Jimmy felt the years behind a desk begin to melt away as he fell into old, well-learned skills. He grew up on a boat, not unlike this one. He learned the business from the bottom up under the watchful eyes of his father and a collection of mates and deck hands. If he was a little heavier, a bit slower, and a lot out of practice, well, so what? He sighed happily and nudged the throttle up a bit more as they cleared the inner marker and headed down the channel toward open ocean.
Half a stan later, Casey came up from the forecastle bringing two heavy mugs of steaming coffee and a bright smile. “Tony’s taking a nap,” she said with a grin, handing him one of the cups.
“A nap?”
“He took some pills for seasickness. He’ll need to sleep for a bit.”
“He’s seasick?” Jimmy laughed.
“Not yet, but he’s got the makings of a good barf-storm coming. A little sleep and he’ll be fine.” After a pause she asked, “Where we headed this morning, skipper?”
“I thought we’d just run out the Pumpkin and try out the new toys. This is the first real shakedown cruise for this hull.”
She sipped her coffee and nodded. “Good idea. It’s kinda late in the season for starting a new boat, isn’t it?” she asked, her eyes scanning the horizon.
Jimmy grimaced. “Yeah, but I need to give Tony a feel for what it’s really like out here. And the other fishermen need to see I’m not sitting on my ass in the office while they’re out here trying to make those ridiculous quotas.”
If Casey were surprised by his answer, she didn’t show it. Instead she nodded at the navplotter unit. “May I?”
Jimmy shrugged and nodded. “Be my guest.”
She crossed the wheelhouse and fired up the unit with a couple of stabs of her finger. Reaching up to the overhead, she started the repeater display unit and stepped back as the electronics merged radar, satellite, side scan sonar, and historical imagery into a single display. “It’s too early to find any fish, but where you thinking of looking?”
Jimmy gazed up at the display, then pointed to an area on the western end of the fishing grounds. “Let’s just run up onto the grounds about there and see what we see when it’s closer to sunrise. We’re still almost two stans from full light, and we’ll be out of everybody’s way out there on the end.”
Casey sipped her coffee. “Yup. Not much on that end of the bank this time of year. It’s fished hard all season, but good place to try out the gear.” She tapped the spot on the screen with her fingertip and a glowing dot appeared in green. She punched two more buttons on the base unit and the electronic compass beeped in response showing a course adjustment and the direction to turn. “Oh, shut up,” she muttered. Squinting at the display, she tapped three more times and set way points, adjusting the straight line course to a dogleg around two small islands and a coastal reef. “That should do it, Skip.”
Jimmy looked up at the glowing display, with the course plot in green, the amber dot that was their vessel, and the read-out of position, speed, course, and estimated time of arrival, running in the lower right corner. “Thanks, Casey.” He punched the autopilot reset before pulling his hand back from the wheel. The electronics bipped once and the boat settled down to drive itself on the long run out to the grounds. If any other vessel got within half a kilometer, the proximity alarms would make sure somebody knew it before anything nasty happened. With the broad expanse of ocean around them as they pulled out of the immediate coastal waters, and out into open sea, the probability of chance encounter grew smaller and smaller.
For the moment, there was nothing to do but ride it out. Casey settled onto one of the padded stools bolted to the deck and rested her elbows on the arms, gazing out over the gleaming darkness as the coastal chop gave way to the long rollers of open sea and the boat took on a gentle fore-and-aft rhythm, riding up the face of one wave and down the back into the shallow trough behind it before climbing the next one.
Out here, the air was much colder than ashore. Winter was just around the corner, and the chill wind was a harbinger of the change. Jimmy stuck his head out of the wheelhouse door and pulled a deep lungful of the cold air through his nose. The chill drove him back and he slammed the door, capturing the heat of the engine rising from the deck beneath their feet. “Gonna be a good day.”
Casey gave a little nod. “Met Office said so, too, and they’re getting better at predictin’.”
Weather forecasting was one of those arcane arts that suffered from its own successes. Most of the time, the forecasts were pretty good. Once in a while, though, the complex planetary systems that drove the weather reminded the forecasters that weather was not completely predictable. Humans had been on St. Cloud for close to a hundred stanyears, but localized conditions that produced the proverbial hundred stanyear storms were not well understood. The various science types kept sending out warnings about climatological conditions that were as yet undocumented. Jimmy snorted to himself in amusement every time he read one of their warnings. Lawyers covered their butts.
Thinking of lawyers reminded him of the quota problem. He sighed and his mind kept chasing its tail around and around worrying the problem even though he knew he couldn’t solve it.
“So why are you doin’ it?” Casey asked suddenly, her voice pitched to carry over the diesel rumble.
The sudden imposition of her question into his thought stream startled him before he realized what she meant. “You mean taking a boat and going back to sea?”
“Yup. You’re the Pirano man-on-the-spot for the whole system. Why are you settin’ yourself up for all this work?”
“I started out here. Me and the Ole Man opened up the Pumpkin and the Ole Man’s Bank.”
“Yeah, but you paid your dues, Skipper. Nobody on the waterfront would say different. Why take it on again?”
“Something’s not right. Those quotas are way out of line with what we can reasonably be expected to land. Every boat, every crew, it’s all in the production model. We know pretty well, after half a century, what any given boat can produce within some narrow range of factors. Weather, salinity, light, it all plays a part in the model, and we know roughly how many fish are here to catch. We know about how many boats it’ll take to catch ’em. We know approximately how long it will take any given boat to do it.”
“But?”
“These quotas throw that model out. We’d need about half again as many boats as we have working now to make that level of catch.”
Casey gave a low whistle. “I knew it was a big increase, but I didn’t realize it was that big.”
“It’s because of diminishing returns. The schools are only so big. Once you scrape through the bigger schools, you need to work a lot harder to find and catch the smaller ones. The raw numbers aren’t that much bigger, but the operations here on planet are geared for a level of efficiency as much as production. Making those quotas would be ruinously expensive, even assuming we could.”
“You mean we can’t?”
Jimmy shook his head. “We can make enough boats. Even equip them. That’s not the problem.”
Understanding lit Casey’s face. “No crews.”
“We got about eighty thousand boats working on the planet right now. In raw body counts we could probably find enough people to crew another four hundred across the whole South Coast. It would be expensive. Prices would be crazy. Fishing would be almost impossible after the first few weeks of the season because the increased pressure on the grounds would be extreme and four hundred more boats wouldn’t be enough to reach the landing quotas. We’d need closer to two thousand more. The fleet would have to be very close to half again bigger.”
Casey whistled again. “Are there that many fish?”
Jimmy nodded. “That’s the hell of it. The fishing stocks could take that for a few years. I had the Fisheries Management people run projections. If we could catch them, the current stocks are resilient enough to survive it for a decade before the gene pool started being hurt.”
&n
bsp; Casey looked startled. “Just a decade?”
Jimmy nodded. “Economically, it would be ruinous. More and more boats chasing smaller and smaller stocks. The costs of landing a kilogram of fish would approach the cost of diamonds.”
“What are they thinking?” Casey asked her forehead furrowed in a scowl.
Jimmy shrugged. “That’s the question, and we don’t have any answers.”
Casey looked out across the glassy ocean’s surface. “Well, that takes us back to my original question.”
“Why am I doing it?” he asked.
She nodded without looking at him. “Yup.”
“Because, nobody’s gonna lose a boat over landing quotas unless I lose mine first.”
Casey looked startled. “But who’d take your boat away? You’re the Pirano man!”
“That’s why.”
Casey cast an appraising eye on him as the logic of it worked out in her head. “You’re a sneaky, bastid, ain’t cha.”
Jimmy chuckled and nodded. “I’ve been called worse.”
Casey laughed out loud at that and they lapsed back into a comfortable silence, riding across water toward the brightening sky.
Chapter Seven
Callum’s Cove
October 8, 2304
Otto woke slowly. The previous day’s sitting on the rock had given him aches he hadn’t realized until he left Bentley’s Head and came back to the house at the end of the day. He hadn’t even gone into the village to see the new boats. He smiled in satisfaction knowing he’d been the first to see them as they rounded the head. That was as close as he’d have been able to get in the village and they did look very fine.
As he dragged himself up into consciousness, he became aware of the voices coming from the kitchen. Father and Mother were having a discussion in hushed tones, but given the intensity, he was pretty sure it wasn’t about the price of eggs. In spots, he could make out his mother’s voice, but his father’s responses were just too muffled. He lay very still to try to hear what they were talking about.
“Richard, I know how you feel about this, but you’re being pigheaded. Think!”
“Mumble, mum, mumble when he’s mumble mum!” his father said.
“You’re the shaman. He’s your son. He’ll be a shaman if he wants to, when he wants to. You know how this works better than most!”
“Mumbly mumble mum!”
“Don’t be an ass, Richard.”
“Mum mumbly mum mum mum!”
“It’s a fishing village. Everybody fishes—”
“Mum mum!”
“Yes, I know, but you could if you wanted to. That’s not the point and you know it. This is a fishing village. Everybody fishes. It’s only natural that Otto wants to fish, too. Every other kid his age in the village is out on one boat or another. How do you think that makes him feel? How did it make you feel?”
His father didn’t answer, at least not that Otto heard.
His mother changed the subject. “Who’s going to crew on the new boats? Have they picked skippers?”
“Mumbly mumble mum.”
“True, but there’s a definite pecking order down there. I’d bet Red and Alan have it all sorted out between them, you wait and see.”
“Mumble, um, mumble mumbly mumble mum.”
Otto heard the chairs scraping as they both got up from the table and door latch clicking his father left the house. When the footsteps crunching on the walk had faded, his mother spoke again. “You can come out now. He’s gone.”
Otto started, but he clambered out of bed and into his dirty clothes from the day before. Pajamas went under the pillow as he straightened the covers. Not exactly a “made” bed, but it would pass initial muster.
“How could you tell?” he asked as he padded barefoot into the kitchen.
“Your bed stopped squeaking.”
He looked at her quizzically, as he poured some granapple juice.
“You toss something dreadful when you sleep, Otto. Your bed squeaks all the time. I knew you woke up because the bed stopped squeaking.”
He felt his face heat, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.
“How much did you hear?” she asked, taking her seat at the table once more.
“I could hear you, but only got mumbles from Father. What’s his problem with fishing?”
“He doesn’t understand it, and it’s a dangerous business. He wants to protect you from it, is all. As a shaman-in-training, you’re gonna be a shaman one day, unless you decide not to be. But if you renounce it, you’re governed under the same rules as everybody else. You have to have a company job or you have to leave.”
Otto leaned his lanky frame against the counter as he sipped the chilled juice and considered both breakfast and what his mother had just said. “So he’s trying to make sure that I don’t fish so that I don’t get deported?”
His mother gave a soft chuckle. “Not exactly, but that’s certainly part of it.” She looked at him seriously for a few heartbeats. “Fishing is a dangerous business. Yes, I know the boats are safe and all that, but accidents happen, and when the sea is concerned, they happen a lot. People get killed out there, Otto. Good, careful, responsible people get killed all the time.”
“We all die eventually.”
“Yes, Otto, we do, but the idea is to avoid doing it until you absolutely have to. And with fishermen, even in this day and age, there are a lot of possibilities for accidents.”
Otto nodded, but he wasn’t convinced. “So was he mad that I went fishing yesterday?” he asked, going back to the original question. He was dying to know what they’d been not-quite-arguing about, but he couldn’t very well ask.
“A bit.”
“Is it going to be a problem if I go again today?” he asked shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
His mother shrugged. “We live in a fishing village and those three harbor dace you caught yesterday were very tasty. A nice change.” She looked up at the ceiling as if considering what to say next. “You might do a little fence mending today, and go be the good son for a bit. When the weather turns, nobody will be fishing and your father will be carving. If you want to get on his good side, start talking to him about whelkies.”
Otto looked a little startled at that and his hand went, involuntarily, to the small carved seabird hanging from a thong around his neck. His grandfather had carved it and it had come down to him on his tenth birthday. Whelkies were the symbolic representation of the shaman’s gift all along the South Coast. They carried goodly amount of tradition and folklore–not to mention mystery–about them. He was a bit nonplussed by the sudden notion that he, Otto Krugg, might carve a whelkie.
“Ah, you hadn’t thought about that now, had you?”
Otto shook his head but didn’t speak. He had too many conflicting ideas running through his head. How could he carve a whelkie? He’d seen the figures take shape in his father’s hands, but they hadn’t really seemed like something he might do. There was a kind of magic about them. He hadn’t considered that when he thought about what it meant to be the shaman’s son and, someday, shaman.
His mother sighed. “Otto, my boy, sometimes I wonder whatever you are thinkin’ and other times, I’m pretty sure you’re not thinkin’ at all. You’re turnin’ into a fine young man, but it’s time for you to stop woolgatherin’ and start really thinkin’ about what it means to be a shaman’s son on the South Coast of St. Cloud.”
“I have been, Mother. Ever since I was old enough to be told I’m to be a shaman.”
She shook her head. “No, Otto, I don’t think you really have. Up until today, had you ever really thought about carving whelkies? About the needs of the people in the village? About who’s in trouble and who’s the troublemaker? Did it occur to you that at some point, you’d have to deal with it?”
Otto stopped and thought, for perhaps the first time in his life. In all honesty, he’d never really thought about it at all, other than as a burden he would be sad
dled with against his will. He didn’t even know what his father did as shaman, beyond talk to people, walk the beach, and gather bits of wood and shell that he carved into whelkies. The realization must have shown on his face.
“I thought not,” his mother said. “Maybe it’s time you took a walk with your father and stopped worrying about how unfair it is to you and started seeing what it is he does.”
Otto sighed, but recognized the wisdom of her advice. He felt as if somebody had turned on a light in the attic. All the shadowy objects he’d been bumping into, stepping over, and walking around all his life took on color, texture, and shape.
“He’s gone to the village?” he asked.
She nodded, “Yes. Alan wanted to talk to him about something. He’s probably at the Pirano office.”
Otto glanced at the chrono over the sink, nodded to himself, and headed for the door.
“Breakfast, young man! Breakfast!” his mother stopped him. “You can’t be charging all over town on an empty stomach.”
“I won’t be, Mother. Alan Thomas has breakfast at Rosie’s about now. If Father is meeting him now, that’s where they are. I can get something there.”
Her eyebrows arched upward in surprise. “Well, see that you get something proper. Your father will be busy today and you’ll want to be able to keep up and make a good impression. Do a good job today and you can go fishing tomorrow.” She winked at him.
He grinned at that and headed for the door. His long legs scissored him into the village in a matter of minutes. He arrowed straight for Rosie’s Diner and Coffee Shop, just a block up from the head of the main docks. The Pirano offices were around the corner and Otto's guess had proven accurate. He walked through the door and spotted Alan Thomas sitting with his father in a booth on the far side of the small dining room.
South Coast (Shaman's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) Page 4
