Jim Baen’s Universe
Page 58
"We'd better go and see what's up," said Patrick. I can still see that grin, gleaming in the darkness. What he actually meant was to embark on Stage One in the Approved Manual of First Aid for Drunken Males: Mockery of the Afflicted.
Traditionally, when venturing into the dark to rescue a fallen comrade in a Mighty Quest, our heroes bear aloft guttering torches.
This particular Mighty Quest was being filmed on a budget, however, so we had to make do with the dim glow of Benson Hedges' finest as we strode, intrepid, into the darkness-spattered with mud, just starting to feel the cold and very, very drunk.
"Bobby, you silly bastard, where are you?"
We found him, hip deep in the Wandle. Hudson had clearly gone under at some point, and was floundering toward the bank, trying to keep his footing in the primal ooze and his tackle box out of the river.
"Look out for the Pike," said Sheila.
Disdaining this witticism, Hudson said "Help me out, then." He was too drunk to be really agitated about his predicament, but woebegone enough to have us helpless with mirth.
"Fuck off," said Patrick between guffaws, with all the compassion at his command. "I know how this goes. We reach down and you pull us in. Get out by yourself, mate."
Harsh, but insightful. It was exactly what any of us would have been thinking in Bobby's position.
Someone had to be the sacrifice, however. Being the only person present with so much as a moiety of English heritage, it fell to me to deploy the heedless stupidity of the Sons of Albion. You know, that quality that leads people to climb high and treacherous mountains because they're there, trek across the Antarctic on hamster-back to see if it can be done, and, ultimately, to trust Bobby while he was drunk up to his arse in the river and Patrick and Sheila behind me at all.
"Here," I said, "Pass me the tackle box while you climb out."
All very well, but even without attempting such a delicate maneuver, this riverbank had betrayed Hudson into the drink.
As it did me. Gingerly approaching the water margin, reaching for the box, I was undone. Did I fall? Was I pushed? Time, drink and circumstance prevent me from saying for certain. Nonetheless, arse-over-tit I went, head first into the watery domain of monster pike and forlorn shopping trolley alike.
"Argh!" I spluttered, giving the correct response after surfacing as fast as I could, and spouted river muck from all respiratory orifices. "You bastard, Welch!"
"What?" said that worthy, admitting nothing.
"You pushed me in!" In all justice I should not have made that accusation. It might equally have been Rowen. Or, in fairness, no one. But my dander was well and truly up, and Patrick got it with both verbal barrels, at full volume, dwelling in some detail on her character, ancestry, diet, sexuality and personal load-out of assorted microorganisms of a venereal character.
I record here, with neither pride nor shame, that-suitably motivated-I can blaspheme, profane and inveigh with the best and the worst alike. Should the ancient and learned institution of Oxford University found a faculty of Coarse Language, a fellowship and tenure would be mine for the asking. It was in the middle of demonstrating this innate talent and honed skill that cold, immersion, ingested river-water and involuntary acrobatics overtook the mounting range, made rendezvous with the drink and caused me to throw up.
Copiously.
"Oy! Do that downstream, you bugger!" said Hudson and, just ahead of the spreading slick, levitated-I swear, levitated, tackle box and all-out of the river.
I made a few colorful remarks about inbred molesters of sheep from the West Country. Then, pausing to allow the current to wash away bile, part-owned Guinness and whatnot, I clambered out of the river.
A reasonable person following this narrative might suppose, with a weight of evidence and reason on his side, that minus a portion of alcohol and reinvigorated in the general direction of sobriety by a refreshing dip in the gelid waters of the Wandle, sense might have prevailed. Indeed, some half of our party had now been visited with a traditional, time-honoured remedy for inebriation.
Patrick tested this hypothesis. "You want to go home, guys?" he asked.
"No," I said, for reasons clear to me neither then nor now.
"Got a fish to catch," said Bobby, hefting his tackle.
So, we perpetrated the most obdurate persistence in self-evident error since the year 842, when, it is recorded in the Gesta Norvegiae, Olaf the Bloody-Minded, despite realizing his early and radical navigational mistake, pressed on and pillaged and burnt his own fjord.
Onward it was, along the Wandle with rod, line and now-soggy cigarettes.
Naturally, we were somewhat loud and obstreperous. We remained so as we passed along the river to what we deemed a "good peg." This was a stretch of river onto which a row of houses backed.
And who can blame the anonymous householder of one of those houses for what happened next?
I invite you all to picture the scene. A dark, moonless night-well, I think it was moonless. Truth be told, I couldn't have told the moon from a streetlight or, comes to cases, my own backside. Four bold and potently inebriate heroes-I include Rowen in that category, since I maintain that the tattoo on her left bicep alone disqualifies her from the more genteel “heroine”-on a quest to find and slay the dread Wandle Pike of legend.
And such a fish, a mighty fish, a beast of ill repute! Of prodigious proportion, possibly massing as much as a ton, twenty feet long by this date and drawing four feet of water fully submerged. Fangs! Such fangs this fish would have, when we met it. Teeth like dockers' hooks with all the mercy of a Revenue Man's smile.
"I'll need the big spinner, then," said Bobby, opening his tackle box.
How he managed to tackle up I don't know. Don't want to, what's more. I don't care how well he set up his rigs all straight in his box, no man who can bend on tackle while mortal drunk and by the uncertain light of a Zippo lighter is quite canny. Manage it he did, though, and was soon ready with a shortish rod-maybe eight foot-with a big spinner on the end.
Naturally there was some mismatch between the tackle he was using and the fish he was after. If you ask me, there are but two ways you can go with tackle for a truly eldritch fish: high tech and "alternative."
The high tech… Well, what you're looking for there is something precision cut from lambent, refractory titanium by robots programmed to tolerances in the Angstrom range, using lasers that focus coruscating, scintillant energies in hellish torrents to cut a mighty spinner. The whole would be armed with nanotech augmented, diamond-edged hooks able to hold the very Leviathan, and fitted with booster rockets to enable its titanic proportions to be cast by mor
tal arm. Along with a high-tech lure fit to be found in the tackle box of Kimball Kinnison himself for use in his rare off-hours from saving Civilisation from Boskone.
Alternatively, one might opt for something that seemed grown in a dark and unknown metal, studded with ebon crystals of fell mien and nefarious import, humming faintly with terrible energies and inducing mordant and sanguinary thoughts in the unwary angler who bends it on his line. A spinner lure engraved and ensorcelled with foul runes and hooks forged in the fires of Hades and quenched in the blood of sinners. The lure might be bought with a promise of the angler's very soul from the Pandemonium Tackle Shop, prop. R. Beelzebub. (All tackle shop owners are called either Bob or Ted. It's the law.)
Not, I think you'll agree, a tin lure stamped in a mold that gave it the form of a herring with a cheery expression of culpable stupidity and retrofitted with a spinner tail that looked suspiciously like a canteen-issue teaspoon and a rusty treble hook. Such was Hudson's choice of weapon in this imminent duel between mortal man and mighty fish.
Still, he looked like he meant business. Rod in hand, he scanned the waters for a point of aim, and we all shuffled away from the likely backswing. I tried to follow his sight line. Did Hudson pick a spot where he wanted his lure to go, there I wanted to be as the safest place for a bystander.
"Right," said Bobby, his tactical assessment complete. "I'm going to troll it across that swim there." He gestured toward the river. He sounded more competent than he looked, truth be told. The Wandle is not a big river and “That swim there” encompassed most of it.
It seemed, though, that Hudson had superimposed some mental image of the mighty Amazon on the humble Wandle. "Mind out," he said, and took a backswing fit to send his lure-had it the throw-weight of a grand piano rather than dopey-looking tin herring-clear to Warwickshire somewhere.
Me, I have a morbid fear of getting a hook in the eye when anyone casts near me, so I covered my face with a warding hand and only heard what followed.
"Unnnnhh- ! " This, Hudson's grunt of effort accompanied by a hiss of line running out. A click, as he flipped his spinner-arm over to reel in.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh-!" This, from Welch, clearly in some distress. He let off a few choice oaths by which he bade Hudson stop reeling.
I opened my eyes.
The tableau vivant: Bobby, rod at the pose of action, hand on reel, looking over his shoulder with a frown of puzzlement. Patrick, his face a very rictus of pain and fury, clutching his groin with a glint of metal visible between his fingers.
No matter the state of befuddlement, there are some scenes that are always taken in with the utmost celerity.
"Play him, Bobby, I'll get the landing-net!" I cried.
"Land 'im and get 'im weighed, mate, this could be a record!" said Sheila, doing rather better.
All save Patrick went weak at the knees with laughter. Patrick was just weak at the knees. I nearly swallowed my cigarette and Sheila laughed to the point of vomiting. Bobby staggered into the river, he was so unable to cope.
"You- " said Patrick, and here I censor his remarks, which were long, loud and foul. The trauma was evidently great: Welch's language caused several small fish to float to the surface, stunned.
Recovering first, I went to Patrick's aid and bent before him to extract the barb that had caught him.
It was just as I took hold that the police arrived.
Now, some police forces would approach this particular tactical problem with helicopter-borne searchlights, screaming sirens, trained dogs snarling and straining at the leash and probably a hail of wildly inaccurate gunfire.
Not Her Majesty's Metropolitan Police, at least not in those more innocent days. Their response was limited to two youngish chaps with torches and stout sticks. They were still young enough to remember their mother's advice to wrap up warm on cold nights, as well, so the stout sticks were buttoned away under several layers.
You, O gentle reader, will be fully aware of the innocence of our motives in being there. The Questing Beast! No higher or more noble pursuit! However, to the sturdy-minded eye of the beat copper, standard issue, Metropolitan police, villains for the nicking of, the whole thing looked as kosher as a bacon butty.
"What's going on here, then," were the words of constabulative tone that announced their presence, along with the glare of a torch. Was it imagination alone that bade it pulse with a blue tinge? Or only incipient walking hangover?
Now, I am as ready a man with the smart-arse response as the next bellicose drunk. But I had been having quite the run of flashes of chilling clarity that night, and I realised that an occasion on which one is, in public, bent to the crotch of a male acquaintance, visibly clutching something that I knew damn well did not look to casual examination in poor light like a cheap tin fishing lure, was a Really Bad Time to have someone say-
"What does it fucking look like? We're trying to catch a pike!" said Hudson, holding his fishing rod at an angle and in manner that no reasonable person could deny amounted to a "brandish."
I believe I may have mentioned, earlier in this narrative, that Hudson was wont to display valor without discretion. This is a quality that is more than mere courage. It is known to the native Englishman as "bottle."
The distinction is clear. Mere courage will take men into battle. “Bottle" has memorably been described as that level of stoutness of heart and thickness of skull that causes a man to address a platoon of paratroopers with the words: "I thought only fairies had wings?"
Hudson had it.
And with those words, we'd had it. With a sinking feeling in the bowels I realized that there would-given a false move on anyone's part-be at least one arrest. Somehow the blatting of the officers' shoulder radios took on a more sinister cast.
"What seems to be the problem, officers?" said Sheila.
Now, I don't know how the New Zealand police react to that phrase, but to the Met it's like a red rag to a bull.
The officers closed in. Fortunately, once they got closer it became obvious that what I was doing was not Gross Indecency, but first aid. The matter of being drunk and disorderly was still open.
Words were had about creating a disturbance in a residential area in the wee hours of the morning. Well, we took that point. It looked like things were going to calm down: even Hudson was doing a crashingly insincere show of contrition. Then-error of errors-one of the officers asked to see Bobby’s rod license.
Slight digression, here. Britain's waterways take a certain amount of maintenance to keep them in fit condition for the coarse fishery. Not much, since most coarse fish are much less demanding than salmon or trout.
But enough that a modest annual impost must be made on each angler and a ticket issued as proof of payment, to be produced on request to anyone who asks while you're actually fishing.
Stone cold sober, no one argues with it. Hudson had his with him, there in his tackle box. Producing it, he launched into a long, drooling harangue on the infringements upon his personal liberty attendant on being hassled, at a perfectly respectable night's fishing, by "uniformed state goons."
His exact words. “Bottle,” as I said.
He went on to expostulate on how the fishing licence was a typical Tory attempt to grind down the peasantry with petty and pointless bureaucracy. Or similar. I forget the precise details, but you have to bear in mind that Bobby was from the West Country, where they're all lib dem voters. From such a ground state of political incoherence, Hudson could discharge some truly inspiring rants.
As well as ranting at some length and with much profanity, the suspect was brandishing a long blunt instrument, to wit, a fishing rod.
Friend copper-let us designate this one Copper A-stared in mild disbelief. He had, after all, merely asked to see a rod license, a perfectly normal transaction. He had even said "please" and addressed Bobby as "Sir." It'll be a worrying sign when coppers stop doing that, y'know. I mean, nowadays, when they stop you for traffic offenses, they ask: "Is this your car, sir?" Now, that's an insinuation that a) you're a car thief; and, b) stupid enough to cough the job at the first question of a uniformed officer. But they deliver it politely, which is nice.
But what was poor Copper A to do? There was only one thing he could do.
He took Hudson by the elbow in the approved manner for arrests where witnesses are present and informed him that he had a right to silence and did not have to say anything but that it might harm his defense if he failed to mention when questioned something he later relied on in court.