The 2084 Precept (70 page)

Too good to be true, except that it wasn't.
The offer he quoted was too low. I knew what the costs for the crew
and the fuel and the other standard items were, but if I added in a
rough estimate for the depreciation and short and long-term
maintenance expense, it would be a break-even job at best. I
explained this to him and made him a counter-offer which was about
30% higher, but he just sadly shook his head.

My second meeting of the morning went the
same way as yesterday's meetings. And the last meeting in the early
afternoon produced an offer to transport salt here, there and
everywhere at a price which wouldn't even have paid for the salt
corrosion prevention work which such a cargo entails. And it was
not, in any case, a use to which a fine, albeit small, container
ship should be put; that was not a way to treat an excellent
vessel.

The rain had stopped and as it was only just
after three o'clock, I decided to walk back in the direction of our
offices. I dropped into a café for some tapas and a coffee. I was
learning that this was a tough business to be in, no doubt about
it. My brilliant idea would have to join those large numbers of
non-viable miracle solutions to be found discarded in the dusty
files of many a company foolish enough to have contracted an
exorbitantly expensive third-party business review.

But if Fernando managed to fix up another
meeting or two, I would be back to complete the work before
abandoning the whole concept. As the old saying goes:
If at
first you don't succeed, try, try and try again
. And as the
modern continuation has it:
And then give up. There’s no point
in being a bloody fool about it
.

Jeremy's phone rang and I walked out into
the street and lit up a cigarette.

"Good afternoon, Peter. And how is sunny
Spain today?"

"Meteorologically downcast, Jeremy."

"You mean overcast, ha ha."

"Yes, anyone would think that a meteorite
had landed nearby."

"Ah hah, you liked that did you?"

"I was suitably impressed, Jeremy."

"Well, that's why I'm calling you. To give
you an update on the second summit meeting in Geneva today.
Monday's event obviously worked. It amazed and convinced them all.
Two summit meetings in one week, that has to be a record."

"Probably, Jeremy," I said, "but I thought
you weren't going to that meeting?"

"Quite right, Peter. I wasn't. And I didn't.
But I seem to have become important enough to be kept fully in the
picture. The deputy prime minister has just called to inform me of
the day's proceedings."

"And what exactly did he have to say?"

"Probably just as you expect, Peter. They
are scared. They are scared of me. They are scared of my 'powers'.
Half of them have me classified as dangerous. They want to have me
incarcerated, which they wouldn't be able to achieve of course. And
the other half have taken my recommendation seriously and wish to
start organizing its implementation, aliens or no aliens. A
peaceful world is what they want; they believe in the desirability
of that and they are calling for 'the most significant initiative
in the history of the human race'. But as a whole, there is only
one item on which they are unanimous."

"And that would be?"

"That I am mad. A lunatic with severe brain
damage, but with hypnotic or advanced telepathic powers and with
extremely advanced astronomy knowledge. That more or less coincides
with what you still think, Peter."

"I am not so certain nowadays," I said, "but
one thing is for sure, Jeremy, your money is real enough. I would
like to thank you again very much for your most recent transfer.
You can imagine how greatly I appreciate that."

"All as agreed, Peter, no need to mention
it, my pleasure."

"And what else did the deputy prime minister
have to say?"

"Well…he summed up by saying that the summit
meeting did not in fact achieve any agreement, but that there were
great hopes that continued negotiation would result in a workable
consensus. And he said that everyone would like to meet with me
again. I told him no, Peter. Thanks in great part to your
assistance I have been able to complete what I set out to do. My
work is finished. I sincerely hope it results in a happy ending.
Anything else would have unnecessary and very sad consequences, but
at least we will have tried. He tried to pressure me into at least
agreeing to one more meeting with the prime minister on his own.
And again, I said no."

"Aren't you at all concerned about them
keeping you under surveillance, perhaps capturing you even?"

"Not really, Peter. As you know, I can take
care of myself on that front. I am already being watched day and
night by what seems to be an army of secret service personnel. But
it doesn't worry me, they are not causing any disruptions to my
life and they are not interfering in my affairs."

"So what are you going to do now?"

"I am just going to carry on completing the
research for my dissertation, Peter. It might take me a few more
days or a few more weeks or even a few more months, and then I'll
be gone."

"And what will happen to Jeremy Parker?" I
asked. A very clever question indeed. What have his fantasies got
worked out for that?

"I am sorry to say that poor Jeremy will
suffer a relapse and they will waste no time in returning him to a
secure room in a high-security asylum for the mentally
deranged."

This was becoming weirder and weirder. How
could he know that he was going to have a relapse?

"But they will still think he is you," I
said, continuing to play his game. "They will subject him to all
kinds of pressure and harassment. Perhaps even torture. They will
never stop trying to find out about his 'powers'. And poor Jeremy
won't be able to do a single thing about it."

"That is true, Peter. But Jeremy will not
have to suffer in the way that a normal person such as yourself
might. Jeremy was, and will again, be truly deranged and partially
incapable of perceiving or experiencing or understanding what is
going on around him, or what is happening to him, or why. And I
really don't expect them to stoop to torturing a poor creature who
is clearly and certifiably insane. A dangerous psychopath. I really
don't."

And maybe he was right about that. And that
was the end of our conversation. We said goodbye and Jeremy said he
would be contacting me at the weekend. He assumed that by then he
would have news of the General Committee's decisions regarding our
planet. And once more I had to admit to considerable admiration for
him, the guy was playing out his fantasy world in all of its
intricate madness right down to the finishing line.

Back in the real world, I realized I had to
pick up my suitcase at the hotel and make it back to the port
before the
Mahon Star
sailed. I paid my bill, lit up a
cigarette, fast-walked the whole route and made it about ten
minutes before departure time. I gave Fernando the sorry news that
today's visits had been as lacking in success as yesterday's had
been. I thanked him, said goodbye and told him I would let him know
in advance when I would fly over again so that he could pre-arrange
some final agency meetings for me.

Agustín welcomed me on board and we sailed
out of the harbor under a grey sky and into relatively calm
seas.

Two
global meetings. And it took an
insane man to achieve them. But nothing would ever come of it.
Great hopes, continued negotiation, workable consensus
. Oh
yes, that was my species alright. Represented by its birdbrains.
Flap, flap, flap, flap, and flap again. Which was a pity, a very
great pity. I stared out at the flat grey ocean, at the mini-waves
sloshing against the ship rather like the Naviera problems washing
around inside my skull.

We must have been less than two hours under
way and dusk was upon us, when the seamen began rolling out long
lines off the back of the ship. I asked Agustín what they were
doing. Ah, he said, at this time in the evening, the tuna come up
close to the surface and if the weather is on our side, not too
heavy a swell, we like to try and catch one or two. One of our
sailors' perks, he added, they sell the catch to restaurants when
we reach port.

Nothing much happened for about twenty
minutes. And then a cry went up, there was a lot of shouting, and
the ship heeled over, violently changed course by about 90˚ and
increased its velocity to what I assumed was full speed. We are
tracking the catch, said Agustin, these fish are very strong and
can swim at up to 50 kilometers per hour. There followed some
zigzagging which would have done credit to a warship being hunted
by a U-boat, and after a while the seamen began gradually hauling
in the lines.

They had caught two tuna. They were very
large ones, one of them can't have been far off three meters long.
The seamen had their work cut out to haul them on board and then
they began the unpleasant task of killing them. Not a pleasant
spectacle. Unlike most fish, tuna have pink-colored flesh and
together with the large quantities of blood being produced by the
stabbing, the deck took on the appearance of what a murder scene in
the 'Red Lips' nightclub might have looked like.

As we know, human beings are especially
proficient in slaughtering things and eventually it was all over
and finished with, and the ship was heading back towards its
original course for Palma. I was invited to dinner in the crew
dining room and although the red wine could not be described, under
the most benevolent of criteria, as refined, the ship's cook was
certainly able to prove that he knew how to cook. Dinner was fun,
there were plenty of jokes including some excellent filthy ones,
and they wrapped up a chunk of tuna for me to take home with me
when we reached Palma.

The remainder of the voyage was similar to
the outward journey on the
Gerona Sol
, hundreds of dots on
the radar screen, although on this ship there was not so much
television watching on the bridge. Thus reassured, I was actually
able to sleep for a couple of hours in Agustin's cabin.

We docked in Palma shortly before six
o'clock. There was not a cloud in the sky. It was going to be a hot
day, the rainy interlude had gone to wherever rainy interludes go.
I lit up a cigarette—yes, we smokers believe what we are told, that
it is even worse to smoke in the early morning or late at night,
but such trivialities are not permitted to confuse and cloud our
neurons. And in any case we are all going to give it up well before
we develop cancer.

I smoked away on the quay while Agustín
sorted out some unloading matters with some of his guys. And then
we went together to the café for some coffee, brandy-laced as usual
in Agustín's case.

And it was while he was peaceably flipping
through one of the local newspapers that my neurons suddenly
unleashed one of their vicious war-cries. 'Are you an idiot?' they
asked me. 'Are you an imbecile? Don't you need us anymore?'

"Agustín," I said.

"Hmmm?"

"That is the reason, isn't it?"

"Reason? What reason?"

"The reason why our fuel costs sometimes
shoot sky-high."

He thought for a while. Or at least he made
it look as if he was thinking. "You mean the tuna?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "I mean the tuna. It must
require a lot of fuel to go full-speed. And on top of that, chasing
the tuna and then getting back on course must add quite a few
sea-miles to the journey."

He chewed this over for a moment. "Yes," he
said without any rancor, "it does. But it's one of the crew's
perks."

I told him that I didn't want to eliminate
any of the crew's perks, but that we had to reach an agreement to
limit this activity and arrive at a budgeted monthly amount for
fuel consumption. You and Antonio both, I said. And he said yes, he
saw the need for it, he understood, he would talk with Antonio and
he would appear in my office next Tuesday with a budget proposal.
Which would no doubt have to be compared to the boss's proposal, he
added with a smile. That, I also replied with a smile, is the way
it is, Agustín.

We went back to the dock and I went into the
office. Pedro was already there, working away—if he carried on like
this, he was going to reap some nice benefits while I was the
boss—and I said good morning and made myself some coffee and went
into Alfonso's maritime museum and began checking through the last
few days' invoices which had been placed in a neat pile on my
desk.

There was nothing out of the ordinary among
the invoices. My email messages, however, contained five messages
forwarded by Pedro: three quotes for the crane repair and two for
the
Mahon Star
's deck. I called him into my office.

"Pedro," I asked, "how on earth did you
manage to get these quotes in so quickly?"

"Well," he replied, "it wasn't that
difficult. One of the crane quotes is from the Balearics
representative of the manufacturer of the crane and the other two
are from local companies we have previously used for crane
maintenance work. I know the guys there. I told them it was very
urgent, twenty-four hours would be a good idea. And as the work
required is clearly defined and so are the parts requirements,
there was nothing complicated for them to do. And given the
situation of the economy nowadays, they would both like to be given
a nice contract such as this one. So they rushed it."

"Hmm…well done, Pedro. And the quotes for
the ship?"

"Two Mallorca companies which specialize in
this kind of work. This is obviously a nice fat order for them and
they were both here on Tuesday to inspect the ship. I had one of
them come in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Each of
their inspections took around three hours during which they both
spent considerable time discussing exactly what was needed with
Agustín and his on-board engineer. I also told these companies that
twenty-four hours would be a good idea. But I must admit I didn't
expect the quotes for another two or three days. Both must have
decided it was worth a bit of overtime."