Involution Ocean

Chapter 10 Flying Fish

My next days were occupied mostly by cooking. I spent much time studying Nullaquan tastes, thinking that when I returned to Reverie I would startle my friends with odd Nullaqua-style delicacies. Unfortunately, while she was sweeping the kitchen Dalusa accidentally upset the con­tainer of horseradishlike spice into one of my stews. A sin­gle taste of this inadvertent dish puckered my mouth for two hours. I almost threw it out, but served it at the last minute. The crew ate it with their usual stolidity and atten­tion. Had Nullaqua grown trees, they would have eaten the bark and found it good.

There was not much wind in this part of the Sea of Dust. The equator was at the verge of the two convection cells that determine the crater’s climate, and eternal calm stretched from wall to wall. The air was clearer, too, and to either side of Lunglance a silvery heat haze stretched shim­mering into the distance. One could squint through the len­ses of one’s mask and almost imagine the Lunglance se­renely afloat on a monstrous ocean of mercury. The sky seemed bluer than usual here, almost violet, and the low rim of cliffs, far to the west, were tinged purple with dis­tance. Every scrap of plastic sail that the Lunglance had was set, even the tiny auxiliary ones at the very top whose masts were no thicker than broomsticks. Only the merest whisper of wind propelled us’ and the ship seemed to slide almost regretfully through the dust.

I was sweating inside my mask; I had to tilt my head back and shake it to keep perspiration out of my eyes. The crew, with thicker eyebrows than mine, had no such problem. I leaned over the rail again and stared moodily into the distance, still a little glazed from the Flare I had done that morning. It was an affecting scene, I noted. I thought about writing a poem. I decided against it.

Dalusa, back from her morning patrol, swooped by me at the rail, so close that the wake of her passage stirred my hair. I waved in acknowledgement. Dalusa, I noticed, was getting her own equivalent of a tan; she was growing paler and paler with repeated exposure to the sun. It was a more logical arrangement than my own. After all, pale skin re­flects the heat.

I looked around unobtrusively and was relieved to find Murphig nowhere in sight. I had been sure that he was standing around somewhere, watching.

Perhaps I would have to make a friend of Murphig. He was an open, inquiring mind, and despite his oddities he seemed firmly rooted in sanity. Suppose, for instance, that Desperandum suddenly became dangerous. Little help could be expected from the tradition-bound mates or oxlike crew. They would probably poison their mothers before they would soil their souls with mutiny. Calothrick was a zero, also. He was still resentful because I had not given him his own store of Flare, as I had learned just yesterday when he had come back to fill up all three of his packets. He was growing dirtier, too; his hair was lank and greasy, and the lightning-stripes were slowly peeling off the sides of his mask. He could not be trusted.

And it would take at least two of us to handle Desperan­dum; it would probably take two just to kill him, even with the harpoons. I even had my doubts about Dalusa as a confederate. She loved me, there was no doubt about that But in what way? How much did love mean to her, any­way? There was no way to tell, as she refused to talk about her cultural background. Dalusa obsessed me but I was not yet blind.

We killed two whales later that day and dropped six fer­tilized eggs overboard. I cooked whale steaks that night They were noxious.

Next morning there was a cloud on the southern hori­zon. This could only bode ill, as Nullaqua never had the decent, normal clouds of harmless vapor that grace the skies of other planets.

“What do you make of it, Mr. Flack?” I heard Desper­andum say to his first mate, handing the man a pair of binoculars.

“Flying fish, sir,” replied the laconic whaler.

“Good! Good!” said Desperandum gruffly. “Mr. Flack, have two men ready to help me with equipment. The rest of the crew will retire belowdecks.”

While two crewmen dragged monitoring devices from Desperandum’s cabin, the rest of us sought shelter below. Before I went in, I glanced quickly around for Dalusa. She was nowhere in sight. I later discovered that she had gone below before I did. I sat on the stool in the kitchen while the rest of the crew tramped down the stairs. Calothrick walked by and gave me a glazed, yellow-toothed grin.

I debated a short blast of Flare while the migration passed. The pro side was winning when Flack stuck his head through the hatch and said flatly, “Cookie wanted on deck.”

I went. On deck, Desperandum and the two crewmen were stringing nets between the masts. I noticed that six cubical boxes with swiveling wire-mesh radar dishes had been set several feet apart in front of the nets. Red and blue wiring trailed in tangles from the boxes to a sort of metal pillbox, fitted together out of five thin sheets of iron. It had a thick visorlike window, facing south toward the cloud. Al­ready the sails had been furled, to give the migratory horde leeway. In. the feeble winds of the equator, we could not possibly have outrun or dodged the fish.

Hie nets were ready. “Get below, men,” Desperandum told the crewmen. They hastened into the hold and slammed the hatch behind them. Already the fish swarm was assuming ominous proportions.

“Newhouse!” the captain shouted. I walked closer and saluted. “This way if you please,” Desperandum continued. He opened a low door in the side of the metal pillbox and we walked inside. Touching switches, Desperandum turned on a dim light in the ceiling and set an air filter humming.

They were rather cramped quarters, only seven feet by seven feet, and Desperandum’s vast bulk took up much of that. In addition, there was a metal counter that supported Desperandum’s binoculars and a large flat tally box with a small television screen. Two tiny white bUps crossed the screen, starting from the top and moving slowly and errati­cally.

Desperandum reached under the counter and handed me a notebook and a pen. “You can take of! your mask,” he said. “The filters should have cleaned the air by now.”

I took off my mask and dropped it under the counter. “You can write, I hope,” Desperandum said.

“Certainly, Captain,” I said.

“Good. You’re here to take notes. Copy down the num­bers I give you into that column I’ve listed as ‘individuals.’ Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, taking the notebook and lodging it in the crook of my left elbow.

“Two,” said Desperandum. “Well be just on the fringes of the horde for a few minutes, so you can take it easy. Stay alert though. You want to look before they arrive?”

Without waiting for an answer he handed me the binocu­lars. I stooped to get them at the level of the visor, which was set at Desperandum’s height. I focused the binoculars.

The cloud resolved itself into thousands of individual fish, foot-long creatures with thin, brightly colored wings. They dipped and pirouetted like the molecules of a gas.

“They look like butterflies,” I said.

“What are butterflies?”

“Earth fauna. Six-legged invertebrates with multicolored wings. They sometimes travel in swarms.”

“Are they aquatic?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, the analogy might be worth pursuing anyway,” Desperandum rumbled. “Eighty-seven.”

I wrote the number down. A complex pattern of clumped and scattered dots appeared on Desperandum’s television screen; he did a quick sketch of the pattern on graph paper in his notebook. “See how many we have in the nets,” he said.

I crouched to look out.

“Uh . . . Captain . . .

“What?”

“They’re slicing the nets to pieces out there. Their wings are as sharp as razors.”

Desperandum’s ruddy face turned pale. He looked out the window and grunted, as if he had been struck in the stomach. He looked down with an attitude of intense con­centration and touched two switches on his tally box.

“Three hundred and ninety-three,” he said.

There was a light metallic thud as a flying fish struck our pillbox. Desperandum flinched. There were more thuds.

The main body of the swarm was passing over the Lunglance. “One four nine four three,” Desperandum said, sketching frantically. The television screen was alive with swarming dots. “Aren’t we catching any of them?” Desper­andum demanded.

I looked out and flinched myself when a fish struck the window. “No, sir,” I said. “The nets are completely shred­ded now, they’re just lying on the deck. There’re a few fish on the deck by the mizzenmast, though. Wait a minute. They just flew off.”

“Five five six two seven,” Desperandum said. The air was growing dark. There were millions of them out there. “No matter,” said Desperandum, recovering his poise. “We’ve still got the radar to analyze their flying pattern. Their spawning grounds are in a bay just behind the Brokenfoot Islands. We can stop there and pick up a few speci­mens.”

“That’s a bit of a detour, Captain,” I said. It was an unwise remark.

“IH thank you to remember that I am the captain of this ship,” Desperandum said.

“I apologize, sir. I was out of line.”

It sounding like hail on the top of our pillbox; dozens of fish were colliding and rebounding. “Two oh five, eight eighty-three,” Desperandum said.

Then, suddenly, part of Desperandum’s television screen went dark, a long narrow vertical band on the left side of the screen. Desperandum frowned mightily and touched switches with his thick, blunt fingers. The band stayed dead.

“They must have sliced the wiring from one of my radar sets,” Desperandum said. “That means I’ll have to multiply the rest of the values by a sixth. Make a note of that. One eighty-five, nine forty-one.”

I glanced at the screen. White dots were pouring off the live portions of the screen into the dead area. None were re-emerging.

“What are they doing out there?” Desperandum asked himself. He peered through the visor; three fish, their thin crystalline wings splashed with yellow and crimson, collided with it at once. Desperandum flinched back.

Another band of the screen went dead. “One oh one three two,” Desperandum said. “Are they thinning out, or are they just flying into the dead areas?”

I bent and looked out. “It does seem to be getting a little clearer, Captain.”

“Any in the nets?”

“No, sir. But there are several dozen by the radar instal­lations. One of them isn’t moving. Its wing seems to be shrivelled. It must have been electrocuted. Now a thick band of them is coming over the rail. They just hit a radar box and knocked it over.”

I glanced down at Desperandum’s screen. The radar was pointing straight upwards, and its values did not mesh with the others’. There was no longer a coherent image; dots were leaping madly in and out of existence along the zone between the areas on the screen that were covered by the fourth and fifth radar sets.

“We’re going blind;” Desperandum said.

“They seem to be attacking the boxes,” I said. Another area of the screen winked out.

“Yes,” Desperandum said. “They must operate by radar themselves. The signals probably confuse their own flying patterns. That’s why they collide with the boxes. It would be interesting to see how they do it.” Another section of the screen went dead. I looked out the window.

“Only the first, fourth, and fifth boxes are working, Cap­tain,” I said. “That’s where all the fish are, too. The other boxes are deserted. Hmmm. I was mistaken about that elec­trocuted fish. Captain. It’s still alive, and trying to fly off. It’s having difficulties though.”

“I must have one of those specimens,” Desperandum said tightly, shutting off the screen with a snap. The fish rose and fluttered away. “Put your mask on, Newhouse. I’m going to open the door.”

I grabbed my dustmask. “Don’t do it, Captain. You’ll be sliced to ribbons.”

“Don’t try to stop me,” Desperandum bristled. “When I aim to find something out, I don’t let anything stand in my way.” He put his arm against my shoulder and brushed me casually out of the way. I slammed into the back of the pillbox and saw stars. Hurriedly I pulled on my dustmask, then reached out and slammed the door shut.

I heard a flutter. Somehow one of the damnable little beasts had flown inside the pillbox. I grabbed the notebook with both hands and looked around wildly. Something touched my sleeve near the elbow and I saw a red and yellow flash out the corner of my eye. I swung quickly, heard a solid whop and a thud as the fish struck the wall. It slid, crippled and thrashing to the ground, leaking ichor from around one of its fiat, lidless eyes. Its dotted wings were broken, but their razor edges still gleamed evilly in the light from the overhead bulb. It did look a lot like a butterfly. I had seen one in a book once.

I looked at my sleeve. There was a neat two-inch slash just above my elbow, but the skin was untouched.

I dropped the notebook on the crippled fish, pinning it down, and looked out to see how Desperandum was doing.

He had seized a whaling spade from somewhere and bro­ken it, leaving a five-foot metal stub with a flat spade at one end, like a flyswatter. The fish were not attacking him. What few were left were evading him with insolent ease and fluttering languidly off to join their brothers in the de­parted swarm. Desperandum swung at them with all his massive strength, but they floated serenely up and around the edges of the spade.

Suddenly one dipped and swooped near him. It seemed to miss Mm, but suddenly a bright red line appeared on the side of his neck. Desperandum bellowed and swiped at the thing with one hand, knocking it to the deck. Blood dripped from his fingers. The creature struggled to rise, but Desperandum leapt suddenly and mashed it to paste under the heels of his boot. Blood was trickling down the side of his neck and into his shirt. A quick feint with the spade and a stab downed another; he swatted it to the deck. It splattered. Then he rah after the retreating cluster of fish and halved one with the spade’s metal edge. Its head flew overboard. Another fish swooped down from nowhere and scored his arm. With astonishing speed Desperandum snatched it in midair and squeezed it juicily, earning more cuts in the process. More splatters of blood marred the deck.

The few remaining fish were fluttering upward now, gaining height and moving out of the captain’s reach. There was no point in attacking him. It would have taken hundreds of such shallow wounds to drain the gallons of blood in Desperandum’s massive frame.

The entire flock was gone. I opened the pillbox door and glanced quickly at the receding horde. The last few fish were struggling to regain their positions in the flock.

Bleeding, Desperandum watched them recede into the distance. Then he threw his bloodied spade aside with a clatter and walked to the pillbox.

“We have a few specimens now,” he said. “It’s too bad, but I think their heads were all crushed. That would be where they kept their radar equipment. What a shame.”

He walked inside the pillbox and disconnected a few of the wires from the tally box.

I pulled my mask off and closed my eyes. “One of the fish flew in here, Captain. I managed to trap it,” I said all in a breath. I pulled my mask back on and inhaled. Dust stung my nose. I sneezed and nearly burst my eardrums.

Desperandum shut the door with a loud clang and turned on the air filters. “Really? Where?”

I waited for the air to clear, then pulled off my mask and said, “I think it’s still alive. Right under that notebook.”

“Notebook? Where?” Desperandum looked at the counter. He took a step back and—squish—his large flat foot landed squarely on the book. I winced.

“Well. What a misfortune,” Desperandum said in a tone of deep regret. He picked up the notebook and gazed criti­cally at the stickily adhering remnants of fish. “Completely ruined. What bad luck. By the way, Newhouse, I’m sorry I snapped at you a few minutes ago. I was overwrought.”

“I understand, sir. I had it coming, anyway.”

“No, no, I appreciate frankness. And, as you said, I don’t think the crew would appreciate a detour like that. There aren’t many whales there; they would see it as a waste of time. We don’t want the men getting restless.”

“Just as you say, sir.”

“You’re dismissed. Give the men the all clear when you go back to the kitchen. And have our medical officer re­port to my cabin.”

“Yes, sir.” I left.

And that was the last of the incident. But, later I found Dalusa staring raptly at the dried patches of Desperan­dum’s blood on the deck. I scrubbed it clean with sand that night when no one was looking.