Jim Baen's Universe

Serials - parts and parts.

Fish Story, Episode 5

Written by Eric Flint, Andrew Dennis, Dave Freer

Illustrated by Barb Jernigan

The Whale at Bay

"—and that's when you went to Nineveh." Sheila Rowen took another long pull from her tankard. "It's right there in the Bible, He-Who-Calls-Himself-Jonah. So please explain to the jury—sorry, the peasant mob with pitchforks, imitation thereof—how there's any room in there for my client—"

She used the now half-empty tankard to point to the mini-whale on the table. "—to have engaged in this conspiracy you're talking about?"

The little homunculus standing on the table peered up at her. Then looked around at the other people staring down at him.

"Isn't that called 'leading the witness'?" he complained.

"More like dragging the witness with chains," I said, belching. "Grossly improper in a court of law, and any competent judge would have ruled her out of order five minutes ago. Unfortunately, we're not in a court of law and if there's any judge about—competent or otherwise—he's keeping his light well hidden under a bushel. Nothing here but a bunch of drunks, several of them intemperate. Well . . . Actually, all of us are intemperate or we wouldn't be souses. But some of us are also bad-humored." I used my tankard to point at the big redheaded carpenter. "Shockingly so, in the case of this one."

Sheila leaned forward and stuck her finger in Jonah's face. "So answer the question, shorty."

Jonah now looked to the redhead for support. The carpenter seemed unhappy with Sheila's aggressive courtroom technique, but all he did was shrug. Couldn't very well do otherwise, of course, seeing as how he'd just gotten done threatening my client Captain Ahab with dismemberment.

Jonah planted his hands on his hips. "Well, this sucks. And I'll tell you right now that as soon as this is over I'm sending a strong letter of protest to the Connecticut Bar Association."

"We're in California, actually," said Dryck Spivey.

"Venice, to be precise," added James Watters.

"Oh." The homunculus glanced around. "Looks just like the one in Hartford. Don't you guys in the Brotherhood have any imagination? Well, silly question. But I'd think you could at least afford to hire an interior decorator."

He gave the redheaded carpenter a sour look. "Or is your sponsor's rep over here still claiming they're broke on account of the child support?"

The redhead smiled. "Hey, he's a big mutt. And the legal bills over the custody dispute are a constant drain on the treasury." He nodded toward me and Sheila. "Lawyers charge by the hour, you know. We're talking a lot of hours, by now."

Jonah sneered. "Save it for the chumps. Fine. I'm writing a strong letter to the California Bar Association." He jabbed a tiny little finger up at Sheila. "You're as good as disbarred already, lady."

The finger jabbed at me. "You, too. Aiding and abetting, in clear violation of your oaths."

"We're Brits, you little ass. Ask us if we care whether the colonials let us practice in their courts or not."

"He still hasn't answered the question," said Rowen. "Can I borrow your pliers, Red? Oh, never mind."

She rummaged in the Purse of Death, still planted on the table, and came out holding a stapler. "This'll do well enough."

Jonah sidled back. "What kind of screwball carries a stapler in a purse?"

"She's a lady lawyer," pointed out Spivey. "I'd recommend you start talking. Consider the implications of 'screwball.' She probably will start stapling various parts of your body together. And we certainly won't try to stop her, being sane and reasonable men who long ago learned the folly of interfering with drunk, overmuscled, tattooed, screwball lady lawyers in a stapling frenzy. They pack on you, once the smell of blood starts spreading."

Sheila took a grab at him, but Jonah scampered aside. "Hey! Take it easy! This is just a case of mistaken identity!"

"Huh?"

"Mistaken identity, I said. What's the matter, you have trouble with three-syllable words?"

Sheila sneered. "I can recite whole pages of publishing contracts in my sleep, twerp. The yeomanlike 'huh' was a reference to your preposterous—not to mention problematical, dubitable, uncompassable, rococo, phantasmagorical—"

"Okay, okay, lady, you made your point."

"—and cockamamie claim that there's more than one Jonah in the Bible. And before you even think of trying to claim there is, you stand forewarned that I am an expert on the subject."

I squinted at her. "You never told me or the lads you were some sort of Biblical scholar."

Rowen made a face. "Am not. Came from a religious family. Had to do Bible readings every Sunday, week in and week out. A psychologist I dated once told me that's what explains the addiction to tattoos and alcohol and the general irreverence."

I thought about it, as I drained the last of my tankard. "Well, it's a theory."

"Only date that jackass ever got with me and that one ended right there. It's an insult, what it is."

"Well . . . Look, Sheila, it's just a fact that you're a souse and covered with tattoos—I won't even get into the body-building madness—and—"

"Yeah, sure. But I worked at all that, and damned hard too." She emitted, wonder of wonders, a very lady-like sniff. "It's offensive to see hard-earned adult vices dismissed as mere childhood by-products. How would you like it if I told you the reason your avarice is so transcendent that every single one of your clients refers to you as The Vampire except the one who calls you The Tapeworm, is because you were deprived of enough birthday presents as a wee lad?"

I thought about it, again, for a split-second. "That's deeply offensive."

"See?" She took advantage of the momentary distraction to reach out and snatch Jonah. A moment later she had the homunculus nicely fitted between the jaws of the stapler. "Well, my fine whale-up-chucked friend. You're about to discover the meaning of arms-akimbo-nevermore."

"Wait! Wait!" shrilled Jonah. "You gotta let me talk!"

"I don't propose to staple your jaws together," Rowen said reasonably. "Just your arms."

"Wait! Wait! Yeah, there's only one Jonah in the Bible! But there's lots of us in the great game! Seventeen, at last count. I'm the Jonah working for the Greater Epsilon Eridani Katamorphic Society. We're the ones—"

"Oh, Haurun help us," groaned Spivey. "He's a fucking Geek."

"—trying to overcome the divisions in the ranks of the anti-piscine forces." He managed to glare at Dryck, even pressed like he was between the jaws of a stapler. "Which are perfectly exemplified by the attitudes of that schismatic over there. The Brotherhood is one of the worst outfits, when it comes to sectarianism."

Spivey rolled his eyes. "Just for starters, peewee, it's the anti-ichthyoid forces."

"We might, in a pinch, settle for anti-pisciform," agreed James Watters heavily, "although that term is unbearably sloppy. But 'anti-piscine' borders on outright deviationism. Implies that the great enemy is limited to narrow genetic lines instead of"—he pointed at the miniature white whale on the table—"being able to suborn all manner of low creatures."

"I'm a mammal!" the whale snapped. Literally, snapped. That lower jaw really was pretty impressive.

The big redhead glared at him. "You're a pack of Benedict Arnolds, is what you are. No better than squids."

He shifted the glare to Jonah. "And spare us the Geek lecture, shorty. If you're not the Bible Jonah, explain how you wound up inside Richard M. Dick. And there's only sixteen of you Jonahs left, by the way. Jonah Twelve got trapped months ago by cnidarian agents on Tau Ceti II. Wasn't much left of him, after the nematocysts got done."

Jonah winced. "Oh, jeez. He wasn't a bad guy, if you made allowances for being a piscophage."

"All true chthonians are piscophages, you Geek wuss," jeered Watters. He drained his own tankard and used it to point at the whale. "As he's most likely going to find out before the day is done. Hey, Mario, I think we need another round. And while you're back there, check in the kitchen to see if we've got all the spices we need."

The bartender rose from his chair and collected all the empty mugs. "What recipe have you got in mind? I'm warning you, if it's paella cetacii, forget it. I know I don't have saffron."

"No, I was just thinking along the lines of a bouillabaisse." He turned his attention back to the homunculus. "And answer Red's question, damn you. How did a Geek wind up inside a whale? Not likely to have been divine intervention, ha! The Big Guy despises you wimps even more than we do."

Jonah eyed Rowen, whose face loomed above him. "Tell the lady weightlifter to let me out of this stapler. It's a long story, too long to tell all cramped like this. And how's about somebody offering me a drink, while we're at it."

"You started the whole thing off by saying you were an alcoholic," I pointed out.

Jonah squinted at me. "And your point is?"

I felt a bit foolish. "Oh, sorry. I assumed you were about to launch into one or another of the Twelve Steps."

The homunculus made a face. "You don't need to be insulting, you know."

The big redhead waved at Sheila. "Oh, what the hell. Let him out. We've got him surrounded, after all."

Rowen took him out of the stapler jaws and set him back on his feet. "Okay, then. Start talking."

****

"—which point I knew something was fishy. Pun intended." Jonah gave Captain Ahab a sharp glance. For his part, the one-legged crazy fellow had been silent during all this, in striking contrast to his former loquacity. In fact, he seemed completely spaced out. He'd spent the whole time since Red squeezed Jonah out of the mini-whale staring off into space.

"I mean, ask yourselves. What sort of whaling captain do you find playing blackjack in Las Vegas?"

There was a moment's silence. Then Spivey said, sounding a bit dubious, "Not impossible."

"In the Venetian?"

"Oh."

Sheila had been following the back and forth closely. "Explain, please. My opposing counsel and I are not familiar with the colonial vice dens."

Mario Jori provided the answer. "The Venetian's one of your upscale casinos on the Strip. 'Upscale' as in a room costs $400 a night, a meal in most of the restaurants not all that much less. That's for a party of two; forget a whole table. And the boutiques in the Grand Canal Shoppes—that's 's-h-o-p-p-e-s,' naturally—give a whole new meaning to the expression 'sticker shock.'"

Everyone was now peering suspiciously at Ahab. Who, for his part, continued to stare off as if mesmerized by some vision in the distance.

"Bullshit!" snapped the redhead. "One of the old fleabag casinos downtown, maybe. The Venetian on the Strip? This clown? Since when did whale-hunters start getting paid like lawyers? Those guys bill by the barrel, not the hour."

"That's exactly what I thought!" shrilled Jonah. "So, I started tailing him. And the first thing he does after he finishes losing a bundle at blackjack is start walking south down the Strip. Walking, mind you—with a pegleg."

He seemed to think that fact was significant. As did, from their expressions, Spivey and Jori and the redheaded carpenter. Watters, on the other hand, being a fellow Britisher—using the term loosely—was frowning with puzzlement the way Sheila and I were.

"You'll have to explain again," groused Rowen. "We're not natives, remember. I grant you that walking with a pegleg's got to be a bit difficult, but so what?"

"First of all," said Spivey, "while Las Vegas isn't technically part of Southern California, the religious ambiance"—he waved about—"of this region spreads widely, through manifold and multiple means. It certainly spreads as far as Las Vegas. The eleventh commandment here is Thou Shalt Not Walk."

Mario shuddered. "Unheard of. There's even a rumor that a new developer is putting up a tract somewhere out by Glendale that lets the owners bring their cars into the house, so they can drive to the bathroom. Probably a tall tale, of course. Unfortunately."

"And secondly," Dryck continued, "they've got cabs in Las Vegas. Sure, it's a hair-raising experience, taking a cab down the Strip—but why else does anyone go to Vegas, except to gamble?"

"Very suspicious, I agree," rumbled the big redhead. "But not conclusive of anything, in itself. Let's be fair-minded here."

I thought that was a preposterous caution, coming from him. Your average fair-minded fellow, after all, is not inclined to question a homunculus by threatening to cut off his leg with a pair of pliers. But I kept my mouth shut, seeing as how the homunculus in question was technically my client.

"So go on," the carpenter told Jonah.

"Naturally, I caught a cab. No way I was going to follow the idiot walking on the Strip. Fer chrissake, it was August. The temperature was one hundred and ten degrees—Fahrenheit, sure, but we're still into heatstroke territory here."

For a moment, he looked uncomfortable. Embarrassed, perhaps. "'Course, I lost him almost right away. Stupid cabbie ignored me completely when I told him to drive slow enough to follow the guy."

Jori chuckled. "No fool, he. You're lucky he did ignore you. Driving slowly, on the Strip? What're you, nuts?"

Jonah ignored the quip. "Well, anyway, so I told the cabbie to just drop me off on the corner of the Strip and Tropicana. I figured I'd wait for Stumpy there, since I could keep an eye on the whole area from the overpass between the New York, New York and the MGM Grand. Hey, what happened to that drink I was promised?"

"What drink you were promised?" scoffed Jori. "Keep talking. Maybe if you ever get to a conclusion I'll summon up the energy to go over to the bar and pour you something. But it better be a damn good conclusion, seeing as how I got no choice but to walk to the bar and I'm trying to keep my L.A. karma from getting too badly frayed."

Jonah glared at him, but went back to his story. "After maybe an hour he finally shows up, weaving and staggering down the sidewalk on the MGM Grand side of the strip. It was late in the afternoon, which meant the idiot spent the whole time walking in the sun, instead of crossing the street and getting a bit of shade here and there. I'm telling you, he's nuts."

Sheila didn't miss the opening. "Exactly what I said right at the start. An obvious lunatic, whose testimony against my client is therefore automatically suspect. In fact, ought to be tossed out with no further ado."

I was no slouch myself, of course. "And agrees entirely with my argument that my client"—here I nodded to the one-legged captain—"is not guilty of the charges on grounds of insanity. And what are the charges, anyway?"

The big carpenter gave me a cold sort of grin. "You're old-fashioned, fella. We lads in the Brotherhood figure it makes a lot more sense to charge somebody with a crime first and then use the interrogation to find out what the crime was."

The scary thing was, it did make a lot more sense, if you were prepared to throw away all notions of fairness, civil rights, the rule of law, and respect for the dignity of the individual. And, worse still, get rid of lawyers.

"That's ridiculous," I said. "Following that method, every human being who ever lived—I exempt not toddlers—could be accused of being a criminal."

Suddenly Captain Ahab roused himself from his stupor. "Curses throttle thee!" he shrilled, looking wildly about. "Born in throes, 'tis fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So be it, then! Here's stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then."

We all stared at him. But, an instant later, he went back into his stupor. So, our attention returned to Jonah.

"Crazy, like I said. Luckily for me, he crossed the street—down below, on the crosswalk—so I was able to follow him into the Excalibur. Stumping along the way he was, I managed to get downstairs in time to spot him coming in, and fell in right behind him. He was an easy tail, since he never bothered to so much as glance over his shoulder.

"Eventually he got on the walkway connecting the Excalibur to the Luxor. I guess a momentary spasm of sanity came over him, because that's an interior connection. Air-conditioned, the whole works. Then we got into the Luxor itself and I had my second piece of evidence that he was a fake and a fraud. There's a fancy coffee place in the Luxor, and he stopped there. Can you believe it?"

Jonah bestowed a look of scorn on Captain Ahab. "Ha! Caught him red-handed!"

Watters shook his head. "Sorry, don't see your point. Even peg-legged crazy whaling ship captains drink coffee, I'd imagine."

"A non-fat extra-dry cappuccino?" demanded Jonah. "I say again: Ha!"

Several pairs of beady eyes now focused on Ahab. "Suspicious, for sure," muttered the big redhead. "Then what did he do?"

Jonah's eyes got a little furtive-looking. "You ain't gonna believe me. I could really, really use a drink."

The redhead slapped the table. Even hitting it with his open hand, the whole table shuddered. Only the quick and sure reflexes of the sots at the table kept the mugs from spilling.

"Talk, damn you! What'd he do next?"

"There's some sphinxes in the lobby. Supposed to be statues." Jonah pointed an accusing finger at Ahab. "But I saw him. He went up and started talking to one of them."

The redhead's jaws tightened. Spivey grimaced. So did Watters.

"Oh . . . bloody hell," said Jori. "Are you telling us that Stumpy here is in league with the Manticore Alliance? Just what we needed. Those clowns getting into the act."

Jonah shrugged. "Way it looks to me. Of course, the Manticores are usually considered part of chthonedom."

"Only by Geeks and other deviants," growled the redhead. "Where's it stop, this mixing up of parts? Once you start down that slippery slope, what's to prevent you from falling into outright ichthyophilism?"

"Nothing," said Spivey. "Just a matter of time before one of the Manticores decides that scales are just the thing for fending off mosquitoes. Add gills just in case Little Baby Mishmash slips in the tub and would otherwise drown. Before you know it—"

"Aye, and we've said it all along," chimed in Watters, heavily. "Sooner or later, some Mantie is going to adopt indiscriminate sperm-spraying as part of their physiological repertoire. From there, it's a hop, skip and jump before they all get sucked into the genetic maelstrom. Just as the enemy planned."

Jonah rolled his tiny little eyes. "Oh, for crying out loud! Yeah, sure, they're promiscuous—but they're still mammals."

"Like me! Like me!" yelped the whale.

Jonah ignored him. "Well, bits of mammals stuck together. Okay, yeah, the occasional reptile thingie or other. But it's all solidly chthonic, isn't it?"

"So far," hissed the redhead. "Only reason we haven't declared war. Yet. But the more I think about it, the more it strikes me that this shaggy dog story of yours still hasn't gotten any closer to an answer to the question we asked you at the beginning." He reached out a meaty hand, grabbed the mini-whale by the flukes, and held him up. Then, poked the creature's belly with a finger. "How did you wind up in here? Remember?"

"Oh, that. Well . . ."

"I'm a mammal, you idiots!" yelped the whale.

Jonah gave Mario a look of appeal. "Boy, could I use a drink. Just thinking about Las Vegas in August is enough to parch my throat."

"Fuck off. How'd you get in the whale? Speaking of which"—he glanced at the carpenter—"I don't know about anybody else, but I'm getting tired of that yapping."

"Got just the thing for it," said the redhead, grinning evilly. He dug into his huge carpenter's belt and came out with . . .

At this point, my ever-growing suspicion that Sheila Rowen and I had fallen in with lunatics was confirmed. Either that, or I was suffering from delirium brought out by too many hours of non-stop alcohol consumptions. Of course, the two possibilities were not mutually exclusive.

Before I quite knew it, the carpenter and Spivey had seized the whale and fitted the miniature cetacean with a straight-jacket and muzzle. Richard M. Dick just barely had time, before the muzzle got fitted, to yelp: "You morons! I've got no arms!"

It did seem like a waste of a perfectly good miniature straight-jacket. On the other hand, the muzzle worked fine. Truth is, I was getting a little tired of the yapping myself.

"I wish to register for the record," said Sheila, then pausing for a belch, "that I object to the immobilization and silencing of my client. I warn you, this won't look good in the