Dawn, Sunset and the Colours of the Earth
                                   by Michael F. Flynn


A native and resident of Easton, Pennsylvania, and the grandfather of “three incredibly cute and
  talented children,” Michael Flynn makes his living as a management consultant in statistical
methods and quality management. He is the author of the Firestar series and, most recently, the
 critically well-received novel, The Wreck of the River of Stars. His short fiction has appeared in
Analog, Asimov’s, F&SF, and elsewhere. Mike has been a Hugo nominee four times and won the
 Sturgeon prize for his Asimov’s story, “House of Dreams” (October/ November 1997). His next
novel, Eifelheim, will be released from Tor in October. In his first story for us in nine years, Mike
        masterfully explores the after effects of a disaster that seems to swallow up the . . .
At six-thirty of an early fall morning, when the sun was just lighting the evergreens and new
snow glistened atop Ranier, Motor Vessel Hyak left Pier 52 in Seattle, bound for Bremerton.
A Washington State Ferry of the Super Class, longer than a football field, she grossed 2700
tons dead weight and drew eighteen and a half feet. She cast off with nearly a thousand souls
aboard and motored into a fog in the center of Elliott Bay.
None of them were ever seen again.
                                        Chino Mendez
People say at first what business has a poor fisherman to speak of Jesus? I have no
education, no clever words. I have nothing but the high school and many years of chasing the
tuna. But then I thought: what better thing for a preacher than to start as a fisherman? There is
precedent, no?
I will give my witness as I saw it, so you may believe with me.

Understand that I was a sinner before. This is important. I drank and I gambled and I had
women. Oh, yes. Perhaps you do not think so to look at me, but women find me attractive. I
have cut men in fights. Perhaps I killed a man in Miami, but this I do not know for sure.

I tell you this because you must understand what I was, so that you may understand what I
am, and so understand what I say. If one as lost as me can be found, there is hope for all.

I was christened Ipolito, but my friends have always called me Chino, because of my eyes.
Oh, yes, there were many Chinese brought to Cooba years ago and their blood runs in me. I
have been a fisherman all my life, even before I fled Cooba. I fished the Gulf, and then the
Keys, and then I came here to these strange, cold waters. Capitan Norris give me a place
on his Esmeralda and he teach me the waters of the Sound and there were many very hard
years, but never did I complain. Well, perhaps a little.

That morning we cast off and took our bearing on Duwamish Head. The dawn was behind us
and the air shimmer like the rainbow. The horizon glowed red; the sky above me, blue; and
all the colors ranged between. Oh, the salt tang of the sea! Oh, the cries of the gulls! They
swoop in a great circle around the bay. Around and around. I look back now and I see how
clear were all my senses that day.

We hear the horn of the ferry as she left the pier and for a time our paths run side by side, the
great ferry and the humble fishing boat, but the capitan saw a fog is risen in the bay, so he
turn the wheel a little to avoid it. The ferry, yes, had the radar and the global positioning, and
so she sailed into the fog, her horn booming. I hear the churn of her engines as she pass us,
and I see the people who lined the railing. Some were reading of the newspapers. Some
were watching the scenery. Some were talking to each other. There was one—a young girl
near the quarter rail—who saw me watching. She was, I think, twelve. She smile and wave
to me and I wave back and the capitan saw, and our boat’s whistle shrieked and the little
girl, she clapped in delight.

But the capitan was fight the wheel. There was a strong current where there been no current
before. I had the mad fancy that our boat sat . . . somehow . . . on the lip of a waterfall. We
struggled like salmon against it as it pull us into the fog, toward the ferry.

A collision with such a ship would destroy us, so Ngyuen and me—he is the other
deckhand—we throw the bumpers over the side and stand by with the fending poles. When I
look up again at the deck of the ferry, I see the little girl bathed in a golden-red light, such as
one sees at dawn. The light came from out of the fog, you understand, and what sun has ever
dawned in the west? It seem like all the ferry was aglow and I hear a great shout from on
board. The foghorn was take on a sound like a train racing away. The little girl turn and face
into the fog and her mouth drop open. Oh, it was a look of such delight! And she raise her
hands to her face, and then the fog shrouded her, too, and everything—boat, foghorn,