Brett felt guilty about his sudden embarrassment.
You shouldn’t be embarrassed by your friends.
The first long shaft of dawn washed across the coracle, a lazy pink.
Brett sat up.
Twisp, his voice low and muffled at the stern, said, “Take the watch, kid. I’ll need a few winks.”
“Right.”
Brett whispered to keep from waking Scudi. She lay curled up close, her back and hips fitting into the socket of his body as if they were built together. One hand lay flung backward around Brett’s waist. He gently disengaged her light grip.
Looking up at the clear sky, Brett thought, It’s going to be a hot one. He slid out from beneath the tarp and felt the damp bow spray wet his hair and face.
Brett brushed a thick lock of hair from his eyes and crept aft to take the tiller.
“Gonna be a hot one,” Twisp said. Brett smiled at the coincidence. They thought alike now, no question about it. He scanned the horizon. The boats still glided down a narrow avenue of current between the hedging kelp.
“Aren’t we going kinda slow?” Brett asked.
“Eelcells are getting low,” Twisp said. He gestured with a foot at the telltale pink of discharge on the cellpack set into the deck. “Gonna have to stop and charge them or raise sail.”
Brett wet a finger in his mouth and raised it to the air. There was only the coolness of their own passage—flat calm everywhere he looked, and gently undulating kelp fronds as far as the eye could see.
“We should be raising Vashon pretty soon,” Twisp said. “I caught the Seabird program while you were asleep. Everything’s going well, so they say.”
“I thought you wanted some shut-eye,” Brett said.
“Changed my mind. I wanta see Vashon first. ‘Sides, I miss all the times we’d just sit up and shoot the shit. I’ve just been dozing and thinking here since I relieved you at midnight.”
“And listening to the radio,” Brett said. He indicated the half-earphone jacked into the receiver.
“Real interesting, what they had to say,” Twisp said. He kept his voice low, his attention on the mound that was the sleeping figure of Bushka.
“Things are going well,” Brett prompted.
“Seabird says Vashon is in sight of land that is well out of the water. He describes black cliffs. High cliffs and waves foaming white at the base. People could live there, he says.”
Brett tried to visualize this.
Cliff was a word Brett had heard rarely. “How could we get people and supplies up the cliff?” Brett asked. “And what happens if the sea rises again?”
“Way I see it, you’d have to be part bird to live there,” Twisp agreed. “If you needed the sea. And fresh water might be scarce.”
“LTA’s might help.”
“Maybe catch basins for the rain,” Twisp mused. “But the big problem they’re worried about is nerve runners.”
In the bow, Bushka lifted himself out of his tarp and stared aft at Brett and Twisp.
Brett ignored the man. Nerve runners! He knew them only from the scant early holos and the histories from before the dark times of the rising sea and the death of the kelp.
“Once there’s open land, there’ll be nerve runners,” Twisp said. “That’s what the experts are saying.”
“You pay for everything,” Bushka said. He patted the back of his open hand against his mouth, yawning widely.
Something had changed in Bushka, Brett realized. When he accepted that his story about Guemes was believed, Bushka had become a tragicomic figure instead of a villain.
Did he change or is it just that we’re seeing him different? Brett wondered.
Scudi lifted herself from beneath her tarp and said, “Did I hear somebody say something about nerve runners?”
Brett explained.
“But Vashon can see land?” Scudi asked. “Real land?”
Twisp nodded. “So they say.” He reached down and tugged at a pair of lines trailing over the side of the coracle.
Immediately, their squawks set up a flapping commotion beside the boat, spattering cold water all around. Bushka caught most of the splashing.
“Ship’s teeth!” he gasped. “That’s cold!”
Twisp chuckled. “Wakes you up good,” he said. “Just imagine what—” He broke off and bent his head in a listening attitude.
The others heard it, too. All turned toward the horizon on their port where the distant pulse of a hydrogen ram could be heard. They saw it then—a white line far off across the kelp.
“Foil,” Bushka said. “They’re turning toward us.”
“Their instruments have locked onto us,” Twisp said.
“They’re not going to Vashon … they’re coming to us!” Bushka said.
“He may be right,” Brett said.
Twisp jerked his chin down and up. “Brett, you and Scudi take your dive suits and those kits. You hit the water. Hide in the kelp. Bushka, there’s an old green duffle bag under the deck forward. Haul it out.”
Brett, struggling into his suit, remembered what was in that bag. “What’re you going to do with your spare net?” he asked.
“We’ll lay it here.”
“I don’t have a dive suit,” Bushka moaned.
“You’ll hide under the tarp there in the cuddy,” Twisp said. “Over the side, you two. Hurry it up, Scudi! String that net along the kelp.”
Presently, after hurried preparations, Bushka burrowed his way beneath the tarp and crawled under the forward deck. Brett and Scudi rolled backward over the side of the boat, pulling the net with them. The sound of the approaching foil was growing louder.
Twisp stared toward the sound. The foil was still eight or ten kilometers to port but closing faster than he had thought possible. He hauled in his squawks and caged them, then found two handlines. He baited them with dried muree and slung them over the side.
The raft!
It bobbed against the side of the supply coracle like a beacon. Twisp shot out a long arm, grabbed the line and pulled it to him. He slit it open, rolled the air out of it as fast as he could and stowed it under his seat. Brett and Scudi, he saw, were getting something out of the supply coracle. Harpoon? Damn! They had better hurry.
He glanced around his coracle then. Bushka lay concealed under the bow cuddy. The net trailed aft. Scudi and Brett had gone under water into the kelp. Why did Brett want a harpoon? Twisp wondered. They were safely under the kelp, though, taking their surface air from beneath huge leaves.
Twisp cut his motor and slipped the lasgun out of its hiding place behind him. He put it under a towel beside him on the seat and kept his hand on it.
“Bushka,” he called. “Stay as quiet as a dead fish. If it’s them … well, we don’t know. I’ll give you the all-clear if it’s not.” He wiped the back of his free hand across his mouth. “Here they are.”
He raised a hand in greeting as the foil circled in over the kelp, scattering torn green fronds in its wake. It avoided the net and the side of the channel where Brett and Scudi had taken to the water.
No response came to his greeting, just intense stares from two dark figures in the high cockpit. Twisp saw streaks of green on the figures up there. He breathed deeply to slow his heartbeat and steady the trembling in his legs.
Be ready, he warned himself, but don’t be jumpy.
The foil swung wide astern and sank into the channel through the kelp. The jet subsided to a faint hiss. A heavy wave rolled out from the foil’s bow and rocked the coracles. The squawks set up a loud complaint.
Once more, Twisp raised a hand in greeting and waved the approaching foil to the left, indicating the long line of his net with its bobbing floats. When no more than twenty meters separated the craft, Twisp shouted, “Good weather and a good catch!”
He tightened his grip on the lasgun. The choppy cross-waves set up by the foil broke over the coracle’s thwarts and soaked him.
Still no response from the foil, which now loo
med high over him and no more than ten meters away. Its side hatch slid open and a Merman appeared there in a camouflaged dive suit—green blobs and stripes. The foil slid alongside and came to a stop.
The Merman standing above Twisp said, “I thought Mutes never fished alone.”
“You thought wrong.”
“I thought no Mute fished out of sight of his Island.”
“This one does.”
The Merman’s quick eyes flitted over both coracles, followed the line of floats astern, then fixed on Twisp.
“Your net’s strung along a kelp bed,” he said. “You could lose it that way.”
“Kelp means fish,” Twisp said. He kept his voice level, calm. He even flashed a smile. “Fishermen go where the catch is.”
Under the foil’s bow, too low to be visible to the Merman, Twisp saw Scudi slip up for air, then drift down.
“Where’s your catch?”
“What’s it to you?”
The Merman squatted on the deck above Twisp and looked down at him. “Listen, shit-bug, you can disappear out here. Now I’ve got some questions and I want answers. If I like the answers, you keep your net, your boat, your catch and maybe you keep alive. Do you understand?”
Twisp remained silent. Out of the corner of one eye he caught a glimpse of Brett’s head surfacing under the other side of the foil’s bow. Brett’s hand came up gripping the harpoon from the supply coracle.
What’s he doing with that thing? Twisp wondered. And he’s in too close for me to use the stunshield if the chance comes.
“Aye,” Twisp said. “No catch yet. Just got set up.” Brett and Scudi disappeared from his sight around the other side of the foil.
“Have you seen anyone else on the water?” the Merman asked. “Not since the wavewall.”
The Merman looked at Twisp’s grizzled, weather-beaten face and said, “You’ve been out ever since the wavewall?” There was awe in his voice.
“Yeah.”
He dropped the awe. “And no catch?” he snapped. “You’re not much of a fisherman. Not much of a liar, either. You sit still, I’m coming aboard.” He signaled his intentions to someone out of view in the foil, then flipped a stubby ladder over the side.
The Merman’s movements were deft and controlled. He used no more than the minimal energy required for each action. Twisp noted this and felt a deep sense of caution.
This man knows his body, Twisp thought. And it’s a weapon. It would be difficult to take this man by surprise. But Twisp knew his own strengths. He had leverage and a net-puller’s power. He also had a lasgun under his towel.
The Merman began lowering himself into the coracle. One foot probed backward for the thwart and, as the Merman put his weight onto that foot, Twisp moved backward as though compensating for the weight shift. The Merman smiled and released both hands from the ladder. He turned to make the last step down into the coracle. Twisp reached his long left arm out to steady the man and, as he moved, shifted his weight. Twisp allowed the man to feel a firm grip in the clasp of the hand, steadying him against the roll of the boat until the last possible blink. Then, in one smooth move, Twisp shifted farther toward the Merman, shortened his long-armed grip and tipped that side of the boat completely under water. The Merman lurched forward. Twisp twisted his grip, jerking the man toward him. The long left arm released its grip and snaked around the Merman’s neck while the other hand came up with the lasgun pressed against the back of his head.
“Don’t move or you could disappear out here,” Twisp said.
“Go ahead and kill me, Mute!” The Merman thrashed against Twisp.
Twisp tightened his grip. Muscles that single-handedly pulled loaded nets over a coracle’s rim stood out in sinewy ropes.
“Tell your mates to step out on deck!” Twisp growled.
“He won’t come out and he’s going to kill you,” the Merman choked. He twisted again in the powerful grip. One foot braced against a thwart and he tried to push Twisp backward.
Twisp lifted the lasgun and brought it down sharply against the man’s head. The Merman grunted and went limp. Twisp lifted the lasgun’s barrel toward the open hatch and started to rise. He didn’t like the idea of going up that ladder fully exposed.
Brett appeared in the hatchway, saw the lasgun directed at him and ducked, shouting: “We’ve got the foil! Don’t shoot!”
Twisp noted blood down Brett’s left side, then, and felt his stomach tighten. “You hurt?”
“No. It’s not me. But I think we killed this guy in here. Scudi’s trying to help him.” Brett shuddered. “He wouldn’t stop. He came right at the harpoon!”
“Only one in there?”
“Right. Just the two of them. This is the foil Scudi and I stole.”
“Bushka,” Twisp called, “practice your knots on this one.” He heaved the unconscious Merman across the coracle’s motor box.
Bushka crept aft, trailing a length of line from the bow. He looked fearful, and kept well back of the Merman.
“Know him?” Twisp asked. “Cypher. Works for Gallow.”
Scudi appeared in the hatchway behind Brett. She looked pale, her dark eyes wide.
“He’s dead,” she said. “He kept telling me I had to feed his body to the kelp.” Her hands didn’t know what to do with their smears of blood.
“This one wouldn’t give up, either.” Twisp looked to where Bushka was tying the limp Merman’s hands behind his back and then to his feet. “They’re crazy.” Twisp returned his attention to Scudi. She slipped a black-handled survival knife back into its sheath at her thigh.
“How’d you get inside?” Twisp asked.
“There’s a diver’s hatch on the other side,” Brett said. “Scudi knows how to work it. We waited until that one stepped off into the boat before boarding. The pilot didn’t suspect a thing until we were right behind him.” Brett was talking fast, almost breathless. “Why’d he keep coming for me, Queets? He could see I had the harpoon.”
“He was stupid,” Twisp said. “You weren’t.” He glanced at Scudi above him, then at her knife.
She followed the direction of his gaze and said, “I didn’t know if he was faking.”
That one can take care of herself, Twisp thought.
Bushka stood up from tying the Merman. He looked the foil over approvingly. “We’ve got ourselves a machine.”
The Merman on the deck beneath him stirred and muttered.
“Kid!” Twisp used the command tone that Brett remembered so well from their days at sea. He responded without thinking: “Sir?”
“You think we should move aboard the foil?”
Brett flashed a wide grin. “Yes, sir. It’s bigger, faster, more mobile and more seaworthy. I certainly do think we should move aboard, sir.”
“Scudi, can we get my coracles aboard of her?”
“The cargo hatch is plenty wide enough,” she said, “and there’s a winch.”
“Brett,” Twisp said, “you and Scudi start moving our gear aboard. Iz and I will just ask a few questions of this chunk of eelshit.”
“If you want to help the kids,” Bushka said, “I can handle this one alone.” He nudged the Merman at his feet with a toe.
Twisp studied Bushka for a couple of blinks, noting the new tone of assurance in the man’s voice. Anger crawled across Bushka’s face now and it was directed at the captive.
“Find out what he was looking for,” Twisp said. “What was he doing out here?” Bushka nodded.
Twisp took his boat’s bow line and tied it to a foil strut below the boarding ladder. They began shifting gear, moving presently to the tow coracle.
When both coracles were emptied, Twisp paused. He heard Brett and Scudi shifting gear aboard the foil. In the dozens of trips they’d made packing supplies, the two youngsters had touched, bumped against each other or brushed together as often as appeared discreetly possible. Twisp felt good just watching them. Nothing in the world ever felt as good as love, Twisp thought.
B
elow Twisp, Bushka sat back on his heels, glaring at the captive Merman. “You getting anything from him?” Twisp asked.
“They’ve taken the Chief Justice.”
“Shit,” Twisp snapped. “Let’s haul that tow coracle aboard. Keep at him.”
Even with the winch, it was sweaty work getting the first coracle aboard. Scudi opened a cargo compartment aft of the loading hatch and the three of them wrestled the boat inside. They lashed it against cleats in the walls.
Scudi stepped out onto the loading deck, glanced behind her and stiffened. “You better come out and look,” she said. She was pale as a sun-washed cloud.
Twisp hurried outside, followed by Brett.
Bushka stood over the bound Merman. The man was no longer lashed to the coracle’s bow. The naked Merman had been pulled to a hanging position, hung by the wrists, bound up behind his shoulder blades. His dive suit lay in ragged pieces about the deck and his knees barely touched the floors. Bushka held a fish-knife in his right hand, its slender tip directed at the Merman’s belly.
The muscles of the captive’s arms stood out red but his thin drawn lips were white. His shoulders strained at their sockets. His penis was a shrunken stump of fear tucked against his pelvis.
“All right,” Twisp demanded, “what’s going on?”
“You wanted information,” Bushka said. “I’m getting information. Trying out a few tricks Zent bragged about.”
Twisp squatted in the opening, suppressing feelings of revulsion.
“That so?” He kept his voice level.
When Bushka turned, Twisp realized that this was not the whining castaway he had jerked out of the sea. This one talked slow and even. He did not take his eyes off the target.
“He claims the kelp makes them immortal,” Bushka said. “They have to be fed to the kelp when they die. I told him we’d burn him and keep the ashes.”
“Take him off the cleat, Iz,” Twisp said. “You shouldn’t treat a man that way. Haul him aboard here.”
A sullen expression flitted across Bushka’s face and was gone. He turned and cut the captive down. The Merman flexed his arms behind his back, restoring circulation.