Once prepared, the harvest slid down the steel table to the tubs at the end. At that point a group of children under the direction of a young teen female sorted them by type, washed them and iced them down. Whenever a tub got full it would be covered and wheeled into the icehouse, only to be replaced by another.
After watching quietly for a few minutes Mike picked up an abandoned knife and gloves and joined in. He chose only the types to be gutted, recognizing that his filleting technique was not up to par. He tried his own gutting technique and quickly found that not only did it require more motions, it left more junk in the body cavity. So he started experimenting with the new technique.
The conversation went on around him, much of it in such a thick cracker accent as to be nearly incomprehensible. The conversation, whether it was the norm or censored for the visitor in their midst, centered around the weather to be expected for the next few days, fair, and the fishing, fair, and the price the fish might fetch when the buyer came through in a few days, poor. Despite price stabilization supports and general inflation the price per pound of all the major fish types, even the prized black grouper and red snapper, had been going consistently down.
Mike kept his face in its habitual frown when Harry and a fisherman called Bob got into another argument about power. Bob was of the opinion that Harry was being stingy in not providing electricity for the regular Saturday-night party at the No-Name-Key Pub. Harry pointed out the consequences of overusing fuel in a way that was so oblique as to be opaque to an outsider. Thereafter the conversation slid to less ominous topics, leaving Mike metaphorically scratching his head.
Finally the last fish was gutted and Mike stripped off the chain mail gloves. The fisherman called Bob looked him up and down and tossed over a cut lime. “Let’s get washed up and head to the pub,” he said in general. There was a chorus of muttered agreement which Mike decided to take as invitation. The worst that would happen was that someone would try to throw him out.
Good luck.
Harsh, homemade soap and the strong Key limes took away the worst of the fish smell and the crowd headed out of the screening to brave the mosquitoes. The distant pub was lit by kerosene lanterns hung over the doorway, but the path to it was pitch-black darkness. Mike found himself walking between Harry and Bob and decided that he was more or less being escorted.
“It was good of you to help with the cleaning,” said Harry, somewhat stiffly.
“The more hands the better,” was Mike’s only comment.
The walked a little farther in silence.
“You in the Army?” asked Bob, noncomitally.
“Fleet Strike,” said Mike and heard a faint snort.
“Really,” said Harry in a sarcastic tone. “I bet you’ve been off-planet and everything, huh? Got a chest full of medals from Barwhon. Pull the other one.”
“We had a guy down here a couple of times,” said Bob in explanation. “He was a SEAL based at Homestead Airforce Base, or so he said. The cops finally caught up with him. He was a deserter from a Guard unit in Missouri.”
“He sure could talk the talk, though,” said Harry, bitterly.
“He stiffed Harry for a goodly bill. And ate us out of house and home,” Bob commented.
Mike’s nod was unseen in the darkness but they stopped when he did. He reached into the depths of his jacket and extracted a card from his wallet. It was easily discerned by the faintly glowing purple stripe around the edges.
“You forgot to ask for my ID,” Mike noted, handing it to Bob instead of Harry. As he did he tapped a control on the lower face of the electronic ID.
A full-length hologram of Mike at parade rest in combat silks sprung up as an electronic voice intoned the appropriate statistics. Name, rank, service, Galactic ID number, height, weight, sex and age were all recited by the combination ID and dog tag. The IDs were made of the same refractory material as the suits, designed to take damage and still be able to identify their users. In a pinch they made a dandy weapon in trained hands.
The group had stopped when the hologram blossomed. When the recording ended the only thing that could be heard was the buzz of mosquitoes and the occasional idle swat. Bob handed the ID back.
“Hmmph,” said Harry, noncommitally. “Okay, you’re really in Fleet Strike. Big deal.”
“And my wife’s an XO of a frigate in Fleet,” said Mike mildly. “And if you give her the same ration of shit I’ve gotten I’ll feed you your left arm.”
There was a general chuckle from the group in the darkness and a movement towards the pub. “I think he means it,” said Bob, chuckling at the store owner’s discomfiture.
“Yeah, well,” said the aging hippie. “It’s been so long since I had any red meat, it might not be all that bad.”
“Things are getting a tad complicated,” admitted Mike.
CHAPTER 24
Washington, DC, United States of America, Sol III
1937 EDT October 2nd, 2004 ad
Monsignor O’Reilly regarded the small piece of electronics that had mysteriously appeared in his cassock pocket. It looked like a standard flash memory card, but there were no manufacturer’s marks on it. Nor were there any instructions. He finally put it in the flash reader attached to his computer and checked its directories.
The chip was apparently named “Religious Documents.” The first directory was titled “Rig Veda,” the second “Koran,” the third “Talmud” and the fourth “The Franklin Bible.” He opened up this directory and stared at the single file titled “Install.” He twisted his face a few times, took a deep breath and double-clicked the file.
It asked for a password. He thought about it. He had not been given a password. The likelihood was that if the first guess was wrong, the chip would erase instantly. Finally he typed, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” The computer chirped and the installation began.
Either the chip had more memory than any flash card should or the file had been hyper-compressed. The tiny file was expanding to dump a mass of files into his computer. If he had to destroy the evidence it would be nearly impossible to track them all down. He nearly pulled the chip in panic, but the file dump finally ended and a text box popped up.
“Welcome,” it read, “To The Franklin Bible Complete Study of Human Archetypes And Pre-Historic Myths.”
There was a new icon on his taskbar, a tiny blue world with a telephone on it. He drifted the mouse across it and the caption “New Messages” popped up. He clicked it.
“Dear Monsignor O’Reilly,” the simple text box read, “in the event that you do not want this program to stay on your computer, simply uninstall it using the uninstall icon on your desktop. Uninstallation will remove all files created with this program, all messages associated with this program and every bit of evidence that it ever existed on your computer. This will take less than fifteen seconds with the system it is currently installed on. You may also do this by simply saying, ‘Dump the Post Office.’
“At this time these are the critical messages for the Society of Jesus.
“The Tir Dol Ron is en route to Earth. His first stop will be the United States.”
The message that followed was much the same information he had received from Kari. It did, however, include some expansions. Apparently the reason that the Tir was coming to finalize the negotiations was that the humans could not possibly kill this messenger.