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Lonfinn strode across the room and tested the controls on a hatch. He turned. “The head’s through this hatch and guest bedrooms are down the hallway here in case you wish to rest.” He returned and looked down at Keel. “I imagine that thing around your neck becomes tiresome.”
Keel rubbed his neck. “It does indeed. But I know we all must put up with tiresome things in our world.”
Lonfinn scowled. “I wonder why a Merman has never been C/P?”
Brett spoke up, recalling Twisp’s comment on this very question. He repeated it: “Maybe Mermen have too many other things to do and aren’t interested.”
“Not interested?” Lonfinn looked at Brett as though seeing him for the first time. “Young man, I don’t think you’re qualified to discuss political matters.”
“I think the boy was really asking a question,” Keel offered, smiling at Brett.
“Questions should be asked directly,” Lonfinn muttered.
“And answered directly,” Keel persisted. He looked at Brett. “This matter has always been in dispute among ‘the faithful’ and their political lobby. Most of Ship’s faithful topside think it would be a disaster to turn over the C/P’s power to a Merman. They have so much power over other aspects of our otherwise dreary lives.”
Lonfinn smiled without humor. “A difficult political subject for a young man to understand,” he said.
Brett gritted his teeth at the patronizing attitude.
Lonfinn crossed to the wall behind Keel, touched a depression there and a panel slid away. It revealed a huge port that looked out on an undersea courtyard with transparent ceiling and a watery center where clusters of small fishes flashed and turned among delicate, richly colored plants.
“I must be going,” Lonfinn said. “Enjoy yourselves. This”—he indicated the area he had just exposed—”should keep you from feeling too enclosed. I find it restful myself.” He turned to Brett, paused and said, “I’ll see that the necessary forms and papers are sent for you to sign. No sense wasting time.”
With that, Lonfinn departed, leaving by the same hatch they had entered. Brett looked at Keel. “Have you filled out these papers? What are they?”
“The papers fulfill the Merman need to feel they have everything pinned down. Your name, your age, circumstances of your arrival down under, your work experience, any talents you might have, whether you desire to stay …” Keel hesitated, cleared his throat. “ … your parentage, their occupations and mutations. The severity of your own mutation.”
Brett continued to regard the Chief Justice silently.
“And in answer to your other question,” Keel continued, “no, they have not required this of me. I’m sure they have a long dossier on me giving all the important details … and many unimportant tidbits, too.”
Brett had fastened onto one thing in Keel’s statement. “They may ask me to stay down under?”
“They may require you to work off the cost of your rescue. A lot of Islanders have settled down under, something I mean to look into before going topside. Life here can be very attractive, I know.” He ran his fingers through the soft nap of carpet as if for emphasis.
Brett looked at the ceiling, wondering how it would be to live most of his life here away from the suns. Of course, people from down under did go topside lots of times, but still …
“The best disaster-recovery team is composed mostly of ex-Islanders,” Keel said. “So says Kareen Ale.”
“I’ve heard the Mermen always want you to pay your own way,” Brett said. “But it shouldn’t take long to work off the cost of my …” He suddenly thought of Scudi. How could he ever repay Scudi? There was no coin for that.
“Mermen have a great many ways of attracting desirable and acceptable Islanders,” Keel said. “You appear to be someone they’d be interested in having aboard. However, that should not be your chief concern of the moment. By any chance, do you have medical training?”
“Just first aid and resuscitation through school.”
Keel drew in a deep breath and expelled it quickly. “Not enough, I’m afraid. Guemes went down quite a while ago. I’m sure the survivors they’re just now bringing in will require more expert attention.”
Brett tried to swallow in a tight throat.
Guemes, a whole Island sunk.
“I could carry a stretcher,” he said.
Keel smiled sadly. “I’m sure you could. But I’m also sure you wouldn’t be able to find the right place to take it. Either one of us would just be in the way. At the moment, we’re just what they think of us—two Islander misfits who might do more harm than good. We’ll just have to wait.”
Chapter 20
We seldom get rid of an evil merely by understanding its causes.
—C.G. Jung, Shiprecords
“There’s a curse in the Histories,” Bushka said, “old as humans. It says, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ I guess we got it.”
For some time now, as the coracles cruised through the half-night of Pandora’s open sea, Bushka had been telling Twisp what he’d learned from Gallow and from members of Gallow’s crew. Twisp could not see Bushka. Only the thin red light of the RDC’s arrow glowed in the coracle. All else was darkness—not even stars overhead. A damp cloud cover had swept over them shortly after nightfall.
“There’ll be more open land than you can possibly imagine,” Bushka continued. “As much land as you see water around you now. So they say.”
“It’s all bad for the Islands,” Twisp said. “And those rockets you say they’re launching …”
“Oh, they’re well-prepared,” Bushka said. His voice came out of the darkness with a smug sound that Twisp did not like. “Everything’s ready for bringing down the hyb tanks. Warehouses full of equipment.”
“It’s hard for me to imagine land,” Twisp admitted. “Where will they lift it out of the sea first?”
“The place that the settlers here called ‘Colony.’ On the maps, it’s a slightly curved rectangle. The curve is being widened and lengthened into an oval with a lagoon at its center. It was a complete city before the Clone Wars, walled in with plasteel, so it makes a good place to start. Sometime this year they’ll pump it out and the first city will be exposed to the sky.”
“Waves will wipe it out,” Twisp said.
“No,” Bushka countered. “They’ve been five generations preparing for this. They’ve thought of everything—the politics, economics, the kelp …” He broke off as one of the squawks uttered a sleepy bleat.
Both men froze, listening expectantly. Was there a night-roaming hunt of dashers nearby? The squawks remained quiet. “Bad dream,” Bushka muttered.
“So Guemes Island with its religious fanatics stood in the way of this land-colonization project, is that it?” Twisp asked. “Them and their ‘stick-to-the-Islands-where-Ship-left-us’ attitude?”
Bushka did not respond.
Twisp thought about the things the man had revealed. A lifetime of fisherman’s isolation clouded Twisp’s imagination. He felt provincial, incapable of understanding matters of worldwide politics and economics. He knew what worked, and that seemed simple enough. All he knew was that he distrusted this grand scheme, which Bushka seemed half-enamored of in spite of the experience with Gallow.
“There’s no place in this plan for Islanders,” Twisp noted.
“No, no place for mutants. They’re to be excluded,” Bushka said. His voice was almost too low to hear.
“And who’s to say what a mutant is?” Twisp demanded. Bushka remained silent for a long time. Finally, he said, “The Islands are obsolete, that much I can’t argue with. In spite of everything else, Gallow’s right about that.”
Twisp stared into the darkness where Bushka sat. There was a spot just to the left that felt a little darker than the rest. That’s where Twisp aimed his attention. An image of Merman life came to him—their habitation, places Bushka had described. Home, he thought. What kind of person calls this home? Everything sounded regular
and nearly identical, like some insect hive. It gave him the creeps.
“This place you’re guiding us to,” Twisp asked, “what is it? Why is it safe for us to go there?”
“The Green Dashers are a small organization,” Bushka said. “Launch Base One is huge—by the numbers alone our odds are better there than anyplace else in decent range.”
This is hopeless, Twisp thought. If Mermen had not found Brett already, what else could he do? The sea was too big and it had been a fool’s errand trying to fix on the place where the wave wall hit Vashon.
“It’ll be dawn soon,” Bushka said. “We should be there shortly after dawn.”
