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“I don’t know how I can ever repay you for being so nice to me,” he said.
“But it is our custom,” she said. “If a Merman saves you, you can have what the Merman has until you … move on. If I bring life into this compound, I’m responsible for it.”
“As though I were your child?”
“Something like.” She sighed, and began undressing. Brett found he could not invade her privacy and averted his eyes.
Maybe I should tell her, he thought. It’s not really fair to be able to see this way and not let her know.
“I would prefer not to interfere with your life,” he said.
He heard Scudi slip under her blankets. “You don’t interfere,” she said. “This is one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to me. You are my friend; I like you. Is that enough?”
Brett dropped his clothes and slipped under the covers, pulling them to his neck. Queets always said you couldn’t figure a Merman. Friends?
“We are friends, not so?” she insisted.
He offered his hand across the space between the beds. Realizing that she couldn’t see it, he picked up hers in his own. She pressed his fingers hard, her hand warm in his. Presently, she sighed and removed her hand gently.
“I must sleep,” she said. “Me, too.”
Her hand lifted from the bed and found the switch on the wall. The whale sounds stopped.
Brett found the room exquisitely quiet, a stillness he had not imagined possible. He felt his ears relaxing, then, an alertness … suddenly listening for … what? He didn’t know. Sleep was necessary, though. He had to sleep. His mind said: “Something is being done about informing your parents and Queets.” He was alive and family and friends would be happy after their fears and sadness. Or so he hoped.
After several nervous minutes, he decided the lack of motion was preventing sleep. The discovery allowed him to relax more, breathe easier. He could remember with his body the gentle rocking motion topside and thought hard about that, tricking his mind into the belief that waves still lifted and fell beneath him.
“Brett?” Scudi’s voice was little more than a whisper.
“Yes?”
“Of all the creatures in hyb, the ones I would like most are the birds, the little birds that sing.”
“I’ve heard recordings from Ship,” he said, his voice sleepy. “The songs are as painfully beautiful as the whales. And they fly.”
“We have pigeons and squawks,” he said. “The squawks are ducks and they do not sing,” she said. “But they whistle when they fly and it’s fun to watch them.” Her blankets rustled as she turned away from him.
“Good night, friend,” she whispered. “Sleep flat.”
“Good night, friend,” he answered. And there, at the edge of sleep, he imagined her beautiful smile.
Is this how love begins? he wondered. There was a tightness in his chest, which did not go away until he fell into a restless sleep.
Chapter 13
The child Vata slipped into catatonia as the kelp and hylighters sickened. She has been comatose for more than three years now and, since she carries both kelp and human genes, it is hoped that she can be instrumental in restoring the kelp to sentience. Only the kelp can tame this terrible sea.
—Hali Ekel, the Journals
It was not so much that Ward Keel noticed the stillness as that he felt it all over his skin. Events had conspired to keep him topside throughout his long life, not that he had ever felt a keen desire to go down under.
Admit it, he told himself. You were afraid because of all the stories—deprivation shock, pressure syndrome.
Now, for the first time in his life there was no movement of deck under his bare feet, no nearby sounds of human activity and voices, no hiss of organic walls against organic ceilings—none of the omnipresent frictions to which Islanders adjusted as infants. It was so quiet his ears ached.
Beside him in the room where Kareen Ale had left him “to adjust for a few moments” stood a large plazglass wall revealing a rich undersea expanse of reds, blues and washed greens. The subtlety of unfamiliar shadings held him rapt for several minutes.
Ale had said: “I will be nearby. Call if you need me.”
Mermen well knew the weaknesses of those who came down under. Awareness of all that water overhead created its own peculiar panic in some of the visitors and migrants. And being alone, even by choice, was not something Islanders tolerated well until they had adjusted to it … slowly. A lifetime of knowing that other human beings were just on the other side of those thin organic walls, almost always within the sound of a whispered call, built up blind spots. You did not hear certain things—the sounds of lovemaking, family quarrels and sorrows.
Not unless you were invited to hear them.
Was Ale softening him up by leaving him alone here? Keel wondered. Could she be watching through some secret Merman device? He felt certain that Ale, with her medical background and long association with Islanders, knew the problems of a first-timer.
Having watched Ale perform her diplomatic duties over the past few years, Keel knew she seldom did anything casually. She planned. He was sure she had a well-thought-out motive for leaving an Islander alone in these circumstances.
The silence pressed hard upon him.
A demanding thought filled his mind: Think, Ward! That’s what you’re supposed to be so good at. He found it alarming that the thought came to him in his dead mother’s voice, touching his aural centers so sharply that he glanced around, almost fearful that he would see a ghostly shade shaking a finger of admonishment at him.
He breathed deeply once, twice, and felt the constriction of his chest ease slightly. Another breath and the edge of reason returned. Silence did not ache as much nor press as heavily.
During the descent by courier sub, Ale had asked him no questions and had supplied no answers. Reflecting on this, he found it odd. She was noted for hard questions to pave the way for her own arguments.
Was it possible that they simply wanted him down here and away from his seat on
the Committee? he wondered. Taking him as an invited guest was, after all, less stressful and dangerous than outright kidnapping. It felt odd to think of himself as a commodity with some undetermined value. Comforting, though; it meant they would probably not employ violence against him.
Now, why did I think that? he wondered.
He stretched his arms and legs and crossed to the couch facing the undersea view. The couch felt softly supportive under him in spite of the fact that it was of some dead material. The stiffness of age made the soft seat especially welcome. He sensed the dying remora within him still fighting to survive. Avoid anxiety, the medics told him. That was most certainly a joke in his line of work. The remora still produced vital hormones, but he remembered the warning: “We can replace it, although the replacements won’t last long. And their survival time will become shorter and shorter as new replacements are introduced. You are rejecting them, you see.” His stomach growled. He was hungry and that he found to be a good sign. There was nothing to indicate a food preparation area in the room. No speakers or viewscreens. The ceiling sloped upward away from the couch to the view port, which appeared to be about six or seven meters high.
