Jim Baen's Universe

Serials - parts and parts.

Fish Story, Episode Eleven, The End of Mankind

Written by Dave Freer, Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis

Illustrated by Barb Jernigan

It was a good pub to be back in, even if I was being talked to.

"Are you listening to me?" The woman—she'd introduced herself as Melonie Brown, was just at that stage of consumption when the inner schoolmarm dominates.

I smiled in what I hoped was a suitably offensive manner. I'd made a bad choice of women to sit next to at the bar. I should have guessed by the wide berth around her, despite her physical charms. I'd taken the stool anyway, as there weren't many other choices, and I'm really good at unfounded optimism. "I'm sorry . . . I was thinking about fish."

Melonie sniffed. "We're discussing the end of man."

I made a moue. "My favorite subject, darling." To my irritation she didn't back off or even seem to notice. It's hard to get pissed as a newt in peace these days.

"Did you know that there is the equivalent forty tons of TNT for every human on earth, stored in the thermo-nuclear stockpiles of the world's major powers?" she said in the "we will have a questions and answers session after this lecture" fashion. (I will ask the questions. If you don't know the answers, I will start the lecture again.)

"Oh good!" I said cheerfully. "Where do I collect mine? No more complaints of sexual inadequacy. You'll say I was the best bang since the big one," I said, cheerfully stealing from Douglas Adams. He's dead, and wasn't, I was fairly sure, in the bar at the time. They've passed no smoking laws. That means you can't hide Granddad's remains in the ashtrays anymore. (I know someone who did this at his local. Some people have the weirdest last wishes.)

Finally, I penetrated the armor of her righteous indignation about the wicked (and evil) nuclear powers. Ms. Brown sniffed. "You don't take anything seriously, do you?"

"Au contraire!" I protested. "I take fish seriously. And beer. Especially the absence of it. Anyway, who works out these figures? It's totally improbable that it is exactly 40 tons. And it must change by the day. At last, a good reason for increasing the world population. It reduces the per person risk, to say nothing of the weight of TNT our knees bend under. Now fish. . . ."

"If some mindless jerk pushes the button the fish'll all be radioactive slag too, along with all you useless males."

"Well," I said cheerfully raising my glass. "We might as well drink ourselves paralytic and say 'screw the bag limits' then."

"Don't you care about anything but drink and fishing? The end of man . . ."

"Look, Ms. Melonie Brown, it's not that I don't care. It's just you are so unutterably wrong and on the cosmic scale of things a few nukes are so trivial, compared to the way it is really going to happen."

She shook her head. "Oh, yeah. Like how?"

"I told you. Fish and liquor."

She rolled her eyes. "You really are a waste of space."

"Look, I have been there. I've seen it happen. And, predictably, it was caused by the output of female fish, Van der Decken and gin. Nothing to do with thermonuclear devices."

"And you were there. Ha ha ha."

"Well, I was, but I didn't want to be. I got out just in time you might say. Or just before time. To microseconds before, on a geological scale."

"Hmph. Geological scale. And how many million years is that?"

"Hard to tell. I bounced around like a yo-yo, dodging Gods, mythological creatures, Paleozoic monsters and the offspring of Cthulhu."

"Bless you."

"More like final absolution, with Cthulhu. Anyway, the end is coming soon, so we might as well enjoy it while we can." I patted her thigh.

She removed my hand, not quite severing the tendons. "The end would have to be real microseconds away. And I'd need to be blind drunk."

I took the hint—I'm quite good at getting those, if you apply them with a sledge hammer—and ordered another round.

Out of politeness and in gin she was foolish enough to ask, "So what do you claim will cause the end of mankind?"

"I didn't say mankind. I just said man. Women may go on. I didn't stick around to find out."

"Aha. So women survived Armageddon."

"It's possible. So do cockroaches. Or at least they have in the past."

Her eyes narrowed. "One minute you're making a pass at me, the next we're cockroaches."

"No. You have too few legs. And I have it on good authority that female cockroaches never turn males down. Besides I don't know if women did survive. I don't think they'd have liked it much if they did. Hendrik Van der Decken saw to that."

"Hendrik Van der Decken?"

"The Flying Dutchman. You know, cursed God and got doomed to try and beat round the Cape of Storms until the Day of Judgment. As usual, Wagner got it wrong. It's not every seven years. It's every hundred that he's allowed ashore. I met him here, in this very pub."

"It's been sold. I hear they're planning on a trendy wine-bar in its place," said Melonie.

"That's enough to start me crying into my beer," I said, looking at the well polished teak. "And it'd have suited Van der Decken better. He was supposed to be picking a true love."

"Trust me, a trendy wine bar is the wrong spot for that," she said sourly.

"Well, I don't think it would have made any difference. He's not very talented at picking up women. So we ended up drinking together."

"Two of a kind, eh?"

"You might say that. But I bathe a little more often, and I'm not a crusty old Dutchman with salt patches on my cap. Anyway, he spoke English of sort and we got talking about fish."

"How odd. Not about world peace or global warming," she said, dryly.

"The subject of global warming did come up. He thought it was a good idea," I said, cheerfully.

She was suitably outraged. I should get tired of playing these games, but they do rise so well to the bait. "What!? Was he crazy? It's the worst . . ."

"Ah, come on. Old Hendrik only gets to see other shipping during storms, when the other ship is in distress. And he only gets free at Armageddon. Global warming is supposed to increase the frequency and severity of storms and was supposed to destroy mankind. It gets pretty boring after a few centuries. There's sometimes the opportunity for picking up some new crew and a bit of entertainment. They got a hand-held game of Yahtzee with one of them. Hendrik said it nearly did what three centuries of storms and doing business with the treefort hadn't been able to do: sank the ship."

"You're crazy," she said, shaking her head.

"Yes, but I am buying the next round. And something to eat. So long as it is not caviar."

She pulled yet another disapproving face. "Caviar is one of those stupid affectations. And poaching is going to cause extinction!"

"You're telling me. Last time I nearly got potted by a gamekeeper. I'm a retired poacher."

"Poaching of sturgeon," she said with exaggerated patience.

"In champagne is best, I believe. But they're hard to come by in England. Royal game, officially. Or belong to Red Ken Livingstone, if they're caught above London bridge."

"I think I'll have a double," she said, holding her head with one hand and her glass out with the other.

I nodded. I still had a fair amount of the Dutchman's gold, after all, and a limited time to spend it. "And a Cornish pasty. They have carrots and peas and, if you're going bark at the great white telephone later, it's always wise to have some recent carrots and peas. You go on throwing up until there is at least one carrot and three peas in the bowl. It is one of those immutable laws of physics. And besides the carrots and peas, a Cornish pasty may have almost anything in it, except caviar."

"Okay, so why the obsession with caviar?" She seemed more willing than most to stick with the subject.

"It's more of a violent dislike than an obsession. It's the way the world is going to end. In Beluga caviar. It's a horrible way to go."

She raised an eyebrow. "Better than thermonuclear fire?"

"That would be quicker, so long as they do a proper job. Drowning in caviar has the side effect of certain death with the smell of fish-oil."

"Okay. I grant you fish oil. Death by fish oil should be reserved for specially deserving cases. Anyway, I thought Beluga were whales."

"Nope. Totally unrelated. Beluga sturgeon are supposed to be the biggest bony fish known to be alive. Eighteen or nineteen feet long, and about two and a half tons. You get them in the rivers that run into Caspian and Black Sea. And the Adriatic, I believe. Van der Decken claimed his encounter was in the Black Sea. He sailed the seven seas. Or somewhere close to them. I'm not sure that they're our seven seas. Anyway, I've seen bigger fish since. "

"With bigger teeth."

"Not hard. Sturgeon don't have teeth. They swallow their prey whole."

"The dangerous, toothless prey of man, the conqueror!"

"Yep. And if it happens to be a female toothless victim at the right time of year . . . more than a million dollars worth of victim. Top quality and retail, of course. It'd only be worth about 60 thousand dollars in Kazakhstan. I went fishing with Van der Decken for money, not trophies. And if I'd been sober, not even for a million dollars. But somehow I got talked into drinking Kopstoot. You know, iced Dutch gin and . . ."

"Lager. You poor sick man!" Melonie Brown, for the first time, looked almost approachable. She'd obviously experienced this. It was amazing what shared experience of horror could do.

"Yeah, I was broke and he was buying . . . and talking about fish that could solve all my financial problems see. I am surprised I could stand upright, let alone think. It did leave me capable of wandering off the sea at two in the morning, following a villainous old Dutchman. And that's how I ended up like this."

I paused. "You see, Van der Decken's ship doesn't sail the seven seas as we know 'em. He's in a parallel continuum, and the walls between that place and this only break down during storms. It's the massive electrical activity. Time and space don't work like here, over there. It's all mixed up, see. He even drops into the Cretaceous sometimes."

"I see. Well, I don't, but let's pretend I do. And the every hundred years bit?"

"Ah, that's actually a deal Hendrik cut with a bunch of fishy creatures lurking somewhere outside the space time continuum themselves. The bunch back in the Cretaceous. They needed wood for the treefort and he needed more Genever and a night out every now and again. They're pretty good at the space-time stuff. For a price of course. They want timbers for their treefort in the Cretaceous Yggdrasil. Biggest damned tree you ever saw, and most of it is underwater."

"The World Tree."

"Yeah. Source of a lot of coal-measures I gather. At least that's what this bloke I met on the ship told me. Geologist. Shipwreck survivor. A guy called Paul Bean. Van der Decken was always recruiting. It seems he was damned but his crew . . . can escape. If they can get off."

"Suddenly you interest me extremely," said my companion-of-the-bar. "What happened to him?"

I scratched my head. "He's still on the ship, I think. Van der Decken isn't any keener on losing crew than he is on losing business. I got out by good luck and bad judgment."

"Why don't you tell me about it?" She summoned the barman with an imperious gesture.

"Mine's a pint," I said, out of habit.

She shook her head. "Give him an Irish coffee. I want him wide awake and drunk. And now, start telling me the story. Leave nothing out. You were on the Flying Dutchman, with Paul Bean. Geologist."

"Good man. Can't sing and he's not God's gift to Shanghai poker. That was fashionable right then on the Flying Dutchman. Very suntanned, but that could be because he lost his shirt on a pair of queens early on, apparently. I was very sober, very hungover, face down in the scupper somewhere in the mid Niobraran sea when I met him. He told the wisest thing that I have ever heard."

"What?" she asked.

"Ah. He said: 'Don't play Shanghai with Asrael Hands.' Hands was the ship's gunner, as well a card-sharp of note. If I'd listened I'd have kept my shirt too. He also told me that I had to get on my feet, because Van der Decken was going to put the old tub about, and it was man the capstan winch or I wouldn't get blue balls."

"Er . . ."

"Yeah that's what I thought too. It turned out that it was gin. Bols. Dutch stuff. We got rations. Van der Decken did a fair bit of trading across time and space. He had a cargo of narwhal horn for the treefort. They use them as nails. Van der Decken was looking for more time out from them. They haven't figured out he's sold them enough spars, masts and deck-planks to build another three Flying Dutchmen. But it's good for sales, saying that'll sink the old tub if he parts with as much as another plank. He has the crew painting 'Der Vliegende Hollander' on all sorts of flotsam that we pick up. If it was drifting about, we picked it up, rough-sawed it into planks, and sold it the treefort.

"Anyway to cut a long story short we found some floating remains near the tree. Paul fished them out with a boat-hook. Very herring-scented, they were. It was the remains of big fish—rather like a tarpon with teeth—and some flotsam that might have come from it. There was no wood, but a small walrus ivory chess set, a mobile and a copy of 'Teach yourself Swedish for Dummies,' a wallet with ten kroner in it, all sealed off in a large latex item, if you take my meaning. A very large latex item. It also happened that the wallet had a card in it for exotic massage, and a library card with the owner's name and address. Van der Decken got the loot of course—He'd seen Paul fish it out."

I paused, drank some of the Irish, and explained. "And when he got to the library card, we got orders to set the sails. Get every inch of canvas out. When you find Cthulhu's library card you really want to return it, as soon as possible. An evil ammonite God set on returning the world to primordial slime needs lots of reading matter. Old Van der Decken wasn't stupid enough to be picking any enemies, not with having to sail the seven seas for eternity. He was even neutral with the Ostracoderm Equalization League."

"That's not easy."

"You're telling me," I said, wondering how she knew. "I never knew lack of a jaw could make a species so inclined to take legal action. Anyway, Van der Decken has had a few centuries to work out his way between here and elsewhere . . . and to get us to R'lyeh, that bleak and ancient harbor—one of the few the Dutchman can get near—and usually tries to choose not to. The booze is a terrible price. And you don't want to think about the women. They have way too many legs and have inherited group memory. That's a combination to make strong men blanch and run, even if they like sheep and are not at all proud about crossing the species line. So Paul Bean and I went for a walk. Sober. This is proof that there is no greater folly than overpricing alcohol. And the trouble with the non-Euclidean geometry of lost R'lyeh where the dead Cthulhu lies dreaming . . . or at least cursing his missing library card, is that it's a good place to walk away from. We came to a charming little lava-sand beach—where the sand is black and still has glass sharp edges, is washed by a sluggish, glutinous surge, and—to make it a real winner with British tourists—is surrounded by a brooding cliff. Can I sell you package tour?" I said, noticing that my glass was mysteriously full. The world is full of wonders.

"Go on."

"And that was where we found the crashed flying saucer. Neat little racy sports coupe spacecraft—you know, seats two aliens and two legless, or tentacle-less or pseudopod-less spawnlings. Red. With black trim and leather seats from some nameless starbeast. No sign of the driver. I guess we should have left it well alone. But I haven't seen many in Hartlepool, and almost none in daylight. It was Paul who found the replicator. It was in the trunk. Interesting looking curly-whirly device, like a Klein bottle made by an epileptic glassblower, with a few extra loops, with a large scoop and a whole bunch of odd little holes. The alien must have had thin fingers. Or a beak. I decided we might as well take it back with us, as the ship had plainly been there a long time."

"How did you know that?"

"It had barnacles growing on the rear fender. They don't grow overnight, you know. Anyway, Paul suddenly had a nasty thought and realized that Van der Decken might sail off and leave us there. There are a lot of places we'd happily have jumped ship, but we really did not want to be stuck there. Worshiping Cthulhu is the only way to get fed. Food on the Flying Dutchman comes down to weevily biscuit, ropy salt pork, rats, occasional albatross and fish. But at least the captain made sure we got our grog. It's Genever, but it kept the crew from mutiny . . . So we legged it back up a narrow little gully to the top of the cliffs and then on down towards the wild gaiety of R'lyeh, with its dank and slime and rotten seaweed bouquet. Got there just in time too. Van der Decken was all set to sail. We did a couple of storms, frightened the bejasus out of a few yachtsmen, and then hit one of those calm spells. We were in the Black Sea—or at least a parallel Black Sea, which was funny in itself, seeing as it was the prime fish of the Black Sea that led me to get drunk enough to take a berth with