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robust hunter-gatherer forefathers.”
    “Redmond?”
    “Yes?”
    “What the hell are you trying to say?”
    “Eh? Well—it’s obvious. Your trawlermen with their 1990s belief in the magical curative power of iron—that idea
must
go back at least 3,000 years. Imagine it—preserved in oral memory, the astonishment, the admiration for the successful experiments of the early scientists, for a handful of intellectuals: for the undeniable, the magic production of iron—the enabler!”
    “Look, I’m sorry,” said Luke, as we left Thurso behind us. “Iknow you love all that—magic, superstition, whatever. But, unlike you, I’m a
genuine
atheist. I’m a scientist. A marine biologist. If I thought in those terms, in that world—even for ten minutes a day, Redmond—I’d never be able to answer a lifeboat call-out on time; I wouldn’t join a trawler; I couldn’t function; I couldn’t do my job. I am
not
a social anthropologist. You see—I like the
external world.
The deep-sea octopus, for instance, the sea-bat. I’ve never seen one…” And then, “Oh
Jesus,”
he said, as we turned to the right off the main road and topped the rise down to Scrabster harbour.
    Luke took a hard suck on his catheter tube of a cigarette. “Look, Redmond, OK—it won’t mean anything to you—that’s OK: but, you see, I’ve come here every month for years, I have to—I have to weigh and measure a random sample of set species from all the landings. But hey! Look at them! This is big style!
I’ve never seen anything like it.
Every single trawler is in. Everyone has run to shelter. It must be bad. It must be
very
bad out there!”
    “So why—so why are we going out?” I said (or, rather, I sang, like a castrato, as my gubernacula retracted and my testes shot back to their safe, pre-pubescent hiding-places). “Who
is
Jason Schofield? Luke—is this normal?”
    “Normal?” said Luke, as he directed me, right ( RESTRICTED ACCESS ) away from the scrag of cliffs, the desultory row of houses, and into the small working-area of the harbour proper. “Normal?” he said, affronted. “Normal? Certainly not!” (“Turn left—no, here!”) “You don’t understand, Redmond, I can see that—it took me
months
to find this guy!” (“Up that ramp, for Chrissake! No, here!”) “And look—I only did all this because you made such a fuss on the
Scotia.
The worst time of year—all that bullshit.” (“Stop! Over there
—slow down.
Park—over there; there! Against the market shed!”) “Well, Redmond, here we are—and get this: I have never met Jason Schofield; I have never set eyes on the
Norlantean.
I did this for you—I asked around, I read the
Fishing News,
and everyone agreed: Jason would be perfect. He was a brilliant student at the Nautical College, in Stromness—Captain Sutherland’s place; Jason really was and is exceptional, apparently;but, Redmond, the real point is this: he married into a big tough Orkney trawler dynasty and his father-in-law gave him a post-marriage test: he gave him a second-hand trawler right enough, but Jason had no white-fish quota—so he had to convert his trawler for the new deep-sea fishery. And the conversion cost him upwards of two
million
pounds. Jason, at thirty, has a
two million
pound overdraft. Imagine that! (As you would say.) So it goes like this: simple mathematics: he must bring in around £50,000 every ten days. And the bank? Do you think they know or care about the weather? Does a Force 11, or a Force 12, a junior hurricane—does that appear on your statement? Of course not! And that’s the point—that’s why he’s perfect for you! He
has
to go out in the January storms. But he’s exceptional, he’s very successful, he’s driven—he can
think
his way towards the fish. He’s opened new fishing-grounds: and that’s not surprising, so they say, because when he came into the world, when he was a baby, his cot—it was a regular plastic fish-box!”
    “Well, Luke,