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

Those ships were really big.

We did have guns, at least (I reassured myself, looking sidelong at Raleigh’s face). He stood straight-backed at the prow, hands clasped behind him, jawline firm. The guns were a factor in our favor, I could see the logic there, but where there are guns there are always more guns. Seemed like another can of worms. The guns didn’t comfort me, for that reason.

There’d been some radio communiqués back and forth, I guessed, because we had a destination in the vast armada: the flagship yacht, where management resided. Now we circled the periphery, engine rumbling and wake churning as we cut a swath. I looked down at the white curls, at my flip-flop-clad feet on the deck, damp from the spray. I thought of the defectors, those former dive companions and partygoers. Where were they now, the blond-headed profiteer Riley, the toe fetishist from the Heartland, the substitute teacher? Where was the Fox News spearfisherman who’d rummaged around in my tampons?

I looked up at the rails, the gunwales, idly hoping to catch a glimpse of a familiar face. But if there were any people there, they were hidden from my sight.

Then the bureaucrats were climbing into an orange rubber motorboat—a Zodiac, Raleigh called it. Then he was boarding, then Nancy, then a couple more soldiers. I thought we’d all be left behind, till Nancy waved impatiently at Chip and he gave me a quick kiss and hurried to board too.

My husband was among the chosen people, but I wasn’t, apparently.

I raised an eyebrow at Gina and tried not to resent it, the fact that I hadn’t made the cut. I did resent it, though. I wondered whether I had offended Nancy somehow (bad breath? Or had she read my mind about her caterpillar eyebrows?). I felt only a bit better when, as the boat sputtered away toward the flagship yacht, Raleigh turned, smiled, and saluted me mockingly/flirtingly.

“Man. You could totally date him,” said Gina.

SO THERE I was, cooling my heels with the rest of the rabble. It was me, Gina, Ellis, Sam, Thompson, Simonoff, the good doctor, and some leftover soldiers, still standing at strict attention on the deck, waiting on Sam’s orders. Thompson was talking to a crewman and Rick, with Ronnie’s help, was busy filming Miyoko. That Japanese VJ never stopped working; right then she was broadcasting an update from the stern of the cutter, where the mics wouldn’t pick up the interference of our background noise.

We watched quietly as the orange boat ferried our diplomatic dinghy over to the yacht with soaring lines, a pearly white vessel whose name, emblazoned in ornate gold curlicues, seemed to be Narcissus. I wasn’t sure why you’d name your luxury yacht that. Was it self-aware/ironic, or more straight-up toolishness?

I opened my mouth to ask Gina, but she was already talking.

“What are they going for, an injunction?” asked Gina.

“They’re going to ask them to simply pull up the nets,” said Ellis. “The minister says they don’t have the legally required permits.”

“And they think the parent company will just say, Oh, OK?” said Gina. “And, like, go gently into that good night?”

“Not really, no,” said Ellis. “They’re also filing for a PI. Not sure where that’s at, though, judicially.”

The arc of my confidence fell. Gone was the rush I’d felt as the Coast Guard cutter crested the waves, when speed was ours and we’d seemed to be duty-bound.

We’d had a higher calling, then.

“Hey,” said Sam, squinting into his binoculars, “I can see them talking, there on the upper deck. I can make out Nancy . . . that’d be the deputy governor, yeah. There’s the GM.”

“GM?” asked Gina.

“The resort’s general manager,” I said.

“Sam!” called one of the cutter’s crewmen, sticking his head out the door of the wheelhouse. “Get in here!”

Gina and I followed Sam over, looking sidelong at each other—we were hoping to get in on the action, whatever that might be. No one stopped us.

Inside, near the control panel with the steering wheel, a TV jutting out from the wall was playing CNN. We hung behind Sam and the crewmen and craned our necks.

It was live footage of the airport in Tortola, according to the news ticker. Very crowded: people hurried along pulling their roller bags, hefting their suitcases, pink-faced from the strain of hefting their duffel bags. Disorder seemed to reign, and the reporter’s voice was barely audible. Then the scene changed: the ferry dock, also Tortola. I recognized it, since I’d been there less than a week before. Two ferries were docked at once, full of people; crowds were still pressing to get on them, crew pushing them away.

Then there was a reporter talking, a woman who stood on the quay with strands from her mound of polished yellow hair blowing across her face. She had a British accent, not unlike Ellis’s—and for all I knew, equally fake.

“. . . tourists descending on the island in numbers that have simply never been seen before,” I caught. “Every single hotel room on Virgin Gorda is full to capacity, according to the reports we’re getting, and frankly no one knows where the rest of the arriving crowds will be accommodated. Some are based here on Tortola, of course, where hotels rooms are also overbooked . . . .”

“Feculent shite,” said Ellis.

“It’s happening,” I said, and my throat closed gaggingly.

“Shhh,” Gina hissed.

“. . . these are not all your friendly neighborhood scuba enthusiasts and beachgoers, which these tiny islands in the British Caribbean have depended on for decades,” said the reporter. “No, many of them apparently have a very different reason for visiting this tropical getaway.”

A man was talking, a microphone held up in front of his angry, slightly sweaty face; his backpack bobbed behind his head.

“. . . gotta get in there and take care of these things. Get rid of them. Our mission is annihilation. What if they interbreed with humans? What then?”

The camera panned to the woman beside him, who