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Bushka moved up and sat on the cuddy top to watch the birds and the horizon ahead of them. Where is that damned Launch Base? The motions of the birds kept attracting his attention. Twisp had said the squawks acted out of an ancient instinct. Probably true. Instinct! How long did it take to extinguish instinct? Or develop it? Which way were humans going? How strongly were they driven by such inner forces? Historian questions thronged his mind.
“That dull-looking squawk is a female,” Bushka said, pointing to the wild flock. “I wonder why the males are so much more colorful?”
“Has to be some survival in it,” Twisp said. He looked at the flock swimming beside the coracle, their eyes alert for another handout. “That’s a female, all right.” A scowl settled over his face. “One thing you can say for that hen squawk: she’ll never ask a surgeon to make her normal!”
Bushka heard the bitterness and sensed the old familiar Islander story. It was getting to be ever more common these days: A lover had surgery to appear Merman-normal, then pressured the partner to do the same. A lot of angry fights resulted.
“Sounds like you got burned,” Bushka said.
“I was crisped and charred,” Twisp said. “Have to admit it was fun at first …” He hesitated, then: “ … but I hoped it would be more than fun, something more permanent.” He shook his head.
Bushka yawned and stretched. The wild flock took his movement as a threat and scattered in a flurry of splashes and loud cries.
Twisp stared toward the wild birds, but his eyes were not focused on them. “Her name’s Rebeccah,” he said. “She really liked my arms around her. Never complained about how long they were until—” He broke off in sudden embarrassment.
“She chose surgical correction?” Bushka prompted.
“Yeah.” Twisp swallowed. Now what set me talking about Rebeccah to this stranger? Am I that lonesome? She had liked to feed the squawks at rimside every evening. He had enjoyed those evenings more than he could tell, and remembered details in a flood that he shut off as soon as it started.
Bushka was staring at his own hands. “She dumped you after the surgery?”
“Dumped me? Naw.” Twisp sighed. “That would’ve been easy. I know I’d always feel like some kind of freak around her afterwards. No Mute can afford to feel that way, ever. It’s why a lot of us more obvious types shy away from the Mermen. It’s the stares and the way we think of ourselves then—our own eyes looking back from the mirror.”
“Where is she now?” Bushka asked.
“Vashon,” Twisp said. “Someplace close to Center, I’d guess. That’s one thing good looks can get you on Vashon. I’d bet big money she’s down there where the rich and powerful live. Her job was preparing people psychologically for surgical correction—she was sort of a living model of how life would be if they went through everything right.”
“She made the choice, and it worked for her.”
“If you talk about something like that long enough it becomes an obsession. She used to say: ‘Changing some bodies is easy. A good surgeon knows just where to work. Minds are a little tougher.’ I think she didn’t really listen to herself.”
Bushka looked at Twisp’s long arms, a sudden insight flooding his mind.
Twisp saw the direction of Bushka’s gaze and nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “She wanted me to get my arms fixed. She didn’t understand, not even with all of her psychological crap behind her. I wasn’t afraid of the knife or any of that eelshit. It was that my body would be a lie, and I can’t stand liars.”
This is no ordinary fisherman, Bushka thought.
“I finally figured it out about her,” Twisp said. “A little too much boo and she started with this pitch for all of us to be ‘as normal as possible.’ Like you, Bushka.”
“I don’t feel that way.”
“‘Cause you don’t have to. You’re all ready to join the Mermen on their open land, on their terms.”
Bushka found no words to answer. He had always been proud of his Merman-normal appearance. He could pass without surgery.
Twisp pounded his fist against the rim of the coracle. It startled the caged squawks, who sat up and fluffed their feathers in frustration.
“She wanted kids … with me,” Twisp said. “Can you imagine that? Think of the surprises you’d find in the nursery when all these corrected, lying Mutes started bedding each other. And what about the kids growing up to find out that they’re Mutes while their parents appear to be norms? Not for me!” His voice was husky. “No way.”
Twisp fell silent, lost in his own memories.
Bushka listened to the slep-slep of waves against the coracle’s sides, the faint rustling of the squawks preening and stretching in their cage. He wondered how many love affairs drowned on Twisp’s style of principles.
“Damn that Jesus Lewis!” Twisp muttered.
Bushka nodded to himself. Yes, that was where the problem had started. Or, at least, where it was precipitated. The question remained for the historian: What made Jesus Lewis? Bushka looked at Twisp’s arms—muscular, well-developed, tan and over half a length too long. The Island mating pool was still a genetic lottery, thanks to Jesus Lewis and his bioengineering experiments.
Twisp was still angry. “Mermen will never understand what growing up an Islander is like! Someone around you is always frail or dying … someone close. My little sister was such a nice kid …” Twisp shook his head.
“We don’t say ‘mutation’ much except when we’re being technical,” Bushka prompted. “And deformity is a dirty word. ‘Mistakes,’ that’s what we call them.”
“You know what, Bushka? I deliberately avoid people with long arms. There are only a few of us in this generation.” He raised his arm. “Are these a mistake? Does that make me a mistake?”
Bushka didn’t answer.
“Damn!” Twisp said. “My apprentice, Brett, he’s sensitive about the size of his eyes. Shit, you can’t tell anything just by looking at him, but you can’t tell him that. Ship! Can he ever see in the dark! Is that a mistake?”
“It’s a lottery,” Bushka said.
Twisp grimaced. “I don’t envy the Committee’s job. You have any idea of the grotesques and the dangerous forms they have to judge? How can they do it? And how can they guess at the mental mistakes? Those don’t usually show up until later.”
“But we have good times, too,” Bushka protested. “Mermen think our cloth is the best. You know the price we get for Islander weaving down under. And our music, our painting … all of our art.”
“Sure,” Twisp sneered. “I’ve heard Mermen pawing over our stuff. ‘How bright! Such fun. Oh! Isn’t this pretty? Islanders are so full of fun.’”
“We are,” Bushka muttered.
Twisp merely looked at him for a long time. Bushka wondered if he had committed some unforgivable blunder.
Suddenly, Twisp smiled. “You’re right. Damn! No Merman knows how to have a good time the way we do. It’s either grief and despair or dancing and singing all night because somebody got married, or born, or got a new set of drums, or hauled in a big catch. Mermen don’t celebrate much, I hear. You ever see Mermen celebrating?”
“Never,” Bushka admitted. And he remembered Nakano of Gallow’s crew talking about Merman life.
“Work, get a mate, have a couple of kids, work some more and die,” Nakano had said. “Fun is a coffee break or hauling a sledge to some new outpost.”
Was that why Nakano had joined Gallow’s movement? Precious little fun or excitement down under. Rescue an Islander. Work at building a barrier. Bushka did not think of life down under as grim for people like Nakano. Just drab. They hadn’t the lure of an intellectual goal, nor even the nearness of grief to make them snatch at joy. But topside, there you found dazzle and color and a great deal of laughter.
r /> “If we go back to the open land, it’ll be different,” Bushka said.
“What do you mean, ‘if’? Just a few minutes ago you were saying it was inevitable.”
“There are Mermen who want only an undersea empire. If they—”
Bushka broke off as Twisp suddenly pointed ahead and blurted, “Ship’s balls! What is that?”
Bushka turned and saw, almost directly ahead of them, a gray tower with a lace of white surf at its base. It was like a thick stem to the great flower of sky, a blue flower edged in pink. The storm that had been skirting them for the past few hours framed the scene in a halo of black cloud. The tower, almost the same drab shade as the clouds, climbed up like a great fist out of the depths.
Twisp stared in awe. It wasn’t visible for fifty klicks, as Bushka had first stated, but it was impressive. Ship! He’d not expected it to be so big.
Beyond the gray press of sea and sky, the clouds began to open. The interrupted horizon became two bright flowers and neither man could take his gaze off the launch tower. It was the center of a giant stormcloud whirlpool.
“That’s the Launch Base,” Bushka said. “That’s the heart of the Merman space program. Every political faction they have will be represented there.”
“You’d never mistake it for something floating on the surface,” Twisp said. “No movement at all.”
“It clears high water by twenty-five meters,” Bushka said. “Mermen brag about it. They’ve only sent up unmanned shots. But things are moving fast. That’s why Gallow and his people are acting now. The Mermen expect a manned shot into space soon.”
“And they control the currents with the kelp?” Twisp asked. “How?”
