"Joe Haldeman - Forever Free" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

when I didn't want company. I pulled on wool sweater and cap and left the rain slicker on its peg.

I stepped out into the damp hard wind. It didn't smell like snow coming. I asked my watch and
it said 90 percent rain, but a cold front in the evening would bring freezing rain and snow. That
would make for a fun meeting. We had to walk a couple of klicks, there and back. Otherwise the
zombies could look through transportation records and see that all of us paranoids had converged
on one house.

We had eight trotlines that stretched out ten meters from the end of the dock to posts I'd
sunk in the chest-deep water. Two more had been knocked down in a storm; I'd replace them come
spring. Two years from now, in real years.

It was more like harvesting than fishing. The blackfish are so dumb they'll bite anything, and
when they're hooked and thrash around, it attracts other blackfish: "Wonder what's wrong with that
guy--oh, look! Somebody's head on a nice shiny hook!"

When I got out on the dock I could see thunderheads building in the east, so I worked pretty
fast. Each trotline's a pulley that supports a dozen hooked leaders dangling in the water, held to
one-meter depth with plastic floaters. It looked like half the floaters were down, maybe fifty
fish. I did a mental calculation and realized I'd probably just finish the last one when Bill got
home from school. But the storm was definitely coming.

I took work gloves and apron off a hook by the sink and hauled the end of the first line up to
the eye-level pulley wheel. I opened the built-in freezer--the stasis field inside reflected the
angry sky like a pool of mercury--and wheeled in the first fish. Worked it off the hook, chopped
off the head and tail with a cleaver, threw the fish into the freezer, and then rebaited the hook
with its head. Then rolled in the next client.

Three of the fish were the useless mutant strain we've been getting for more than a year.
They're streaked with pink and have a noxious hydrogen-sulfide taste. The blackfish won't take
them for bait and I can't even use them for fertilizer; you might as well scatter your soil with
salt.

Maybe an hour a day--half that, with the kids helping--and we supplied about a third of the
fish for the village. I didn't eat much of it myself. We also bartered corn, beans, and asparagus,


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in their seasons.

Bill got off the bus while I was working on the last line. I waved him inside; no need for
both of us to get all covered with fish guts and blood. Then lightning struck on the other side of
the lake and I put the line back in anyhow. Hung up the stiff gloves and apron and turned off the
stasis field for a second to check the catch level.

Just beat the rain. I stood on the porch for a minute and watched the squall line hiss its way
across the lake. Warm inside; Marygay had started a small fire in the kitchen fireplace. Bill was
sitting there with a glass of wine. That was still a novelty to him. "So how are we doing?" His