I agreed.

"...Not much of a brain box, though, for his bulk."

"Smart enough to stay out of our locker."

Chuckles, because nothing exists but this room, really. The worldoutside is an empty, sleet drummed deck. We lean back and make clouds.

"Boss lady does not approve of unauthorized fly fishing."

"Boss lady can walk north till her hat floats."

"What did she say in there?"

"She told me that my place, with fish manure, is on the bottom."

"You don't Slide?"

"I bait."

"We'll see."

"That's all I do. If she wants a Slideman she's going to have to asknicely."

"You think she'll have to?"

"I think she'll have to."

"And if she does, can you do it?"

"A fair question," I puffed. "I don't know the answer, though."

I'd incorporate my soul and trade forty percent of the stock for theanswer. I'd give a couple years off my life for the answer. But theredoesn't seem to be a lineup of supernatural takers, because no one knows.Supposing when we get out there, luck being with us, we find ourselves anIkky? Supposing we succeed in baiting him and get lines on him. What then?If we get him shipside, will she hold on or crack up? What if she's made ofsterner stuff than Davits, who used to hunt sharks with poison-darted airpistols? Supposing she lands him and Davits has to stand there like a videoextra.

Worse yet, supposing she asks for Davits and he still stands there likea video extra or something else--say, some yellowbellied embodiment namedCringe?

It was when I got him up above the eight-foot horizon of steel andlooked out at all that body, sloping on and on till it dropped out of sightlike a green mountain range...And that head. Small for the body, but stillimmense. Fat, craggy, with lidless roulettes that had spun black and red