She was trying to tease me cheerful-she knew I'd never ridden a horse. "So we're going to sell it for scrap metal, then?
"No! Then less emphatically, "I don't think so. What can we do with it, Jason? The Gulf of Mexico?
I'd thought of that myself, but it wasn't good sense. There was good grazing in the gulf for smaller boats, but it didn't seem to me there was enough sea room for an aging oaty-boat to get out of the way of bad weather. "Maybe the Brazil Triangle, I said-that was good, too, from the eastern coast of South America to the African Gold Coast-but how did you get it there? It would never go through the Canal, of course, or even the Straits of Magellan, and the seas south of Cape Horn would probably sink it. "I'll think of something, I said, and after a while I did. I sold it to May's old in-laws. They moored it for a fixed OTEC station in the straits off Lahaina, for the gray whales to stare at. It was no joy dealing with the old witch, but she made us a fair price, and even sent May a wedding present into the bargain-a year late and a lot too little, but May took it kindly and even offered to let Jimmy Rex visit his grandmother now and then out of gratitude.
But I missed the old boat. The big one wasn't just bigger. It was better designed. We put in a new cold- water intake system, with a single pipe five kilometers long and six meters wide. The thicker the pipe was, the better the surface-to-volume ratio, so the water didn't warm up as much on the way up. It does warm a little, of course. But the dissolved gases expand a little, which tends to cool it-in fact, we had to install relief valves along the pipe to bleed out the excess pressure; otherwise it would have ruptured. We were reliably getting a delta-T of 26 or 27-once even 29 for five days in a row. But the damn pipe was so long it wanted to curl up like spaghetti, and so we had to divert scout subs from prospecting for cold-water lenses to pushing it back into shape almost every day. And because we were bringing up so much in the way of nutrients, the fishing fleets from Korea and Peru followed us around. I didn't begrudge them the fish, but I liked it better when we couldn't see other ships on the horizon.
May just laughed at me when I said as much. "You just don't like to change anything, she told me, halfway between teasing and tenderness. We were on a lower deck, Jimmy Rex pretending to shoot the dolphins that were larking around our moat. Naturally, I'd installed the same sort of warm-water trap as Betsy's flagship, and naturally, the dolphins weren't going to let a little two- meter-high screen keep them from jumping over into a new playpen.
I said, "I like things to get better, not just different.
She sighed and pulled Jimmy Rex back from the rail. "And isn't this better'?
"It is in some ways.
"Name one it isn't!
I pointed over the screen, at the open ocean waters. "We didn't see dead squid floating around the old boat.
"Jason, be fair! That's not the boat's fault. There are fish kills all over this part of the Pacific- And then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the boy had climbed up onto the rail to get a better make-believe shot. "James Reginald Appermoy! she yelled, and dragged him back just as he was about to go over.
Well, it wouldn't have hurt him much, a twelve-meter fall into a warm bathtub, but he wouldn't have liked it, either. He was good for almost a minute, and even let me put my arm around him for almost that long. But I was still worrying about the squid. A dead fish at sea is a curiosity; as soon as anything slows down enough to be dying, something else is sure to eat it. "I hear they're worse off on Hawaii, I said, and May said:
"Oh, that reminds me. Jimmy Rex is going to see his grandmother next week.
I said nothing, but I didn't have to. "It's all right, she reassured me.
"It's all right if he can take Pan and Jeremy along, I bargained-they were the two security men Jimmy Rex hated least.
"Well, if you don't think Grandma's feelings will be hurt- She saw my eyes and dropped it. ~They'll go, she promised. "But after all, the Appermoys are family. And so's Betsy, and when Jimmy Rex comes back from Hawaii, I'm thinking of inviting some of her friends over.
"Betsy's family, I admitted, "but the trash she keeps around her are not.
"But they're amusing, Jason. With all the space we've got now, it's no trouble to have a few guests.
"That, I said, "is another way the old boat was better.
But I could not really argue against family. And if we entertained Betsy and her friends, then Betsy must entertain us and ours, so May and Jeff and the boy and the four Mays and I flew over to visit good queen Betsy. Our flagships were not usually very far apart-I speak geographically. With the scouts for both our fleets getting better at finding the best delta-Ts and the hydrologists improving their predictions about how stable they were and the navigators getting more skilled at plotting courses that would graze where the deltas were greenest- well, there are only so many optimal solutions to a problem, especially as we each copied the other's technology as soon as it was proved. It was no wonder that we often came to the same solutions. And the same problems, for looking over the side of Betsy's flagship with Havrila by my side, I said, "I see you've got dead squid, too.
"The fishing fleet's complaining, too. He nodded gravely and then laughed. "Best thing we ever didn't do, he said, "was diversify into fishing.
"We thought about it for a while, too, I said, "and decided to stay out of perishables. There are plenty of other fields!
And there were. We were getting into dozens of them. Mining the hot heavy-metal brine from the springs of the East Pacific Rise. Scooping up manganese pellets from the ocean bottom. The only "perishable we got into was fresh water-we built two experimental sailing tugs, huge devils with revolving masts to catch the winds, and used them to tow icebergs from Antarctica to the Persian Gulf.
All the ventures prospered-though nothing more than the ocean-thermal that was our core money spinner- even the icebergs. They were Jefferson's own pet. He was land-born and land-oriented, and he could not resist something that would make things better for people on land. He went off to supervise the project now and then, a week at a time. I didn't like his leaving May alone. I liked it least when it began to be so that, as Jeff was leaving, some of Betsy's giddy friends would arrive. The one who came most often was Dougie d'Agasto.
There was bound to be trouble, and it came. Dougie stayed a day too long. Jeff came home, and he must have been looking for his family with field glasses as the plane came in, for he didn't bother to go to their rooms. He dropped his bags with a deckhand and headed straight for the pool. May. looking ethereally ravishing in her skimpy suit, was watching to keep Jimmy Rex from drowning himself-heaven knows why. Dougie d'Agasto was standing beside her, whispering in her ear. His arm was around her waist, and his fingers were toying delicately with the elastic of her trunks. Jeff did not look like a fighter. His bald head gleamed sweatily in the Pacific sun, and he was shorter and fatter. But he spun d'Agasto around and decked him with one punch. Into the pool went Dougie d'Agasto, and came up screaming and fingering his bloody, but not broken, perfect nose. He was off the boat in an hour, and what May and Jefferson said to each other about it I do not know.
I know what I said to May. First chance I got her alone I said, "You're a fool to risk Jeff for that little pimp.
Was it any of my business? At least she didn't tell me it was not. She said seriously, "I am not risking Jeff, Uncle Jason. Dougie's flattering, though. He's such a beautiful boy.~~