Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [43]
“I guess,” Boon admitted. Will figured Boon’s hesitation was just because the idea had been Will’s and not his own. Not that he had contributed much during this exercise, other than wearisome negativity and the occasional judicious application of criminal tendencies. Will found himself glad that his encounters with Boon over the past year had been minimal, and that there hadn’t been more extensive group projects like this one. Far from being captain material, Boon seemed like he’d be a detriment to any starship.
“Let’s get moving, then,” Dennis suggested. “The sooner we finish, the sooner we’re home.”
San Francisco’s Fish Market, on the site of the city’s old Fisherman’s Wharf, was a massive complex where dozens of boats, hovercraft, and skimmers brought thousands of pounds of fish every day for the citizens of San Francisco. Fresh seafood had always been a tradition in the city, and remained so to this day.
Will smelled the market before he could see it. The unique and powerful odor of so many fish-dead and not-concentrated in one place created an olfactory wall that was unmistakable. A stranger, beamed into San Francisco for the first time, would have been able to find her way to the Fish Market from anyplace within a kilometer of it. When they passed the invisible barrier, Will wrinkled his nose and smiled at his comrades. “We’re nearly there,” he said.
“Will?” Dennis ventured. “I’ve been to the Fish Market before. It’s huge. Do you have any idea how we’ll find the checkpoint when we get there?”
Will flashed him a smile. “I have no idea. I figured we’d cross that bridge when we got to it.”
“As long as there’s a plan,” Felicia put in. She walked next to Will almost all the time now, and had been sleeping next to him at night. She had never suggested anything further, though, and except for casual-and slightly more than casual-physical contact from time to time, they hadn’t really touched in any meaningful way. A few days ago, Will had been sure he’d been reading her signals correctly, but now he wasn’t as certain. He’d had a couple of girlfriends before, but they had been brief affairs, not at all serious, and having been raised in an all-male household, he sometimes thought of women as a race every bit as different from him as Andorians or Vulcans. Maybe if he’d had sisters, or at least a mother, he would have some idea of what to say and how to act around them. As it was, he had to make it all up. He definitely wanted something to happen-from the moment he’d started looking at Felicia in that light, instead of merely as an extraordinarily gifted cadet who happened to be female, he had wanted to be with her.
But where do you go from here, Will?
He didn’t know the answer to that, any more than he knew where in the vast Fish Market they should look for their checkpoint.
There were, as Dennis had pointed out, hundreds of stalls in the Fish Market. Some offered only one specific type of seafood-Will saw stalls for squid, for shrimp, prawns, lobsters, roe, salmon, and many others-while others offered more variety. It seemed that every craft, or every fisher who went out to sea, had his or her own stall. The wares were displayed on metal trays so cold to the touch that Will had once thought his skin would stick or break off if he dared to finger them, only to find out later that safety regulations required that they be cold enough to keep the fish fresh but not to injure curious humans. Some stalls even had large saltwater tanks where live fish, eels, and octopuses swam and waited to be taken away by some consumer or professional chef. Around each stall, humans and aliens of virtually every description loitered, examining the day’s catch-sniffing, touching, eyeing, comparing a swordfish at one with a tuna at the next.
“Dennis has a point, Will,” Estresor Fil offered after they’d been walking amongst the stalls for a while. “This place is big, and crowded. Are we sure this is what the clue points to? And is there anything in it that might narrow things down more for us?”
Will had been