AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I told you!” Bushka wailed.
“Oh, shut up!” Twisp snapped. “Ryan Wang’s dead and I’m tired of listening to your crap.” He turned to Brett and Scudi. “The kid says you saved his life. Is that right?”
“Yes.” She spoke with one of her small shrugs. Her eyes stared into the console’s instruments.
“Anything else we should know?”
“I … don’t think so,” she said.
Twisp caught Brett’s eye and decided to get all the bad news out. He hooked a thumb toward Bushka. “This bit of dasher bait here,” he said, “piloted the sub that sank Guemes. He claims he didn’t know what they had in mind until the sub chewed into the bottom of the Island. Says he was tricked by the Merman commander, a guy named Gallow.”
“Gallow,” Scudi whispered.
“You know him?” Brett asked.
“I’ve seen him many times. With my father and Kareen Ale, often—”
“I told you!” Bushka interrupted. He prodded Twisp’s ribs. Twisp grabbed Bushka’s wrist, twisted it back suddenly, then flung it aside.
“And I told you to stow it,” Twisp said. Brett and Scudi both turned to face Bushka.
He stepped back instinctively.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Bushka asked. “Twisp can tell you the whole story—I couldn’t stop them—” He broke off when they continued to stare at him silently.
“They don’t trust you,” Twisp said, “and neither do I. But if Scudi delivered you all packaged and safe to Launch Base, that might be just what this Gallow would want. If he’s a manipulator, he’ll have people crawling all over a political scene like that. You might just disappear, Bushka.” Twisp rubbed the back of his neck and spoke low. “We have to do this one right the first time. We’ll have no way of regrouping.
“Brett and I could take the coracles and get back to Vashon,” Twisp said.
“No,” Brett insisted. “Scudi and I stay together.”
“I should go to the base alone,” Scudi said. “When they see me alone, they’ll know you and I have separated and others will listen to our story.”
“No!” Brett repeated. He tightened his grip on her shoulders. “We’re a team. We stick together.”
Twisp glared at Brett, then his expression and his bearing softened. “So that’s the way it is?”
“That’s the way it is,” Brett said. He kept his arm firmly around Scudi’s shoulders. “I know you could order me to go with you. I’m still your apprentice. But I wouldn’t obey.”
Twisp spoke in a mild voice. “Then I better not be giving any orders.” He grinned to take the sting from his words.
“So what do we do?” Brett asked.
Bushka startled them when he spoke. “Let me take the foil and go to Launch Base alone. I could—”
“You could spread the word to your friends and tell them where to pick up a couple of slow-moving coracles,” Twisp said.
Bushka paled even further. “I tell you, I’m not—”
“You’re an unknown right now,” Twisp said. “That’s what you are. If your story’s true, you’re dumber than you look. Whatever, we can’t afford to trust you—not with our lives.”
“Then let me go back in the coracles,” Bushka said.
“They’d just tow you away again. Farther this time.” Twisp turned to Brett and Scudi. “You two are determined to stick together?”
Brett nodded; so did Scudi.
“Then Bushka and I go in the coracles,” Twisp said. “We’re better off split up, I’m sure of that, but we don’t want to get out of touch again. We’ll turn on our locator transmitter. You know the frequency, kid?”
“Yes, but—”
“There must be a portable RDF on this monster,” Twisp said. He glanced around the cockpit.
“There are small portable direction finders in all emergency kitpacks,” Scudi said. Her toe nudged a pack under the seat.
Twisp bent and looked at the small orange kit. He straightened. “You keep them handy, eh?”
“When we think it necessary,” she said.
“Then I suggest we follow in the coracles,” Twisp said. “If you have to take to the water, you’ll be able to find us. Or vice versa.”
“If they’re alive,” Bushka muttered.
Twisp studied Brett for a moment. Was the kid man enough to make the decision? Brett could not be shamed in front of the young woman. Scudi and Brett were, indeed, a team. One that had a bond he couldn’t match. It was the kid’s decision, and in Twisp’s mind it was making Brett a man.
Brett’s arm stroked Scudi’s shoulder. “We’ve already shown that we work well together. We got this far. What we’re going to do may be dangerous, but you always said, Twisp, that life gives you no guarantees.”
Twisp grinned. Going to do … The kid had made his decision and the young woman agreed. That was that.
“All right, partner,” Twisp said. “No shilly-shally and no regrets.” He turned to Bushka. “Got that, Bushka? We’re the backup.”
“How long can you hang around?” Brett asked. “Count on at least twenty days, if you need that much.”
“In twenty days there might not be any Islands to save,” Brett said. “We’d better move faster than that.”
Twisp took two of the kitpacks for the coracles, and loaded a grumbling Bushka back aboard.
Scudi slipped an arm around Brett’s waist and hugged him. “We should get into those dive suits now,” she said. “We may not get time later.”
She pulled hers out from under her couch and draped it across the back of the seat. Brett did the same. Undressing was easy for him this time, and he thought maybe it was seeing all of those Mermen swimming around their base, most of them with only weightbelts full of tools around their waists. Maybe it was the ride out from the foil bay with his shirt open. It gave Brett a feeling of security in the integrity of his own skin. Besides, Scudi didn’t react one way or another. He liked that. And he liked the fact that this time she didn’t comment on his modesty. He was beginning to get a feel for the matter-of-fact Merman nudity. But he was only beginning. When Scudi slipped out of her shirt, skinning it over her head, he followed every bounce her firm breasts took and knew it would be very hard to keep from staring. He wanted to look at her forever. She kicked her deck shoes off in two easy flicks of her feet and dropped her pants behind her couch. She had a very small patch of black hair—wispy, silky and inviting.
He noted suddenly that she was standing with her head cocked to one side. She moved gently, not telling him to quit staring but letting him know that she knew what he was doing.
“You have a very beautiful body,” he said. “I don’t mean to stare.”
“Yours, too, is nice,” she said. She placed her hand in the middle of his chest, pressed her palm against him. “I just wanted to touch you,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. He put his left hand on her shoulder, felt her strength and her warmth and the easy smoothness of her skin. His other hand came up to her shoulders, and she kissed him. He hoped that she liked it as much as he did. It was a soft, warm and breathless kiss. When she leaned against him her breasts flattened on his chest and he could feel the hard little knots of nipples focused there. He felt himself hard
ening against her thigh, her thigh of such strength and grace. She stroked his shoulders, then tightened both arms around his neck and kissed him hard, her small tongue tapping the tip of his own. The boat took a sudden lurch and they both fell in a heap on the deck, laughing.
“How graceful,” he said.
“And cold.”
She was right. The suns had set as Twisp and Bushka departed. Already there was a stiff chill in the air. It wasn’t the hardness of the deck that bothered him, but the sudden shock of cold metal against his sweaty skin. When they sat up he heard the strange unpeeling sound of damp skin. It was the sound that sheets of skin made when a friend had unpeeled his sunburned back as a boy.
Brett wanted to loll with Scudi forever, but Scudi was already trying to get up amid the unsteady rocking of the foil. He took her hand and helped her to her feet. He didn’t let go.
“It’s nearly dark,” he said. “Won’t we have trouble finding the base? I mean, it’s always a lot darker underwater.”
“I know the way,” she said. “And you have a night vision that could see for us both. We should go now …”
This time he kissed her. She leaned against him for a blink, soft and good-feeling, then pulled back. She still held his hand, but there was an uneasiness in her eyes that Brett translated as fear.
“What?” he asked. “If we stay here we will, you know … we’ll do what we want to do.”
Brett’s throat was dry and he knew he couldn’t talk without his voice cracking. He remained quiet, wanting to hear her out. He didn’t know much about what it was that they wanted to do, and if she could give him a few clues, he was ready. He did not want her to be disappointed and he did not know what she expected of him. Most important, he did not know how much experience she’d had in these matters and now it was important for him to find out.
She squeezed his hand. “I like you,” she said. “I like you very much. If there’s anyone I’d like to … to get that close with, it’s you. But there is the matter of a child.”
He blushed. But it was not out of embarrassment. It was out of anger at himself for not thinking of the obvious thing, for not considering that the step from child to parent could very well happen all at once and he, too, was not ready.
