“Look what I found, Daddy!” The kitten’s fur feels soft, like down, under my fingers. Euphemia’s face is aglow with excitement. I don’t know what breaks my heart more: that one glance tells me the kitten is dying, or that I cannot keep this precious smile on our daughter’s lips. You always told me I couldn’t help but try to save the world. It hurts every time, realising I won’t be able to.
“Where did you find it?” I ask Euphemia. Wrong question. She hesitates, just for a second. Six years old and already contemplating the benefits of a lie—she got thatfrom you. I can see the precise moment she decides risking to tell me the truth.
“The docks,” she mumbles. My frown makes her hunch her shoulders and pout—she knows she’s done something wrong, but not quite wrong enough to be punished for it. I almost yell at her anyway. The docks are overflowing with contaminants and pollution and might worsen her cough; but then, everything might worsen her cough and she will only reply that you live there and that’s the end of the discussion. I can’t forbid Euphemia from visiting her mother. I wipe my eyes to stop myself from scowling. Euphemia watches me carefully, the kitten pressed against her chest. It’s a grey, scrawny thing, all paws and huge, mucus-encrusted eyes, trembling faintly in her hands. I cannot tell if it does so out of shock or cold or a pathetic attempt at purring.
“Sweetheart.” I sigh, making my voice as soft as it will go, then go down on one knee for good measure. “The kitten is very sick. You know it’s going to die.” My tone catches Euphemia by surprise. Her face waxes like the sky, clear one moment, then full of gathering clouds. The desperation in her eyes is like a knife slicing my heart into pieces. I wish I could take the kitten away quietly, make her forget she ever found it.
“No,” Euphemia says loudly, as if saying things loudly enough will make them come true. She resembles you so thoroughly it hurts to look at her. “It can’t. You can’t let it, Daddy! It’s so small and soft and…” She runs out of arguments and her eyes start filling with tears. It’s a horrible thing, to feel so helpless. I wish I could do something, anything. I wish I could bring the kitten to a vet and spend a stupid amount of money and resources to make it live, like my parents would have. I wish a lot of things. A knock at the door saves me from answering and I’m stupidly glad about it.
It’s Agnes, my colleague, face flushed with agitation and waving her phone. “Emergency call. We got a spill.”
I throw a glance at Euphemia, who has used my distraction to retreat into a corner, as if I might start taking the kitten from her any moment. I grab my coat. “You okay on your own, sweetheart?” It’s Sunday afternoon, no school, and she’s a big girl.
Euphemia nods and pets the kitten. I close my eyes for a second before I give in.
“If you really want to keep the kitten…” Euphemia’s eyes widen with hope. “But you have to promise to take care of it. Even if it’s sick. Even if it doesn’t want to be petted.” I know this is going to end horribly, in tears and despair, but I don’t know how to avert this disaster. “Just… I don’t… Just don’t expect it to live very long.”
Euphemia nods gravely as I hurry to join Agnes. Of course, she’ll utterly ignore my advice. By the time I return home the kitten will already be sleeping on her pillow, it will have food and a blanket and a name. A very fitting name at that, grey and insubstantial like the kitten itself. She’ll call it Fog.
Spill is a bit of an exaggeration. What we have are two unlucky fishermen, the beaten-up engine of their dingy leaking petrol. The younger of the two, broad-shouldered, sweating in the heat and with a brutish twist to his mouth, spits in the water as we draw near. We’re not popular, in general.
“Office for environmental protection,” Agnes barks, trying to glower them into submission. I still marvel at how righteous she manages to sound, as if there’s no place in her mind for doubt. Reminds me of you, when we were younger. For Agnes everything is black or white, right or wrong. We’re the good ones, they’re the bad ones. I don’t know where she managed to scavenge ideals in this world of ours.
The coast guard boat that gave us notice stays in the background. It’s one of these sleek new vessels with nothing but a sail to manoeuvre with. Our boat is smaller, lighter, with an electric engine and a coast-guard skipper to steer it, but she, too, tries to stay as inconspicuous as possible. All the coast-guards always do. I can’t quite tell if it’s a ploy to earn the fishermen’s trust, keeping their distance from us, or if they simply dislike the OEP as well.
“We didn’t do nothing.” Brutish spits again, resulting in a disgusting blob of phlegm floating on the water. I spot smears of blood and fish guts staining the inside of their dingy, belying his words, but of course they dumped their catch at first sight of the coast guard. They kept their rods, though. Good fishing rods are hard to come by.
“You are outside of sanctioned fishing grounds.” A part of me hates myself for sounding so damn posh. Another part of me hates the fishermen for being so damn stupid. It’s not that they’re not allowed to fish here because of protected species, we’re way past that. The fish are toxic. Micro-plastic pollution, mingled with heavy metals and pesticides and the fish gobble it all up as if it was plankton. By now, the toxicity levels are bad enough to triple your risk for cancer, and probably sterilize you for good.
“Didn’t do no fishing,” the other one, grizzly and weather-beaten, replies. Sweat pools in the creases around his eyes. Stubborn. Agnes scoffs, wrinkling her nose over the obvious stench of fish guts. “Nah, you just came out here for a stroll in the park.”
“We can go wherever we damn like,” Brutish says. I don’t much like the look of him, the way he eyes Agnes as if her giving orders is a personal affront to his manliness.
I’m almost glad for the heavy weight of the gun at my side; as if I hadn’t been the one protesting loudest when the office made them mandatory. I don’t like being armed. I’m clumsy and insecure even at the shooting range, never mind a real fight. But as I said: we’re not popular. It took our society until after the world was ruined to realise that ruining the world might have been a crime. Some people still can’t accept it.
I point at the fishermen’s wrecked engine. An iridescent carpet of petrol dances over the waves, slowly stretching its tendrils in all directions. The engine looks like a DIY project, rusty and about to fall apart. I’m surprised they made it this far out.
“Grade three fuel spill. And I doubt the manufacturer can be held liable. That’s a fine and a first warning.” My words drift over the water into sullen silence. For a second, I think Brutish will cause trouble, but he’s smarter than I gave him credit for because he glances at the waiting coast-guard boat and changes his mind. His buddy merely blanches and I try, without success, not to feel sorry for him. You used to tell me I’m shit at my job—too much compassion, too many scruples—because there’s never just black and white, only infinite shades of grey. If I’m honest with myself, I know the fishermen know their catch is toxic, how could they not? But they fish anyway, because there aren’t enough jobs and not enough food and not enough hope going around. Dying later and living today, your motto stuck in my head.
“IDs, please,” I remind them. Brutish reluctantly holds out his wrist to be scanned, but the old fisherman surprises us all by producing an old-fashioned paper passport, carefully wrapped in a plastic bag. He actually looks guilty when I wave the coast-guard boat over and they start deploying the small boom and the skimmers to soak up the fuel. It’s always the old ones who feel guilty, the ones who still remember the world could have been different if enough of us had actually cared.
On our way back to harbour, we spot the first dead fish.
Agnes’ knuckles turn stark white from the force she clutches the railing with.
The fish float belly-up; small shiny mackerel and muddy brown cod and pale whiting. It feels like sailing through an apocalypse, especially in contrast with the mundane fuel spill of the two fishermen. Usually somebody else reports the pollution and we’re the ones who come later, with checklists and reparation demands, assessing the damage and finding someone to blame. We’re not used to coming upon it without warning.
We follow the trail of dead fish to its source with grim determination.
“What happened to Phemie’s kitten?” Agnes asks when she can’t stomach the silence any longer. She tries to sound casual, but small-talk can’t hide the gleam of anguish smouldering in her eyes. I know some of the coast-guard skippers still think her too inexperienced, too rash and emotional for this job—but if Agnes is emotional, what does that make me? The only difference lies in Agnes carrying all her emotions on the outside, and they only come in black or white, all or nothing.
“She found it down at the docks.”
Agnes flashes me a surprised, almost disapproving frown for allowing my daughter to venture there, but what can she do? She knows just as well as I do where you live. I’d say we’ve become friends, me and Agnes, in the year we’ve been working together, but not quite tight enough friends to allow for discussions of ex-wives.
“You think it’s going to make it?”
I shake my head. A light drizzle has started and my hair sticks to my skull.
“Don’t think so. Probably ate something poisonous.” Agnes doesn’t ask for details.
There’s plenty of poison down at the docks, she can take her pick.
As we sail on, the dead fish lead us to one of the bays out west, not far from town. The bay is unremarkable, like a hundred others along the coast. A pebble beach with the tell-tale dots of colour from washed-up plastic debris tangled in the rocks.
Beyond it, miles of fields stretch into the distance. I spot one scraggly tree near the shore and wonder who had enough pity not to chop it down.
The coast-guard skipper taps something on her GPS. “Clayton Bay,” she informs us, voice hushed—as if you could startle pollution, or dead fish, with too harsh a word.
At first the name means nothing to me, but then a memory stirs in the back of my mind.
Agnes catches my expression and narrows her eyes.
“I think there’s supposed to be an algal bloom here,” I explain. “I did the paperwork last week, fertilizer run-off from the soy fields.” I blink, confused. An algal bloom is not a short-lived event and even though it’s raining, the heat still stifles. In this weather, the algae should have smothered the bay for weeks, a brackish green carpet suffocating all other life. Agnes, looking over the railing, furrows her brow. It takes her pointing before I spot the canisters, almost invisible under the pattern of raindrops on the water. A dump, I guess. Something toxic. Why do people never learn?
Clayton Bay turns into a hub of activity over the next few hours. Hectic phone calls, boats coming and going, shouted conversations. Brendan, one of our lab technicians, arrives to take samples of the water and leaves again. Most of the helpers look grumpy—it’s Sunday afternoon and they have better things to do. The mayor sidles up to us to offer us coffee in reusable cups, trying to sweet-talk the OEP into dropping the blame at somebody else’s feet. I don’t even have to look at Agnes to feel her stiffen with indignation. We both dislike politicians.
Finally, my phone rings. “Hydrogen peroxide,” Brendan says without preamble.
“Killed the algae, killed the fish. Already degrading, but the concentration is high, so I assume the canisters are still leaking.” I want to bury my face in my hands, but at least there’s nothing to be done here anymore, only stacks of paperwork tomorrow morning.
As if the toll of dead fish and ruined ecosystems and the smell of bleach on the waves could be measured in numbers and applicable paragraphs.
By the time I return home, it’s past midnight. Euphemia lies curled up on the living room sofa, Fog a little heap of fluff at her feet, barely making a dent on the pillow she put it on. The acrid tang of cat piss and vomit hangs faintly in the air, but she’s done her best to clean it up. I spot a tangle of soiled rags near in the laundry basket, and the residue of soap on the floor and I can’t help but be proud of her. It was you who chose Euphemia’s name. You wanted something frivolous, something grand, because there aren’t enough grand and frivolous things in our world any longer. I watch Euphemia’s face for a while, the expression of soft concern edged into her features even in her dreams, then gather her up in my arms. There’s nothing grander than our daughter. She coughs and squirms into the mattress as I deliver her to her bed and smooth the blanket over her shoulders. After a moment of hesitation I return to the living room to fetch Fog as well. The kitten wakes from the movement and opens its eyes, but is too weak to even lift its head. I pet its soft little back and sigh.
Euphemia is awake when I return to her room with Fog in my arms.
“Did you stop the bad people form poisoning the world?” she asks sleepily.
I don’t know what to answer. I was never good at lying.
We find you at the fish farm the next morning. I have no idea what you are doing, but when you hear us approach you stop and turn around. Your fingers are wet, your eyes narrowed. Since Agnes is with me, there’s no doubt about this being a social call, but I guess there wouldn’t have been anyway. The hard lines carved into your face still surprise me, the grey streaks in your hair and the bitter set of your shoulders. In my mind you are still twenty, still all-or-nothing, still desperately passionate and I have trouble aligning the two. I will never tell you, but I still talk to this twenty-year-old idea of you in my head, the way you were when our lives still matched.
I skip the pleasantries, mostly because I have no idea how to talk to the real you. “You heard about the dump?”
You wipe your hands on dirty overalls and nod. The fish farm sways under our feet and you barely seem to notice, but me it sets off balance. The farm is made of black plastic tubes, joint into a ring to form the huge, floating walkway the net is fixed to. Its insides squirm with fish, too many to count, trashing against each other and the net in their mindless quest for food and freedom. I don’t know how you can stand working here. I don’t know how you can stand owning it.
“Hydrogen peroxide spill,” I continue. Agnes stays in the background, unsure how to approach you, how to handle the personal bias. I can relate.
You tuck an imaginary strand of hair back into your tight ponytail. I remember this gesture, and once upon a time it signalled impatience. I can no longer tell. “And you think I dumped it? Because I have permission to use it for the fish farm?”
“What do you need it for?”
Instead of an answer, you turn around and grab a catcher, plunge it into the mass of fish. I can still see why I fell in love with you in your movements, in the proud tilt of your head, your tight energy. You grab one of the big grey salmon and hold it out for inspection. I can also see why we broke apart so completely, in the end.
“See these lesions?” You drag your finger along the fish’s flank. It trashes in your hands, gills frantically searching for oxygen. Brutal red patches line the head and fins. They look contagious. “Sea lice. If we do nothing, they eat the salmon alive. We use hydrogen peroxide. 35 percent concentration. To kill the lice.” You toss the fish back into the pool. “I have a permit. Been using it for years. So why d’you think I’d suddenly dump it?” You cross your arms and I cannot decide if your tone betrays anger or hurt.
“The spill destroyed an algal bloom.” Agnes manages to sound accusing even while hiding behind my back.
“Ah.” You shake your head and fall silent. An algal bloom could easily herald the death of your fish farms; a slow, agonizing, asphyxiating death, as the bloom creeps towards the shore, depleting oxygen with every dying algae replaced by a new one. In the open ocean, the schools of fish simply swim away, but your fish farms are anchored to the ground. Five giant, floating rings visible even from the opposite side of town.
Clayton Bay is far away, though, barely a menace unless the heat rises drastically. I don’t understand your silence. Are you too proud to plead your innocence?
Are you disgusted with us, the way the fishermen were? For a second, I consider whether they might work for you. Worked, their boat is confiscated since they couldn’t pay the fine. You need plenty of by-catch for fishmeal to feed the carnivorous salmon.
But you’re not one to exceed the contamination limits, you’re careful that way, always just inside the margins.
Maybe the silence means you’re guilty. I don’t know what to think about this possibility.
We have nothing. No clues, no evidence, no idea why you or anyone else would dump a pile of leaking canisters in the middle of an algal bloom. I stare at the paperwork on my desk for an entire day until Brandon announces the hydrogen peroxide dissipated enough for us to send down the divers the next day.
It’s a crisp, clear morning, promising to turn oppressive with the rising sun. The twin divers are locals, way too young, in my opinion, to do anything as risky as diving for hazardous material, barely older than fifteen. But they’re the only people in town owning wet suits and that makes them qualified enough. The town can’t afford hazmat suits, let alone professional divers from down the coast.
The girl diver sports bright winding tattoos all over her arms and shoulders and grins at the coast-guard guys on board while she slips into her suit. Her brother, moody and quiet, glares at me and Agnes with a vengeance. Agnes’ shoulders stiffen as she glares right back. It doesn’t take much to know what she’s thinking. The boy belongs to a generation raised in the midst of pollution, and sees no use in trying to restore a world he never knew. Maybe Agnes is right, and he’s selfish and ignorant, but I can’t bring myself to begrudge him his hatred. I knew the boy’s grandmother, back in the day, and watched her drink herself to death. Because the OEP banned every single occupation you could hold as a diver, after tourism collapsed with the oil industry. First, we shut down the oil rigs, then the mussel farms, and finally even most of the fish farms. That’s how the twins came to own wet suits in the first place. They inherited them after the funeral.
I watch the trail of bubbles descend into the murky water as the twins go down. I still can’t wrap my head around the thought that it could have been you dumping the poison. We used to march in demonstrations together, for heaven’s sake, side by side, chanting slogans, hoping to get anyone but us to see how the world was dying around us. I remember the day I argued with the police for hours, trying to recruit them to our cause, while you superglued yourself to a bridge. It was you who made it to the headlines for causing a traffic jam. They had to bring in a specialist to remove you.
Agnes joins me at the railing, still tense, but her glare has softened. She fidgets a little before reaching into her pocket and withdrawing an object wrapped in entirely too much plastic. It’s a syringe, covered with a smiling cartoon cat. I haven’t seen a ridiculous thing like this in ages.
“For the kitten,” Agnes clarifies, shrugging her shoulders. “Went over to my aunt’s yesterday, she’s a vet out with the farm collectives. She has a whole stash of these lying around for the taking. They’re no good for cows or pigs or chickens, so nobody there has a use for them.”
I gingerly pluck the package from her fingers. The label identifies it as some kind of vitamin compound, boosting the cat’s immune system. The due date lies seven years in the past. I guess it’s been a while since anybody had resources enough to spend on cat’s medicine. The plastic feels slick and new under my fingers as I slip it into my pocket. I think back to the ray of hope lighting Euphemia’s eyes as I told her she could keep Fog. “Thank you,” I say with feeling.
It doesn’t take the twin divers long to clean up the dump, a mere couple of minutes. The water isn’t too deep, the current mild. When they surface, they do so almost silently, just a little splash, a quiet wave against the hull of our boat. They carry a pile of bright red canisters between them.
I drop the canister at your feet. It bounces on the tiled floor, its ringing sound burrowing into my brain. I’m alone. Agnes didn’t have the heart to tell me how stupid I’m acting, but she also refused to tag along and watch me cause a scene.
“They have serial numbers on the bottom.” My voice is so harsh it startles even me.
“I know,” is your only reply, terse and clipped, but you hug yourself as if you’re cold. It’s never cold in your house in summer, not with these huge glass windows you’ve boarded up long ago. The windows give away the house’s age, hot like an oven in summer and cold and draughty in winter, leaking energy with every glass pane. Why would anyone with any sense design a house that constantly needs to be regulated? The house came with the inheritance, grand and wide and empty, same as the fish farm. I still don’t know why you accepted it. Maybe I should have known there and then that we wouldn’t work out.
“A serial number which can be tracked,” I add, although I’m sure you know this, too. I dare you to find a mistake, to point out where my reasoning went wrong. If I’d pause to reconsider, just for a moment, if I’d thought my accusations through before my emotions got the better of me, maybe I’d have arrived there on my own. Maybe I’d have remembered that you always beat me at every strategy game we ever played. That you wouldn’t make such a rookie mistake.
But I don’t reconsider and you stay stubbornly quiet. You always made me react too strongly, and I’m afraid to be biased in your favour, so I end up biased against you. “We checked with the shipping company. They’re yours, rusted through on the bottom, and leaking. They should have been disposed of months ago.” I try to keep the bitterness, the frustration, the hurt out of my voice, but I know I fail miserably. “We checked your warehouse at the docks and we found more leaking canisters. Dozens of them. There’s no use denying it!”
You drop your arms abruptly and I watch your demeanour flicker rapidly from frustration and confusion towards outrage and understanding, but before you can get in a reply the quiet screech of a door freezes us both. We turn our heads at the same time.
Euphemia must have come home from school early. It’s Tuesday, she’s always with you on Tuesdays, but usually not until later. She has a spare key. She’s been in her room and we have not been talking quietly. I have never seen anything worse than the look of utter betrayal on our daughter’s face. She stares at you as she speaks, her voice strained, every syllable enunciated as clearly as she can. “You. Poisoned. Fog.”
The anguish on your features cuts me in two. I watch your face fall, your voice break, the careful mask of control slip off your rigid stance, but it’s too late. Euphemia turns around without another word, bitterness and defeat hunching her shoulders. She’s not even bothering to run, just walks away like a beaten stray. Your fingers slowly ball into fists. I think I spot a tear glistening in the corner of your eyes, but you never wanted me to see you cry. “Get out,” you hiss in my direction, turning your broken heart against me. I don’t think you realise how much you and Euphemia sound alike in your misery. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say, so, like always, I say nothing. You always hated this about me.
Euphemia locks me out of her room for three hours. By the time she finally relents she’s cried herself hoarse, her raw throat wrecked by coughing fits and her trembling body curled into the blanket for comfort. I settle down on the edge of her bed and stroke her hair.
Fog is an indistinct ball of fluff in the corner, burrowed deeply into the nest our daughter has assembled out of rags and old towels. The kitten looks awful. Bushels of grey fur have fallen out in clumps, revealing oozing patches underneath. It’s not eating, and if it does it throws up immediately. You once told me that I’m an idealist because I can’t really handle reality. Maybe you’re right. There’s a world of difference between knowing that harsh reality exists and having a sick, ugly kitten dying in your daughter’s bedroom.
I try not to feel guilty as I slip Agnes’ present out of my pocket. I don’t want to paint you as the bad one, and me the good one, whatever you think. I never wanted that.
I tried to raise Euphemia with the conviction that we’re both on the good side, just not so good for each other. When you accepted the fish farm, you re-baptized it Greyfish, to prove to the whole world you’d never even consider putting dye in your fish food, the way the other farms did, to make the salmon go as pink as people expected them to be.
Wild salmon get their colour from eating krill, but there’s no krill any more in the North Sea, and no more wild salmon, and you refused to make people pretend otherwise. I know you accepted the fish farm because of Euphemia, because I was always the one with the romantic ideals, and you were convinced ideals wouldn’t pay rent or food or tuition fees. Maybe it was the fact that, by pure chance, they did, as much as you running the fish farm, that broke us apart.
I hold the syringe out for Euphemia to inspect.
“What is it?” She sniffles into her pillow.
“It’s medicine. For Fog.” Our daughter stirs, clearly aware that this is the first time I complied and called the kitten by its name. But she stays wary and it breaks something inside me to realize how quickly the world has worn her optimism thin.
“Will it help?”
I shake my head minutely. “I don’t know. Agnes got it from a vet, but she doesn’t know exactly what Fog ate to be so sick. But we can try, at least.”
Euphemia sits up, wiping her eyes. I carefully lift the grimy Fog onto my lap and press the point of the syringe into the fold at its neck. The kitten is so weak it doesn’t even struggle, only opens its mouth as if to mewl in protest, but no sound escapes.
Euphemia doesn’t look at me when she speaks again.
“Why did Fog eat poison?”
I crush the plastic wrapping of the syringe in my fingers. What am I supposed to answer? Hydrogen peroxide poisoning matches the kitten’s symptoms, the rashes on exposed skin, the foaming mouth, the vomit and heavy breathing. It doesn’t affect humans too badly, but a tiny kitten? But how can I tell her you poisoned her kitten by accident?
“Where exactly did you find Fog? At your Mum’s warehouse?” Stalling, nothing else, that’s why I ask. But Euphemia shakes her head.
“You said I’m not allowed at the warehouse.” She glances at me out of the corner of her eyes. As if I’m supposed to believe she always does what I tell her.
“I found it at one of the boathouses,” she finally admits. Her restless fingers betray her guilt. She keeps fiddling with Fog’s ears, causing the kitten to twitch erratically. “Don’t be mad, Daddy. I heard it cry behind the fence and it sounded so small and sad and I wanted to help. I know I wasn’t supposed to climb over.” A brief hesitation. “There were canisters on the other side, just like the one you showed Mummy.”
I frown. Doubt is a sneaky little thing, like a grain moth. You barely notice its presence until it starts breeding and has infested every morsel of flour and rice with its larvae. “Which boathouse?”
“The green one.” Euphemia watches me warily, not sure where my sudden change of temper comes from, or if it spells trouble. “With the spear painting.”
My fingers twitch. I get up and deposit the limp Fog onto our daughter’s lap.
“Euphemia.” I know I sound desperate and I don’t want to frighten her, but I cannot help myself. “I think I was wrong. I think it wasn’t your Mum’s fault at all that Fog got sick.”
Your house is dark when I arrive, no residual light seeping through the cracks of your barred-up windows. I hammer against the wood anyway, but there’s no answer. I close my eyes and curse your brashness, but it’s not as if I expected anything else. You never could do things halfway, not a protest, not a job, not a family. And it’s not so hard to guess where you went. I start running.
I can’t make out the colour of the boathouse in the dusk, but the spears spray-painted over one whole wall are hard to miss: three of them fanned out and pointing upwards. I almost drop my phone in my haste to pull it out of my pocket. It’s one of those sturdy old ones that last forever, so it’s not as if it would have mattered. I dial Agnes’ number, but the phone goes to voicemail. I dial again immediately.
The boathouse looks deserted this time of night. I almost hope I’m mistaken before I hear your voice floating on the breeze. You sound angry, but not as angry as whoever it is you’re arguing with.
Agnes finally picks up and I almost scream into the phone. “Agnes, I need you at the docks. Green boathouse, left of the old cannery. It’s a Spearwall building, get backup.” I don’t wait for her reply before I wrench one of the big double doors open.
You used to tell me stories of the Spearwall, good stories, back when they held demonstrations and chained themselves to trees. But the Spearwall always identified more as an organisation against than an organisation for something. Against breaking the world, not for patching it up again. I don’t think they knew how to handle it when a majority suddenly agreed with them, when the environmental taxes came, and the pollution squads, and the OEP. First, they turned more radical, shouting how too little was done, or too late, or the wrong way. Then they turned ridiculous, advocating tiny details and obscure studies, until, in the end, the only people who could do right in their eyes were themselves—and it didn’t matter any more whether your actions were sustainable or not, only that you were part of the group. I know you fell out with them two years ago, even though nobody knows why or how or what happened. Just like you, leaving without explanation. But the Spearwall is no longer known foor tolerating defection.
The warehouse’s interior lies wreathed in shadows, the only source of light a flickering bulb way back behind a stack of degrading crates. The inside smells of fish oil and petrol and dust, an odour that has burned itself into the wood and corrugated metal sheets of the walls.
“The fuck you will—” The voice sounds familiar, young and sullen, but I have no time to identify it. There’s a crash, sounds of a struggle. The gun feels cold and unfamiliar in my hands. My palms are wet. I’m not a soldier, I’m an idealist, I’m out of my depth, but I hear your muffled scream and I run anyway.
You’re crumpled against a stack of crates. I spot a flash of limbs, blood, a knife.
My fingers tremble, but I ignore them, pull the safety and press the trigger. The shot goes wild, it’s fucking hard to aim with a pistol, but its roar echoes through the spacious warehouse like thunder. Your attacker jumps and looks up and I almost drop the gun in surprise because it’s the diver, fifteen and fierce and how could I not notice the Spearwall tattoo on his neck?
Your survival instincts are way better than mine; instead of gawking, you go straight for bashing your elbow into the diver’s face. If my ears weren’t ringing from the shot I’m sure I’d hear his nose break. The diver stumbles backwards, blood gushing across his lips. I catch the flash of the knife in his hand and shoot again without thinking. This time, I hit him in the thigh and he cries out, drops the knife and tumbles onto the crates.
I’m breathing too fast, startled like a rabbit, searching your face for answers.
Your cheekbone is bruised and swollen, there’s a deep cut on your forearm and a red stain across your shirt. You sprint for the knife the same moment something hits me over the head. My vision goes dark, then red. Pain lances through my neck as I crash to the ground. Someone is trying to wrestle the gun out of my hands and I want to resist, but my fingers won’t obey. I have the surreal thought that I’m just like Fog, trying to mewl but no sound is escaping my lips. I catch a blurry glimpse of you out of the corner of my eyes before the weight lifts off my back. You kick the guy who assaulted me right in the face without restraint and I’ve never been gladder for your streak of violence. He grunts and stumbles back and you grab the gun and point it at him. He takes one look at you and turns tail and I’m kind of glad and also kind of surprised that you don’t shoot. I’m sure you’re better at aiming than I am.
You drop down hard on the floor beside me, pressing a hand to your bloody side.
I see you flinch with pain, but you have enough strength left to flash me a contemptuous grin, so I think you’ll be okay. Your teeth are blood-stained from where you must have bitten your tongue. You look like a vampire. Everything spins and I feel like throwing up, but I also feel strangely content, sprawling next to you, waiting for Agnes to come rescue us.
I try to make sense of the mess, afterwards, planted safely behind the stack of papers on my desk. My head is still throbbing with pain from where the Spearwall guy, Greg, hit me with an oar. I try to drown the pain in coffee, which, frankly, doesn’t work at all.
Agnes and the backup arrived just in time to intercept Greg and stop Cyril, the diver boy, from bleeding out. The two of them are in custody now, and already admitted to dumping your canisters in Clayton Bay, although they still refuse to name their reasons. I don’t think I need them to, since you finally told me why you fell out with the Spearwall, in the sterile white waiting room of the clinic right after the fight. It felt strange, sitting so close together, licking our bloody wounds; like old times, when we still found the energy to fight with teeth and claws every day. Maybe that’s why you relented.
“Massacring fish for petty revenge.” I watched your lips pucker and for a moment I thought you’d spit on the gleaming floor in disgust. You caught yourself, though. I wonder what other habits you picked up, working your fish farm. “I’ve known Greg for years, he grew up with the Spearwall, courtesy of his parents. Hell, I offered him his first real job. Worked for me at Greyfish, for a year-and-a-half. Cocky but reliable, at first.”
I didn’t say anything, didn’t dare to interrupt and shatter the sudden peace, the understanding spanning between us, even though I knew it couldn’t last. I’m an idealist, but I try not to cross over into denial.
You retied your tight ponytail, which had come mostly undone in the fight.
“Course he only stayed reliable as long as it suited him. I caught him dropping plastic waste in the ocean, too lazy to collect it.” My fingers twitched. I still remember your determination to do better than the other salmon farms, your strictly enforced rules of never dumping any empty canisters or fraying ropes into the depths. You’d seen what it did to beaches, fish, birds. It lives at the core of you, this need to do better. I realize I’ve tried hard to forget. “Greg even had the gall of telling me to cut him some slack, since he’s already done so much for the environment. As if he racked up some credit, just for being born into the Spearwall.” I felt the anger radiating off your body like heat, even though you sat perfectly still. You laughed, bitter and without mirth. “I fired him. And then the Spearwall tried to make me take him back.”
I can see now why you left, how you understood no part of the organization you’d once fought for remained. You always hated bullies. Sometimes I can’t help but admire the way you stick to your decisions, once you made them. You didn’t continue, didn’t specify what kind of threats were exchanged, but I guess they weren’t pretty.
I aimlessly move files and reports around my desk and try to concentrate enough to shut out the headache. I don’t succeed, but there’s nothing pressing to file anyway, almost all the loose ends accounted for. I suspect Greg and Cyril will admit to planting the leaking canisters in your warehouse, sooner or later, or maybe the rest of the Spearwall will sell them out to save their own hides. I don’t want to contemplate almost falling for their ruse. Why would you leave leaking canisters in your own warehouse, in plain view, after I told you in no uncertain terms you were a suspect? I don’t know what to do with the guilt, the realisation that I can never simply shake off the past. The only thing I can do is struggle on. And maybe apologize.
No, we’re almost done. Only one question remains for you to answer: how the Spearwall got their hands on hydrogen peroxide in the first place. Your hydrogen peroxide, twenty rusted canisters, from a time when you still supported their methods. I asked you in the clinic, right after the nurse patched us up, with your teeth still bloody and the stitches in your arm and side glowing an angry red. But by then the openness between us had snapped shut, the past caught up to the situation. The scowl you offered me instead of an answer must have hurt your bruised cheek. I’m not quite sure what to think of this return to our usual modes of communications, but, somehow, I suspect I’m relieved.
I don’t think I need you to answer anyway, not any more. I found an explanation for your silence in the margins of my reports. You and your stupid integrity. I remember another algal bloom, how many years back? Three, maybe? A red tide of toxic microorganisms staining the water for kilometres along the coast; infinitely worse than the patch around Clayton Bay. Dead fish washed ashore daily, reeking of rot and decay.
Dogs started to collapse because they’d scavenged for scraps along the waterline. The OEP watched helplessly, while none of the approved counter-measures took, none of the desperate suggestions worked fast enough. And then, suddenly, the whole thing dissipated without any apparent cause. I looked into it in the last hour, finally giving up on writing my report. Hydrogen peroxide actually works as an algaecide—it’s one of the methods the OEP has given up on for being too risky. But if you know what you’re doing, if you measure precisely enough instead of simply dumping a pile of canisters on the bottom of the ocean, it won’t kill everything in reach; just the algae. I can already picture your stoic face when I ask you about it, and the haughty glint in your eyes that will let me know if I’m correct where you never will. You always were too proud to brag when your solutions worked better than mine.
When I look up from my research Agnes waits in front of my desk, her arms crossed, looking almost bemused. “You’re on sick leave. Just go home,” she orders, raising an eyebrow at the bandage around my head. She has a point and I don’t know how to start explaining about red tides and canisters and environmental terrorists, so I simply hand over my paperwork and leave.
Back home, I find the living room swamped with drawings of fluffy grey kittens and boathouses and you and me fighting the bad guys; Euphemia’s idea of an apology for doubting you. Our daughter sits in the middle of the fray, crayons in hand, but her eyes focus on Fog’s progress across the floor. The kitten traipses towards the kitchen with determination, its legs unsteady, but when it finally reaches its destination it gobbles up the whole bowl of food scraps waiting for it. I drop down on the sofa next to Euphemia and watch the little grey fluff-ball sway back in our direction, visibly steadier than before. For a moment the pain in my head recedes into the background.
“Sweetheart.” I hug Euphemia close and plant a kiss on top of her head. “Maybe Fog is going to survive after all.”
Nora Schinnerl lives in a shared house on the outskirts of Vienna, Austria, and tries not to get confused by writing in English while speaking in German. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys reading too much, playing video games for too long and finding shortcuts through the woods. She is very bad at being realistic, which is why her idea of a day job is working as an archaeologist. Her short fiction has previously appeared in Future SF Digest, Escape Pod and Best of World Science Fiction Vol. 3.