And so it was with the anger of a parent betrayed by one of his own that Albie banished Vic from his boats. He had lived with the anguish of that day ever since.
"There’s lots of things I can’t explain about that season," Vic said. "But I still think you’re a psi, and maybe you could help turn a big catch into an even bigger one. If you want to play coy, that’s your business. But at least come out and see the boat. I had a lot to do with the design."
"What’s in this for you, Vic? Money?"
He nodded. "Lots of it. And a place on the Council of Advisors."
"That’s if everything goes according to plan. What if it fails?"
"Then I’m through. But that’s not a realistic concern. It’s not going to be a question of failure or success, just a question of how successful." He turned to Albie. "Coming out tomorrow?"
Albie’s curiosity was piqued. He was debating whether or not to let Zaro take charge of the catch tomorrow… he’d do an adequate job… and it was early in the season…
"When?"
"Midmorning will be all right. The scanners have picked up a good-sized run up at the shoals. It’s on its way down and should be here by midday."
"Expect me."
A HUNDRED METERS WIDE and at least three times as long: Those were Albie’s estimates. The ship was like nothing he had ever seen or imagined… a single huge empty container, forty-five or fifty meters deep, tapered at the forward end, and covered over with a heavy wire mesh. Albie and Vic stood in a tiny pod on the port rim that housed the control room and crew quarters.
"And this is supposed to make me obsolete?"
"Afraid so." Vic’s nod was slow and deliberate. "She’s been ready since spring. We’ve tested and retested – but without chispies. This’ll be her christening, her first blooding." He pointed to the yellow streak creeping down the center of the scanning screen. "And that’s going to do it."
Albie noticed a spur off the central streak that appeared to be moving toward a dot at the left edge of the screen.
"My, my!" he said with a dry smile. "Look at those chispies heading for my boats – even without me there to invite them in."
A puzzled expression flitted briefly across Vic’s features, then he turned and opened the hatch to the outside.
"Let’s go up front. They should be in sight now."
Under a high white sun in a cloudless sky, the two men trod the narrow catwalk forward along the port rim. They stopped at a small observation deck where the hull began to taper to a point. Ahead on the cobalt sea, a swath of angry white water, eighty meters wide, charged unswervingly toward the hollow ship. A good-sized run – Albie had seen bigger, but this was certainly a huge load of fish.
"How many of those you figure on catching?"
"Most of them."
Albie’s tone was dubious. "I’ll believe that when I see it. But let’s suppose you do catch most of them – you realize what’ll happen to the price of filet when you dump that much on the market at once?"
"It will drop, of course," Vic replied. "But only temporarily, and never below a profitable level. Don’t worry: The Council has it all programmed. The lower price will act to expand the market by inducing more people to take advantage of the bargain and try it. And once you’ve tried filet of chispen…” He didn’t bother to complete the thought.
"Got it all figured out, eh?"
"Down to the last minute detail. When this ship proves itself, we’ll start construction on more. By next season there’ll be a whole fleet lying in wait for the chispies."
"And what will that kind of harvesting do to them? You’ll be thinning them out… maybe too much. That’s not how the game’s played, Vic. We could end up with no chispies at all someday."
"We’ll only be taking the bigger ones."
"The little guys need those bigger ones for protection."
Vic held up a hand. "Wait and see. It’s almost time." He signaled to the control pod. "Watch."
Water began to rush into the hold as the prow split along its seam and fanned open into a giant scoop-like funnel; the aft panel split vertically down the middle and each half swung out to the rear. The ship, reduced now to a huge open tube with neither prow nor stern, began to sink.
Albie experienced an instant of alarm but refused to show it. All this was obviously part of the process. When the hull was immersed to two-thirds of its depth in the water, the descent stopped.
Vic pointed aft. "There’s a heavy metal grid back there to let the immature chispies through. But there’ll be no escape for the big ones. In effect, what we’re doing here is putting a huge, tear-proof net across the path of a major run, something no one’s dared to do before. With the old methods, a run like this would make chowder out of anything that tried to stop it."
"How do you know they won’t just go around you?"
"You know as well as I do, Albie, these big runs don’t change course for anything. We’ll sit here, half-sunk in the water, and they’ll run right into the hold there; they’ll get caught up against the aft grid, and before they can turn around, the prow will close up tight and they’re ours. The mesh on top keeps them from flying out."
Albie noticed Vic visibly puffing with pride as he spoke, and couldn’t resist one small puncture: "Looks to me like all you’ve got here is an oversized, motorized seining scoop."
Vic blinked, swallowed, then went on talking after a brief hesitation. "When they’re locked in, we start to circulate water through the hold to keep them alive while we head for a plant up the coast where they’ll be flash-frozen and processed."
"All you need is some cooperation from the fish."
Vic pointed ahead. "I don’t think that’ll be a problem. The run’s coming right for us."
Albie looked from the bright anticipation in Vic’s face to the ship sitting silent and open-mawed, to the onrushing horde of finned fury. He knew what was going to happen next but didn’t have the heart to say it. Vic would have to learn for himself.
THE STARS WERE BEGINNING to poke through the sky’s growing blackness. Only a faint, fading glow on the western horizon remained to mark the sun’s passing. None of the moons was rising yet.
With the waves washing over his feet, Albie stood and watched the autumn aurora begin to shimmer over the sea. The cool prevailing breeze carried smoke from his after-dinner pipe away toward the land. Darkness expanded slowly and was almost complete when he heard the voice.
"Why’d you do it, Albie?"
It wasn’t necessary to turn around. He knew the voice, but had not anticipated the fury he sensed caged behind it.
"Didn’t do a thing, Vic." He kept his eyes on the faint, wavering flashes of the aurora, his own voice calm.
"You diverted those fish!"
"That’s what you’d like to believe, I’m sure, but that’s not the way it is." The run had been almost on top of them. The few strays that always travel in the lead had entered the hold and slammed into the grate at the other end.
Then the run disappeared. The white water evaporated and the sea became quiet. In a panic, Vic had run back to the control pod where he learned from the scanner that the run had sounded to the bottom of the trench and was only now rising toward the surface… half a kilometer aft of the ship. Vic had said nothing, glaring only momentarily at Albie and then secluding himself in his quarters below for the rest of the day.
"It’s true!" Vic’s voice was edging toward a scream. "I watched your lips! You were talking to those fish… telling them to dive!"
Albie swung around, alarmed by the slurred tones and growing hysteria in the younger man’s voice. He could not make out Vic’s features in the darkness, but could see the swaying outline of his body. He could also see what appeared to be a length of driftwood dangling from his right hand.
"How much’ve you had to drink, Vic?"
"Enough." The word was deformed by its extrusion through Vic’s clenched teeth. "Enough to know I’m ruined and you’re to blame."
"And
what’s the club for? Gonna break my head?"
"Maybe. If you don’t agree to straighten out all the trouble you caused me today, I just might."
"And how do you expect me to do that?"
"By guiding the fish into the boat instead of under it."
"Can’t do that, Vic." Albie readied himself for a dodge to one side or the other. The Vic he had known on the nets would never swing that club. But eleven years had passed… and this Vic was drunk. "Can’t do it as I am now, and I sure as hell won’t be able to do it any better with a broken head. Sorry."
There followed a long, tense, silent moment. Then two sounds came out of the darkness: one, a human cry – half sob, half scream of rage; followed by the grating thud of wood hurled against wet sand. Albie saw Vic’s vague outline slump into a sitting position.
"Dammit, Albie! I trusted you! I brought you out there in good faith and you scuttled me!"
Albie stepped closer to Vic and squatted down beside him. He put the bit of his pipe between his teeth. The bowl was cold but he didn’t bother relighting it.
"It wasn’t me, Vic. It was the game. That ship of yours breaks all the rules of the game."
" ‘The game’!" Vic said, head down, bitterness compressing his voice. "You’ve been talking about games since the day I met you. This is no game, Albie! This is my life… my future!"
"But it’s a game to the chispies. That’s what most people don’t understand about them. That’s why only a few of us are any good at catching them: Those fish are playing a game with us."
Vic lifted his head. "What do you take me for–?"
"It’s true. Only a few of us have figured it out, and we don’t talk it around. Had you stayed with me a few years longer, I might have told you if you hadn’t figured it out for yourself by then. Truth is, I’m no psi and I don’t direct those fish into my net; they find their way in on their own. If they get caught in my net, it’s because they want to."
"You’ve been out on the nets too long, Albie. Chispies can’t think."
"I’m not saying they can think like you and me, but they’re not just dumb hunks of filet traveling on blind instinct, either. Maybe it only happens when they’re packed tight and running, maybe they form some sort of hive-mind then that they don’t have when they’re spread out. I don’t know. I don’t have the words or knowledge to get across what I mean. It’s a gut feeling… I think they look on the net as a game, a challenge they’ll accept only if we play by the rules and give them a decent chance of winning."
He paused, waiting for another wisecrack from Vic, but none came. He continued. "They can gauge a net’s strength. Don’t know how, but they do it. Maybe it’s those few fish always traveling in the lead… if they find the net too strong, if there’s no chance of them breaking out, they must send out some kind of warning and the rest of the run avoids it. Sounds crazy, I know, but there’s one inescapable fact I’ve learned to accept and apply, and it’s made me the best: The weaker the net, the bigger the catch."
"So that’s why you fired me when you found out I was repairing the nets with wire!"
"Exactly. You were hunting for a shortcut with the chispies and there aren’t any. You made the net too strong, so they decided to play the game somewhere else. I wound up with the worst season I ever had."
"And I wound up in the water and out of a job!" Vic began to laugh, a humorless sound, unpleasant to hear. "But why didn’t you explain this then?"
"Why didn’t you come to me when you wanted to experiment with my nets? Why didn’t you go buy your own tear-proof net and try it out on your own time? I may have overreacted, but you went behind my back and betrayed my trust. The entire crew went through pretty lean times until the next season because you broke the rules of the game!"
Vic laughed again. "A game! I must be drunker than I thought – it almost makes sense!"
"After forty years of hauling those winged devils out of the water, it’s the only way I can make sense out of it."
"But they get caught and die, Albie! How can that be a game for them?"
"Only a tiny portion of the run challenges me at a time, and only a small percentage of those go into the freezer. The rest break free. What seems like a suicide risk to us may be only a diversion to them. Who knows what motivates them? This is their planet, their sea, and the rules of the game are entirely up to them. I’m just a player – one who figured out the game and became a winner."
"Then I’m a loser, I guess – the biggest damn loser to play." He rose to his feet and faced out toward the running lights of the GelkCo I as it lay at anchor a league off shore.
"That you are," Albie said, rising beside him and trying to keep his tone as light as possible. "You built the biggest, toughest damn net they’ve ever seen, one they’d never break out of… so they decided not to play."
Vic continued to stare out to sea, saying nothing.
"That’s where you belong," Albie told him. "You were born for the sea, like me. You tried your hand with those stiff-legged land-roamers on the Council of Advisors and came up empty. But you and me, we’re not equipped to deal with their kind, Vic. They change the rules as they go along, trying to get what they want by whatever means necessary. They sucked you in, used you up, and now they’re gonna toss you out. So now’s the time to get back on the water. Get out there and play the game with the chispies. They play hard and fast, but always by the same rules. You can die out there, but not because they cheated."
Vic made no move, no sound.
"Vic?"
No reply.
Albie turned and walked up the dune alone.
"ALBIEEEEEE!"
One of the dock hands came running along the jetty. Albie had just pushed off and was following his crew into the early morning haze. He idled his scow and waited for the man to get closer.
"Guy back at the boathouse wants to know if you need an extra hand today."
Albie held his breath. "What’s he look like?"
"I dunno," the dock hand said with a shrug. "Tall, dark hair, a piece missing from his right–”
Albie smiled through his beard as he reversed the scow. "Tell him to hurry… I haven’t got all day!"
And out along the trench, the chispies moved in packs, running south and looking for sport along the way.
HEALER II
Heal Thy Neighbor
Age 218
It is difficult in these times to appreciate the devastating effect of "the horrors." It was not a plague in the true sense: it struck singly, randomly, wantonly. It jumped between planets, from one end of Occupied Space to the other, closing off the minds of victim after victim. To date we remain ignorant of the nature of the malady. An effective prophylaxis was never devised. And there was only one known cure – a man called The Healer.
The Healer made his initial public appearance at the Chesney Institute for Psychophysiologic Disorders on Largo IV under the auspices of the Interstellar Medical Corps. Intense investigative reporting by the vid services at the time revealed that a man of similar appearance (and there could have been only one then) was seen frequently about the IMC research center on Tolive.
IMC, however, has been steadfastly and frustratingly recalcitrant about releasing any information concerning its relationship with The Healer, saying only that they gave him "logistical support" as he went from planet to planet. As to whether they discovered his talent, developed his talent, or actually imbued him with his remarkable psionic powers, only IMC knows.
from The Healer: Man & Myth
by Emmerz Fent
I
THE MAN STROLLS SLOWLY along one of Chesney’s wide thoroughfares, enjoying the sun. His view of the street ahead of him is suddenly blotted out by the vision of a huge, contorted face leering horribly at him. For an instant he thinks he can feel the brush of its breath on his face. Then it is gone.
He stops and blinks. Nothing like this has ever happened to him before. He tentatively scrapes a foot forward to start walking again and
kicks up a cloud of –
– dust. An arid wasteland surrounds him and the sun regards him cruelly, reddening and blistering his skin. And when he feels that his blood is about to boil, the sky is suddenly darkened by the wings of a huge featherless bird which circles twice and then dives in his direction at a speed which will certainly smash them both. Closer, the cavernous beaked mouth is open and hungry. Closer, until he is –
– back on the street. The man leans against the comforting solidity of a nearby building. He is bathed in sweat and his respiration is ragged, gulping. He is afraid… must find a doctor. He pushes away from the building and –
– falls into a black void. But it is not a peaceful blackness. There’s hunger there. He falls, tumbling in eternity. A light below. As he falls nearer, the light takes shape… an albino worm, blind, fanged and miles long, awaits him with gaping jaws.
A scream is torn from him, yet there is no sound.
And still he falls.
II
PARD WAS PLAYING GAMES AGAIN. The shuttle from Tarvodet had docked against the orbiting liner and as the passengers were making the transfer, he attempted to psionically influence their choice of seats.
("The guy in blue is going to sit in the third recess on the left.")
Are you reading him? Dalt asked.
("No, nudging him.")
You never give up, do you? You’ve been trying to work this trick for as long as I can remember.
("Yeah, but this time I think I’ve got it down. Watch.")
Dalt watched as the man in blue suddenly stopped before the third recess on the left, hesitated, then entered and seated himself.
"Well, congratulations," Dalt whispered aloud.
("Thank you, sir. Now watch the teenager sit in the same recess.")
The lanky young man in question ambled by the third recess on the left without so much as a glance and settled himself in the fifth on the right.