【英文读物】Ecology on Rollins Island.docx

【英文读物】Ecology on Rollins IslandChapter 1 There's a library in a small town near Charles Neck on Murdock Sound. It's so run down and useless that a lot of old books still hang around on the shelves, the big kind with stiff backs and all kinds of fancy little stars or small, curly designs to show the end of one section and the beginning of another. Very quaint. After the WFI took over the Sound in our remote area, I didn't have much to do in the day time, so I used to walk down the road to town and get a handful of these stiff backs once in a while. From reading them I got the notion I'm a one man resistance movement, which is pitiful and foolish, and, I gather, always has been a seedy, run-down sort of thing, a backward state of mind and feelings. That's me, alright: backward. I tried to be forward, but it made me hard to live with; and since I live mostly with myself, I had to quit. Still, I knew I couldn't get away with backwardness, and that sooner or later the WFI would slap me down, squash this bussing insect, and get on with its work again as usual.Sure enough, one bleak November morning, when I was half through a couple of eggs and a cup of coffee, I heard the throb of a motor. I walked down to the end of my wharf and looked skyward. I was pretty sure they wouldn't come by land, because most of the secondary roads were in bad shape; and they wouldn't travel by water, because that took too much gas and time. In fact, the WFI never wasted anything. They couldn't afford to. Everything went for food, its growth, collection, and processing. The big freighters, some of them, had atomic piles, but that power was impossibly clumsy and expensive for smaller boats. So they came by air in the usual inspection helicopter. The pilot dropped her in the cove right alongside the wharf and made fast. Three men stepped onto the planks. They had the wheat sheaf insignia of the WFI on their overcoat arms and caps, and they looked cold and bored. A small sea sucked at the pilings and the helicopter rose and fell, grating against the wharf. I looked at the pilot and said, "Better put your chafing gear out if you intend staying a while." We all watched while the pilot put a few kapoks at the tight spots. Then he looked at a notebook and said, "You George Arthur Henry?"I said, "Call me George."This inspector was the usual type: tired from long hours, bored from doing nothing on a weary round of food inspections. He hunched his shoulders against the wind.I said, "It's warmer inside."They followed me into the kitchen of the house. All three of them started to sit down, then stopped, and walked over to the table in perfect step. They looked at the cold remains of my breakfast eggs. The WFI inspector shoved his hat up and said, "Eggs." The others nodded, wordless with wonder. Then the inspector said, "Chickens?" "Where," I said, "do you think I got the eggs?"The little man alongside the inspector came to life. In three dextrous movements he had glasses on, a notebook in his hand, and stylus poised. "What do you feed them?" he inquired eagerly."Seeds," I said, "insects, chopped up garter snakes, mussels, ground up oyster shells. You boys have all the grain."There was an excited light in the little man's eyes. He hurried out to a broken down shed to examine the chickens.That left two of them. The inspector continued to gaze at the remains on the plate in a dreamy way. The other man straightened his big shoulders, looked at me, and said, jerking his thumb toward the shed, "Mr. Carter's an ecologist. He just came along for the trip. He's on his way to the Government Experimental Farm over at Murdock. I'm a government sociologist. I was sent here to have a talk with you. My name is Ranson.""Sure. Sit down. I guess I'm licked, but there's no use making a rumpus about it."I turned to the inspector whose eyes were still caught in the egg plate. I said, "Ever taste them?""Once," he said, in a far away voice. I went to the cupboard and came back with a paper bag full of eggs and put it in his hands. He held them as if someone had just given him the wheat sheaf badge of merit."I won't be needing these after our little talk, I expect. Take them home to the kiddies."He smiled, looked at the sociologists, who grinned back and nodded. The inspector walked very carefully out of the back door and down to the wharf to stow his eggs in the helicopter.Ranson shifted in his chair. He said, "That was very nice of you, Mr. Henry.""George," I said."Against the law, of course." There was a smile around his eyes. "Are you against the law, George?""Yes. No use bluffing. You know the story. All the waters and everything in them are WFI. All the land and everything on it. I don't like packaged food. I like real food. I don't like my oysters, crabs, clams, fish minced up and blended with chick weed, cereals, yeast, algae, plankton, and flavored to taste a little like steak. And plenty of others feel the same. I have a market.""An illegal market.""Yes," I said. "By God, if you had told my father, before I was born, that the oysters he tonged could not be eaten as oysters, he'd have laughed in your face. And if you had told him he wouldn't even be allowed to tong them, he'd have cussed you good and proper!""People have to be fed. The only way we can do it is to combine the total food resources of the world, process and package them, and do it as efficiently as possible. That means absolute control of all food sources and their harvesting. You could work for WFI, George. It would be important work.""I know. It's so important nothing else gets done. Have you seen the roads around here? Half the bridges are down across Charles Neck and Walter Hook. You can't get gas. You can't get telephones, and if you happen to have one, it doesn't work half the time. And the busses don't run any more. And"Ranson held up his hand. "It's an emergency, George. You have to realize that. It's been building up for a long time, long before your father worked the oyster beds in Murdock Sound.""There's another thing," I said. "Before you fellows closed the Sound, I was independent. I had my own boat and I made my own way. Now you put your WFI scoops in the Sound and the whole job is done in a month or two. And who are the watermen? A couple of clerks to every scoop who turn a valve every once in a while and draw their packaged food, clothing, and entertainment once a week. Do you call that a job? Why, those food clerks couldn't even lift a pair of thirty foot rakes, let alone tong with them.""We get more oysters, George, and in less time, and we do it scientifically."Ranson tapped his notebook with the stylus and he looked out of the kitchen window. He was giving me time to cool off. He'd been kind and patient when he didn't have to be either. With his job he had no time to sit and reason with a one man resistance movement. He had no time for anything but food, and organizing society to keep it grubbing incessantly for food, and, at the same time, to keep society as orderly and contented as possible. I was not orderly and I was not contented. But I was just one man, not society. I cooled off.CHAPTER 2 I said, "Look, Ranson. It's like this. I know you're right. I've had a look around, and I've thought about it some. The figures are with you: too many men and not enough food. Only thing is, even from your point of view, I'm not fit for WFI. I have to be on my own. There ought to be somewhere, someplace for a man, instead of a food clerk-" I trailed off unhappily."I'm afraid you have no alternative, George. You are a criminal in the eyes of the WFI. Either you will work for WFI or you will be punished." He paused."I won't work for them."Carter, the ecologist, burst in at the door, slammed his gloves down in the middle of the kitchen table. "Ranson, you never saw anything like it. Fifty in the flock, two roosters, all in fine shape. Lice of course, some bone malformation in the legs. But healthy."He began to ask me dozens of questions, but Ranson interrupted."I need your help, Carter, and time's wasting. Among other depredations, George Henry, here, has been robbing government oyster beds, trapping government crabs, netting government fish, presumably at night. I needn't add that he has a ready and lucrative market. In effect, he refuses to cease his depredations, he refuses to join the WFI, and he is generally uncooperative."Carter said, "uncooperative," in an absent way. He dragged his mind away from a flock of fifty fowl living in a most unusual ecology, narrowed his eyes, and asked a shrewd question."How did he get there?""What?""To the beds."Ranson said, "Where did you get the gas, George?""I didn't. Took the engine out, put in a well and center-board, shipped a mast, and rigged her for sail. She's tucked away up in Marshwater Creek."They were astounded. Nobody had sailed pleasure craft for a generation: no leisure and no money for such a waste of time; and sail craft were too inefficient for food collecting."My God, George," Ranson said, "you're a living anachronism!"Carter nodded. He adjusted his glasses, looked at me, and said quietly, "He is also an able man.""His abilities will be largely wasted in a Penal Food Processing Plant," Ranson said grimly."Oh, I agree, I agree." Carter nodded his head emphatically. "The wrong environment entirely. No scope. No initiative." He gave me a glance of understanding that warmed me right through and also had the unfortunate effect of taking some of the starch out of me. I had been prepared for hostility and indifference. I stood up and walked to the sink for a glass of water I didn't want."Now," Carter said, talking to Ranson, "you take the way he walks. Notice how he swings his arms, with his hands a little forward, as if ready to grip, and the tilt of his head, alert, watchful. You don't see that often. Different attitude, different environment."Ranson sighed. "Get down to business.""Yes. There's always this terrible lack of manpower, machine power, everything, all swallowed up in food. And besides, the men can't stand those bird stations. Too lonely. Can't meet an emergency. Four of them died on Rollins Island three winters ago when the power plant failed. Just sat there and froze. Terrible thing. Had to install emergency two-way radios; need the equipment elsewhere.""They died of loneliness, if you ask me," Ranson said.Carter nodded. "And no gas available for boat inspection. Helicopter too wasteful for a single station. Put George out there with one or two others. Could you sail out? Seaworthy? Big enough?"I said yes."Good. Food processing all done by machines. Just feed birds in. Take up to half the colony of young birds when bred, half the old ones when coming to nest. Regular inspection of tern colonies by sail, your boat. Helicopter lands June twenty, small freighter in July to load processed birds in Rollins Harbor. Just the thing."He took off his glasses to show that the problem had been solved."Look," Ranson said. "I don't have anything against George personally. I want him to be useful and contented. If he can't be contented, then at least I want him to be useful, instead of wasteful. Robbing government food resources is a grave offense, but even that doesn't justify putting him down in the middle of a pile of excrement where no ordinary man can breathe for more than a few minutes without stifling.""Healthy," Carter said. "Healthy. It does stink. That's one reason we have such trouble keeping the stations manned.""Boys," I said. "What is this pile of dung I'm supposed to sit on? And what birds? And why?"Carter explained. In the desperate search for food, the sea birds were now being subjected to an annual harvest. From various nesting places along all the ocean coasts in the world, birds were harvested, to say nothing of their eggs, in large numbers. It was simply a matter of catching and killing the birds, gathering their eggs, and feeding the processing hoppers with same. These foods were later shipped to Food Processing Plants to be added to other harvests and packaged for consumption. In some cases, more specialized processing was necessary, as with the fulmars on Rollins Island. The fulmars were much prized because their alimentary system contained an especially stinking oil rich in fat and vitamin A. In their case, no eggs were collected, since they bred only once in a season, and the birds were separately processed to retrieve the oil.Literally millions of sea birds and their eggs were cropped yearly from nesting sites on the east coast of North America alone. It was a regular and assured source of food on an enormous scale the world over. The thousands of tons of excrement were also gathered every five years to be used in food processing and in agriculture. It was the policy of the WFI to waste nothing and to use everything.The cropping of the young birds took place in the spring and early summer, depending on the species. The adult birds were trapped by various devices when they returned to their nests. Over-cropping was carefully avoided to insure a steady annual production."If it's the island or a Penal Food Plant, I'll take the island. I'm a waterman, not a bird collector. At least I'll get a chance to use the boat once in a while."Both the WFI men looked relieved. Then Ranson put a question."Do you know of anyone else around here who might be fitted for such work? I'm not asking you to inform. I know there's been a good deal of discontent in this Sound region, which is one reason why I'm here. The island may be a solution for other misfits as well."I thought it over. "The Jackson boys aren't very happy. They were the best men with drift nets this Sound has ever seen. Now they sit on stools all day long and watch a row of bottles pass in front of lights. Once in a while they lift a bottle out of the line and put it aside. They get very drunk every night on some stuff they make out of berries and dandelions from the marsh."Ranson sighed. Carter again passed a warming look of complete understanding, and nodded encouragement."Then there's Pete Younger. He was a trapper before WFI closed the muskrat areas. He turns a valve several hundred times a day in the Small Fish Processor. He oils his traps and talks to himself. He may be too far gone. I think he is.""Anyone else?""Others. But the WFI has a bight on them for good, I guess. They were men, once.""Are the Jackson men married?"I smiled. "No. We're dying out."Carter chuckled.It was a twenty-five mile sail to Rollins Island. The Jackson boys and I loaded the boat with clothing mostly. Food was stored on the island. I took along four pairs of oyster rakes, I didn't have the heart to leave them behind. And Bill and Joy took a huge ball of linen twine, ropes, corks, rings, all the makings for a drift net.Unexpectedly, Carter