Filaria - Brent Hayward [22]
Diverting his reveries back to the crab, and to possibilities of better times ahead, Tran so wondered again if the catch could truly be prophetic. Might this be a turning point in life? Was it absurd to allow a moment’s hope?
He frowned. When Tran so had first lifted the dripping crustacean from the water, it had pleaded, “No kill! Please no kill. No eat, man, big luck! I help. Big luck!”
But should he believe it? Foolish to trust crustaceans, he knew, but maybe just this once a crab might be telling the truth. If he believed enough?
The creature struggled feebly in the holding net. Surreptitiously, Tran so watched it, glancing once or twice over his shoulder at the shacks of Hoffmann City, and the few people milling about. No one paid him or the crab any attention. Tran so Phengh kept a knife in a scabbard, at his waist. He used it to defend these rare catches. He also used the knife to clean fish, but had not drawn it, for either reason, in a long time.
There came an approaching rumble. He looked up. Along the breakwater, atop the slope of the beach — where the water level had once been when Tran so was a kid — trundled a god of dispensing. Stopping at the brink, it watched him from on high. He glared at it. The god nodded, an almost imperceptible motion.
“Can I help you?” Tran so Phengh asked when it became clear the god was not going to speak first.
“I merely bid you a good morning, sir. How’s the fishing?”
“Terrible.”
The god continued to stare with its tiny, unreadable eyes. “Sorry to hear that. But I see you’ve caught something there?” Indicating the disturbance in the water with a short arm, which emerged from beneath its tarnished shoulder plate. “What is that? A crab?”
“Yes,” Tran so said. “I’ve caught a sick crab.”
“Excellent. And would you like a food pak, sir, to go with it? I’m coming from the depot. They’re nice and fresh.”
“Fresh food paks?” Tran so Phengh almost smiled. “I don’t need any right now, thanks. Larders are full.”
“Well, how about a vial for copulation? Keep your cock nice and hard.”
“No.”
“Perhaps a dose of the remedy then?” Holding up a capsule, shaking it so the contents sluiced about. “Makes you feel right as rain in no time.”
What angered Tran so about these encounters was the naively positive attitude of the dispensing gods. Each time he wondered if the deities truly believed in the products they pushed or if they were all just good liars. “I am immune,” he said.
“Sir?” Unsure, the god paused, still proffering the capsule.
“I am not able to contract the Red Plague,” he explained, slowly. “My wife has it. And my friends have it. My infant son had it. He took your remedy every day, twice a day, with his milk, until he died. I, however, cannot get the sickness. As much as I try.”
The dispensing god clearly did not know what to say, remaining still for a moment, blinking. Finally, it rocked back and forth on its treads. It put the capsule away. “I see,” it said, nodding again. “You have no faith.”
The god seemed genuinely hurt but it did not want to argue. Gods and men both had tired of that. Turning away, the deity moved off; Tran so returned his attention to Lake Seven. Gods of dispensing, he decided, were too polite and not so smart. How intelligent would the lake god be, out there in its tank? At least there was only one of them, he believed, as opposed to the numerous dispensing gods. Perhaps a deity apportioned a finite amount of intellect throughout its representatives: the more entities of a particular variety, the thicker in the head they became.
As Tran so pondered this theory, the crab managed to pull itself onto a piece of floating garbage and, half out of the water — but still pinned under the wet net — it called out in a feeble voice. Tran so did his best to ignore the cries but when he thought he heard his wife’s name in the quiet, damp tones, he hunkered