Гарднер Дозуа - Mermaids!

The pressure of Love? I dont know. Some force unknown to us and maybe it's all explained somewhere in one of those little five-cent blue reincarnation books from out Kansas way—I guess it was one I missed. The pressure to get those fish and a few bottles and a lot of mud and water up the pipes and into that room was, as I say, considerable. But nothing compared to the pressure it must have taken to get Darly back out into the river. Out of that room. Into the green, polished, fathomless mother of waters. Love? Maybe it is the strongest force in nature. At least, the love of someone like her.

No trace of her was ever found. No trace of Darly, either—except for his rainbow-hued Ballyhoo shorts—they were the one part of him that didnt go through the spigot and which hung there like a beaten flag against the nozzle.

Go there now.

To the river.

When the spring moon is high.

When the lights in the skiffs on the black river look like campfires on stilts of light.

A catfish leaps—porpoising into moonshine and mist and then dipping joyously back into the deeps. Another—smaller—appears by its side. They nuzzle their flat homely faces in the starshine. Their great rubbery lips brush in ecstasy.

And then they are gone in the spring dark—off for a bit of luscious garbage—old lovers at a honeymoon breakfast.

Lucky Darly Pogue! O, lucky Darly!

Here's another story about the fabled Irish Merrow. But unlike T. Crofton Croker's "The Soul Cages, " which comes from a nineteenth century tradition that created the stage Irishman and "imagined the country as a humorist's Arcadia" (to quote W. B. Yeats), "The Shannon Merrow" takes place in troubled, war-torn modern Ireland.

New writer Cooper McLaughlin—a frequent contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction— takes us not to a pastel-colored land of myths, but instead to the gray, hard-edged, post-Vietnam world, the all-too-familiar world of drug addiction and pollution and high-speed computers and crime, a world where even the most beautiful of country vistas can be stained and shadowed by a man 's memory of war and mutilation and death.

But magic still lives, even in such a world, waiting around the next corner, behind the scenes, below the surface ... magic waiting only for a touch to set it free ... magic strong enough to heal the bitterest heart...

IT WAS THREE YEARS SINCE I'D BEEN IN YOUGHAL. EVEN IF you've never been to Ireland, you've probably seen the region. The film Moby Dick was shot there, and the locals still laugh about the day the great rubber whale blew out to sea.

From the cottage which is mine since my mother's death you can look over the reaches of the Blackwater River. Opposite are the green rolling hills where Barry Lyndon was filmed. Down to the right you can see the decaying gray stones of an abandoned abbey, and beyond that the fire-blackened facade of a country house, once owned by the Anglo-Irish ascendancy.

I stood in the doorway of the cottage. The sun was bright but a cold March wind blew up the valley. At the mouth of the river two open fishing boats pulled a string of orange floats.

I felt depressed. It was here that I'd done my first crude sketches. Later when I'd learned to paint, I rode Uncle Frank's ancient Norton motorcycle over the country roads. With a box of watercolors and a cool bottle of stout, I was free.

From the time I was nine until I went into the army, each summer I'd fly from San Francisco to Shannon to meet my Uncle Frank. Sometimes my mother would come with me but usually she was too busy making a living for the two of us.

I looked at my watch. Ten-fifteen. I had an appointment with Uncle Frank at eleven to sign the documents transferring the title of the cottage to me. I pulled the suede jacket over my nearly useless right arm. Two AK-47 rounds had shattered my shoulder and upper arm. The bones had healed but the nerves were dead—the end of my career as a painter.

I got into the rented blue Ford Escort. It's no trouble for me to drive in Ireland. My right arm is good enough to steer and I can work the left-hand shift easily. I drove down the short rutted path and through the gate. I got out and swung it shut on the rusty hinges. I looked back at the house with its shaggy rush roof, the whitewashed walls stark against the sea of green grass. "The grass of half a cow is what you have," Uncle Frank said, "half a cow at the most." True, it was not a large place, but it was filled with the fragile ghosts of happier times.

There was a warped wooden sign bolted to the gate. Uncle Frank, who, before he'd gone into law had studied archaeology, gave me the old name of the place. CNOC GRIANAN ... The Hill of the Place of the King. My shoulder began to ache and there was a lead ball weighting my stomach. No point in trying to hang on to the past. Perhaps I should sell the place after all. I got in the car and drove down the hill. At the bottom I stopped and pulled a bottle of Paddy from the glove box. I took a long hit, letting the smooth gold whiskey run down my throat.

Youghal is not a large town, but it is old. People talk of Cromwell's troopers as if they'd been there yesterday. I turned from the High Street and up an alley to Nalley's bar. Nalley's is for serious drinkers. No bearded young men in imitation Aran sweaters blowing tin whistles and bagpipes, no jukebox blaring Chieftains' records. Just a long dim room, the bar lined with cloth-capped men, drinking black Guinness. At the far end were three rickety beer-soaked tables. Against the smoke I caught sight of Uncle Frank at one of them, sitting under the black draped portraits of Jack and Robert Kennedy which were lit by a pair of red votive candles.

He saw me and smiled, raising two fingers. I edged my way to the bar and got the curate's attention. With one hand I carefully carried the thick glasses, each with a good fistfull of whiskey, over the layer of cigarette butts which carpeted the floor.

Uncle Frank is not really my uncle. Like my mother he is a MacNeil, and in the convolutions of Gaelic lineage, counted as her cousin. After my father's death he acted as a surrogate parent. He taught me to fish and shoot and sail a boat, and to drink with dignity.

Frank was a tall man, gray-haired, with the flattened nose of a former county hurling star. He dressed like the prosperous Dublin lawyer he was. Hanging from his gold watch chain was an ancient Roman coin. "The mark of MacNeil's folly," he called it. A souvenir of his brief career as an archaeologist. "We've enough of burrowing through the old raths like rats in a cellar." He had told my mother, "The country needs developing, not digging up." So he had abandoned the life of a scholar and read the law.

"Ah... the O'Reilly himself." Frank smiled. "Michael, you're a saint. Another minute and I'd have perished from the thirst."

I glanced at the empty glass at his elbow. "You don't look perishing to me..."

"Well, now. The first one's for the mouth. This one's for the soul." He held up the glass. I knew there was no rushing the process. One more round, talking of sports, politics, the weather. Then business.

I leaned back in the rickety chair and lit a cigarette. "Grand day today, isn't it?" I began the ritual.

Two drinks later we were finished. Frank tucked the signed documents into his briefcase and snapped it shut.

"What will you do, now the place is yours?"

I could feel the whiskey popping sweat beads on my forehead. "I don't know ... sell it maybe..."

"Sell it! Its been in the family for a hundred years! You'll not be a favorite around here if you peddle it to a German or an Arab..."