When Pete Pottender gets home in the evening, he puts the fish in the freezer, crowding out the bags of ice-cubes and the TV dinners. His wife, who relies on the dinners because she is holding down three jobs to pay the mortgage held by NeptuneBank on their modest, two-bedroom cottage, is beginning to complain. But Pete insists the fish are too potentially valuable to throw away, and there is a huge market for frozen fish somehwere out there, in land-locked countries. Mrs. Pottender, who once got an "A" in geography at Farn Secondary Modern, points out that on the Vex there are, in fact, no land-locked countries and wonders where he even got the concept. Pete mumbles vaguely about the imminent advent of space travel.

   The Pottenders' freezer is crammed because the profits on flounder are flatter than the fish these days in the quaint coastal villages of Port Marie, more than 75% of whose population lives from the once-flourishing coastal and deep-sea fisheries. The catches are superabundant, and consumer demand for fish (fresh, not frozen) match the catches. But Port Marie's fisherfolk are not flourising because of a concommitant result of their recent reunion with Altland as its first and only Crown Colony.

   Neptune's Bounty, CCC, a so-called Crown Chartered Corporation headquartered in Nieumarktshavn, Estgorth, holds a royal patent issued at the end of the last century which grants it exclusive rights within the sovereign territories of Altland to buy and wholesale all the fish taken in Altlandic territorial waters. The only retail seafood which does not pass through its elaborate network of processing plants and distribution centers is that sold directly from small fish-mongers stalls by the fisherfolk themselves. The granting of this monopoly once made eminent good sense, since only the sparsely populated mountainous areas do not have direct access to the small direct sellers.

Before the era of modern refrigeration (which in slow-changing Altland means until quite recently), this monopoly was the most efficient way to insure the even quality and the wholesomeness of the mass-distributed product. In Altland itself people are so used to living with this exclusive patent that it has never been effectively challenged by potential competitors.                          Now, however, it is causing a problem in Port Marie, which the Neptune's Bounty Corporation insists now falls under the terms of its patent.The locals in Port Marie object vigorously, especially outside of the colony's capital city, where Neptune's Bounty has for some time maintained a large wholesale purchase and distribution facility. When local wholesalers stubbornly persisted in buying up the catch, they found themselves served with injunctions issued by a magistrate of the Maritime Court in Grethavn, a person and institution of whom they had never before heard, but which now claim jurisdiction over their business affairs. They have fought back buy apparently going out of business, but they are accused by Neptune's bounty of conducting it almost as usual, although "under the table." But this may not be the case, considering the Pottenders' over-filled freezer.       Neptune's Bounty is finding it hard to drum up support in their uneven wrestling match with the fisherfolk. By its own account the largest seafood business on the face of the Vex, Neptune's Bounty easily turns an enormous profit annually, mainly from export. It has over the past ten years expanded into dozens of other kinds of commercial enterprise, including the bank

Idled: Northport's flounder fleet.

      Their governments have radically different forms, their public personae could not be in greater contrast, their economies are not heavily involved with one another, but perhaps the unlikeliest grouping of nations in the history of the Vex appears to be all but concluded at high-level talks being conducted in the New Aquitanian capital of Cuitat. What Solelhada, New Aquitania, and Altland (also officially "Alterra") have in common, aside from geographical proximity, is language. Before its reunion with the United Provinces of Disonda, an autonomous principality which just this month returned once again accepted Altlandic monarch George II Victor as its Prince, the majority of the King's subjects spoke the Jermanic language they call Teutsprek, while only approximately 40% spoke a Romanic language referred to officially as "Romança." Now, however, with the Disondan population of 11.2 million added in, the kingdom is genuinely bilingual, with about equal numbers of His Altlandic Majesty's subjects speaking each language.                                                  With this impending change in the linguistic and cultural situation perhaps in mind, Acting Chancellor for Diplomatic Relations Genthar Jengling, on order from the Jergenpalas, took the unusual step, toward the end of May, of inviting the two other Meridic Ocean neighbors, which had been somewhat cool initially in their official attitude toward the restored monarchy, to estalblish formal diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level. Both responded cautiously, especially Solelhada, which had long maintained a claim to certainly rather vaguely defined areas in southwestern provinces of Altland, once the independent Kingdom of Romania.                                                        But this difficulty was overcome when the Altlandic government proposed the giving of guarantees about cultural autonomy to the Romandian provinces and the opening of cultural and linguistic institutes at four of Altland's universities, with similar facilities to be supported at comparable Solelhadan and New Aquitanian institutions. New Aquitania then proposed a preliminary conference in its capital, where the three countries, in addition to normal bilateral relations, might also form a permanent regional organization, The Council of the Isles of the Meridic Ocean (CIMO for short).