DoG (5 page)

“Hell yeah, greenhorn,” McGillicuddy called out. “Nice save.”

Worner grabbed him in a good-natured headlock. Even Gus gave him a short nod of appreciation. Culann chewed his lip to keep from smiling. This was his first noticeable display of competence. Then Frank grabbed his arm and spun him around.

“Don’t listen to them, Culann,” Frank said. “You almost got your arm tore off to save fifteen minutes of extra work.”

“Thanks for the tip, but can you at least be happy for me that I finally did something right?”

“Christ, Culann. Don’t you realize that I’m the only one on this ship who actually cares if you die? Do not try to impress these assholes. Just keep doing a shitty job and come home in one piece.”

Culann slumped his shoulders and walked to the other end of the deck without responding. It was clear to him that he’d gotten on Frank’s nerves, maybe due to the close 30

quarters or by simply invading this world that was so far from the one that Frank had escaped. Culann was grateful to Frank for helping him get out here, but Frank’s unwillingness to acknowledge his improvement stung. The whole purpose of this voyage was to become a new man or die trying, and for the first time, Culann believed he was going to succeed in leaving his old life behind. Why couldn’t Frank be happy for him?

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4

He continued to improve over the next week. His stomach settled, and the

soreness in his muscles solidified into strength. His hands sorted fish, untangled lines and hauled nets like they’d been doing it for years. Though Gus still slapped him around, he did so with less frequency and intensity than he had in the first week at sea.

Culann avoided Frank as much as was possible on the incapacious ship. He’d gotten over Frank’s harsh words, but didn’t want to annoy his cousin further. He instead spent most of his time with Worner, who seemed to view Culann as some sort of protégé who tagged along as Worner conducted his rounds. Worner was the ship’s chief medical officer by virtue of his combat medic experience in Vietnam. He had not undergone any medical training since the fall of Saigon, however, and he had nothing but a grocery store first-aid kit to work with. Nevertheless, the men showed great faith in his healing abilities as he bound wounds and dispensed aspirin.

“Hey, kid,” Worner said. “You ever see a splinter like this?”

A fat, filthy fisherman by the name of Garue sat on a crate with his palm

upstretched. Culann crouched down next to Worner to examine it. The seas were rough, so Culann had to steady himself to take a good look. The splinter ran perfectly straight just under the surface of the skin for half-an-inch before disappearing into the inflamed meat of the man’s hand.

“It’s not wood,” Worner continued. “It’s a piece of steel cable. How do you suppose we get it out?”

“With tweezers?”

“Tweezers? Hah! I thought you were a schoolteacher. Didn’t you learn anything in science class? Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Worner scurried below deck. Culann marveled at how spryly this man twice his age could move. Worner returned shortly with a strange tool. One end was a ring, which he wore around his finger. A short wire connected the ring to a stout copper stub that looked like a car’s cigarette lighter.

“Watch this.”

Worner held the sailor’s injured hand with his left hand. He pressed his thumb down on top of the splinter. He brought his right hand, which held the tool, to the entry hole. He slowly drew back his right hand, and the splinter slid out after it.

“It’s a magnet,” he proclaimed with a satisfied smile.

Garue rubbed his palm, then inspected the empty hole. He thanked Worner and went back to work.

“You see, kid, you got to stop and think. If I’d gone with the first thing that popped into my head, we would have torn the hell out of his hand trying to dig that thing out with tweezers, and he’d have probably gotten an infection. I know you think this place is all about toughness, but brains make a difference out here. You got more brains than anyone on this ship, so you just got to figure out how to apply them to new situations.”

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“Thanks,” Culann replied. “I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

“Don’t mention it. Now let’s go give those dummies a hand with that net.”

Culann rushed over to help guide a fish-laden net back into the net drum. A wave splashed over the side and into his face just as he arrived. The end of the net started to tangle up again, so he leaned over the railing to straighten it out. He felt a hand grip the back of his belt.

“I told you not to do that anymore,” Frank said.

With Frank holding on to him, Culann could still reach the snarl and wouldn’t have to worry about falling over the edge. He tugged at the knot and almost had it loose.

“Goddamnit, Culann. Let go of the net.”

With one last tug, the tangle came free in Culann’s hands. He pulled his arms out, but his right hand caught in the net just as it reached the drum and began winding around.

The net pinned his hand against the drum, which revolved quickly away from him. The barnacle-encrusted net pressed against his flesh while the rotating drum stretched his arm up and back. The tendons of his shoulder muscles burned with strain. Frank leaped up onto Culann’s back and yanked his hand out with both arms. Culann was free, but the rescue had flayed off a piece of his palm. Blood dripped from his hand onto his jeans.

“I told you not to do that,” Frank said. “I told you not to!”

“Sorry, Frank,” Culann replied.

He cradled the wounded appendage to his chest. Blood pooled thick and dark in his palm. He tipped his hand down to allow the blood to pour onto the deck at his feet.

The cut stung from the saltwater crashing onto the deck. Worner bent down to examine it.

“You dumbshit.”

This appeared to be the extent of his diagnosis. Worner wrapped an entire roll of gauze around the hand.

“Shouldn’t you wash it first,” Culann asked.

“You just got ten gallons of water dumped on your head. Wound’s as clean as it’s going to get.”

Employing a now-familiar curative, Worner wrapped the whole thing in duct

tape. Culann’s hand looked like it was encased in a silver boxing glove. A little blood still trickled out the side, but Worner seemed pleased with his work.

It didn’t take long for Gus to come tearing after Culann.

“Quit lying down on the job,” he roared before latching onto the greenhorn’s ear and yanking him to his feet.

The crew had just emptied the net onto the deck, and Culann ran over to help sort.

“Hey, greenhorn, can you give me a hand over here?” McGillicuddy called out from behind him.

Culann turned right into an airborne cod, which caught him flush on the chin. He 33

tumbled over and broke his fall with his bad hand, sending pain zapping up his arm. A thirty-pound halibut twitched and slapped him in the face with its tail. He rolled across the writhing mass of fish, shoved himself back up to his feet with his good hand, and went back to work.

A few hours later, Culann’s hand throbbed in its filthy dressing, and he shivered despite the bleary sunlight warming the deck. He dropped to his knees and began sorting the next catch. The fish writhed beneath him, a seething sea of silver. He struggled to concentrate on the mind-numbing task at hand, and found himself instead scanning the array of fishfaces in front of him, marveling at how they resembled people he knew, if he looked closely enough. He caught a glimpse of an old neighbor here, his optometrist there, even the puckered lips of his junior high girlfriend. These fish weren’t so different from the people he’d known. What right did he have to pluck them from their home?

Culann asked them if they wanted to be caught, and they cried out in unison,
No, no, let
us go!

The fever broke two days later. Despite Worner’s ministrations, the cut in Culann’s hand had gotten infected. The
Orthrus
did not return to port to secure medical assistance, but it had hailed another vessel with an actual doctor on board. She cleaned the wound and pumped him full of antibiotics. The doctor told Frank that Culann was lucky the hand hadn’t needed to be amputated.

Culann came to in his bunk. His clothes were soaked through with sweat. He felt something hard pressing into his side. He reached down and found a heavy metal ball.

“My granddad’s cannonball,” Worner said as he snatched it back up. “I told you it was lucky.”

“You were having some crazy dreams,” Frank said. “You were howling like a

wolf.”

Culann sat up and saw a dozen men crowded around his bunk. Almost tenderly, Gus told Culann to get his candyass back to work, assuring him that he would not be paid for the two days he’d spent dozing on the job. Having survived his trial of blood, the rest of the crew stopped laughing at Culann and hitting him in the head with fish when his back was turned. He was one of them.

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6

Now the hours flew by. Culann learned to shut off his brain and follow the pulses of the ship. He went where he was needed without the aid of Gus’s boot. His muscles hardened, his hands calloused, he slept like a corpse each night, untroubled by bad memories. This adventure was proving to be everything he’d hoped it would be. He was becoming a man, at the tender age of thirty-three.

While sorting through a churning mass of halibut, Culann spotted something not native to these waters. The sturdy and close-knit net had dredged up an object, perfectly spherical and the size of a shot put. It was made of metal, but so smooth it was impossible to tell what kind of metal. It was as black as the ocean bottom with strange silver lettering etched onto the surface.

“Looks Russian or something,” Frank said.

“No,” Worner said, “it’s Greek, ancient Greek. It looks just like the letters on a frat house.”

“Those ain’t any letters I’ve ever seen,” McGillicuddy said. “This thing came from outer space. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

A crowd formed around them. As the only educated man on board, Culann was

asked to render a verdict on the origin of these symbols. He didn’t know what to think.

He wasn’t familiar enough with the Cyrillic alphabet or ancient Greek to judge the first two hypotheses, and of course he had no way of knowing what extraterrestrial writing might look like. He scanned the symbols again, trying to discern their meaning. No two symbols were exactly alike. They resembled familiar geometric shapes, but only partly so. There were right angles and acute angles, but they never connected with one another to form triangles. They often intersected with the arc of an unfinished circle. Sometimes the fractional shapes stood alone, sometimes they connected with one another. The spacing between symbols was haphazard, with no visible rows or columns. Yet taken as a whole, the symbols projected a sense of uniformity. It seemed to emit a kind of cold heat; it was cool to the touch, but his hand warmed as he held it.

“I have no idea,” he replied.

They passed the orb around. Every member of the crew examined it, and all came away puzzled. The debate continued.

“I bet it’s some Russian superweapon left over from the Cold War,” Frank said.

“You think the Cold War’s over?” Worner asked. “That’s exactly what they want you to think. If this thing’s a Russian superweapon, my money’s on something brand new. Those bastards have just been waiting for us to let our guard down.”

Worner paused for a moment to allow the crew to consider the implications of Russkie revanchism, before he continued.

“But it’s not a Russian superweapon. Where are the wires and circuits and stuff?

This thing is old. Not Cold War old, but ancient. That explains the Greek letters.”

“But what the hell are ancient Greek letters doing in the Bering Sea?” Frank challenged.

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“You ever hear of Atlantis?” Worner shot back. “Most advanced civilization the world has ever known. Maybe this is some kind of Atlantis technology that’s been roving across the seabed for three thousand years.”

“What a steaming pile of horseshit,” McGillicuddy countered. “If anybody has advanced technology it’s the aliens. This is probably some space probe sending signals across the galaxy. Some ET is listening to us right now and laughing at what a couple of dumbasses you guys are.”

Debate continued as they hauled the next load out of the water. Culann didn’t believe in aliens or Atlantis, and was certainly skeptical of claims of secret Soviet superweapons. He leaned back and enjoyed the more elaborate conspiracies, mythologies and cosmologies the sailors developed to explain this thing. McGillicuddy and Worner advocated their positions so zealously it looked like they might come to blows. Many heads nodded in agreement as Frank staved off violence by diplomatically hypothesizing alien technology lent to the Atlanteans before disappearing for centuries to be later uncovered by the Russians.

“Quit dicking around,” Gus chimed in before confiscating the orb and heading to the bridge.

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7

The men stood around as McGillicuddy prepared the drum to cast the nets back out. They continued to chatter about the odd object they’d plucked from the ocean.

Culann leaned against the rail. Thunder growled in the distance. Dark clouds from the south crawled across the water towards the ship. He didn’t look forward to the rough seas they undoubtedly dragged with them.

Culann turned to see Gus slam the door to the bridge and stalk across the deck, muttering profanely the whole way. He clenched his teeth and fists, and blood flooded his face. Crew members hopped out of his way as he stomped over to the net drum.

“That’s it,” he growled.

Worner was the only man brave enough to ask, “What’s it?”

Gus raked his fingers through the short beard he’d grown over his days at sea.

“That’s it,” he repeated. “We’re done.”

“We’re done for the day already?” Worner asked.

“Not for the day,” Gus replied. “We’re going home.”

The men howled.

“We’ve only been gone two-and-a-half weeks,” Frank said with palms upturned.