THE ANCIENT ART OF FLY FISHING

by Joshua Allen

(Originally published in Static Movement)

Howard could no longer steady his hands; another ailment age had

given him. His fingers shook as he tied a new fly to the end of his

nearly invisible line. He knew neither line nor fly existed, but that

didn't steady his hands. He wished the prickly feeling on the bottoms

of his feet were grass. When he used to go fishing for actual fish,

he would occasionally lie down in the grass face down, placing his

cheek against their cool blades, and dream of his wife Sara--back

when he used to get drunk on her laughter and gulp down her body with

his eyes and hands whenever she'd been close.

He cast his line up into the churning stream. In his

visualization, there was a piece of orange yarn tied to the line: a

strike indicator. He gave the line a little flip as the orange fleck

traveled up, over, and then into the multidimensional skein in front

of him. The skein churned and weaved, several strands flowing through

the twisted, shimmering blue ball, but none of it actually moving in

the three solid dimensions of space, nothing going up or down or out.

If you looked just right at it, none of it moved at all.

 He thought about Sara as he watched the fleck of orange

convolute in the skein and come out unharmed. He had dreamed of her

over and over again in the last sleep.

"The old guy got it? I don't see how. This isn't like fishing."

Jersar Staten, their effervescent new captain, picked his teeth just

to the periphery of Howard's field of vision. He wanted to act,

Howard could tell, but there was nothing for him to do now but watch.

"He's got his methods. Howard's the best." Clare always believed

in him. He needed that strength. She reminded him the most of Sara.

"He's got to be a hundred and seventy."

Clare's voice was small. "He's much older than that."

He rolled the line in a loop that looked like a bell from the

side and circle if you looked straight down it, like one of those PVC

ornaments that people used to hang on their balconies that would seem

to be a jagged piece of nothing with one breeze, and then reveal

itself as a six-pointed star in the next.

"Zip a little and then settle," he gave the line a little flip

to straighten its approach, "you must settle," Howard whispered to

his fly. "You must sink, you must swim, you must dance."

"What's he saying, Clare?"

"His readings are normal, Jersar."

"That's not what I asked."

"You must hurt." The indicator paused for a split second. "You

must hurt." The skein released a bubble that broke off, shimmering,

and disappeared in a wipe like a scene in a movie--a universe had

been born. "You must hurt. You must hurt..." Howard hesitated, the

words stinging even before they were real. "...the one you love."

The indicator dipped out of sight. Howard held the line steady

with his right hand and heaved the rod up and back with his left

hand. His wrist flared in pain, but he could afford to ignore it. The

line went taught, wriggled, jerked back three times in quick

succession, and then went limp. A rock--a thick patch of

hyperdimensional space--had seized his lure, nothing more.

Howard let the slipstream flowing out of the skein pull his line

down and took a few steps closer to the slipstream, letting his line

trail off to his left. He planted his feet, lifted the tip of the rod

and let the drag of force against his line bend his rod back. Then he

lifted it all at once and shot his fly forward, his seven-foot rod

acting like a kid's slingshot.

* * *

"You're going fishing again?" Sara pulled her head up from her

pillow. Another episode of hers. Howard wiped his brow, though it was

dry.

"Get some rest. I'll be back before you get supper on."

"Howard, I feel sick. My head won't stop aching."

Twenty years of marriage and her head always ached. At first, it

had been her way of ensuring her doctor would keep feeding her pain

pills. Then it had been a way to keep their son, Michael, at a

distance. Her head pounded whenever she didn't want to do something,

whenever life became inconvenient, whenever a decision needed tending

to. Even the doctors tried to tell her.

"I'll catch you a big trout." He backhanded her shoulder,

playfully.

She said nothing until he was almost out the door. Then he heard

her say, "This one's different. Not like the other times."

Howard paused at the door, considering. Then he picked up his

hat and placed it low on his head. Some of us have to enjoy life.

* * *

Howard tied a new lure on, an almost gaudy conglomeration of

feathers and dyed rabbit fur he had constructed himself in the slow

hours, many many years ago, out of pure intuition. It didn't really

exist, he knew that somehow each strand of rabbit fur and the way it

poked through the thread wrapped around it were parameters to a

navigation equation, but he'd never been able to see it well as

scribbly curves and numbers, only as feathers, hooks, lines and rod.

Howard heard a gull, but then realized it was a scream coming

over the com unit. Clare snapped it off with a twist of her wrist.

The fish needed to be caught. They were hurting in the deepest bowels

of the spaceship, which was gut shot and stranded in this wasted,

empty universe by Iridians. Howard pushed all that away, though the

echo of his children, the people of this ship, still bounced in his

skull, finding each center of peace he tried to establish and

annihilating it.
 Howard stepped to his left, letting the green line flow out. He

straddled the slipstream, a real-enough visual representation of

energy flowing out of the skein. He found an angle he liked. It gave

him a view of a bend just on the edge of the tangled blue ball, where

a small still eddy had formed. Reality was a tricky fish. She liked

to hide in calms at the edge of the chaos. He had enough room now for

a full cast. He whipped his line up. It trailed behind him,

unrolling, flowing backward. He tipped the rod forward with perfect

timing, loading the thin tip with potential energy.

"I don't like him straddling that slipstream, Clare. How are his

readings?"

"He'll be fine."

"We can't afford to lose him. I don't like this. Is our computer

back on line?"

"Dead, Jersar. Or don't you understand what that means?"

His indicator passed the eddy, paused, and then dipped. Howard

pulled line and rod up and back. The line jerked in rapid succession,

a vibration, another rock--no, now it coursed up and to the right,

into the heart of the skein. She was hooked. Reality was making a run

for deeper waters.

* * *

All day long she called his cell phone, and he ignored her. God

help him. He stood on that bank, looking for the slick red flash of

the trout, and he ignored her.

 When he got home, her head was shaved, though he never

understood why. She held a piece of paper.

"I went to the doctor, did you get my messages?"

He shook his head. She handed the paper to him. He expected it

to be a doctor's order or a petition for divorce, but that's not what

it was.

"I'm sorry I never loved you the right way."

Howard looked up from the paper, into Sara's eyes. "What is

this?"

"Tell Michael, too. I'm sorry I wasn't the right mother for

him."

Howard wiped his lips, though they were dry.

* * *

The ship lunged, not forward or backward or to either side, but

real-ward, toward home. The Iridians had stranded the ship in a void

between hyperspace and reality with no operating navigation computer

except this primitive construct Howard had developed years and years

ago--it was akin to leaving a man in the desert with no water. Harold

was going to get them home.

"He's got something." Clare clapped.

"Let's see what before we start the homecoming dance."

The line went taught and the reel buzzed. He let the green

strand zip through his hands. Once it unstrung a few dozen yards, he

used his thumb and forefinger as a brake to slow the line down to a

stop. "You must feel, you must rip, you must tear, you must lay down
your head in the cool cold water and let it burn, you must burn, you

must..."

Then he palmed the reel and brought the line in. Really, he was

dragging the ship toward the skein, toward home, but he felt like a

fish was coming toward him, a big one. The difference, of course, was

that this fish had no jaw, no bony lip for a hook to catch on, only a

complicated set of parameters that were so very slippery.

Howard's lips trembled. Saying the next words was too hard. He

wouldn't be able to say them; he wouldn't be able to reel the fish

in. The universe ran out, and he couldn't move. He was hung. He

choked on the words he was trying to force out. He had to say them,

but his voice only croaked. "You must..." He pulled the rod up,

reeling as the fish fought to the side then retreated back the other

way. "You must...hold!" The first word, not even the hardest and yet

to say it felt like giving birth. "The dead! Child! In your hands!"

The fish went up.

Real fish didn't have that option, but universes weren't fish,

not really. Howard lost his balance. The shaking in the hands had

migrated to his chest, which fluttered as though a bird was trying to

break out of his skin. "You must cry."

"How's it looking, Jersar?" Clare sounded giddy, as usual.

"String variables stable, hydrogen levels within acceptable

limits...I think he's got it."

* * *
 Howard set the words he couldn't figure out down on the table.

"What is this, Sara?"

"Do you love fishing more than me?"

"Absolutely." He told her. When she didn't smile, he batted her

arm. She leaned back as though repulsed by him suddenly. He wanted to

grab her, hold her, make sure she still loved him.

That night, he broke every fishing pole he owned while she

watched, wordless. He snapped them each into fourths, the fiberglass

poles splitting like wet sticks.

* * *

"You must die, you must die, you must set your heart in his

chest." Howard flailed once, but if he lost his grip now... Howard

was helpless to stop his foot from disappearing into the slipstream.

The fish tugged, then ran toward him. The ship around him shimmered

and faded.

"We're shifting. We're in the green. Realspace and home coming

up on scope." Jersar was giddy. He reminded Howard of Michael and of

himself at that age. He was naive, despite all his experience flying.

The universe hesitated and Howard reeled frantically. He begged

to no one, as his left leg now faded into nothing up to the hip. "You

must stop, you must stop, you must stop." The universe fled away,

now, on the loose line. In another second, it would break free. "You

must find a way to stop screaming."

"What's happening to him, Clare?"

 "I don't know. I think he's fallen into the slipstream. His leg

is off the chart."

"But it's still connected to him. Somewhere, right? It's still

there?"

If she answered, Howard didn't hear.

The swirling reached his chest, covering him in the cold ice of

emptiness, but still he reeled. His hands were a blur. The waters

came up over his neck, the river pulling him toward nowhere. He felt

his hands still turning. "You must float you must sink."

He heard voices like distant birds calling mates. "I'm running

the seeker program, Jersar."

"Not yet, Clare. We're moving realward, the universe is

coalescing. One more minute."

"He'll be gone in thirty seconds."

"Event horizon in thirty seconds. Our momentum will carry us

through. Thirty seconds!"

Howard had no choice. He pulled his rod in close to his body,

risking losing it in the current, and kept his hands working, but it

was like working the hands of a clock from the next planet over. He

opened his eyes, forgetting when he'd shut them, and saw blue all

around him. There was no oxygen. This stream of universes couldn't

understand oxygen.

* * *

"It's a poem, Howard."

He stared blankly at the paper.

 "I thought it might help you catch a fish, some day."

"Sara..."

And then, like a blink in time, she was gone, taken by cancer.

Then Michael was taken by the crash. Then Howard boarded a giant ship

bound nowhere. He lived on, despite himself. His genes were strong

and they used him to make the crew and the lives he helped, but

mostly they let him sleep in cold storage. They would wake him and

tell him how brilliant he was and beg him for help. He could see

himself and he could see Michael in their faces, but he could never

see Sara. She wasn't a part of his genes, so she never came to be.

And so he helped them because they were him, little hims and little

Michaels everywhere, and only the poem, strange like a chant, was

left of her.

* * *

It wasn't so bad. He would be annihilated, but his atoms would

live on, dispersed through the universe. He would be a part of stars,

and planets and lives of beings he couldn't comprehend. He would see

none of it, because seeing would be irrelevant, but he would be all

of it, everywhere. Entropy would spread him and give him to the stars

if he just breathed in the shimmering blue and let it go. Sara would

be out there, somewhere. Waiting in little bits and together they

could be fathers and mothers and daughters and pain and hurt and the

fish and the fish.

Howard pulled his arms in closer, thought the operation no

longer had the same logic. He the fish caught the end of the line,
but the line held. He'd reeled fast enough, and now he reeled harder.

Somewhere, his genetic son Jersar would be watching the final

parameters turn into cubes and complete the last equations. "And do

all this a thousand times. And then you will catch the slick, hidden

fish." Then the line snapped. All was lost.

Arms wrapped his chest and heaved him upward. They weren't

really arms, but the seeker program reassembling him not backward or

upward, but realward. He felt failure on his chest, like a slab of

marble crushing him. He gasped for air. Clare appeared in his vision,

looking so much like Sara, but only to him. Sara's eyes were softer,

her hair lighter, the curve of her saw slanted up just a few degrees

more. But Clare is all he has.

"I couldn't do it." His voice sounded like a croaking frog, like

a fish gulping for water.

"How did he hold on, Clare. I thought he'd been atomized."

She ignored Jersar and smoothed Howard's hair back. "You did do

it, Howard. We're home. The rescue ship is almost here. You saved us,

the whole ship. A million lives. Rest now. We'll let you rest."

He shook his head. "No more resting, Clare. No more cold. Let me

live on."

"Howard, no. We need you."

Jersar stood, but was frozen, as though unsure whether to carry

Howard back to the deep freeze or just return to the bridge. "What

you did..."

"I'll teach you. You could do it," Howard said.

 "You'll teach me that mantra you were saying?" Clare's eyes

brightened.

Howard pushed himself up into a sit. It felt good to feel his

muscles working, even though they shook violently. His time was short

and everything that was life felt worth feeling. "No, that's just for

me. But there are other poems, Clare.

"Help an old man up."

THE END