Forever Free

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, 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 accent always sounded strange when he first got back from school. He didn’t speak English in class or, I suspected, with many of his friends.

“Over the sixty percent mark,” I said, scrubbing my hands and face at the work sink. “Any better luck and we’ll have to eat the damned things ourselves.”

“Think I’ll poach a big bunch for dinner,” Marygay said, deadpan. That gave them the flavor and consistency of cotton.

“Come on, Mom,” Bill said. “Let’s just have them raw.” He liked them even less than I did. Chopping off their heads was the high point of his day.

I went to the trio of casks at the other end of the room and tapped a glass of dry red wine, then sat with Bill on the bench by the fire. I poked at it with a stick, a social gesture probably older than this young planet.

“You were going to have the art zombie today?”

“The art history Man,” he said. “She’s from Centrus. Haven’t seen her in a year. We didn’t draw or anything; just looked at pictures and statues.”

“From Earth?”

“Mostly.”

“Tauran art is weird.” That was a charitable assessment. It was also ugly and incomprehensible.

“She said we have to come to it gradually. We looked at some architecture.”

Their architecture, I knew something about. I’d destroyed acres of it, centuries ago. Felt like yesterday sometimes.

“I remember the first time I came across one of their barracks,” I said. “All the little individual cells. Like a beehive.”

He made a noncommittal noise that I took as a warning. “So where’s your sister?” She was still in high school but had the same bus. “I can’t keep her schedule straight.”

“She’s at the library,” Marygay said. “She’ll call if she’s going to be late.”

I checked my watch. “Can’t wait dinner too long.” The meeting was at eight and a half.

“I know.” She stepped over the bench and sat down between us, and handed me a plate of breadsticks. “From Snell, came by this morning.”

They were salty and hard; broke between the jaws with an interesting concussion. “I’ll thank him tonight.”

“Old folks party?” Bill asked.

“Sixday,” I said. “We’re walking, if you want the floater.”

” `But don’t drink too much wine,’ ” he anticipated, and held up his glass. “This is it. Volleyball down at the gym.”

“Win one for the Gipper.”

“What?”

“Something my mother used to say. I don’t know what a gipper is.”

“Sounds like a position,” he said. “Server, spiker, gipper.” As if he cared a lot about the game qua game. They played in the nude, mixed, and it was as much a mating ritual as a sport.

A sudden blast of sleet rattled against the window. “You don’t want to walk through that,” he said. “You could drop me off at the gym.”

“Well, you could drop us off,” Marygay said. The route of the floater wasn’t registered; just the parking location, supposedly for call forwarding. “Charlie and Diana’s place. They won’t care if we’re early.”

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