Eversong

By Geoffrey W. Cole

On the cold North Pacific, the crew of the Setsot hunt for the most valuable substance on Earth. In 16th century Peru, a Catholic missionary tries to bring hope to those enslaved to mine silver. Beneath the dark water flows the eversong that unites them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Geoffrey W. Cole
• Release date: Nov 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9780987710758

Geoffrey W. Cole

GEOFFREY W. COLE’s short fiction has appeared in such publications as Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Apex, Clarkesworld, The Blackness Within anthology, and is forthcoming in On Spec and Dark Recesses. Geoff is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and Speculative Fiction Canada. He teaches speculative fiction writing at Vancouver Community College. Visit Geoff at his website: www.geoffreywcole.com.

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Eversong

a novella

Geoffrey W. Cole

Copyright © 2012 by Geoffrey W. Cole.

Published by G.W.Colebooks.

Smashwords Edition

Eversong is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives Non Commercial Licence, which means you can share it with whomever you like provided you attribute the work to me, you don't alter it, and you don't take any cash for it. If you would like to create something based on my fiction, contact me through my website and we can chat.

Cover design by Anand Mani. Whale skull pendant by Lost Apostle and used with permission.

ISBN 978-0-9877107-5-8

For Nico

1

Don't call me Uhura.

Five and a half days we've been chasing qmerc across the North Pacific. Hearst whipping us like galley slaves the whole time. Espresso and caffeine gum are the only things keeping me awake. With each wave the Setsot rolls over, the door to my comm station falls open and the stench of fish-death wafts in. Another hour of this and I'll throw myself in the grinders.

Pull up your panties, Uhura, Hearst says through my headset. And tell me we've got it all.

The bastard never lets off. He needs his answer though. Hearst and his men cast their net wide behind the Setsot. On my screens, the net's a green lasso, and within its wide arc the silver mass floats. I try to look out the porthole window but my eyes are so exhausted that everything out there looks like some ancient pixellated video game; only the screens look real. By my caffeine-addled estimate, we've got most of the remaining qmerc-infected biomass in our nets. Enough to go home.

We got it, Cap, I say. Haul the lines in.

I can feel it through my feet, hungry vibrations as the winches, the grinders, the pumps, and the centrifuges start up. Through the headset, Richter, the mate, yells at his deckhands and Hearst yells at Richter. The biologist, Nadine, calls off the species as the fish and other critters start to slide up the sloping rear-end of the Setsot toward the grinder pits. Business as usual.

I lean back, crack my knuckles. My damn hands won't stop shaking. Too much caffeine, too much of Hearst breathing down my neck. I fire off an email to my boy: Home tonight, dude. We'll get your lab up and running. Promise. Your Dad just hit the big time. Another waft of fish-death through the open door, fresher this time: the smell of freshly ground salmon, herring and mackerel.

I'm about to head for the galley where the smell isn't so bad, when I notice something on the screen. A big silver blob has separated from the rest of the infected biomass. It passes under the green line of the nets and swims north. At a glance, over half the mass I thought we'd trapped just escaped our nets.

Oh fuck.

I zip up the survival suit and put on my toque, run out the door of the comm station, down the short hallway to the balcony above the deck. Organized chaos below. The Setsot's an old trawler Hearst purchased and converted in under a week for our purpose, which really isn't much different from its original intent: to yank as much life as possible from the ocean and turn it into money.

On the long, flat deck below, Richter works the control panel while his deckhands Mustafa and Lionel wade through the biomass the nets pull from the churning sea. The deckhands use squeegee-brooms to push everything into the two wide pits that lead down to the grinders. Nadine, our little biologist, also wades through fish that come up to her knees. With her tablet in one hand, she checks off the species they send to the grinders for her report to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

What the hell you doing out here, Uhura? Hearst says. He's below me on the deck, directing the whole thing from the crew's level. I slide down the ladders. Hearst stands six and half feet, his bright red survival suit worn and filthy, his beard and head of wild, black hair no better. His eyes could nail me to the wall.

Well? he says. You here to take in the ocean air?

Before I can say anything, Richter pipes in over the headsets we all wear: You better see this, Cap.

Hearst forgets me. He unclips his lifeline, walks to stern where more biomass slides up the slip and is ushered to the grinders. No way am I walking out there. Hearst clips back in when he arrives beside Richter, who points to the rear of the boat. There. My eyes still see pixels, but the pixellated thing bobbing behind the Setsot looks like a round head.

Nadine, Hearst says. What the hell is that?

Our biologist consults her tablet after she's had a good look at the bobbing head. Her survival suit looks like it attacked her: the smallest suit Hearst could find still has to be cinched tight at her wrists and ankles to keep the extra material from engulfing her slender limbs.

Steller's sea lion, she says. Endangered. Bloody fucking great.

Is it infected? Hearst says.

If it's been eating the mackerel, she says. You can bet it's infected. Christ. You realize the paperwork this will take?

Will we get fined? Hearst says.

Not if I sort out the offsets, she says. Gonna take a few days when we get back, though.

That's why I pay you the big bucks, Hearst says. Let's bring him in boys. Richter, think you can handle it?

Oh yeah, the mate says.

Fish and plankton and squid are one thing; if my boy knew we were grinding up endangered species, what would he think of me? Still, the sea lion is infected. Qmerc poisoning works pretty well the same as normal mercury poisoning, only qmerc is worth about five thousand times more per gram.

The sea lion appears at the edge of the slipway. Richter pulls up the handrails around the grinder pit; the big mammal won't slide under the rails like everything else. The conveyors on the slipway whine louder as the creature struggles. Hearst takes over the control panel while Richter and his deckhands wade toward the creature, their hooked gaffs dull and vicious in the grey November light.

Those gaffs rise and fall into the brown flesh of the sea lion. It hollers like a wounded cow. There's gotta be a more humane way to bring it in, but I'm no biologist. I don't know how Nadine can call herself one when we're doing this kind of thing. With the gaffs in place, Richter and his men manage to keep the creature on the conveyors. It comes up over the top. Christ, is it ever huge. Over seven hundred kilos, I'd guess.

Whether it’s the sound of the grinders, the stench of death, or the hooks in its flesh, those seven hundred kilos start moving like a fifteen-kilo Chinook salmon fighting for its life. None of the men are ready for it except Richter. He keeps his gaff in place, leans into it, and keeps the creature moving toward the grinders. The sea lion reaches the lip of the grinder pit and starts to slide. That's when the sea lion twists and grabs Richter's gaff with its massive jaws and