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How extravagant! he thought. Only one person in all this space. A room this size could house a large Islander family. The air was a bit cooler than he liked but his body had adjusted. The dim light through the view port cast a green wash over the floor there. Bright phosphorescence from the ceiling dominated the illumination. The room was not far under the sea’s surface. He knew this from the outside light level. Plenty of water over him, though: millions of kilos. The thought of all that weight pressing in on this space brought a touch of sweat to his upper lip. He ran a damp palm over the wall behind the couch—warm and firm. He breathed easier. This was Merman space. They didn’t build anything fragile. The wall was plasteel. He had never before seen so much of it. The room struck him suddenly as a fortress. The walls were
dry, testimony to a sophisticated ventilation system. Mermen topside tended to keep their quarters so humid he felt smothered by the air. Except for Ale … but she was like no other human he had ever met, Islander or Merman. The air in this room, he realized, had been adjusted for Islander comfort. That reassured him.
Keel patted the couch beside him and thought of Joy, how much she would like that surface. A hedonist, Joy. He tried to picture her resting on the couch. A desire for Joy’s comforting presence filled him with sudden loneliness. Abruptly, he wondered about himself. He had been mostly a loner throughout his life, only the occasional liaison. Was the proximity of death working a fearful change on him? The thought disgusted him. Why should he inflict himself on Joy, saddle her with the sorrow of a permanent parting?
I am going to die soon.
He wondered briefly who the Committee would elect as Chief Justice to replace him. His own choice would be Carolyn, but the political choice would be Matts. He did not envy whoever they chose. It was a thankless job. There were things to do before he made his final exit, though. He stood and steadied himself against the couch. His neck ached, as usual. His legs felt rubbery and didn’t want to support him at first. That was a new symptom. The deck underfoot was hard plasteel and he was thankful that it, like the walls, was heated. He waited for strength to return, then, leaning against the wall, made his way toward the door at his left. There were two buttons beside the door. He pressed the lower one and heard a panel slide back behind the couch. He looked toward the sound and his heart shifted into triple-time.
The panel had concealed a mural. He stared at it. The thing was frighteningly realistic, almost photographic. It showed a surface construction site at least half-destroyed, flames everywhere and men wriggling in the tentacles of hylighters drifting overhead.
Hylighters died with the kelp, he thought. This was either an old painting or somebody’s imaginative reconstruction of history. He suspected the former. The rich suns-set background, the intimate detail of hylighters—everything focused on one worker near the center who pointed a finger at the viewer. It was an accusing figure, dark-eyed and glaring.
I know that place, Keel thought. How is it possible? Familiarity was stronger than the flutterings of deja vu. This was real seeing, a memory. The memory told him that somewhere in this room or nearby there was a red mandala.
How do I know this?
He examined the room carefully. Couch, plaz port, the mural, bare walls, an oval hatch-door. No mandala. He walked to the view port and touched it. Cool, the only cool surface in the room. How strange the fixed view port installation was—nothing like it at all on the Islands. Couldn’t be. The flex of bubbly around the solid plaz would tear away the organics that sealed it and the heavy, solid material would turn into a thing of destruction during a storm. Drift watchers, mutated cornea, were safer in rough weather even if they did require care and feeding.
The plaz was incredibly clear. Nothing in the feel of it suggested the extreme density and thickness. A small, heavily whiskered scrubberfish grazed the outside, cleaning the surface. Beyond the fish, a pair of Mermen came into view, jockeying a heavy sledge loaded with rocks and mud. They went past him out of sight beyond a slope to his right.
Out of curiosity, Keel fisted the plaz: thump-thump. The scrubberfish continued grazing, undisturbed. Anemone and ferns, grasses and sponges waved in the current beneath the fish. Dozens of other fish, a multicolored mixed school, cleaned the surface of kelp leaves beyond the immediate growth. Larger fish poked along the soft bottom mud, stirring up puffs of gray sediment. Keel had seen this sort of thing in holos but the reality was different. Some of the fish he recognized—creatures from the labs that had been brought for judgment by the Committee before being released in the sea.
A harlequin fish came up below the scrubber and nudged the plaz. Keel remembered the day the C/P had blessed the first harlequin fish before their release. It was almost like seeing an old friend.
Once more, Keel turned to his examination of the room and that elusive memory. Why did it feel so damned familiar? Memory said the missing mandala should be to the right of the mural. He walked to that wall and brushed a finger along it, looking for another panel switch. Nothing, but the wall moved slightly and he heard a clicking. He peered at it. It was not plasteel but some kind of light, composite material. A faint seam ran down the middle of the wall. He put a palm against the surface to the right of the seam and pushed. The panel slid back, revealing a passage, and immediately he smelled food.
He opened the panel wide and walked through. The passage made a sharp turn to the left and he saw lights. Kareen Ale stood there in a kitchen-dining area, her back to him. A rich smell of strong tea and fish broth assailed his nostrils. He drew a breath to speak but stopped as he saw the red mandala. The sight of it above Kareen’s right shoulder brought a sigh from Keel. The mandala drew his consciousness into the shapes there, twisting him through circles and wedges toward the center. A single eye peered out from the center, out at the universe. It was unlidded, and rested atop a golden pyramid.
These can’t be my memories, he thought. It was a terrifying experience. Ship memories flitted through his mind—someone walking down a long, curved passage, a violet-lighted agrarium fanned out to his left. He felt powerless before the stream of visions. Kelp waved to him from someplace under the sea and schools of fish his Committee had never approved swam past his eyes.
Ale turned and saw the enraptured expression on his face, the fixed intensity with which he stared at the mandala.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Her voice shocked him out of the other-memories. He exhaled a trembling breath, inhaled.
“I’m … I’m hungry,” he said. There was no thought of revealing the weird memories he had just experienced. How could she understand when he did not understand?
“Why don’t you sit here?” she asked. She indicated a small table set for two at one end of the kitchen area beside a smaller plaz port. The table was low, Merman-style. His knees ached just thinking about sitting there.
“I’ve cooked for you myself,” Ale said.
Noting his still bemused expression, she added: “That hatchway in the other room leads to a head with shower and washbasin. Beyond it you’ll find office facilities if you require them. The exterior hatchways are out there as well.”
He crowded his legs under the table and sat with his elbows on the surface in front of him, his hands supporting his head.
Was that a dream? he wondered.
The red mandala lay directly in front of him. He was almost afraid to focus on it.
“You’re admiring the mandala,” Ale said. She busied herself once more in the kitchen area.
He lifted his attention and let his gaze trace the ancient lines along their mysterious pathways. Nothing drew him inward this time. Slowly, bits of his own memories crept into his mind, images flashed behind his eyes and stuttered like a crippled larynx, then caught. Awareness reached back to one of his earliest history lessons, a holo being played in the center of a classroom. It had been a docudrama for young children. Islanders loved theatricals and this one had been fascinating. He could not remember the title, but he did recall that it dealt with the last days of Pandora’s continents—they didn’t look small at all in the holos—and the death of the kelp. That had been the first time Keel had heard the kelp called “Avata.” Behind the holo figures playing out the drama in a command post there had been a wall … and that frightening mural from the outer room. Nearby, as the holo shifted its focus, there had been the red mandala, just as he saw it now. Keel did not want to think how long ago he had watched the drama—more than seventy years, anyway. He returned his attention to Ale.
“Is that the original mandala or a copy?” he asked.
“I’m told it’s the original. It’s very old, older than any settlement on Pandora. You seem taken by it.”
“I’ve seen it and the mural out there before,” he said. ?
?These walls and the kitchen area are more recent, aren’t they?”
“The space was remodeled for my convenience,” she said. “I’ve always been drawn to these rooms. The mandala and mural are where they’ve always been. And they’re cared for.”
“Then I know where I am,” he said. “Islander children learn history through holodramas and …”
“I know that one,” she said. “Yes, this is part of the old Redoubt. Once it stood completely out of the sea, with some fine mountains behind it, I understand.”
She brought food to the table on a tray and set out the bowls and chopsticks.
“Wasn’t most of the Redoubt destroyed?” he asked. “The documentary holos were supposed to be reconstructions of a few from before …”
“Whole sections survived intact,” she said. “Automatic latches closed and sealed off much of the Redoubt. We restored it very carefully.”
“I’m impressed.” He nodded, reassessing the probable importance of Kareen Ale. Mermen had remodeled a part of the old Redoubt for her convenience. She lived casually in a museum, apparently immune to the historical value of the objects and building surrounding her. He had never before met a Merman in a Merman environment, and he now recognized this blank spot in his experience as a weakness. Keel forced himself to relax. For a dying man, there were advantages to being here. He didn’t have to decide life and death for new life. No pleading mothers and raging fathers would confront him with creatures who could not pass Committee. This was a world away from the Islands.
Ale sipped her tea. It smelled of mint and suddenly reignited Keel’s hunger. He began to eat, Islander-style, setting aside equal portions for his host. The first taste of the fish broth convinced him that it was the richest and most delicately spiced broth he’d ever shared. Was this the general diet for Mermen? He cursed his lack of down-under experience. Keel noticed that Ale enjoyed her own helping of the steaming soup and felt insulted at first.
Another cultural thing, he realized. He marveled that a simple difference in table manners could need translation to avoid international disaster. Unanswered questions still buzzed in his head. Perhaps a more devious approach was indicated—a mixture of Merman directness with Islander obliqueness.
