South Coast (Shaman's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1)

by Nathan Lowell

  “What else did Jake say?” Red asked quietly.

  “Spinelli ain’t happy, but Jimmy was actin’ like it was some kinda lark.”

  Red grunted, and sipped, but didn’t reply.

  After a few minutes of companionable silence, Alan asked, “So, who’s ready to take a boat here?”

  Red never looked up and spoke without pause. “Frank’s ready. He’s gettin’ over the close call with the Esmerelda, but he was ready last year. Just wasn’t a boat for him. He’s ready to skipper and it would be good for Sandra not to have him aboard. Janie McGill’s got Aaron Stewart ready to move up, and I’d have to ask Richard Krugg on the third, but I think we’ve got one or two more ready to take the helm.”

  Alan raised an eyebrow at the mention of the village shaman. “Where we gonna get crews? We got enough young’uns to bring along?”

  Red snorted. “Sandra’s eldest been supercargo on the Windsong since he could walk. Move him over with Frank. They get along right well. Hank’s kid has been ready to go for a year, but Hank’s such a hothead. What’s her name–Sally?”

  “Susan,” Alan supplied.

  “Yeah, put Susan with Sandra and move the Salmons kid to mate. That’ll take care of Sandra’s new boat.”

  “That still leaves a lot of open berths,” Alan said. “Boat’s no good without the hands to fish her.”

  “Jimmy knows that, too.”

  Alan gave a kind of sideways nod in agreement. “But he’s going back out after–what? Twenty stanyers?”

  Red bobbed his head once, idly tracing a finger through the wet ring on the table. “Jimmy grew up with it. He’s forgotten more than some of the skippers know. I’m not worried about Jimmy,” Red said.

  “What are you worried about, Red?”

  “Honestly?” Red responded, looking at the other man out of the corner of his eye.

  Alan shrugged and gestured with his beer.

  “I’m worried about what in the name of all the watery gods is going on that’s so serious that Jimmy Pirano is taking a boat out himself.”

  “I talked to Carruthers up in Personnel, too,” Alan said. “It’s the lawyers. They’ve got something going about the tons landed. They weren’t interested in profit, just on landings.”

  Red stared at Alan. “That makes no sense.”

  “It does if they’re trying to get control of the planet away from The Ole Man. If they can get enough people deported, it’ll be a black eye to the company because it’ll be that much harder to make those ridiculous quotas with fewer and fewer boats fishing.”

  Red stared at Alan without moving for a few heartbeats. “What does that gain them?”

  “Dunno. But somebody up there in Dunsany has to know that these numbers are ridiculous. Quotas are one thing, we’ve had landing quotas since the first year on planet.”

  Red nodded his agreement.

  “These aren’t quotas. These are impossible.”

  “So they want our boats,” Red said.

  “They want us gone,” Alan said.

  Red shielded his look of surprise behind his mug, but Alan saw it.

  “What else can it be?” Alan asked. “The quota increase is foolishly large. We’ve never had a policy of ‘meet the quota or else’ before and most people are overlooking that little detail. There has to be something they want here that the fishery is in the way of.”

  “Could be some high level finance scheme to drive the price of Pirano down by ruining the production capacity,” Red said. “Maybe they’re trying to make us look bad for some reason.”

  “If they’re getting ready to sell it, you’d think they’d wanna make it look good.”

  Red shrugged. “Yeah. That’s why this makes no sense.”

  Mary rang the ship’s bell mounted on the bar. “Last call, ladies and gents, last call.”

  Alan nodded at Red’s glass. “You want another?”

  Red shook his head. “Nope. I’m done. I need to grab a nap before we get underway. I should be going, but thanks for the skinny.”

  Alan shrugged. “We’re not on different sides here.”

  Red drained his glass and nodded. “I know, Alan. I know.” With that, he stood up and took his empty back to the bar and, with some nods and waves to various and sundry, slipped out into the darkness.

  Chapter Five

  Callum’s Cove

  October 7, 2304

  When Otto came out for breakfast, he found his mother already working on PlanetNet. She looked up and smiled.

  “Good morning, hon. How’d you sleep?” She pushed back from the terminal to favor him with her full attention.

  “Good." He grabbed a glass of granapple juice and a muffin and sat at the table where he could talk. He started to say something, then stopped, suddenly not sure what he wanted to talk about.

  His mother just sat and waited.

  “Where is he?” Otto asked.

  “I think he’s gone into the village to check in with Sandra Jamison. What’s on your mind, Otto?”

  “What if I don’t wanna be the shaman?”

  His mother smiled back. “Then don’t be the shaman.”

  “But father...he’s...that’s not an option with him.” Otto struggled around the words.

  His mother sighed. “I know, Otto, but it is the tradition. The shaman’s son becomes the shaman. I know it’s frustrating, but being shaman is really an honor. You become the spiritual center of the community in a lot of ways. You can do things that no other person can do and help people in ways that nobody else can.”

  “I know, mother, but–I suppose it sounds selfish–what if I don’t wanna help them?”

  His mother cocked her head a little to the left. “Why wouldn’t you want to help people?” she asked. “Is there somebody in particular you don’t like?”

  Otto flushed red at that. “No, no, that’s not what I mean at all,” he rushed on, becoming more flustered as he went. “It’s just–what if I wanna be a fisherman?” he blurted out.

  His mother shrugged her shoulders. “Then fish. What has that to do with being shaman?”

  “But father says I need to learn to be a shaman and that I need to listen to the world.”

  Rachel smiled at him and let her arms collapse into her lap. “Your father is a good man, Otto. He wants what’s best for all of us and sometimes he thinks he knows what it is, but just between you and me? I think–just sometimes–he doesn’t. There’s nothing that says the shaman can’t fish. There’s nothing that says he must either. It’s one of those odd company rules about the spiritual leaders in the community. They’re only required to be recognized as tending to the spiritual needs of some group of people and the company has to let them stay under the terms set up in their original charter.”

  Otto stared at his mother, unmoving except for the rather piscine oscillation of his lower jaw.

  His mother waited for his brain to catch up.

  “Why doesn’t Father fish?” Otto asked. It wasn’t the question he wanted to ask, but only the first one to surface through the turbulence.

  “Your grandfather was a sheep herder, Otto. When he came into his gift, he moved here to Callum’s Cove from the Eastern Reaches and brought your father with him. He’s been here most of his life, but he’s never been asked to join a crew. He didn’t grow up on the water like most of the kids in the village.”

  “But didn’t he want to?” Otto asked, his mind not tracking clearly in the wake of the ideas being cast across the table so early in the morning.

  His mother just smiled and shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps you should ask him.”

  “Why won’t he let me fish?”

  “Who says he won’t? And how can he stop you from fishing?”

  “But I’ve asked him. Lotsa times. And he always says no.” Otto said.

  “You’ve asked him if you can go out on the boats,” his mother said . “Not if you can fish. Of course he said no.”

  “But—” and there Otto ran out of
steam and closed his mouth with not quite a snap.

  Taking pity on him, his mother rose from her seat and crossed to the junk cupboard just inside the back door. It was the place in the house where things got tossed and sometimes resurfaced. She rummaged in the back and pulled out a battered utility carrier just about twice as big as a lunch box. “Here it is. I knew it was still here.”

  She placed it on the table. “There you are. Go fish.”

  “What is it?” Otto asked, eyeing the rather shabby looking carrier.

  “Open it and see.”

  Otto looked from his mother to the carrier a couple of times before stuffing the rest of his muffin in his mouth and reaching for the clasp. When he flicked the release, the utility clam-shelled open revealing a collection of small boxes, pigeonholed on one side and a strange oblong wooden frame wrapped in cord on the other. It took him a tick to figure out what he was looking at. “It’s a hand-line!”

  His mother made a little moue with her mouth.“Oh? Is it now?”

  “Whose is it?”

  “Well, it was mine. But you can use it if you like.” She grinned like a cat with a whole mouta to itself. “You know how it works?”

  “Mother. Of course, I know how. But don’t I have to go out in a boat to use this?”

  “I think as long as you get the hook baited correctly and put it in the ocean, you’re pretty much fishing. The boat part is largely optional.”

  “But where...?”

  “Hm. When I used to fish, I went out on the lee side of Bentley’s Head and cast out off one of those big square rocks out there into the channel where it’s deep. You know the place?”

  Otto blinked in astonishment, but nodded.

  “That’s where I’d go. If I didn’t have to stay here and work.”

  He looked into the utility once more and spotted hooks, weights, even a small gutting knife cleverly slotted into the case. “You used to fish?”

  “Honey, everyone here fishes,” his mother said with a smile. “Even your father. It’s just some of us catch different things. Now, scoot! Go fishing!”

  Otto drained his glass in a single go, closed the utility carefully, and grabbing a hat, headed for the door.

  “Otto!” his mother called just before he disappeared.

  He stopped and turned, fearful of being called back for some chore he’d forgotten.

  “Rockweed grows pretty thick between the rocks. Rummage around in there and look for the little white periwinkles with purple spots. Smash about five or six of them with a rock and use them for bait. The mouta love ’em.” She winked at him and settled back into her chair, making a little shooing motion with her hand.

  In a twinkling, he was gone. As Rachel turned back to her work in the soft morning light of the kitchen, she murmured to herself, “Ah, Rachel-my-girl, what have ye done? What have ye done?” She sighed and went back to work.

  Outside, Otto raced down the point and out onto Bentley’s Head. The morning was not yet very old and with his father tied up in the village, he hoped to be free for the day. Free to fish. It didn’t take long for him to get to the end of the point and find the squared off plates of rock along the lee side. They were a local landmark after all. He and Petie Hoskins had spent many an afternoon pretending they were pirates, each sailing his rock-ship in search of buried treasure. Back before Petie started going out fishing with his mother’s crew.

  He stood atop the farthest rock, savoring the moment. A fresh breeze flew across the top of the headland and just whispered about his head, ruffling his hair and blowing in his ears with a soft roar. There were no whitecaps in the cove, but the rollers blew in from the southeast. He could hear them collide mightily on the far side of the head. He cast his eyes across the sound and noted where the color changes marked the depths and thought he saw a likely place to drop his hook.

  As soon as he found bait. He placed the utility carefully on the rock and scrambled down into the rock weed, poking about with a stick until he’d collected a dozen or so of the small whelks hidden among the rocks. He clambered back up on to the flat and, with a handy flake of stone, smashed the shells to reveal the soft bodies within. In that instant, he felt a pang.

  He’d killed them, and while they were just snails, he still felt a stab of remorse. He promised them he wouldn’t waste them and proceeded to string the battered snail bodies onto the hook. With the grisly mess accomplished he stood once more and wiped his hands on the seat of his pants before unwinding some line and trying to figure out how to get the line out into the channel. Ultimately, he unwrapped about half the line from the square-ish spindle and coiled it loosely on the stone. He picked up the hook and weight end of the line and, giving it an experimental spin, launched it toward the open water.

  The line sailed out, arching against the sky, and stopped suddenly, falling disappointingly short. The momentum tugged the reel around and it started skittering off toward the edge of the rock. Otto threw himself on it to keep it from falling off the rock and into the water. His heart hammered in his chest at the near disaster and he winced at the scrape on his forearm where the rock had rasped the skin down to blood. He levered himself back onto his knees, holding the blocky frame carefully, and took a deep breath to calm himself.

  “Now what?” he said aloud, and settled in to wait.

  The sun glittered off the surface, dazzling him with the sharp diamond edges. He pulled his hat brim down to shield his eyes a bit more and settled in to wait. He sighed in satisfaction. Whatever else happened, he was fishing.

  The soft breeze, warm rock, and lapping waves conspired against the growing boy and he soon fell into a kind of drowsy wakefulness, sitting there on the hard rock. He wasn’t so far out of it that he didn’t feel the rock under his bony behind, but not so aware that he wasn’t startled when the four boats came around the headland. He’d heard the engines before he saw the boats, even over the sound of the waves on the rocks and the wind in his ears. The low rumble of hydrazine powered diesels was unmistakable. The sound had floated on the background noise of wind and wave. It hadn’t been enough to rouse him as it slowly gained in volume. When they burst around the headland and throttled back for the run into the channel, he came to full wakefulness and jumped to his feet. He shaded his eyes against the glare to get a good look at the boats running straight up the middle of the channel–two side trawlers and two stern. The sunlight glinted off the paint and bright-work in a way that marked them as new boats. A season at sea would help them blend in, but for the moment, Callum’s Cove had four fresh faces in the fleet.

  Chapter Six

  Aram’s Inlet

  October 8, 2304

  “Are you sure?” Jimmy asked. He pitched his voice low to keep it from carrying.

  “Carruthers says she’s the best mate on the Inlet,” Tony said, misgiving clear in his tone.

  They watched as the startlingly young looking woman wrestled a utility tote down the pier. She handled it with panache and grace, but the relative size and awkwardness made it look like the tote might win at any moment. Her legs were stuffed into a well-worn pair of black rubber boots folded down at the top. She wore stained jeans and a couple layers of knitwear, making her look just slightly bulgy. Her hair hugged her head like a scarlet cap. It took Jimmy a couple of ticks to realize it wasn’t.

  “Who are we stealing her from?”

  “She’s between berths at the moment,” Tony said.

  Jimmy was about to follow up on that, but the woman was too close and waved happily. “Hey, there. You Jimmy and Tony?” she shouted. Her nose was crooked just slightly, giving her a striking, almost androgynous appearance to what would have otherwise been a classically beautiful heart-shaped face. Her time on the water was evident in the rich color of her skin and the slightly chapped look around the eyes and lips. Her smile infected them and they found themselves grinning back.

  Tony waved, nodding in agreement.

  She trundled up to the side of the boat and stopped wi
th her hands on her hips, looking along the lines of the vessel and not quite surreptitiously examining the two guys looking at her. “Well, I’m Casey Keefe. Carruthers said you might have a berth for a mate?” Her eyes flickered back and forth between Tony and Jimmy, and curiosity animated her face.

  “Yeah,” Jimmy said, sticking his hand out over the gunwale. “I’m Jimmy and he’s Tony. I need a mate who can teach Tony the ropes. And frankly, I’m a little rusty myself. Been awhile since I been out.”

  She shook the hand that Jimmy offered, then offered her own small, calloused hand to Tony. “Twenty stanyers piloting a desk will do that do ya. Carruthers told me who ya are, like I wouldn’t a reck-a-nized ya. Not like Pirano and Spinelli are unknown names–or faces–on the waterfront, yanno.”

  She reached down and flipped her tote up onto the rail with an expert and effortless heave. She stood balancing it on the rail for a heartbeat or two. “Gimme a hand will ya, Tony? Let’s get this boat underway and go catch some fish.”

  Tony shook himself and hefted the tote down from the rail with a grunt of surprise at the heft of it while Casey swung lightly aboard.

  “Just like that?” Jimmy asked.

  She blinked up at him. “What? You interviewing or you fishing? I heard the quotas are up and we got some huge landings to make. You wanna stand around talkin’ or you wanna go lay some twine?”

  Jimmy felt a bubbling laugh building in his chest. “Lemme get the engines started and we’ll go see if we can do any damage. Single up and get ready to cast off. I need a couple minutes to get ’em warmed up

  Casey started working on the lines while Tony stowed the tote in the deckhouse.

  In less time than Jimmy would have thought possible, they were backing down against the spring line and the bow swung away from the dock. Jimmy shifted to slow-speed ahead as the bow cleared and Casey released the spring line with a flip of her wrist, pulling the trailing end aboard and stowing it securely.

  Jimmy nudged the throttle up a tad and they pulled out into the channel, headed toward the sea. The sun had not yet begun to light the eastern horizon and the murky pre-dawn sky took on a darker-than-dark texture. Ahead of him, Jimmy saw other vessels leaving the harbor. He glanced aft around the side of the wheelhouse and saw he wasn’t the last to leave the dock either. The smell of the ocean mixed with the tangy hydrazine exhaust and the faint smell of new paint and lubricant filled wheelhouse. He and Tony had been breaking in the boat—and themselves—running up and down the Inlet for a couple of days. This was their first trip out into open ocean. Jake Samson said the boat was ready and up to spec. Jimmy himself had checked the nets, lines, cables, engines, winches, and electronics as he and Tony took turns piloting around the harbor.