Earth Thirst (The Arcadian Conflict) - By Mark Teppo Page 0,28

that picture was taken a few years ago.”

“I'll extrapolate.”

“I'll… uh, I'll be there in a half-hour.”

That's a lot of tea to drink, I think as we end the call.

Patience. Time enough.

I kind of hope one of the Secutores guys shows up while I'm waiting. That would be more fun than sitting here.

ELEVEN

Ralph Abernathy takes closer to forty-five to find the café. He wasn't kidding when he said his press picture was several years old. The last few turns around the sun haven't been kind to him. He stands near the entrance of the café, fussing with his cell phone while trying to be surreptitious in his examination of the room. I'm the only one paying him any sort of attention, and after a few minutes of pretending to be coy, he shoves his phone into his pocket and marches up to the counter.

Mid-forties. Divorced or never married. Certainly single. Obsessive about all the wrong things. Good shoes, though. The man knows the importance of decent footwear. His coat is an old leather bombardier jacket, nicely distressed and worn in. It's a little snug across the back, and I doubt he can zip it up anymore, but it's clearly the one aspect of his old life—his wistfully remembered twenties—that he can't quite let go of.

He sits down heavily across from me—a complicated espresso drink in a wide ceramic cup, a half-eaten cookie in his hand. He needs a haircut more than he needs a shave; more than both, he looks like he could use a break from the relentless of his life.

I wonder if this is what I'll look like in a few months, or if it'll happen more quickly.

“Fishing,” he says by way of greeting. “Shall I call you Fisherman?” He's given this some thought on the drive over.

“David is fine.”

He takes a big bite of the cookie. “You don't look like a David,” he says, trying to hide his disappointment that I'm not keen on his code name.

I don't have the heart to tell him about the statue in Florence that I modeled for once upon a time.

“You wrote the stories about the Cetacean Liberty,” I say, getting to the point. “I read all the press. You were the one who kept asking questions.”

He nods, sitting up in his chair—pleased that I know his work. “It never made sense, and then, yeah, I did some digging and found about the tragedy in Japan, with Kyodo Kujira.” He shoved the rest of the cookie in his mouth and leaned forward. “I paid a translator for some port reports. Out of my own pocket. I knew Kyodo had put a fleet in the water. In June. They'd been out for nearly a month when the accident on the Liberty happened.”

“A long time when you're not actually catching whales,” I say.

“Exactly.” His head bobs up and down again. “The reports are gone now. Kyodo's fleet is now listed as having been moved from Ishinomaki to Shimonoseki, which is bullshit. They've never had boats in Shimonoseki.”

“New management,” I suggest.

He chokes on a laugh, and covers it up by taking a drink from his beverage. “That's not funny,” he protests when he has recovered. He glances around. “Do you know who these Secutores guys are?”

“They're independent contractors,” I say, using the phrase that is de rigueur in this decade for mercenaries. “I suppose they can work in Japan as readily as they can here in Adelaide, yes?”

“Jesus,” he swears, putting his hands on the table and stiffening his fingers to gesture at me to keep my voice down.

I lean forward. “Why do they have two guys sitting in the second floor waiting area of the P wing at the hospital?” I ask.

“They're still there?” When I nod, he shakes his head. “Why? There's no one there any more.”

“Who isn't there?”

“The people from the Liberty.”

“How many?”

“I don't know. I could never find out. That's where they went, though. I talked to a couple of the pilots who airlifted people out of the rafts. Some of them in pretty bad shape. Burns and exposure. Somewhere around twenty is my guess.”

“And?”

“And nothing. Prime Earth's lawyers showed up.” He tries to rattle off the firm's name but gets it wrong. He nods when I correct him. “Yeah, bunch of tight-assed corporate hacks from the US. Flown in. Didn't give a shit that they had no clue about Australian law. Buried the hospital in a ton of paperwork, and threatened litigation on everyone—down to the fucking interns who were