Earth Thirst (The Arcadian Conflict) - By Mark Teppo Page 0,22
do make a second pass, walking in the opposite direction. The guy in the car doesn't even look up from his phone. The other one continues to sleep.
Reefie's is a noisy pub three blocks away, and after I enter and gauge my choices, I head for the bar and find an open spot next to a guy drinking alone. A half-dozen plasma screen TVs are competing for the patrons' attention with three different football games (two of the three are broadcasting Australian games), a pair of soccer games, and a US basketball game. Lakers versus someone else—no one seems to care, including the network that is broadcasting the game.
The bartender, a well-groomed man with precision-razored stubble, flips a coaster on the bar in front of me and I order a beer. “A lager. Whatever you've got on tap that isn't the tourist beer.” He squints at me for a second, trying to gauge if I'm trying to be a smart-ass, and when I put a bill on the bar, he stops wondering.
“Not a fan of the local?” The man sitting next to me stinks of fish, and his blond hair has been permanently stiffened by sea and sky.
“It's like that American coffee company,” I reply. “You can get it anywhere, but that doesn't make it good.”
He chuckles and raises his pint glass in my direction. I clink my glass off his, notice how empty his is compared to mine, and catch the bartender's eye. “Thanks, mate,” he says when another full pint is deposited in front of him. “So, journalist or investigator?” he asks.
“Excuse me?”
“If you're looking to chat me up, you're bad at picking out men who might be your type.”
“Was I trying to pick you up?” I ask.
My answer confuses him for a second, though it isn't hard to confuse him in his state. “I ain't got much else to offer,” he says, “and I don't believe in random charity.”
“And the world is a poorer place for it,” I say.
“Which are you?” He squints at me. “Angling for a payout or writing a story?”
“Journalist,” I say, figuring that's the answer he's looking for.
He nods and sticks out a hand. “I'm Ted.”
“Silas.” His hand is calloused, rough from the nets and a fishing knife. “You want to tell me something about that boat out there?”
He grins. We both know which boat I'm referring to. “Aye,” he says, “I can tell you a story or two.” He takes a long pull from his glass, moistening his tongue and making me wait a few seconds. Ted is a garrulous local, pre-greased by the media, and a bit of a drunk; he knows the routine and is happy to play along. I'm a good listener, and I have a pocket full of money taken from the caretaker's wallet.
We're going to be good friends.
* * *
Ted takes me back about two and a half weeks when stories began circulating among the fishing boats out of Adelaide that something had happened out on the water. A few days later the Cetacean Liberty was found, adrift, in the Great Australian Bight. She had suffered a fire, and all of her life boats were gone. The Royal Australian Navy flooded the Bight with ships and found a few drifting life boats. What survivors were in them were suffering from burns in addition to exposure and dehydration.
Ted doesn't know how many survived, but it doesn't sound like many.
The Cetacean Liberty was towed back to Adelaide and wrapped up tight. Prime Earth's management—back in San Diego and quick to point out that they are miles and miles from any sort of altercation in the Southern Ocean—stuffed their fingers in their ears and pretended nothing had happened other than an unfortunate galley fire.
Ted tries to milk me for a few drinks, but once I establish that he knows nothing about the whaling fleet, it's clear he isn't quite the fount of knowledge that he thinks he is, which makes sense, given the lack of ongoing speculation I hadn't seen in the local papers. The media did their routine of scrounging for scraps, looking for some morsel that they can worry long enough to show an upward trend in their readership metrics at their next quarterly shareholder meeting. But without some immediate scandal to keep their audiences' attention, their corporate overlords will simply can the stories. The story is lacking a champion, someone like Meredith Vanderhaven, to keep it alive. It dies with a whimper, a final update buried on