Free The Pop’s Rhinoceros by Lawrance Norflok Page B

means the sea. It is the servant of too many masters, this diving sea-flag, waving downward into the fish-filled depths. Its meshes open like a battery of mouths, wide to swallow herring.
    Which scatter, mostly. Flight from nets is an instinct strong in herring. The shoal hangs decked in the fathoms, layer upon layer, row upon row. The very last of the autumn fry vibrate the surface waters; below them are the fattening sprat. Herring flesh muscles itself with the years, moving down through the layers little by little: all herring tend to descend. In the midst of the shoal are the full-grown fish, millions of them, billions of them, spawning, feeding, slowly sinking. Many never see the open waters, surrounded by the colony from birth to death: they aretheir own landscape, a herring-sea. Plankton and spawn are the currencies here, but below, farther down in the lightless depths, a different commerce is carried on. From far beneath the shoal come the sounds of crustacea being cracked, of fish spines being crunched. Of the eating of copepods and sticklebacks. Of herring feeding on herring. Dark-backed bodies twist in the darkness and swirl about near the bottom. They rarely rise. As sprat, these demersal predators passed from a diet of plankton to a diet of fish, ate themselves huge, and sank. Now they swim the deepest waters. They look like herring and would taste like herring, though they are seldom caught. Contact with each other is avoided—not much unites them; even together they are alone—and their swimming is a graceless business of lurches and lunges. They are giants to the sprat, monsters to the shoal. Shunned and feared by those above, these nightmare fish are cannibal herring. As the net descends they feel the waters twitch. The shoal breaks up, shooting side-ways, upward, downward… Downward is good. The cannibals stir, then circle up slowly. The waters pop with aimless herring-panic, lone slivers of silver darting back and forth, lost in these depths. The cannibals cruise, picking off the stragglers and gulping them down. The net hangs above them, hovering and waving, but they are gorged and torpid, barely noticing as it balloons and starts to rise out of sight.
    Uppp … through the layers of fish, catching full grown, near grown, leaving sprat and fry. Ploetz strained on the ropes. Ploetz heaved in the net. Ewald stared at the bottom of the boat. He bit the flesh around his nails and scratched at his cheeks. Ploetz lugged. Ploetz tugged. The boat lurched and bobbed. Brüggeman stared at the cloudy sky. A dark mass of herring grew brighter and nearer, rising through the water. Ploetz hauled, intent, working hand over hand. The catch was good, the net almost full. He braced himself, grunted. The gunwales dipped, the whole boat lurched, unbalanced. Ewald started, looked across, saw, knew.
    Too late.
    The boat tipped them both into the freezing sea, rolled, and almost capsized. Ploetz gasped from the cold, shouted, spat mouthfuls of water, striking down with his feet as the water filled his boots. Brüggeman surfaced like a madman, lunging at the hull. Underneath their bodies the net was opening, wriggling, unsnagging. The herring were escaping and diving back to the shoal.
    They would right the boat and clamber back in. They would gather dead fish from the waters around them and row to shore. Ewald would curse him, but the balance of the boat was a matter for them both. Ewald would know this, know too he was worried, lax on the job.
    Later, when they had dragged the boat up the beach and the two men had sunk soaked and exhausted beside it, Ploetz turned to the vessel’s master.
    “You tipped us in,” he said bluntly.
    Ewald nodded absentmindedly. He was gazing out over the water. Another week now and the boat would be out for winter. Perhaps they should haul it up now? His heart was not in it, and he told the other man as much.
    “Don’t tell me you don’t like the work,” Ploetz burst out. “We both hate