The warning beeper on Twisp’s depth finder sounded once, and again. He glanced at it and reset the lower limit. The sea had been shallowing here for some time. Only seventy-five meters now. Fifty meters and he could start trying to see bottom. One of his dockside gifts had been a small driftwatcher, organic and delicately beautiful. It held corneal material at one end that would focus at his demand. At the other end, a mouth-like aperture fitted itself over his eyes. The thing could only exist immersed most of the time in nutrient, and it grew inexorably, eventually becoming too large for a small boat. Custom dictated that it then be passed along to a larger boat. Twisp ran a hand absently along the smooth organic tube of the thing, feeling its automatic response. He sighed. What could he hope to find on the bottom even if it did get shallow enough? He removed his hand from the little driftwatcher and lifted his attention to his surroundings.
The air felt warm, almost balmy and quite moist after the rains. The seas were calmer. Only that shifting, boiling current stretched ahead of him and for more than a kilometer on both sides. Odd. He had never seen a current quite like it, but then Pandora was always turning up new things. The one constant was the weather: It changed and it changed fast. He looked east at the cloud bank there, noting how far toward the horizon Little Sun had moved. Big Sun would come up soon—more light, more visibility. He glanced back at the strip of rich blue along the horizon. Yes, it was clearing. The dark bank of clouds east of him receded faster than his motor and the current chased it. Sunlight tapped his cheeks, his arms. He settled back beside the tiller, feeling the warmth like an old friend. It was as though Pandora had smiled upon his venture. He knew he was very close to where the wave wall had struck Vashon, and now visibility opened up. He moved his gaze around the horizon, seeking a black speck that was not the sea.
I’m here, kid.
His gaze, sweeping left, glimpsed a distinct line of froth. The sight of it prickled the hairs on his neck and sent a chill down his spine. He sat stiffly upright, staring.
A white line on the sea!
Wavewall? No … it wasn’t growing larger or receding. Just off to the left of his course and dead ahead a white line of foam grew more distinct as he approached. Sonar read fifty meters. He slipped the little driftwatcher from its container and fixed it to the coracle’s side with the corneal end underwater. Fitting his forehead to the mouth aperture, he stared downward.
When his eyes adjusted, the view took a moment shaping itself into something identifiable. It was not the rolling contour of the deeps, which he had seen from the subs. It was not the jagged, surreal landscape of the danger areas. This bottom climbed high, almost to the surface. Twisp tore his gaze away from the driftwatcher and looked at the sonar reading: twenty meters!
He returned his attention to the bottom. It was so shallow he could see delicate, sinewy steps—curving terraces covered with kelp fronds. Rock buttresses and walls guarded the outer edges of the terraces. It all looked artificial … manmade.
A core of the Merman kelp project! he thought.
He had seen many segments of the project, but this was vastly different and, he suspected, much larger. Merman engineers experimented with the kelp, he knew that. Supposedly some of the beds would live and grow even on land—if there ever was such a thing. Now Twisp found himself much closer to believing—if this bed was an example. Mermen were doing all that they claimed they’d do. He’d seen the fine latticework strung for kilometers undersea, a structure where the kelp could climb and secure itself. Undersea walls of rock sheltered other plantations. Islanders had complained about the latticework supports, arguing that they were nets to entangle the fishing subs. Twisp had doubted this argument, remembering all the stories of net-bound Mermen. Islander complaints had not stopped the project.
He gave up studying the bottom and looked at the foam line again. The silvery current that carried him curved off to starboard, sweeping close to that disquieting line. He guessed the intersection to be about five klicks off. A distant, recurrent roar accompanied the surfline.
Could it be waves foaming across one of the latticeworks? he wondered.
Both coracles bobbed heavily in a cross-chop, the towed craft pulling at its line and making his job at the tiller a tough one.
Surf! he thought. I’m actually seeing surf.
Islanders had reports of this phenomenon, few of them reliable. It occurred to him that they were unreliable only because the incidents were so infrequent. The great Island of Everett, almost as large as Vashon, had reported a surf sighting just before crashing bottom in a swing-surge of Pandora’s sea that left it suddenly awash in a mysterious shallows. Everett had been lost without survivors, bottomed out, thirty years back.
The course beeper sounded.
Twisp boxed up the driftwatcher, kicked off the warning switch and pulled the tiller hard into his belly. Now he was cutting across the great curve of current that still drifted him toward the foaming white line. The current took on a new character. It rolled and twisted along the surface, dispersing waves in its track. There was a determination about it, a feeling of purpose, as though it were a live thing remorselessly savaging anything in its way. Twisp only wanted out of it. He had never felt such a force. He notched the motor up another hundred revs. At this point a burnout seemed worth the risk—he had to shake this current.
The coracles twisted at the rim of the surge, forcing him to fight the tiller. Then, suddenly, he was through and onto open waves. The white line of surf still lay too close but now he felt he could beat it. He cranked the motor up another notch, pushing full speed. The silver line of current grew thinner and thinner as he left it behind him. It swept in a great curve around the surfline and disappeared.
What if the kid was caught in that? Twisp wondered. Brett could be anywhere.
He crouched over his instruments, read the doppler on Vashon’s range signal, and prepared to make a sun-sight to report the location of this danger. A red telltale blinked on his radio—another Island’s signal. He rotated and homed in on it, identified it as little Eagle Island, off to the northeast. It was almost at range limit, too far away to ask for distance and a crosscheck. His depth finder had nothing in its memory circuits to match the stretch of bottom under him. Dead reckoning, the sun-sight and Vashon’s doppler, however, told him the swift current had taken him at least ten klicks to the west of his intended course. The current had moved him rapidly, but the diversion meant he saved no time reaching the coordinates where the wavewall had struck Vashon.
Twisp coded in the bearings and location, keyed the automatic transmitter and activated it. The signal went out for anyone listening: “Dangerous shallows in this location!”
Presently, he scanned the water around him, squinting and shading his eyes. No sign of Mermen—not a buoy, no flag, nothing. That terrifying current had become nothing more than a silver thread glinting along the surface. He took a course reading and prepared for another hour or more of careful dead reckoning. In a moment, he knew, he would be back into that watchful waiting from which anything unusual could bring him instantly alert.
A noisy boiling hissing and clatter came from astern, an eruption of sound that drowned out the quiet pulsing of his motor and the slap of waves against his hull.
Twisp whirled and was just in time to see a Merman sub leap nose-first out of the water and fall back onto its side. The hard metal glittered gold and green. He had a brief glimpse of exterior tools on the sub, all in active mode, whirling and twisting like spastic limbs. The sub splashed down not a hundred meters away, sending up a great wave that swept under the coracles and carried Twisp high. He fought for steerage as he watched the sub roll, then right itself.
Without thinking about it, Twisp swung his tiller into his gut, turning to go to the rescue. No sub did that sort of thing. The crew could be beaten half to death—particularly inside one of those all-metal Merman wonders. This crew was in trouble.
As he came around, the sub’s hatch popped open. A ma
n wearing only green utility pants clambered out onto the hull. The conning tower already was awash, the sub nosing back under the surface. A wave swept the man from his perch. He started swimming blindly, great thrashing strokes that took him at an angle across Twisp’s course. The sub vanished behind him with a great slurping air bubble.
Twisp changed course to intercept the swimmer. Cupping his great hands around his mouth, Twisp shouted: “This way! Over here!”
The swimmer did not change course.
Twisp swung wide and pulled up alongside the man, cut the motor and extended a hand.
Now in the coracle’s shadow, the swimmer twisted his head upward and gave Twisp a frightened look, seeing the extended hand.
“Come aboard,” Twisp said. It was a traditional Islander greeting, matter-of-fact. Not even an implied question, such as “What in Ship’s name are you doing out here?”
The swimmer took Twisp’s hand and Twisp pulled him aboard, nearly swamping the coracle as the man clumsily tried to grasp a thwart. Twisp pulled him to the center and returned to the tiller.
The man stood there a moment, looking all around, dripping a damp pool into the bilges. His bare chest and face were pale, but not as pale as most Mermen’s.
Is this a Merman who lives a lot topside? Twisp wondered. And what the hell happened to him?
The swimmer looked older than Brett but younger than Twisp. His green utility pants were dark with seawater.
Twisp glanced to where the sub had been. Only a slow roiling of the water showed where it had gone down.
“Trouble?” Twisp asked. Again, it was the Islander way—a laconic overture that said: “What help do you need that I can give?”
The man sat down and lay back against the coracle’s deck cover. He drew in several deep, shuddering breaths.
Recovering from shock, Twisp thought, studying him. The man was small and heavyset, with a large head.
An Islander? Twisp wondered. He put it as a question, hoping directness would shock the man back to normal.
The man remained silent, but he scowled.
That was a reaction, anyway. Twisp took his time examining this strange figure from the sea: dark brown hair lay dripping against a wide forehead. Brown eyes returned Twisp’s gaze from beneath thick brows. The man had a wide nose, wide mouth and square chin. His shoulders were broad, with powerful upper arms thinning to rather delicate forearms and slender hands. The hands appeared soft but the fingertips were calloused and shiny. Twisp had seen such fingertips on people who spent a lot of time at keyboard controls.
Hooking a thumb back to where the sub had gone down, Twisp asked: “You care to tell me what that was all about?”
“I was escaping.” The voice was a thin tenor.
“The sub’s hatch was still open when it went under,” Twisp said. That was just a comment and could be taken as such if the man desired.
“The rest of the sub was secured,” the man said. “Only the engine compartment will flood.”
“That was a Merman sub,” Twisp said; another comment.
The man pushed himself away from the deck cover. “We’d better get out of here,” he said.
“We’re staying while I look for a friend,” Twisp said. “He was lost overboard in that last wave wall.” He cleared his throat. “You care to tell me your name?”
“Iz Bushka.”
Twisp felt that he had heard that name before, but could not make the connection. And now as he looked at Bushka there was a sensation that Twisp had seen this face before—in a Vashon passage, perhaps … somewhere.
“Do I know you?” Twisp asked.
“What’s your name?” Bushka asked.
“Twisp. Queets Twisp.”
“Don’t think we’re acquainted,” Bushka said. He sent another fearful gaze across the water around the coracles.
“You haven’t said what you were escaping from,” Twisp said. Another comment.
“From people who … we’d all be better off if they were dead. Damn! I should’ve killed them but I couldn’t bring myself to do it!”
Twisp remained silent in shock. Did all Mermen speak so casually of killing? He found his voice: “But you sent them down under with a flooded engine room!”
And unconscious, too! But they’re Mermen. They’ll get out when they recover. Come on! Let’s get out of here.”
“Perhaps you didn’t hear me, Iz. I’m looking for a friend who went overboard from Vashon.”
“If your friend’s alive, he’s safe down under. You’re the only thing on the surface for at least twenty klicks. Believe it. I was looking. I came up because I saw you.”
Twisp glanced back at the distant white line of the surf. “That’s on the surface.”
“The barrier? Yeh, but there’s nothing else. No Merman base, nothing.”
Twisp considered for a moment—the way Bushka said “Merman.” Fear? Loathing?
“I know where there’s a Search and Rescue base,” Bushka said. “We could be there by daybreak tomorrow. If your friend’s alive …” He left it there.
Talks a bit like an Islander, acts a lot like a Merman, Twisp thought. Damn! Where have I seen him?
Twisp glanced at the distant surfline. “You called that a barrier.” “Mermen are going to have land on the surface. That’s part of it.”
Twisp let this sink in, not believing it or disbelieving it. Fascinating, if true, but there were other muree to fry at that moment.
“So you scuttled a sub and you’re escaping from people who would be better dead.”
Twisp did not believe half of this Bushka’s story. The hospitality of the sea said you had to listen. Nothing said you had to agree.
Bushka sent an agitated gaze over their surroundings. Second sun was up but in this season it made a quick sweep and the half-night would be on them soon. Twisp was hungry and irritated.
“Do you have a towel and some blankets?” Bushka asked. “I’m freezing my ass off!”
Abruptly contrite because he had failed to provide for the man’s comfort, Twisp said: “Towel and blankets are rolled up in the cuddy behind you.”
As Bushka turned and found the roll, Twisp added: “You saw me so you came up hoping I’d save you.”
Bushka looked out from beneath the towel with which he was drying his hair. “If I’d left them under CO2 any longer it would’ve killed them. I couldn’t do it.”
“Are you going to tell me who they are?”
“People who’d kill us while eating lunch and not miss a bite!”
Something in the way Bushka said this set Twisp’s stomach trembling. Bushka believed what he said.
“I don’t suppose you have an RDC,” Bushka said. He spoke with more than a little snobbishness.
Twisp kept his temper and uncovered the instrument near his feet. His relative drift compensator was one of his proudest possessions. The compass arrow in its top was pointing now far off their course.
Bushka approached and looked down at the RDC. “A Merman compass is more accurate,” he said, “but this will do.”
“Not more accurate between Islands,” Twisp corrected him. “Islands drift and there’s no fixed point of reference.”
Bushka knelt beside the RDC and worked its settings with a sureness that told Twisp this was not the first time the man had used such an instrument. The red arrow atop the housing swung to a new setting.
“That should get us there,” Bushka said. He shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder how we found any place without Merman instruments.”
We? Twisp wondered.
“I think you’re an Islander,” Twisp accused, barely holding in his anger. “We’re a pretty backward lot, aren’t we!”
Bushka stood and returned to his position near the opening of the cuddy.
“Better work a bit more with that towel,” Twisp said. “You missed behind your ears!”
Bushka ignored him and sat down with his back against the cuddy.
Twisp fed more power to his mo
tor and swung around on the course indicated by the RDC arrow. Might as well go to this Rescue Base! Damn that Bushka! Was he one of those down-under Islanders who had become more Merman than the Mermen?
“You going to tell me what happened on that sub?” Twisp asked. “I’m through playing and I want to know what I’m into.”
With a sullen expression, Bushka settled himself into his former position against the deck. Presently, he began describing his trip with Gallow. When he got to the part about Guemes Island, Twisp stopped him.
“You were at the controls?”
“I swear to you I didn’t know what he was doing.”
“Go on. What happened next?”
Bushka picked up his story after the sinking of the Island. Twisp stared at him with a hard expression throughout the recital. Once, Twisp felt under the tiller housing behind him for the lasgun he stored there—a real Merman lasgun that had cost him half a boatload of muree. The cold touch of the weapon settled his mind somewhat. He couldn’t help asking himself, What if this Bushka’s lying?
When Bushka finished, Twisp thought a moment, then: “You strapped the crew into their seats, including this Gallow, and sent them to the bottom. How do you know you didn’t kill them?”
“They were tied loose enough to get free once they came around.”
“I think I’d have …” Twisp shook his head sharply. “You know, don’t you, that it’s your word against theirs and you were at the controls?”
Bushka buried his face in the blanket around his knees. His shoulders shook and it was a few blinks before Twisp realized the man was sobbing.
For Twisp, this was the ultimate intimacy between two men. He had no more doubts that the story was true.