For Brett, Twisp's voice lay immersed in what the kelp had insisted, a chant imprinted on the vocal centers. Certainly this was what the kelp had told Bushka.
Drive Gallow out. Avata will do the rest.
The chant surged there, background to a persistent image of Ward Keel imprisoned in plaz, beckoning to him. Brett felt sure that Keel was Gallow's prisoner at this outpost.
Panille went to the left-hand pilot's seat and checked the instruments. The foil was making minimal headway in the wide circle of open water enclosed by kelp fronds.
Brett stopped near the pilot station. Feeling Scudi's hand tremble in his, he squeezed her hand firmly. She leaned against him. He looked out the plaz to his right. Framed there was a churning gray sea. Rain slanted with a stiff breeze. Kelp fronds lifted and danced on the wavetops, smoothing them and dampening the chop. Even as he looked, darkness settled over the sea. Automatic lighting came on to rim the edges of the cabin ceiling. Course vector lights winked on the screens in front of Panille.
Twisp had stopped at the entrance to the cabin, his hand on the lasgun, his attention on Nakano.
Noting this, Nakano smiled. He moved across in front of Brett and went to the pilot station beside Panille, activating the exterior lights. A spotlight fanned brilliant illumination across the open water and the edge of kelp. Abruptly, swift motion entered the illuminated area.
"Dashers!" Panille said.
"Look at that big bull!" Nakano said.
Brett and Scudi stared out at the scene, the blanket of kelp, the hunt of dashers.
"I've never seen such a big one," Ale said.
The hunt swept along in an undulating glide behind the monster bull. Nakano tracked them with the spotlight. They circled the dark perimeter of kelp, then worked into the leaves.
Nakano turned from the control station and opened the plaz hatch beside him, letting in a damp rush of wind and rain. Lifting his lasgun, he sent a burning arc at the hunt, tumbling the lead bull and two followers. Their dark green blood washed over the kelp fronds, foaming in the waves.
The rest of the hunt turned on its own dead, spreading blood and torn flesh across the fan of light. Abruptly, kelp stalks as thick as a man's waist lifted from the sea, whipped the gore to a foam and drove the dashers from their feed.
Nakano drew back and secured the hatch. "You see that?" he asked.
No one answered. They had all seen it.
"We will submerge," Bushka said. "We will go in with the foil underwater. Nakano will be visible. The rest of us will appear to be captives until the last blink."
Brett released Scudi's hand and crossed to confront Bushka. "I'll not have Scudi used as bait!"
Bushka made a grab for his lasgun but Brett caught the man's wrist. Young muscles, made powerful by months of hauling nets, flexed once, twisted Bushka's wrist and the lasgun dropped to the deck. Brett kicked it toward Twisp, who picked it up and hefted it.
Bushka eyed the weapons he had left near the passage entrance.
"You'd never make it," Twisp said. "So relax." He held the lasgun casually, muzzle pointed downward, but his manner suggested poised readiness.
"So what do we do now?" Ale asked.
"We could run for the Launch Base and alert everyone to what's happening," Panille said.
"You'd start a civil war among Mermen and the Islanders would be drawn into it," Bushka protested. He rubbed at his wrist where Brett had twisted it.
"There's something else," Scudi said. She glanced at Brett, then at Twisp. "Chief Justice Keel is being held prisoner here by Gallow."
"In Ship's name, how do you know that?" Twisp demanded.
"The kelp says it," Scudi said.
"It showed me a vision of Keel in captivity," Brett said.
"Vision!" Twisp said.
"The only important thing is to kill Gallow," Bushka muttered.
Twisp looked at Kareen Ale. "The only reason we went back to the cargo bay was to ask you for advice," he said. "What does the ambassador suggest?"
"Use the kelp," she said. "Take the foil down to the inner edge of the kelp in sight of the outpost ... and we wait. Let them see Scudi and me. That should tempt Gallow to come out. And yes, Justice Keel is there. I've seen him."
"I say we run for Vashon," Brett said.
"Let me remind you," Ale said, "that the hyb tanks will be brought down here. The pickup team is at this outpost."
"And they're either Gallow's people or Gallow's captives," Twisp sneered. "Any way you look at it, the hyb tanks are his."
Ale glanced at the chrono beside the control panel. "If all goes well, the tanks could be here in a little more than eight hours."
"With seven of us aboard, we couldn't stay down eight hours," Panille said.
Bushka began to giggle, startling them. "Empty argument," he said. "Empty words. The kelp won't permit us to leave until we do its bidding. It's kill Gallow or nothing."
Nakano was the first to break the subsequent silence. "Then we'd better get busy," he said. "Personally, I like the ambassador's plan but I think we also should send in a scout party."
"And you're volunteering?" Twisp asked.
"If you have a better idea, let's hear it," Nakano said. He returned to the cabin's rear bulkhead and opened a supply locker, exposing fins, air tanks, breathers and dive suits.
"You saw the kelp crush that sub," Brett reminded Twisp. "And you saw what happened with the dashers."
"Then I'm the one who goes in," Twisp said. "They don't know me. I'll carry our message so they get it real clear."
'Twisp, no!" Brett protested.
"Yes!" Twisp glanced at the others, focusing on each face for a blink, then: "With the exception of the ambassador there, who can't go in for obvious reasons - they want her, for Ship's sake! But except for her, I'm the obvious one. I'll take Nakano with me." Twisp sent a dasher grin at Nakano, who looked both surprised and pleased.
"Why you?" Brett asked. "I could -"
"You could get yourself in eelshit for no good reason. You've never dealt with people who want to get the best of you, kid. You've never had to drive the best bargain you could for your fish. I know how to deal with such people."
"Gallow is no fish dealer," Bushka said.
"It's still bargaining for your life and everything you want," Twisp said. "The kid stays here with Panille. They keep an eye on you, Bushka, to see you don't do something crazy. Me, I'm going to tell this Gallow just what he gets - so much and no more!"
Do that which is good and no evil shall touch you.
- Raphael, Apocrypha, The Christian Book of the Dead
Within the first minute of the dive, Twisp tumbled along, flailing his long arms, his fins thrusting inefficiently. He watched helplessly as the gap between himself and Nakano widened. Why was Nakano speeding off that way?
Like most Islanders, Twisp had trained with Merman-style breathers for emergency use; he had even considered at one time that he might permit himself to become one of the rare Islanders fitted for an airfish. But airfish were a cash crop and the operation was outrageously costly. And his arms, superb for net pulling, were not suited to swimming.
Twisp struggled to keep Nakano in sight. He skimmed the bottom, his fins puffing sand along a blue-black canyon illuminated by Merman lights set into the rock. The sea above him remained a black remoteness hidden in the short-night.
When Panille had locked the foil against a rocky outcrop within the outpost's kelp perimeter, he had warned them: "The current's ranging between two and four knots. I don't know where the current came from, but it'll help you get to the outpost."
"Kelp is making that current," Bushka had said.
"Whatever is causing it, be careful," Panille had said. "You'll be moving too fast for mistakes."
Brett, still protesting the assignment of duties, had demanded: "How will they get back to us?"
"Steal a vehicle," Nakano had said.
As he had sealed the dive hatch behind them and prepared to flood the foil's lock, Nakano had said: "Stay close, Twisp. We'll be about ten minutes getting to the outpost hatch. I'll tow you the last few meters. Make it look like you're my prisoner."
But now Nakano was far ahead in the chill, green-washed distance. The floppy bubbles of his exhalations raced upward behind him, creating strange prism effects in the artificial light. The Merman obviously was in his element here and Twisp was the muree-out-of-water.
I should've anticipated that! Twisp thought.
Abruptly, Nakano rolled to one side in a powerful turn, clutched one of the light mountings anchored in the canyon's wall and held himself against the current, waiting for Twisp's arrival. Nakano's air tank glistened yellow-green along his back and his masked face was a grotesque shadow beside the rock.
Twisp, somewhat reassured by the Merman's action, tried to change course but would have missed Nakano had not the latter pushed off smoothly and grabbed the breather valve at Twisp's left shoulder. They rode along together then, swimming gently as the current slackened near the underwater cliff into which the outpost had been planted.
Twisp saw a wall of black rock ahead, some of it looking as though it were part of the sea's natural basement complex, some appearing man-changed - great dark shapes piled one atop another. A wide plaz dive lock outlined in light had been set into this construction. Nakano operated controls at the side of the plaz with one hand. A circular hatch opened before them. They swam into the lock, Nakano still holding Twisp's breather valve.
It was an oval space illuminated by brilliant blue lights set into the walls. A plaz hatch on the inner curve revealed an empty passage beyond.
The outer hatch sealed automatically behind them and water began swirling out of the lock through a floor vent. Nakano released his grip on Twisp when their heads emerged from the water.
Removing his mouthpiece, Nakano said: "You're being very intelligent for a Mute. I could've shut off your air at any time. "You'd have been eelbait."
Twisp removed his own mouthpiece but remained silent. Nothing was important except getting to Gallow.
"Don't try anything," Nakano warned. "I could break you into small pieces with only one hand."
Hoping Nakano was playing a part for any would-be listeners, Twisp looked at the Merman's heavily muscled body. Nakano's threat could be real, Twisp thought, but the Merman might be surprised at the strength in a net-puller's arms ... even if those arms did appear to be mutated monstrosities.
Nakano took off his tank and harness and held the equipment in his left hand. Twisp waited for the last of the water to swirl through the floor vent, then shucked off his own tank. He held it loosely cradled in one long arm, feeling the weight of it and thinking how potent a weapon this would be if hurled suddenly.
The inner hatch swung aside and Twisp tasted hot, moist air. Nakano pushed Twisp ahead of him through the hatchway and they emerged into a rectangular space with no other visible exit.
Abruptly, a voice barked at them from an overhead vent: "Nakano! Send the Mute topside. You get off at level nine and come to me. I want to know why you didn't bring the foil straight in."
"Gallow," Nakano explained, looking at Twisp. "After I get off, you go straight on up."
Twisp's gut felt suddenly empty. How many people did Gallow have here? Was Gallow so confident of his Security that he could release an Islander prisoner to wander around without a guard? Or was this a ploy to disarm the stupid Islander?
Nakano looked up at the vent. Twisp, peering at the ceiling construction, saw the glittering oval of a Merman remote-eye.
"This man's my prisoner," Nakano said. "I presume there are guards topside."
"The Mute can't run away anywhere up there," Gallow's voice snapped. "But he had better wait near the lift exit. We don't want to hunt all over for him."
Twisp felt himself get heavier then and realized that the entire rectangular room was rising. Presently, it stopped, and a thin seam in the back wall opened to reveal a hatch and a well-lighted passage with many armed Mermen in it.
Gallow grasped Twisp's dive tanks by the harness. "I'll take them," he said. "Wouldn't want you using these as a weapon."
Twisp released his hold on the equipment.
Gallow went out and the hatch sealed.
Again, the room lifted. After what seemed to Twisp an interminable wait, the room again came to a stop. The hatch opening was haloed in dim light. Hesitantly, Twisp stepped out into hot, dry air. He looked up and around at high, black cliffs and open sky - dawn light, still some stars visible. Even as he looked, Big Sun lifted over the cliffs, illuminating a great rock-girdled bowl with much square-edged Merman construction in it and an LTA base in the middle distance.
Open land!
Twisp heard someone nearby using a saw. The sound was reassuring, a thing heard often in an Island's shop areas - metal and plastics being cut by carpenters for assemblage into necessary nonorganic utensils.
The rocks were sharp under Twisp's bare feet and Big Sun blinded him.
"Abimael, simple one! Come here out of the sun!"
It was a man's voice and it came from a building ahead of Twisp. He saw someone moving in the shadows. The sound of sawing continued.
The air in his lungs felt hot and dry, not the cool metallic dampness of the dive tanks nor the warm moisture that blew so often across Vashon. The surface underfoot did not move, either. Twisp felt this as a dangerous, alien thing. Decks should lift and move!
All the edges are hard, he thought.
He stepped gingerly forward into the building's shade. The sawing stopped and now Twisp discerned a figure in the deeper shadows - a dark-skinned man in a diaperlike garment. Long black hair frizzed out from the man's head and he had a gray-streaked beard. It was one of the few beards Twisp had ever seen, reaching nearly to the man's navel. Twisp had heard that some Mermen grew beards and the beard-gene cropped up occasionally among Islanders, but this luxurious growth was something new.
As the man moved in the shadows, Twisp saw the evidence of great physical strength, particularly in the shoulders and upper body. This Merman would make a good net-puller, Twisp thought. The Merman's midsection displayed the preliminary settlings of middle age, however. Twisp guessed the man at a hard-driven forty or forty-five ... very dark-skinned for a Merman. His skin glowed with a layer of red within the leathery tones.
"Abimael, come now," the man said. "Your feet will burn. Come have a cake till your mama finds you."
Why does he call me Abimael? Twisp glanced around at the basin enclosed by the high black cliffs. A squad of Mermen worked in the middle distance, sweeping the ground with flamethrowers.
It was a dreamlike scene in the hot light of swiftly rising Big Sun. Twisp feared suddenly that he had been narced. Panille had warned him about it: "Don't swim off into a deep area and you be sure to breathe slow and deep. Otherwise you could be narced."
Narc, Twisp knew, was the Merman term for nitrogen narcosis, intoxication they sometimes encountered in the depths when using pressurized air tanks. There were stories - narced divers releasing their tanks at depth and swimming away to drown, or offering their air to passing fish, or going off into a euphoric water-dance.
"I hear the flamethrowers," the old carpenter said.
The matter-of-fact confirmation of what Twisp saw eased his fears. No ... this is real land ... open to the sky. I am here and I am not narced.
"They think they'll sterilize this land and they'll never have nerve runners here," the carpenter said. "The fools are wrong! Nerve-runner eggs are in the sea everywhere. Flamethrowers will be needed for as long as people live here."
The carpenter moved across his shadowed area toward a brown cloth folded on a bench. He sat on the end of the bench and opened the cloth, revealing a paper-wrapped package of cakes, dark brown and glossy. Twisp smelled the sweet stickiness rising from the cakes. The carpenter lifted a cake in thick knuckle-swollen fingers and held it toward Twisp.
In that instant, Twisp saw that the man was blind. The eyes were cloud-gray and empty of recognition. Hesitantly, Twisp accepted the cake and sampled it. Rich brown fruit in the cake sweetened his tongue.
Again, Twisp looked at the scene in the bowl of open land. He had seen pictures and holos from the histories but nothing had prepared him for this experience. He felt both attracted and repelled by what he saw. This land would not drift willy-nilly on an uncertain sea. There was a sense of absolute assurance in the firmness underfoot. But there was a loss of freedom in it, too. It was locked down and enclosed ... limited. Too much of this could narrow a man's vision.
"One more cake, Abimael, and then you go home," the carpenter said.
Twisp stepped back from the carpenter, hoping to escape silently, but his heel encountered a stone and he tumbled backward, sitting sharply on another stone. An involuntary cry of pain escaped him.
"Now, don't you cry, Abimael!" the carpenter said.
Twisp heaved himself to his feet. "I'm not Abimael," he said.
The carpenter aimed his sightless eyes toward Twisp and sat silent for a moment, then: "I hear that now. Hope you liked the cake. You see Abimael anywhere around?"
"No one in sight but the men with the flamethrowers."
"Damned fools!" The carpenter swallowed a cake whole and licked the syrupy coating off his fingers. "They're bringing Islanders onto the land already?"
"I ... I think I'm the first."
"They call me Noah," the carpenter said. "You can take it as a joke. Say I was the first out here. Are you badly deformed, Islander?"
Twisp swallowed a sudden rise of anger at the man's bluntness.
"My arms are rather long but they're perfect for pulling nets."
"Don't mind the useful variations," Noah said. "What's your name?"
"Twisp ... Queets Twisp."
"Twisp," Noah said. "I like that name. It has a good sound. Want another cake?"
"No, thank you. It was good, though. I just can't take too much sweetness. What're you making here?"
"I'm working with a bit of wood," Noah said. "Think of that! Wood grown on Pandora! I'm fashioning some pieces that will be made into furniture for the new director of this place. You met him yet? Name's Gallow."
"I haven't had that ... pleasure," Twisp said.
"You will. He sees everybody. Doesn't like Mutes, though, I'm afraid."
"How were you ... I mean, your eyes?"
"I wasn't born this way. It was caused by staring at a sun too long. Bet you didn't know that, did you? If you stand on solid ground so you don't move around, you can stare right at the sun ... but it can blind you."
"Oh." Twisp didn't know what else to say. Noah seemed resigned to his fate, though.
"Abimael!" Noah raised his voice into a loud call.
There was no answer.
"He'll come," Noah said. "Saved a cake for him. He knows it."
Twisp nodded, then felt the foolishness of the gesture. He stared across the enclosed basin. The land glared at him from all sides, everything highlighted by the brightness of Big Sun. The buildings were stark white, shot through with streaks of brown. Water or the illusion of water shimmered in a flat area near the far cliffs. The flamethrowers had been silenced and the Merman workers had gone into a building toward the center of the basin. Noah returned to his woodworking. There was no wind, no sound of seabirds, no sound of Abimael, who was supposed to be coming to his father's call. Nothing. Twisp had never before heard such silence ... not even underwater.
"They call me Noah," Noah said. "Go to the records and look up the histories. I call my first-born Abimael. Do you dream strange things, Twisp? I used to dream about a big boat, called an ark, in the time when the original Terrahome was flooded. The ark saved lots of humans and animals from the flood ... kinda like the hyb tanks in that, you know?"
Twisp found himself fascinated by the carpenter's voice. The man was a storyteller and knew the trick of flexing his voice to hold a listener's attention.
"The ones who didn't get on the ark, they all died," Noah said. "When the sea went down, they found the stinking carcasses for months. The ark was built so animals and people couldn't climb aboard unless they were invited and the ramp was lowered."
Noah mopped sweat from his brow with a purple cloth. "Stinking carcasses everywhere," he muttered.
A slight breeze came over the cliff walls and wafted the heavy stink of burned things across Twisp. He could almost smell the rotting flesh Noah described.
The carpenter hefted two joined pieces of wood and hung them on a peg in the wall behind him.
"Ship made a promise that Noah would live," Noah said. "But watching that much death was very bad. When so many die and so few live, think how dead the survivors must feel! They needed the miracle of Lazarus and it was denied them."
Noah turned away from the wall and his blind eyes glittered in reflected light. Twisp saw that tears rolled unchecked down the man's cheeks and onto his dark, bare chest.
"I don't know whether you'll believe it," Noah said, "but Ship has talked to me."
Twisp stared at the tear-stained face, fascinated. For the first time in his life, Twisp felt himself to be in the presence of an authentic mystery.
"Ship spoke to me," Noah said. "I smelled the stink of death and saw bones on the land still clotted with rotting flesh. Ship said: 'I will not again curse the ground for mankind's sake.'"
Twisp shuddered. Noah's words came with a compelling force that could not be rejected.
Noah paused, then went on: "And Ship said, 'The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.' What do you think of that?"
For mankind's sake, Twisp thought.
Noah frightened him then by speaking it once more aloud: "For mankind's sake! As though we begged for it! As though we couldn't work out something better than all that death!"
Twisp began to feel a deep sympathy for the carpenter. This Noah was a philosopher and a profound thinker. For the first time, Twisp began to feel that Islander and Merman might achieve a common understanding. All Mermen were not Gallows or Nakanos.
"You know what, Twisp?" Noah asked. "I expected better of Ship than slaughter. And to say He does it for mankind's sake!"
Noah came across the shadowed work area, skirting the bench as though he could see it, and stopped directly in front of Twisp.
"I hear you breathing there," Noah said. "Ship spoke to me, Twisp. I don't care whether you believe that. It happened." Noah reached out and grasped Twisp's shoulder, moved the hand downward and explored the length of Twisp's left arm, then returned to trace a finger over Twisp's face.
"Your arm is long," Noah said. "Don't see anything wrong in that if it's useful. You got a good face. Lots of wrinkles. You live outside a lot. You see any sign of my Abimael yet?"
Twisp swallowed. "No."
"Don't you be frightened of me just because I talk to Ship," Noah said. "This new ark of ours is out on dry land once and for all. We're going to leave the sea."
Noah pulled away from Twisp and returned to the workbench.
A hand touched Twisp's right arm. Startled, he whirled and confronted Nakano. The big Merman had approached without a sound.
"Gallow wants to see you now," Nakano said.
"Where is that Abimael?" Noah asked.
And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off.
- Genesis 8:11, The Christian Book of the Dead
Duque ignored the gasps of the watchers ringed around the constant gloom of the Vata Pool. His ears did not register the strangled moan that came clearly from the wide, flaccid throat of the C/P. The heavy fist that Vata clamped to his genitals captured Duque's attention completely. Her fervor hurled him painfully out of pseudosleep, but her touch softened with every blink. The poolside gasps were replaced by sporadic mutterings and a few hushed giggles. When Duque's hand began its complementary stroking of Vata's huge body the room stilled. Vata moaned. The poolside watchers were soaked by the wave set up under the rhythmic strokes of her mighty hips.
"They're going to pair!"
"Her eyes are open," one said, "and look, they move!"
Vata licked her lips, pinned Duque to the bottom of the pool and straddled him there. Her head and the tops of her shoulders broke the surface and she gasped great, long breaths with her head thrown back.
"Yes!" Vata said, and the C/P's mind registered, Her first word in almost three hundred years. How could the circumstances of that first word be explained to the faithful?
It's to punish me! The thought flooded Simone Rocksack's mind. She saw it all. The C/P wondered, then, what sort of punishment Vata might have in mind for Gallow.