AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“The more kelp there is the faster it spreads and the faster it grows,” he said.
“It is more like an explosion at this point,” she said, “or like the moment of crystallization in a saturated solution. Add one tiny crystal and the whole thing precipitates out one massive crystal. That’s what the kelp will do next. Right now it is learning to care for itself.”
Brett shook his head. “I know what the history says. Still … sentient plants?”
She shrugged off his incredulity like a shawl. “If the C/P is right—if they’ve all been right—Vata is the key to the kelp. She is the crystal that will precipitate its consciousness. Or its soul.”
“Vata,” he whispered, a childlike awe in his voice. He was not one for WorShip, but he respected any human being who had outlived so many generations. No Merman had ever done that. Did Scudi believe in that Chaplain/Psychiatrist stuff?
He asked her.
Scudi shrugged. “I only know what I can arrange in my mind. I have seen the kelp learn. It is sentient, but very low-grade. There is no magic in sentiency except life and time. Vata has kelp genes, that is a fact.”
“Twisp says last time it took the kelp a quarter of a billion years to come awake. How will we ever know …”
“We’ve helped. The rest is up to it.”
“What does Vata have to do with it?”
“I don’t really know. I suspect she’s some kind of catalyst. The last natural link with the kelp’s ancestor. Shadow says Vata’s really in a coma. She went into the coma when the kelp died. Shock, maybe.”
“What about Duque? Or any number of us—Mermen included—who have kelp genes? Why aren’t we the catalysts you talk about?”
“No one human has all kelp genes—such a being would be kelp, not human,” she said. “Each one may have wholly different combinations.”
“Duque says Vata dreams him.”
“Some of our more religious types say Vata dreams us all,” Scudi said. She sniffed. “The fact that you and I were prisoners and escaped, that was no dream.” She shot him a warm glance. “We are a good team.”
Brett blushed and nodded.
“How close are we to Launch Base?” he asked.
“Before nightfall,” she said.
Brett thought about the coming encounter. Launch Base would be an important place, many people. Among those people might be the ones who had deliberately destroyed Guemes. His Islander accent could mean danger. He turned to Scudi and tried to speak of this casually. He didn’t want to argue with her or scare her. But it became immediately apparent that Scudi had been thinking along the same lines.
“In the red locker beside the main hatch,” she said. “Dive suits and kitpacks. We’ll be in colder water at the Launch Base.”
“Hypothermia kills,” he said. He had seen the two words in bright yellow on the red locker, reminding him of his earliest survival lessons. Island children were taught the dangers of the cold water as soon as they could talk. Apparently Mermen taught the same lesson, although Twisp claimed that Mermen had greater tolerance for cold.
“See if you can find suits to fit us,” she said. “If we have to go over the side …” She left the sentence unfinished, knowing it was unnecessary to continue.
The sight of the pile of gray dive suits inside the locker brought a smile to Brett’s face. The organic suits, of Islander design and manufacture, represented one of the few advancements they held over the Mermen. He selected a “small” and a “medium” and tore open the packages to activate them. He picked up two of the orange kitpacks with the suits and stowed them under the command couch seats in the cabin.
“What are those kitpacks for?” he asked.
“They’re survival kits,” she said. “Inflatable raft, knife, lines, pain pills. There are even repellent grenades for dashers.”
“Have you ever had to use grenades?”
“No. But my mother did once. One of her team did not get away.”
Brett shuddered. Dashers seldom came near Islands anymore, but fishermen had been lost and there were stories of children taken by sneak attacks at an Island’s rim. Suddenly, the wide ocean around their speeding foil lost some of its warm softness, its protective familiarity. Brett shook his head to clear it. He and Twisp had lived out here on a tiny coracle. For the love of Ship! A foil could not be as vulnerable as a flimsy coracle. But they had no squawks on the foil and if they had to take to the water in dive suits … Could their own senses warn them in time? Dashers were blindingly fast.
The two suns had moved perceptibly closer to each other, nearing their sunset meeting. Brett stared ahead, looking for the first sign of their goal. He knew this fear of dashers was foolishness, something they’d laugh about someday …
Something bobbing on the water ahead commanded his whole attention.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at a spot far ahead and slightly to starboard.
“I think it’s a boat,” Scudi said.
“No,” he mused, “whatever it is, it’s two things.”
“Two boats?”
The foil’s speed was bringing the objects closer at an astonishing rate. His voice was barely audible: “Two coracles.”
“One is towing the other,” Scudi said. She veered the foil toward them.
Brett stood and leaned against the control console, squinting out at the coracles. He waved a hand at Scudi, palm down: “Slow down!” She throttled back and he gripped the console to keep his balance as the hull dropped into the water with a surge of the bow wave.
“It’s Queets!” Brett shouted, pointing at the man at the tiller. “Ship’s teeth, it’s Queets!”
Scudi shut down one ram and maneuvered the foil upwind of the coracles. Brett fumbled at the dogs to the canopy and swung it back, leaning out to shout at the boats only fifty meters downwind. “Twisp! Queets!”
Twisp stood and shielded his eyes with a hand, the long arm held awkwardly against his side.
“Kid!”
Brett tossed him a traditional greeting of fishermen at sea: “Do you have a full load?”
Twisp stood at the tiller, rocking the coracle from side to side, and clapped his hands high over his head. “You made it!” he hollered. “You made it.”
Brett pulled back into the cockpit. “Scudi, take us alongside.”
“So that’s Queets Twisp,” she said. She restarted the ram and eased them gently ahead. She rounded the coracles in a wide curve and came alongside the lead boat, opening the access hatch as the coracles drew near.
Twisp grabbed a foil brace and in less than a minute he was inside the cockpit, his long arms wrapped around Brett. His huge hands pummeled Brett’s back.
“I knew I’d find you!” Twisp held Brett at a long arm’s length and gestured wide to take in the foil, Scudi, his clothes and dark glasses. “What’s all this?”
“A very long story,” Brett said. “We’re heading for a Merman Launch Base. Have you heard anything … ?”
Twisp dropped his arms and sobered. “We’ve been there,” he said. “At least, near enough as makes no difference.” He turned, indicating the other man in the coracle. “That bit of flotsam is Iz Bushka. I tried to take him to Launch Base on a piece of very heavy business.”
“Tried?” Scudi asked. “What happened?”
“Who’s this little pearl?” Twisp asked, extending a hand. “I’m Queets Twisp.”
“Scudi Wang,” she and Brett said at once.
They laughed.
Twisp stared at her, startled. Was this the beautiful young Merman rescuer he had visualized in his daydreams? No! That was foolishness.
“Well, Scudi Wang,” Twisp said, “they wouldn’t listen to us at the Launch Base—wouldn’t let us into the base at all.” Twisp pursed his lips. “Towed us away with a foil bigger than this one. Told us to stay away. We took their advice.” He glanced around him. “So what’re you doing here, anyway? Where’s the crew?”
“We’re the crew,” Brett said.
Brett explained why they were heading for the base, what had happened to them, the Chief Justice and the political scene down under. Bushka stepped into the cabin as Brett was finishing. Brett’s recital had a marked effect on Bushka, who grew pale and breathed in shallow gasps.
“They’re ahead of us,” Bushka muttered, “I know they are.”
He stared at Scudi.
“Wang,” he said. “You’re Ryan Wang’s daughter.”
Brett, edging toward a temper flare-up, asked Twisp, “What’s wrong with him?”
“Something on his conscience,” Twisp said. He, too, looked at Scudi. “Is that right? Are you Ryan Wang’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
