Mermaids in Paradise by Lydia Millet (debian ebook reader .txt) 📕

“A buttload,” said Thompson.

“With all that gear, those greedy cretins haven’t found the mermaids yet?” said Ellis.

“Maybe the mermaids have burrows,” suggested Chip. “Some fish do, Nancy told me. They camouflage themselves beneath the sand. Those flat ones, kind of ugly. I mean, no offense. The sonar wouldn’t show them there, would it? Maybe the mermaids are hiding.”

Thompson went hmph.

“Hey, can’t the other boats see us?” asked Chip. “Aren’t we too near?”

“Nothing on the channels I checked,” said Thompson. “There was a window, sure. Where someone might have noticed. Don’t think they did. I woulda heard the hail. Believe me. These morons couldn’t find their asses in a shit tornado.”

“A shit tornado,” savored Gina. “You’re a wordsmith, Swanson.”

“No training, is the problem. Morons,” he said, turning and glaring at Gina, “with no training.”

“We need people like you, Dobson,” said Gina. “In academia, where I work. Man, do we ever need people like you. People who have been trained. To do the high-level work. Such as killing.”

She smiled, of course, when she said that. Gina tends to.

“Whoa,” said Chip. “What’s that?”

On the fishfinder, a formless mass appeared.

“School of bait,” said Thompson.

“So what are you looking for?” asked Chip. “The mermaids? The divers?”

“This right here is the edge of one of the nets, where they’ve set it. Between that ship over there”— he inclined his head to the left—“and a ways off to the south-southeast is where this net stretches. I propose to cruise the perimeter of the nets, sounding and scanning. I’ll tune the radio to the frequency they’re probably using, see if we hear some shit. Meanwhile we’ll keep a lookout on the screen. See what we can see.”

“And if they notice us?” asked Gina.

“What do you think? We’ll book it out of here. Their boats’ll start up slow.”

So Ellis and Gina got tasked to radio, while Chip and I gazed at the fishfinder’s screen, with its frizzy fields of color. It was interesting enough for a while; Thompson pointed out fish, reefs, and the lines of nets as he steered us along, the engine putt-putting at a low murmur, running lights shining on the waves. He showed us what undersea objects looked like, in those blazes of false hue. Fishes were fish-shaped, long crescents, mostly; bait schools moved by in slow blobs. I thought of how it really must look down there, the darkness of the depths, the warmth of the water. Waving seagrass, maybe, bulbous long whips of kelp.

It was peaceful and black out there, peaceful and nauseating; I wished I’d taken some Dramamine, cursed my poor planning. I kept hoping to see the shape of a human torso on the sonar, the shape not of a diver but of a person with a tail—I stared and stared, while Gina and Ellis listened to the radio. But the minutes soon ran together, my eyelids felt heavy, and elements of the scene blended. There were no mermaids; the closest we came was spotting a few night divers, which Thompson had to point out to me. But they had no tails, and so they didn’t hold my interest.

Thompson muttered to Chip, describing features, using lingo: honeyholes, he said several times, as my attention drifted. I heard it quite distinctly. Honeyholes.

After a while—it must have been past midnight, and I’d given up on watching and dozed off atop one of the leather benches, imagining myself in the electronic purples and blues of the sonar images, my own body, its legs like scissors, then fused in a long, graceful triangle, tranquilly sinking down into the waving eelgrass beds—

“Shut up,” said Thompson.

I vaguely registered Gina retorting—he must have been talking to her—and heard the radio squawk. I struggled to sit up. The boat’s satellite phone was lighting up and ringing. Thompson hovered over the radio, turned up the volume, and reached out to pick up the sat phone receiver, I guess to stop the racket—I personally couldn’t parse the radio exchanges, a mere patchwork of sounds. We waited anxiously, not knowing what was going on, until Thompson handed the sat phone to Chip and nodded at him to deal with it, while he leaned in close over the radio.

Chip had to talk low so Thompson could hear the radio chatter; I couldn’t tell who was calling about what until he dropped the phone and was leaping around oddly, a raw nerve of excitement, trying to contain himself.

“What is it, Chip? What is it?”

“We have to go back,” said Chip, after he grabbed the receiver again and hung up, beaming. “We have to go back!”

“Not yet,” said Thompson, who was rummaging in a heap of duffel bag on the floor. Holding a padded case in one hand, he used the other to steer the boat this way, that way, around the glare of lights. “Gotta see what’s going on. U.S. Coast Guard cutter is almost here. Boarding the flagship. They’re taking someone into custody.”

“Custody?” echoed Chip. “You mean, arresting them?”

“Not us, I hope,” said Ellis.

“These binoculars are night-vision,” said Thompson, and waved the case in my direction. “Get ’em out, wouldja?”

“Sure,” I said, but as I did it I whispered to Chip, “Tell me!”

He shook his head stubbornly, still wearing that grin.

I handed Thompson the binoculars as he throttled down, as we took up a position near a much larger vessel, maneuvering around a bit, this way and that. It was one of the soaring white yachts. Sure enough, another boat was pulling up alongside, the small police boat we’d seen once or twice before; then there was a gangway-type deal, a walkway was being lowered. We didn’t need the night-vision goggles, as it turned out: the scene was flooded with halogen-white lights, and there were crowds on the decks of the yacht, looking down. My problem was I couldn’t get a good angle on the scene, Gina and Chip were blocking my line of sight. I tried to peer between their heads, around and