_One_
The moment arrived when Terry Holt realized that he was simply holding
the bag for Jimenez y Cía.--Jimenez and Company--in the city of Manila.
He wasn't getting anywhere, himself. So, painfully, he prepared to wind
up the company's affairs and his own, and start over. It seemed
appropriate to take inventory, consult the police--they'd been both
amiable and co-operative--and then make new plans. But first it would be
a good idea to go somewhere else for a while, until the problem
presented by _La Rubia_ and radar and fish and _orejas de ellos_ had
been settled. He was at work on the inventory when the door opened, the
warning-bell tinkled, and the girl came into the shop.
He looked up with a wary eye, glancing over the partition separating the
workshop area in which the merchandise sold by Jimenez y Cía. was
assembled. There were certain people he felt should not come into the
shop. The police agreed with him. He was prepared to throw out anybody
who came either to demand that he build something or else, or to demand
that he not build it or else. In such forcible ejections he would be
backed by the authorities of the city and the Philippine Republic.
But this customer was a girl. She was a pretty girl. She was pleasantly
tanned. Her make-up, if she wore any, looked natural, and she carried a
sizable parcel under her arm. She turned to close the door behind her.
She was definitely from the United States. So Terry said in English,
"Good afternoon. Can I do something for you?"
She looked relieved.
"Ah! We can talk English," she said gratefully. "I was afraid I'd have
trouble. I do have trouble with Spanish."
Terry came out from behind the partition marking off the workshop. The
shop was seventeen feet wide and its larger expanse of plate glass said,
"_Jimenez y Cía._" in large letters. Terry's now-vanished partner
Jimenez had liked to see his name in large print. Under the name was the
line "_Especialidades Electrónicas y Físicas._" This was Terry's angle.
He assembled specialties in the line of electronics and modern physics.
Jimenez had sold them, not wisely but too well. At the bottom corner of
the window there was a modest statement: "_Orejas de Ellos_," which
meant nothing to anybody but certain commercial fishermen, all of whom
would deny it.
The girl looked dubiously about her. The front of the shop displayed two
glaringly white electric washing machines, four electric refrigerators,
and two deep-freeze cabinets.
"But I'm not sure this is the right shop," she said. "I'm not looking
for iceboxes."
"They're window-dressing," said Terry. "My former business associate
tried to run an appliance shop. But the people who buy such things in
Manila only want the latest models. He got stuck with these from last
year. So we do--I did do--_especialidades electrónicas y físicas_. But
I'm shutting up shop. What are you looking for?"
The shop was in an appropriate place for its former products. Outside on
the Calle Enero there were places where one could buy sea food in
quantity, mother-of-pearl, pitch, coir rope, bêche-de-mer, copra, fuel
oil, Diesel repair-parts and edible birds' nests. _Especialidades_
fitted in. But though it was certainly respectable enough, this
neighborhood wasn't exactly where one would have expected to find a girl
like this shopping for what a girl like this would shop for.
"I'm looking," she explained, "for somebody to make up a special device,
probably electronic, for my father's boat."
"Ah!" said Terry regretfully. "That's my line exactly, as is evidenced
in Spanish on the window and in Tagalog, Malay and Chinese on cards you
can read through the glass. But I'm suspending operations for a while.
What kind of special device? Radar--No. I doubt you'd want _orejas de
ellos_...."
"What are they?"
"Submarine ears," said Terry. "For fishing boats. The name is no clue at
all. They pick up underwater sounds, enabling one to hear surf a long
way off. Which may be useful. And some fish make noises and the
fishermen use these ears to eavesdrop on them and catch them. You
wouldn't be interested in anything of that sort!"
The girl brightened visibly.
"But I am! Something very much like it, at any rate. Take a look at this
and see what my father wants to have made."
She put her parcel on a deep-freeze unit and pulled off its paper
covering. The object inside was a sort of curved paddle with a handle at
one end. It was about three feet long, made of a light-colored fibrous
wood, and on the convex part of its curvature it was deeply carved in
peculiar transverse ridges.
"A fish-driving paddle," she explained. "From Alua."
He looked it over. He knew vaguely that Alua was an island somewhere
near Bohol.
"Naturally a fish-driving paddle is used to drive fish," she said.
"To--herd them, you might say. People go out in shallow water and form a
line. Then they whack paddles like these on the surface of the water.
Fish try to get away from the sound and the people herd them where they
want them--into fish-traps, usually. I've tried this, while wearing a
bathing suit. It makes your skin tingle--smart, rather. It's a sort of
pins-and-needles sensation. Fish would swim away from an underwater
noise like that!"
Terry examined the carving.
"Well?"
"Of course we think there's something special about the noise these
paddles make. Maybe a special wave-form?"
"Possibly," he admitted. "But--"
"We want something else to do the same trick on a bigger scale.
Directional, if possible. Not a paddle, of course. Better. Bigger.
Stronger. Continuous. We want to drive fish and this paddle's limited in
its effect."
"Why drive fish?" asked Terry.
"Why not?" asked the girl. She watched his face.
He frowned a little, considering the problem the girl posed.
"Oh, _ellos_ might object," he said absently.
"Who?"
"_Ellos_," he repeated. "It's a superstition. The word means 'they' or
'them.' Things under the ocean who listen to the fish and the
fishermen."
"You're not serious." It was a statement.
"No," he admitted, still eying the paddle. "But the modern, businesslike
fishermen who buy submarine ears for sound business reasons call them
_orejas de ellos_ and everybody knows what they mean, even in the
modernized fishing fleet."
"Which," said the girl, "Jimenez y Cía. has had a big hand in
modernizing. That's why I came to you. Your name is Terry Holt, I think.
An American Navy Captain said you could make what my father wants."
Terry nodded suddenly to himself.
"What you want," he said abruptly, "might be done with a tape-recorder,
a submarine ear, and an underwater horn. You'd make a tape-recording of
what these whackings sound like under water, edit the tape to make the
whackings practically continuous, and then play the tape through an
underwater horn to reproduce the sounds at will. That should do the
trick."
"Good! How soon can you do it?" she asked.
"I'm afraid not at all," said Terry. "I find I've been a little too
efficient in updating the fishing fleet. I'm leaving the city for the
city's good."
She looked at him inquiringly.
"No," he assured her. "The police haven't asked me to leave. They're
glad I'm going, but they're cordial enough and it's agreed that I'll
come back when somebody else finds out how _La Rubia_ catches her fish."
"_La Rubia?_"
"_The Redhead_," he told her. "It's the name of a fishing boat. She's
found some place where fish practically fight to get into her nets. For
months, now, she's come back from every trip loaded down gunwale-deep.
And she makes her trips fast! Naturally the other fishermen want to get
in on the party."
"So?"
"The bonanza voyages," Terry explained, "started immediately after _La
Rubia_ had submarine ears installed. Immediately all the other boats
installed them. My former partner sold them faster than I could assemble
them. And nobody regrets them. They do increase the catches. But they
don't match _La Rubia_. She's making a mint of money! She's found some
place or she has some trick that loads her down deep every time she puts
out to sea."
The girl made an interrogative sound.
"The other fishermen think it's a place," Terry added, "so they ganged
up on her. Two months back, when she sailed, the entire fishing fleet
trailed her. They stuck to her closer than brothers. So she sailed
around for a solid week and never put a net overboard. Then she came
back to Manila--empty. They were furious. The price of fish had gone
sky-high in their absence. They went to sea to make some money
regardless. When they got back they found _La Rubia_ had sailed after
they left, got back before they returned--and she was just loaded with
fish, and the market was back to normal. There was bad feeling. There
were fights. Some fishermen landed in the hospital and some in jail."
A motor truck rolled by on the street outside the shop of the now
moribund Jimenez y Cía. The girl automatically turned her eyes to the
source of the noise. Then she looked back at Terry.
"And then my erstwhile associate Jimenez had a brainstorm," said Terry
ruefully. "He sold the skipper of _La Rubia_ on the idea of short-range
radar. I built a set for him. It was good for possibly twenty miles. So
_La Rubia_ sailed in the dark of the moon with fifty fishing boats
swearing violent oaths that they'd follow her to hell-and-gone. When
night fell _La Rubia_ put out her lights, used her radar to locate the
other boats who couldn't see her, and sneaked out from their midst. She
came back loaded down with fish. There were more fights and more men in
the hospital and in jail. Some of _La Rubia's_ men boasted that they'd
used radar to dodge their rivals. And that's how the police got
interested in me."
The girl had listened interestedly.
"Why?"
"Oh, Jimenez began to take orders for radar from other fishing boat
owners. If _La Rubia_ could dodge them by radar, they could trail her by
radar even in the dark. So the skipper and crew of _La Rubia_ promised
blood-curdling things as Jimenez's fate if he delivered a radar set to
anybody else. Then the skippers and crews of other boats made even more
blood-curdling threats if he didn't deliver radar to them. So Jimenez
ran away, leaving me to hold the bag."
The girl nodded.
"And therefore," said Terry, "I'm shutting up shop. I'll turn the
inventory over to the police and go off somewhere until someone learns
where _La Rubia_ gets her fish. When things calm down again, I'll come
back and start up business once more--without Jimenez. I'll probably
stick to electric-eye doors, burglar alarms, closed-circuit television
systems and things like that. Then I might make this underwater
broadcasting device, if your father still wants it. I'd better not now."
"We heard about your problem," said the girl. "Almost exactly the way
you just explained it."