Tales from Kalgachia - 27

Clement Seedenhyde was a fishmonger - and thus a criminal.

It was a disagreeable oversight in Kalgachi law, which for the sake of maintaining full sovereignty over the country's food supply had forbidden the import or export of any comestibles except 'recreational beverages', this single allowance being an apparent one-off sop to the Nova English brewing industry whose craft had been found irreplicable by the finest minds in Kalgachi biochemistry. The official reasoning for denying any further exceptions was that Kalgachia could reproduce just about anything else natively, especially once the closed-system agronomists of Lapivril had perfected the means to replicate tropical climates in the deep lithosphere. Whether by resource shortage or technical difficulty, however, they had not made any forays into aquaculture thus far and Kalgachia's natural fish stocks were limited to a few freshwater tiddlers, too small and too few to create a meal, which ventured upstream from foreign lands and made it through the narrow, seasonally-flowing rapids which constituted most of Kalgachia's rivers.

The absence of fish from the national diet was not especially remarked upon by the labouring classes who were content to fill their bellies with a thousand variations of roast mutton and root vegetables, chased by torrents of gin and vodka. The cultured elite, however, lamented the lack of a piscean aspect to their culinary lives - especially those who had travelled abroad and sampled the sea's bounty directly. Thus was created an unmet demand for fish whose fulfilment, in the absence of any legal reform, fell to the criminal classes by default.

It took a certain type of individual to reconcile the aspiration to stand among the cream of the Kalgachi meritocracy with a naked defiance of the Oktavyan Code, the supposedly infallible work of the Council of Perfecti whose collective hand was said to channel the relevatory vibrations of the Garden Ketheric itself. Upon reflection Seedenhyde supposed that he was indeed that type of individual, or else he would not be in the business that he was. In all but one respect the man's outward appearance was that of the vaunted 'Homo Kalgachiensis' - raised in Oktavyan City, mixed ethnicity, unpeturbed in the face of danger, irreverent in the face of pomposity, relentlessly cunning and jolly to the last. But time and again, the same searing question had assailed his ears from folk of good standing who had assumed that the absence of an Urchaginka badge on his business attire meant he had merely neglected to wear it. The answer, that he had never in fact participated in the national rite of passage that was the Urchagin, replayed in his head from the thousands of awkward situations in which it had been uttered - job offers had been rescinded in front of him, church congregations had shunned him, the only type of people who provided him with stimulating conversation and company fell silent at his words and avoided him thereafter. Once they had even enlisted the ushers of the Oktavyan Opera House to escort him off the premises. His hurried explanation, that a near-fatal case of meningitis and its complications had kept him hospitalised until he was too old to be eligible for the Urchagin, was usually lost among the crushing silence or derisory hissing. They always had an excuse to hand, said those few who bothered listening to his appeals. Who 'they' were was never entirely clear to Seedenhyde, but apparently he could count himself among them.

His career in the Kalgachi civil service had duly stalled at its very beginning and he had found himself stuck in the position of mailroom clerk at the Directorate of the Tumultuous Wastes - working among Froyalaners, of all people - where it gradually became evident that his supervisor had been banished to the same place for his sociopathic tendencies. Being rather less intelligent than Seedenhyde, but intelligent enough to resent the disparity, the supervisor had duly used his authority to make Seedenhyde's life a living nightmare over the course of several years. No mistake was too small to escape a ritual reprimand - where no mistakes were made, they would be contrived. Over time Seedenhyde had felt his jollity slowly fall away, it being finally smothered by an incident regarding some accidental damage to the seal of a diplomatic pouch which the supervisor gleefully referred through the command chain, getting Seedenhyde a formal warning from the Directorate Postmaster that one more complaint would result in his dismissal.

Seedenhyde - not wishing to give his supervisor the satisfaction - had finished his shift, headed down to the Directorate's subway station and jumped in front of an oncoming train.

Unfortunately from his perspective, the impact had thrown him back onto the platform with survivable injuries and he had woken up in a hospital bed some days later. Having reached something of a bedrock layer in his self-esteem with the revelation that he could not even kill himself properly, his mood had been stabilised by the undemanding bedside chatter of the surgeon assigned to reconstruct his fractured skull - an affable Nezeni by the name of Dr. Larva - and a cocktail of psychotropic drugs. It was Larva's casual remark about the difficulties of fish procurement, as the two were discussing their culinary tastes, that caused an idea to part the curtains of Seedenhyde's drug-addled delirium and dance about the stage of his mind in burlesque titillation.

About a year previously he had been tasked with locating the misplaced visa of one Jan De Schurk, the reluctantly-apprenticed son of a barrel organ builder from Kasterburg who was frequently called across the Kalgachi border to service and repair his father's exported contraptions. Seedenhyde had eventually found the missing visa - it had fallen behind the back of a filing cabinet drawer - and his ever-blistering supervisor had arranged the necessary diplomatic clearance for Seedenhyde himself to visit De Schurk's hometown, the Kasterburgish sea port of Nieuw Ingelheim, and deliver the visa in person with the Directorate's most effuse apologies for the considerable delay in its processing. For once the supervisor had misalculated - what was supposed to be a punitive errand turned out to be an unscheduled holiday for Seedenhyde who had neither travelled abroad nor seen the ocean before. Better still, Mr. De Schurk proved to be a gracious individual in his own gruff Batavian way - upon the receiving the visa he had berated Seedenhyde for trying to leave his company so quickly and insisted that his Kalgachi visitor, having come so far, should "stick arount for a bit men, see de sights for fuck sake eh?" What followed was a most agreeable tour of Nieuw Ingelheim, guided by De Schurk and mainly spent in the town's bars where the two men imbibed formidable quantities of St. Gesellmann's beer, all at De Schurk's expense. The man had barely finished his first drink before freely denigrating his 'miserly prick' of a father who, it transpired, heaped a great deal of work on him for a tokan pittance of a wage. Seedenhyde had retorted with tales about his own malevolent supervisor back home, and the two men had bonded in increasingly drunken terms until the bar's owner, a dour pillar of medicority who looked like he had never taken a drink in his life, refused to serve them any more and ejected them from the premises.

De Schurk had assented to Seedenhyde's suggestion that they sober up by getting something to eat, leading him through a labyrinthe of bustling alleys toward the town's less-salubrious dock district. There, nonetheless, they had found a pierside restaurant of acceptable cleanliness and the two men had gorged themselves on platters of seafood which, according to the waiter, had been caught that very morning. Such was Seedenhyde's only experience of eating fish, which he had found sufficiently delicious and vivifying that along with the curse-laden generosity of one Jan De Schurk, it had rooted itself deeply and fondly in his memory. De Schurk, as they parted, had casually offered to sneak some fish into Kalgachia for Seedenhyde on his next visit. Seedenhyde had politely declined, explaining that he could not in good conscience let Schurk risk charges of smuggling and subsequent deportation - something as pungent as seafood would catch the noses of the border guards themselves, let alone their search dogs. He had, however, offered to pay De Schurk to deliver him a crate of St. Gesellmann's beer whenever he was in Kalgachia - that was legal enough. De Schurk, being only too willing to supplement his pathetic income, had agreed to the arrangement and made infrequent but consistent deliveries to Seedenhyde in the year that had elapsed since then. More often than not, most of each crate was already gone by the time De Schurk had slurred his belated goodbyes but Seedenhyde had no regrets. The periodic visits by his Kasterburgish friend had done much to shore up his flagging morale until the incident with the diplomatic pouch had rendered things hopeless.

Now, propped up in his hospital bed with a series of scars atop his head from multiple operations, Seedenhyde resolved to revisit the fish question - this time the medical authority of Dr. Larva, a man well-regarded in his field and endowed with no small amount of administrative authority, would come into play. With a few strings pulled on his part, the risk factor of a small-time fish smuggling operation could be wiped aside and such an arrangement promised to be vastly lucrative for all who conspired in it.

Whether inspired by the prospect of personal gain, or some kind-hearted desire to avoid dashing the only hope which was bringing Seedenhyde out of his suicidal state, it took suprisingly little persuasion to bring Dr. Larva on board with his patient's budding plan. Most of the Directorate of Health and Public Welfare, Larva explained, were running one kind of fiddle or another - something Seedenhyde already suspected as he had worked alongside a number of disgraced and demoted physicians at the Directorate of the Tumultuous Wastes, the traditional human-resource dumping ground of the Kalgachi state.

The operation was duly put into motion - haphazardly at first, but soon to be perfected into a well-oiled smuggling machine. It began at the Nieuw Ingelheim fish market, not a place for the unwary. Here one Jan De Schurk ventured into fierce bidding wars with deep-pocketed wholesalers and bitter arguments with acid-tongued fishwives who were supremely skilled at cleaning up the early catch from the bottom of the trawler's hold, bathed in slime and nibbled by the crustacean bycatch for half a week before it was landed, to pass it off as something fresher. A practised eye could discern between the smooth matte scales of fish caught the very day of their sale, and the porous glistening of older catches which had been immersed in brine before display to re-plump their flattened bodies and mask the smell of their spoilage. De Schurk was gifted with just such an eye, and could reliably come away from the market with fish fresh enough to stay edible during the long journey ahead - the problem was getting them at a low enough bid to recoup some profit from the rate Seedenhyde paid him. Sometimes he succeeded - other times he had to walk away empty-handed and await the next day's boats.

Once it was acquired, De Schurk would immediately place the fish into a sealed, DHPW-issued icebox marked 'Blood Plasma for Transfusion - Do Not Open'. With the icebox came all the headed and stamped documents required to pass De Schurk off as a medical courier under contract to the DHPW, including the necessary entry visa to Kalgachia. He would board the soonest train to Kasterburg city - always in time to make his connection for the overnight train to Oktavyan, the Kalgachi capital. Even under refrigeration, speed was essential to get the fish to its destination before it spoiled beyond the standards of haute cuisine.

Some time in the morning, after it had entered Kalgachia, the train would pull up in a remote siding to be searched by border guards who moved progressively through the train's sleeping compartments, rousing those who were not yet awake with unsympathetically loud fists to the door. After an hour checking papers and inspecting luggage, they would let the train move off for its final run into Oktavyan. That the DHPW had no official arrangements for blood plasma import from Kasterburg was not suspected by the border guards - the paperwork De Schurk showed them was of the same type used for imported pharmaceuticals, familiar in its legitimacy. Dr. Larva, in his cunning, had even furnished De Schurk with an advisory document stating that any attempt to open the icebox for inspection would render its blood plasma medically unusable. Left unbroken, the box's seal thus kept the smell of fish from the border guards' sniffer dogs. Dr. Larva's extra document also dissuaded the attentions of the Kasterburgish Beschutting, whose interest at any rate was more directed at what entered the country than what left it.

From De Schurk, the goods passed to Seedenhyde who stored them in the refrigerator of his small apartment, above a surface-level road intersection in the middle of Oktavyan city. It was an easy location for Seedenhyde's customers, gained through the elite social circles in which Dr. Larva moved, to spot the covert signal that fish were available for sale - a stuffed toy cat placed in the window. Demand always outstripped supply and Seedenhyde sold the fish on a first-come-first-serve basis. Some of his customers would send their Froyalanish house servants past his apartment every hour to check if the little cat had appeared - it was usually these burbling minions who picked up the first, best fish which would end up on their masters' platters that very evening. With each successive dinner party, furtive word of mouth had brought Seedenhyde more customers whom, as he quickly discovered, would pay any price he cared to charge them for such a rare culinary treat. He dispensed with any notions of attempting a return to the Kalgachi civil service; the salary he was likely to get could never compete with what he enjoyed now. Similarly, De Schurk got enough from his cut that he finally plucked up the courage to tell his father to stuff his barrel organs up his arse - sideways, as he recounted to Seedenhyde - and live off the proceeds of his fish smuggling alone. Dr. Larva, for his part, was not interested in money but he did insist upon the first pick of the fish coming in.

Seedenhyde was proud of what he had achieved - on a good run, his fish could get from the sea to his customers' tables in as little as forty-eight hours. He had also been proud of himself for avoiding the temptation to eat the profits - some of the fish De Schurk had landed on his kitchen table were as good as the ones they had devoured on that fine sunny day in Nieuw Ingelheim, but he resolved to always put his customers first.

Until now, he thought, as the click of his apartment's closing door echoed in his ears. De Schurk had just left him with another shipment, and by the sublime grace of the Garden Aquatic it was the best yet - three Great Western Haddock at three kilos apiece with another three kilos of Cosimo Mackerel, all of it so fresh and unblemished that Seedenhyde could have sworn he saw the tails twitch. De Schurk had also left him with something else - the usual crate of St. Gesellmann's, a little over half of which was already gone and now emitted a steady stream of yeasty gas which coursed up Seedenhyde's gullet and tickled his nostrils at belching intervals. Now its inspirational influence combined with the fortuitous position of the clock on the wall, indicating the time when Seedenhyde usually took lunch.

Screw it, he thought. The customers can wait for an hour. Mackerel time.

The preparation was simple enough - steamed for half an hour with vegetables, lightly salted and drizzled in goat butter. He had received enough feedback from the hostesses of Oktavyan society about their trial and error in cooking his fish, often into the realms of tiresome detail broken only by the piquancy of their sporadic flirtation. It amused Seedenhyde that they no longer questioned his lack of an Urchaginka badge, now that he had become indispensable to them.

His mirthful reverie over the stove was abruptly broken by a sharp knock on the door, causing a cold sweat to flash over him. He looked over at the window - he had definitely not put the stuffed cat on display, so none of his customers had cause to arrive yet. Perhaps it was De Schurk again? Perhaps he had left his wallet behind or some such thing?

Yes that must be it, he thought as he swung open the door - only to find three complete strangers standing before him. His chill returned as he studied their plain overcoats, their military haircuts and their contemptuously gormless faces. The man in the middle flashed a badge in its leather holder, a silver shield charged with the letter P - the dreaded motif of the Prefects, Kalgachia's national security service. Seedenhyde felt the blood drain from his face and he gawped at the man in barely concealed terror. His world was ending before him, as clearly as it had when he had jumped in front of that train.

The man glanced over Seedenhyde's shoulder into the kitchen beyond. "Is Mister De Schurk in?" He said flatly.

Seedenhyde hesitated. If he was not the man they sought, maybe he could talk his way out. "Nobody of that name lives here, officer," he said.

"I didn't ask if he lived here," said the man, raising his eyebrows pointedly. "I asked if he was in."

"Uh no, I'm th-th-the only one, only one here..." Seedenhyde's nerves were failing him already.

"It's just that..." said the man, holding up a Kasterburg passport, "he left this in his train compartment. We're trying to get it back to him. According to our... impeccable sources... a man of his description was seen entering this building about three hours ago."

"Oh..." said Seedenhyde. "Well, uh... you just missed him. He left about... fifteen minutes ago."

"Do you know where he's gone?"

"Not for sure, officer. He, ah... " Seedenhyde looked behind him while nervously rubbing his neck, inwardly screaming at himself to tell a coherent story. "...He fetches me beer from Kasterburg. He usually gets on the next train back, so you'll probably find him at the station." He cracked a weak smile. "He won't be going anywhere without a passport, right?"

"Right," said the man. "Thanks for your help." He nodded to his two goons and the trio turned to leave.

"No problem, officer." Seedenhyde began to close the door, termbling. He could not believe his luck.

"And quit with the fish!" echoed the Prefect's voice from the hallway. "You know it's against the law. We could smell it across the street... think of your neighbours!"

Seedenhyde was paralysed with a jolt of blinding terror, visions of imminent arrest playing out before his eyes - but all he heard was the three Prefects descending the communal staircase, followed by the squealing hinges of the building's main door as they left.