«But what if you could not use the fuel for the generator?» Mike asked. «What then?»
«Well, that puts off a reckoning,» Harry admitted. «We've thought about a windmill or something. We'd be pretty okay then. Hell, I've got an electric car stashed. We could load up on spare batteries and make it to Miami and back with at least some of the stuff we need.» He shook his head in despair. «But we don't have a windmill and they're impossible to buy these days. Even if we had the cash. And it wouldn't produce enough electricity to matter. And the first good storm would tear it up.»
«Ay-aaaah-ah,» Mike whispered and whistled a scrap of melody.
Harry smiled. «It's not quite that bad. We haven't had a Viking raid. Yet.»
Mike smiled. «It's an old memory. Who's your electrician?»
Harry wrinkled his brow in question. «Why the twenty questions?»
«I'm getting to that,» Mike said. «Is it you?»
«No,» admitted Harry. «It's one of the guys on Bob French's long-line boat.»
«Okay,» Mike said. «Well we'll have to wait for Bob to get back in to get it installed, but let me show you something I just happened to have brought along.»
* * *
Good day, thought Bob French as he navigated the cut up to No-Name-Key. The world might be going to hell in a handbasket, but the lack of tourists, fuel and markets had reduced fishing pressure to the point of recovery. Since the types of fishing that prevailed put more pressure on the upper end of the food chain, the stocks of feeder fish recovered in the first year of the emergency. Since then the increases in catch size across the board had been phenomenal. On ledges where he used to be lucky to get one legal-sized snapper he now was taking dozens a day. Lobster pots were coming in brimming with «keeper» langostino and occasionally had a real monster, the sort of lobster that hadn't been seen in the Keys since the '60s. And he had always thought that the tales the old-timers told of multi-square-mile shoals of herring and sardines were sea-stories until he saw one just this year.
This day he was coming in with a boat loaded to the gunnels with giant groupers and snappers. Unfortunately, the thought of what that meant was disheartening. Every month the price was going down for all the fish, even the best cuts. And the official trade company paid in warbucks instead of pre-war dollars or, best of all, FedCreds. The warbuck was deliberately inflationary, so the cost of everything went up nearly as fast as the price of fish went down. It should have been the other way, but it wasn't.
He suspected, hell, all the fishermen suspected, that it wasn't supposed to be that way. But without any way to communicate with the mainland except mail or driving, nothing seemed to be happening. He had finally used up his hoard of gas tickets and gone to Miami to complain. After two days of getting shuffled from one department to the next at the Marine Fisheries offices he had to get back. If he wasn't fishing he'd find himself on the shore.
And he was better off than most of the fishermen. His boat was free and clear and one of the larger ones still operating. Two of the guys working for him had lost their boats to the repo companies after they couldn't make the payments. He couldn't pay his crew much—hell most everybody got paid in fish or supplies—but it was something. The communities had pulled together so nobody starved and everybody had a little something extra. But nobody, not even he or Harry, had much.
What was going to happen when the invasion finally came was another question. But that was a worry for another day. For today there was gutting a bumper haul of fish that would just put him more in the hole for gas.
He made the cut ahead of the tide race and finally saw something to smile about. John Samuels had made harbor, which was the first bright spot he'd seen in a month of Sundays.
They called Samuels «Honest John» as a joke. The free trader ran a sixty-foot sloop that carried small cargoes from Miami to Cuba and back. He stopped at all the islands, buying delicacies «on the left» and trading at prices lower than the «official» black marketers. He and the other traders were practically the only source of tobacco and alcohol in the islands.
The trader was sitting on the dock of the harbor office with Harry and the «visitor» from Fleet Strike. The little fireplug probably was an actual Fleet officer; his casual demonstration of Galactic technology the night before had been impressive. Before everything went south they had watched the video from Barwhon and Diess. Fighting the aliens was going to be hell. He didn't envy the frowning little bastard his job.
The visitor seemed to have mended his fences with Harry. As the boat took the final turn to the dock the sound of their laughter was clear over the quiet chugging of the diesel. He killed the engines and drifted into the dock; every bit of fuel was worth saving. As Harry and Honest John caught his tossed lines the visitor flicked the butt of a cigar into the waters. Unless Bob was mistaken it was one of John's prized Havana Panatellas. The Fleet guy was making friends fast.
«How's the fishing?» John asked, taking the boat captain's hand as he jumped ashore.
«Oh, it was a hell of a haul,» Bob answered bitterly. «For what it's gonna fetch.»
«Smile, Bob,» Harry said with a grin of his own. «We just got a new set of buyers and suppliers.»
The fisherman looked from one grinning face to the other in puzzlement. «You want to explain that?»
«FBI agents just performed raids on your suppliers' and buyers' offices along with the offices of the Miami Rationing Board and the Marine Fisheries Board,» the visitor answered for them.
«Why the hell would they do that?» he asked in surprise. «And how did we find out so fast?»
«Well,» answered the visitor, with a slight smile violating his habitual frown, «they are required to perform an investigation at the registered request of a Galactic Enforcement Officer. All Fleet officers are also law officers. A second request from the office of the Continental Army Commander just got them moving faster than you can say 'posse comitatus.' «
«That black thing around his wrist is a communicator,» Harry added with a laugh. «The FBI has already called him back. They said it was the best black market bust they've made since the start of the emergency. It's gonna make national news.»
«Things are gonna be screwed up for a while still, man,» Honest John cautioned. «They're gonna have to find a replacement that ain't part of the Cubano Mafia that's been controlling it.» He shook his head. «Ain't gonna be easy. The Cubanos have gotten used to having their way in South Florida. One raid ain't gonna stop it.»
«Cooperate,» said the Fleet officer. «The assets of the companies have been seized. Ask the FBI to turn them over pending the completion of the investigation. They don't need the trucks to prosecute the perps. And you can probably get them permanently as the 'victims.' Get some materials and convert the old Piggly Wiggly to a warehouse so you don't have to base in Miami.»
«That takes electricity,» said Bob, with his own shake of a head. «Which is something we ain't got. We can't afford the diesel to run a generator that big. Even if we're in a co-op with the whole Keys.»
«Ah, well, as to that,» said the visitor, with a real grin while John and Harry just laughed.
«What?» asked the captain, as the crew started to unload. The four of them joined in as tub after tub of prime grouper and snapper were unloaded. He looked at Harry again, waiting for him to go on. «What's so funny?» he asked again, heaving a hundred-pound tub to the Fleet Strike officer. The heavyset dwarf caught it like it was a feather and slid it across the dock. He was even stronger than he looked.