Life Stories Page 13

  And then there was a lad and a girl. Or a man and a woman. It didn't matter. There was no way to figure out the age of earthlings. They were walking together and it was immediately obvious that they would be staying together.

  "Three clients," Robert said to himself.

  The earthlings came up to the dock. Miguel and his boys stood on their boat's stern, and the other crews fell into line too, best face forward.

  Robert didn't get up.

  The one in the wheelchair chose first. He rolled up to the ketch and gave an imperious wave. Miguel and his older son went down to help. They left the chair on shore and carried the invalid aboard.

  The kid who was doing it right picked Daniel's sloop. In his mind, Robert gave him the okay on that: best boat, best crew. He also saw how rapidly the guy's eyelids were twitching. And he wished him luck.

  Then the lad and the girl boarded his sloop.

  "Your name's Robert," the girl said. "You were recommended to us."

  Robert nodded. On rare—very rare—occasions in the past, he'd refused a client. He couldn't always explain to himself why. But if he didn't like a client, he'd refuse.

  "We want to hire your boat and you," the girl went on.

  "You know the rules?" Robert asked.

  "Yes."

  "A thousand credits. No more than three days. No guarantees. If we don't find a snark or if we find one but can't kill it, I still get the full fee. On board, my word is law. If there's work to be done, you'll work."

  The girl nodded. She seemed to be in charge here, but Robert looked at the young man, meeting his firm, steady gaze. He nodded too.

  "You'll bring no more than a hundred grams of metal with you," Robert went on. "Best to bring nothing at all. No technology. Absolutely none. No electrical devices or energy sources. If you have anything implanted, the hunt'll be a washout."

  "We know," the girl said. "The snarks sense metal and electromagnetic fields. Right? I had an implant, but I got it removed before lift-off."

  "Those are all the rules?" the young man asked. There was an assurance in his voice that inspired trust. People with that kind of voice are used to getting things done by persuasion; they don't even have to tell anyone what to do.

  "Yes."

  "We agree."

  Robert took another second. Once a captain had chosen, he couldn't just call off the hunt.

  He liked them. So what was bothering him?

  "How old are you?" Robert asked.

  "I'm twenty-six. Alina's twenty-seven." He paused, then added, "We're husband and wife. By the laws of Earth, we're a hundred percent legally competent."

  To Robert, that was important. He had nothing against rejuvenates, who could look like teenagers when they were a hundred years old. If a person had the means to prolong his youth and was enjoying life, why not? But rejuvenates seemed unpredictable to him. A mature mind in a youthful body is sketchier than old wine in a new bottle.

  "Then we can shake on it," Robert said, standing up.

  The lad had a strong, reliable, masculine grip.

  "Thank you for your confidence, captain," he said earnestly. "We're all yours. My name's Alexander the Younger. But you can call me Alexander."

  "I'll call you Alex. Alexander if you earn it."

  "Deal."

  By evening they were five miles off shore, on a northward tack. Snarks love the cold. After twenty-four hours in that direction, given a good following wind, the odds for success would go up.

  Miguel's ketch was also heading north. He was almost twice as far from shore and had overtaken the Bad Rap by seven or eight miles.

  Robert didn't care. A snark hunt was always the luck of the draw, and it didn't matter who was first to the hunting grounds. And the fact was, you didn't always have to go that far out, because snarks could be caught right by the dock. Or you could roam the northern waters for months but never once see, rising above the water, a head atop a thin, white neck with big eyes and wreathed in stiff, trembling quills.

  Still, the odds were better in the North.

  The cabin door banged. Robert had encouraged his two hunters to get some sleep, and they'd had a good six hours. Now Alina was coming up on deck. Her face was fresh, squeaky-clean. Probably she'd brought some moist towelettes with her, because the only sink was in the galley.

  "Good evening, captain," the woman said.

  She went aft without waiting for an answer. Not arrogantly, as if she owned the place and was just giving a servant a casual "hi," but like a levelheaded woman who didn't need to distract a man just to make small talk.

  Robert smiled. He took out a precious cigarette and lit up. Then he looked back.

  Half-hidden by the mast and the rigging, Alina had dropped her pants and was hanging over the stern. Sheepishly, Robert turned around.

  Women had to be told how to take care of business at sea. They were usually incredulous, and often they'd hold it in for half a day. And, whatever else happened, they'd make a big thing about everyone not looking.

  This woman was acting like a seasoned sailor.

  Good clients.

  Which of them was sick? And with what?

  Cancers could be cured on Earth. Almost every kind. And nobody with a horrific late-stage cancer would act so calm or look so healthy.

  The old man in the wheelchair probably had a rotting spine. It was a painful, difficult thing, but might not be terminal for decades.

  The kid who'd gone with Daniel had cysts from the twisting sickness. When there was that much blinking, that often, the bugs were within three or four days of hatching. Either Daniel would find a snark by then, or those bugs would eat the guy's brain.

  But these two?

  Robert thought a little, while his hands kept doing what they did. Tighten the halyard. Look at the sky. Glance at the compass card. Turn the wheel two points to the west...

  They were both sick, he decided. Which meant it was Michelaux syndrome, a sexually transmitted disease. Unbearable pain, paralysis, and a death that could come at any moment.

  No worries. The odds were still good. He thought about the men, women and children who had sailed on his sloop. The sick, the crippled, the paralyzed, the mad. They had all needed one thing—a snark. The heart of a snark. And they had almost all got one.

  Robert figured he would make it in time. Usually the ones he liked made it in time.

  Alina came up, stood near him, and took a pair of binoculars out of her pocket. Robert eyed them suspiciously, but they were the right kind: ceramic and glass, not a single metal part, no chips, no batteries. Alina raised them to her eyes, followed Miguel's little boat for awhile, then took to scanning the desolate shore. Usually Robert hustled women off the bridge. But for this one, he was making an exception.

  "On the shore," Alina said, "there are animals like seals but with long necks. Are they snarks?"

  "Snark pups," Robert replied.

  "Oh!" Alina stared at the shore for a time. "I didn't think they'd be so ... graceful," she confessed. "Or that there'd be so many... Why can't we catch a pup?"

  "They're easy to catch, very friendly. The youngsters love playing with them."

  "Did you?"

  "Sure. You can swim with them. Way out to sea. They understand when you want them to go back. You can play ball with them too."

  "They're not ... rational, are they?" Alina asked.

  "Like dogs. Or dolphins. A commission looked into it and concluded they aren't rational."

  Robert didn't give her the details. That the commission had been made up of a couple of dozen old, sick scientists. Or that they had returned to Earth hale and hearty, their minds clear, and with not a thing ailing them. Earth medicine could make a man young again. But not even it could cure everything. Only snarks could cure everything.

  "So why don't we hunt the pups?" Alina asked.

  "You do know that the snark doesn't really have a heart?"

  "Of course." She glared at Robert. "They have a vascular circulatory
system. What we call a heart is an integral hormonal gland through which... Yes, I get it!"

  "The pups don't have the same hormones as the adults. They go to sea when they're five years old. At seven or eight, the thing we call their heart is fully functional. You can tell, because they grow their quills then."

  "I get it." She lowered the binoculars. "Shall I spell you, captain?"

  Robert hesitated. He was not used to trusting so quickly. And on top of that, she was a woman.

  "Are you up for it?"

  "I'm well trained. Crewed yachts for a year."

  "Which ones?"

  "A sloop like yours. I selected the Bad Rap before we left Earth."

  Robert looked her in the eye and stepped away from the wheel. She took his place.

  "Hold this course. The shoreline runs almost due north. Stay five miles from shore. Keep an eye on the sky. It's often squally here."

  "Don't worry, captain."

  Robert went below, to the wardroom. He was sure that Alexander would still be sleeping, but found him standing at the stove in the tiny galley. The partition was drawn back, so Robert could see every move he made.

  On the even flame given off by a coal briquette in the small range, a heatproof glass saucepan was simmering. Wielding two long knives, Alexander was at the little table, cutting up a fish. Up went the matte gray blades, hung in the air for a fraction of a second, and came down to slice gently into the hepu's oily flesh. Blood and slimy chunks of guts, along with bone fragments, should have been splattering out from under the knives. But instead, something amazing was happening. The knives were taking thin cuts of fish and flipping them into the air; one blade briskly removed skin and scales, while the other split each cut into two slim slices and tossed them aside, to join the rest of the fish slices lying on a plate.

  Robert knew how sharp a knife would have to be to carve up the compact, clingy hepu flesh like that.

  "Are they metal?" he asked.

  "Ceramic," Alexander said, not turning around. "They're good knives."

  Robert loved good knives. He had a Solingen from Earth at home—a good knife that had cost him fifty credits. But he couldn't even guess how much these knives went for.

  "Hepu isn't the best fish there is," he said apologetically. "I brought it because it keeps well... But I've got sea-glog too. It tastes better."

  "No problems," Alex mumbled. "No problems. We'll make something of this."

  Robert thought for a moment, then sat down. Sleep could wait.

  Those astonishing knives had turned the hepu into one small heap of meat and another of scraps. Alex swept the scraps into the garbage pail. He carefully wiped the knives off on a cloth and slid them into a belt sheath. Robert frowned. When they had boarded, Alex had not been wearing that belt.

  "Hepu's best fried," Robert said. "Boiled hepu isn't good at all."

  "No problems," Alex said again.

  A little canvas bag came out of nowhere and from the bag came some mauve pongo leaves. Alex dropped five of them into a saucepan. Sniffed the steam. Added another leaf. And a small pinch of salt.

  Robert shook his head. No one ever boiled fish with pongo leaves. That was guaranteed to make it inedible.

  And what came next made no sense at all. With two little sticks like the chopsticks that the colony Orientals ate with, Alex picked up a sliver of filleted fish and plunged it into the boiling water for three seconds, took it out, and slung it onto a clean plate. So sushi was on the menu?

  When all the fish had been in and out of the boiling water, Alex poured some of the liquid from the pan, squeezed a lemon into what was left and sprinkled it with half a cup of powder—like flour but mauvish-gray—and a few pinches of dried herbs. Some of the herbs had a familiar aroma. Some were in small glass jars, and probably from Earth.

  "Any minute now," said Alex, although Robert hadn't said a word. "I know you're hungry."

  There was a frying pan set to one side. Alex removed the inverted plate that served as a lid, revealing a stack of thin flatbreads. He must have cooked up those tortillas earlier... He put a couple of fillet pieces onto a flatbread, topped them with two spoonfuls of sauce, and rolled it all up. The sauce had thickened and gone blue. Nothing fit to eat could be a color like that.

  But it did smell good.

  "This one's for you, captain." Alex handed him the wrap and started rolling another for himself.

  Robert took a careful bite. The flatbread was still warm; the fish and sauce in it were hot.

  Good. Very good! He would never have believed that hepu could taste so good. The sauce might have looked horrendous, but it went down smooth, with a light, tartish note that brightened the oily fish. Before Robert knew what he was doing, he had finished the wrap and had even licked off his sauce-smeared fingers.

  "Here you go, captain."

  A plate with two more wraps was set in front of him, and Alexander took another plate (how did he put them together so quickly?) topside.

  Robert ate, cleaning the drops of sauce off his fingers with his tongue. Superb! A man doesn't have to be a good cook. But if a man does cook, he should cook superbly. A man should do only what he can carry off superbly. Women are good at everything else.

  He peered into the galley. There was a little fish left, two flatbreads, and some sauce in the pan. He realized that it was there for him. He poured a glass of cold tea from a porcelain teapot. Drank it thirstily. Then he made himself one more wrap and went up on deck.

  And stopped short.

  A mile dead ahead, a snark neck swayed above the water. The open mouth was turned to the sky. A thin, barely audible sound carried over the waves. The snark was singing. Alex and Alina, their arms around each other, stood at the wheel. The sloop was heading straight for the snark.

  But Robert knew why snarks serenaded the sky.

  "Alex!" he barked. "Reef the sail! Squall's coming!"

  The snark's song was bewitching, especially when heard for the first time. Robert had to shake Alex to bring him out of it. He grabbed them both by the shoulders and turned them around. A churning bank of violet clouds was rapidly bearing down on them from the ocean side. Off and on, the clouds were stitched through with a white flash of forked lightning that made no sound. The song grew louder.

  "It's close!" Alina yelled. "A snark! Do you see it? A snark!"

  The woman's eyes were merrily mad.

  "Go to your cabin!" Robert pushed her away from the wheel. "Get a move on! Dog the hatches and secure your things!"

  The violet clouds had fast covered up the sun, which was setting into the sea. It was suddenly dark and cold. Another bolt of lightning sparkled in Alina's eyes. Thunder rolled. The snark was singing, rejoicing, triumphing. The pale flame of a corona discharge danced on its quills.

  Alina took one last look at the snark and dashed below. The wooden hatch banged shut. Alexander was already out on the weather side, leaning against the boom while he reefed the sails. He was almost done, so Robert didn't go to help. He fastened a lifeline to his belt, glancing dubiously at the buckle. He should have replaced it but there was no time now...

  "Lifeline!" he yelled. "Alex! Tether up!"

  Alexander heard him. Under the captain's exasperated eye, he lunged for a belt and, with the moments ticking away, buckled it and secured the line to the mast.

  And it was on them.

  The Bad Rap slid along a wave crest, hovered motionless over an abyss of black glass. And slammed down, in a cloud of salt spray. Then shot upward, its bow caught on another wave. The sloop was playing on a giant's swing set.

  Robert laughed, holding onto the wheel for dear life. There was no sun. The sky was foam. The song had died away. The frigid water...

  "Captain!"

  Alexander had struggled to him along the galloping, bucking deck. He grabbed him by the shoulder. Robert read his lips, not hearing the words: "How much longer?"

  "Five ... ten ..." To get his point across, he took his hands from the wheel for an
instant. And the ocean got in with a sneaky punch against the bottom of the sloop's hull. The next wave that had come to lift the Bad Rap up suddenly fell apart. The boat that had been loping up now wallowed downward. Robert was pitched up by the impact and realized that he was suspended in the air, like a cartoon character with the floor pulled out from under him. The deck, covered with seething, streaming water, was falling away from him. Black walls of waves capered all around, gloating. Alexander had grabbed the masterless wheel, gripping it hard with both hands.

  But the brief instant of surreal weightlessness passed. Robert flopped down, his feet hitting the deck at an angle; he had his hands on the wheel for an instant before he was jerked away, dragged across the deck, smashed into the port rail ... and heard the lifeline give way, with a moist popping sound. The unbuckled belt flew past, as if the lifeline were a rubber band wanting nothing more than to snap back.

  Robert felt his feet slipping between the deck and the rail. He clutched hopelessly at the damp deck, but his fingers just slid. He knew that he would be able to catch hold of the rail on his way overboard. Where he would hang for the ten or twenty seconds it would take for the next wave to come and sweep him away...

  Something stabbed through the air and drove softly into the deck. Robert hadn't seen a thing but his hands instinctively clenched around the handle of a ceramic knife. Alexander put back the second blade he had unsheathed and took the wheel again. For a few seconds, Robert dangled there, clinging to that knife. Then the deck tilted forward, and he sprang to his feet, dashed over, made a grab for another belt that was tethered to the mast. And buckled it.

  Alexander was steering the sloop straight into the waves. His stance was tense, he had no real feel for the boat, and he was doing everything the way the books said. But for now, nothing more was needed.

  Robert stayed by the mast, letting Alexander spend the remaining minutes piloting the sloop through the storm. The squall was ending as quickly as it had begun. The clouds had moved shoreward, dropping a brief downpour as they went, the lightning died away, and the waves subsided. Somewhere far to sea, the snow-white spot that was the snark glittered, then disappeared into the waves. After a storm, snarks dove deep, for an hour, for five, for ten hours.