"Did he say anything specific?" Twisp asked. "Could he have found a real hyb tank manifest?"
Brett shook his head. "I don't know. Something that big ... he'd have to brag about it. Bushka, he ever say anything to you about what's up there?"
"Gallow has ... dreams of grandeur," Bushka said. "Anything that'll feed those dreams is real to him. He never claimed to know what was in the tanks; he just knew the political value of having them."
"Brett's right about Gallow," Scudi said.
Twisp could make out the dark flash of her eyes in the growing light. "Gallow's like a lot of Mermen - they believe the hyb tanks will save the world, destroy the world, make you rich or curse you forever."
"Same with Islanders," Brett said.
"Speculation, but no facts," Twisp said.
Scudi looked from Brett to Twisp and back to Brett. How like Twisp Brett sounded! Laconic, practical - all based on rocklike integrity. She studied Brett more carefully then, seeing the stringy strength in his young body. She sensed the power of the adult he would become. Brett was already a man. Young, but solid inside. It came over her like a quick-dive narcosis that she wanted him for a lifetime.
Twisp turned to the controls, started up the motor and set a course for Vashon. The coracle surged across the kelp into open water.
Scudi glanced around the brightening day. She scratched under the neck seal of her dive suit, and, with an impatient gesture, shucked out of the suit and spread it across the thwarts to dry. She did this after one smiling glance at Brett, who smiled back.
Twisp glanced once at her, noting the vestigial webs between her toes, but otherwise an ideal, Merman-normal body. He hadn't seen that many up close. He forced himself to look away, but noticed that Bushka, too, could not help staring at Scudi. She worked close beside Bushka, turning the dive suit and fluffing it as the wind blew it dry. Twisp watched Bushka's eyes flick up from the water, over Twisp at the stern, up and down Scudi's body, back to the water.
Twisp had long believed that Mermen didn't have the same drives as Islanders, and he related it to the free display of their perfect bodies. Scudi's display bore that out in his mind. Mermen lived so much of their lives either without clothes or in skin-clinging dive suits that they would have to develop different feelings about the body than the bulky-clothed Islanders.
Not much difference between nudity and a dive suit, Twisp thought. He could see that Bushka was bothered by Scudi's proximity and her nudity. Brett was doing what any normal Islander might - giving Scudi the privacy of not looking at her. Scudi, however, was not able to keep her eyes off Brett.
Something going on there, Twisp decided. Something strong. He reminded himself that Mermen sometimes married Islanders, and sometimes it worked out.
Bushka shifted his attention from Scudi to Brett and the look on Bushka's face was like a shouted statement to Twisp. It was the kid's eyes.
Not as normal as I am! That was the look on Bushka's face.
Twisp remembered seeing a long-armed Islander once holding hands with a long-armed woman - the first time he'd seen two of them in one place. It had taken Twisp a long time to dig out his personal rejection of that scene and with his digging had come a valuable insight.
Like me. That's how we define human.
He had traced that thought down its dark trail and come up with his own reason for judging that couple.
Jealousy.
He had only chosen women who were different from himself. Chances of passing along a specific trait to children got too high when similar mutants paired. Sometimes it was a genetic time-bomb that didn't show for one or two generations.
Most of us aren't willing to pass along anything except hope.
Something similar was going on in Bushka.
He doesn't like Brett, Twisp thought. He doesn't know it yet. When he figures it out he won't know why. He won't want to admit it's jealousy and it wouldn't do much good to tell him.
It was obvious to anyone who looked at her when she studied Brett that Scudi had eyes only for the kid.
Brett had found the larder and quick-heated some fish stew. Without looking at Scudi, he said, "Scudi, something to eat?"
Scudi, her dive suit aired out sufficiently, slipped it back over her lithe young body. She finished closing the seals. "Yes, please, Brett," she said. "I'm very hungry."
Brett passed her a filled bowl and looked a question at Twisp, who shook his head. Bushka accepted a bowl from Brett after a slight hesitation that spoke loudly to Twisp.
Doesn't want to owe the kid anything!
Brett had been brought up on Islander courtesy over food and so had Bushka. The early training dominated. Brett completed the usual ritual before filling his own bowl. A dasher couldn't have gobbled it faster. Presently, Brett held his bowl over the side, cleaned it and put it away. He looked up at Twisp.
"Thanks," he said.
"For what?" Twisp asked, surprised. The food belonged to all of them.
"For teaching me how to pay attention, and how to think."
"Did I do that?" Twisp asked. "I thought people were born knowing how to think."
Bushka heard this exchange with an ill-concealed sneer. He sat brooding. The news about Gallow and his crew - Green Dashers! In striking range! The proximity of the Gallow-Nakano-Zent trio filled Bushka with terror. They were sure to come looking for the fugitives. Why wouldn't they? Ryan Wang's daughter was here, for Ship's sake! What a hostage! He thought then about Zent, those glossy, unfeeling eyes with their deep-down delight at pain. Bushka wondered how these two young people had outsmarted the likes of them, although Gallow was prone to underestimate his opposition. Bushka looked straight at Scudi. Ship! What a body! Whoever owned her owned the world, and he knew that was no exaggeration. There could be little doubt that her father had controlled much of Pandora through his food operations, and now that he was dead it would surely pass to Scudi. Bushka half-closed his eyes and studied the young couple beside him.
Gallow must've thought them a couple of scared kids.
Bushka had learned the danger of assumptions while he'd been boat-bound with Twisp. Scudi obviously had a first-love crush on the kid ... but that would pass. It always did. Her father's minions were still alive. They would put a stop to it once they found out. Once they took a good look at the kid's mutated eyes.
Twisp stood up at the tiller and peered ahead, shading his eyes against the rising ball of sun. "Foil," he said. "It's heading for Vashon."
"I told you!" Bushka shouted.
"Looked like an orange stripe along the cabin top," Twisp said. "Official."
"They're looking for us," Bushka said. His teeth began to chatter.
"Not changing course," Twisp said. "They're in a real hurry." He reached down and flipped the switch on his emergency-band radio receiver.
The sound of the Vashon announcer came on in midsentence: "... who there was no immediate further threat to Vashon's substructure. We are hanging bottom on a kelp margin of enormous dimensions. There is exposed land and surf immediately to the east of us. Fishermen are advised to approach us through the clear water from the southwest. We repeat: All downcenter areas are being evacuated because of grounding. Vashon itself is in no immediate danger as long as the calm weather holds. Repairs are proceeding and Merman help has been assured. Hourly bulletins will be provided and you are advised to keep tuned to the emergency band."
Scudi shook her head and whispered, "Current Control wasn't supposed to let something like that happen."
"Sabotage," Bushka said. "It's Gallow's doing. I know it."
"Exposed land," Twisp muttered. The big change was happening. He could feel it.
Down the course of history, people have been the principal cause of human deaths. It is possible to alter that course here on Pandora.
- Kerro Panille, the Histories
Ward Keel's head throbbed in time to his heartbeat. He opened his eyes a crack but shut them quickly against the painful stab of white light. A demanding interior whine filled his ears, blotting out the world around him. He tried to lift his head but failed. His neck support had been removed. He tried to remember if he had removed it. Nothing came to him. He knew there should be things to remember but his throbbing head took most of his attention. Again, he tried to lift his head and gained only a few millimeters. The back of his head thumped onto a hard, flat surface. Nausea gripped his throat. Keel gulped quick lungfuls of air to keep from vomiting. The air tasted thick and humid and did not help much.
Where in the name of Ship am I?
Bits of memories flickered into his mind. Ale. And someone ... that Shadow Panille. He remembered now. There had been an argument between Ale and someone in Merman Mercantile - the late Ryan Wang's operation. She had ended it by removing Keel to ... to ... He could not remember. But they had left Ale's complex. That much he recalled.
Thick air all around him now ... down-under air. Slowly, he tried opening his left eye. A dark shape loomed over him, haloed by a pair of bright ceiling lights.
"He's coming around."
A smooth, unhurried voice, conversational. The piercing whine in Keel's ears began to wind down. He tried opening both eyes wider. Slowly, a face came into focus above him: crisscrossed scars on the cheeks and brow, a twisted mouth. The face turned away like a receding nightmare and Keel saw streaks of green smeared up to the neck below those awful scars.
"Don't fuss over him, Nakano. He'll keep."
That was a voice edged in ice.
The scarred face regarded Keel once more - two deeply set eyes with something far back in there that refused to emerge. Nakano? Keel felt that the name and the scarred face should ignite an important memory. Blank.
"He's no good to us dead," Nakano said. "And you hit him pretty hard with that stuff. Hand me some water."
"Get it yourself. I don't tote for Mutes."
Nakano removed himself from Keel's view, returning in a moment to bend closer with a beaker and a straw. A hand striped with green paint put the straw between Keel's lips.
"Drink it," Nakano said. "I think it'll help."
Hit him pretty hard?
Keel remembered someone shouting ... Kareen Ale screaming at ... at ...
"It's just water," Nakano said. He moved the straw against Keel's lips.
Keel sucked in cold water and felt the soothing splash of it into his cramping stomach. He told himself that he should reach for the beaker but his hands refused to cooperate.
Straps!
Keel felt them over his chest and arms. He was being restrained, then. Why? He took another deep drink of the water and pushed the straw from his mouth with his tongue.
Nakano removed the beaker and released the restraints.
Keel flexed his fingers and tried to say "thanks," but the word was no more than a dry whistle in his throat.
Nakano placed something on Keel's chest and Keel felt the familiar outlines of his neck appliance.
"Took it off when you puked and damn near choked to death," Nakano said. "Couldn't figure how to get it back on you."
Keel felt weak but his fingers knew this familiar thing. He fumbled over the slips and catches, putting the support into place around his neck. Two raw spots pained him where the braces met his shoulders. Someone had tried to pull it off without unfastening it.
Lucky they didn't break my neck.
With the support in place, Keel's thick shoulder muscles carried the burden of lifting his head upright. The brace slipped into its usual position and he winced at the pain. He saw that he was in a small rectangular room with gray metal walls.
"Do you have a celltape?" he asked. His voice echoed in his ears and sounded much deeper than he remembered. Keel rested his forehead in his hands and listened as someone rummaged through a case. The table that Keel sat on was much lower than he had imagined. It wasn't a gurney, but a low dining table, Merman-style, within a cluster of low padded chairs and a couch. Everything seemed constructed out of old, dead materials.
Nakano handed him a roll of celltape and, as if in answer to an unasked question, said, "We put you on the table because you weren't breathing good. The couch is too soft."
"Thanks."
Nakano grunted and sat back down in a chair behind Keel.
Keel noticed that the room was filled with books and tapes. Some of the bookshelves were packed two deep with well-worn texts of many sizes. Keel turned his head and saw behind Nakano an elaborate comconsole with three viewscreens and racks of tapes. The room felt as though it moved - back and forth, up and down. It was an unsettling sensation, even for one accustomed to riding the waves on an Island.
Keel heard a distant hissing. Nakano stood at his side then and another man, his dive suit smeared with green paint, sat nearby, his back to them. The other man appeared to be eating.
Keel thought about eating. His stomach said, "Forget it."
My medication! he thought. Where is my case? He felt his breast pocket. The little case was gone. It came over him then that this rectangular space around him actually was moving - rising and falling on a long sea.
We're still on the foil, he thought. The thick air was a Merman preference. These two Mermen had merely done something to humidify the air.
Still on the foil!
He remembered more now. Kareen Ale had taken him aboard a foil to ... to go to the Launch Base. Then he remembered the other foil. Memories came rushing at him. It had been after nightfall. He could see daylight now through louvered vents high in the walls of this room: the double yellow-orange of both suns low in the sky. Morning or evening? His body could not inform him. He felt the borderline nausea of movement, the constant inner pain of his fatal illness and the headache, now localized in his right temple where, he knew, he had been struck.
Drugged, too, he thought.
The attack had occurred after the foil in which Ale had been taking him to the Launch Base slowed abruptly. A voice had called: "Look there!"
Another foil had bobbed dead in the water with only its anchor lights glowing through the darkness. It drifted slowly in heavy kelp and was not at anchor. A spotlight from Ale's foil illuminated the identification numbers on the bow of the vessel.
"It's them, all right," she said.
"Do you think they're in trouble?"
"You bet they're in trouble!"
"I mean something wrong with -"
"They're waiting out the night on the kelp. It hides them from bottom search and they won't drift far in it."
"But why do you suppose they're here ... I mean, so close to Launch Base?"
"Let's find out."
Slowly, its jets muted, Ale's foil moved up on the other craft while four Security men readied themselves for boarding from the water.
Keel and Ale on the forward pilot's deck had a commanding view of what happened next. With only a few meters separating the two craft, four dive-suited men slipped into the water, swam the short distance and opened the main hatch on the other foil. One by one, they crept inside and then ... nothing.
Silence, for what seemed to Keel an interminable time. It ended with a jerky rocking action on Ale's foil followed by shouts from the stern. Abruptly, two green-striped apparitions burst into the pilot's compartment. One of the intruders had been a monstrous Merman with terrible scars on his face. Keel had never seen arms that thickly muscled. Both men carried weapons. There was only time to hear Ale shout: "GeLaar!" Then the blinding pain on his own head.
GeLaar? Keel prolonged his recovery period from the blow, making it appear he was still dazed. His encyclopedic memory pored over names and physical identifications. GeLaar Gallow, idealized Merman. Former subordinate of Ryan Wang. Suitor to Kareen Ale. The man at the table pushed a bowl away from him, wiped his mouth and turned.
Keel looked at him, shuddering in the cold appraising stare of those dark blue eyes.
Yes, this is the man himself. Keel thought Gallow grotesque in the cover of green paint.
A hatch to Keel's right opened and another green-striped Merman entered. "Bad news," the newcomer said. "Zent just died."
"Damn!" That was Gallow. "She didn't really try to save him, did she!"
"He was badly crushed," the newcomer said. "And she is exhausted."
"If only we knew what caused it," Gallow mumbled.
"Whatever it was," Nakano said, "it was the same thing that damaged the sub. The wonder is he got back to us at all."
"Don't be stupid," Gallow snapped. "The sub's homing system brought him back. He didn't have anything to do with it."
"Except to activate the system," Nakano said.
Gallow ignored him, turning to the newcomer. "Well, how are the repairs going?"
"Very well," the man said. "We got the replacement parts and tools aboard the Launch Base foil marked as rocket supplies. We should be fully operational by this time day after tomorrow."
"Too bad we can't replace Tso as easily," Nakano said. "He's a good man in a fight. Was."
"Yes." Gallow spoke without looking at Nakano, gesturing instead to the newcomer. "Well, get back to your station."
The man hesitated. "What about Zent?" he asked.
"What?"
"His body."
"Green Dashers are kelp food when they die," Gallow said. "You know that. It's imperative if we're to know what happened out there."
"Yes sir." The man left, closing the hatch quietly after him.
Keel brushed at his collar and the front of his jacket. He could smell the sour taint of vomit there, confirming Nakano's account of what had happened.
So, they want me alive. No ... they need me alive.
As long as he was alive, Keel could probe for weaknesses. Superstition was a weakness. He vowed to pursue this curious burial ritual that Gallow employed. Its very mention had brought a hush over the cabin. They were fanatics. Keel could see it in Gallow's expression. Anything was justified by the sacred nature of their goal. Another matter for probing. Very dangerous. But ... I'm dying anyway. Let's see how deep their need for me actually is.
"A small case was taken from my pocket," he said. "It contains my medication."
"So, the Mute needs medication," Gallow taunted. "Let's see how he does without it."
"You'll see quite soon," Keel said. "You'll have another body to feed to the kelp."
Keel swung his feet casually over the edge of the table and felt for the deck. A startled look passed between Nakano and Gallow. Keel wondered at it. There was shock in that look. Some nerve had been struck.
"You know about the kelp?" Nakano asked.
Keel said, "Of course. A man in my position ..." He waved off the rest of the bluff as extraneous.
"We need him alive for the time being," Gallow said. "Get the Mute his medication."
Nakano went to a small storage locker in the rear wall and removed a pocket case of cured organics - dark brown and with a tie string closure.
Keel accepted the case thankfully, found a bitter green pill in it and gulped the pill dry. His intestines felt knotted and it would be long minutes before the pill brought relief, but just the knowledge that he had taken it removed some of the discomfort. Another remora, that was what he needed. But what was the use even of that? His rebellious body would only make short work of another remora. Shorter than the last, and the one before that. His first one had lasted thirty-six years. This last one, a month.
"You can always tell," Nakano said. "Someone who isn't bothered by dying, that one knows about the kelp."
With difficulty, Keel kept his face expressionless. What was the man saying?
"It wasn't something we could keep secret forever," Gallow said. "They contact the kelp, too."
Nakano looked piercingly at Keel. It was one of those looks that made a big man like Nakano swell even bigger. "How many of you know?" he asked.
Keel managed a noncommittal shrug, which irritated the seating of his brace.
"We'd have heard something before this if it was out," Gallow said. "Probably just a few of the top Mutes like this one know anything."
Keel stared speculatively from one Merman to the other. Something important to know about the kelp. What could that be? It had to do with dying. With contact with the kelp. Feeding their dead to the kelp?
"In a little while we'll go out and try to hear Zent's memories," Gallow said, a new and deeply reflective tone in his voice. "Then we may learn what happened to him."
Nakano, his voice more matter-of-fact, asked Keel: "How do you contact the kelp? Does the kelp answer every time?"
Keel pursed his lips in thought, delaying his response and gaining time. Talk to the kelp? He recalled what Ale and Panille had said about the Merman kelp project - teaching the kelp, assisting the spread of it under Pandora's universal sea.
"We have to actually touch the kelp," Nakano prompted.
"Of course," Keel snorted. And he thought, Hear Zent's memories? What was going on here? These violent men were suddenly revealing a mystical side that astonished the pragmatic Keel.
Gallow suddenly laughed. "You don't know any more about it than we do, Mute! The kelp takes your memories, even after you're dead. That's all any of us knows, but you Mutes didn't think about what that could mean."
Green Dashers are kelp food when they die, Keel thought. And somehow their memories can be read by the living - through the kelp. He recalled the odd stories out of human history on Pandora - dashers talking with human voices, a fully sentient kelp speaking to the minds of those who touched it. So it was true! And the kelp, genetically rebuilt from the genes carried in a few humans, was recovering that old skill. Did Ale know? And where was she?
Gallow glanced around the room and returned his attention to Keel. "Very pleasant, this cabin," he said. "Ryan Wang's gift to Kareen Ale - her personal foil. I think I'll keep it for my command center."
"Where is Kareen?" Keel asked.
"She's busy being a doctor," Gallow said. "Something she should stick to. Politics doesn't suit her. Maybe medicine doesn't, either. She didn't do much for Zent."
"Nobody could've saved Tso," Nakano said. "I want to know what got him. Does Vashon have a new defense weapon?" Nakano glared at Keel. "What about it, Mr. Justice?"
"What're you talking about? Defense against what?"
Gallow stepped closer. "Tso and two of our new recruits were given the simple task of sinking Vashon," Gallow said. "Tso returned dying and in a damaged sub. The two recruits were not with him."
Keel was a moment finding his voice, then: "You're monsters. You would scuttle thousands and thousands of lives -"
"What happened to our sub?" Gallow demanded. "The whole forward section - it looked as though it had been crushed by a fist."
"Vashon?" Keel whispered.
"Oh, it's still there," Gallow said. "Do I have to tell Nakano he must be more persuasive? Answer the question."
Keel drew in a deep, trembling breath and exhaled slowly. Here was why they kept him alive! Whatever had happened to the sub, he had no answer, but there was something he could do. Forward section crushed?
"So it worked," Keel said.
Both men glared at him. "What worked?" Gallow barked.
"Our cable trap," Keel bluffed.
"I thought so!" Nakano said.
"Tell us about this device," Gallow ordered.
"I'm no technic or engineer," Keel protested. He put a hand up. "I don't know how it's made."
"But you can tell us what you do know," Gallow said. "Or I will direct Nakano to cause you a great deal of pain."
Keel looked at Nakano's massive arms, those bulging muscles, the bull neck. None of that frightened him, and he knew that Nakano knew it. The reference to death earlier, it was a bond between them.