The hatches hissed open. Panille's litter was picked up and carried out onto the loading platform with near-surface light trickling through heavy plaz panels overhead.
Panille watched as much as he could through slitted eyelids.
An LTA facility? he wondered. But they said we were ... The truth dawned - they were going to fly him to the outpost!
He almost opened his eyes but restrained himself. Blowing it now would not bring him closer to Kareen.
The litter moved with swift lurches and Panille heard Nakano's voice behind him: "Medical emergency, clear the way."
Panille's slitted eyes showed him the LTA gondola interior - a squashed sphere about ten meters in diameter. It was nearly all plaz, with a canopy of gray above the orange hydrogen bag. He found himself both excited and fearful, filled with confusion at this fierce activity. He heard the hatch seal behind him and Nakano's unruffled voice.
"We made it. You can relax, Panille. Everybody in here is secure."
Panille's straps were loosed and he sat up.
"Tether release in two minutes," the pilot reported.
Panille looked up at the orange canopy - the bag was a taper of pleats, its long folds hung down against the cabin's plaz. Once they were up and clear of the tube, more hydrogen would flow into the bag and fill it out. He glanced right and left, saw the two hydrogen jets that would propel them once they were topside.
The whine of a cable winch filled the gondola then. The pilot said, "Strap down, everyone. A bit rough up there today."
Panille found himself dragged backward into a seat beside Nakano. A strap was fitted around his waist. He kept his attention on the pilot. No one spoke. Switches clicked like the hard-shelled chatter of mollusks.
"Topside hatch open," the pilot said, speaking into a microphone at his throat.
A halo of white light filtered around the bag above them.
The cabin lurched and Panille glanced out to his left, momentarily dizzy with the sensation that the gondola had stayed stationary and the launch tube was moving downward past him at increasing speed.
The winch sound silenced abruptly and he heard the hiss of the bag against the tube's walls. The bag cleared the tube then and light washed the cabin. Panille heard a gasp behind him, then they were clear of the water, into a cloudy gray day, swaying beneath the expanding hydrogen bag. The jets swung out with a low whine and were ignited. The swaying motion of the gondola steadied. Almost immediately, they entered a rain squall.
"Sorry, we won't be able to see the rocket launch because of this weather," the pilot said. He flicked a switch beside him and a small screen on the panel in front of him came alight. "We can watch the official coverage, though."
Panille couldn't see from where he sat and the pilot had the sound turned down. The gondola emerged from the rainstorm, still pelted by the runoff from the bag overhead. They began swaying wildly and the pilot fought to control the motion. His flurried movement had little effect. Panille noted with some satisfaction that the Merman guards had green expressions that had nothing to do with their camouflage.
"What's going on?" This was a woman's voice from behind Panille. A voice he could not mistake. He froze, then slowly turned and stared past his captors. Kareen. She sat beside the entry hatch where she had been hidden from him as he entered. Her face was very pale, her eyes dark shadows above her cheeks, and she did not meet his gaze.
Panille felt a hard emptiness in his stomach.
"Kareen," he said.
She did not respond.
The gondola continued to lurch and sway.
Nakano looked worried. "What's going on, pilot?"
The pilot pointed to a display on the board to his right. Panille tore his gaze away from Kareen Ale's ashen face. He could not see all that was indicated on the control panel, only the last two numbers of a digital display and those were changing so rapidly they were a blur.
"Our homing frequency," the pilot explained. "It won't stay on target."
"We can't find the outpost without locking on the right frequency," Nakano said. There was fear in his voice.
The pilot withdrew his hand and this revealed once more the display for the launch broadcast. The picture was gone, replaced by wavelike lines and pulsing colored ribbons.
"Try your radio," Nakano ordered. "Maybe they can talk us in."
"I am trying it!" the pilot said. He flipped a switch and cranked up the volume control. A keening, rhythmic sound filled the gondola.
"That's all I'm getting!" the pilot said. "Some kind of interference. Weird music."
"Tones," Panille murmured. "Sounds like computer music."
"What's that?"
Panille repeated it. He glanced back at Kareen. Why wouldn't she meet his eyes? She was very pale. Had they drugged her?
"Our altimeter just went out," the pilot called. "We're adrift. I'm taking us up above this weather."
He punched buttons and moved his controls. There was no apparent response from the LTA.
"Damn!" the pilot swore.
Panille stared once more at the screen on the pilot's board. The pattern was familiar, though he wouldn't tell Nakano. It was a pattern Panille knew he had seen on his own screens in Current Control - a kelp response. It was what they saw when the kelp complied with an instruction to shift the great currents in Pandora's sea.
The repressed share the psychoses and neuroses of the caged. As the caged run when released, the repressed explode when confronted with their condition.
- Raja Thomas, the Journals
17 Alki, 468. In captivity at Outpost 22.
Jealousy is a great teacher if you allow it. Even the Chief Justice can learn much from his jealousy of Mermen. Compared to Mermen, we Islanders live squalid lives. We are poor. There are no secrets among the poor. The squalor and close sweat of our lives oozes information and rumor. Even the most clandestine arrangements become public. But Mermen thrive on secrecy. It is one of their many luxuries.
Secrecy begins with privacy.
As Chief Justice of the Committee on Vital Forms I enjoy private quarters. No more stacked cubbies pressed head to foot along some rimside bulkhead. No more feet stepping on hands in the night or grunting lovers bumping against your back.
Privilege and privacy, two words that share the same root. But down under, privacy is the norm.
My imprisonment represents a special kind of privacy. These Green Dashers do not understand that. My captors appear exhausted and a little bored. Boredom opens paths into secrecy, thus I anticipate learning something of their lives because their lives are now my life. How little they understand of true secrecy. They do not suspect the chanting in my head that records these things that I may share with others if I wish ... and if I survive that long. These fanatics give no quarter. Guemes is proof that they can commit murder skillfully and easily ... perhaps even cheerfully. I have few illusions about my chances here.
Little can survive me except my record on the Committee. I admit to a little pride about that record. And some regrets about my other choices. The child that Carolyn and I should have had ... she would have been a daughter, I think. By now there would be grandchildren. Did I have the right to prevent that generation out of fear? They would have been beautiful! And wise, yes, like Carolyn.
Gallow wonders why I sit here with my eyelids opened only to slits. Sometimes, he laughs at what he sees. Gallow dreams of dominating our world. In that, he is no different from Scudi's father. Ryan Wang fed people to control them. GeLaar Gallow kills. Their other differences are just as profound. I suppose death is a form of absolute control. There are many kinds of death. I see this because I have no grandchildren. I have only those whose lives have passed through my hands, those who have survived because of my word.
I wonder where Gallow sent that big assistant, Nakano? What a monster ... on the outside. The very vision of a terrorist. But Nakano's goals are not on the surface. No one could call him transparent. His hands are gentle when there is no need for his great strength.
They have suspended this foil beneath the surface. More secrecy. More privacy. Such stillness can be frightening. I am beginning to find it captivating - I see that my mind jokes with me in its choice of words. Privacy, too, is captivating. Islanders do not know this reality of life down under. They imagine only the privacy. They envy the privacy. They do not imagine the stillness. Will my people ever encounter this immense quiet? I find it difficult to believe that the C/P will order all Islanders to move down under. How could she do this? Where could the Mermen put us and not lose their precious privacy? But even more than fear of Ship, our envy would cause us to obey. I cannot believe that Ship enters into such a scheme except by innuendo. And the innuendo of Ship suffers a sea of change in human interpretation. A moment's reflection back through the histories, especially upon the writings of that maverick C/P, Raja Thomas, makes this as clear as plaz. Ah, Thomas, what a brilliant survivor you were! I thank Ship that your thoughts have come down to me. For I, too, know what it is to be caged. I know what it is to be repressed. And I know myself better because of Thomas. Like him, I can turn to my memory for company, and he is there, too. Now, with kelp to record us, no lock seals the hatchway to memory ... ever.
If you don't know about numbers you can't appreciate coincidence.
- Scudi Wang
Brett marveled at Scudi's control. All during the ordeal in the control cabin her attention remained on the operation of the foil. She kept them skimming along the edge of the kelp in the bright light of morning, avoiding stray tangles of leaves that might catch the struts. There were moments when Brett thought the kelp opened special channels for the foil. Directing them? Why would it do that? Scudi's eyes widened from time to time. What did she see in the kelp channels to cause that reaction? Her tan face paled at what she heard behind her where Twisp and Bushka argued, but she kept the foil cruising smoothly toward its rendezvous with Gallow.
Her reaction was not natural, Brett thought. Bushka was crazy to think they could surprise Gallow and overcome him - just the four of them here. Vashon had to learn what was happening. Scudi must realize this!
Within an hour they came out of the heaviest kelp infestation onto open water where the seas were steeper and the motions of the foil more abrupt.
Bushka sat alone on the command couch at the rear of the cabin, forcing Twisp to sit on the floor well away from him. Between them, trussed like a kelp-tangled dasher, their captive Merman lay quiet. Occasionally he opened his eyes to study his surroundings.
Twisp bided his time. Brett understood the big fisherman's silent waiting. There was a limited future arguing with a man holding a lasgun.
Brett studied Scudi's profile, the way she kept her attention on the water ahead of them, the way she tensed when she corrected course. A muscle in her cheek trembled.
"Are you all right?" Brett asked.
Her knuckles whitened on the wheel and the tremble disappeared. She looked childlike in that big seat with the spread of instruments around her. Scudi still wore her dive suit and he could see a red irritation where it rubbed against her neck. This made him acutely conscious of the constrictions in his own suit.
"Scudi?"
She barely whispered: "I'm OK."
She took a deep breath and relaxed against the padded seat. He saw the whiteness retreat from her knuckles. The foil lurched and shuddered along the wavetops and Brett wondered how long it could take such punishment. Twisp and Bushka began a conversation too low for Brett to make out more than the occasional word. He glanced back at them and focused on the lasgun still held firmly in Bushka's hands. Its muzzle pointed in the general direction of Twisp and the Merman.
What was Bushka really doing? Was it only rage? Surely Bushka could never escape memories of his part in the Guemes massacre. Killing Gallow wouldn't erase those memories, it would only add more.
Scudi leaned toward Brett then and whispered, "It's going to be a bad storm."
Brett jerked his attention around and looked out the sweep of plaz, aware for the first time that the weather was changing dramatically. A gusting wind from port had begun to blast the tops off the waves, whipping scuds of foam along the surface. A gray curtain of rain slanted into the sea ahead, closing the tenuous gap between black clouds and gray water. The day suddenly had the feel of cold metal. He glanced up at the position vector on the overhead screen and tried to estimate their time to Gallow and his hunt of Green Dashers.
"Two hours?" he asked.
"That's going to slow us." Scudi nodded toward the storm line ahead. "Fasten your safety harness."
Brett swung the shoulder strap across his chest and locked it in place.
They were into the rain then. Visibility dropped to less than a hundred meters. Great pelting drops roared on the foil's metal fabric and overcame the airblast wipers on the cabin plaz. Scudi backed off the throttle and the foil began to pitch even more with the steepening waves.
"What's going on?" Bushka demanded.
"Storm," Scudi said. "Look at it."
"How soon will we get there?" Bushka asked.
His voice had taken on a new note, Brett realized. Not exactly fear ... Anxiety? Uncertainty? Bushka had the Islander's dreamlike admiration for foils but really did not understand them. How would the foil survive a storm? Would they have to stop and submerge?
"I don't know how long," Scudi said. "All I know is we're going to have to slow down more, and soon."
"Don't waste any time!" Bushka ordered.
It had grown darker in the cabin and the wave action outside looked mean - long, rolling combers with their tips curling white. They were still in kelp, though, with a broken channel through it.
Scudi switched on the cabin lights and began paying more attention to the screens overhead and in front of her.
Brett saw his own reflection in the plaz and it startled him. His thick blonde hair fanned his head in a wild halo. His eyes were two dark holes staring back at him. The gray of the storm had become the gray of his eyes, almost dasher-black. For the first time, he realized how close to Merman-normal he appeared.
I could pass, he thought.
He wondered then how much this fact figured in his attraction for Scudi. It was an abrupt and startling thought, which made him feel both closer and more removed from her. They were Islander and Merman and they always would be. Was it dangerous to think that they might pair?
Scudi saw him staring toward the plaz in front of them.
"Can you see anything?" she asked.
He knew immediately she was asking whether his mutant eyesight could help them now.
"Rain's just as bad for my eyes as it is for yours," he told her. "Trust your instruments."
"We've got to slow down," she said. "And if it gets much worse we'll have to submerge. I've never -"
She broke off as a violent, creaking shudder engulfed the foil, rattling the hardware until Brett thought the boat might split. Scudi immediately backed the throttle. The foil dropped off the step with an abrupt plowing motion that sent it sliding down a wave face and pitched it up the next one. Brett was hurled against his safety harness hard enough to take his breath away.
Curses and scrambling noises came from behind him. He whirled and saw Bushka picking himself up off the deck, clutching the grabs beside the couch he had occupied. His right hand still gripped the lasgun. Twisp had been dumped into a corner with the captive Merman atop him. One long arm came out of the tangle, pushing the captive aside, finding a handhold and lifting himself to a standing position at the side of the cabin.
"What's happening?" Bushka shouted. He shifted his grip to a handhold behind his couch and eased himself onto the cushions.
"We're into kelp," Scudi said. "It's fouled the struts. I've had to retract them, but they're not coming fully back."
Brett kept his attention on Bushka. The foil was riding easier, its jet only a low murmur far back in the stern. It was in Scudi's hands now and he half suspected she had exaggerated the nature of their predicament. Bushka, too, looked undecided. His large head bobbed in the constant motion of the foil as he tried to peer past Scudi at the storm. Brett was suddenly struck by how Mermanlike Bushka appeared - powerful shoulders tapering to sinewy, almost delicate hands.
The assault of the wind and waves against the hull increased.
"There's a heavy kelp bed in our path," Scudi said. "It shouldn't be here. I think it may have broken loose in the storm. We don't dare go up on the step again."
"What can we do?" Bushka demanded.
"First, we'll have to clear the struts so I can retract them," she said. "Hull integrity is vital for control. Especially if we have to submerge."
"Why can't we just clear the struts and go back up on the foils?" Bushka asked. "We have to get to the outpost before Gallow suspects!"
"Lose a strut at high speed, very bad," Scudi said. She gestured at the captive Merman. "Ask him."
Bushka looked at the man on the deck.
"What does it matter?" The Merman shrugged. "If we die in kelp we are immortal."
"I think he just agreed with you," Twisp said. "So, how do we clear the struts?"
"We go out and do it by hand," Scudi said.
"In this?" Twisp looked out at the long, white-capped rollers, the gray bleakness of the storm. The foil rode the waves like a chip, quartering into them and twisting at every crest when the wind hit it with full force.
"We will use safety lines," Scudi said. "I have done it before." She hit the crossover switch to activate Brett's controls. "You take it, Brett. Watch out at the crests. The wind wants to take it and the struts being half-out that way makes it hard to control."
Brett gripped the wheel, feeling perspiration slippery against his palms.
Scudi released her safety harness and stood, holding fast to her seatback against the roll and pitch of the foil. "Who's going to help me?"
"I will," Twisp said. "You'll have to tell me what to do."
"Just a minute!" Bushka snapped. He studied Twisp and Scudi for a long blink. "You know what happens to the kid if you cause me any trouble?"
"You learned very fast from this man Gallow," Twisp said. "Are you sure he's your enemy?"
Bushka paled with anger but remained silent.
Twisp shrugged and made his way along overhead grabs to the rear hatch. "Scudi?"
"All right." She turned to Brett. "Hold it steady as you can. It's going to be rough out there."
"Maybe I'm the one should go with you."
"No ... Twisp has no experience handling a foil."
"Then he and I could -"
"Neither of you knows how to clear the struts. This is the only way. We will be careful." Abruptly, she leaned down and kissed his cheek, whispering, "It is all right."
Brett was left with a warm sense of completeness. He felt he knew exactly what to do at the foil's controls.
Bushka checked the Merman's restraints, then joined Brett at the controls. He took Scudi's seat. Brett only spared the slightest glance for him, noting the lasgun still at the ready. Heavy seas swept them steadily sideways at every crest and the foil barely had enough headway to recover. Brett listened to voices out on the deck, Scudi shouting to Twisp. A steep swell broke over the cabin, then another. Two long rollers swept under them, then one more breaking crest curled over the plaz. The foil stood almost vertical on its stern, slapped back into the trough and the crest crashed onto the cabin-top. The boat shuddered and wallowed in a side-slip while Brett fought to bring its nose back into the weather.
Twisp shouted something. Abruptly, his voice came crying up the passage: "Brett! Circle port! Scudi's lost her safety line!"
Without any thought for whether the foil could take it, Brett cranked the wheel hard left and held it. The boat turned on a crest, slipped sideways down a wave, lifted at the stern and water washed down the long passage into the cabin. It swirled around their feet, lifting the captive and sending him against Bushka's thigh. The foil almost rolled over on the next wave. It came up broadside to the weather as it continued its mad circle. Brett felt the sea slosh through the cabin and realized that Twisp had opened the rear hatch to be heard.
Get her, Brett prayed. He wanted to abandon the wheel and run back to help but knew he had to keep the foil tight in this pattern. Twisp was experienced - he would know what to do.
A wave in the cabin broke almost up to his waist and Bushka cursed. Brett saw that Bushka was struggling to keep the Merman in one place.
Brett's mind kept repeating: Scudi Scudi Scudi ...
The storm's roar in the cabin diminished slightly and Bushka shouted, "He's closed the hatch!"
"Help them, Bushka!" Brett hollered. "Do something for once!"
The foil lifted once more over a crest, rolled heavily with the weight of the water they'd taken on.
"No need!" Bushka shouted. "He has her."
"Get back on course." It was Twisp's voice behind Brett, but Brett dared not turn. "I have her and she's all right."
Brett swung the foil's bow back into the seas, quartering into a high comber that rolled over them at the crest. Water sloshed through the cabin as the foil pitched down into the next trough. The sound of pumps chuffing below decks came clearly to Brett's ears. He risked a glance back and saw Twisp backing into the cabin, Scudi's limp form over his shoulder. He dogged the hatch behind him and dumped Scudi on the couch where Bushka had been.
"She's breathing," Twisp said. He bent over Scudi, a hand on her neck. "Pulse is strong. She hit her head on the hull as we tipped."
"Did you clear the struts?" Bushka demanded.
"Eelshit!" Twisp spat.
"Did you?"
"Yes, we cleared the damn struts!"
Brett looked at the overhead screen and brought the foil around ten degrees, putting down a surge of rage against Bushka. But Bushka was suddenly busy with the keyboard at his position.
"Finding how to retract these foils. That was the whole idea, wasn't it?" Bushka's fingers flurried over the keys and a schematic appeared on the screen in front of him. He studied it a moment and manipulated controls at his side of the board. Within blinks, Brett heard the hiss and clunk of struts retracting.
"You're not on course," Bushka said.
"As close as I can be," Brett said. "We have to quarter these seas or we'll pound ourselves to pieces."
"If you're lying, you're dead," Bushka said.
"You take it if you know better than I do," Brett said. He lifted his hands from the wheel.
Bushka brought the lasgun up and pointed it at Brett's head. "Steer us the way you have to but don't give me any shit!"
Brett dropped his hands onto the wheel in time to catch the next crest. They were riding easier now. A green light showed at the "Foils Retracted" marker.
Bushka swiveled his seat and hunched down, positioning himself to watch both Brett and Twisp. The captive Merman lay beside Bushka, his face pale but he was breathing.
"We're still going after Gallow," Bushka said. There was a note of hysteria in his voice.
Twisp strapped Scudi into the couch and sat beside her. He held a grab near her head for balance. Twisp looked forward past Bushka, then up at the overhead display. "What's that?" he asked, nodding at the screen.
Bushka did not turn.
Brett glanced up at the screen. A green diamond-shaped marker flashed near the course line and off to the right.
"What is it?" Twisp repeated.
Brett leaned forward and punched the identity key under the screen.
"Outpost 22" flashed on the screen beside the diamond.
"That's the pickup station for the hyb tanks," Brett said. "That's where Gallow's supposed to be. Scudi's brought us out right on target."
"Get us in there!" Bushka ordered.
Brett turned onto the new heading while he tried to recall everything Scudi had told him about the hyb-tank recovery project. There wasn't much.
"Why's it flashing?" Twisp asked.
"I think it does that when you get within range," Brett said. "I think it's a warning that we're getting close to the shallows around the outpost."
"You think?" Bushka snarled.
"I don't know this equipment any better than you do," Brett countered. "Take over any time you want."
"Throw some water on that woman, get her awake," Bushka ordered. Again, that note of hysteria in his voice. He brought the lasgun around until it pointed at Brett. "You stay put back there, Twisp!" Bushka ordered. "Or the kid gets burned."
With his free hand, Bushka began working the keyboard in front of him. "Incompetents," he muttered. "Everything's right here if you just ask for it." Chart-reading instructions scrolled upward on his screen. Bushka bent to read them.
"Ship's balls!" Twisp shouted. "What's that?"
Through the spray-drenched plaz ahead and to his left, Brett saw a great splash of bright orange, something floating a wave out there. He bent forward to peer through the salted plaz. It was a long orange something that stretched into the anonymous gray of the storm. Kelp lay tangled all around it.
The foil was coming up on the orange thing fast, bringing it close to their port side.
"It's an LTA bag," Bushka said. "Somebody's gone down."