Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction (35 page)

“I appreciate the warning,” I said. “But aren’t you taking a risk by telling me?”

“I took this job because nobody was hiring marine biologists,” she said. “I thought I could continue my whale research. I had no idea how cutthroat this business is. These are evil people.”

“And here we are, fighting over trash. Do you even feel like the world was wearing out?”

She leaned back against a seat cushion I’d harvested from a 2017 Toyota roadster. “I can’t speak for the world, but my little piece of it is exhausted.”

We sat in companionable silence until she began to snore softly. I woke her just before dawn so she could get back to her ship before first watch.

§

The next day brought a return of summer weather, clear and temperate. Only the falling water temperature and southerly declination of the sun foreshadowed the approach of winter. As the harvester chugged toward the island, I paddled out to intercept it.

Goodale was at the con. As I spun the
Scumbucket
to face the harvester’s three-story-high scoop, he turned off his engines and snatched the microphone from its hook on the bridge.

“You’re trespassing on Midas property,” he said, “and interfering with our legal business operations. You have ten minutes to get out of my way.” His voice was as deep as a humpback’s keening, and gravely. It had the forcefulness of a military order.

Which put my hackles up. A military brat, I’d spent my childhood without a home to call my own, surrounded, raised, by order-followers and order-givers.

I picked up my megaphone, made from a highway cone. “Beautiful day, huh? Have you introduced yourself to the TV audience?” I pointed to the sky.

He exited the bridge and walked the narrow catwalk to the upper lip of the scoop, only twenty yards from my boat. I popped open my dry box and pulled out the flare pistol the CNN reporter had given me to draw their attention in the event of a confrontation.

Goodale looked down on me. “How tough do you think you are, kid?”

“Tough enough, I guess,” I said, with the bravado that came from confidence that my courage would not be tested.

He leaned against the railing and lifted one foot onto the lower rung. “I bet you have a ten-second pitch for the cameras, right? All you pretty boys talk in sound bites.”

The “pretty boy” comment cheered me up a bit. I recited, “The oceans belong to everyone, not just the countries with big guns. The North Pacific Coalition had no right to sell off the harvesting rights to this latitude. Flotsamland alone is worth billions, and we’re here to make sure the poor people of the world get their cut for a change.”

“You’re an idiot, kid. A dangerous idiot. He stared at me like I was a dog to be cowered. “I didn’t come out here to play games. You want to avoid becoming recycled trash yourself, you’ll leave as soon as you can.”

Although I’d expected him to threaten me, as others had before him, he spoke with that voice of a drill instructor, one that expected immediate and unswerving obedience. Dad had that kind of voice.

The Midas crew and I had long before come to a tacit agreement on ground rules for ocean face-offs; if I could hold my position, they wouldn’t assail it. If they could get around me fairly, they could chew on Flotsamland for the rest of the day. None of us believed any more that trash or the cause warranted bloodshed. At least, until now.

“Forecast calls for increasing cloud cover tonight,” Goodale said before turning away and returning to the bridge. As the harvester puttered back to the ship, I wondered if I had the guts to face a real assault. If they shipped Koo home, I was pretty sure the answer would be no.

§

The clouds did indeed arrive that night, thick and wet, but, as usual, the seas came up, too. The waves were tall and broad enough to toss Flotsamland around like a garbage-can lid in a tornado, and the harvester remained tied up to the cargo ship.

The following morning, I awoke to the unmistakable smell of shit. Dread fell over me as I dressed and stepped outside.

There, on Styrofoam Beach, lay a lifeless 15-foot-long baby humpback whale, a harpoon sticking out of its head like a toothpick from an olive. Its belly had been slit from stem to stern, and guts were spilled across one of my rain collection tarps. A message was painted on its side: “You’re next.”

Goodale was watching me through binoculars from the ship’s superstructure. He waved derisively.

A hundred yards offshore, a pod of humpies circled slowly, each surfacing in turn as it reached the nearest point to the island. The pod stayed there for the next two days before leaving. Each morning Koo paddled out and spent a couple of hours circling and singing along with it.

§

The Fair Share Gaea copter arrived on schedule that Sunday. Since waves were still percolating the island, it hovered and my usual contact, Pamela, zip-lined down.

“I thought Midas would be gone already,” she said as she unclipped from the line.

I explained the situation, wondering if I should have kept the whale to show her, instead of dumping it back into the ocean.

“You can’t spend the winter out here,” she said, concerned, as she checked out my kingdom. I’d been segregating new trash with the thought of adding some acreage to the western shore—plastic in one pile, then glass bottles, cans and other metal containers, nets, and mile upon mile of monofilament line. A tall stack of driftwood was drying at the foot of Mount Détritus, and my rainwater collection tarps and barrels covered much of the northern plain.

“I’ll stay as long as Goodale does,” I said, hoping my spoken commitment would bolster my resolve. I could almost hear Dad telling me, for the thousandth time, “Quitters never prosper.” In fact, I wasn’t sure my sister would even welcome me back on the mainland. She had her own place in San Diego, and my presence was an unwelcome reminder of our loss: both our parents were killed in the Congo War.

“We didn’t bring food,” Pam said, “or clothes, or anything. We thought we were coming to pick you up.” I was taken aback when she confessed that the organisation didn’t have the money to make another trip for several months, even if the weather cooperated.

I almost cracked from longing for the convenience of central heat, hot meals, fresh laundry. Electricity. I’d installed solar panels and a wind turbine on Flotsamland to power the fridge I’d found in a crate of appliances, but it had crapped out months earlier and was now a part of the appliance archipelago.

Seeing Koo watching from the ship gave me courage to say, “I’ll get by. A case of Korean army rations floated in this spring, enough to hold me for the winter, along with the fish and sea birds I can catch. You haven’t lived until you’ve roasted an Auk.”

Pam, resigned to my decision, lowered the few supplies they had brought, mostly magazines, and flew away with the understanding that they would return in April, come hell or high water.

I’d never felt more alone.

§

I wasn’t alone for long, though. That evening the sky cleared and the sea smoothed over. The water was already noticeably cooler, on its way down to its winter temperature of 55 degrees. My feet were beginning to ache from the cold every time I sat in my kayak.

The harvest moon that night was full and almost bright enough to read a magazine by, so I spotted Koo as she pulled up to Baggie Beach and dragged her boat onto shore. She removed a large backpack from the luggage hatch and slowly hiked up Mount Détritus to the shack. Since I had a tarp for a door, she knocked on the eye of the wooden Cyclops, a ship’s figurehead, that I’d used to frame the entrance.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You want to borrow a cup of sugar.”

She stepped into the shack, dropped her bag next to the small fire burning in the fireplace I’d made of an old oven, and squatted, rubbing her hands over the flames. “
Qué onda
?”

She’d lost weight in the short time since her last visit, and there were bags under her eyes. Her hands were cracked and dry, the curse of saltwater.

“
Nada
. You okay?” I said.

She laughed bitterly. “I used to think I could find the good in anyone, but Goodale is dead to me, after he killed that whale. I spent a year in grad school following that pod through their migration. They pass through here twice a year, from Hawai‘i to the Alaskan coast and back. I knew that calf’s mother.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I pointed to her bags. “You’re planning to stay?”

“I’m requesting political asylum.”

“No problem,” I sat upright. “Place your hand on your heart.”

She pressed her palm to her bosom.

“Do you promise to uphold the laws and defend the honour of Flotsamland against any and all foes? And obey the monarchy?”

“I do.” A slight smile broke through her distress.

“Then I hereby welcome you as a loyal subject of Flotsamland.”

“My liege,” she said, and curtsied.

“Later that night, she made an assault on the crown. I didn’t object.

§

The weather was boisterous for the next week, and we took the opportunity to repair some of the damage the harvester had made over the summer. When the weather finally settled down enough for Midas to resume its attack, Koo joined in Flotsamland’s defence with gusto.

The doubled size of our fleet made it easier to parry Goodale’s harvester thrusts. Fortunately, a North Pacific high also stalled over us until almost Christmas, with a cloudless sky that kept us in clear view of the CNN audience. And when the clouds finally returned, so did the waves.

Goodale was indefatigable, though, spending every possible daylight hour at the helm of the harvester, stalking our perimeter like a caged cat. Several times, he sent the rest of the crew in the lifeboat to box us in, but they rowed with the enthusiasm of ill-treated slaves and we easily avoided them

Not all was right in Flotsamland, though, even with our increased population. The supplies adequate for me alone were diminishing quickly when split two ways. The pile of dried driftwood dwindled, and the old saw, which I’d found trapped in one of the logs, was so dull it could barely cut plastic.

Koo and I filled the empty hours getting to know one another. I told her about how I came to volunteer for Fair Share Gaea (pretty girls, too much beer), about my dead-end job pressing tofu, my university days leading to an utterly useless degree in geography, and my boyhood, a different home on a different military base every twelve months.

She described her fieldwork in marine biology. I also learned that she had been a star diver in college, in high school, in grade school, an almost-Olympic talent, thrilling to her parents, who were unhappy unless they were pursing unattainable goals.

Neither of us talked about our old romances. I’d had very few, and handled them badly. Fear of commitment on my part was often cited as the reason for the failure.

§

On Christmas Day, a smudge of sun far to the south, dim as a 15-watt bulb, backlit thick grey clouds. No satellite coverage, for sure. The sea was mirror-calm.

“This is trouble,” I said to Koo. Shaking her awake. I quickly pulled on my clothes and wrapped a wool rug over top like a serape.

Goodale had the harvester headed for Cape Cardboard. We hurriedly launched the fleet and paddled like hell, managing to pull in front of the harvester as it closed to within 50 yards of the mainland.

Goodale was puffing on a cigar the size of a barracuda. He waved us aside, and kept coming. Waved again, kept coming. Koo looked at me, eyebrows raised.

I picked up my speaking tube. “Get out of the way,” I shouted to her. “No need for both of us to go in harm’s way.”

She stuck out her tongue and made a few quick pry strokes to bring her boat closer to mine. Goodale was now only twenty yards away. The knife-edged, stainless-steel screw thread that chewed up the material gathered by the harvester’s front-end scoop was already feasting on material floating loose in the waters around our shoreline. Bushels of squid were being pureed.

Ten yards. We back-paddled. Goodale kept coming. We backed up some more. The stern of my boat struck the shore. Goodale kept coming, a smile on his face. The screw thread made a whining sound as it spun.

I chickened out.

“Retreat!” I yelled to Koo as I took three quick strokes, carrying me beyond the machine’s scoop.

I turned to make sure Koo had followed, but she hadn’t moved. Instead, she gave Goodale the finger as her kayak was dragged into the scoop. The screw grabbed the prow of her boat and remorselessly sucked it in. Her boat was suddenly jerked vertical, catapulting Koo out of the cockpit, still holding on to her paddle, over the scoop and into the ocean.

The awful screech of the harvester as it began to chew up the shoreline drowned out any other noise, but Goodale laughed as I frantically circled the harvester. As soon as I cleared the hopper, I spotted Koo, floating and shivering. I prayed that the commotion would keep Mr Pepsodent away.

To my relief, there was no sign of the shark, but Koo had lost control of her limbs in the cold seawater, and I had to dead-lift her onto my deck. I ripped off her PFD and shirt, as well as my own, threw the rug over both of us and hugged her fiercely.

She stopped shivering after ten minutes, and was finally able to speak. The first thing she said was, “Get me to shore.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s get to a fire.”

She shook her head. “Put me there.” She pointed to a narrow defile formed by an old lifeguard tower and a pile of deck chairs, twenty yards to one side of the path Goodale was chewing into the island.

“Hurry,” she said.

I figured that, once on shore, I could carry/drag Koo to the shack before she caught pneumonia. As soon as I landed where she indicated, though, she crawled out of the boat. She staggered for a few steps before strength returned to her legs.

As I made my way to the bow of the boat and precariously stepped onto land, Koo made a beeline toward the Anchor Alps. There, she grabbed two of the largest plough anchors, forty pounds each. One in each hand, she limped toward the harvester, now ten yards into the mainland and gobbling up more of the island by the minute.