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Gallow glanced around the room and returned his attention to Keel. “Very pleasant, this cabin,” he said. “Ryan Wang’s gift to Kareen Ale—her personal foil. I think I’ll keep it for my command center.”
“Where is Kareen?” Keel asked.
“She’s busy being a doctor,” Gallow said. “Something she should stick to. Politics doesn’t suit her. Maybe medicine doesn’t, either. She didn’t do much for Zent.”
“Nobody could’ve saved Tso,” Nakano said. “I want to know what got him. Does Vashon have a new defense weapon?” Nakano glared at Keel. “What about it, Mr. Justice?”
“What’re you talking about? Defense against what?”
Gallow stepped closer. “Tso and two of our new recruits were given the simple task of sinking Vashon,” Gallow said. “Tso returned dying and in a damaged sub. The two recruits were not with him.”
Keel was a moment finding his voice, then: “You’re monsters. You would scuttle thousands and thousands of lives—”
“What happened to our sub?” Gallow demanded. “The whole forward section—it looked as though it had been crushed by a fist.”
“Vashon?” Keel whispered.
“Oh, it’s still there,” Gallow said. “Do I have to tell Nakano he must be more persuasive? Answer the question.”
Keel drew in a deep, trembling breath and exhaled slowly. Here was why they kept him alive! Whatever had happened to the sub, he had no answer, but there was something he could do. Forward section crushed?
“So it worked,” Keel said.
Both men glared at him. “What worked?” Gallow barked.
“Our cable trap,” Keel bluffed.
“I thought so!” Nakano said.
“Tell us about this device,” Gallow ordered.
“I’m no technic or engineer,” Keel protested. He put a hand up. “I don’t know how it’s made.”
“But you can tell us what you do know,” Gallow said. “Or I will direct Nakano to cause you a great deal of pain.”
Keel looked at Nakano’s massive arms, those bulging muscles, the bull neck. None of that frightened him, and he knew that Nakano knew it. The reference to death earlier, it was a bond between them.
“All I know is it’s organic and it works by compression,” Keel said.
“Organic? Our sub has cutters and burners!” Gallow clearly did not believe him.
“It’s like a net,” Keel said, warming to his fiction. “Each surviving part can behave like the whole. And once it’s inside your defenses where your cutters and burners can’t reach it …” Keel shrugged.
“Why would you make such a thing?” Gallow asked.
“Our Security people determined that we were hopelessly vulnerable to attack from below. Something had to be done. And we were right. Look what happened to Guemes. What almost happened to Vashon.”
“Yes, look what happened to Guemes,” Gallow said, smiling.
Monsters, Keel thought.
“Tso must’ve done some damage,” Nakano said. “That’s why Vashon’s grounded.”
Keel tried to speak past a pain in his throat. “Grounded?” His voice was a croak.
“On the bottom and abandoning its downcenter,” Gallow said, showing obvious relish in his words. He reached out and tapped Nakano’s arm. “Keep our guest company. I will go out and prepare to commune with Tso’s kelp-spirit. See if the Mute here can tell us any way to improve our contact with the kelp.”
Keel took a deep breath. His improvisation about a Vashon defense weapon had been accepted. It would make these monsters more cautious. It would give Vashon a breathing space—if the Island survived grounding. He took heart from the fact that Vashon had survived groundings in the distant past. There would be damage, though, and economic losses. Ballast pumps would be working frantically to lift and compress the bottom sections of the Island. Heavy equipment would be detached in its own floaters. Mermen would be called in for assistance.
Mermen! Would friends of these vermin be among those summoned for help? It could take days for Vashon to lift its enormous bulk and refloat. If no storm or wavewall came …
I have to escape, Keel thought. My people have to know what I’ve learned. They need me.
Gallow had moved to the hatch, looking back thoughtfully at Nakano and the captive. He opened the hatch and stood there a moment, then: “Nakano, he has not given us every detail of their weapon. He has not told us how he communes with the kelp. There are things of value in his head. If he does not reveal them willingly, we will have to feed him to the kelp and hope to recover the information that way.”
Nakano nodded, not looking at Gallow.
Gallow let himself out and sealed the hatch behind him.
“I can’t protect you from him if he gets angry, Mr. Justice,” Nakano said. His voice was casual, even friendly. “You had better sit down and tell me what you know. Would you like some more water? Sorry we don’t have any boo, that would make things easier—more civilized.”
Keel moved painfully to the table where Gallow had sat and dropped into the chair. It was still warm.
What a strange pair, he thought.
Nakano brought him a beaker of water. Keel sipped slowly, savoring the coolness.
It was almost as though these two exchanged personalities. Keel realized then that Nakano and Gallow were playing the old Security game with him—one guard always browbeat a prisoner while the other came on as a friend, sometimes pretending to protect the prisoner from the attacker.
“Tell me about the weapon,” Nakano said.
“The ropes are thicker than full-grown kelp,” Keel said. And he recalled underwater views of the kelp—strands thicker than a human torso swaying in the currents.
“A burner would still cut them,” Nakano said.
“Ah, but the fibers have some way of reattaching to each other when they touch. Cut it apart and put the cut ends together, it’s as though there were not cut.”
Nakano grimaced. “How? How is it done?”
“I don’t know. They talk about fibrous hooks.”
“Now you understand,” Nakano said, “why Mutes must go.”
“What have we done except protect ourselves?” Keel demanded. “If that sub hadn’t been out to sink the Island, it wouldn’t have been harmed.” Even as he spoke he wondered again about the damaged sub, wishing he could see and examine it. What had really done it? Crushed? Truly crushed or damaged by the bottom?
“Tell me how you commune with kelp,” Nakano said.
“We … just touch it.”
“And?”
Keel swallowed. He remembered the old stories, the remnant history, especially the accounts by Shadow Panille’s ancestor.
“It’s like daydreaming … almost,” Keel said. “You hear voices.”
That much the old accounts had said.
“Specific voices?” Nakano demanded.
“Sometimes,” Keel lied.
“How do you contact the specific dead and gain access to what they knew when alive?”
Keel shrugged, thinking hard. His mind had never worked this fast, absorbing, correlating. Ship! What a discovery! He thought about the countless Islander dead consigned to the sea by mourning relatives. How many of those had been absorbed by the kelp?
“So the kelp doesn’t respond to you any better than it does to us,” Nakano said.
“I fear not,” Keel agreed.
