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

by Nathan Lowell

  Otto poured a little hot tea into his cup, shrugged into his jacket, and went out to the shop, carrying his tea with him. Nothing was going to happen for several hours. He lit the fire in the stove and built up a comforting blaze. He looked into the bucket of what he thought of as “whelkie wood” and pulled out several bits. One held a Behringer’s gull, wings outstretched. Nodding to himself, he dropped the other bits back into the pail for later. He tossed some more scraps into the stove and adjusted the dampers once more. Slipping the knife from his pocket, he settled his coat over his shoulders like a cape and leaned back in his chair to carve.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Aram’s Inlet

  March 16, 2304

  “Get Casey,” Jimmy said, “and I wanna see Jake, Carruthers, and any of the other skippers we can find.”

  “Okay, Jimmy,” Tony said.

  “My office, 10:30.”

  “It’s already 9:30, Jimmy,” Tony said. The meeting with the Ole Man had lasted less than half a stan.

  “Just tell ’em soon as they can.”

  “You got it, Skipper,” Tony said.

  “Who we got can run the fisheries models?”

  “Jake’s kid, Billy, is probably the best we got,” Tony said as the elevator reached the lobby.

  Jimmy raised an eyebrow in Tony’s direction but shrugged. “Ask Jake if we can borrow him for a few days.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy stepped out of the elevator and put a hand on his friend’s arm to swing him around to look him in the face. “No stim. We do it on coffee and danish, just like the old days, but no stim. I don’t know when we’ll crack this problem, but when we do, I don’t wanna have to wait for you to wake up.”

  Tony flushed a bit, but didn’t look away. “You got it, Jimmy.”

  “Okay, then call Barney. Have him open a tab for Pirano Fisheries and send over ten liters of his finest and a dozen of those cheese danishes.

  Tony grinned and headed off to find a quiet corner to make some calls.

  Jimmy headed for the office, but instead of going up, he went down to archives.

  Janie Pritchard was there, as always, and looked up from her terminal with a big smile. “Hiya, Mr. Pirano! What brings you down here?”

  “Hi, Janie. Call me Jimmy. I need survey charts.”

  “Specific location?” she asked.

  “Coastline, Western Reaches.”

  “Scale?”

  “Whatever you got. Satellite imagery for the same areas in the last ninety days, high-rez, false color, true color, and infrared.”

  “Anything else?”

  Jimmy thought for a minute. “You got anything that shows fish in the sea?”

  “What kind of fish?”

  “Anything we can sell.”

  “That’s doubtful, but I’ll look.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “When do you need these?” she asked.

  “Right now. I’ll wait.”

  She shot a look at him, but decided he wasn’t joking. “You want them printed or forwarded to your terminal?”

  He thought about it for three heartbeats. “Gimme one print, true color, Inlet on the north edge, two hundred kilometers out, and two thousand wide for now. Send the rest to my terminal.”

  He could almost see her eyes click over as she digested his directions. Her fingers slapped keys in a sharp staccato and the plotter printer across the room started spraying ink on chart paper. “Five ticks and you’ll have the maps. Now let me find your other stuff. Fish, you say.” A small smile curled her right cheek and the tip of her tongue just stuck out a tiny bit as she stared, read, keyed, and searched her terminal.

  Jimmy snagged the first map off the plotter as soon as it was ready and started looking it over. It told him what he already knew. He sighed in frustration, but kept looking, his eyes scanning back and forth looking for anything that might give him a clue. The plotter tinged and signaled the end of the job, so Jimmy gathered the sheets and thanked Janie.

  “All I got will be in your inbox within the next ten ticks, Jimmy. I’ll keep looking if you can tell me what you need.”

  “Fishing grounds, Janie. Shoals with deep water around them.”

  “Okay, Jimmy.” Her gaze stayed riveted to her terminal.

  Jimmy took the maps up to his office and taped them to the wall. He was studying them when Tony came in with Carruthers in tow.

  “Casey’s on her way. Jake’s collecting his boy. Barney’s sending a runner with an urn and the pastries. He wants to know if you want sandwiches delivered at noon.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “No, but tell him we’ll bring six for lunch.”

  Tony tapped a message out and put his peeda away. “Whatcha lookin’ at, Jimmy?”

  “Coastal maps. Here’s the inlet. We need more places to fish.”

  “How can I help, Jimmy?” Carruthers asked.

  “Manpower. Where are we? Anyplace have more than they can use?” He didn’t look up from his scan.

  “Nobody extra here and they’re short over at Callum’s Cove now. Cheapskate may have a few spare hands loitering about. I’d have to get into the database to see if there are any more. What skills you looking for?”

  “Anything. Skippers, or mates we can promote. Need mates, and hands. Warm bodies to sort fish. Anybody up on the Orbital we can bring down? Can we borrow people from Allied for the summer? Anything. Everything. I need to know what we got available.”

  “Okay, Jimmy. Lemme go look.”

  Jimmy grunted and Carruthers scooted out the door as Casey came in.

  “Hey, Skip. What’s the word?”

  “The word is we need to meet the quotas.”

  “But you said...”

  “I know what I said. I need to find a way to be wrong.”

  “Okay, but how?”

  She looked at Tony who just shrugged and opened the door for the Barney’s delivery guy. He pointed to the work table at the side of the office. “Just set it up there. We’ll deal with it.” He thumbed the bill and closed the door behind the departing runner.

  “We need more grounds,” Jimmy said. “At the moment, we only have so many places to fish. We need more places. That will reduce the pressure on the banks, keep them from getting over fished over the summer, and let us tap into new stocks at the same time.”

  “How are you gonna find new grounds by looking at the walls, Skipper?”

  He tossed her a pen. “Follow the hundred meter contours. We need a relatively flat plateau between fifty and a hundred meters deep. That’s the most productive.” He set action to words and traced a sea mount he spotted on the map in front of him. “Pick a map. Find the banks.”

  Jake and his boy stepped through the door. Billy’s eyes widened as he scanned the room room and he had neck problems trying not to stare at Casey. “Hi, Jimmy. What’s up?” Jake asked.

  “Boats,” Jimmy said. “How many we got? How many can you build and outfit in the next little while?”

  “Depends on the boat. Simple boat, small one, I can stamp them out one a day.”

  Jimmy froze and turned to stare at Jake. “One a day?”

  “Simple boat hull, Jimmy. I got a nice ten meter hull template. We use them for launches and utility boats around the Inlet. Another day for a motor.”

  “How long for a trawler? Like the Sea Horse?”

  “Depends. Maybe two weeks.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “Parts mostly. The running gear takes the longest. If I didn’t need to put nets and winches and all that on it, maybe two a week.”

  “What other kinds of boats you got templates for?” Tony asked. “Anything I could make a nice yacht out of?”

  Everybody chuckled at that.

  “Almost anything. Can’t build anything over forty meters in this yard, but we got the templates for hundred meter tankers and freighters. We’d never find engines for ’em, but we got the templates.”

  “Okay, Ja
ke, build me some sisters to the Sea Horse,” Jimmy said.

  “How many?”

  “Until I tell you to stop.”

  Jake looked at him as if smacked with a wet mackerel. “You’re serious?”

  “Deadly, and contact all the other yards. Get them building, too.”

  “You want all twenty-fives?”

  Casey said, “No, build some of the twenty meter stern trawlers.”

  Jimmy looked at her.

  “They use different running tackle. You’re gonna run out of nets, gantries, and engines really fast if you only build that one design. This way you can build longer with the parts we have here. That’ll give you time to buy, build, or steal more.”

  Jimmy nodded to Jake. “You heard the lady. Split ’em up.”

  “We don’t have crews for that many boats, Jimmy,” Tony said.

  “I know and I don’t have fish either. Billy?”

  The younger Samson was about nineteen stanyers, still gangly, and burning with curiosity. “Yessir?”

  “Rumor is you know your way around the fisheries model. That true?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Okay, I need a projection out of the model. Feel like working for me for a couple of days?”

  “Working on the model?” his eyes lit up and he looked to his father.

  “Yeah, working on the model. I need some projections on the various banks and I don’t have the time, inclination, or skill set.” Jimmy grinned at the young man. “You up to the challenge?”

  “Sure. Which banks you need projections for?”

  “All of ’em.”

  Billy’s eyes snapped from Jimmy to his father and back to Jimmy, before making the rounds of Tony and Casey. “All of them? There’s over two thousand of them.”

  “Something like that,” Jimmy said.

  “You need a projection on all the banks within two days?”

  “I pay well,” Jimmy said. “And I need it today.”

  Tony snickered, but Jake just shrugged when his son looked at him for confirmation.

  “When do I start?” Billy asked. “What kind of projection are you looking for?”

  “Right now,” Jimmy said. “There’s coffee and pastry there on the table, help yourself while I log you in.”

  Jimmy walked over to his own terminal and logged into the fisheries model with his Pirano corporate credentials. “Don’t delete anything,” he said as Billy settled at the terminal.

  “Delete anything?” Billy looked at the display. He stammered, “N-N-N-o, sir! I won’t!”

  “I need to know how many boats can I fish on any bank without summer slump kicking in,” Jimmy said. “I want full loads all season. How many boats is the maximum number for any of the grounds. Start with Pumpkin Grounds, Ole Man’s Bank, and Kelp Bank.”

  Billy settled into his work and started trying to answer the question.

  Jake said, “Good luck, Jimmy. If anybody can solve this, you can. Lemme head back down to the yard and check on stores so we can get this thing going.”

  Jimmy waved and everybody went back to work.

  “Twenty.” Billy Samson announced about a stan later.

  Jimmy had finished the first map and was onto his second. Tony and Casey were still on their first.

  “Twenty what, Billy?” Tony asked.

  “Twenty standard boats,” Billy said. “That’s how many can fish the Pumpkin without summer slump. You can do twenty-five and only get a five percent reduction in projected catches by October.”

  Jimmy frowned. “What’re you calling a standard boat?”

  “Fifty metric tons a day,” Billy said.

  Tony stopped and stared. “What?”

  “According to the model, a standard boat collects fifty metric tons a day. You can fish the Pumpkin grounds with twenty to twenty-five boats, which between a thousand and twelve-fifty metric tons a day before fall off gets above five percent.”

  Jimmy and Casey both frowned.

  “The Sea Horse is more than a standard boat,” Jimmy said.

  Billy blinked back into reality. “Oh, yeah. That design is rated at eighty metric tons.”

  Tony said, “And the stern trawlers are rated at seventy-five.” He looked at Jimmy.

  “So, about twelve boats on the Pumpkin?” Casey jumped ahead.

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “Whatever combination adds up to a thousand tons a day.”

  “And we don’t know how many are there now, do we?” Jimmy said.

  Both Casey and Tony shook their heads. “Forty-boats here, thirty-five over in Cheapskate. There’s twenty-three in Callum’s Cove, but they generally fish the Kelp and Ole Man,” Tony said.

  “Well, Arnold’s Bank and the Sandy Grounds are off to the east’ard of Cheapskate, so they have more choices, but assuming any kind of even distribution, that’s still thirty boats on the Pumpkin all season.”

  Casey said, “Yeah, it’s no wonder the catches taper off so fast.”

  Jimmy sighed. “Okay, then. There’s probably some simple algebra that’d tell us how many boats it would take to maintain our current landings and my brain has a cramp. There’s something I’m missing here, I can feel it.”

  Tony, Casey, and Jimmy looked at each other.

  Jimmy turned to Billy. “Confirm the model for us. What happens when we run thirty boats on the Pumpkin all season?”

  Billy slapped keys for a couple of ticks. “Looks like landings fall off to about a quarter around the halfway mark and stay there.”

  “That’s about what we see. Would that be the same for all the banks?” Casey asked.

  “The model says so,” Billy said, “but I think it’s wrong.”

  “Why?” Jimmy asked.

  “Because it assumes that every bank has the same elasticity,” Billy said.

  “Elasticity?” Casey asked.

  “The ability to replace the fish that are taken. I think some places are more resilient to fishing pressure because of localized conditions.”

  “Like the Nanking Upwelling,” Casey said.

  “Exactly.”

  Jimmy asked, “How do you know so much about this model?”

  Billy looked down at his hands on the keyboard. “Well, I, um, built a game. A fishing simulator game.”

  “A game?” Jimmy asked.

  “Yeah. A ’Net game, but I couldn’t publish it because it was based on the Pirano model.”

  “You used the company model to build a fishing game?” Jimmy laughed.

  Billy’s ears turned red. “I didn’t publish it. I just tested it on the PlanetNet.”

  Casey blinked. “You’re the one who built ‘Fish Finder’?”

  “You’ve heard of it?” Billy asked, looking up with wide eyes.

  “I’ve played it. It’s very cool.”

  Grinning, Jimmy shook his head. “Focus, people! Assuming a standard resiliency, we still need to know the capacity of every bank.” He looked at Billy. “How long will that take?”

  Billy shrugged. “Stan or two. It’s pretty formulaic, but I need to know the approximate areas for each bank. They’re all in the model, it’s just a question of listing them out and there’s a lot of them.”

  “Okay, that’s fine. Go to it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Callum’s Cove

  March 17, 2305

  Otto and Rachel arrived at the clinic mid-morning and were greeted by medical staff wearing professional expressions. In moments, they stood in the medical bay. One of the amber lights from the day before had gone green. The one continued to flash red, while the remaining lights stayed amber.

  “Here’s the situation. He’s going to survive this,” the ranking medtech said with detached professional calm.

  Otto could smell the tension in her. “But there’s a catch. What is it?”

  “We don’t know how far the neurotoxin collapse ate into him. We got him in the acetylcholine inhibitors as soon as he came in and he’s shown some good response to the MEK treatm
ents to try to foster dendrite regeneration already. That’s the good news. The bad news is, it looks like it got as far as some brain stem functioning.”

  Rachel looked at her. “You’re telling me he can survive brain stem damage?”

  “His autonomic systems seem to be intact. His heart beats on its own and his lungs work. Beyond that, it’ll take a lot of testing to determine exactly what, if anything, is wrong with him. I’d suspect some rehabilitation will be required as well.”

  The tone rang subtly wrong in Otto’s ears.

  Rachel nodded. “When can he come home?”

  “We need to keep him in the pod for another day or two to make sure we’ve got the toxin stopped. The only way we can control the damage is to keep the acetylcholine inhibitors blocking new damage while we flush the toxin out of his system, one molecule at a time.”

  “Can we speak to him? Let him know what’s happening?” Rachel asked.

  The medtech shook her head. “We’d have to open the pod, which means we’d have to interrupt the inhibitors and that means potential for new damage. As long as that tell-tale is red, we shouldn’t interrupt the treatment.”

  Otto looked at his mother then back to the medtech. “Can she sit with him?”

  Rachel looked at Otto, eyes wide in surprise. “Yes, can I sit with him?”

  The medtech shrugged. “Certainly, but there’s no need to, really. He won’t wake up until we wake him. We’d certainly call you first.”

  “I’d like to sit here, if I wouldn’t be in the way.”

  The medtech shrugged again. “Of course. Pick a chair. We’ll tell you if we need it” She smiled. “I’d be going crazy if this were my husband. You’re doing very well.”

  “I am going crazy. You just can’t see it.” She took the chair nearest the pod and rolled it over so she could sit with her hand on the smooth case. She looked up at Otto and smiled.

  “Can I bring you anything? Tea? Something to eat?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Not just now, Otto. Thank you. I’ll just rest here for a bit. You go on, though.”

  “I’ll be back around lunch time,” he told the medtech, before walking back to the cottage.