Near + Far (3 page)

Looking out over the railing, I spotted the three corp ships long before we got to the Lump. For a moment I wondered why they were so spread out, and then I realized the Lump's size. It was huge—kilometers wide. The ships were gathered around it, and their buzz boats were resting, wings spread out to recharge the solar panels.

They must have seen us around the same time. A buzz boat folded its wings, shadows spider-webbed with silver, and approached us. As it neared, I saw the Novagen logo on its side, on its occupant's mirrored helmet.

"This is claimed salvage," the logo-ed loudspeaker said.

I cupped my hands to shout back, "Salvage's not claimed till you've got tethers on it. Unless you're pulling in the whole thing, we've got a right to chew on it, too."

"Claimed salvage," the pilot repeated. He looked the
Mary Magdalena
up and down and curled his lip. Most of the time I liked her shitty, rundown look, but pride bristled briefly. "You want to be careful, kid. Accidents happen out here when freelancers get in the way."

I knew they did. Corp ships liked to sink the competition, and they had a dozen different underhanded ways to do it.

Jorge Felipe said at my elbow, "Gonna let them chase us off?"

"No," I said, but I nodded at the pilot and said, "
Mary Magdalena
, back us off."

We moved round to the other side.

"What are you going to do?" Niko asked.

"We're going to cut the engines and let the currents creating the Lump pull us into it," I said. "They're watching for engine activity. After it gets dark, they won't notice us cutting. In the meantime, we'll act like we're fishing. Not even act, really."

We broke out fishing gear. The mermaids had deserted us, and I hoped to find a decent school of something, bottom-feeders at least. But the murk around the Lump was lifeless. Plastic tendrils waved like uneasy weed, gobbling our hooks till the rods bent and bowed with each wave.

I wanted the corp ships to see our lines. Every hour, a buzz boat would whoosh by, going between two of the larger ships.

When the sun went down, I went below deck. The others followed. I studied the weather readout on the main console's scratched metal flank.

It took longer than I thought, though. By the time we'd managed to cut our chunk free with the little lasers, draining the batteries, the sun was rising. Today was cloudier, and I blessed the fog. It'd make us harder to spot.

We worked like demons, throwing out hooks, cutting lumps free, tossing them into the cargo net. We looked for good stuff, electronics with precious metals that might be salvaged, good glass, bits of memorabilia that would sell on the Internet. Shellfish—we'd feed ourselves for a week out of this if nothing else. Two small yellow ducks bobbed in the wake of a bottle's wire lacing. I picked them up, stuck them in my pocket.

"What was that?" Jorge Felipe at my elbow.

"What was what?" I started hauling in orange netting fringed with dead seaweed.

"What did you stick in your pocket?" His eyes tightened with suspicion.

I fished the ducks out of my pocket, held them out. "You want one?"

He paused, glancing at my pocket.

"Do you want to stick your hand in?" I said. I cocked my hip towards him. He was pissing me off.

He flushed. "No. Just remember—we split it all. You remember that."

"I will."

There's an eagle, native to the islands. We call them brown-wings. Last year I'd seen Jorge Felipe dealing with docked tourists, holding one.

"Want to buy a bird?" he asked, sitting in his canoe looking up at the tan and gold and money-colored boat. He held it up.

"That's an endangered species, son," one tourist said. His face, sun-reddened, was getting redder.

Jorge looked at him, his eyes flat and expressionless. Then he reached out with the bird, pushed its head underwater for a moment, pulled it out squawking and thrashing.

The woman screeched. "Make him stop!"

"Want to buy a bird?" Jorge Felipe repeated.

They couldn't throw him money fast enough. He let the brown-wing go and it flew away. He bought us all drinks that night, even me, but I kept seeing that flat look in his eyes. It made me wonder what would have happened if they'd refused.

By the time the buzz boats noticed us, we were underway. They could see what we had in tow and I had the
Mary Magdalena
monitoring their radio chatter.

But what I hoped was exactly what happened. We were small fry. We had a chunk bigger than I'd dared think, but that wasn't even a thousandth of what they were chewing down. They could afford to let a few scavengers bite.

All right, I thought, and told the
Mary Magdalena
to set a course for home. The worst was over.

I didn't realize how wrong I was.

Niko squatted on his heels near the engines, watching the play of sunlight over the trash caught in the haul net. It darkened the water, but you could barely see it, see bits of plastic and bottles and seawrack submerged underneath the surface like an unspoken thought.

I went to my knees beside him. "What's up?"

He stared at the water like he was waiting for it to tell him something.

"It's quiet," he said.

Jorge Felipe was atop of the cabin, playing his plastic accordion. His heels, black with dirt, were hooked under the rungs of the ladder. I'd let the plastic fray there, and bits bristled and splayed like an old toothbrush. His music echoed out across the water for kilometers, the only sound other than splash or mermaid whistle.

"Quiet," I said, somewhere between statement and question.

"Gives you time to think."

"Think about what?"

"I was born not too far from here." He stared at the twitch and pluck in the sun-splattered water.

"Yeah?"

He turned to look at me. His eyes were chocolate and beer and cinnamon. "My mother said my dad was one of them."

I frowned. "One of what?"

"A mermaid."

I had to laugh. "She was pulling your leg. Mermaids can't fuck humans."

"Before he went into the water, idiot."

"Huh," I said. "And when he came out?"

"She said he never came out."

"So you think he's still there? Man, all those rich folks, once they learned that the water stank and glared, they gave up that life. If he didn't come out, he's dead."

I was watching the trash close to us when I saw what had sparked this thought. The mermaids were back. They moved along the net's edge. It shuddered as they tugged at it.

"What are they doing?" I asked.

"Picking at it," Niko said. "I've been watching. They pick bits off. What for, I don't know."

"We didn't see them around the Lump. Why now?"

Niko shrugged. "Maybe all that trash is too toxic for them. Maybe that's why we didn't see any fish near it either. Here it's smaller. Tolerable."

Jorge Felipe slid onto his heels on the deck.

"We need to drive them off," he said, frowning at our payload.

"No," Niko protested. "There's just a few. They're picking off the loose stuff that makes extra drag, anyhow. Might even speed us up."

Jorge Felipe gave him a calculating look. The look he'd given the tourist. But all he said was, "All right. That changes, let me know."

He walked away. We stood there, listening to the singing of the mermaids.

I thought about reaching out to take Niko's hand, but what would it have accomplished? And what if he pulled away? Eventually I went back in to check our course.

By evening, the mermaids were so thick that I could see our own Lump shrinking, dissolving like a tablet in water.

Jorge Felipe came out with his gun.

"No!" Niko said.

Jorge Felipe smiled. "If you don't want me to shoot them, Niko, then they're taking it off your share. You agree it's mine, and I won't touch a scale."

"All right."

"That's not fair," I objected. "He worked as hard as us pulling it in."

Jorge Felipe aimed the gun at the water.

"It's okay," Niko told me.

I thought to myself that I'd split my share with him. I wouldn't have enough for the Choice, but I'd be halfway. And Niko would owe me. That wouldn't be a bad thing.

I knew what Choice I'd make. Niko liked boys. I liked Niko. A simple equation. That's what the Choice is supposed to let you do. Pick the sex you want, when you want it. Not have it forced on you when you're not ready.

The
Mary Magdalena
sees everything that goes on within range of her deck cameras. It shouldn't have surprised me when I went back into the cabin and she said, "You like Niko, don't you?"

"Shut up," I said. I watched the display. The mermaids wavered on it like fleshy shadows.

"I don't trust Jorge Felipe."

"Neither do I. I still want you to shut up."

"Lolo," she said. "Will you ever forgive me for what happened?"

I reached over and switched her voice off.

Still, it surprised me when Jorge Felipe made his move. I'd switched on auto-pilot, decided to nap in the hammock. I woke up to find him fumbling through my clothes.

"What you pick up, huh? What did you grab and stick away?" he hissed. His breath stank of old coffee and cigarettes and the tang of metal.

"I didn't find anything," I said, pushing him away.

"It's true what they say, eh? No cock, no cunt." His fingers rummaged.

I tried to shout but his other hand was over my mouth.

"We all want this money, eh?" he said. "But I need it. You can keep on being all freaky, mooning after Niko. And he can keep on his own loser path. Me, I'm getting out of here. But I figure you, you don't want to be messed with. Your share, or I'm fucking you up worse than you are already."

If I hadn't turned off her voice, the
Mary Magdalena
would have warned me. But she hadn't warned me before.

"Are you going to be good?" Jorge Felipe asked. I nodded. He released my mouth.

"No one's going to sail with you, ever again."

He laughed. "World's a whoooooole lot bigger than this, freaky chicoca. Money's going to buy me a ticket out."

I remembered the gun. How far would he go? "All right," I said. My mouth tasted like the tobacco stains on his fingers.