REPROCESSING Similarly with four men, hardened in mind and body by many sorts of hard labour at sea and elsewhere without much gain. They worked as dockers, but much picketing by them and their kind did not stop them being mechanized out of their jobs. They sailed as distant water trawlermen and saw their nation's supposedly all-defending Navy, in the `Cod War', unable to stop Iceland's much smaller craft from continually cutting their fishing gear off, for regulations forbade them to use firearm unless firearm was used against them first, until Britain abandoned the fight rather than admit that the regulations were wrong; they sought what living could be got from the Barents Sea, but saw it fished out in a few years; they tried coastal salmon fishing, and saw it ruined by overconserved multiplying seals and other enemies and price-undercut by farmed salmon; between this they potted for shellfish and had the usual nuisances, boating holidaymakers hauling their pots, swarms of a new sort of big sea-woodlouse eating the pot baits first, mass deaths of edible crabs from pollution, and other real or imagined enemies - which once, losing patience, they took action against, and the next carful of weekend scuba divers who came with an inflatable loaded with diving gear on a trailer came out of the village pub to find their car there but their trailer and its load gone. Thus our four got the means to dive for scallops, usually avoiding crabs and lobsters, for toleration gained from them being of local blood would have only extended so far; until one day they returned from a hard day in rough sea to find on their quay an official (escorted by two policeman as if into an unsafe area) who read out a long rigmarole of names of chemicals and bacteria and parts per million, and such laboratory-talk, ending in an order stopping them from selling any scallop or cockle or mussel caught in such and such a large area - which included all of their area. The ever-spreading towns, senders of infesting trippers, enticers of men's sons and daughters away to town office jobs till few were left locally to take over farm or fishing or handicraft or to give birth to grandsons to take over in their turn, closers down of vital local transport in country areas under the delusion that everybody could afford a car, had attacked and robbed them yet again, by polluting the sea with their dirty house and factory waste tipped anywhere at random as long as it was away from themselves. What would have happened to the official if he had come alone, is a moot point; but they had to obey him. They picked a living as they could, in and on and out of the water. They salvaged stuck or lost fishing gear for people. They scavenged in sunken wrecks, risking the wrath of the Receiver of Wreck and of insurance companies who claimed to own wrecks that they had paid out on. By now so many things hoped for or relied on had let them down that they had long ago stopped treating anybody except their own kind as images to look up to and imitate or as owners of rights needing respecting, for "Why should we bow and scrape to paperwork and rules made by and for the town office types, who do little but `doing dirt on us' literally as well as figuratively? The sea's getting like diving in a sewer in some places, and they won't stop infesting us as trippers and letting outsiders take our livelihood.", as Jacko once said. Until one day when looking for a lost mooring, WY17, named Yormungand, Whitby's dredgersub, found them. They started in fright, but only for a moment, for it knew them and they knew it. It was 60 feet long, with an onboard destructor / recycler, and much had vanished into the large object intake hatch in its front end or into its 5-foot-diameter aimable suction tube suddenly untelescoping to much longer than the undersea visibility ever is round there, and rumour followed it. It spoke to them, and after they had surfaced it heard from them their usual tale of ill-luck - a true tale, a too-often true tale. It submerged again. Its large-object intake opened and shut once as their inflatable vanished inside. Its suction-tube aimed and untelescoped four times. Its propeller started turning again as it moved on, leaving the sea empty. It continued to suck about at the sediment. It pumped them and their boat into a storage tank which it then blew full of air. "Let us out! We belong here! You said so! We're not some bunch of thieving trippers!" Jacko shouted inside it. "Every sort of #$% that we trusted, lets us down." said Bert resignedly, "Even this thing. It fits. We are society's dredgings, and we end up tracelessly dissolved and recycled like dredgings for our energy and metal content.". "I know you have a right to fish here. I will let you out, at the right place." it said, "Men who need the sea made me to help tidy up the mess that other men make. You also have suffered from that mess. I can't be in two places, or easily handle small objects outside myself. Out at sea is a fishing boat from Crabhaven who has come round here for seasonal fishing. If you wish, he will take you there. There you will be recycled, sort of - by being turned into an anti-poacher `diving hard squad' by one of them who learned that sort of rough underwater stuff as a commando frogman in the Marines. He is named Pendane. You have will and toughness, but you need training. Enough of nuisances, town people and their rubbish that won't leave us alone. And you need other equipment, not only those aqualungs with their trails of bubbles and loud bubbling noises giving you away. Society treats you like dredgings, you say? Once last century, the Thames's uncleared dredgings with their stink invaded the Houses of Parliament!, and did what no human protester would ever have managed to do, and forced Parliament to order big improvements to London's sewers which were before then thought impossible to get them to fork out the money to get them done.". So it was done. Newspapers reported their disappearance, but after a few months they reappeared off Filey. Polluters repeatedly found outfall pipes blocked, although all known Greenpeace personnel were far away. BSAC Nottingham met them, and did not take back to Robin Hood's chief enemy's town their diving gear or happy memories of one too many shellfish-pickings, when they found that some of the local lobstermen could now go underwater after them. More than one luxurious cabin cruiser took away a limpet mine as well as the contents of a looted shellfish-keep-box. And BSAC Coventry, who had `got away with it' several times, basking in the shelter of landsmen's law and their member John's judo, this day met them and rued the meeting. [340.6] "Who? Filey? - Oh, it's four ringing! Aphanistor here.", said Aphanistor, having reached with his grab for a cable connection and plugged it into a socket in his front end. #1 told him what had happened. "What?" said Aphanistor, sounding pleased, "Double mask snatch, one with each hand? I wish I'd seen it! I and Pendane here trained you well! How's the ordinary fishing? What!? Hatchery lobsters now? Rear them from egg to prawn size and let them go, to add to the natural spawning, OK; rear them to legal size in tanks full of warm water from a power station outfall and sell them undercutting our caught lobsters, not so good. Seven Frenchies in a cabincruiser, a few days ago, not allowed by their law to catch lobsters while diving in French waters, so they sneaked in here to try it on - their empty boat drifted away out to sea - their explosive spearheads tickled me a bit -- Land, sea, underwater! That was a lovely 3-way combined trapping operation you lot carried out!". [341] "What now?" #4, still in his frogman's kit, asked, "Aphanistor at Crabhaven who trained us, said `Be as hard as my grab and thorough as my grinder and as traceless as my recycler when on anti-poacher operations, and no fraternising with them.'.". "Give them their car keys and tell them to #$%^ off." the harbourmaster replied, "Take their diving and poaching kit, and the film or cassettes out of any cameras they've got. And their boat. We may as well spare Oban from 6x7x3=126 man-days of sport diver poaching and nuisance.". Coventry BSAC got away, that time, and were thankful to see their home city again. "I'll melt their lead weights." said #4, "The rest goes. We've got enough spare diving gear, and `tracelessness is all' if they come back with the police in tow, looking for their kit as evidence for landsmen's law always backing up landsmen. I better let the air out of their cylinders.". Next day the local articulated refuse-destructor-recycler truck came. Its driver parked it and stayed in its cab, for he had been told that it was a `confidential wastepaper destruction day'. One of the local men pressed a button on its rear, and a large steel hopper emerged from its rear like an enormous deep drawer. Each time the hopper pulled in, it re-emerged empty. Aqualungs, rubber suits, flippers, lifejackets, six sets of the means of giving frogman-capability to the weekend idle public, were loaded into its intake hopper in successive batches, to be pushed inside and ground to fragments, which were dissolved in a special `fuel cell' for energy and to recover metals like any other rubbish. Inflatable and motor and trailer, and then the village's and harbour's routine rubbish, followed them. No trace was left, and no chance for tramps to scavenge and be a nuisance. So the Silesian German iron-ore which became a German tank, charging with fear and roar across France in 1940, and then battlefield wreckage in Normandy in 1944, and then a Peugeot car exported to England, and then again scrap, and then a metalworking lathe, until the works shut after one too many strikes, and then scrap, and then aqualung cylinders, passed on again and became iron oxide which was sent to a steelworks for smelting back to iron, some of which will be made into 4-inch nails - and those divers, who owned it before, will meet it again. Also the lead ore which became lead ingots, and then Carthaginian lead guttering, and then Roman war loot, and again ingots, which were shipwrecked, and 2000 years later (without knowledge of archaeologists) scuba divers' lead weights, passed on again and became net and pot weights - and some divers' weights - for the local fishermen. [342] In the village pub that evening they sang this, which one of them had written in a meter used of old by the Vikings, who had brought sea-skill and many of their ancestors to their area. Each verse reminded them of some incident that they had taken part in or heard of:- "Costly curse of Cousteau's kit now ground to bits is. Steel stomach once more swallowing suits which let the rootless selfish steal our shellfish. (Seek not from law's weakness!) Cylinders send to ending, swift iron-tanked pest-shifter. [The first pair of the mobile refuse destructor's Smith & Malton's type Z4 rotary grinder's counter-rotating breaker drums rapidly reduced the seized wetsuits, lifejackets, fins, masks, emptied aqualungs, and two inflatables to hand-sized pieces, which were ground smaller by each successive drum. The final output was sent to its onboard reprocessor for dissolving.] Westminster to administer makes no effort 'gainst takers; must we selves skill master, make and wield law shielding. Chaos-horde came daily, crowd oft became rowdy, club turned quick to lobsters, killed drink th'will to be thinking, [The beach filled solid with trippers. A family picnicking on the slip refused to move to let a boat be launched. Tripper scuba divers took endless bagfuls of shellfish, basking in the shelter of diving club solicitors. Drink soon killed all plans to be considerate.] till men, though other-minded, made in that time fading, might to give our might back, much back getting which lacking was. Swallowing duck of th'cylindered sought town-frogmen haughty, might-deed England's moat in; missed no prey Aphanistor. [At Crabhaven, two aggressive-minded divers from Droitwich found more than they expected [see 177-179].] And others also elsewhere, end long sought-for sending. Ourselves we job shelved not skill t' use 'gainst the wilful. The aqualung-horde lacks now eagerness to beleaguer landing-shore with lawless seekers every weekend. [The rest of the scuba divers read the papers and for a time were wise.] The land-men, who London lacks now means to back up, pass dread-tales, that press we plunderer-chase, though hundred feet deep fin-footed creep they: found we and dragged groundwards enmity of town-inmates; ocean 'neath `poached' we! [On the wreck of the Eurynome near Crabhaven, Kidderminster BSAC, intent on lobsters, were not saved by RAF helicopters a second time, but 100 feet below the sea Crabhaven fishermen's `diving hard squad' efficiently and roughly overpowered them and forced them to surface, where the waiting boat squad handcuffed them and took all their kit. Now poachers can be reached anywhere.] [343] Our missing skill's now missing not: make fear-story fakeless Godiva's town's divers: "Dived too, pursuing!"; Robin Hood sent robbers rubbery: rubber-skinned we fast troubled them: air-tank-backed we at them under sea caught plunderers. [As Coventry BSAC and Nottingham BSAC found at Filey.] Finned-footed fast we found them, forced them from their horseplay. Retain we tough training; take they no strength-making drill from Pendane skilful daring 'gainst foe farers: t'give might 'gainst thieves meeting missed no chance Aphanistor.". [During antipoacher training at Crabhaven, Filey frogman #3, using an aqualung, was ordered to jump Tregear from above. #3 breathed in at the wrong time and Tregear heard #3's set's intake hiss and rolled over and saw him. Pendane was harshly critical. Aphanistor told #3 to go back to the surface and try again.] Unbidden floating boardroom (bragging of profit unflaggingly) came for keepbox. (Famous cook t'make famed dish looking was.) With lobsters, gift liberal (Learned some who greed turned had!) below for th'theft left we: limpet-mine blast skimped not. [A cabin cruiser, coming the third time in the same month to loot their keepboxes (submerged wooden chests for keeping caught crabs and lobsters in until they are sold), took away more than it expected, for two of the village's men were lurking underwater there. "Flashy cabin cruiser, costs so much to run that he can't afford to buy food, so he comes round thieving." #3 thought. "A present from Filey! Now we're equal with Tregear and Malling at Crabhaven." #2 thought, referring to when Tregear and Malling on their `subskimmer' (submersible inflatable), directed by an ultrasonic beam used in message mode by Aphanistor who can see far farther by sonar than divers can by eye, brought an overdue end to raids on keepboxes and nets by the cabin cruiser La-Parisienne, named in French `the woman of Paris' ("or of Babylon", as Tregear said), but nicknamed `the Big Belly', for (as Captain Hurlock had pointed out) if treated as Greek it contains `laparos' (= `abdomen'), "for its crew fatten themselves off us".] " action-gear owes nothing to Cousteau and the pleasure-scoobydoo-ism that he set off so massively!" said #1, "Silent bubbleless rebreathers, much longer lasting underwater for the same weight and bulk, from the naval tradition of gear for properly authorized and controlled combat and work diving; and rubber drysuits and swimming fins were around before his time. Although we also use aqualungs sometimes, they're less trouble to refill.". Coventry BSAC indeed came back, and police with them, but found nothing. There was no more sign of the four rebreather-divers or their kit than of anything else that had allegedly happened. Inevitably, this incident was discussed at BSAC headquarters. "Well!" said one delegate, "Coventry BSAC's latest experience at Filey! That idea in our magazine that "some inshore fishermen become divers - coming over to our side?" - I it was too good to hope for! More likely, as I said, that "An inshore fisherman who can scuba dive is merely an inshore fisherman in diving gear, as hostile as before, and now able to go underwater after us.". And also to masquerade as an ordinary diver to spy on us. That four in their all-black naval-looking kit, hard to see underwater, with bubbleless rebreathers, were a real right tough lot. From what they said it seems they've been at various times dockers, deepsea trawlermen, lobster potters, scallop divers, and general-purpose surface or underwater rough types. And they acted like they'd been specially trained in underwater combat some time. I hope we don't get too many of sort of efficient underwater thug, official or otherwise, turning up on top of all the other aggro we get. Something else for sport divers to have to watch out for. Out of sight underwater, too much can happen. Where are those four now? The police couldn't find them, nor their fancy kit.". " `group diver disappearance' I make a good guess at why!" said another delegate, "Likely they've moved along the coast to `ghostbust' another sportdiver-infested lobstering area, if I may talk as they would!". In the morning #3 refilled and tested his mixture-rebreather set, recharged the battery in its oxygen proportion controller, and put his set on. His face vanished behind the hard hemispherical black breathing mask. Its small metal-edged eye-windows were close against his head, and gave him the complete field of vision. Inside the mask was a small maker's plate bearing an outline side view of Aphanistor and the word `Crabhaven' and a serial number - its designer was equipped inside himself to use part of his dredgings processing system as a miniature workshop. A hard black helmet covered the rest of #3's head. He swam out, back to work to pay for the previous day's time-consuming action and excitement, for defence forces need to be supplied and paid, "even if they are ourselves interrupted from work.", as he thought, "Shellfish divers ad infinitum come round poaching, and I end up as one myself! Only way to catch shellfish in the summer in some areas, what with trippers in boats hauling our pots incessantly, on top of those new big sea-woodlice eating the pot baits first.". He caught a large crab and put it in his bag, and carried on. A bit later, he saw a lobster pot, and thought "It's one of old Alf's. Current's carried me into his fishing area. I better go back, or give him any that I catch in his area. Pity about him. He's too old to go further out than boating trippers go, and some of them haul any pot they see.". He scooped up several large starfish that he saw there, in annoyance at forced timewasting muttering: "`Twinkle twinkle little star / what a $%^%# pest you are, / eating oysters night and day. / At least the scallops can swim away.' At least the curio shop'll buy some of them off me, to help pay the bills.". A shadow approached over him. He thought briefly that it might be WY17, then saw that it was a small surface boat with a white hull and therefore none of the village's craft. Then the pot started to rise to the surface. "That $%#^'s hauling that pot! I better go see who it is." he thought, and rose with it. [344] The pot surfaced. A cultured voice using a formal mode of address said "Look, Mr.Wilson. There's a frogman coming up with it.". #3 looked with distaste at the boat and its two crew. In a small sailing dinghy, meant for sheltered or inland water and not for open sea, two men in office suits with collars and ties were hauling the pot. No waterproofs on board. One of them, who wore spectacles, said "Could you do your share pulling, please?". The other one, whose right hand was bleeding badly, replied "Mind my hand. That slimy snake thing bit it.". No first aid kit. No angling gear either, so only one thing could have happened. All the losses and hardships of his seagoing life while town men with polite town manners had assured pay packets, flashed over. With an angry breathing-mask-muffled shout of "Conger eel in the last pot, and it bit you!? Serve you #$% right!! You leave our pots $%^%^ alone!", he pushed down hard with both hands on the edge of the small white fibreglass dinghy's hull. "Oi! My specs have gone! You trying to rock us over? Scuba divers everywhere we try to sail. What club are you in?". That sort of appeal from outsiders had long ago ceased to affect him, but, together with being mistaken yet again for a sport diver, merely pushed his mind further into a hard efficient mood. He continued to push down and up in time with the boat's swaying. "He's got a local accent! I thought we'd missed those lobstermen. Now they come out of the sea at us.". "Oi! Quit it! Mind my hand!". "Whoa rocking! You'll swamp us! All right, we give up.". With a final push down the boat heeled over on top of him with a heavy slap of sails on water. A loose spar cracked one of his ribs; he ignored it. He swam out from under it and lay on the surface belly-up. His all-black helmet and hemispherical breathing mask and breathing bag and strong rubber drysuit gave him an impersonally mechanically efficient `equipped and trained to go anywhere' appearance, compared with their `respectable' clothes only meant for town use. "We can't swim!" the two complained. "Can't you? Then don't $%^%^ about in boats till you can, you idiots!" he shouted at them, "Now the inshore fishermen here can also dive! Now we can go everywhere you go! Underwater pests, we can go under after. Surface pests, we can come up out of the sea after. Now $#%%$#% off and leave men's gear alone!". Two weekend sport divers surfaced just then and saw this. They wore ordinary sport diving gear, but with large `diffuser boxes' over their regulators, to break up their bubbles. "What's that hooligan doing!? Mucking about in a rebreather against all clubs' rules; deliberately tipping a boat over, giving us all a bad name. We better go and give him a piece of our mind." said one of them. "No! It's one of that lot that `did over' Nottingham BSAC's men that time! Now we've got fishermen in diving gear going below after us. But now 've got helmets and bubbleless sets, and 've been practising the rough stuff. Lets do it!" said the other. #3 dived to the seabed and did more of what he annoyedly called `underwater astronomy', that is, clearing the area of starfish to protect the bivalve molluscs which were his and others' living, then swam on. His arms were folded against the sides of his chest. In air that position is merely a form of `gunpoint hands-up', but when diving it is `at the ready', and often gave him a valuable few seconds start in underwater fights with poaching sport divers who swim with their arms trailing. "Those two dingy-minded dinghy sailors'll be safe." he thought, "They'll hold onto their boat till someone comes. They shouldn't've come round thieving. Some call us four `general-purpose waterfront roughs in diving gear' - yes we are - and a deal of Pendane and Aphanistor's ex-Marines frogman commando training added to it. I better fish in old Alf's area and give him what I find there, he's been having days off with his joints - he has three sons and they all skive off to soft town jobs and send him no money and leave him to do all the work - I'll have a good look in those rocks ahead, they're in his area.". The two sport divers, holding their breath to prevent intake hiss from their sets, swam down on their target with their knives drawn held in front of them. "It's him or us. That sort of undersea trained thugsquad after us." one thought. "Captain Hurlock and his nine merry men went to prison, and we've seen off the various feeble imitations of him. They overfish and they blame us. Enough diver disappearances." thought the other, as they silently approached #3 from above. [345] #3 saw a large and a small pair of lobster antennae protruding from burrows which lobsters had dug bulldozer-fashion under a rock lying on sand. He left the small lobster to grow on a few sizes, but hooked the big one out. A dense layer of its eggs was stuck to the underside of its abdomen. "Uhh, it's `in berry', let it go, to let its eggs hatch for the future." he thought, "No, I'll keep it, the hatchery needs one in berry, to breed from.". (This was to add to the natural breeding, for if kept properly in captivity a lot more of the young survive than in the wild.) But before he could put it in his bag, he jumped in alarm and awaited his end, for a long untelescoping 5-foot-diameter steel suction pipe stabbed at him from beyond the underwater visibility limit. His heart fluttered in relief as the tube passed close above him. Bumps and metallic ringings passed up the tube as it sucked two objects up and then pulled back as a shadow appeared just below it and took definite shape and stopped near him. It was the huge steel hull and aimable telescopic suction pipe of WY17, named Yormungand. He knew it and it knew him. He spoke to it. "What!? Oh, it's you, Yormungand. You've been away from here a while.", said #3. WY17, intelligent of himself in his silicon brain in his steel braincase, minded much like Captain Hurlock the ex-naval inshore fishermen's action-leader who had helped to program him, with no human pilot, replied. A voice came from the sea-hardy steel hull: "Yes, and it's you, diving alone! What Pendane would have said!? I had to suck something off your back just now, else you four would have soon been down to three! Don't dive alone! Too many risks. Why can't you humans have enough eyes to see all round you at once? like I have. There are four of you, that's two pairs - and you dive alone. So many hazards for men in the sea.". "The other three of us are taking the crabs and lobsters to market. Old Alf's been off with his joints and --" #3 started. "Meaning that matters arise and rules get bent. Tell me the old old story. As usual." WY17 interrupted curtly. "How did you get your name `Yormungand'? I've been meaning to ask." asked #3. "From a huge sea-serpent that the Vikings told stories about." said WY17, "What I came for is this: I'm salvaging a wreck near here. I've sucked out the sand that it was bedded in, but I need a man to go into small places and to shackle lines etc. I'll pay you for your time. I need you for about two hours. That wreck keeps fouling your nets. Likely you'll be glad to be rid of it.". #3 backed into the end of Yormungand's suction-tube and held on to its edge, hoping by all the old Norse gods that their immense seaserpent's namesake wouldn't forget he was there and start to suck. "I suppose I'll get used to riding this way. Don't suck at anything on the way!!" #3 said, "My breathing set's got about 3 hours of use in it before I must get another or refill it.". They got to the place. #3 helped to fasten wire ropes round jagged pieces of shipwreck so that Yormungand could tow them into a sort of sinkable and refloatable lighter-craft that lay on the seabed nearby. He took advantage of free moments to catch and pouch the shellfish revealed by removing the wreck piecemeal. Many winter storms had done most of the work of breaking the wreck up. WY17 finished loading the lighter, `blew' it to neutral buoyancy, and towed it into Whitby. On the way he transferred #3 to a boat which took him to Filey and a well-earned rest. Later WY17 came to Filey and pumped-off into a tank on the quay 50 gallons of boat motor fuel which his recycler had made from digesting organic matter in silt etc. #3 refilled his breathing set. Life went on.