Robert Sheckley - Fishing Season

'Am I still here?' he asked.

'Are you all right?' Phyllis demanded. 'What happened? Oh, darling! Let's get out of this place—'

'Where's your father?' Mallen asked groggily, getting to his feet.

'Fishing. Now please sit down. I'm going to call a doctor.'

'No. Wait.' Mallen went into the kitchen. On the refrigerator was the cake box. It read 'Johnson's Cake Shop. Vainsville, New YorK'. A capital K in New York. Really a very small error.

And Mr Carter? Was the answer there? Mallen raced upstairs and dressed. He crumpled the cake box and thrust it into his pocket, and hurried out of the door.

'Don't touch anything until I get back!' he shouted at Phyllis. She watched him get into the car and race down the street. Trying hard to keep from crying, she walked into the kitchen.

Mallen was at Old Creek in fifteen minutes. He parked the car and started walking up the stream.

'Mr Carter!' he shouted as he went. 'Mr Carter!'

He walked and shouted for half an hour, into deeper and deeper woods. The trees overhung the stream now, and he had to wade to make any speed at all. He increased his pace, splashing, slipping on stones, trying to run.

'Mr Carter!'

'Hello!' He heard the old man's voice. He followed the sound, up a branch of the stream. There was Mr Carter, sitting on the steep bank of a little pool, holding his long bamboo pole. Mallen scrambled up beside him.

'Take it easy, son,' Mr Carter said. 'Glad you took my advice about fishing.'

'No,' Mallen panted. 'I want you to tell me something.'

'Gladly,' the old man said. 'What would you like to know?'

'A fisherman wouldn't fish out a pool completely, would he?'

'I wouldn't. But some might.'

'And bait. Any good fisherman would use artificial bait?'

'I pride myself on my flies,' Mr Carter said. 'I try to approximate the real thing. Here, for example, is a beautiful replica of a hornet.' He plucked a yellow hook from his hat. 'And here is a lovely mosquito.'

Suddenly his line stirred. Easily, surely, the old man brought it in. He caught the gasping trout in his hand and showed him to Mallen.

'A little fellow -1 won't keep him.' He removed the hook gently, easing it out of the gasping gill, and placed the fish back in water.

'When you throw him back - do you think he knows? Does he tell the others?'

'Oh, no,' Mr Carter said. 'The experience doesn't teach him anything. I've had the same young fish bite my line two or three times. They have to grow up a bit before they know.'

'I thought so.' Mallen looked at the old man. Mr Carter was unaware of the world around him, untouched by the terror that had struck Vainsville.

Fishermen live in a world of their own, thought Mallen.

'But you should have been here an hour ago,' Mr Carter said. 'I hooked a beauty. A magnificent fellow, two pounds if he was an ounce. What a battle for an old war-horse like me! And he got away. But there'll come another - hey, where are you going?'

'Back!' Mallen shouted, splashing into the stream. He knew now what he had been looking for in Mr Carter. A parallel. And now it was clear.

Harmless Mr Carter, pulling up his trout, just like that other, greater fisherman, pulling up his—

'Back to warn the other fish!' Mallen shouted over his shoulder, stumbling along the stream bed. If only Phyllis hadn't touched any food! He pulled the cake box out of his pocket and threw it from him as hard as he could. The hateful lure!

While the fishermen, each in his respective sphere, smiled and dropped their lines into the water again.