Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 2 Num 1

by Eric Flint

  "If you're suggesting that I'm trying to avoid real work," I said, ready for this one, "I'll just invite you to remember that you're a lawyer too."

  Sheila humphed, loudly, as near to an acknowledgement of a palpable hit as I was ever to get out of her. "Be that as it may, and I think you'll find a comparison of our billable hours shows that you're definitely the workshy one."

  "Well, I could get into point-scoring," I replied, making a virtue of the necessity of avoiding inevitable defeat, "but I shall rise above that particular fray. The thing is, if we can't kill the fish, we should try and kill the idea."

  "This von't vork," said one of the Aesir twins. "Most of the minds that Midgardsormr draws its strength from won't listen to you anyway. Most of them don't read anything but fishing magazines."

  "'Tis true," McCann said, "the Serpent is the biggest one that got away ever."

  "It draws its strength from fish stories? " I was aghast to discover that I might have in some measure contributed to my own near-undoing on the shores of far California.

  "You mean to say we're our own fifth column?" Sheila asked, getting more to the nub of the thing. After all, if humanity was feeding the dread serpent with fish stories, half the shelves at most newsagents amounted to a veritable buffet for the thing. There are, at a rough count, some fifteen titles published monthly on the subject of carp-fishing alone in the United Kingdom, another half-dozen for salmon and trout, and a positive bewilderment of general piscatorial publications.

  "Worse," McCann said, "It's a cult."

  "Jar," Modi and Magni slurred in unison, with Magni continuing, "He who fights fish, becomes a fish himself."

  Modi added, "He who stares overlong into der fishpond, he finds the fishpond stares into him."

  "Nietzsche," Magni said, capping both misquotations.

  "Well, I'm sure we can do without the ravings of a demented German," Sheila said, although I suspect most of her beef with dear old Fred was the fact that he wrote of the Super man, thus offending her female chauvinist sensibilities.

  "Wouldn't know about that," McCann said, "just that there's any number of anglers go to the bad. Been happening for thousands of years."

  This was starting to sound interestingly grisly. "Human sacrifice?" I probed, "Dark rites, conducted in the blackest of ebon nights? Fell rituals to shatter the mind, horrors to sear the soul?"

  "Fishing, mostly," McCann said, "Fishing that don't catch no fish. "

  A long, drawn-out silence.

  "Hold on," Sheila said, "if they're not catching fish, surely—"

  "Belay that logic, there!" McCann snapped. "You've seen 'em, you know you have. Angling around ponds no more'n knee-deep. More tackle than any sane man would have. More, oftener 'n not, than a mortal man can carry."

  "Clapham Common pond," I said, pouncing on something that had troubled me for a long time. "There's always at least one of the buggers there. And I don't believe there's any fish in there to start with. Discarded condoms, yes. Sunken Special Brew cans, certainly. Fish? Not likely. And you're right, they're tackled up for Leviathan Himself."

  I invite the casual reader to take a moment in earnest, here, and use the facility of the modern Internet to look up Clapham Common Round Pond. If It's twenty yards across, it could only be so by dint of a generous measure made by a drunken surveyor using yards of less than the Imperial Standard. And yet, day in, day out, in all manner of weather, there is at least one angler there. Typically with a collapsible shelter against the dank and windy elements that is British weather for two out of three parts of the year, he has a rod-rest and multiple rods festooned with high-tech reels, electronic bite detectors and probably short-wave radar to boot. I'd always suspected that it wasn't quite canny—possibly some kind of occupational therapy for the irredeemably insane—but I was now to learn just how wrong the whole situation really was.

  "T'ain't about the fish," McCann said. "It's about the worship of fish. A cult, I tell you. And round ponds, such as you mention. And thousands of years, I tell ye."

  "How thousands?" I asked, hinting for more evidence. "And none of your immanent personification malarkey, either, we've a sight too many deities involved in this business, friend."

  "Stonehenge," McCann had the air of a man betting open on a priall of threes.

  "Stonehenge?"

  "Used to have a pond in it. With stone markers for the fishing pegs. And no fish. " McCann's demeanour had lost the air of ages-won superiority. "They've been recruiting at least that long. Go far in the great struggle and you'll learn, oh yes, you'll learn. The Brotherhood fights the fight, yet at any moment any of us can go to the bad. It's always just one more bit of tackle, just a little earlier to rise to get on the water while they're biting, and afore ye know it, ye're there, rod in hand, a tackle box bigger than you are, by a small round pond with no fish in it and your mind gone, altogether gone..."

  That was good for a round of shudders. We'd seen it ourselves, of course. Hudson was probably half gone already, and I was aware that even as I'd stood in fishing tackle shops and wondered wryly who the hell it was used all this stuff, I'd been tempted to have a go with some of the more esoteric tackle. Fortunately, I'd passed all my sanity checks so far. I could still manage to resist the urge that has a man regard angling as an end in itself and damn the want of fish actually caught.

  As for the sacrifices, I note that there have been bodies found buried near Stonehenge, so it can't be ruled out. I resolved to keep a wary eye on the angling cultists in future, no matter if I managed to get out of this quest.

  Sheila broke the long silence in which we contemplated this. "Boat," she said, hoarse with the horror we'd had visited on our fragile minds.

  "Beer," I said, rising to match action to words, for my glass had passed half-empty some time since, literally as well as metaphorically.

  The place was still full of the lunchtime crowd, so I was some time getting the drinks, and I returned again to discover that I'd missed a significant part of the action.

  "It turns out that Mister McCann is captain of a vessel that will serve our purposes," Sheila said, making an allusion that I didn't fancy above half.

  "If he has a hairy first mate, I'm not interested," I said, "even if he does have the sense to shoot first."

  "Best way," McCann said. "Best way. Saves all that business with asking questions later, too. First mate aboard my ship ain't so hairy, mind. Fightin" Bob McKnight, he is, from Dover."

  "The men of Kent are suspect," I snapped, picking the one line from that old saw that is fit for polite company.

  "Well, Dave McLean's from Westmeath, how does that figure?" McCann asked.

  "My grandfather's from near those parts, in Mullingar," I grudgingly allowed, although given that my granddad's a sober, unordained version of Father Jack from the notorious Irish comedy, it wasn't perhaps the greatest of recommendations for the midlands of Ireland as a breeding-ground of sanity.

  "Well, if you're keener on an Irish crew, I've mostly got one," McCann said. "They're up the road praying for a Celtic win. At least Mick Mooney will be. A right drunken looney. And Bob McKenzie, avoiding work since it puts him in a frenzy."

  A horrible realization was stealing over me. "You're not from anywhere by the Bann, are you?" I asked, seeing the answer, with a gloomy inevitability, rise like a rock in the conversational stream. A man from Westmeath, a fighting man from Dover. And the names did seem to have been recruited in spite of obvious deficiencies in working seafarers, recruited for scansion and rhyme.

  "Here and now, that I am," McCann said, and the grin of ages past was there again.

  "What are you on about, Ishmael?" Sheila asked, "not that I'm surprised you've found something else to complain about. You're only happy when you're moaning about something, so happy I see you've bought the beers again."

  "This ship," I asked, no more able to resist exploring this subject than I might ever have been able to resist picking at a scab, "has it ever been used to carry a
large cargo? Such as of a city hall's worth of bricks?"

  "Catches on fast, don't 'e?"

  "Fucking right I do," I said, "especially when clear disaster is staring us in the face. Sheila, if you have engaged us to voyage aboard this man's ship, we are doomed and there is no denying it."

  "You don't mean—?" The sight of Sheila paling in terror is not one to behold when one is in the grips of that same emotion. Even Modi and Magni looked a little uncomfortable.

  "The rest of the crew will join us shortly," McCann said, "and It's a whale of a crew, at that."

  Now, the astute reader will have noticed that we were, indeed, about to sail on the Irish Rover, a vessel famed, among other things, for having twenty-seven masts, and carrying millions of tons of cargo, so a large crew was a practical necessity.

  Whether she was the original, refloated after her multitude of sinkings in a million folk nights at a million pubs since she first set sail in eighteen hundred and six, I was never to discover. But whoever had decided that the quest to lay to rest the Midgard Serpent was to be a reverse-murphy stunt—deliberately courting failure so that when Murphy's Law operated we met with unlooked-for success—was laying it on with a shovel.

  "You say we need to be good and drunk before we go hunt this serpent?" I asked.

  "That's the spirit!" McCann exclaimed.

  "How drunk?" Sheila asked.

  "As drunk as you need to be."

  I looked over at the bar. Counted the fourteen pumps of various brands of Real Ale. Considered the row of optics, no less than fourteen different malt whiskies, and assorted other ardent spirits. Estimated the sheer volume of alcohol in the eighteen-foot long top shelf of arcane liqueurs and obscure fortified wines. Came to some conclusions about how big a cellar this place could possibly have, and how much beer there might be if the barrels were stacked to the rafters therein.

  And measured it all in balance against how drunk we'd all have to be to actually dare this fell and deadly hunt.

  I lit a cigarette, upper lip stiff but Zippo in trembling hand. Not just Ishmael, can you call me, but now Chief Brody as well.

  "We're going to need a bigger pub, you son of a bitch," I said.

  * * *

  To be continued

  Eric Flint is the author of many novels and some short fiction. He has also edited a number of anthologies. Dave Freer has written a number of novels and short stories. Andrew Dennis has co-authored books with Eric Flint. This is the first time the three have worked together.

  To read more work by these authors, visit the Baen Free Library at: http://www.baen.com/library/

  INTRODUCING:

  Touching the Dead

  Written by J. Kathleen Cheney

  Illustrated by Emily Tolson

  The colonel, Shironne decided, must be one of those clever people, the kind who liked to fix things. She could sense him waiting for them there in his office, his curiosity held at bay, but only just.

  Her mother took her hand and laid it on the tall back of a chair. Shironne ran her gloved fingers along the wood, straightened her skirts and sat down. She pulled her braid over her shoulder, well aware that she presented a ragged picture— the blind girl in a child's dress. More than two years old now, it was too short in the skirt and sleeve. Even so, she'd grown accustomed to the feel of it against her over-sensitive skin, and that made the old blue woolen tolerable.

  "Madam Anjir, Miss Anjir," the colonel said in a deep, sincere voice. "I'm honored to have you here."

  Shironne smiled in response, returning his goodwill without thinking. He stood and approached them, his boots crossing a hard floor, only a few steps. She guessed he must be quite tall.

  "I'm sorry to trouble you, Colonel . . ." her mother began, sounding official, as a politician's wife should.

  "Cerradine," he supplied.

  ". . . Colonel Cerradine. This is the Investigations Office, isn't it? We've come to inquire about the death of an army gentleman, a Sergeant Merha. The hospital sent us here to talk to you."

  "And why would you be making inquiries into this man's death, Madam?"

  He didn't walk away, but Shironne thought she heard the movement of his clothes, as if he'd sat down, perhaps on the edge of his desk. She could smell him from there: wool and leather and the oily black smell of a gun. She caught a faint whiff of cologne or soap, something exotic and manly. She didn't recognize it, but liked it much better than the cloying musk her father favored.

  "It's me, not her," Shironne told him.

  The colonel's attention turned on her then. His interest didn't fall all over her like an exuberant puppy but sat back and observed her like a cat, distant and willing to wait for its prize. "And why would you do that, Miss Anjir?"

  "Because I promised my maid Benia I would find out what happened to him," she admitted, knowing it sounded like a childish whim. "I . . . um, she was upset and she kept asking why someone would kill him, and I promised without thinking, sir."

  "It's never a good idea to make rash promises, Miss Anjir," he said with laughter in his tone.

  Harder than he knew. With Benia's distress falling all about her like an enveloping wave of water, she'd been carried away. The woman's emotions had overridden her own, stealing her judgment. "I do realize that, sir."

  "Hmmm," he said. "Unfortunately, I can't give you that answer yet, ladies. We've only begun to investigate his death. I will, however, send word around to your residence as soon as I do have information." His feet moved away toward the other side of the room.

  He felt regretful, Shironne decided, because he couldn't help them. "You misunderstand me, sir. I thought I could help you. Figure out who killed him, I mean."

  He didn't dismiss her idea immediately. Instead, the emotions in his mind locked away as calculation took over. A moment passed in silence. "Madam Anjir," he asked then, "do you intend to permit this if I agree?"

  Her mother radiated surprise, but quickly tamped it down. She'd expected the colonel to refuse. "I gave my promise, sir," she said, "but I must ask that this be handled with the utmost discretion. My husband wouldn't wish it known we came here."

  "No, I expect not," he said.

  Shironne sensed animosity in the colonel's thoughts and wondered if he already knew her father.

  "My people will be perfectly discreet, Madam," he said. "Now how did you think to help me, Miss Anjir?"

  "I wondered if I might touch the body, sir."

  * * *

  The colonel walked with her across the level lawn of the Army Square. Her mother had described the square to her when they alighted from their carriage, but Shironne hadn't been able to fix anything in her mind save the location of the army's administration building on one side of the green and the hospital on the other.

  She'd heard men calling out in the distance, a drill or a parade. Their voices drew forth a childhood memory of seeing military men in their sharp blue and brown uniforms, parading along the streets of Noikinos with their long rifles on their shoulders. It was an old memory, and she couldn't remember if their trousers were blue with a brown stripe down the side, or the other way around. Perhaps they didn't have a stripe at all. The men were gone now, their drill finished, and only the normal sounds of horses and carriages came from the square.

  The colonel led her through the entry doors of the hospital. Shironne knew the scents well, having spent more time in the company of doctors in the last few years than she cared to. They traversed a flight of stairs leading down to the army's morgue.

  She tried not to smell the un-circulated air, pressing a gloved finger under her nostrils. The cool room stank of ripeness and chemicals, of bowels emptied and strong soaps, one scent layering over another. Someone should throw open a few windows and let the wind sweep through, she thought, and then wondered if the place had any windows to open. Shironne tightened her other hand on the colonel's sleeve, queasiness welling in her stomach.

  Male voices protested her presence, and the colonel went to spea
k with the men, leaving her standing alone. An older-sounding man argued the appropriateness of a young girl seeing such things, which made Shironne want to laugh. The colonel prevailed in the end, and Shironne felt the men's protests, both mental and vocal, fading into the distance, past closing doors.

  "There are people who specialize in investigating these things, Miss Anjir," the colonel said from several feet away. "If you want to back out now, I can send for one of them."

  "No, sir. I promised." She sensed his concern. He felt curious, but worried for her sake as well. "I . . . um, don't know where the body is."