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I'm a baitman. No one is born a baitman, except in a French novel where
everyone is. (In fact, I think that's the title, _We are All Bait_. Pfft!)
How I got that way is barely worth the telling and has nothing to do with
neo-exes, but the days of the beast deserve a few words, so here they are.
The Lowlands of Venus lie between the thumb and forefinger of the
continent known as Hand. When you break into Cloud Alley it swings its
silverblack bowling ball toward you without a warning. You jump then, inside
that firetailed tenpin they ride you down in, but the straps keep you from
making a fool of yourself. You generally chuckle afterwards, but you always
jump first.
Next, you study Hand to lay its illusion and the two middle fingers
become dozen-ringed archipelagoes as the outers resolve into greengray
peninsulas; the thumb is too short, and curls like the embryo tail of Cape
Horn.
You suck pure oxygen, sigh possibly, and begin the long topple back to
the Lowlands.
There, you are caught like an infield fly at the Lifeline landing
area--so named because of its nearness to the great delta in the Eastern
Bay--located between the first peninsula and "thumb." For a minute it seems
as if you're going to miss Lifeline and wind up as canned seafood, but
afterwards--shaking off the metaphors--you descend to scorched concrete and
present your middle-sized telephone directory of authorizations to the
short, fat man in the gray cap. The papers show that you are not subject to
mysterious inner rottings and etcetera. He then smiles you a short, fat,
gray smile and motions you toward the bus which hauls you to the Reception
Area. At the R.A. you spend three days proving that, indeed, you are not
subject to mysterious inner rottings and etcetera.
Boredom, however, is another rot. When your three days are up, you
generally hit Lifeline hard, and it returns the compliment as a matter of
reflex. The effects of alcohol in variant atmospheres is a subject on which
the connoisseurs have written numerous volumes, so I will confine my remarks
to noting that a good binge is worthy of at least a week's time and often
warrants a lifetime study.
I had been a student of exceptional promise (strictly undergraduate)
for going on two years when the _Bright Water_ fell through our marble
ceiling and poured its people like targets into the city.
Pause. The Worlds Almanac re Lifeline: "...Port city on the eastern
coast of Hand. Employees of the Agency for Non-terrestrial Research comprise
approximately 85% of its 100,000 population (2010 Census). Its other
residents are primarily personnel maintained by several industrial
corporations engaged in basic research. Independent marine biologists,
wealthy fishing enthusiasts, and waterfront entrepreneurs make up the
remainder of its inhabitants."
I turned to Mike Dabis, a fellow entrepreneur, and commented on the
lousy state of basic research.
"Not if the mumbled truth be known."
He paused behind his glass before continuing the slow swallowing
process calculated to obtain my interest and a few oaths, before he
continued.
"Carl," he finally observed, poker playing, "they're shaping
Tensquare."
I could have hit him. I might have refilled his glass with sulfuric
acid and looked on with glee as his lips blackened and cracked. Instead, I
grunted a noncommittal.
"Who's fool enough to shell out fifty grand a day? ANR?"
He shook his head.
"Jean Luharich," he said, "the girl with the violet contacts and fifty
or sixty perfect teeth. I understand her eyes are really brown."
"Isn't she selling enough face cream these days?"
He shrugged.
"Publicity makes the wheels go 'round. Luharich Enterprise jumped
sixteen points when she picked up the Sun Trophy. You ever play golf on
Mercury?"
I had, but I overlooked it and continued to press.
"So she's coming here with a blank check and a fishhook?"
"_Bright Water_, today," he nodded. "Should be down by now. Lots of
cameras. She wants an Ikky, bad."
"Hmm," I hmmed. "How bad?"
"Sixty day contract. Tensquare. Indefinite extension clause. Million
and a half deposit," he recited.
"You seem to know a lot about it."
"I'm Personnel Recruitment. Luharich Enterprises approached me last
month. It helps to drink in the right places.
"Or own them." He smirked, after a moment.
I looked away, sipping my bitter brew. After awhile I swallowed several
things and asked Mike what he expected to be asked, leaving myself open for
his monthly temperance lecture.
"They told me to try getting you," he mentioned. "When's the last time
you sailed?"
"Month and a half ago. The _Corning_."
"Small stuff," he snorted. "When have you been under, yourself?"
"It's been awhile."
"It's been over a year, hasn't it? That time you got cut by the screw,
under the _Dolphin_?"
I turned to him.
"I was in the river last week, up at Angleford where the currents are
strong. I can still get around."
"Sober," he added.
"I'd stay that way," I said, "on a job like this."
A doubting nod.
"Straight union rates. Triple time for extraordinary circumstances," he
narrated. "Be at Hangar Sixteen with your gear, Friday morning, five hundred
hours. We push off Saturday, daybreak."
"You're sailing?"
"I'm sailing."
"How come?"
"Money."
"Ikky guano."
"The bar isn't doing so well and baby needs new minks."
"I repeat--"
"...And I want to get away from baby, renew my contract with
basics--fresh air, exercise, make cash..."
"All right, sorry I asked."
I poured him a drink, concentrating on H2SO4, but it didn't transmute.
Finally I got him soused and went out into the night to walk and think
things over.
Around a dozen serious attempts to land _Ichthyform Leviosaurus
Levianthus_, generally known as "Ikky", had been made over the past five
years. When Ikky was first sighted, whaling techniques were employed. These
proved either fruitless or disastrous, and a new procedure was inaugurated.
Tensquare was constructed by a wealthy sportsman named Michael Jandt, who
blew his entire roll on the project.
After a year on the Eastern Ocean, he returned to file bankruptcy.
Carlton Davits, a playboy fishing enthusiast, then purchased the huge raft
and laid a wake for Ikky's spawning grounds. On the nineteenth day out he
had a strike and lost one hundred fifty bills' worth of untested gear, along
with one _Ichthyform Levianthus_. Twelve days later, using tripled lines, he
hooked, narcotized, and began to hoist the huge beast. It awakened then,
destroyed a control tower, killed six men, and worked general hell over five
square blocks of Tensquare. Carlton was left with partial hemiplegia and a
bankruptcy suit of his own. He faded into waterfront atmosphere and
Tensquare changed hands four more times, with less spectacular but equally
expensive results.
Finally, the big raft, built only for one purpose was purchased at an
auction by ANR for "marine research." Lloyd's still won't insure it, and the
only marine research it has ever seen is an occasional rental at fifty bills
a day--to people anxious to tell Leviathan fish stories. I've been a baitman
on three of the voyages, and I've been close enough to count Ikky's fangs on
two occasions. I want one of them to show my grandchildren, for personal
reasons.
I faced the direction of the landing area and resolved a resolve.
"You want me for local coloring, gal. It'll look nice on the feature
page and all that. But clear this--If anyone gets you an Ikky, it'll be me.
I promise."
I stood in the empty Square. The foggy towers of Lifeline shared their
mists.
Shoreline a couple eras ago, the western slope above Lifeline stretches
as far as forty miles inland in some places. Its angle of rising is not a
great one, but it achieves an elevation of several thousand feet before it
meets the mountain range which separates us from the Highlands. About four
miles inland and five hundred feet higher than Lifeline are set most of the
surface airstrips and privately owned hangars. Hangar Sixteen houses Cal's
Contract Cab, hop service, shore to ship. I do not like Cal, but he wasn't
around when I climbed from the bus and waved to a mechanic.
Two of the hoppers tugged at the concrete, impatient beneath flywing
haloes. The one on which Steve was working belched deep within its barrel
carburetor and shuttered spasmodically.
"Bellyache?" I inquired.
"Yeah, gas pains and heartburn."
He twisted setscrews until it settled into an even keening, and turned
to me.
"You're for out?"
I nodded.
"Tensquare. Cosmetics. Monsters. Stuff like that."
He blinked into the beacons and wiped his freckles. The temperature was
about twenty, but the big overhead spots served a double purpose.
"Luharich," he muttered. "Then you _are_ the one. There's some people
want to see you."
"What about?"
"Cameras. Microphones. Stuff like that."
"I'd better stow my gear. Which one am I riding?"
He poked the screwdriver at the other hopper.
"That one. You're on video tape now, by the way. They wanted to get you
arriving."
He turned to the hangar, turned back.
"Say 'cheese.' They'll shoot the close-ups later."
I said something other than "cheese." They must have been using
telelens and been able to read my lips, because that part of the tape was
never shown.
I threw my junk in the back, climbed into a passenger seat, and lit a
cigarette. Five minutes later, Cal himself emerged from the office Quonset,
looking cold. He came over and pounded on the side of the hopper. He jerked
a thumb back at the hangar.
"They want you in there!" he called through cupped hands. "Interview!"
"The show's over!" I yelled back. "Either that, or they can get
themselves another baitman!"
His rustbrown eyes became nailheads under blond brows and his glare a
spike before he jerked about and stalked off. I wondered how much they had
paid him to be able to squat in his hangar and suck juice from his
generator.
Enough, I guess, knowing Cal. I never liked the guy, anyway.
Venus at night is a field of sable waters. On the coasts, you can never
tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. Dawn is like dumping milk into
an inkwell. First, there are erratic curdles of white, then streamers. Shade
the bottle for a gray colloid, then watch it whiten a little more. All of a
sudden you've got day. Then start heating the mixture.
I had to shed my jacket as we flashed out over the bay. To our rear,
the skyline could have been under water for the way it waved and rippled in
the heatfall. A hopper can accommodate four people (five, if you want to
bend Regs and underestimate weight), or three passengers with the sort of
gear a baitman uses. I was the only fare, though, and the pilot was like his
machine. He hummed and made no unnecessary noises. Lifeline turned a
somersault and evaporated in the rear mirror at about the same time
Tensquare broke the fore-horizon. The pilot stopped humming and shook his
head.
I leaned forward. Feelings played flopdoodle in my guts. I knew every
bloody inch of the big raft, but the feelings you once took for granted
change when their source is out of reach. Truthfully, I'd had my doubts I'd
ever board the hulk again. But now, now I could almost believe in
predestination. There it was!
A tensquare football field of a ship. A-powered. Flat as a pancake,
except for the plastic blisters in the middle and the "Rooks" fore and aft,
port and starboard.
The Rook towers were named for their corner positions--and any two can
work together to hoist, co-powering the graffles between them. The
graffles--half gaff, half grapple--can raise enormous weights to near water
level; their designer had only one thing in mind, though, which accounts for
the gaff half. At water level, the Slider has to implement elevation for six
to eight feet before the graffles are in a position to push upward, rather
than pulling.
The Slider, essentially, is a mobile room--a big box capable of moving
in any of Tensquare's crisscross groovings and "anchoring" on the strike
side by means of a powerful electromagnetic bond. Its winches could hoist a
battleship the necessary distance, and the whole craft would tilt, rather
than the Slider come loose, if you want any idea of the strength of that
bond.
The Slider houses a section operated control indicator which is the
most sophisticated "reel" ever designed. Drawing broadcast power from the
generator beside the center blister, it is connected by shortwave with the
sonar room, where the movements of the quarry are recorded and repeated to
the angler seated before the section control.
The fisherman might play his "lines" for hours, days even, without
seeing any more than metal and an outline on the screen. Only when the beast
is graffled and the extensor shelf, located twelve feet below waterline,
slides out for support and begins to aid the winches, only then does the
fisherman see his catch rising before him like a fallen Seraph. Then, as
Davits learned, one looks into the Abyss itself and is required to act. He
didn't, and a hundred meters of unimaginable tonnage, undernarcotized and
hurting, broke the cables of the winch, snapped a graffle, and took a
half-minute walk across Tensquare.
We circled till the mechanical flag took notice and waved us on down.
We touched beside the personnel hatch and I jettisoned my gear and jumped to
the deck.
"Luck," called the pilot as the door was sliding shut. Then he danced
into the air and the flag clicked blank.
I shouldered my stuff and went below.
Signing in with Malvern, the de facto captain, I learned that most of
the others wouldn't arrive for a good eight hours. They had wanted me alone
at Cal's so they could pattern the pub footage along twentieth-century
cinema lines.
Open: landing strip, dark. One mechanic prodding a contrary hopper.
Stark-o-vision shot of slow bus pulling in. Heavily dressed baitman
descends, looks about, limps across field. Close-up: he grins. Move in for
words: "Do you think this is the time? The time he _will_ be landed?"
Embarrassment, taciturnity, a shrug. Dub something-"I see. And why do you
think Miss Luharich has a better chance than any of the others? Is it
because she's better equipped? [Grin.] Because more is known now about the
creature's habits than when you were out before? Or is it because of her
will to win, to be a champion? Is it any one of these things, or is it all
of them?" Reply: "Yeah, all of them." "--Is that why you signed on with her?
Because your instincts say, 'This one will be it'?" Answer: "She pays union
rates. I couldn't rent that damned thing myself. And I want in." Erase. Dub
something else. Fade-out as he moves toward hopper, etcetera.
"Cheese," I said, or something like that, and took a walk around
Tensquare, by myself.
I mounted each Rook, checking out the controls and the underwater video
eyes. Then I raised the main lift.
Malvern had no objections to my testing things this way. In fact, he
encouraged it. We had sailed together before and our positions had even been
reversed upon a time. So I wasn't surprised when I stepped off the lift into
the Hopkins Locker and found him waiting. For the next ten minutes we
inspected the big room in silence, walking through its copper coil chambers
soon to be Arctic.
Finally, he slapped a wall.
"Well, will we find it?"
I shook my head.
"I'd like to, but I doubt it. I don't give two hoots and a damn who
gets credit for the catch, so long as I have a part in it. But it won't
happen. That gal's an egomaniac. She'll want to operate the Slider, and she
can't."
"You ever meet her?"
"Yeah."
"How long ago?"
"Four, five years."
"She was a kid then. How do you know what she can do now?"
"I know. She'll have learned every switch and reading by this time.
She'll be all up on theory. But do you remember one time we were together in
the starboard Rook, forward, when Ikky broke water like a porpoise?"
"Well?"
He rubbed his emery chin.
"Maybe she can do it, Carl. She's raced torch ships and she's scubaed
in bad waters back home." He glanced in the direction of invisible Hand.
"And she's hunted in the Highlands. She might be wild enough to pull that
horror into her lap without flinching.
"...For Johns Hopkins to foot the bill and shell out seven figures for
the corpus," he added. "That's money, even to a Luharich."
I ducked through a hatchway.
"Maybe you're right, but she was a rich witch when I knew her.
"And she wasn't blonde," I added, meanly.
He yawned.
"Let's find breakfast."
We did that.
When I was young I thought that being born a sea creature was the
finest choice Nature could make for anyone. I grew up on the Pacific coast
and spent my summers on the Gulf or the Mediterranean. I lived months of my
life negotiating with coral, photographing trench dwellers, and playing tag
with dolphins. I fished everywhere there are fish, resenting the fact that
they can go places I can't. When I grew older I wanted a bigger fish, and
there was nothing living that I knew of, excepting a Sequoia, that came any
bigger than Ikky. That's part of it....
I jammed a couple of extra rolls into a paper bag and filled a thermos
with coffee. Excusing myself, I left the gallery and made my way to the
Slider berth. It was just the way I remembered it. I threw a few switches
and the shortwave hummed.
"That you, Carl?"
"That's right, Mike. Let me have some juice down here, you
double-crossing rat."
He thought it over, then I felt the hull vibrate as the generators cut
in. I poured my third cup of coffee and found a cigarette.
"So why am I a double-crossing rat this time?" came his voice again.
"You knew about the cameraman at Hangar Sixteen?"
"Yes."
"Then you're a double-crossing rat. The last thing I want is publicity.
'He who fouled up so often before is ready to try it, nobly, once more.' I
can read it now."
"You're wrong. The spotlight's only big enough for one, and she's
prettier than you."
My next comment was cut off as I threw the elevator switch and the
elephant ears flapped above me. I rose, settling flush with the deck.
Retracting the lateral rail, I cut forward into the groove. Amidships, I
stopped at a juncture, dropped the lateral, and retracted the longitudinal
rail.
I slid starboard, midway between the Rooks, halted, and threw on the
coupler.
I hadn't spilled a drop of coffee.
"Show me pictures."
The screen glowed. I adjusted and got outlines of the bottom.
"Okay."
I threw a Status Blue switch and he matched it. The light went on.
The winch unlocked. I aimed out over the waters, extended an arm, and
fired a cast.
"Clean one," he commented.
"Status Red. Call strike." I threw a switch.
"Status Red."
The baitman would be on his way with this, to make the barbs tempting.
It's not exactly a fishhook. The cables bear hollow tubes; the tubes
convey enough dope for an army of hopheads; Ikky takes the bait, dandled
before him by remote control, and the fisherman rams the barbs home.
My hands moved over the console, making the necessary adjustments. I
checked the narco-tank reading. Empty. Good, they hadn't been filled yet. I
thumbed the inject button.
"In the gullet," Mike murmured.
I released the cables. I played the beast imagined. I let him run,
swinging the winch to simulate his sweep.
I had the air conditioner on and my shirt off and it was still
uncomfortably hot, which is how I knew that morning had gone over into noon.
I was dimly aware of the arrivals and departures of the hoppers. Some of the
crew sat in the "shade" of the doors I had left open, watching the
operation. I didn't see Jean arrive or I would have ended the session and
gotten below.
She broke my concentration by slamming the door hard enough to shake
the bond.
"Mind telling me who authorized you to bring up the Slider?" she asked.
"No one," I replied. "I'll take it below now."
"Just move aside."
I did, and she took my seat. She was wearing brown slacks and a baggy
shirt and she had her hair pulled back in a practical manner. Her cheeks
were flushed, but not necessarily from the heat. She attacked the panel with
a nearly amusing intensity that I found disquieting.
"Status Blue," she snapped, breaking a violet fingernail on the toggle.
I forced a yawn and buttoned my shirt slowly. She threw a side glance
my way, checked the registers, and fired a cast.
I monitored the lead on the screen. She turned to me for a second.
"Status Red," she said levelly.
I nodded my agreement.
She worked the winch sideways to show she knew how. I didn't doubt she
knew how and she didn't doubt that I didn't doubt, but then--
"In case you're wondering," she said, "you're not going to be anywhere
near this thing. You were hired as a baitman, remember? Not a Slider
operator! A baitman! Your duties consist of swimming out and setting the
table for our friend the monster. It's dangerous, but you're getting well
paid for it. Any questions?"
She squashed the Inject button and I rubbed my throat.
"Nope," I smiled, "but I am qualified to run that thingamajigger--and
if you need me I'll be available, at union rates."
"Mister Davits," she said, "I don't want a loser operating this panel."
"Miss Luharich, there has never been a winner at this game."
She started reeling in the cable and broke the bond at the same time,
so that the whole Slider shook as the big yo-yo returned. We skidded a
couple of feet backward. She raised the laterals and we shot back along the
groove. Slowing, she transferred rails and we jolted to a clanging halt,
then shot off at a right angle. The crew scrambled away from the hatch as we
skidded onto the elevator.
"In the future, Mister Davits, do not enter the Slider without being
ordered," she told me.
"Don't worry. I won't even step inside if I am ordered," I answered. "I
signed on as a baitman. Remember? If you want me in here, you'll have to
_ask_ me."
"That'll be the day," she smiled.
I agreed, as the doors closed above us. We dropped the subject and
headed in our different directions after the Slider came to a halt in its
berth. She did not say "good day," though, which I thought showed breeding
as well as determination, in reply to my chuckle.
Later that night Mike and I stoked our pipes in Malvern's cabin. The
winds were shuffling waves, and a steady pattering of rain and hail overhead
turned the deck into a tin roof.
"Nasty," suggested Malvern.
I nodded. After two bourbons the room had become a familiar woodcut,
with its mahogany furnishings (which I had transported from Earth long ago
on a whim) and the dark walls, the seasoned face of Malvern, and the
perpetually puzzled expression of Dabis set between the big pools of shadow
that lay behind chairs and splashed in cornets, all cast by the tiny table
light and seen through a glass, brownly.
"Glad I'm in here."
"What's it like underneath on a night like this?"
I puffed, thinking of my light cutting through the insides of a black
diamond, shaken slightly. The meteor-dart of a suddenly illuminated fish,
the swaying of grotesque ferns, like nebulae-shadow, then green, then
gone--swam in a moment through my mind. I guess it's like a spaceship would
feel, if a spaceship could feel, crossing between worlds--and quiet,
uncannily, preternaturally quiet; and peaceful as sleep.
"Dark," I said, "and not real choppy below a few fathoms."
"Another eight hours and we shove off," commented Mike.
"Ten, twelve days, we should be there," noted Malvern.
"What do you think Ikky's doing?"
"Sleeping on the bottom with Mrs. Ikky if he has any brains."
"He hasn't. I've seen ANR's skeletal extrapolation from the bones that
have washed up--"
"Hasn't everyone?"
"...Fully fleshed, he'd be over a hundred meters long. That right,
Carl?"
I agreed.
"...Not much of a brain box, though, for his bulk."
"Smart enough to stay out of our locker."
Chuckles, because nothing exists but this room, really. The world
outside is an empty, sleet drummed deck. We lean back and make clouds.
"Boss lady does not approve of unauthorized fly fishing."
"Boss lady can walk north till her hat floats."
"What did she say in there?"
"She told me that my place, with fish manure, is on the bottom."
"You don't Slide?"
"I bait."
"We'll see."
"That's all I do. If she wants a Slideman she's going to have to ask
nicely."
"You think she'll have to?"
"I think she'll have to."
"And if she does, can you do it?"
"A fair question," I puffed. "I don't know the answer, though."
I'd incorporate my soul and trade forty percent of the stock for the
answer. I'd give a couple years off my life for the answer. But there
doesn't seem to be a lineup of supernatural takers, because no one knows.
Supposing when we get out there, luck being with us, we find ourselves an
Ikky? Supposing we succeed in baiting him and get lines on him. What then?
If we get him shipside, will she hold on or crack up? What if she's made of
sterner stuff than Davits, who used to hunt sharks with poison-darted air
pistols? Supposing she lands him and Davits has to stand there like a video
extra.
Worse yet, supposing she asks for Davits and he still stands there like
a video extra or something else--say, some yellowbellied embodiment named
Cringe?
It was when I got him up above the eight-foot horizon of steel and
looked out at all that body, sloping on and on till it dropped out of sight
like a green mountain range...And that head. Small for the body, but still
immense. Fat, craggy, with lidless roulettes that had spun black and red
since before my forefathers decided to try the New Continent. And swaying.
Fresh narco-tanks had been connected. It needed another shot, fast. But
I was paralyzed.
It had made a noise like God playing a Hammond organ...
_And looked at me!_
I don't know if seeing is even the same process in eyes like those. I
doubt it. Maybe I was just a gray blur behind a black rock, with the
plexi-reflected sky hurting its pupils. But it fixed on me. Perhaps the
snake doesn't really paralyze the rabbit, perhaps it's just that rabbits are
cowards by constitution. But it began to struggle and I still couldn't move,
fascinated.
Fascinated by all that power, by those eyes, they found me there
fifteen minutes later, a little broken about the head and shoulders, the
Inject still unpushed.
And I dream about those eyes. I want to face them once more, even if
their finding takes forever. I've got to know if there's something inside me
that sets me apart from a rabbit, from notched plates of reflexes and
instincts that always fall apart in exactly the same way whenever the
proper combination is spun.
Looking down, I noticed that my hand was shaking. Glancing up, I
noticed that no one else was noticing.
I finished my drink and emptied my pipe. It was late and no songbirds
were singing.
I sat whittling, my legs hanging over the aft edge, the chips spinning
down into the furrow of our wake. Three days out. No action.
"You!"
"Me?"
"You."
Hair like the end of the rainbow, eyes like nothing in nature, fine
teeth.
"Hello."
"There's a safety regulation against what you're doing, you know."
"I know. I've been worrying about it all morning."
A delicate curl climbed my knife then drifted out behind us. It settled
into the foam and was plowed under. I watched her reflection in my blade,
taking a secret pleasure in its distortion.
"Are you baiting me?" she finally asked.
I heard her laugh then, and turned, knowing it had been intentional.
"What, me?"
"I could push you off from here, very easily."
"I'd make it back."
"Would you push me off, then--some dark night, perhaps?"
"They're all dark, Miss Luharich. No, I'd rather make you a gift of my
carving."
She seated herself beside me then, and I couldn't help but notice the
dimples in her knees. She wore white shorts and a halter and still had an
offworld tan to her which was awfully appealing. I almost felt a twinge of
guilt at having planned the whole scene, but my right hand still blocked her
view of the wooden animal.
"Okay, I'll bite. What have you got for me?"
"Just a second. It's almost finished."
Solemnly, I passed her the little wooden jackass I had been carving. I
felt a little sorry and slightly jackass-ish myself, but I had to follow
through. I always do. The mouth was split into a braying grin. The ears were
upright.
She didn't smile and she didn't frown. She just studied it.
"It's very good," she finally said, "like most things you do--and
appropriate, perhaps."
"Give it to me." I extended a palm.
She handed it back and I tossed it out over the water. It missed the
white water and bobbed for awhile like a pigmy seahorse.
"Why did you do that?"
"It was a poor joke. I'm sorry."
"Maybe you are right, though. Perhaps this time I've bitten off a
little too much."
I snorted.
"Then why not do something safer, like another race?"
She shook her end of the rainbow.
"No. It has to be an Ikky."
"Why?"
"Why did you want one so badly that you threw away a fortune?"
"Many reasons," I said. "An unfrocked analyst who held black therapy
sessions in his basement once told me, 'Mister Davits, you need to reinforce
the image of your masculinity by catching one of every kind of fish in
existence.' Fish are a very ancient masculinity symbol, you know. So I set
out to do it. I have one more to go.
--Why do you want to reinforce _your_ masculinity?"
"I don't," she said. "I don't want to reinforce anything but Luharich
Enterprises. My chief statistician once said, 'Miss Luharich, sell all the
cold cream and face powder in the System and you'll be a happy girl. Rich,
too.' And he was right. I am the proof. I can look the way I do and do
anything, and I sell most of the lipstick and face powder in the System--but
I have to be _able_ to do anything."
"You do look cool and efficient," I observed.
"I don't feel cool," she said, rising. "Let's go for a swim."
"May I point out that we're making pretty good time?"
"If you want to indicate the obvious, you may. You said you could make
it back to the ship, unassisted. Change your mind?"
"No."
"Then get us two scuba outfits and I'll race you under Tensquare.
"I'll win, too," she added.
I stood and looked down at her, because that usually makes me feel
superior to women.
"Daughter of Lir, eyes of Picasso," I said, "you've got yourself a
race. Meet me at the forward Rook, starboard, in ten minutes."
"Ten minutes," she agreed.
And ten minutes it was. From the center blister to the Rook took maybe
two of them, with the load I was carrying. My sandals grew very hot and I
was glad to shuck them for flippers when I reached the comparative cool of
the corner.
We slid into harnesses and adjusted our gear. She had changed into a
trim one-piece green job that made me shade my eyes and look away, then look
back again.
I fastened a rope ladder and kicked it over the side. Then I pounded on
the wall of the Rook.
"Yeah?"
"You talk to the port Rook, aft?" I called.
"They're all set up," came the answer. "There's ladders and draglines
all over that end."
"You sure you want to do this?" asked the sunburnt little gink who was
her publicity man, Anderson yclept.
He sat beside the Rook in a deckchair, sipping lemonade through a
straw.
"It might be dangerous," he observed, sunken-mouthed. (His teeth were
beside him, in another glass.)
"That's right," she smiled. "It _will_ be dangerous. Not overly,
though."
"Then why don't you let me get some pictures? We'd have them back to
Lifeline in an hour. They'd be in New York by tonight. Good copy."
"No," she said, and turned away from both of us.
"Here, keep these for me."
She passed him a box full of her unseeing, and when she turned back to
me they were the same brown that I remembered.
"Ready?"
"No," I said, tautly. "Listen carefully, Jean. If you're going to play
this game there are a few rules. First," I counted, "we're going to be
directly beneath the hull, so we have to start low and keep moving. If we
bump the bottom, we could rupture an air tank..."
She began to protest that any moron knew that and I cut her down.
"Second," I went on, "there won't be much light, so we'll stay close
together, and we will _both_ carry torches."
Her wet eyes flashed.
"I dragged you out of Govino without--"
Then she stopped and turned away. She picked up a lamp.
"Okay. Torches. Sorry."
"...And watch out for the drive-screws," I finished. "There'll be
strong currents for at least fifty meters behind them."
She wiped her eyes and adjusted the mask.
"All right, let's go."
We went.
She led the way, at my insistence. The surface layer was pleasantly
warm. At two fathoms the water was bracing; at five it was nice and cold. At
eight we let go the swinging stairway and struck out. Tensquare sped forward
and we raced in the opposite direction, tattooing the hull yellow at
ten-second intervals.
The hull stayed where it belonged, but we raced on like two darkside
satellites. Periodically, I tickled her frog feet with my light and traced
her antennae of bubbles. About a five meter lead was fine; I'd beat her in
the home stretch, but I couldn't let her drop behind yet.
Beneath us, black. Immense. Deep. The Mindanao of Venus, where eternity
might eventually pass the dead to a rest in cities of unnamed fishes. I
twisted my head away and touched the hull with a feeler of light; it told me
we were about a quarter of the way along.
I increased my beat to match her stepped-up stroke, and narrowed the
distance which she had suddenly opened by a couple of meters. She sped up
again and I did, too. I spotted her with my beam.
She turned and it caught on her mask. I never knew whether she'd been
smiling. Probably. She raised two fingers in a V-for-Victory and then cut
ahead at full speed.
I should have known. I should have felt it coming. It was just a race
to her, something else to win. Damn the torpedos!
So I leaned into it, hard. I don't shake in the water. Or, if I do it
doesn't matter and I don't notice it. I began to close the gap again.
She looked back, sped on, looked back. Each time she looked it was
nearer, until I'd narrowed it down to the original five meters.
Then she hit the jatoes.
That's what I had been fearing. We were about half-way under and she
shouldn't have done it. The powerful jets of compressed air could easily
rocket her upward into the hull, or tear something loose if she allowed her
body to twist. Their main use is in tearing free from marine plants or
fighting bad currents. I had wanted them along as a safety measure, because
of the big suck-and-pull windmills behind.
She shot ahead like a meteorite, and I could feel a sudden tingle of
perspiration leaping to meet and mix with the churning waters.
I swept ahead, not wanting to use my own guns, and she tripled,
quadrupled the margin.
The jets died and she was still on course. Okay, I was an old
fuddyduddy. She _could_ have messed up and headed toward the top.
I plowed the sea and began to gather back my yardage, a foot at a time.
I wouldn't be able to catch her or beat her now, but I'd be on the ropes
before she hit deck.
Then the spinning magnets began their insistence and she wavered. It
was an awfully powerful drag, even at this distance. The call of the meat
grinder.
I'd been scratched up by one once, under the _Dolphin_, a fishing boat
of the middle-class. I _had_ been drinking, but it was also a rough day, and
the thing had been turned on prematurely. Fortunately, it was turned off in
time, also, and a tendon-stapler made everything good as new, except in the
log, where it only mentioned that I'd been drinking. Nothing about it being
off-hours when I had the right to do as I damn well pleased.
She had slowed to half her speed, but she was still moving cross-wise,
toward the port, aft corner. I began to feel the pull myself and had to slow
down. She'd made it past the main one, but she seemed too far back. It's
hard to gauge distances under water, but each red beat of time told me I was
right. She was out of danger from the main one, but the smaller port screw,
located about eighty meters in, was no longer a threat but a certainty.
She had turned and was pulling away from it now. Twenty meters
separated us. She was standing still. Fifteen.
Slowly, she began a backward drifting. I hit my jatoes, aiming two
meters behind her and about twenty back of the blades.
Straightline! Thankgod! Catching, softbelly, leadpipe on shoulder
SWIMLIKEHELL! maskcracked, not broke though AND UP!
We caught a line and I remember brandy.
Into the cradle endlessly rocking I spit, pacing. Insomnia tonight
and left shoulder sore again, so let it rain on me--they can cure
rheumatism. Stupid as hell. What I said. In blankets and shivering.
She: "Carl, I can't say it." Me: "Then call it square for that night
in Govino, Miss Luharich. Huh?" She: nothing. Me: "Any more of that
brandy?" She: "Give me another, too." Me: sounds of sipping. It had
only lasted three months. No alimony. Many $ on both sides. Not
sure whether they were happy or not. Wine-dark Aegean. Good fishing.
Maybe he should have spent more time on shore. Or perhaps she
shouldn't have. Good swimmer, though. Dragged him all the way to
Vido to wring out his lungs. Corfu should have brought them closer.
Didn't. I think that mental cruelty was a trout. He wanted to go to
Canada. She: "Go to hell if you want!" He: "Will you go along?"
She: "No." But she did, anyhow. Many hells. Expensive. He lost a
monster or two. She inherited a couple. Lot of lightning tonight.
Stupid as hell. Civility's the coffin of a conned soul. By whom?
--Sounds like a bloody neo-ex....But I hate you, Anderson, with your
glass full of teeth and her new eyes....Can't keep this pipe lit, keep
sucking tobacco. Spit again!
Seven days out and the scope showed Ikky.
Bells jangled, feet pounded, and some optimist set the thermostat in
the Hopkins. Malvern wanted me to sit it out, but I slipped into my harness
and waited for whatever came. The bruise looked worse than it felt. I had
exercised every day and the shoulder hadn't stiffened on me.
A thousand meters ahead and thirty fathoms deep, it tunneled our path.
Nothing showed on the surface.
"Will we chase him?" asked an excited crewman.
"Not unless she feels like using money for fuel." I shrugged.
Soon the scope was clear, and it stayed that way. We remained on alert
and held our course.
I hadn't said over a dozen words to my boss since the last time we went
drowning together, so I decided to raise the score.
"Good afternoon," I approached. "What's new?"
"He's going north-northeast. We'll have to let this one go. A few more
days and we can afford some chasing. Not yet."
_Sleek head..._
I nodded. "No telling where this one's headed."
"How's your shoulder?"
"All right. How about you?"
_Daughter of Lir..._
"Fine. By the way, you're down for a nice bonus."
_Eyes of perdition!_
"Don't mention it," I told her back.
Later that afternoon, and appropriately, a storm shattered. (I prefer
"shattered" to "broke." It gives a more accurate idea of the behavior of
tropical storms on Venus and saves a lot of words.) Remember that inkwell I
mentioned earlier? Now take it between thumb and forefinger and hit its side
with a hammer. Watch yourself! Don't get splashed or cut--
Dry, then drenched. The sky one million bright fractures as the hammer
falls. And sounds of breaking.
"Everyone below?" suggested the loudspeakers to the already scurrying
crew.
Where was I? Who do you think was doing the loudspeaking?
Everything loose went overboard when the water got to walking, but by
then no people were loose. The Slider was the first thing below decks. Then
the big lifts lowered their shacks.
I had hit it for the nearest Rook with a yell the moment I recognized
the pre-brightening of the holocaust. From there I cut in the speakers and
spent half a minute coaching the track team.
Minor injuries had occurred, Mike told me over the radio, but nothing
serious. I, however, was marooned for the duration. The Rooks do not lead
anywhere; they're set too far out over the hull to provide entry downwards,
what with the extensor shelves below.
So I undressed myself of the tanks which I had worn for the past
several hours, crossed my flippers on the table, and leaned back to watch
the hurricane. The top was black as the bottom and we were in between, and
somewhat illuminated because of all that flat, shiny space. The waters
didn't rain down--they just sort of got together and dropped.
The Rooks were secure enough--they'd weathered any number of these
onslaughts--it's just that their positions gave them a greater arc of rise
and descent when Tensquare makes like the rocker of a very nervous grandma.
I had used the belts form my rig to strap myself into the bolted-down chair,
and I removed several years in purgatory from the soul of whoever left a
pack of cigarettes in the table drawer.
I watched the water make teepees and mountains and hands and trees
until I started seeing faces and people. So I called Mike.
"What are you doing down there?"
"Wondering what you're doing up there," he replied. "What's it like?"
"You're from the Midwest, aren't you?"
"Yeah."
"Get bad storms out there?"
"Sometimes."
"Try to think of the worst one you were ever in. Got a slide rule
handy?"
"Right here."
"Then put a one under it, imagine a zero or two following after, and
multiply the thing out."
"I can't imagine the zeros."
"Then retain the multiplicand--that's all you can do."
"So what are you doing up there?"
"I've strapped myself in the chair. I'm watching things roll around the
floor right now."
I looked up and out again. I saw one darker shadow in the forest.
"Are you praying or swearing?"
"Damned if I know. But if this were the Slider--if only this were the
Slider!"
"_He's out there?_"
I nodded, forgetting that he couldn't see me.
Big, as I remembered him. He'd only broken surface for a few moments,
to look around. _There is no power on Earth that can be compared with him
who was made to fear no one._ I dropped my cigarette. It was the same as
before. Paralysis and an unborn scream.
"You all right, Carl?"
He had looked at me again. Or seemed to. Perhaps that mindless brute
had been waiting half a millennium to ruin the life of a member of the most
highly developed species in business....
"You okay?"
...Or perhaps it had been ruined already, long before their encounter,
and theirs was just a meeting of beasts, the stronger bumping the weaker
aside, body to psyche....
"Carl, dammit! Say something!"
He broke again, this time nearer. Did you ever see the trunk of a
tornado? It seems like something alive, moving around in all that dark.
Nothing has a right to be so big, so strong, and moving. It's a sickening
sensation.
"Please answer me."
He was gone and did not come back that day. I finally made a couple of
wisecracks at Mike, but I held my next cigarette in my right hand.
The next seventy or eighty thousand waves broke by with a monotonous
similarity. The five days that held them were also without distinction. The
I'm a baitman. No one is born a baitman, except in a French novel where
everyone is. (In fact, I think that's the title, _We are All Bait_. Pfft!)
How I got that way is barely worth the telling and has nothing to do with
neo-exes, but the days of the beast deserve a few words, so here they are.
The Lowlands of Venus lie between the thumb and forefinger of the
continent known as Hand. When you break into Cloud Alley it swings its
silverblack bowling ball toward you without a warning. You jump then, inside
that firetailed tenpin they ride you down in, but the straps keep you from
making a fool of yourself. You generally chuckle afterwards, but you always
jump first.
Next, you study Hand to lay its illusion and the two middle fingers
become dozen-ringed archipelagoes as the outers resolve into greengray
peninsulas; the thumb is too short, and curls like the embryo tail of Cape
Horn.
You suck pure oxygen, sigh possibly, and begin the long topple back to
the Lowlands.
There, you are caught like an infield fly at the Lifeline landing
area--so named because of its nearness to the great delta in the Eastern
Bay--located between the first peninsula and "thumb." For a minute it seems
as if you're going to miss Lifeline and wind up as canned seafood, but
afterwards--shaking off the metaphors--you descend to scorched concrete and
present your middle-sized telephone directory of authorizations to the
short, fat man in the gray cap. The papers show that you are not subject to
mysterious inner rottings and etcetera. He then smiles you a short, fat,
gray smile and motions you toward the bus which hauls you to the Reception
Area. At the R.A. you spend three days proving that, indeed, you are not
subject to mysterious inner rottings and etcetera.
Boredom, however, is another rot. When your three days are up, you
generally hit Lifeline hard, and it returns the compliment as a matter of
reflex. The effects of alcohol in variant atmospheres is a subject on which
the connoisseurs have written numerous volumes, so I will confine my remarks
to noting that a good binge is worthy of at least a week's time and often
warrants a lifetime study.
I had been a student of exceptional promise (strictly undergraduate)
for going on two years when the _Bright Water_ fell through our marble
ceiling and poured its people like targets into the city.
Pause. The Worlds Almanac re Lifeline: "...Port city on the eastern
coast of Hand. Employees of the Agency for Non-terrestrial Research comprise
approximately 85% of its 100,000 population (2010 Census). Its other
residents are primarily personnel maintained by several industrial
corporations engaged in basic research. Independent marine biologists,
wealthy fishing enthusiasts, and waterfront entrepreneurs make up the
remainder of its inhabitants."
I turned to Mike Dabis, a fellow entrepreneur, and commented on the
lousy state of basic research.
"Not if the mumbled truth be known."
He paused behind his glass before continuing the slow swallowing
process calculated to obtain my interest and a few oaths, before he
continued.
"Carl," he finally observed, poker playing, "they're shaping
Tensquare."
I could have hit him. I might have refilled his glass with sulfuric
acid and looked on with glee as his lips blackened and cracked. Instead, I
grunted a noncommittal.
"Who's fool enough to shell out fifty grand a day? ANR?"
He shook his head.
"Jean Luharich," he said, "the girl with the violet contacts and fifty
or sixty perfect teeth. I understand her eyes are really brown."
"Isn't she selling enough face cream these days?"
He shrugged.
"Publicity makes the wheels go 'round. Luharich Enterprise jumped
sixteen points when she picked up the Sun Trophy. You ever play golf on
Mercury?"
I had, but I overlooked it and continued to press.
"So she's coming here with a blank check and a fishhook?"
"_Bright Water_, today," he nodded. "Should be down by now. Lots of
cameras. She wants an Ikky, bad."
"Hmm," I hmmed. "How bad?"
"Sixty day contract. Tensquare. Indefinite extension clause. Million
and a half deposit," he recited.
"You seem to know a lot about it."
"I'm Personnel Recruitment. Luharich Enterprises approached me last
month. It helps to drink in the right places.
"Or own them." He smirked, after a moment.
I looked away, sipping my bitter brew. After awhile I swallowed several
things and asked Mike what he expected to be asked, leaving myself open for
his monthly temperance lecture.
"They told me to try getting you," he mentioned. "When's the last time
you sailed?"
"Month and a half ago. The _Corning_."
"Small stuff," he snorted. "When have you been under, yourself?"
"It's been awhile."
"It's been over a year, hasn't it? That time you got cut by the screw,
under the _Dolphin_?"
I turned to him.
"I was in the river last week, up at Angleford where the currents are
strong. I can still get around."
"Sober," he added.
"I'd stay that way," I said, "on a job like this."
A doubting nod.
"Straight union rates. Triple time for extraordinary circumstances," he
narrated. "Be at Hangar Sixteen with your gear, Friday morning, five hundred
hours. We push off Saturday, daybreak."
"You're sailing?"
"I'm sailing."
"How come?"
"Money."
"Ikky guano."
"The bar isn't doing so well and baby needs new minks."
"I repeat--"
"...And I want to get away from baby, renew my contract with
basics--fresh air, exercise, make cash..."
"All right, sorry I asked."
I poured him a drink, concentrating on H2SO4, but it didn't transmute.
Finally I got him soused and went out into the night to walk and think
things over.
Around a dozen serious attempts to land _Ichthyform Leviosaurus
Levianthus_, generally known as "Ikky", had been made over the past five
years. When Ikky was first sighted, whaling techniques were employed. These
proved either fruitless or disastrous, and a new procedure was inaugurated.
Tensquare was constructed by a wealthy sportsman named Michael Jandt, who
blew his entire roll on the project.
After a year on the Eastern Ocean, he returned to file bankruptcy.
Carlton Davits, a playboy fishing enthusiast, then purchased the huge raft
and laid a wake for Ikky's spawning grounds. On the nineteenth day out he
had a strike and lost one hundred fifty bills' worth of untested gear, along
with one _Ichthyform Levianthus_. Twelve days later, using tripled lines, he
hooked, narcotized, and began to hoist the huge beast. It awakened then,
destroyed a control tower, killed six men, and worked general hell over five
square blocks of Tensquare. Carlton was left with partial hemiplegia and a
bankruptcy suit of his own. He faded into waterfront atmosphere and
Tensquare changed hands four more times, with less spectacular but equally
expensive results.
Finally, the big raft, built only for one purpose was purchased at an
auction by ANR for "marine research." Lloyd's still won't insure it, and the
only marine research it has ever seen is an occasional rental at fifty bills
a day--to people anxious to tell Leviathan fish stories. I've been a baitman
on three of the voyages, and I've been close enough to count Ikky's fangs on
two occasions. I want one of them to show my grandchildren, for personal
reasons.
I faced the direction of the landing area and resolved a resolve.
"You want me for local coloring, gal. It'll look nice on the feature
page and all that. But clear this--If anyone gets you an Ikky, it'll be me.
I promise."
I stood in the empty Square. The foggy towers of Lifeline shared their
mists.
Shoreline a couple eras ago, the western slope above Lifeline stretches
as far as forty miles inland in some places. Its angle of rising is not a
great one, but it achieves an elevation of several thousand feet before it
meets the mountain range which separates us from the Highlands. About four
miles inland and five hundred feet higher than Lifeline are set most of the
surface airstrips and privately owned hangars. Hangar Sixteen houses Cal's
Contract Cab, hop service, shore to ship. I do not like Cal, but he wasn't
around when I climbed from the bus and waved to a mechanic.
Two of the hoppers tugged at the concrete, impatient beneath flywing
haloes. The one on which Steve was working belched deep within its barrel
carburetor and shuttered spasmodically.
"Bellyache?" I inquired.
"Yeah, gas pains and heartburn."
He twisted setscrews until it settled into an even keening, and turned
to me.
"You're for out?"
I nodded.
"Tensquare. Cosmetics. Monsters. Stuff like that."
He blinked into the beacons and wiped his freckles. The temperature was
about twenty, but the big overhead spots served a double purpose.
"Luharich," he muttered. "Then you _are_ the one. There's some people
want to see you."
"What about?"
"Cameras. Microphones. Stuff like that."
"I'd better stow my gear. Which one am I riding?"
He poked the screwdriver at the other hopper.
"That one. You're on video tape now, by the way. They wanted to get you
arriving."
He turned to the hangar, turned back.
"Say 'cheese.' They'll shoot the close-ups later."
I said something other than "cheese." They must have been using
telelens and been able to read my lips, because that part of the tape was
never shown.
I threw my junk in the back, climbed into a passenger seat, and lit a
cigarette. Five minutes later, Cal himself emerged from the office Quonset,
looking cold. He came over and pounded on the side of the hopper. He jerked
a thumb back at the hangar.
"They want you in there!" he called through cupped hands. "Interview!"
"The show's over!" I yelled back. "Either that, or they can get
themselves another baitman!"
His rustbrown eyes became nailheads under blond brows and his glare a
spike before he jerked about and stalked off. I wondered how much they had
paid him to be able to squat in his hangar and suck juice from his
generator.
Enough, I guess, knowing Cal. I never liked the guy, anyway.
Venus at night is a field of sable waters. On the coasts, you can never
tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. Dawn is like dumping milk into
an inkwell. First, there are erratic curdles of white, then streamers. Shade
the bottle for a gray colloid, then watch it whiten a little more. All of a
sudden you've got day. Then start heating the mixture.
I had to shed my jacket as we flashed out over the bay. To our rear,
the skyline could have been under water for the way it waved and rippled in
the heatfall. A hopper can accommodate four people (five, if you want to
bend Regs and underestimate weight), or three passengers with the sort of
gear a baitman uses. I was the only fare, though, and the pilot was like his
machine. He hummed and made no unnecessary noises. Lifeline turned a
somersault and evaporated in the rear mirror at about the same time
Tensquare broke the fore-horizon. The pilot stopped humming and shook his
head.
I leaned forward. Feelings played flopdoodle in my guts. I knew every
bloody inch of the big raft, but the feelings you once took for granted
change when their source is out of reach. Truthfully, I'd had my doubts I'd
ever board the hulk again. But now, now I could almost believe in
predestination. There it was!
A tensquare football field of a ship. A-powered. Flat as a pancake,
except for the plastic blisters in the middle and the "Rooks" fore and aft,
port and starboard.
The Rook towers were named for their corner positions--and any two can
work together to hoist, co-powering the graffles between them. The
graffles--half gaff, half grapple--can raise enormous weights to near water
level; their designer had only one thing in mind, though, which accounts for
the gaff half. At water level, the Slider has to implement elevation for six
to eight feet before the graffles are in a position to push upward, rather
than pulling.
The Slider, essentially, is a mobile room--a big box capable of moving
in any of Tensquare's crisscross groovings and "anchoring" on the strike
side by means of a powerful electromagnetic bond. Its winches could hoist a
battleship the necessary distance, and the whole craft would tilt, rather
than the Slider come loose, if you want any idea of the strength of that
bond.
The Slider houses a section operated control indicator which is the
most sophisticated "reel" ever designed. Drawing broadcast power from the
generator beside the center blister, it is connected by shortwave with the
sonar room, where the movements of the quarry are recorded and repeated to
the angler seated before the section control.
The fisherman might play his "lines" for hours, days even, without
seeing any more than metal and an outline on the screen. Only when the beast
is graffled and the extensor shelf, located twelve feet below waterline,
slides out for support and begins to aid the winches, only then does the
fisherman see his catch rising before him like a fallen Seraph. Then, as
Davits learned, one looks into the Abyss itself and is required to act. He
didn't, and a hundred meters of unimaginable tonnage, undernarcotized and
hurting, broke the cables of the winch, snapped a graffle, and took a
half-minute walk across Tensquare.
We circled till the mechanical flag took notice and waved us on down.
We touched beside the personnel hatch and I jettisoned my gear and jumped to
the deck.
"Luck," called the pilot as the door was sliding shut. Then he danced
into the air and the flag clicked blank.
I shouldered my stuff and went below.
Signing in with Malvern, the de facto captain, I learned that most of
the others wouldn't arrive for a good eight hours. They had wanted me alone
at Cal's so they could pattern the pub footage along twentieth-century
cinema lines.
Open: landing strip, dark. One mechanic prodding a contrary hopper.
Stark-o-vision shot of slow bus pulling in. Heavily dressed baitman
descends, looks about, limps across field. Close-up: he grins. Move in for
words: "Do you think this is the time? The time he _will_ be landed?"
Embarrassment, taciturnity, a shrug. Dub something-"I see. And why do you
think Miss Luharich has a better chance than any of the others? Is it
because she's better equipped? [Grin.] Because more is known now about the
creature's habits than when you were out before? Or is it because of her
will to win, to be a champion? Is it any one of these things, or is it all
of them?" Reply: "Yeah, all of them." "--Is that why you signed on with her?
Because your instincts say, 'This one will be it'?" Answer: "She pays union
rates. I couldn't rent that damned thing myself. And I want in." Erase. Dub
something else. Fade-out as he moves toward hopper, etcetera.
"Cheese," I said, or something like that, and took a walk around
Tensquare, by myself.
I mounted each Rook, checking out the controls and the underwater video
eyes. Then I raised the main lift.
Malvern had no objections to my testing things this way. In fact, he
encouraged it. We had sailed together before and our positions had even been
reversed upon a time. So I wasn't surprised when I stepped off the lift into
the Hopkins Locker and found him waiting. For the next ten minutes we
inspected the big room in silence, walking through its copper coil chambers
soon to be Arctic.
Finally, he slapped a wall.
"Well, will we find it?"
I shook my head.
"I'd like to, but I doubt it. I don't give two hoots and a damn who
gets credit for the catch, so long as I have a part in it. But it won't
happen. That gal's an egomaniac. She'll want to operate the Slider, and she
can't."
"You ever meet her?"
"Yeah."
"How long ago?"
"Four, five years."
"She was a kid then. How do you know what she can do now?"
"I know. She'll have learned every switch and reading by this time.
She'll be all up on theory. But do you remember one time we were together in
the starboard Rook, forward, when Ikky broke water like a porpoise?"
"Well?"
He rubbed his emery chin.
"Maybe she can do it, Carl. She's raced torch ships and she's scubaed
in bad waters back home." He glanced in the direction of invisible Hand.
"And she's hunted in the Highlands. She might be wild enough to pull that
horror into her lap without flinching.
"...For Johns Hopkins to foot the bill and shell out seven figures for
the corpus," he added. "That's money, even to a Luharich."
I ducked through a hatchway.
"Maybe you're right, but she was a rich witch when I knew her.
"And she wasn't blonde," I added, meanly.
He yawned.
"Let's find breakfast."
We did that.
When I was young I thought that being born a sea creature was the
finest choice Nature could make for anyone. I grew up on the Pacific coast
and spent my summers on the Gulf or the Mediterranean. I lived months of my
life negotiating with coral, photographing trench dwellers, and playing tag
with dolphins. I fished everywhere there are fish, resenting the fact that
they can go places I can't. When I grew older I wanted a bigger fish, and
there was nothing living that I knew of, excepting a Sequoia, that came any
bigger than Ikky. That's part of it....
I jammed a couple of extra rolls into a paper bag and filled a thermos
with coffee. Excusing myself, I left the gallery and made my way to the
Slider berth. It was just the way I remembered it. I threw a few switches
and the shortwave hummed.
"That you, Carl?"
"That's right, Mike. Let me have some juice down here, you
double-crossing rat."
He thought it over, then I felt the hull vibrate as the generators cut
in. I poured my third cup of coffee and found a cigarette.
"So why am I a double-crossing rat this time?" came his voice again.
"You knew about the cameraman at Hangar Sixteen?"
"Yes."
"Then you're a double-crossing rat. The last thing I want is publicity.
'He who fouled up so often before is ready to try it, nobly, once more.' I
can read it now."
"You're wrong. The spotlight's only big enough for one, and she's
prettier than you."
My next comment was cut off as I threw the elevator switch and the
elephant ears flapped above me. I rose, settling flush with the deck.
Retracting the lateral rail, I cut forward into the groove. Amidships, I
stopped at a juncture, dropped the lateral, and retracted the longitudinal
rail.
I slid starboard, midway between the Rooks, halted, and threw on the
coupler.
I hadn't spilled a drop of coffee.
"Show me pictures."
The screen glowed. I adjusted and got outlines of the bottom.
"Okay."
I threw a Status Blue switch and he matched it. The light went on.
The winch unlocked. I aimed out over the waters, extended an arm, and
fired a cast.
"Clean one," he commented.
"Status Red. Call strike." I threw a switch.
"Status Red."
The baitman would be on his way with this, to make the barbs tempting.
It's not exactly a fishhook. The cables bear hollow tubes; the tubes
convey enough dope for an army of hopheads; Ikky takes the bait, dandled
before him by remote control, and the fisherman rams the barbs home.
My hands moved over the console, making the necessary adjustments. I
checked the narco-tank reading. Empty. Good, they hadn't been filled yet. I
thumbed the inject button.
"In the gullet," Mike murmured.
I released the cables. I played the beast imagined. I let him run,
swinging the winch to simulate his sweep.
I had the air conditioner on and my shirt off and it was still
uncomfortably hot, which is how I knew that morning had gone over into noon.
I was dimly aware of the arrivals and departures of the hoppers. Some of the
crew sat in the "shade" of the doors I had left open, watching the
operation. I didn't see Jean arrive or I would have ended the session and
gotten below.
She broke my concentration by slamming the door hard enough to shake
the bond.
"Mind telling me who authorized you to bring up the Slider?" she asked.
"No one," I replied. "I'll take it below now."
"Just move aside."
I did, and she took my seat. She was wearing brown slacks and a baggy
shirt and she had her hair pulled back in a practical manner. Her cheeks
were flushed, but not necessarily from the heat. She attacked the panel with
a nearly amusing intensity that I found disquieting.
"Status Blue," she snapped, breaking a violet fingernail on the toggle.
I forced a yawn and buttoned my shirt slowly. She threw a side glance
my way, checked the registers, and fired a cast.
I monitored the lead on the screen. She turned to me for a second.
"Status Red," she said levelly.
I nodded my agreement.
She worked the winch sideways to show she knew how. I didn't doubt she
knew how and she didn't doubt that I didn't doubt, but then--
"In case you're wondering," she said, "you're not going to be anywhere
near this thing. You were hired as a baitman, remember? Not a Slider
operator! A baitman! Your duties consist of swimming out and setting the
table for our friend the monster. It's dangerous, but you're getting well
paid for it. Any questions?"
She squashed the Inject button and I rubbed my throat.
"Nope," I smiled, "but I am qualified to run that thingamajigger--and
if you need me I'll be available, at union rates."
"Mister Davits," she said, "I don't want a loser operating this panel."
"Miss Luharich, there has never been a winner at this game."
She started reeling in the cable and broke the bond at the same time,
so that the whole Slider shook as the big yo-yo returned. We skidded a
couple of feet backward. She raised the laterals and we shot back along the
groove. Slowing, she transferred rails and we jolted to a clanging halt,
then shot off at a right angle. The crew scrambled away from the hatch as we
skidded onto the elevator.
"In the future, Mister Davits, do not enter the Slider without being
ordered," she told me.
"Don't worry. I won't even step inside if I am ordered," I answered. "I
signed on as a baitman. Remember? If you want me in here, you'll have to
_ask_ me."
"That'll be the day," she smiled.
I agreed, as the doors closed above us. We dropped the subject and
headed in our different directions after the Slider came to a halt in its
berth. She did not say "good day," though, which I thought showed breeding
as well as determination, in reply to my chuckle.
Later that night Mike and I stoked our pipes in Malvern's cabin. The
winds were shuffling waves, and a steady pattering of rain and hail overhead
turned the deck into a tin roof.
"Nasty," suggested Malvern.
I nodded. After two bourbons the room had become a familiar woodcut,
with its mahogany furnishings (which I had transported from Earth long ago
on a whim) and the dark walls, the seasoned face of Malvern, and the
perpetually puzzled expression of Dabis set between the big pools of shadow
that lay behind chairs and splashed in cornets, all cast by the tiny table
light and seen through a glass, brownly.
"Glad I'm in here."
"What's it like underneath on a night like this?"
I puffed, thinking of my light cutting through the insides of a black
diamond, shaken slightly. The meteor-dart of a suddenly illuminated fish,
the swaying of grotesque ferns, like nebulae-shadow, then green, then
gone--swam in a moment through my mind. I guess it's like a spaceship would
feel, if a spaceship could feel, crossing between worlds--and quiet,
uncannily, preternaturally quiet; and peaceful as sleep.
"Dark," I said, "and not real choppy below a few fathoms."
"Another eight hours and we shove off," commented Mike.
"Ten, twelve days, we should be there," noted Malvern.
"What do you think Ikky's doing?"
"Sleeping on the bottom with Mrs. Ikky if he has any brains."
"He hasn't. I've seen ANR's skeletal extrapolation from the bones that
have washed up--"
"Hasn't everyone?"
"...Fully fleshed, he'd be over a hundred meters long. That right,
Carl?"
I agreed.
"...Not much of a brain box, though, for his bulk."
"Smart enough to stay out of our locker."
Chuckles, because nothing exists but this room, really. The world
outside is an empty, sleet drummed deck. We lean back and make clouds.
"Boss lady does not approve of unauthorized fly fishing."
"Boss lady can walk north till her hat floats."
"What did she say in there?"
"She told me that my place, with fish manure, is on the bottom."
"You don't Slide?"
"I bait."
"We'll see."
"That's all I do. If she wants a Slideman she's going to have to ask
nicely."
"You think she'll have to?"
"I think she'll have to."
"And if she does, can you do it?"
"A fair question," I puffed. "I don't know the answer, though."
I'd incorporate my soul and trade forty percent of the stock for the
answer. I'd give a couple years off my life for the answer. But there
doesn't seem to be a lineup of supernatural takers, because no one knows.
Supposing when we get out there, luck being with us, we find ourselves an
Ikky? Supposing we succeed in baiting him and get lines on him. What then?
If we get him shipside, will she hold on or crack up? What if she's made of
sterner stuff than Davits, who used to hunt sharks with poison-darted air
pistols? Supposing she lands him and Davits has to stand there like a video
extra.
Worse yet, supposing she asks for Davits and he still stands there like
a video extra or something else--say, some yellowbellied embodiment named
Cringe?
It was when I got him up above the eight-foot horizon of steel and
looked out at all that body, sloping on and on till it dropped out of sight
like a green mountain range...And that head. Small for the body, but still
immense. Fat, craggy, with lidless roulettes that had spun black and red
since before my forefathers decided to try the New Continent. And swaying.
Fresh narco-tanks had been connected. It needed another shot, fast. But
I was paralyzed.
It had made a noise like God playing a Hammond organ...
_And looked at me!_
I don't know if seeing is even the same process in eyes like those. I
doubt it. Maybe I was just a gray blur behind a black rock, with the
plexi-reflected sky hurting its pupils. But it fixed on me. Perhaps the
snake doesn't really paralyze the rabbit, perhaps it's just that rabbits are
cowards by constitution. But it began to struggle and I still couldn't move,
fascinated.
Fascinated by all that power, by those eyes, they found me there
fifteen minutes later, a little broken about the head and shoulders, the
Inject still unpushed.
And I dream about those eyes. I want to face them once more, even if
their finding takes forever. I've got to know if there's something inside me
that sets me apart from a rabbit, from notched plates of reflexes and
instincts that always fall apart in exactly the same way whenever the
proper combination is spun.
Looking down, I noticed that my hand was shaking. Glancing up, I
noticed that no one else was noticing.
I finished my drink and emptied my pipe. It was late and no songbirds
were singing.
I sat whittling, my legs hanging over the aft edge, the chips spinning
down into the furrow of our wake. Three days out. No action.
"You!"
"Me?"
"You."
Hair like the end of the rainbow, eyes like nothing in nature, fine
teeth.
"Hello."
"There's a safety regulation against what you're doing, you know."
"I know. I've been worrying about it all morning."
A delicate curl climbed my knife then drifted out behind us. It settled
into the foam and was plowed under. I watched her reflection in my blade,
taking a secret pleasure in its distortion.
"Are you baiting me?" she finally asked.
I heard her laugh then, and turned, knowing it had been intentional.
"What, me?"
"I could push you off from here, very easily."
"I'd make it back."
"Would you push me off, then--some dark night, perhaps?"
"They're all dark, Miss Luharich. No, I'd rather make you a gift of my
carving."
She seated herself beside me then, and I couldn't help but notice the
dimples in her knees. She wore white shorts and a halter and still had an
offworld tan to her which was awfully appealing. I almost felt a twinge of
guilt at having planned the whole scene, but my right hand still blocked her
view of the wooden animal.
"Okay, I'll bite. What have you got for me?"
"Just a second. It's almost finished."
Solemnly, I passed her the little wooden jackass I had been carving. I
felt a little sorry and slightly jackass-ish myself, but I had to follow
through. I always do. The mouth was split into a braying grin. The ears were
upright.
She didn't smile and she didn't frown. She just studied it.
"It's very good," she finally said, "like most things you do--and
appropriate, perhaps."
"Give it to me." I extended a palm.
She handed it back and I tossed it out over the water. It missed the
white water and bobbed for awhile like a pigmy seahorse.
"Why did you do that?"
"It was a poor joke. I'm sorry."
"Maybe you are right, though. Perhaps this time I've bitten off a
little too much."
I snorted.
"Then why not do something safer, like another race?"
She shook her end of the rainbow.
"No. It has to be an Ikky."
"Why?"
"Why did you want one so badly that you threw away a fortune?"
"Many reasons," I said. "An unfrocked analyst who held black therapy
sessions in his basement once told me, 'Mister Davits, you need to reinforce
the image of your masculinity by catching one of every kind of fish in
existence.' Fish are a very ancient masculinity symbol, you know. So I set
out to do it. I have one more to go.
--Why do you want to reinforce _your_ masculinity?"
"I don't," she said. "I don't want to reinforce anything but Luharich
Enterprises. My chief statistician once said, 'Miss Luharich, sell all the
cold cream and face powder in the System and you'll be a happy girl. Rich,
too.' And he was right. I am the proof. I can look the way I do and do
anything, and I sell most of the lipstick and face powder in the System--but
I have to be _able_ to do anything."
"You do look cool and efficient," I observed.
"I don't feel cool," she said, rising. "Let's go for a swim."
"May I point out that we're making pretty good time?"
"If you want to indicate the obvious, you may. You said you could make
it back to the ship, unassisted. Change your mind?"
"No."
"Then get us two scuba outfits and I'll race you under Tensquare.
"I'll win, too," she added.
I stood and looked down at her, because that usually makes me feel
superior to women.
"Daughter of Lir, eyes of Picasso," I said, "you've got yourself a
race. Meet me at the forward Rook, starboard, in ten minutes."
"Ten minutes," she agreed.
And ten minutes it was. From the center blister to the Rook took maybe
two of them, with the load I was carrying. My sandals grew very hot and I
was glad to shuck them for flippers when I reached the comparative cool of
the corner.
We slid into harnesses and adjusted our gear. She had changed into a
trim one-piece green job that made me shade my eyes and look away, then look
back again.
I fastened a rope ladder and kicked it over the side. Then I pounded on
the wall of the Rook.
"Yeah?"
"You talk to the port Rook, aft?" I called.
"They're all set up," came the answer. "There's ladders and draglines
all over that end."
"You sure you want to do this?" asked the sunburnt little gink who was
her publicity man, Anderson yclept.
He sat beside the Rook in a deckchair, sipping lemonade through a
straw.
"It might be dangerous," he observed, sunken-mouthed. (His teeth were
beside him, in another glass.)
"That's right," she smiled. "It _will_ be dangerous. Not overly,
though."
"Then why don't you let me get some pictures? We'd have them back to
Lifeline in an hour. They'd be in New York by tonight. Good copy."
"No," she said, and turned away from both of us.
"Here, keep these for me."
She passed him a box full of her unseeing, and when she turned back to
me they were the same brown that I remembered.
"Ready?"
"No," I said, tautly. "Listen carefully, Jean. If you're going to play
this game there are a few rules. First," I counted, "we're going to be
directly beneath the hull, so we have to start low and keep moving. If we
bump the bottom, we could rupture an air tank..."
She began to protest that any moron knew that and I cut her down.
"Second," I went on, "there won't be much light, so we'll stay close
together, and we will _both_ carry torches."
Her wet eyes flashed.
"I dragged you out of Govino without--"
Then she stopped and turned away. She picked up a lamp.
"Okay. Torches. Sorry."
"...And watch out for the drive-screws," I finished. "There'll be
strong currents for at least fifty meters behind them."
She wiped her eyes and adjusted the mask.
"All right, let's go."
We went.
She led the way, at my insistence. The surface layer was pleasantly
warm. At two fathoms the water was bracing; at five it was nice and cold. At
eight we let go the swinging stairway and struck out. Tensquare sped forward
and we raced in the opposite direction, tattooing the hull yellow at
ten-second intervals.
The hull stayed where it belonged, but we raced on like two darkside
satellites. Periodically, I tickled her frog feet with my light and traced
her antennae of bubbles. About a five meter lead was fine; I'd beat her in
the home stretch, but I couldn't let her drop behind yet.
Beneath us, black. Immense. Deep. The Mindanao of Venus, where eternity
might eventually pass the dead to a rest in cities of unnamed fishes. I
twisted my head away and touched the hull with a feeler of light; it told me
we were about a quarter of the way along.
I increased my beat to match her stepped-up stroke, and narrowed the
distance which she had suddenly opened by a couple of meters. She sped up
again and I did, too. I spotted her with my beam.
She turned and it caught on her mask. I never knew whether she'd been
smiling. Probably. She raised two fingers in a V-for-Victory and then cut
ahead at full speed.
I should have known. I should have felt it coming. It was just a race
to her, something else to win. Damn the torpedos!
So I leaned into it, hard. I don't shake in the water. Or, if I do it
doesn't matter and I don't notice it. I began to close the gap again.
She looked back, sped on, looked back. Each time she looked it was
nearer, until I'd narrowed it down to the original five meters.
Then she hit the jatoes.
That's what I had been fearing. We were about half-way under and she
shouldn't have done it. The powerful jets of compressed air could easily
rocket her upward into the hull, or tear something loose if she allowed her
body to twist. Their main use is in tearing free from marine plants or
fighting bad currents. I had wanted them along as a safety measure, because
of the big suck-and-pull windmills behind.
She shot ahead like a meteorite, and I could feel a sudden tingle of
perspiration leaping to meet and mix with the churning waters.
I swept ahead, not wanting to use my own guns, and she tripled,
quadrupled the margin.
The jets died and she was still on course. Okay, I was an old
fuddyduddy. She _could_ have messed up and headed toward the top.
I plowed the sea and began to gather back my yardage, a foot at a time.
I wouldn't be able to catch her or beat her now, but I'd be on the ropes
before she hit deck.
Then the spinning magnets began their insistence and she wavered. It
was an awfully powerful drag, even at this distance. The call of the meat
grinder.
I'd been scratched up by one once, under the _Dolphin_, a fishing boat
of the middle-class. I _had_ been drinking, but it was also a rough day, and
the thing had been turned on prematurely. Fortunately, it was turned off in
time, also, and a tendon-stapler made everything good as new, except in the
log, where it only mentioned that I'd been drinking. Nothing about it being
off-hours when I had the right to do as I damn well pleased.
She had slowed to half her speed, but she was still moving cross-wise,
toward the port, aft corner. I began to feel the pull myself and had to slow
down. She'd made it past the main one, but she seemed too far back. It's
hard to gauge distances under water, but each red beat of time told me I was
right. She was out of danger from the main one, but the smaller port screw,
located about eighty meters in, was no longer a threat but a certainty.
She had turned and was pulling away from it now. Twenty meters
separated us. She was standing still. Fifteen.
Slowly, she began a backward drifting. I hit my jatoes, aiming two
meters behind her and about twenty back of the blades.
Straightline! Thankgod! Catching, softbelly, leadpipe on shoulder
SWIMLIKEHELL! maskcracked, not broke though AND UP!
We caught a line and I remember brandy.
Into the cradle endlessly rocking I spit, pacing. Insomnia tonight
and left shoulder sore again, so let it rain on me--they can cure
rheumatism. Stupid as hell. What I said. In blankets and shivering.
She: "Carl, I can't say it." Me: "Then call it square for that night
in Govino, Miss Luharich. Huh?" She: nothing. Me: "Any more of that
brandy?" She: "Give me another, too." Me: sounds of sipping. It had
only lasted three months. No alimony. Many $ on both sides. Not
sure whether they were happy or not. Wine-dark Aegean. Good fishing.
Maybe he should have spent more time on shore. Or perhaps she
shouldn't have. Good swimmer, though. Dragged him all the way to
Vido to wring out his lungs. Corfu should have brought them closer.
Didn't. I think that mental cruelty was a trout. He wanted to go to
Canada. She: "Go to hell if you want!" He: "Will you go along?"
She: "No." But she did, anyhow. Many hells. Expensive. He lost a
monster or two. She inherited a couple. Lot of lightning tonight.
Stupid as hell. Civility's the coffin of a conned soul. By whom?
--Sounds like a bloody neo-ex....But I hate you, Anderson, with your
glass full of teeth and her new eyes....Can't keep this pipe lit, keep
sucking tobacco. Spit again!
Seven days out and the scope showed Ikky.
Bells jangled, feet pounded, and some optimist set the thermostat in
the Hopkins. Malvern wanted me to sit it out, but I slipped into my harness
and waited for whatever came. The bruise looked worse than it felt. I had
exercised every day and the shoulder hadn't stiffened on me.
A thousand meters ahead and thirty fathoms deep, it tunneled our path.
Nothing showed on the surface.
"Will we chase him?" asked an excited crewman.
"Not unless she feels like using money for fuel." I shrugged.
Soon the scope was clear, and it stayed that way. We remained on alert
and held our course.
I hadn't said over a dozen words to my boss since the last time we went
drowning together, so I decided to raise the score.
"Good afternoon," I approached. "What's new?"
"He's going north-northeast. We'll have to let this one go. A few more
days and we can afford some chasing. Not yet."
_Sleek head..._
I nodded. "No telling where this one's headed."
"How's your shoulder?"
"All right. How about you?"
_Daughter of Lir..._
"Fine. By the way, you're down for a nice bonus."
_Eyes of perdition!_
"Don't mention it," I told her back.
Later that afternoon, and appropriately, a storm shattered. (I prefer
"shattered" to "broke." It gives a more accurate idea of the behavior of
tropical storms on Venus and saves a lot of words.) Remember that inkwell I
mentioned earlier? Now take it between thumb and forefinger and hit its side
with a hammer. Watch yourself! Don't get splashed or cut--
Dry, then drenched. The sky one million bright fractures as the hammer
falls. And sounds of breaking.
"Everyone below?" suggested the loudspeakers to the already scurrying
crew.
Where was I? Who do you think was doing the loudspeaking?
Everything loose went overboard when the water got to walking, but by
then no people were loose. The Slider was the first thing below decks. Then
the big lifts lowered their shacks.
I had hit it for the nearest Rook with a yell the moment I recognized
the pre-brightening of the holocaust. From there I cut in the speakers and
spent half a minute coaching the track team.
Minor injuries had occurred, Mike told me over the radio, but nothing
serious. I, however, was marooned for the duration. The Rooks do not lead
anywhere; they're set too far out over the hull to provide entry downwards,
what with the extensor shelves below.
So I undressed myself of the tanks which I had worn for the past
several hours, crossed my flippers on the table, and leaned back to watch
the hurricane. The top was black as the bottom and we were in between, and
somewhat illuminated because of all that flat, shiny space. The waters
didn't rain down--they just sort of got together and dropped.
The Rooks were secure enough--they'd weathered any number of these
onslaughts--it's just that their positions gave them a greater arc of rise
and descent when Tensquare makes like the rocker of a very nervous grandma.
I had used the belts form my rig to strap myself into the bolted-down chair,
and I removed several years in purgatory from the soul of whoever left a
pack of cigarettes in the table drawer.
I watched the water make teepees and mountains and hands and trees
until I started seeing faces and people. So I called Mike.
"What are you doing down there?"
"Wondering what you're doing up there," he replied. "What's it like?"
"You're from the Midwest, aren't you?"
"Yeah."
"Get bad storms out there?"
"Sometimes."
"Try to think of the worst one you were ever in. Got a slide rule
handy?"
"Right here."
"Then put a one under it, imagine a zero or two following after, and
multiply the thing out."
"I can't imagine the zeros."
"Then retain the multiplicand--that's all you can do."
"So what are you doing up there?"
"I've strapped myself in the chair. I'm watching things roll around the
floor right now."
I looked up and out again. I saw one darker shadow in the forest.
"Are you praying or swearing?"
"Damned if I know. But if this were the Slider--if only this were the
Slider!"
"_He's out there?_"
I nodded, forgetting that he couldn't see me.
Big, as I remembered him. He'd only broken surface for a few moments,
to look around. _There is no power on Earth that can be compared with him
who was made to fear no one._ I dropped my cigarette. It was the same as
before. Paralysis and an unborn scream.
"You all right, Carl?"
He had looked at me again. Or seemed to. Perhaps that mindless brute
had been waiting half a millennium to ruin the life of a member of the most
highly developed species in business....
"You okay?"
...Or perhaps it had been ruined already, long before their encounter,
and theirs was just a meeting of beasts, the stronger bumping the weaker
aside, body to psyche....
"Carl, dammit! Say something!"
He broke again, this time nearer. Did you ever see the trunk of a
tornado? It seems like something alive, moving around in all that dark.
Nothing has a right to be so big, so strong, and moving. It's a sickening
sensation.
"Please answer me."
He was gone and did not come back that day. I finally made a couple of
wisecracks at Mike, but I held my next cigarette in my right hand.
The next seventy or eighty thousand waves broke by with a monotonous
similarity. The five days that held them were also without distinction. The