Harry Turtledove - Cayos in the Stream

“Something may have,” you answer. You do not want to contradict a man like Josep straight out. That is worse luck than taking a hammer and smashing every mirror you own.

He snorts. “Not likely!”

“The bar talk-”

“Bar talk? Bar talk is piss coming out the wrong end, nothing else but.” Josep pauses. Those heavy eyebrows lower and pull together again. “The bar talk about Cayo Bernardo is funny lately, isn’t it? A fisherman missing around there, it could be.”

You nod. “I’ve heard the same thing.”

If he does not take the Pilar to Cayo Bernardo, you will not pay him. This carries weight. And he will not be able to hunt Fascists there, if any Fascists are there to hunt. This also carries weight. You fiddle with your pipe. You give him time. You honor his pride. He is a man. You do not try to rush him into anything.

You get the pipe going. Josep lights a Cuban stogie that might be made from shoe blacking. The two smokes, sweet and harsh, war in the air. “We can see what the bar talk is worth. We can see if it is worth anything,” he grudges at last.

“ Bueno . That’s all I want to do,” you say. “If it has no value, I’ll write Cayo Bernardo off the list and look for German U-boats in other places. If something is going on there, we’ll do what seems best when we see what that something is.”

Josep nods. He smokes without hurrying. He nods again. “Well said.” You nod back gruffly. Your heart sings inside you, though you would sooner die than show it. From a man like him, a man who is a man and who knows he is a man, such praise is more precious than rubies.

Two days later, the Pilar chugs east, toward the Archipelago de Sabana. You eye the chart. Cayo Bernardo lies near the eastern end of the archipelago. Only a speck on the map, as you have seen. A speck with a name, though. Some nearby specks have none. Does that make them more insignificant than Cayo Bernardo? Can an island be more insignificant than Cayo Bernardo and still be an island?

It is a question like How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? But it is not quite like that. It is more like How many Nazis can dance on the sands of a cayo ?

The smaller engine, the Lycoming, pushes the fishing boat along. The Pilar does not run fast, but she does not use much gas, either. You never get all you want in this world. Take what you can get and do not worry about what you cannot get and you will be happy enough. How often will you have to tell yourself that before you start to believe it? You want everything, and you want it right away. You always have. You always will.

You look down into the clear blue water from the flying bridge. The water is so shallow, you can easily see the bottom. You see sand and rocks and seaweed and starfish and spiny urchins and a turtle sculling along above its own shadow. It is like looking through blue stained glass from an old church window. Ripples in the sea could be flaws in the glass.

Then Josep takes the boat farther out to sea. The bottom falls away. Flying fish spring from the water. Mackerel leap after them. Terns and frigatebirds circle overhead. Sometimes one will fold its wings and arrow into the ocean. Maybe it will come up with nothing. Maybe a fish will thrash in its beak.

If a fish thrashes in a tern’s beak, as often as not a frigatebird will try to take it away. Frigatebirds are big and strong and mean and lazy. They would rather steal than work. Stealing is easier. Put a frigatebird in a uniform coat and give him a chest full of medals and he will make you a fine Fascist.

Seeing the small fish and the bigger fish chasing them makes you think of bigger fish yet. Sailfish. Swordfish. Marlin. A great marlin can go better than a thousand pounds. What you would not give to pit your strength against a grander like that! You have caught many big fish, but never one so big.

When you are up on the flying bridge, you are supposed to be watching for U-boats. Your eyes should not stray to the fighting chair at the stern. The stern is lowered. You have put in a roller there to help you bring aboard large fish. You are hunting Germans now. You should not remember you bought the Pilar to go after fish.

But you can watch up here only so long. After a couple of hours, you will not pay close heed the way you should. Then it will be time for someone else to come up and watch. You can bait a stout hook with half a bonito. You can sit down in the fighting chair and see how your luck runs. The day is warm and muggy. You can have someone fetch you a bottle of beer from an ice chest.

The American ambassador and the FBI man in Havana will not like to hear you are fishing for marlin while you are patrolling for U-boats. Well, obscenity on what they will not like. If you catch one, you and your crewmates will eat like kings. Nothing tastes better than a fish you have just pulled out of the sea yourself. Nothing. Obscenity on all the cans in the galley, too.

You do hook one, not half an hour after you take your place in the chair. He is not the monster you dream of. Life has a nasty way of not living up to your dreams, or why are you on your third wife and squabbling with her? But he is longer than a man is tall. He has to weigh as much as you do. And he fights for his life like the free, wild thing he is.

Line smokes off the reel. The marlin is furious and strong, so strong. You have a thick chest and muscled arms, but it is not the same after you pass forty. You shout and roar so you do not have to look at that, but it is not the same whether you look at it or not. You have the rod and the reel and the line and the hook. You have the fighting chair to brace against.

What does the fish have? Only himself. Yet you soon feel like an old man on the sea. But the marlin also feels it. Let him dive. Let him jump. Hook and line and rod still link him to your arms. You work the reel as you can. Sometimes the line pays out when he runs. More often, now, it comes in. You gain. Little by little, you gain.

“Come on, God,” someone behind you says. “Keep the stinking sharks away. Give us a whole marlin, not one all chewed to hell and gone.”

You are so wrapped up in the fight, you did not know someone stood in back of the chair. Neither do you know about God. If He is inclined to answer prayers, though, you hope He answers that one. You hate sharks. And a hooked, exhausted marlin is a feast at Maxim’s for them.

You keep on reeling in the fish. What else can you do? If a shark comes, he comes. That is the long and short of it. After most of an hour, you have beaten the marlin. He lies by the stern, spent but beautiful. No shark has torn that blued-gunmetal hide.

A gaff goes into the marlin. Eager hands pull him up over the roller. His mouth gapes wide. He cannot breathe air, but he does not know that, poor thing. “Watch the bill!” you say sharply. The marlin may spear someone even with his dying thrashes.

An iron pry bar comes down on his head, hard. Once, twice, three times. Eyes and skin dull. It is over.

You draw a knife from a sheath on your belt. You feel the soft yet firm resistance of flesh as the blade goes in. When you yank the knife from the gills down toward the vent, offal spills on the deck. You and your crewmates push the guts into the water.

Sharks now! The ocean behind the Pilar boils as they tear into the gift. A small stretch of sea briefly goes from blue to red.

“Holy cow!” one of the men says. “A big bastard just swallowed one of the little guys.”

“They might as well be people,” you say. “Give them shirts with collars and neckties and they will be running for Congress in the next election.” Your crewmates laugh. You are kidding, but kidding on the square.