“Good. Lemme know how it goes, okay?” Jimmy said. “Oh, and Carruthers? Can you take Bill here and get him an office here on this floor? Maybe the empty one at the end of the hall? He needs a place to work that’s not my office.”
“You bet, boss.”
Billy blushed furiously, but started to follow Carruthers out, when Jimmy called after him. “I need a proposal from you, in writing, outlining what we need to do to bring up shrimp, sardine, and mussel fisheries. Boats, equipment, processing, transportation, and market analysis. The works. Get Tony to help you.”
Tony looked up at that. “We’re not going fishing any more?”
“We got too many boats, Tony. You and I are needed here.” Jimmy . “I’m giving you the Sea Horse. Go find yourself some crew while you can. You’re due for a boat of your own and I’d take it as a personal favor if you got your butt out there and caught some fish.”
The smile wasn’t quite as dazzling as he’d expected, but still very nice.
“You got it, Skip–err–Jimmy. But I’m gonna miss working with you two reprobates.”
Tony smiled and Jimmy cleared his throat.
“To answer your question, Casey,” Jimmy said, “there’s no upper limit on landings. Anything we produce, over and above the contractual demands, is gravy and money in the bank for us.”
“What happens to the share price when it becomes obvious that we’re going to make the quotas?” Tony asked with a knowing grin.
Jimmy grinned back and sent a note up to his father on the orbital. “Buy Combine stock.”
The response was practically immediate. “Congrats.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Callum’s Cove
March 18, 2305
Richard swam up from the dark deeps, his lungs burning, arms burning, legs burning. He burst into the light all at once and was in the medical pod. He blinked at the sudden brightness. Unable to raise his hand, he tried to turn his head, but couldn’t do that either and settled for squinting.
“Richard, it’s Robin McMaster. You’re in the medical station at Callum’s Cove.” The voice sounded urgent but distant. It sounded like something he thought might be pertinent.
“Move,” he started to say, but had trouble with his tongue.
“No, don’t move. You’re in the autodoc, you can’t move just yet.” The voice was just as urgent and distant.
He got his tongue back under control and finished, “The damn light.”
A familiar voice, Rachel’s voice, said, “The light’s in his eyes. Please move it so it’s not blinding him.”
Richard felt his heart beat twice before the light slipped off to the side.
“Sorry. Is that better?” the urgent voice, Robin, asked.
“Yes, thank you. Rachel?”
Her face—beloved, welcome, thank you—slid into his view.
“We’re ashore, Richard. Relax while the medtechs check you over. You’ve been in the pod for two days.”
He closed his eyes. “Okay. Yes.”
He floated on the surface of the dark deeps. His mind lingered on the fish that burned. In the distance, he could hear the tinkle of shells and smiled. In his hand, he felt the wooden bear, cold bear, filled with pain and covered with sharp edges. He curled his hand around it, letting the bear bite into his hand a bit then relaxing his grip, floating gently on the surface of the dark, dark deeps.
“He’s asleep now. It’s the best thing for him,” the voice, Robin, said, not so urgent now.
“Yes, fine,” Rachel’s voice said. “I’ll just sit with him.”
Richard felt her near, safe, and drifted for a time, floating on the dark and listening to the world.
After some time, or no time, he couldn’t be sure, he woke. “Hi.”
Rachel looked up from where she sat beside the pod and smiled the smile.
He grinned back. He needed no words so long as there was the smile.
“Are you in there, Richard?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“How do you feel?” she asked, as if afraid of what he might say.
“I feel drugged.”
She giggled. “You are.”
“Otto?”
“Here, Father.” The voice came from the doorway.
“Thank you, Otto. It was a good bear.”
“You’re welcome, Father.”
The medtech came over. She checked a series of displays. “Are you ready to get out of there?”
“Can I?”
Rachel started to chuckle.
“I don’t know. Would you like to try?”
Until she said something, it hadn’t occurred to him that it might be possible, “Yes.”
She released the restraints and he lifted his hands. She opened the bottom of the pod and tilted it upright. “You just take it very easy, Richard. You’re still sedated and you’ve been laying down for a couple of days.”
“Thank you, Robin.”
He felt a bit wobbly, but with Rachel on one side, and Robin on the other, he managed to step out and sit in the wheel chair. Sitting up was much easier than standing, and they wheeled him down the hall to a cubicle with a bed in it. Rachel and Otto followed along, the sound of Otto’s staff loud in the quiet corridor. In a tick, he was settled in the bed, and felt the darkness calling to him. He struggled against it, turning to Rachel, searching her face.
“I’ll be here,” she said.
He sighed, nodding. He turned to Otto who unfolded a familiar piece of cloth. With a flourish, Otto flung the heavy woolen fabric over the bed, neatly covering Richard’s upper torso. The weight of it pressed down, warming instantly, comforting. The heavy embroidery traced patterns against the weave. Richard recognized his father’s poncho from the faint smell of wool and man. The extra weight and warmth pressed Richard toward the darkness. His eyes closed. He drifted.
Sometime later he woke. The sun beamed through the window in a late afternoon slant.
Rachel sat in the chair beside him, smiling at him. “Have a nice nap?”
He blinked and considered it. “Yes, I’m feeling quite rested.”
The medtech breezed in at that point and grinned at the pair of them. “Well? You ready to go home?”
Rachel looked up at her in surprise. “Just like that?”
“Yeah, just like that.” She turned to Richard. “You’re feeling okay?”
“Surprisingly well, given how strange I was earlier.”
“The pod’s medications just take a couple of stans to play out. Your vitals are all good. We’ll want you to come back in a couple of days to see how the dendritic regeneration has taken. You may have a numb spot in your arm for a time, but you won’t even notice it in a couple of weeks.”
“That’s it?” Rachel asked. “A numb spot?” She didn’t know whether to be relieved or scream.
The medtech sighed. “Well, truthfully, we don’t know. The neurotoxins were up into his brainstem, but we can’t find any damage. The only thing I’m sure about is that the nerve receptors in the patch of skin that took the direct contact are fried.” She reached for Richard’s left arm, held it in one hand and brushed a fingertip across a patch of skin that had a very slightly different texture. “Did you feel that?” she asked.
“Yes. Well, no, I lost the feeling when you passed over that spot, but could feel it on both sides.”
“That’s what I mean. Over time, you might regain feeling to some degree. It’ll never be as sensitive as the skin around it, but you’ll be aware of it less and less. As far as other neurological damage, the scans aren’t showing any. Your EEG is within normal ranges. Without a baseline to compare it to, we don’t know if it’s changed, but there’s nothing there that indicates any kind of damage. Medically, there’s not a lot more we can do for ya, Richard. Just keep an eye on things and let us know if you get any other symptoms. Come back and see us next week for a follow-up. In the meantime, no fishing. After your checkup, if you’re doing okay, you can go back to work.”
/>
Richard smiled and looked to Rachel. “Let’s go home.”
The medtech left them, pulling the drape to provide a bit of privacy while Richard dressed. Rachel stood ready to help, but there wasn’t much for her to do. He did, indeed, seem perfectly fine. Even his balance, while a little off, wasn’t as far off as Rachel’s at that moment.
He slipped on his shoes and looked around the cube. His father’s poncho was still spread across the bed. He picked it up and slipped it over his head. It settled heavily on his shoulders, but the warmth of it was like sinking into a hot bath. With the poncho off the bed, Richard caught sight of the bear. He must have released it in his sleep and let it fall among the linens.
He looked at it lying on the sheet—roughly carved, primitive, and powerful. It was unorthodox but–he had to admit–effective. Rachel saw what he was looking at and he felt her tense up. He reached for the bear, lifting it gently and holding it up for her to see. “He gave me this. I don’t remember how.”
Rachel reached out a finger to stroke across its back. “It’s a polar bear.”
“Yes. Amazing, isn’t it?”
Rachel looked up into his eyes and saw him smiling down at her. “Yes, it is.”
“Where is he, anyway?” Richard slipped the bear into his pocket.
“He said he had to go tend the fire.”
“Yes. Good.” His head turned almost involuntarily in the direction of the shop. It was as if he could feel the location of the fire in the stove and his face turned to bask in the warmth even though it was kilometers away. His eyes caught on another bit of wood, this one standing on the bedside table. He picked it up and held it in the afternoon light, turning it this way and that in delight.
“He left that for you when you woke,” Rachel said.
“A merino ram. We used to have these back on the stead. I haven’t seen one in decades. How does he get such life into these? The carving is so crude. But it works.”
Rachel laughed. “Yeah, I’ve noticed that myself.”
Richard wrapped his hand around the ram, feeling it against his skin, and smiled. “He really is the son of a shaman, isn’t he?”
She looked up into his warm, smiling eyes. Standing there in his father’s poncho, he looked more like his father than at any time she could remember. He even had that same amused glint in his eye that she remembered in Benjamin’s. “So are you,” she said.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Aram’s Inlet
April 10, 2305
Jimmy stared hard at the numbers. “What are your projections, Bill?”
Billy sighed. “The landings are declining very, very slowly. The model and reality just don’t match exactly.”
“So, we’re not gonna make quota?”
“If we continue sliding at this rate, we’re gonna miss it by maybe twelve percent. Of course, it’s only been three weeks or so. They could stabilize, even increase.”
“Or it could continue dropping,” Jimmy said.
“Could drop faster, too.”
Jimmy grimaced. “That’s a chance we have to take. We’re a lot closer than we would have been if we’d kept fishing the full fleet every day. How do we pick up another hundred megatons?”
“Crabs,” Billy said. “It requires specialized equipment, but it’s easy to fabricate, works good, and can be done along the coastal waters using small craft boat molds. Processing is another issue, but that’s probably the best bet. The stocks are huge, the investment is low, and the market demand is high.”
“But Casey said the landings per day were really small.”
“Yeah, well, a ton a day is a lot more than nothing. With two hundred days left in the season, a crabber might get two hundred tons by the end of October. Five boats would be a metric kiloton, five thousand is only a little more than one per village, and that’s a metric megaton.” He shrugged. “You’ve got forty thousand boats sitting idle on any given day.”
“Well, it’s better than nothing, and something we should look into while we see whether or not the summer slump deepens.” He looked at the boy shifting uneasily in his chair. “You done good, Bill. We’re a lot closer than we would have been if we’d kept going the way we were.”
“But the model ...”
“The model is the model. It breaks down. It’s better than nothing, but I never count on the model until I’ve tested it in the world. Crabbing may not get us to the quota, but it’s going to be more than nothing, which is what we got now. I’m kicking myself for not diversifyin’ before this.”
“There’s another fishery that you should look at for long term, and a possible for short term as well.”
Jimmy arched an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“Long lining for coastal fish for short term, and mussel cultivation for long. Mussels freeze well after processing, and cultivation can be done in relatively large scale without a lot of investment in time,” Billy said. “It’s definitely a longer term proposition, but when we can grow the product and know where it is, makes it a lot easier to sell.”
“True enough. We have to survive this year, first. Tell me about long lining.”
“Well, a long line is just a big fishing line with hooks along it. You bait, lay it out, and leave it. Come back later and pull it up. Take the fish, re-bait the hooks, and put it back over the side.”
“I’m familiar with the technique,” Jimmy said.
Billy blushed. “Of course. Anyway, there’s coastal species in sufficient quantities that could be harvested. Jace, mullian, arvol, and pintos. They’re good fish, solid flesh, good flavor, and could be a specialty market because nobody’s harvesting them in commercial quantities.”
“Population stocks?”
“Equal to whitefish and mouta. Same problem as crabbing. Not as easy to get a boat full as with the deepwater schools. They’re roamers and loners. That’s why long lines work well.”
“Recommendations?”
Billy paused for a few moments. “I’d work on crabbing and long lining in parallel. I have a couple of buddies that know a thing or two about laying a line. I could run up a prototype and we can see what damage a single boat can do.”
“You gonna use one of the draggers?”
Billy shook his head. “Pop’s got small boats down at the yard. One of the ten meter utility boats would make a good test boat. Cheap to build, cheap to run, and they’ll take a five metric ton cargo without blinking. They’d make good crabbing platforms, too, come to think of it.”
“Who knows crabbing?” Jimmy asked.
Billy shook his head again. “Dunno. Nobody I know here in the inlet.”
Jimmy thought about it for about three ticks. “Okay, set up the long line prototype. Fish it for a week. See what you get.” He consulted his computer. “We got just over two hundred days to make quota. If we’re gonna make a difference, we need something we can roll out fast. Long lining sounds likely. If we divert some of the extra people we got out dragging, that could pay off.”
Billy said, “Just leave the lines two days. Drag one day, long line the next. The yards can spit out those utility boats about three a day. We could use the draggers to service the lines if they’re scaled up enough to make it worthwhile.”
“Good idea. Keep thinking, Bill.”
Billy got up and headed back to his office. “Lemme get a simulation running and I’ll let ya know what I find out.”
Jimmy pinged Carruthers. “If you wanted twenty kilos of crab, who’d you call?”
“Mary Murray over at Callum’s Cove,” he said without missing a beat.
“Thanks, Carruthers.” Jimmy rang off and placed a call to Alan Thomas. It was time to make a road trip.
Three stans later, Jimmy settled his private flitter down on the Pirano pad in Callum’s Cove. Alan waited for him as he stepped out of the vehicle.
“Jimmy, good to see you,” he said, shaking Jimmy’s hand in both of his.
Jimmy grinned. “Good to see you, too, Alan. Last time was up i
n Fairfax. How’d you make out with that farmer woman?”
“Joan? Joan Armstrong?” he asked, the color rising on the back of his neck.
“Yeah, that was her name.” Jimmy grinned.
“She’s a good dancer,” Alan said with a small smile. “Mary’s at the pub this time of day. She said to come on over and we can talk there, if that’s okay.”
“I don’t wanna big crowd, Alan.”
“There won’t be one. You wanna talk to her about crabbing?”
“Yeah, seems she’s the resident expert.”
Alan looked quizzical, but didn’t ask any more questions, just led the way to The Gurry Butt.
When Jimmy stepped in out of the early afternoon sun dazzle, it took him a tick to adjust to the light. He blinked as he moved slowly into the room. The aroma of good beer filled the place, along with the smell of leather and wood polish, and the unmistakable tang that marked the place as a fisherman’s hang out. It wasn’t a bad smell, just distinctive. Part sweat, part fish, and part something else that Jimmy knew only too well, but couldn’t name.
A man and a woman, both with the sun-stained skin of people who work on the water, had their heads together over a pair of pints in the corner. The man raised his glass in salute to Alan who waved back on his way to the bar.
“I thought there’d be more people here with half the boats in,” Jimmy said.
Alan shook his head. “Always something to do.”
Alan levered a leg over the second stool from the end of the bar and Jimmy settled next to him. The woman behind the counter had a ready smile and graying hair. She looked Jimmy in the eye, but neither challenged nor bowed. Her expression left him no doubt that she knew who he was, but it didn’t seem to faze her, one way or another.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said with a half smile. “Can I get you something to drink while we chat?”
Alan said, “Why, thank you, Mary, I’d like a pint of the porter. And pour yourself a dram, on me, if you’d like.”
She looked to Jimmy and raised one eyebrow, waiting without speaking.
“Do you have a medium lager? Or maybe a wheat beer?”
South Coast (Shaman's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) Page 21
