Lonfinn strode across the room and tested the controls on a hatch. He turned. “The head’s through this hatch and guest bedrooms are down the hallway here in case you wish to rest.” He returned and looked down at Keel. “I imagine that thing around your neck becomes tiresome.”
Keel rubbed his neck. “It does indeed. But I know we all must put up with tiresome things in our world.”
Lonfinn scowled. “I wonder why a Merman has never been C/P?”
Brett spoke up, recalling Twisp’s comment on this very question. He repeated it: “Maybe Mermen have too many other things to do and aren’t interested.”
“Not interested?” Lonfinn looked at Brett as though seeing him for the first time. “Young man, I don’t think you’re qualified to discuss political matters.”
“I think the boy was really asking a question,” Keel offered, smiling at Brett.
“Questions should be asked directly,” Lonfinn muttered.
“And answered directly,” Keel persisted. He looked at Brett. “This matter has always been in dispute among ‘the faithful’ and their political lobby. Most of Ship’s faithful topside think it would be a disaster to turn over the C/P’s power to a Merman. They have so much power over other aspects of our otherwise dreary lives.”
Lonfinn smiled without humor. “A difficult political subject for a young man to understand,” he said.
Brett gritted his teeth at the patronizing attitude.
Lonfinn crossed to the wall behind Keel, touched a depression there and a panel slid away. It revealed a huge port that looked out on an undersea courtyard with transparent ceiling and a watery center where clusters of small fishes flashed and turned among delicate, richly colored plants.
“I must be going,” Lonfinn said. “Enjoy yourselves. This”—he indicated the area he had just exposed—”should keep you from feeling too enclosed. I find it restful myself.” He turned to Brett, paused and said, “I’ll see that the necessary forms and papers are sent for you to sign. No sense wasting time.”
With that, Lonfinn departed, leaving by the same hatch they had entered. Brett looked at Keel. “Have you filled out these papers? What are they?”
“The papers fulfill the Merman need to feel they have everything pinned down. Your name, your age, circumstances of your arrival down under, your work experience, any talents you might have, whether you desire to stay …” Keel hesitated, cleared his throat. “ … your parentage, their occupations and mutations. The severity of your own mutation.”
Brett continued to regard the Chief Justice silently.
“And in answer to your other question,” Keel continued, “no, they have not required this of me. I’m sure they have a long dossier on me giving all the important details … and many unimportant tidbits, too.”
Brett had fastened onto one thing in Keel’s statement. “They may ask me to stay down under?”
“They may require you to work off the cost of your rescue. A lot of Islanders have settled down under, something I mean to look into before going topside. Life here can be very attractive, I know.” He ran his fingers through the soft nap of carpet as if for emphasis.
Brett looked at the ceiling, wondering how it would be to live most of his life here away from the suns. Of course, people from down under did go topside lots of times, but still …
“The best disaster-recovery team is composed mostly of ex-Islanders,” Keel said. “So says Kareen Ale.”
“I’ve heard the Mermen always want you to pay your own way,” Brett said. “But it shouldn’t take long to work off the cost of my …” He suddenly thought of Scudi. How could he ever repay Scudi? There was no coin for that.
“Mermen have a great many ways of attracting desirable and acceptable Islanders,” Keel said. “You appear to be someone they’d be interested in having aboard. However, that should not be your chief concern of the moment. By any chance, do you have medical training?”
“Just first aid and resuscitation through school.”
Keel drew in a deep breath and expelled it quickly. “Not enough, I’m afraid. Guemes went down quite a while ago. I’m sure the survivors they’re just now bringing in will require more expert attention.”
Brett tried to swallow in a tight throat.
Guemes, a whole Island sunk.
“I could carry a stretcher,” he said.
Keel smiled sadly. “I’m sure you could. But I’m also sure you wouldn’t be able to find the right place to take it. Either one of us would just be in the way. At the moment, we’re just what they think of us—two Islander misfits who might do more harm than good. We’ll just have to wait.”
Chapter 20
We seldom get rid of an evil merely by understanding its causes.
—C.G. Jung, Shiprecords
“There’s a curse in the Histories,” Bushka said, “old as humans. It says, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ I guess we got it.”
For some time now, as the coracles cruised through the half-night of Pandora’s open sea, Bushka had been telling Twisp what he’d learned from Gallow and from members of Gallow’s crew. Twisp could not see Bushka. Only the thin red light of the RDC’s arrow glowed in the coracle. All else was darkness—not even stars overhead. A damp cloud cover had swept over them shortly after nightfall.
“There’ll be more open land than you can possibly imagine,” Bushka continued. “As much land as you see water around you now. So they say.”
“It’s all bad for the Islands,” Twisp said. “And those rockets you say they’re launching …”
“Oh, they’re well-prepared,” Bushka said. His voice came out of the darkness with a smug sound that Twisp did not like. “Everything’s ready for bringing down the hyb tanks. Warehouses full of equipment.”
“It’s hard for me to imagine land,” Twisp admitted. “Where will they lift it out of the sea first?”
“The place that the settlers here called ‘Colony.’ On the maps, it’s a slightly curved rectangle. The curve is being widened and lengthened into an oval with a lagoon at its center. It was a complete city before the Clone Wars, walled in with plasteel, so it makes a good place to start. Sometime this year they’ll pump it out and the first city will be exposed to the sky.”
“Waves will wipe it out,” Twisp said.
“No,” Bushka countered. “They’ve been five generations preparing for this. They’ve thought of everything—the politics, economics, the kelp …” He broke off as one of the squawks uttered a sleepy bleat.
Both men froze, listening expectantly. Was there a night-roaming hunt of dashers nearby? The squawks remained quiet. “Bad dream,” Bushka muttered.
“So Guemes Island with its religious fanatics stood in the way of this land-colonization project, is that it?” Twisp asked. “Them and their ‘stick-to-the-Islands-where-Ship-left-us’ attitude?”
Bushka did not respond.
Twisp thought about the things the man had revealed. A lifetime of fisherman’s isolation clouded Twisp’s imagination. He felt provincial, incapable of understanding matters of worldwide politics and economics. He knew what worked, and that seemed simple enough. All he knew was that he distrusted this grand scheme, which Bushka seemed half-enamored of in spite of the experience with Gallow.
“There’s no place in this plan for Islanders,” Twisp noted.
“No, no place for mutants. They’re to be excluded,” Bushka said. His voice was almost too low to hear.
“And who’s to say what a mutant is?” Twisp demanded. Bushka remained silent for a long time. Finally, he said, “The Islands are obsolete, that much I can’t argue with. In spite of everything else, Gallow’s right about that.”
Twisp stared into the darkness where Bushka sat. There was a spot just to the left that felt a little darker than the rest. That’s where Twisp aimed his attention. An image of Merman life came to him—their habitation, places Bushka had described. Home, he thought. What kind of person calls this home? Everything sounded regular
and nearly identical, like some insect hive. It gave him the creeps.
“This place you’re guiding us to,” Twisp asked, “what is it? Why is it safe for us to go there?”
“The Green Dashers are a small organization,” Bushka said. “Launch Base One is huge—by the numbers alone our odds are better there than anyplace else in decent range.”
This is hopeless, Twisp thought. If Mermen had not found Brett already, what else could he do? The sea was too big and it had been a fool’s errand trying to fix on the place where the wave wall hit Vashon.
“It’ll be dawn soon,” Bushka said. “We should be there shortly after dawn.”
Twisp heard the spat-spattering of rain on the tarp. He checked his eelcells with the handlight and found that they were turning a noticeable gray. Right on cue there was a tremendous deafening lightning thunder flash behind them. In the aftershock stillness, he heard Bushka holler, “What the fuck was that?”
Twisp flashed the handlight in that direction. Bushka had gone under the tarp head-first and somehow got himself turned around. He clutched the edges of the tarp, steadying himself, and in the glow from the handlight, his wide eyes punctuated his bleached face.
“We just charged our batteries,” Twisp said. “We might take one more of those if it comes around. Then I’ll bring in the antenna.”
“Holy shit,” Bushka snorted, “fishermen are crazier than I thought. It’s a wonder any of you come back.”
“We manage,” Twisp said. “Tell me, how did you become an expert on Mermen so fast?”
Bushka emerged from the tarp. “As a historian, I already knew a great deal about them before going down under. And then … you learn fast when it’s necessary for survival.” There was the sound of chest-puffing behind his words.
Survival, Twisp thought. He extinguished the handlight and wished that he could see Bushka’s face without having to flash the light on him. The man was not a total coward; that seemed evident. He had crewed in the subs, like many other Islanders putting in their service time. Obviously knew how to navigate. But then, most Islanders learned that in school. With all that, Bushka was driven to seek a life down under. According to him, it was because the Mermen had better historical records, some they had never even examined themselves.
Bushka was like some of the Guemes fanatics, Twisp realized. Driven. A seeker after hidden knowledge. Bushka wanted his facts from the source and he didn’t care how he got there. A dangerous man.
Twisp renewed his alertness, sensitive to any shift in Bushka’s position. The coracle would transmit such movement … should Bushka try to take him.
“You’d better believe it’s happening,” Bushka said. “There’ll be no place for Islands pretty soon.”
“Radio says Ward Keel’s gone down under on some fact-finding mission,” Twisp said. “You suppose he knew about it all along?”
A foot scraped the deck as Bushka shifted his weight. “According to Gallow, they did it without word topside.”
Silence settled between them for a time. Twisp kept his attention on the guiding arrow, a red glowing pointer. How could some of the things Bushka said be believed? The barrier above the sea was real, though. And there was no doubt Bushka had run-for-it fever—something truly big and ugly chased him.
For his part, Bushka lay prisoned in his own thoughts. I should’ve had the guts to kill them. But the thing Gallow represented was bigger than Gallow. No mistaking that. To a historian, it was a familiar pattern. Ship’s surviving records reported a plenitude of violence, leaders who tried to solve human problems by mass killing. Until the madness of Guemes, Bushka had thought such things distantly unreal. Now, he knew the madness, a thing with teeth and shadows.
Pale dawn lightened the wavetops and revealed Twisp working over a small cooking burner on the seat beside him. Bushka wondered whether, in the growing clarity of daylight, Twisp might not rather foreclose on the loan of the kid’s shirt and pants.
Seeing Bushka’s attention on him, Twisp asked, “Coffee?”
“Thanks.”
Then: “How could I have been that blind and ignorant?”
Twisp stared at Bushka silently for a while, then asked, simply, “Going along with them, or letting them go?”
Bushka coughed and cleared his throat. His mouth felt full of lint as soon as he swallowed the hot coffee.
I’m still afraid, he thought. He looked up at Twisp, cooling his coffee at the tiller. “I’ve never been that afraid,” he said.
Twisp nodded. The signs of fear on Bushka were easily read. Fear and ignorance drifted the same currents. There would be anger soon, when the fear receded. For now, though, Bushka’s mind was chewing on itself.
“Pride, that’s what made me do it,” Bushka said. “I wanted Gallow’s story, history in the making, political ferment—a powerful movement among the Mermen. One of their best took a liking to me. He knew I’d work hard. He knew how grateful I’d be …”
“What if this Gallow and his crew are dead?” Twisp asked. “You scuttled their sub and only you are left to say what happened at Guemes.”
“I tell you, I made sure they could escape!”
Twisp suppressed a grim smile. The anger was beginning to surface.
Bushka studied Twisp’s face in the gray light. The fisherman was dark in the way of many Islanders who worked out in the weather. Vagrant breezes whipped Twisp’s shaggy brown hair across his eyes. A two days’ growth of beard shadowed his jaws and caught an occasional strand of hair. Everything in the man’s manner—the steady movement of his eyes, the set of his mouth—spoke to Bushka of strength and resolution. Bushka envied the untroubled clarity in Twisp’s gaze. Bushka was sure that no mirror would ever again return such clarity to his own eyes—not after the Guemes massacre. Bushka could see his own death in that butchery.
How could anybody believe I didn’t know what was happening until it happened? How can I believe it?
“They tricked me good,” Bushka said. “And oh, was I ready! I was all ready to trick myself.”
“Most people know what it’s like to be tricked,” Twisp agreed. His voice was flat and almost devoid of emotion. It kept Bushka talking.
“I won’t sleep for the rest of my life,” Bushka muttered.
Twisp looked away at the surging sea around them. He didn’t like the note of self-pity in Bushka’s tone.
“What about the survivors of Guemes?” He spoke flatly. “What about their dreams?”
Bushka stared at Twisp in the growing light. A good man trying to save a partner’s life. Bushka scrunched his eyes tightly closed but the images of Guemes imprinted themselves on his eyelids.
His eyes snapped open. Twisp was staring intently off to the right ahead of them. “Where’s this Launch Base we’re supposed to see at dawn?”
“It’ll show before long.”
Bushka stared at the lowering sky ahead of them. And when the Launch Base did show … what then? The question tightened a band around his chest. Would the Mermen believe? Even if they did believe, would they act on that belief in a way to protect Islanders?
Chapter 21
Never trust a great man’s love.
—Islander proverb
Keel looked down from the observation platform onto a nightmare scene of controlled pandemonium—rescue sleds wallowed into a small docking basin, coming through hatches lining the far wall of the courtyard below him. This was no nightmare, Keel reminded himself. Triage teams moved among the human shapes that littered the deck. Trauma teams conducted emergency surgery on the scene while other survivors were carried or carted off. The dead, and Keel had never imagined that much death, were stacked like the meat they were against the wall to his left. A long, oval port above the hatches gave a sea view of the arriving rescue sledges queued up and waiting their turns at the hatches. Trauma teams serviced these, too, as best they could.
Behind Keel, Brett uttered a sharp gasp as the shreds of someone’s lower jaw tumbled to the deck from a body
bag in transit to the mounting pile of similar bags against the wall. Scudi, standing beside Brett, shook with silent sobs.
Keel felt numb. He began to understand why Kareen Ale had sent Scudi to fetch him and Brett. Ale had not really grasped the enormity of this tragedy. Seeing it, she had wanted Islander witnesses to the fact that Mermen were doing everything physically possible for the survivors.
And she’ll bring up the dirty work of the dead, he thought.
Keel glimpsed Ale’s red hair among the medics working over the few survivors scattered across the courtyard. From the piles of dead, it was obvious that survivors were not even meeting the odds of pure chance. They were a tiny minority.
Scudi moved up beside him, her attention fixed on the deck below them. “So many,” she whispered.
“How did it happen?” Brett demanded, speaking from beside Keel’s left elbow.
Keel nodded. Yes, that was the real question. He did not want to conjecture on the matter, he wanted to be certain.
“So many,” Scudi repeated, louder this time.
“The last census put Guemes at ten thousand souls,” Keel said. This statement surprised him even as it escaped his mouth. Souls. The teachings of Ship did come to the surface in a crisis.
Keel knew he should assert himself, use the power of his position to demand answers. He owed it to the others if not to himself. The C/P would be after him the minute he returned, for one thing. Rocksack still had family on Guemes, of this Keel was certain. She would be angry, terribly angry in spite of her training, and she would be a force to reckon with.