Exceptions to Reality_ Stories - Alan Dean Foster [20]
“You were right,” she repeated. “It was beautiful. As beautiful as you had hoped.
“And so were you.”
At Sea
The juxtaposition of entirely different story ideas is one of the joys of writing. This is especially true of science fiction and fantasy, wherein the writer has access to absolutely anything that can be conjured, no matter how seemingly unrelated. The only rule is that the final result has to make sense as a story. You can mix together all manner of ingredients, but the result has to be something palatable to the mind.
Grounding fantasy in the real world is always fun. You have the opportunity to upset all manner of perceptual applecarts. If your concept works well, you also enjoy the pleasure of surprising the reader. Sometimes the most disparate notions will come together to produce a viable tale. Once the story is plotted and the rough draft completed, the writer then has the fun of sprinkling it with details, like adding lace and sequins to a dress. The design of women’s earrings, for example, is not something I often find myself having to ponder when putting in those little touches that add verisimilitude to a fantasy. Nor are the minutiae of drug-running, commercial fishing, and Scandinavian mythology.
Especially not in the same story…
“Hoy, Cruz—there are five horses on the stern!”
Sandino was a big man with a squinched puss and huge arms the color of aged bratwurst. Right now his expression was slowly subsiding into his face, like a backstreet into a Florida sinkhole, swallowing his features whole. It was left to his voice, which had the consistency of toxic cheese-whip, to convey his confusion.
Although he was onboard a modern longline fishing boat, Cruz did not know much about fishing. This did not matter, because he did not care much about fishing. Boats, however, were something else. Boats could go where planes and cars could not. As far as fishing boats were concerned, the best thing about them was that they stank. The big swordfish boat reeked of blood, guts, fish oil, and sea bottom. This made it perfect for Cruz’s purpose. This was his ninth run on the Mary Anne, and there was no reason to believe it would be any less successful than the previous eight. No one suspected she carried any cargo beyond the limp mass of dead billfish in her hold. No one suspected that one particular dead swordfish contained twenty million dollars’ worth of pure top-grade Bolivian cocaine that did not normally form part of a billfish’s diet. Compressed and packed into dozens of waterproof, odor-proof, break-proof packages, this highly inhalable product of the Andean hinterland fit neatly into the honored fish’s hollowed-out body cavity.
Cruz did know enough to realize that the presence of five horses on the stern of the Mary Anne, 120 miles out from Providence, Rhode Island, was not in accord with normal commercial fishing procedure. Even if the horses had been dumped at sea, they could not have climbed aboard. Since he had not heard the metallic bang-and-rattle of the big winch that was used to haul in the longlines, they could not somehow have been lifted aboard.
It occurred to Cruz that Sandino might be enjoying a joke at his expense. A single hard stare was enough to put that possibility to rest. There was a lot of meat on Sandino, but not much of it was gray matter. Nor was it the sort of gag that Truque or Weatherford would concoct. Lowenstein—now, he was different. The computer and communications expert was clever. Cruz’s brows furrowed. Too clever to come up with a dumb line about horses on the stern.
“I don’t have time for stupid shit now, Sandino. We’ll be having to look out for Coast Guard soon.”
Cruz turned back to the thick port glass that looked out over the foredeck of the Mary Anne. Sullen and silent as they always were in the presence