"Linda Nagata - Hooks, Nets & Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nagata Linda)

Hooks, Nets and
Time
a novelette
by Linda Nagata

The ocean ran through his dreams. The panting breath of the wavelets as they rose and fell against the
pylons became his own breath, a slow, deep rhythm in his lungs that forced him to run. His footfalls
reverberated against the black plastic photovoltaic field that doubled as a deck: a square track five
kilometers long, encompassing the perimeter of the shark pen. Starlight glinted off the water; glistened in
the film of sweat that coated his pumping arms. The rubber soles of his running shoes beat out an ancient
cursorial rhythm, a telling vibration transmitted through the deck to the perforated steel walls of the shark
pen and then to the coral foundations of the station some twelve fathoms below. Crippled Tiburon would
be lurking there near the bottom, listening, measuring the vibrations in his ancient, clever mind, waiting for
the hour when his fins had fully regrown and his strength was at once new...and old.

A thin wail twisted through the humid night. Tiburon heard it in the depths and thrashed his powerful tail.
The wail grew into a distant howl of terror.

A faint splash.

Zayder sat up abruptly. The dream peeled away like burned film, leaving him in another version of the
night. He'd fallen asleep on a lounge chair again, in the open air, on the deck of the Ocean Hazards
Collection Station that he managed alone. The blocky silhouette of the shed rose behind him. The
structure seemed to be an ugly afterthought to the automated design of the U.N. mandated OHC Station.
Still, it served him for housing, and storage for the shark farm: luxury quarters compared to the fishing
boats he'd grown up on.

Out on the water, the distant lights of a freighter interrupted the blanket of starlight. In the pen, the swish
and splash of a shark fin accented the peaceful wash of the ocean.

Zayder leaned forward, ignoring the dry moss of a hangover that clung to his tongue and the roof of his
mouth. He listened, unsure if the howl had been part of his dream. His pulse still hammered in his ears.
He'd heard howls like that before: once as a kid, when a man fell off the shark boats in the Sulu Sea. And
again, one night when Mr. Ryan came to the station. Zayder had only feigned drinking the cordial that
should have sent him into a drugged sleep. That night he'd watched surreptitiously as a bound man went
screaming to the sharks.

He listened. He thought he could detect a distant, angry voice from the direction of the freighter, but that
was all. And what if he heard more? What was he supposed to do if he discovered mayhem and murder
on the high seas? Call Mr. Ryan and complain about the neighbors?

He chose to believe that it had been a dream.

Dawn came. Zayder woke, washed his face, put on his running shoes. Another day. He would spend
the morning doing maintenance on the robotic garbage trawlers that had come into the station overnight
from their long forays into the South China Sea. In the afternoon he would mutilate sharks, harvesting the
regrown fins of the captive beasts for sale on the Chinese market -- the prized ingredient in shark fin
soup. So much to look forward to.

But first he would run.