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“And topside!” Hastings snapped.
“Oh, yes. The two wild cards—my Committee and the Faith. Wiping out Guemes was a blow at the Faith. But liquidating me would not deter the Committee; they would simply replace me. It’s more effective to keep me incommunicado. Or, if I were liquidated, Islanders would be distracted enough while selecting a new Chief Justice that Mermen could take advantage of the confusion. I no longer think I can stay down here. I am returning topside.”
Hastings and his companion stiffened. “I am afraid that is impossible just now,” Hastings said.
Keel smiled. “Carolyn Bluelove will be the next Chief Justice,” he said. “You won’t have any better luck with her than you have with me.”
Impasse, Keel thought.
A loaded silence fell over the room while Hastings and Lonfinn studied him. Keel could see Hastings composing new arguments and discarding them. He needed the Chief Justice’s cooperation for something—blind cooperation. He needed agreement without revealing the thing to which Keel must agree. Did Hastings think an old political infighter could not see through this dilemma?
Where they stood just inside the room, Scudi and Brett had listened carefully to this argument. Scudi now leaned close to Brett’s ear and whispered. “The guest head is that hatch over to the right. Go in there now and open the sealed switch plate by the hatch. Throw a glass of water into the switch. That will short out all the lights in this section. I will unlock the emergency hatch. Can you find it in the dark?”
He nodded. “We can be out before they even know we’re running,” she whispered.
“The passageway lights will shine in through the emergency hatch when you open it.”
“We have to be quick,” she said. “They will try to use the main controls. It will be a blink before they realize they’ll have to use the manual system.”
He nodded again. “Follow me and run fast,” she said.
Where he stood confronting Keel, Hastings had decided to expose part of his knowledge.
“Justice Keel, you are wrong about the next Chief Justice,” he said. “It’ll be Simone Rocksack.”
“GeLaar Gallow’s choice?” Keel asked, working from the knowledge he had gained at the late Ryan Wang’s comconsole.
Hastings blinked in surprise.
“If so, he’s in for another surprise,” Keel said. “C/Ps are notoriously incorruptible.”
“Your history’s slipping,” Hastings said. “Without the first Pandoran C/P, Morgan Oakes, Jesus Lewis would’ve been just another lab technician.”
A solemn expression settled over Keel’s face. Petitioners before him on the high bench had seen this look and trembled but Hastings only stared at him, waiting.
“You work for Gallow,” Keel said. “Of course you want total political and economic control of Pandora and you’re going to work through the Faith. Did the C/P know you were going to destroy her family on Guemes to do it?”
“You’re wrong! It’s not like that!”
“Then how is it?” Keel asked.
“Please, Mr. Justice! You—”
“Someone has latched on to a basic truth,” Keel said. “Control the food supply, control the people.”
“We’re running out of time for argument,” Hastings said.
“When we actually run out, will I then become one of the Guemes casualties?” Keel asked.
“The future of Pandora is at stake,” Hastings said. “Right-thinking people will steer a safe course through these hard times.”
“And for this, you will kill anyone who opposes you,” Keel said.
“We did not destroy Guemes!” Hastings said, spacing out his words in a low, cold voice.
“Then how do you know that whoever did it will not turn on you?” Keel demanded.
“Who are you to talk about killing?” Hastings asked. “How many thousands have you destroyed under the authority of your Committee? Hundreds of thousands? You’ve been at it a long time, Mr. Justice.”
Keel was momentarily stunned by this attack. “But the Committee—”
“Does what you tell it to do! The almighty Ward Keel points his finger and death follows. Everybody knows that! What’s life to someone like you? How can I expect a mind that alien to understand our Merman dilemma?”
Keel was at a loss how to meet this attack. The accusation stung him. Reverence for life guided his every decision. Lethal deviants had to be weeded out of the gene pool!
As Keel stood silently, wondering what might happen next, Brett stepped toward the hatch to the head. Lonfinn moved to stand between the hatch and the exit. Brett ignored the man and went into the head, closing the hatch behind him.
Brett studied the small room for a moment. The switch plate was a gasketed cover beside the hatch. It had two exposed sealing screws. Brett found the tool Scudi had told him about in the drawer under the sink: a fingernail file. He removed the cover, revealing a paired junction, shiny green and blue conducting plastics. The n and p circuits lay exposed to his view beneath the shielded depressions that changed polarity and activated the switch.
Glass of water, Scudi had said.
There was a glass beside the sink. He filled it and, putting one hand on the hatch dog, flung the water at the exposed switch. A blue-green spark flashed up the wall and all the lights went out. In the same moment he opened the hatch and slipped out into darkness. Hastings was shouting, “Get Keel! Hold him!”
Brett slipped to his right along the wall and bumped into Scudi at the hatch. She touched his face, then pulled his shoulder close. Abruptly, the little hatch opened and she was through it, rolling to one side. Brett dove through behind her and Scudi dogged the little hatch. Leaping to her feet, she darted off down the passage. Brett scrambled up and followed.
It was the first time in his life that Brett had run more than a hundred meters at one stretch. Scudi was far ahead of him, darting into a side passage. Brett skidded around the corner behind her just in time to see her feet disappear th
rough a tiny round hatch low to the deck. She practically pulled him in behind her as he knelt at the opening. The hatch swung closed and she sealed it in darkness. Brett was panting from the exertion. Sweat stung his eyes.
“Where are we?” he whispered.
“Service passage for the pneumatic system. Hold on to my waistband and stay close. We have to crawl through the first part.”
Brett gripped her waistband and found himself almost dragged along a low, narrow passage where his shoulders brushed the sides and he frequently bumped his head against the ceiling. It was very dim even for him in here, and he was sure she was operating in total darkness. The passage turned left, then right, then sloped upward for a time. Scudi stopped and reached back. She gripped his hand, taking it forward and placing it on a ladder that disappeared somewhere above them.
“Ladder,” she whispered. “Follow me up.”
He didn’t remind her that he could see.
“Where’re we going?” he asked.
“All the way up. Don’t slip. It’s twenty-one levels with only three ledges to take breaks.”
“What’s up there?”
“The docking bay for my father’s cargo foils.”
“Scudi, are you sure you want to do this?”
Her voice came to him small and tightly controlled. “I won’t believe anything without proof, but they’re holding the Justice and they’d have stopped us. That’s wrong, and it’s Ale’s doing. The Islands should know at least that much.”
“Right.”
She pulled away from him, the slither of her clothing and their breathing were the only sounds.
Brett followed her, his hands occasionally touching Scudi’s feet on the rungs. The climb felt long to Brett, and he knew it must seem interminable to Scudi, operating in total darkness. He regretted that he had not started counting the rungs, that would help keep his mind off the ever-growing drop to the deck below. It was stomach-tightening for him to think about it, and when he did his hands didn’t want to move from rung to rung. He couldn’t see to the bottom or the top, just Scudi’s trim form working ahead of him. Once, he stopped and looked behind him. Several diameters of pipes were faintly visible to him. One was hot to the touch. There was cold condensation on another. It felt slick when he ran his fingers over it.
