I interpreted the question as an invitation and walked over to take the stool next to him.
“Not quite,” I said. “Will you have a drink?”
“I will,” he said. “So, what has you in town?”
At first, Más didn’t seem too bothered when I explained who I worked for, or at least he didn’t ask the usual questions or put forward the usual conspiracy theories about the squid.
“A job’s a job, I suppose.”
His eyes wrinkled, amused at a joke hidden to me. “So do ye all have jobs in England, then?”
Ireland had been on universal income for the better part of two decades. It was hard to see how people like Más would have survived otherwise.
“No, not by a long chalk. The only reason I got this one is I wasn’t afraid to cross the sea in a plane.”
“More fool you.”
“You have to die of something, I told them. And it was quite exciting, in the end.”
As the light faded, the mid-afternoon drinkers gave way to a younger, louder crowd, but Más and I still sat, talking.
I described the huge reservoir near where I lived in Rutland, where people could still swim and sail and fish, and how everyone worried that the squid would somehow reach it, denying us access, like Superior or the Caspian.
He asked me what on earth would make me leave such a place.
“I wanted to see the world. I needed a job,” I said.
He laughed. “Those used to be the reasons people joined the Navy.”
Perrott’s plane was old, but well serviced. It started first time and once we finished our climb, the engine settled into a bagpipe-like drone.
We crossed the last headland and the cheerful baize below, veined in dry-stone walls, gave way to grey waves, maned in white.
He radioed the Cork tower to tell them we were now over open water and that the rescue team was on formal standby.
He adjusted the trim of the plane to a point where he was happy to let the thing fly itself and joined me in scanning the waters below.
It was less than half an hour until his pilot’s eye spotted it. Perrott took the controls again and banked to give me a better view. I let the video camera run, while I used the zoom lens to snap any identifying features.
From the size of the blurred shape rippling just beneath the surface, I could tell it was old—seventh or eighth generation, perhaps, but I really wanted a more detailed look.
I told Perrott I would like to make another pass.
“If only we had a bomb, eh?” he said. Sooner or later, everyone suggests it.
“We tried that,” I said.
“Oh yeah?”
Perrott had signed a non-disclosure agreement before the flight. It didn’t matter what I told him. Most of it was already on the internet, in any case.
“Yes. First they bombed an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico and opened up its well-head. Miles from shore, so any oil that escaped would be eaten by the squid or burnt in the fire.”
Hundreds of thousands of the things had come, enough that you could see the black stain spread on satellite images. I had only watched the video. I couldn’t imagine how chilling it had been to observe it happen live.
“Then the Americans dropped three of the biggest non-nukes they’ve got on them.”
“It didn’t work, then?”
“No. Any squid more than a dozen feet or so below the surface were protected by the water. We vapourised maybe half of them. After that they stayed deep, mostly.”
I didn’t tell Perrott about the Mississippi and how the squid had retaliated. Let him read that on the internet too.
“Well, they may be mindless, but they’re not stupid,” he said.
We flew on until the light failed but, as if it had heard him, the beast did not reappear.
It would be wrong to think of the squid as a failure of technology. The technology worked, from the plastic filtration, to the self-replication and algorithmic learning.
Also do not forget that they succeeded in their original purpose—they did clean up the waters and they did save fish stocks from extinction.
The failure, if you can truly call it that, is ours. We failed to see that life, even created life, will never behave exactly as we intend.
The failure was not in the squids’ technology, or in their execution. It was in our imagination.
A basket of chips and fried “goujons” of catfish had appeared in front of us, gratis. I dived in, sucking seasalt and smoky, charred fish skin from my fingertips. Mas looked over the bar into the middle distance.
“Don’t tell me you don’t like fish,” I said. “That would be too funny.”
“That’s not real fish.”
Más had progressed to whiskey and a bitter humour sharpened his tongue.
“It tastes pretty real,” I said. I had heard all the scare stories about fish farming.
He held up a calloused hand, as if an orator or bard about to recite. The other was clenched, to punctuate his thoughts.
“Why is it, do you think, that we are trying to replicate the things we used to have?
“Like, if most people can still eat ‘fish,’ or swim in caged bloody lidos, or if cargo comes by airship or whatever, then the more normal it becomes. And it shouldn’t be bloody normal. It’s not normal.”
The barmaid rolled her eyes. Clearly, she had heard the rant before.
I told him I agreed with the swimming bit inasmuch as I wouldn’t personally miss it terribly if I could never do it again, but that farmed fish didn’t bother me and that I thought most people never considered where their goods came from, even before the squid.
Disappointment, whether at me or the world, wilted in his face before he let the whiskey soften him again. His shoulders lowered, his hands relaxed and the melody of his voice reasserted itself.
“When I was a boy, my father once told me a story about trying to grow trees in space.”
I coughed mid-chew and struggled to dislodge a crumb of batter from my throat. With tears in my eyes, I waved him on. I don’t know why, but it amused me to hear an old salt like Más talk about orbital horticulture.
“Well, these guys on Spacelab or wherever, they tried growing them in perfect conditions, perfect nutrients, perfect light, even artificial gravity. They would all shoot straight up, then keel over and die. Every tree seed they planted—pine, ash, oak, cypress—they all died. Nobody could figure out what was wrong. Everything a plant could need was provided, perfectly measured. These were the best cared for plants in the world.”
“In the solar system,” I ribbed him.
“Right. In the solar system. Except for one thing. Do you know what was missing?
“No. Tell me.”
“A breeze. Trees develop the strength, the woody cells, to support their weight by resisting the blow of the wind. Without it, they falter and sicken.”
I didn’t really get his point and told him so.
“You can’t sharpen a blade without friction. You can’t strengthen a man, or a civilisation, without struggle. Airships and swimming pools and virtual bloody sailing. It’s all bollocks. We should be hauling these things out of the water, like they said we would.”
He gestured through the window of the bar to the grey bulk of the cathedral looming in the fog.
“There was a reason Jesus was a fisherman,” said Más, as if it were a closing statement.
I didn’t know what to say to that.
The barmaid leaned over the bar to clear the empty baskets.
“Jesus was a carpenter, Más,” she said.
“Six sea scouts, aged 11 to 14, had left the fishing town of Castletown-berehaven in a rigid inflatable boat, what they call a ‘rib.’ Their scout leader was at the helm, an experienced local woman named De Paor.