[Callahan 08] Callahan's Key by Spider Robinson

Author:Spider Robinson [Robinson, Spider]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science.fiction
Published: 2011-01-26T17:21:18+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Hip Square

“People who are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.”

-J. Danforth Quayle

“BOY,” I TOLD DOUBLE Bill, “I can’t help thinking this bar right here would be a hard one to beat.”

The Schooner Wharf was (and still is) an open-air oasis overlooking Lands End Marina, an agreeable boat basin packed with ships of all kinds, including one custom houseboat that fit my personal mental image of Travis McGee’s Busted Flush. The bar itself was a mahogany racetrack oval with a roof overhead to keep the sun and rain and seagull shit off, and three bartenders dressed as shipwreck victims were working very hard in there. An adjacent shack produced decent finger food and housed supplies and washrooms. There were plenty of tables around, shaded by huge folding umbrellas advertising exotic beers, and there was a covered stage nearby, empty now, but piled with equipment that suggested a blues band would be playing there that night. Looking around me, I saw as many obvious Conchs as obvious tourists-a hard trick to pull off. Neither group seemed to even notice the arrival of a hundred more people who knew each other. The air was full of happy

laughter, and canned music that alternated between island music and blues, and the scents of beer and oysters and fried food and rum and drinks involving citrus fruits.

“It’s in the top ten,” Bill2 agreed. “But I have a few spots in mind I’ll show you tomorrow. Not on the water, of course, the kind of money you’re talking.”

“That’s okay,” I said. I like ocean-but I don’t completely trust it.”

“Smart.”

Doc Webster’s familiar booming voice was heard then, and a pleasure it was to be hearing it again. “All right, everyone who came here with Jake, the Mary’s Place gang-can I have your attention a minute?”

Like all of us, I turned in my chair and gave him my attention. I assumed some kind of toast was coming, and wondered where we were supposed to smash our plastic cups when we were done.

Beside the Doc stood a striking woman, striking even in this context. She was a mix of some kind of Asian and something else, I guessed black. There are no ugly interracial children, and she brought up the average. I estimated her age at about thirty, give or take. Petite and slender but not frail, and definitely female. She was showing a lot less skin than most of the women present, but she didn’t need to. If you’d seen her go by wearing a chador, she’d have caught your attention. Amazing pale eyes. She wore a lovely low-cut lime green dress with tasteful diamond cutaways at the waist, a matching hairband, a matching purse slung over her left shoulder, and brown low-heeled sandals. She seemed just a little nonplussed at having accidentally strayed into the midst of such a huge group of pale strangers, just as the speeches were about to begin, but she hid it well, I thought.

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