Huh I Maybe company men get to live like that. They can recruit for those jobs anywhere.
In fact, Crat had applied for positions like those before finally falling back on Sea State. And if he hadn’t been up to the companies’ standards in Indiana, why would they accept him here? You don’t fool me. I can just guess what kind of work you’ll offer Sea State volunteers. Work a robot would refuse.
Even the poorest citizens of the poorest nations were protected by the Rio Charter, except those whose leaders had never signed, such as Southern Africa and Sea State. That gave them a queer freedom — to volunteer to be exploited at jobs animal rights groups would scream about if you assigned them to a pig. But then, every member of the Albatross Republic supposedly had chosen his own fate rather than accept the world’s terms. Rather than give up the last free life on Earth, Crat thought proudly. He departed that booth with aloof pride, preferring honest crooks to liars.
Over by the Climate Board, passersby scrutinized the fortnight forecast, of life-or-death interest to all floating towns. Two weeks was just long enough to evade bad storms. The Climate Board was also where the gamblers gathered. Whatever other exotic games of chance were fashionable, you could always get a bet on the weather.
Nearby, a small band played the style known as Burma Rag — a catchy mix of South Asian and Caribbean sounds with a growing following on the net, though naturally little profit ever made it back to Sea State. Crat tossed a piaster into the band’s cup, for luck.
The booths he sought lay near the gangway of a sleek little ship, obviously new and powerful and rigged for deep running. In front of the submersible a table lay strewn with rocky, egg-shaped objects, glittering with spongelike metallic knobs. Together, the vessel and ore nodules were probably worth half the town itself, but not many citizens loitered near the well-dressed company solicitors standing there. The real crowd clustered just beyond, where men in turbans jabbered into note plaques while bearded doctors poked and prodded would-be volunteers.
No holos proclaimed the virtues of life in the various Sea State salvage cooperatives. But everyone knew what it was about. It’s about dragging a frayed air hose behind you while you walk the sunken streets of Galveston or Dacca
or Miami, prying copper wires and aluminum pipes out of tottering ruins.
It’s working in stinking shit-mud to help raise blocks of sunken Venice… hoping a chunk will come up whole so it can be sold off like St. Mark’s Square was… to some rich Russ or Canuck theme resort.
It’s hauling dredges up the bloody Ganges, hired by the Delhi government, but shot at by the local militia of some province that doesn’t really exist anymore, except on hilltops.
Crat fingered the note Peter Schultheiss had given him. He edged alongside one queue and tapped a turbaned interviewer on the shoulder. “Can… can you tell me where…” he peered at the writing. “… where Johann Freyers is?”
The man looked at Crat as if he were some loathsome type of sea slug. He shouted something incomprehensible. Undeterred, Crat moved to another station. Again those in line watched him suspiciously. This time, though, the gaunt, sunken-chested fellow in charge was friendlier. Clean shaven, his face showed the stigmata of many long hours underwater — permanently bloodshot eyes and scars where breathing masks had rubbed away the skin.
“Freyers… over at…” He stopped to inhale, a desperate-sounding whistle. “… at…” With amazing cheerfulness for one who couldn’t even finish a sentence, he smiled. Snapping his fingers brought a young boy forth from under the table. “Freyers,” he told the boy in a wheeze.
“Uh, thanks,” Crat said, and to his surprise found himself being dragged away from the recruiting booths, toward the gangway of the sleek submersible. There, two men in fine-looking body suits conversed quietly with folded arms.
“Are you sure… ?” Crat started asking the boy.
“Yes, yes, Freyers. I know.” He snatched the note out of Crat’s hand and tugged the sleeve of one of the men, whose sandy hair and long face made Crat think of a spaniel. The mainlander looked bemused to receive such a token, turning the paper over as if savoring its vintage. He tossed a coin to the little messenger.
“So you were sent by Peter Schultheiss, hmm?” he said to Crat. “Peter’s a landsman known to me. He says you’ve good lungs and presence of mind.” Freyers looked at the note again. “A Yank, too. Have you a full reliance card, by any chance?”
Crat flushed. As if anyone with a card would emigrate to this place. “Look, there’s some mistake…”
“Well, I assume you at least have high school.”
Crat lifted his shoulders. “That’s no plishie. Only dacks don’t finish high school.”
The long-faced man looked at him for a moment, then said in a soft voice. “Most of your fellow citizens have never seen high school, my young friend.”
“Of course they have—” Then Crat stopped, remembering he wasn’t an American anymore. “Oh. Yeah, well.”
Both men continued regarding him. “Hm,” the shorter one said. “He’d be able to read simple manuals, in both Common and Simglish.” He turned to Crat. “Know any written Nihon or Han? Any kanji?”
Crat shrugged. “Just the first hundred signs. They made us learn simple ideo, uh—”
“Ideograms.”
“Yeah. The first hundred. An’ I picked up some others you guys prob’ly wouldn’t care about.”
“Hmm. No doubt. And silent speech? Sign language?”
Crat couldn’t see the point to this. “I guess, grade school stuff.”
“Tech skills? What kind of Net access did you use at home?”
“Hey, you an’ I both know any tech stuff I got is just pissant shit. You wanted someone educated, you wouldn’t be here, for Ra’s sake. There must be three fuckin’ billion college graduates out there, back in the world!”
Freyers smiled. “True. But few of those graduates have proven themselves aboard a Sea State fishing fleet. Few come so well recommended. And I’d also guess only a few approach us with your, shall we say, motivation?”
Meaning he knows I can’t say no to a job that pays good. And I won’t complain to no union if they give me tanks with rusty valves or an air hose peeling rubber here an’ there.
“So, can we interest you in coming aboard and taking some refreshment with us? We have cheese and chocolates. Then we can talk about getting you tested. I cannot promise anything, my boy, but this may be your lucky day.”
Crat sighed. He had long ago cast himself to fate’s winds. People looked at him, heard him speak, and figured a guy like him couldn’t have a worldview — a philosophy of life. But he did. It could be summed up in five simple words.
Oh, well. What the fuck.
In the end, he let hunger lead him up the gangway after the two recruiters. That and a powerful sense that he had little choice, after all.
□ Given their declining petroleum reserves and the side effects of spewing carbon into the atmosphere, why were twentieth century Americans so suspicious of nuclear power? Essentially, people were deeply concerned about incompetence.
Take the case of the Bodega Bay Nuclear Power Plant. The developers knew full well that its foundations straddled the San Andreas fault, yet they kept it quiet until someone blew the whistle. Why?