Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves by Robert N. Charrette

be; he was necessary. Even in this age of information, there were still physical commodities that had to be moved, and many of them moved most cost-effectively by ship. And ships required sailors, at least according to union rules.
    Used to be that a sailor had a hard life, but that was before Carlos's time and so really didn't bother Carlos at all. Used to be ships were a lot smaller than S.S. Wisteria, too. Being on a small ship, now that would bother Carlos. He didn't have to worry about that. Container ships like Wisteria were bigger than just about anything that had ever sailed.
    The big ships were more sophisticated, too. Most of the, time it seemed that Carlos was a supernumerary, that ships like the Wisteria could sail themselves. And most of the time they could. That was fine with Carlos. It gave him time for other things, like surfing the vid nets.
    Weather was a feature of the sailor's life that Carlos didn't care much for, especially cold weather. Wisteria was chugging along in the grip of the West Wind Drift just now, well inside the iceberg limit—not that it mattered much this early in the season—and letting the currents do most of the work in taking them across the shortest distance between New Zealand and South America. The weather was as cold as it would get for this trip. Carlos would be glad when they headed up the Chilean coast, gladder still when they made port in California. Meantime, when he didn't have monitor duty, he'd stay in his cabin or in the lounge and stay warm. Why the bridge couldn't have better heating he didn't understand. The lounge was heated just fine, and it was crew space like the bridge. Had a bigger vid screen too. Only natural that he prefer the lounge to the bridge. Too bad he couldn't convince the captain to patch the monitor feeds down here. Sometimes the captain was a little too by-the-book.
    As if in response to Carlos's thoughts, the loudspeaker spoke with the captain's voice.
    "All hands, this is the captain."
    Carlos sneered at the formality. Too by-the-book.
    "Our weather radar is picking up a small storm that isn't showing on satellite weather feeds. It's probably just a glitch in the system, but I want everyone ready for weather just in case."
    A small storm wouldn't faze Wisteria. Carlos hoped it wouldn't fritz vid reception. The non-corp channels often had weak up-down links, and it was a non-corp channel he was watching now. They had all the good stuff.
    The show was right on target with Carlos: an expose on McKutchen Wood. He liked the way the reporter—Lauder, the name was; he'd remember that—was getting to the meat. Lauder had the Wood pegged as a doorway to other dimensions. Carlos had figured that out as soon as he'd heard about the Wood. How could anybody with a brain not know that something was lurking at the edge of reality, trying to get in? It was so obvious! Some things had already slipped into the real world. Places like McKutchen Wood were doorways for otherworldly things. People like Lauder knew. Carlos knew too.
    Carlos focused down and forgot about the captain's order. The images on the screen were too compelling. He knew all about this kind of stuff, but had an insatiable need to know more. This Lauder had a good line, a good angle, real perceptive. Carlos knew there were plenty of things that ordinary science couldn't explain. Plenty of real things. Things that people like Lauder had the scoop on. The paranormal was all around.
    Not that Carlos had had any personal encounters. But lately Carlos had been seeing a lot more reports about the up-urge in magical things. It used to be hard to find that sort of stuff. Not hard anymore, and the quality of the information was much better. The eyewitnesses were less obviously over die edge, the pictures less fuzzy, and the physical evidence— DNA, for God's sake! Sure, the establishment still said that all the data on this kind of stuff was faked, simply the efforts of crackpots, lunatics, and hoaxers;