JASON

I’m only a Silver, so don’t expect too much. My name is Jason, of the Hall of Samos and the Tribe of Hermes. I was born in the Year Forty-two of the City, eleven years after the Relocation. I work on a fishing boat. I haven’t written anything long since I qualified as a citizen thirteen years ago. These two days I’m going to tell you about changed my life completely. Since Fate caught me up in great events, I’ll do my best to set things down clearly, in case it can do anyone good to read about what happened and what we all said and did.

Amphitrite had been kind, and we’d had a good haul that day, lots of ribbers and a few red gloaters, big ones. They were all heading north with the winter currents, so we simply had to stay in place and use the fine nets to scoop them out. We joked about sticking our hands into the water and pulling out a fish, the kind of day that redeems all the other days where we came home with thin hauls or none. Plato’s a hard planet for humans, and we depend on the catch to have enough protein.

It was chilly and grey out on the ocean, spitting with rain. As we headed homewards around Dawn Point the east wind caught us. I fastened my jerkin up to my throat. The other boats coming in made positive signals. Everyone seemed to have had a good day. It was the kind of thing to cheer your liver. We passed a flatboat gathering suface kelp, which the Saeli like to eat, and even they signalled that they had a good haul.

Our boat was called Phaenarete after a girl Dion had known who was killed in the Battle of Lucia. Dion had been the first one to sail her, so he’d had the choice of naming her. He had taught me everything I knew about handling boats, and fishing too, and a lot about how to live. We were as close as father and son, and closer than many such because we’d chosen each other. Dion was too old to go out regularly now, and Leonidas and Aelia were dead, so I was in charge of Phaenarete, and I had a crew of lunatics. Well, that’s not a kind way to put it, but that’s how I thought of them.

Now, fishing is essential, everyone knows that, and it’s also reasonably dangerous—even if you know what you’re doing you can get caught out by a squall or an underwater eruption—or the usual kind of eruption, come to that. That’s what happened to Aelia and Leonidas five years back. Their luck ran out.