“I don’t take orders from writers,” Zent said.
“Now, boys,” Gallow intervened, but there was amusement in his voice.
“Books lie,” Zent muttered.
Nakano, wearing the hydrophone headset, lifted one earphone. “Lots of activity,” he said. “I count more than thirty fishing boats.”
“A hot spot,” Gallow said.
“There’s radio chatter from the Island, too,” Nakano reported. “And music. That’s one thing I’ll miss—Islander music.”
“Is it any good?” Zent asked.
“No lyrics, but you could dance to it,” Nakano said.
Bushka shot a questioning look at Gallow.
What did Nakano mean, he would miss Islander music?
“Steady on course,” Gallow said.
Zent took over Nakano’s headphones and said, “GeLaar, you said Guemes Islanders were damned near floating morons. I thought they didn’t have much radio.”
“Guemes has lost almost half a kilometer in diameter since I started watching it last year,” Gallow said. “Their bubbly’s starving. They’re so poor they can’t afford to feed their Island.”
“Why are we here?” Bushka asked. “If they only have low-grade radio and malnutrition, what good are they to The Movement?” Bushka experienced a bad feeling about all this. A very bad feeling. Are they trying to set me up? Make the Islander a patsy for some of their dirty work?
“A perfect first demonstration,” Gallow said. “They’re traditionalists, hard-core fanatics. I’ll give ’em credit for one piece of good sense. When other Islands suggest it might be time to move down under, Guemes sends out delegations to stop it.”
Was that Gallow’s secret? Bushka wondered. Did he want all the Islanders to stay strictly topside?
“Traditionalists,” Gallow repeated. “That means they wait for us to build land for them. They think we like them so much we’ll make them the gift of a couple of continents. Keep toting that rock, slapping that mud! Plant that kelp!”
The three Mermen laughed and Bushka smiled in response. He didn’t feel like smiling at all, but there was nothing else to do.
“Things would go much easier if Islanders would learn to live the way we do,” Nakano said.
“All of them?” Zent asked.
Bushka noted a growing tension as Nakano failed to respond to Zent’s question.
Presently, Gallow said, “Only the right ones, Gulf.”
“Only the right ones,” Nakano agreed, but there was no force in his voice.
“Damned religious troublemakers,” Gallow blurted. “You’ve seen the missionaries from Guemes, Iz?”
“When our Islands have been on proximate drifts,” Bushka said. “Any excuse for visiting is a good one, then. Mixing and visiting is a happy time.”
“And we’re always pulling your little boats out of the sea or giving you a tow,”
Zent said. “For that you want us to keep slopping mud!”
“Tso,” Gallow said, patting Zent’s shoulder, “Iz is one of us now.”
“We can’t get this foolishness under control any too soon for me,” Zent said. “There’s no reason for anyone to live anywhere but down under. We’re already set up.”
Bushka marked this comment but wondered at it. He felt Gallow’s hatred of Guemes but the Mermen were saying that everyone should live down under.
Everyone living as rich as the Mermen? There was some sadness to that thought. What would we lose of the old Islander ways? He glanced up at Gallow. “Guemes, are we … ?”
“It was a mistake to elevate a Guemian to C/P,” Gallow said. “Guemians never see things our way.”
“Island on visual,” Zent reported.
“Half speed,” Gallow ordered.
Bushka complied. He felt the reduction in speed as an easing of the vibration against his spine.
“What’s our vertical relationship?” Gallow asked.
“We’re coming in about thirty meters below their keel,” Zent said. “Shit! They don’t even have outwatchers. Look, no small boats at all ahead of their drift.”
“It’s a wonder they’re still in one piece,” Nakano said. Bushka caught a wry edge to the statement that he didn’t quite understand.
“Set us directly under their keel, Iz,” Gallow said.
What are we doing here? Bushka wondered as he obeyed the order. The forward display screen showed the bulbous lower extremity of Guemes—a thick red-brown extrusion of bubbly with starved sections streaming from it. Yes, Guemes was in bad condition. They were starving essential parts of their Island. Bushka inhaled quick, shallow breaths of the thick moist air. The Merman sub was too close for simple observation. And this was not the way you approached an Island for a visit.
“Drop us down another fifty meters,” Gallow ordered.
Bushka obeyed, using the descent propulsion system and automatically adjusting trim. He felt proud that the sub remained straight and level as it settled. The upward display, set wide-angle, showed the entire Island as a dark shadow against the surface light. A ring of small boats dappled its edges like beads in a necklace. Bushka estimated that Guemes was no more than six klicks in diameter at the waterline. He put the depth at three hundred meters. Long strips of organics floated dreamlike in the currents around the Island. Entire bulkheads of bubbly blackened the surrounding water with dead-rot. Thatchings of thin membranous material patched the holes.
Probably spinnarett webbing.
Bushka saw raw sewage pumping out of a valve off to his right, sure evidence that the Guemes nutrient plant had suffered a major breakdown.
“Can you imagine how that place smells?” Zent asked.
“Very nice on a hot day,” Gallow said.
“Guemes needs help,” Bushka offered.
“And they’re going to get it,” Zent said.
“Look at all the fish around them,” Nakano said. “I’ll bet the fishing’s real good right now.” He pointed at the upward display as a giant scrubberfish, almost two meters long, floated past the external sensor. Half of the fish’s whiskers had been nibbled away and the one visible eye socket was empty and white.
“It’s so rotten around here that even the scrapfish are dying,” Zent said.
“If the Island’s this sick, you can bet the people are in sad shape,” Nakano added.
Bushka felt his face get red, and pressed his lips shut tight.
“Those boats all around, maybe they’re not fishing,” Zent said. “Maybe they’re living on their boats.”
“This whole Island is a menace,” Gallow said. “There must be all kinds of diseases up there. There’s probably an epidemic in the whole system of organics.”
“Who could live in shit and not be sick?” Zent asked.
Bushka nodded to himself. He thought he had figured out what Gallow was doing here.
He’s brought the sub in close to confirm their desperate need for help.
“Why can’t they see the obvious?” Nakano asked. He patted the hull beside him. “Our subs don’t need nutrient slopped all over them. They don’t rot or oxidize. They don’t get sick or make us sick …”
Gallow, watching the upward display, tapped Bushka’s shoulder. “Down another fifteen meters, Iz. We still have plenty of room under us.”
Bushka complied and again it was that smooth, steady descent that brought an admiring look from Nakano.
“I don’t see how Islanders can live under those conditions.” Zent shook his head. “Sweating out weather, food, dashers, disease—any one of a hundred mistakes that would send the whole pack of them to the bottom.”
“They’ve made that mistake, now, haven’t they, Tso?” Gallow asked.
Nakano pointed at a corner of the upward display. “There’s nothing but some kind of membrane where their driftwatch should be.”
Bushka looked and saw a dark patch of spinnarett webbing where the large corneal bubble should have been, the observer tucked safely behind it watching for shall
ows, coordinating with the outwatchers. No driftwatch—Guemes probably had lost its course-correction system, too. They were in terrible condition! Guemes would probably do anything for the offer of help.
“The corneal bubble has died,” Bushka told them. “They’ve patched it over with spinnarett webbing to keep watertight.”
“How long do they think they can drift blind before scraping bottom someplace?” Nakano muttered. There was anger in his voice.
“They’re probably up there praying like mad for Ship to come help them,” Zent sneered.
“Or they’re praying for us to stabilize the sea and bring back their precious continents,” Gallow said. “And now that we’re getting it whipped, they’ll be crying about bottoming out on the land we’ve built. Well, let ’em pray. They can pray to us!” Gallow reached over Zent’s shoulder and flipped a switch.
Bushka scanned the displays—up, down, forward, aft the sub’s complement of tools sprang out of their hull sheaths all glittering and sharp—deadly.
So that’s what Zent and Nakano had been doing out there topside! Iz realized. They’d been checking manipulators and mechanical arms. Bushka scanned them once more: trenchers, borers, tampers, cutters, a swing-boom and the forward heliarc welder on its articulated arm. They gleamed brightly in the wash of the exterior lights.
“What are you doing?” Bushka asked. He tried to swallow but his throat was too dry in spite of the humidity.
Zent snorted.
Bushka felt repelled by the look on Zent’s face—a smile that touched only the corners of his mouth, no humor at all in those bottomless eyes.
Gallow gripped Bushka’s shoulder with a powerful and painful pressure. “Take us up, Iz.”
Bushka glanced left and right. Nakano was flexing his powerful hands and watching a sensor screen. Zent held a small needle burner with its muzzle carelessly pointed at Bushka’s chest.
“Up,” Gallow repeated, emphasizing the order with increased pressure on Bushka’s shoulder.
“But we’ll cut right through them,” Bushka said. He felt his breath pumping against the back of his throat. The awareness of what Gallow intended almost gagged him. “They won’t have a chance without their Island. The ones who don’t drown right away will drift in their boats until they starve!”
“Without the Island’s filtration system, chances are they’ll die of thirst before they starve,” Gallow said. “They’d die anyway, look at them. Up!”
Zent waved the needle burner casually and pressed his left phone tighter to his ear.
Bushka ignored the needle burner’s threat. “Or dashers will get them!” he protested. “Or a storm!”
“Hold it,” Zent said, leaning toward his left earphone while he pressed it harder. “I’m getting free sonics of some kind … a sweeping pulse from the membrane, I think …” Zent screamed and tore the earphone from his head. Blood trickled from his nostrils.
“Take it up, damn you!” Gallow shouted.
Nakano kicked the locks off the dive planes and reached across Bushka to blow the tanks. The sub’s nose tipped upward.
Bushka reacted with a pilot’s instincts. He fed power to the drivers and tried to bring them onto an even keel but the sub was suddenly a live thing, shooting upward toward the dark bottom of Guemes Island. In two blinks they were through the bottom membranes and into the Island’s keel. The sub kicked and twisted as its exterior tools hacked and slashed under the direction of Nakano and Gallow. Zent still sat bent over, holding his ears with both hands. The needle burner lay useless in his lap.
Bushka pressed hard against his seatback while he watched in horror the terrible damage being done all around. Anything he did to the controls only added to the destruction. They were into the Island center now, where the high-status Islanders lived, where they kept their most sensitive equipment and organics, their most powerful people, their surgical and other medical facilities …
The cold-blooded slashing of blades and cutters continued—visible in every screen, felt in every lurch of the sub. It was eerie that there could be this much pain and not a single scream. Soft, living tissue was no match for the hard, sharp edges that the sub intruded into this nightmare scene. Every bump and twist of the sub wrought more destruction. The displays showed bits and pieces of humanity now—an arm, a severed head.
Bushka moaned, “They’re people. “They’re people.”
Everything he’d been taught about the sanctity of life filled him now with rebellion. Mermen shared the same beliefs! How could they kill an entire Island? Bushka realized that Gallow would kill him at the first sign of resistance. A glance at Zent showed the man still looking stunned, but the bleeding had stopped and he had recovered the burner. Nakano worked like an automaton, shuttling power where necessary as cutters and torches continued their awful havoc in the collapsing Island. The sub had begun to twist on its own, turning end for end on a central pivot.
Gallow wedged himself into the corner beside Zent, his gaze fixed on the display screens, which showed Island tissue melting away from the heliarcs.
“There is no Ship!” Gallow exulted. “You see! Would Ship allow a mere mortal to do such a thing?” He turned emotion-glazed eyes on Bushka at the controls. “I told you! Ship’s an artifact, a thing made by people like us. God! There is no God!”
Bushka tried to speak but his throat was too dry.
“Take us back down, Iz,” Gallow ordered.
“What’re you doing?” Bushka managed.
“I challenge Ship,” Gallow said. “Has Ship responded?” A wild laugh issued from his throat. Only Zent joined it.
“Take us down, I said!” Gallow repeated.
Driven by fear, Bushka’s pilot-conditioned muscles responded, shifting trim ballast, adjusting planes. And he thought: If we get out fast, some of this Island may survive. Gently, he maneuvered the sub downward through the wreckage left by its terrible ascent. Plazports and screens showed the water around them dim with blood, a dull gray in the harsh illumination from the sub’s exterior lights.
“Hold us here,” Gallow ordered.
Bushka ignored the command, his gaze intent on the exterior carnage—inert bodies and pieces of bodies glimpsed in the murk. Raw horror everywhere around him. A little girl’s dancing frock with white lace ruffles in an ancient pattern floated past a port. Behind it could be seen strung out the remnants of someone’s pantry, half a lover’s portrait pasted against a remnant stone box: outline of a smile without eyes. Beyond the sub’s hot lights, blood rolled and streamed, a cold gray fog reaching down the currents.
“I said hold us here!” Gallow shouted.
Bushka continued to gentle the sub downward. A well of tears brimmed against his eyelids.
Don’t let me cry! he prayed. Dammit! I can’t break down in front of these … these … No word in his memory could label what his companions had become. This realization burned its change in him. These three Mermen were now lethal deviants. They would have to be brought before the Committee. Judgment must be made.
Nakano reached across Bushka and adjusted the ballast controls to bring the sub’s descent to a stop. His eyes looked a warning.
Bushka looked at Nakano through a swim of tears, then shifted his gaze to Zent. Zent still held his left ear, but he watched Bushka steadily, smiling that cold-liver smile. His lips moved silently: “Wait till I get you topside.”
Gallow reached across Zent’s head to the heliarc controls.
“Take us straight ahead,” he ordered. He snapped a polarized shield in place and sighted down the twin snouts of the bow heliarc.
Bushka reached to his shoulder and brought his chest harness into place, snapping it closed at his side. He moved with purpose, which brought a questioning stare from Zent. Before Zent could react, Bushka kicked loose the dive planes, skewed the control surfaces to starboard and blew the rear ballast tanks while he opened the bow valves. The sub surged over onto its nose and corkscrewed toward the bottom, spinning faster and faster.
Nakano was thrown to the left by the force of the spin. Zent lost his needle burner while trying to grab for a support. His body was thrown against Gallow. Both men lay pinned between hull and control panels. Only Bushka, strapped in at the center of the spin, could move with relative ease.
“You damn fool!” Gallow shouted. “You’ll kill us!”
His right hand moving across the switches methodically, Bushka snapped off the cabin lights and all but the exterior bow light. Outside the glow of that one beacon, darkness closed in, surrounding them with a gray murk in which only a few shreds of torn humanity drifted and sank.
“You’re not Ship!” Gallow screamed. “You hear me, Bushka? It’s just you doing this!”
Bushka ignored him.
“You can’t get out of this, Bushka,” Gallow shouted. “You’ll have to come up sometime and we’ll be there.”
He’s asking if I mean to kill us all, Bushka thought.
“You’re crazy, Bushka!” Gallow shouted.
Bushka stared straight ahead, looking for the first glimpse of bottom. At this speed, the sub would dig in and make Gallow’s warning come true. Not even plasteel and plaz could withstand a twisting dive into the rocky bottom, not at this depth and this speed.
“You going to do it, Bushka?” That was Nakano, voice loud but level and more than a little admiration in the question.
For answer, Bushka eased the angle of dive but kept the hard spin, knowing his Island-trained equilibrium could better withstand the violent motion.
Nakano began to vomit, gagging and gasping as he tried to clear his throat in the heavy centrifugal pressure. The stench became a nauseating presence in the cabin.
Bushka keyed his console for display of the sub’s gas displacement. Notations showed ballast was blown with CO2. His gaze traced out the linked lines. Yes … exhausted cabin air was bled into the ballast system … conservation of energy.
Gallow had subsided into a low growling protest while he struggled to crawl out against the force of the spin. “Not Ship! Just another damn shit-eater. Gonna kill him. Never trust Islander.”
Following the diagram in front of him, Bushka tapped out the valving sequence on the emergency controls. Immediately, an oxygen mask dropped in front of him from an overhead compartment. All other emergency oxygen remained securely in place. Bushka pressed the mask to his face with one hand while his other hand bled CO2 from the ballast directly into the cabin.