Linda Nagata - Hooks, Nets & Time

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2024-12-23 0 0 84.8KB 15 页 5.9玖币

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Hooks, Nets and

Time

a novelette

by Linda Nagata

The ocean ran through his dreams. The panting breath of the wavelets as they rose and fell against the

pylons became his own breath, a slow, deep rhythm in his lungs that forced him to run. His footfalls

reverberated against the black plastic photovoltaic field that doubled as a deck: a square track five

kilometers long, encompassing the perimeter of the shark pen. Starlight glinted off the water; glistened in

the film of sweat that coated his pumping arms. The rubber soles of his running shoes beat out an ancient

cursorial rhythm, a telling vibration transmitted through the deck to the perforated steel walls of the shark

pen and then to the coral foundations of the station some twelve fathoms below. Crippled Tiburon would

be lurking there near the bottom, listening, measuring the vibrations in his ancient, clever mind, waiting for

the hour when his fins had fully regrown and his strength was at once new...and old.

A thin wail twisted through the humid night. Tiburon heard it in the depths and thrashed his powerful tail.

The wail grew into a distant howl of terror.

A faint splash.

Zayder sat up abruptly. The dream peeled away like burned film, leaving him in another version of the

night. He'd fallen asleep on a lounge chair again, in the open air, on the deck of the Ocean Hazards

Collection Station that he managed alone. The blocky silhouette of the shed rose behind him. The

structure seemed to be an ugly afterthought to the automated design of the U.N. mandated OHC Station.

Still, it served him for housing, and storage for the shark farm: luxury quarters compared to the fishing

boats he'd grown up on.

Out on the water, the distant lights of a freighter interrupted the blanket of starlight. In the pen, the swish

and splash of a shark fin accented the peaceful wash of the ocean.

Zayder leaned forward, ignoring the dry moss of a hangover that clung to his tongue and the roof of his

mouth. He listened, unsure if the howl had been part of his dream. His pulse still hammered in his ears.

He'd heard howls like that before: once as a kid, when a man fell off the shark boats in the Sulu Sea. And

again, one night when Mr. Ryan came to the station. Zayder had only feigned drinking the cordial that

should have sent him into a drugged sleep. That night he'd watched surreptitiously as a bound man went

screaming to the sharks.

He listened. He thought he could detect a distant, angry voice from the direction of the freighter, but that

was all. And what if he heard more? What was he supposed to do if he discovered mayhem and murder

on the high seas? Call Mr. Ryan and complain about the neighbors?

He chose to believe that it had been a dream.

Dawn came. Zayder woke, washed his face, put on his running shoes. Another day. He would spend

the morning doing maintenance on the robotic garbage trawlers that had come into the station overnight

from their long forays into the South China Sea. In the afternoon he would mutilate sharks, harvesting the

regrown fins of the captive beasts for sale on the Chinese market -- the prized ingredient in shark fin

soup. So much to look forward to.

But first he would run.

He set off at an easy pace on the only route the station offered: a 5K lap around the photovoltaic decking

built atop the steel mesh wall of the shark pen. At high tide the deck was a meter above the water, with

the open sea on one side and the enclosed waters of the pen on the other.

Zayder had run this makeshift track twice every morning for almost a year. Boredom had been left

behind long ago. Now, his mind automatically faded into a passive altered state before he finished the first

hundred meters. Conversations rose from his past to fill his consciousness, insignificant exchanges: a joke

offered to college acquaintances in a bar; polite questioning of a professor; a cautious response to the

inquiries of a government personnel officer hiring biologists for the wildlife refuge at Moro Bay; and yet

another personnel officer, hiring for the marine sanctuary in the Gulf of California, and another and

another, until they all seemed to be different versions of the same bad news: I'm sorry. You have an

excellent record and your thesis is impressive, but I'm afraid you're not quite right for us....

He studied every word, searching for some point where -- if only he'd phrased things differently -- events

would have taken a more positive path. An absurd exercise. He already knew the point when his career

in marine biology had been lost. It had happened even before he knew what a career was, when he'd

been arrested at seventeen for poaching.

It had meant nothing to him at the time. He'd been working for his Dad, hunting pelagic sharks for a

dealer, who preserved the bodies and sold them as dramatic ornaments for coastal mansions. Zayder's

family had been deep water fishermen for generations. But as natural resources dwindled, what had been

an honest occupation gradually became a crime, and an arrest for poaching just another risk of the

business.

But the wealthy patrons who supported refuges and sanctuaries around the world didn't see it in that

practical light. No refuge manager would want his patron's newsletter to ring with the headline: Former

poacher hired as field biologist.

It had never mattered how well he did in school.

But he'd come too far in life to go back to the boats, so he'd taken a job with Mr. Ryan instead. Ryan

did not believe in nonprofit enterprises. When a U.N. mandate required every corporate entity that

generated potential ocean garbage to construct and maintain an Ocean Hazards Collection Station, Ryan

had expanded on the design by adding the shark pen.

Shark fins were much in demand and now nearly unobtainable since the wild populations had been

hunted almost to extinction. Tiburon's fins alone would fetch twice Zayder's yearly wages each time they

could be regrown and harvested. Ryan's select market held the great white shark in high esteem: no other

great white had been reported in nearly five years. Speculation held the captive animal to be the last of its

species.

But beyond the income from fins, the station was useful to Ryan in other ways. So Zayder finally found

himself employed again, master of a remote world built on a reef in the South China Sea.

The deep blue sky lightened as he ran. The pink fair-weather clouds that hugged the horizon gradually

brightened until they were bathed in brilliant white. A moment later the rim of the sun appeared above the

water. Zayder ducked his head, his thoughts blown back to the present by the sudden blast of daylight.

A hundred meters out on the sun-burnished water a black torpedo armed with a spine of pentagonal fins

scudded towards the station: one of the robotic garbage trawlers being driven home by a combination of

the light breeze against its adjustable fins, and a solar-powered engine. Its collecting tentacles trailed a

hundred meters behind it: some on the surface, some searching out the depths below. Most of them were

laden with a motley collection of old plastics, netting, glass, metal and organic debris bound for the

station's recycling bins.

Zayder slowed to watch the trawler come in. At the same moment a white-noise explosion of water

erupted from the pen, scarcely a body length away. Startled instinct slammed him backward as the

geyser of white water lunged toward him. A solid shape appeared as the pearly water fell away. He

recognized the massive, lead-gray profile of a great white shark, its fins fully grown and its maw open, its

upper jaw thrust forward to expose rows of triangular teeth. Tiburon!

Spray washed over Zayder as he threw himself back, a split second before the five-meter shark slammed

onto the deck. The whole structure shuddered. Fracture lines bloomed in the photovoltaic panels beneath

Tiburon's belly. The shark fixed him with its manic black eyes. It thrashed on the deck, jaws snapping in

an effort to get at him. He felt the rush of air as the teeth closed within centimeters of his ankle.

"You bastard!" he screamed. He jumped back again. The shark thrust forward. Its torso was draped on

the deck, but its great tail was still in the water, fanning the surface into a violent foam. "Back in, you

fucker!" Zayder screamed.

The shark snapped twice more, then grew still. Its eyes still fixed on him, it slid silently back into the

water.

Zayder stood on the deck, his shoulders heaving, a torrent of curses spilling from his mouth. Tiburon was

the oldest, biggest monster in the pen. Zayder had harvested his fins five times, each time salving the

wounds with a regenerative balm that forced the valuable fins to regrow. Five times he'd nursed Tiburon

in the recovery channels, where pumps forced a steady torrent of water over the helpless shark as it

writhed on the bottom of a narrow steel chute.

"I'll take your fins again this afternoon," Zayder growled. Cautiously, he stepped forward, to peer over

the edge of the deck. Tiburon was a skulking shadow a fathom down.

Suddenly the shark turned, cruising slowly out about fifty meters toward the center of the pen until

Zayder lost sight of it. A moment later Tiburon reappeared, still a fathom below the surface, his great tail

flailing as he charged the wall of the shark pen. Zayder got ready to dodge a second lunge. But Tiburon

had his own designs. He rammed the wall of the pen with his snout. The blow shook the structure.

Zayder stumbled, swaying to keep his balance. He almost went down.

What the hell was going on? Was the damn fish trying to knock him off the deck?

Tiburon took off again for the center of the pen. Zayder turned, ready to run for the shed and his

tranquilizing harpoon, when a low moan reached his ears. "Help, man. Help me," a tired voice croaked.

It came from the ocean side of the deck. Zayder glanced over his shoulder. Tiburon had turned. Quickly

Zayder dropped to his knees and leaned over the decking to spy a young man -- probably no more than

twenty -- adrift in the light swell, a few meters outside the steel mesh. The sun shone full in his pale face

as his bare feet tread the water in quick, frantic strokes. His dark hair floated like an ink cloud around his

shoulders, blending imperceptibly with his black shirt. He sputtered, his eyes pleading with Zayder for

help.

Looking at him, Zayder grinned in sudden relief. No wonder the shark had been pumped into a manic

state. Tiburon had smelled game in the water. And just where had this stray fish come from? He could

guess. The garbage trawlers had brought bodies in before -- though never live ones. The trawler tentacles

were designed to detect and avoid living organic structures. But Zayder knew that clothing could confuse

them.

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摘要：

Hooks,NetsandTimeanovelettebyLindaNagataTheoceanranthroughhisdreams.Thepantingbreathofthewaveletsastheyroseandfellagainstthepylonsbecamehisownbreath,aslow,deeprhythminhislungsthatforcedhimtorun.Hisfootfallsreverberatedagainsttheblackplasticphotovoltaicfieldthatdoubledasadeck:asquaretrackfivekilomete...

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