  “Then I’m through. But that’s not a realistic concern. It’s not going to be a question of failure or success, just a question of how successful.” He turned to Albie. “Coming out tomorrow?”

  Albie’s curiosity was piqued. He was debating whether or not to let Zaro take charge of the catch tomorrow . . . he’d do an adequate job . . . and it was early in the season . . .

  “When?”

  “Midmorning will be all right. The scanners have picked up a good-sized run up at the shoals. It’s on its way down and should be here by midday.”

  “Expect me.”

  A hundred meters wide and at least three times as long: Those were Albie’s estimates. The ship was like nothing he had ever seen or imagined . . . a single huge empty container, forty-five or fifty meters deep, tapered at the forward end, and covered over with a heavy wire mesh. Albie and Vic stood in a tiny pod on the port rim that housed the control room and crew quarters.

  “And this is supposed to make me obsolete?”

  “Afraid so.” Vic’s nod was slow and deliberate. “She’s been ready since spring. We’ve tested and retested—but without chispies. This’ll be her christening, her first blooding.” He pointed to the yellow streak creeping down the center of the scanning screen. “And that’s going to do it.”

  Albie noticed a spur off the central streak that appeared to be moving toward a dot at the left edge of the screen.

  “My, my!” he said with a dry smile. “Look at those chispies heading for my boats—even without me there to invite them in.”

  A puzzled expression flitted briefly across Vic’s features, then he turned and opened the hatch to the outside.

  “Let’s go up front. They should be in sight now.”

  Under a high white sun in a cloudless sky, the two men trod the narrow catwalk forward along the port rim. They stopped at a small observation deck where the hull began to taper to a point. Ahead on the cobalt sea, a swath of angry white water, eighty meters wide, charged unswervingly toward the hollow ship. A good-sized run—Albie had seen bigger, but this was certainly a huge load of fish.

  “How many of those you figure on catching?”

  “Most of them.”

  Albie’s tone was dubious. “I’ll believe that when I see it. But let’s suppose you do catch most of them—you realize what’ll happen to the price of filet when you dump that much on the market at once?”

  “It will drop, of course,” Vic replied. ” But only temporarily, and never below a profitable level. Don’t worry: The Council has it all programmed. The lower price will act to expand the market by inducing more people to take advantage or the bargain and try it. And once you’ve tried filet of chispen . . .” He didn’t bother to complete the thought.

  “Got it all figured out, eh?”

  “Down to the last minute detail. When this ship proves itself, we’ll start construction on more. By next season there’ll be a whole fleet lying in wait for the chispies.”

  “And what will that kind of harvesting do to them? You’ll be thinning them out . . . maybe too much. That’s not how the game’s played, Vic. We could end up with no chispies at all someday.”

  “We’ll only be taking the bigger ones.”

  “The little guys need those bigger ones for protection.”

  Vic held up a hand, “Wait and see. It’s almost time.” He signaled to the control pod. “Watch.”

  Water began to rush into the hold as the prow split along its seam and fanned open into a giant scoop-like funnel; the aft panel split vertically down the middle and each half swung out to the rear. The ship, reduced now to a huge open tube with neither prow nor stern, began to sink.

  Albie experienced an instant of alarm but refused to show it. All this was obviously part of the process. When the hull was two-thirds submerged, the descent stopped.

  Vic pointed aft. “There’s a heavy metal grid back there to let the immature chispies through. But there’ll be no escape for the big ones. In effect, what we’re doing here is putting a huge, tear-proof net across the path of a major run, something no one’s dared to do before. With the old methods, a run like his would make chowder out of anything that tried to stop it.”

  “How do you know they won’t just go around you?”

  “You know as well as I do, Albie, these big runs don’t change course for anything. We’ll sit here, half-sunk in the water, and they’ll run right into the hold there; they’ll get caught up against the aft grid, and before they can turn around, the prow will close up tight and they’re ours. The mesh on top keeps them from flying out.”

  Albie noticed Vic visibly puffing with pride as he spoke, and couldn’t resist one small puncture:

  “Looks to me like all you’ve got here is an oversized, motorized seining scoop.”

  Vic blinked, swallowed, then went on talking.

  “When they’re locked in, we start to circulate water through the hold to keep them alive while we head for a plant up the coast where they’ll be flash-frozen and processed.”

  “All you need is some cooperation from the fish.”

  Vic pointed ahead. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem. The run’s coming right for us.”

  Albie looked from the bright anticipation in Vic’s face to the ship sitting silent and open-mawed, to the onrushing horde of finned fury. He knew what was going to happen next but didn’t have the heart to say it. Vic would have to learn for himself.

  The stars were beginning to poke through the sky’s growing blackness. Only a faint, fading glow on the western horizon remained to mark the sun’s passing. None of the moons was rising yet.

  With the waves washing over his feet, Albie stood and watched the autumn aurora begin to shimmer over the sea. The cool prevailing breeze carried smoke from his after-dinner pipe away toward the land. Darkness expanded slowly and was almost complete when he heard the voice.

  “Why’d you do it, Albie?”

  He didn’t have to turn around. He knew the voice, but had not anticipated the fury he sensed caged behind it. He kept his eyes on the faint, wavering flashes of the aurora, his own voice calm.

  “Didn’t do a thing, Vic.”

  “You diverted those fish!”

  “That’s what you’d like to believe, I’m sure, but that’s not the way it is.”

  The run had been almost on top of them. The few strays that always travel in the lead had entered the hold and slammed into the grate at the other end. Then the run disappeared. The white water evaporated and the sea became quiet. In a panic, Vic had run back to the control pod where he learned from the scanner that the run had sounded to the bottom of the trench and was only now rising toward the surface . . . half a kilometer aft of the ship. Vic had said nothing, glaring only momentarily at Albie and then secluding himself in his quarters below for the rest of the day.

  “It’s true!” Vic’s voice was edging toward a scream. “I watched your lips! You were talking to those fish . . . telling them to dive!”

  Albie swing around, alarmed by the slurred tones and growing hysteria in younger man’s voice. He could not make out Vic’s features in the darkness but could see the swaying outline of his body. He could also see what appeared to be a length of driftwood dangling from his right hand.

  “How much’ve you had to drink, Vic?”

  “Enough.” The word was deformed by its extrusion through Vic’s clenched teeth. “Enough to know I’m ruined and you’re to blame.”

  “And what’s the club for? Gonna break my head?”

  “Maybe. If you don’t agree to straighten out all the trouble you caused me today, I just might.”

  “And how do you expect me to do that?”

  “By guiding the fi
sh into the boat instead of under it.”

  “Can’t do that, Vic.”

  Albie readied himself for a dodge to one side or the other. The Vic he had known on the nets would never swing that club. But ten years had passed . . . and this Vic was drunk.

  “Can’t do it as I am now, and sure as hell won’t be able to do it any better with a broken head. Sorry.”

  A long, tense, silent moment followed. Then two sounds came out of darkness: one, a human cry—half sob, half scream of rage; followed by the dull thud of wood hurled against wet sand. Albie saw Vic’s vague outline drop into a sitting position.

  “Dammit, Albie! I trusted you! I brought you out there in good faith and scuttled me!”

  Albie stepped closer and squatted down beside him. He put the end of his pipe between his teeth. The bowl was cold but he didn’t bother relighting it.

  “It wasn’t me, Vic. It was the game. That ship of yours breaks all the rules of game.”

  “ ‘The game’!” Vic said, head down, bitterness compressing his voice. “You’ve been talking about games since the day I met you. This is no game, Albie! This my life . . . my future!”

  “But it’s a game to the chispies. That’s what most people don’t understand about them. That’s why only a few of us are any good at catching them: Those fish are playing a game with us.”

  Vic lifted his head. “What do you take me for—?”

  “It’s true. Only a few of us have figured it out, and we don’t talk it around. Had you stayed with me a few years longer, I might have told you—if you hadn’t figured it out for yourself by then. Truth is, I’m no psi and I don’t direct those fish into my net; they find their way in on their own. If they get caught in my net, it’s because they want to.”

  “You’ve been out on the nets too long, Albie. Chispies can’t think.”

  “I’m not saying they can think like you and me, but they’re not just dumb hunks of filet traveling on blind instinct, either. Maybe it only happens when they’re packed tight and running, maybe they form some sort of hive-mind then that they don’t have when they’re spread out. I don’t know. I don’t have the words or knowledge to get across what I mean. It’s a gut feeling . . . I think they look on the net as a game, a challenge they’ll accept only if we play by the rules and give them a decent chance of winning.”