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“Do I know you?” Twisp asked.
“What’s your name?” Bushka asked.
“Twisp. Queets Twisp.”
“Don’t think we’re acquainted,” Bushka said. He sent another fearful gaze across the water around the coracles.
“You haven’t said what you were escaping from,” Twisp said. Another comment.
“From people who … we’d all be better off if they were dead. Damn! I should’ve killed them but I couldn’t bring myself to do it!”
Twisp remained silent in shock. Did all Mermen speak so casually of killing? He found his voice: “But you sent them down under with a flooded engine room!”
And unconscious, too! But they’re Mermen. They’ll get out when they recover. Come on! Let’s get out of here.”
“Perhaps you didn’t hear me, Iz. I’m looking for a friend who went overboard from Vashon.”
“If your friend’s alive, he’s safe down under. You’re the only thing on the surface for at least twenty klicks. Believe it. I was looking. I came up because I saw you.”
Twisp glanced back at the distant white line of the surf. “That’s on the surface.”
“The barrier? Yeh, but there’s nothing else. No Merman base, nothing.”
Twisp considered for a moment—the way Bushka said “Merman.” Fear? Loathing?
“I know where there’s a Search and Rescue base,” Bushka said. “We could be there by daybreak tomorrow. If your friend’s alive …” He left it there.
Talks a bit like an Islander, acts a lot like a Merman, Twisp thought. Damn! Where have I seen him?
Twisp glanced at the distant surfline. “You called that a barrier.” “Mermen are going to have land on the surface. That’s part of it.”
Twisp let this sink in, not believing it or disbelieving it. Fascinating, if true, but there were other muree to fry at that moment.
“So you scuttled a sub and you’re escaping from people who would be better dead.”
Twisp did not believe half of this Bushka’s story. The hospitality of the sea said you had to listen. Nothing said you had to agree.
Bushka sent an agitated gaze over their surroundings. Second sun was up but in this season it made a quick sweep and the half-night would be on them soon. Twisp was hungry and irritated.
“Do you have a towel and some blankets?” Bushka asked. “I’m freezing my ass off!”
Abruptly contrite because he had failed to provide for the man’s comfort, Twisp said: “Towel and blankets are rolled up in the cuddy behind you.”
As Bushka turned and found the roll, Twisp added: “You saw me so you came up hoping I’d save you.”
Bushka looked out from beneath the towel with which he was drying his hair. “If I’d left them under CO2 any longer it would’ve killed them. I couldn’t do it.”
“Are you going to tell me who they are?”
“People who’d kill us while eating lunch and not miss a bite!”
Something in the way Bushka said this set Twisp’s stomach trembling. Bushka believed what he said.
“I don’t suppose you have an RDC,” Bushka said. He spoke with more than a little snobbishness.
Twisp kept his temper and uncovered the instrument near his feet. His relative drift compensator was one of his proudest possessions. The compass arrow in its top was pointing now far off their course.
Bushka approached and looked down at the RDC. “A Merman compass is more accurate,” he said, “but this will do.”
“Not more accurate between Islands,” Twisp corrected him. “Islands drift and there’s no fixed point of reference.”
Bushka knelt beside the RDC and worked its settings with a sureness that told Twisp this was not the first time the man had used such an instrument. The red arrow atop the housing swung to a new setting.
“That should get us there,” Bushka said. He shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder how we found any place without Merman instruments.”
We? Twisp wondered.
“I think you’re an Islander,” Twisp accused, barely holding in his anger. “We’re a pretty backward lot, aren’t we!”
Bushka stood and returned to his position near the opening of the cuddy.
“Better work a bit more with that towel,” Twisp said. “You missed behind your ears!”
Bushka ignored him and sat down with his back against the cuddy.
Twisp fed more power to his mo
tor and swung around on the course indicated by the RDC arrow. Might as well go to this Rescue Base! Damn that Bushka! Was he one of those down-under Islanders who had become more Merman than the Mermen?
“You going to tell me what happened on that sub?” Twisp asked. “I’m through playing and I want to know what I’m into.”
With a sullen expression, Bushka settled himself into his former position against the deck. Presently, he began describing his trip with Gallow. When he got to the part about Guemes Island, Twisp stopped him.
“You were at the controls?”
“I swear to you I didn’t know what he was doing.”
“Go on. What happened next?”
Bushka picked up his story after the sinking of the Island. Twisp stared at him with a hard expression throughout the recital. Once, Twisp felt under the tiller housing behind him for the lasgun he stored there—a real Merman lasgun that had cost him half a boatload of muree. The cold touch of the weapon settled his mind somewhat. He couldn’t help asking himself, What if this Bushka’s lying?
When Bushka finished, Twisp thought a moment, then: “You strapped the crew into their seats, including this Gallow, and sent them to the bottom. How do you know you didn’t kill them?”
“They were tied loose enough to get free once they came around.”
“I think I’d have …” Twisp shook his head sharply. “You know, don’t you, that it’s your word against theirs and you were at the controls?”
Bushka buried his face in the blanket around his knees. His shoulders shook and it was a few blinks before Twisp realized the man was sobbing.
For Twisp, this was the ultimate intimacy between two men. He had no more doubts that the story was true.
