The Storm Fishers and Other Stories Read online

and whisper and it didn’t work. There was no response and Digby couldn’t see his son anywhere.

  “Felix where are you?”

  “Here I am!” he shouted, still riding the bunny waving to an imaginary crowd.

  “Son get down and help your sister.” He looked up and rolled his eyes. “Never mind.”

  “No- you said we could go to the park and play with the hopper next door.”

  “We are playing.”

  “I want to play some more!”

  “Well I want to get home and not be eaten alive.”

  Digby heard the engine flush with fuel and a thud shook the tree. Both he and Felix fell onto the bed of leaves in the flatbed. Rose waved at them with a stick in one hand and the wheel in her other. “I did it! Did you see?”

  Dad skittered off the platform and bounced behind the wheel. “You did good. I’ll teach you how to drive when you don’t need this.” He threw the stick out the window where, as he drove away, it hit the roof of a sandstone den. Once the Futters were gone a large wild three-toed napping pig waddled out of the den, yawning and snorting and licking his carnivore teeth.

  As Digby drove home he passed an assembly of neighbors on the Mudfoot’s lawn, he jumped about in the seat and his palms sweat in nervous excitement. Aventine walked back to her lawn and as her husband and exhausted children walked towards front door she said, “The hopper RT and Calinda were going to prepare for the Founder’s Day dinner escaped. Do you want to help look for it?”

  Felix’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. Before he could make a sound Digby covered his son’s mouth and cleared his throat. “No the kids are a little tired right now I think.”

  “No we’re not.”

  Aventine’s eyes squinted and she shooed the children into the house.

  “What did you do my darling?”

  “Science.” He walked behind the kids and Aventine followed. “I’m going to my laboratory to keep an eye on the news feeds. We’ll still have dinner. But it might be, will be, a little late. And if all works out, tonight will be more than an anniversary party.”

  Digby watched the feeds all day. Aventine kept the children out of school and kept them occupied with print version of The Old American Explorers Zoological Guide to Teraforming. Though Aventine had intended the book to be a Curiosity Day present, for her husband’s sake she let the kids unwrap it a day early. The distraction worked, but every hour or so, when Digby came in to steal a snack, she said under her breath, “Science or no, if that thing isn’t discovered before sundown you’ll march over to Calinda and apologize to her for wrecking the neighborhood dinner.” During his final trip she informed him, “The kids are banned from anymore of your shed bred, garage born, piss poor vectored ‘experiments’ again.”

  The more Digby watched the Authorized Martian News wire the deeper he fell into a funk. He flipped back and forth between their other two channels over and over expecting more. Unfortunately his choices were limited to ‘Whose Baby Was It?,’ which the Uncommon Knowledge Channel had renewed for a forty first season, and the Explorer Channel’s marathon of ‘Deep Space Law’ which featured overzealous Asteroid Authority Rangers chasing toothless bootleggers on the edge of the solar system. The documentaries on Malcolm Reynolds and the crew of the Firefly were often called ‘the last good step and the first bad step’ in the Explorer Channel’s descent. Aventine’s criticism stung when she spoke with her starborn accent, like a sunburn reminding Digby of brighter days, and an almost perfect life. Night fell and the Futter’s ate rehydrogenated dinners on their coffee table watching the AMN’s hard-hitting debate on which flowers will look best this winter. Digby just poked at his food before throwing it out.

  After midnight the search party returned with a flatbed hovering across the Mudfoot lawn to the cage in their backyard. There were no news crews, no celebrations. And therefore no prizes for uncovering a most fundamental law of the universe. Aventine sent the kids to bed and stood next to her husband on the veranda as a small team unloaded the hopper with the care of a shuttle payload crew.

  “What happened?” Aventine yelled to Calinda. “Where did you find it?”

  She yelled back, “He was stuck up a tree in Keyserling Park.”

  Digby said, in a voice as timid as a puppy asking for a treat, “What, eh, what, eh, what led you to him?”

  “A zookeeper spotted a pack of three toed napping pigs under a large tree in the park. We put two and two together and figured this had to be him.”

  “Oh. Well, I hope everyone is alright.”

  “No harm, but a scissor tusk took a chunk out of RT’s arm. Came out of nowhere in the forest.”

  Aventine shouted, “Good night. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “You’re not going to tell them are you? Please don’t tell them.”

  “No. You are.”

  “What if he presses charges?”

  “I’m not going to do this anymore. You apologize to them and offer to help cook the hopper and maybe they’ll understand why you did it.”

  Digby didn’t sleep. When he heard Aventine brushing her teeth that morning he shuffled over to the Mudfoot back porch. Calinda smiled and opened the latch.

  “The missus thinks I should come over and apologize for wrecking your barbecue.”

  “You?” said RT.

  “Yea.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re not gonna report me for petnapping are you?”

  “As long as you tell us why. You’re not one of the tech-skeptics are you? You didn’t try to liberate him right?”

  “No no nothing like that at all! I love science. I was trying to conduct my own experiment. That’s all. He was never in any danger.”

  “Except for the scissortooth and the three toed napping pigs,” said Callinda.

  “Well, that wasn’t part-” he thought of the implications of finishing that thought.

  He pulled a chair from their table. The scent of onions and garlic imported from private gardens hung in the air, sweet steam waved through the kitchen and pink flesh marinated in exotic spices. He stared at the wooden table, and could not look either Mudfoot in the eyes.

  “See over there,” he pointed, “that’s my tinker shed. I call it a laboratory but-. I’ve wanted to be a scientist my whole life and I have so many tree books and paper maps in there. You should see ‘em. You can if you want. Some have been drawn on by India ink pens.”

  “I take your word for it.”

  “Sometimes, I sit in my lounger and read about the old days and wonder what it must have felt like to see the Earth from the Moon or Mars for the first time ever. I think ‘that was when the sky was still new’ and I imagine what it’ll be like when we pass the cloud and move out of the solar system. And that makes me sad, because I know it won’t be me. I’ll never see it. As I get older, I think how proud the parents of those explorers and scientists must have been. Then I look at my kids and-. Well you’ve seen ‘em. My son is a lovable little ball of good, but he eats paint and thinks he’s a racecraft driver. And my daughter is interested but lazy and easily distracted by anything shiny. Her mom says she’s half mapgie.”

  “So you stole the neighborhood dinner?” said RT.

  “I came up with a theory and I wanted to test it.”

  “We don’t test theories we test hypotheses. That was your first mistake.”

  “You’re a scientist?”

  “We both are,” said RT.

  “But you live next door to me.”

  “I’m a geologist with the Foundry and she’s in ergonomic psychology. Tell me what your hypothesis is. I’m curious.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Look what happened to Rosalind Franklin.”

  Calinda slung her marinade covered hands toward the sink, “The fact that you know her name means in the long run, truth comes to light. So what is your idea?”

  “Promise you won’t steal credit?”

  “Neither of us would do that. Besides sc
ience is open, not cloistered in a shed.”

  “Well I have this idea, Fate before Futter is like Gravity before Newton.”

  “What does that mean?” said RT.

  Digby explained as he helped the Mudfoots carry meat out to the barbecue pits and stoke the coals. Calinda held his hand as he talked about how long he wanted to do something important and said, “I understand. And we forgive you for pinching the dinner.” RT rushed over with a huge smile and hugged both his wife and neighbor.

  “So you’ll help me?”

  “Here is the problem.” Digby’s brow furrowed and his nose twitched when RT spoke. “This General and Special Fate, it’s not a valid hypothesis. I’m sorry.”

  “Why?”

  “Real science is open and testable, you got those parts right, but also falsifiable.”

  “I don’t know that word, but it sounds familiar.” Digby squinted and rubbed his chin as if a colleague was explaining new research using words to be looked up in private.

  “Think of it like this, if I say there is such a thing as gravity and drop this pin and say ‘Voila! Gravity exists!’ have I demonstrated gravity exists?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Yes?” Digby’s brow furrowed with a touch of embarrassment.

  “Look, what if I claim the same pen is maneuvered around the atmosphere by glowing green faeries. Then when I drop it I yell ‘Voila faeries exist!’ have I verified the existence of faeries?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Right, we test not to prove but to attempt to disprove a hypothesis.”

  “So you understand now?” said Calinda.

  “Yes. As the great Sherlock