Still, even dumb little spinner porpoises looked too much like Tuesday Tursiops, the bottle-nosed hero of Sat-vid kiddie shows. They cried so plaintively when they were hauled aboard, thrashing, flailing their tails… Crat’s gorge was already rising by the time cawing birds arrived to bicker and feed on factory ship offal.

Then, suddenly, had come the greeners — among them probably former countrymen of Crat’s. He recalled seeing well-fed pale faces, jaws set in grim determination as they harassed Sea State’s harvesters to the very limits of international law and then some. To Crat, the lurching fear and confusion of the brief battle had only been the final straw.

“Are you feeling better now, fils?

Crat looked up from his makeshift seat, one of the coiled foredeck anchor chains. Squinting, he saw it was the geep again — the old Helvetian — come around to check up on him for whatever reason. Crat answered with a silent shrug.

“My name is Schultheiss. Peter Schultheiss,” the fellow said as he sat on a jute hawser. “Here you go. I brought you some portable shade.”

Crat turned the gift, a straw hat, over in his hands. Weeks ago he would have spurned it as something from a kindergarten class. Now he recognized a good piece of utilitarian craftsmanship. “Mm,” he answered with a slight nod and put it on. The shade was welcome.

“No gratitude required,” Schultheiss assured. “Sea State cannot afford eye surgery for all its young men. Nor can we count on U.N. dumpit charity.”

For the first time, Crat smiled slightly. The one thing he liked about this disappointing adventure was the way both old and young cursed and suffered alike. Only here at sea, a young man’s strength counted for as much as any grandpa’s store of experience.

Just wait n see, he thought. When I get used to all this, I’ll be tougher ’n anybody.

That wouldn’t be anytime soon, though. First week out, he’d foolishly accepted a dare to wrestle a very small Bantu sailor wearing a speckled bandanna. The speed of his humiliation brought home how useless years of judo lessons were in the real world. There were no rubber mats here, no coaches to blow time out. The jeers and pain that followed him to his hammock proved this dream was going to take some time coming true.

Crat remembered Quayle High and that lousy tribal studies class he and Remi and Roland had to take. Hardly anything spoken by the teacher stuck in memory, except one bit — what old fathead Jameson had said one day about chiefs.

“These were clansmen who won high status, respect, the best food, wives. Nearly every natural human society has had such a special place for its high achievers… even modern tribes like your teen gangs. The major difference between cultures has not been whether, but how chiefs were chosen, and by what criteria.

“Today, neither physical power nor even maleness is a principal criterion in Western society. But wit and quickness still make points…”

Crat remembered how Remi and Roland had grinned at each other, and for an instant he had hated his friends with a searing passion. Then, surprisingly, the prof also let drop a few words that seemed just for him.

“Of course even today there are some societies in which the old macho virtues hold. Where strength and utter boldness still appear to matter…”

Each of them had taken to the Settler style for different reasons. Remi, for romance and the promise of a new order. Roland, for the honor of comradeship and shared danger in a cause. For Crat, though, the motive had been simpler. He just wanted to be a chief.

And so, a month ago, he had bought a one-way ticket and begun what he was sure would be his great adventure.

Some fuckin’ adventure.

“I think maybe the admiral will give up these fishing grounds now,” Schultheiss commented as he looked up toward the bridge. Congo’s officers could be glimpsed, pacing, arguing with the other captains by the flicker of a holo display.

Soon they heard the bosuns shouting — all hands to the nets in five minutes, for hauling and stowing. Crat sighed for his throbbing muscles. “D’you think we’ll be goin’ to town?” he asked.

It was his longest speech yet. Schultheiss seemed impressed. “That is likely. I hear one of our floating cities is heading this way, north from Formosa.”

“Soon as we dock,” Crat said suddenly, “I’m gonna transfer.”

Schultheiss raised an eyebrow. “All Sea State fleets are the same, my friend… except the Helvetian units, of course. And I doubt you’d—”

Crat interrupted. “I’m through fishin’. I’m thinkin’ of goin’ to the dredges.”

The old man grunted. “Dangerous work, fils. Diving into drowned cities, tying ropes to furniture and jagged bits of rusty metal, dismantling sunken office buildings in Miami—”

“No.” Crat shook his head. “Deep dredging. You know. The kind that pays! Diving after… noodles.”

He knew he hadn’t pronounced it right. Schultheiss looked puzzled for a moment and then nodded vigorously. “Ah! Do you mean nodules’¹. Manganese nodules? My young friend, you are even braver than I thought!”

From that brief look of respect Crat derived some satisfaction. But then the old man smiled indulgently. He patted Crat’s shoulder. “And Sea State needs such heroes to take wealth from the deep, so we can take our place among the nations. If you would be such a man, I’m proud to know you.”

He doesn’t believe me, Crat realized. Once, that would have sent him into a sputtering rage. But he had changed… if only because nowadays he was generally too tired for anger. Crat shrugged instead. Maybe I don’t believe it myself.

The main winch was out again, of course. That meant Congo’s section of the great seine net would have to be hauled aboard by hand.

Now Crat remembered where he’d seen the old Helvetian before. Peter Schultheiss was a member of the engineering team that kept the old tub and her sister vessels, Jutland and Hindustan, sailing despite age and decrepitude. Right now Schultheiss was immersed headfirst in a tangle of black gears, reaching out for tools provided by quick, attentive assistants.

Nearby, the forward wing-sail towered like a tapered chimney. No longer angled into the wind to provide trim, it had been feathered and would remain so unless old Peter succeeded. Apparently it wasn’t just the winch this time, but the entire foredeck power chain that depended on the fellow’s miracle work.

Now that’s a skill, Crat admitted, watching Schultheiss during a brief pause in the hauling. You don’t learn that kind of stuff on the gor-sucking Data Net.

“Again!” the portside bosun shouted. The barrel-chested Afrikaaner had long ago tanned as dark as any man on his watch. “Ready on the count, ver-dumpit! One-and, two-and, three-and… heave!”

Crat groaned as he pulled with the others, marching slowly amidships, dragging the sopping line and its string of float buoys over the side. Scampering net makers busied themselves caring for the damaged seine as fast as it came aboard. It was a well-practiced cadence, one with a long tradition on the high seas.

When next they paused to walk forward again — Crat massaging his throbbing left arm — he sniffed left and right, perplexed by a sour, sooty odor. The sharp sweat tang of unbathed men, which had nearly overwhelmed him weeks ago, now was mere background to other smells, drifting in on the breeze.

At last he found the source over on the horizon, a twisted funnel far beyond the Sea State picket boats, rising to stain the shredded, striated clouds. Crat nudged one of his neighbors, an unsmiling refugee from flooded Libya.

“What’s that?” he asked.

The wiry fellow readjusted his bandanna as he peered. “Incinerator ship, I think. No allowed go upwind anybody… UNEPA rule, y’know? But we not anybody. So upwind us jus’ fine okay.” He spat on the deck for effect, then again onto his hands as the bosun ordered them to take up the hawser for another round.