Gust Front

«This has been great,» said Sharon, fi

Karen smiled. «A little different than what you usually do, huh?»

«A bit,» Sharon admitted. She could see the dolphin trying to get into position behind her.

«What do you do?» Karen asked. Most of the conversation of the day had been taken up by the tasks that they had been learning.

Karen had prepared well. The dolphins had taken turns toting the three humans and an inflatable boat full of the necessities of the expedition. She had packed a light lunch of cold lobster salad and some cut fruits along with plenty of fresh water. Sharon had been careful to wear a T-shirt and to insist that Cally wear one as well. The hot South Florida sun would still have burned their legs badly, but Sharon kept Cally well covered with sunscreen. In Sharon's case, the same na

Sharon watched Cally line up for another run at the bottom. She was too worn out to even think about making another try, but the energetic youngster seemed as fresh as when they started. «I'm an XO on a frigate,» she answered, watching the quick hands snag a passing shovel-nose lobster. Although they were less plentiful than the more common spiny lobsters, they were prized by the oriental community as an aphrodisiac and fetched a high price among the free traders.

«What's that mean? I mean, what do you do?» asked Karen, interested. She had never met a person who had been off-planet.

Sharon suddenly found herself unable to explain. How could she explain the constant strain of wondering which critical system would fail next? When the hull would suddenly breach? How the ship, and herself, would perform when they were finally in combat?

She paused a moment and smiled faintly. «Mostly I wait for the air to run out.»

Karen was a kind and empathetic woman. And she recognized that not only was the answer correct, it was also as much as she could expect to get for the time being. She nodded in agreement instead. «We ought to be getting back.» She suited action to words, tossing her nearly full mesh bag into the cooler in the inflatable. She pulled a harness out and winked. «If you waggle your hips do you think you can lure Herman over?»

* * *

Mike took another pull on the bottle of beer and a puff from the cigar. The sky was slowly darkening, the famous purple of the Caribbean drifting up from the east as they kept watch over the westward opening. The girls had been gone most of the day and it was about time they turned back up.

«If this isn't paradise,» he opined to the trader, «it's within the limits of tolerance.»

«It is close,» Honest John admitted. «In a lot of ways, life's gotten better. Slower at least.»

«Down here,» Mike pointed out. «It hasn't been slow for me.»

John nodded in agreement. «The margin sure as hell has gotten thi

«So, how is the Coast Guard these days?» Mike asked with a laugh.

John laughed in return. «Not bad. They keep the pirates in check, at least. But a lot of them have gotten transferred to 'more vital' tasks. So, SAR is spotty.» He pronounced the acronym for Search and Rescue «Sahr.» It was a military way of phrasing it that caused Mike to cock his head.

«Have you lost many boats?» Mike asked.

«A few. There's two problems. Some of the boats have gone to pirates. Or that's the way it looks. Boats just disappear in calm seas. And the free traders are in a constant low-grade war with the Mariellitos bastards who think they control the trade down here.» The trader frowned and looked over towards his ship as if to ensure it was still intact.

«Have you been having much trouble?» Mike asked.

The trader snorted, gave a grim smile and shook his head. «Not . . . anymore.» He seemed disinclined to explain the reference.

«The other problem is a lot of the boats, their GPS and Loran is giving out; they're at sea more than the systems are designed to handle. And most of the traders aren't real sailors, guys who know how to navigate by the wind and the stars. So if they lose their GPS, they get lost: really lost. There was one was just making the crossing from Los Pinos to Key West. The crossing's maybe two hundred miles. Stupid fucker ended up near Bermuda. Dismasted, out of water, half mad. How in the hell anyone could completely miss the Bahamas I'll never know.» The tall captain took another toke on the joint he held. «Nobody could get that stoned. Hell of it is, he wants to go back to sea.»

Mike chuckled grimly. He had his own massive list of screwups that he could detail, starting with the Diess Expeditionary Force. But the situation in the Keys was something of a whole different order.

«I don't understand how it could get this way,» said Mike, gesturing around with the beer bottle. «Where the hell is everybody? I can understand the tourists, but where's the retirees?» The whole state of Florida was filled with retirees. Some of them were recalled military, admittedly. But that had to be a small percentage. Where were the rest?

«It happened slowly,» Honest John admitted. «Not just here but all over Florida. First, the tourists started trickling off. Then, most of the people who could hold a hammer or run a press without cutting their fingers off went up north to get jobs. The Fisheries Board reinstituted net fishing for the Florida waters about then and there was a small rush to get into that. But when people found out how hard it was most of them moved away too. Then all the young guys got sucked off by the Army.»

He smiled and took a big toke. «I was getting recalled my-own-self,» he said with a chuckle. «But not only is free trader a 'vital war production position'—and didn't that take some squeeze to a certain congressman—but I convinced the in-process board it would be a waste of perfectly good rehab just to get a drugged-out Petty Officer Three.» He gri

«Anyway, before we knew it the entire population of the Keys was below twenty thousand, most of them retirees. The nursing homes and 'managed care' retirement centers started having problems with taking care of their old folks. Some of 'em died cause there just wasn't anybody on duty.

«Then when Hurricane Eloise came through, they took it as an excuse to evacuate all the retirees that were not 'fully capable of self-care.' Down here in the Keys, anyway.

«That meant the only people left, other than in Key West, were the fishermen and their families. There's a federal law that Florida Power had to deliver down here. But after Eloise, they got an 'indefinite suspension' because there was a shortage of parts, or so they said. That was last year.

«So that,» the ship captain finished, «is how it got so totally screwed up down here. An' that's the truth.»

The trader took another toke on his joint and a pull on the glass of Georgia branch water Mike had supplied. He worked his mouth for a moment. «Cotton mouth. Haven't talked this much in a coon's age.

Mike nodded and took a contemplative puff on the cigar. Papa O'Neal's branch water was awfully smooth. He doubted that the trader had any idea what proof he was knocking back like water. It was eventually going to catch up with him. «Just one thing I don't understand,» he mused. «Where'd they put them? The retirees I mean.»

«Some of 'em got mixed into the groups up the peninsula. Lots of 'em went to the big underground cities they're building,» said John. He took a last puff on the joint and spun the butt into the water. «One nice thing about this war. Not only has it driven the cost of Mary Jane down, the coasties don't give a rat's ass if you're carrying.»