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Panille felt a hard emptiness in his stomach.
“Kareen,” he said.
She did not respond. The gondola continued to lurch and sway.
Nakano looked worried. “What’s going on, pilot?”
The pilot pointed to a display on the board to his right. Panille tore his gaze away from Kareen Ale’s ashen face. He could not see all that was indicated on the control panel, only the last two numbers of a digital display and those were changing so rapidly they were a blur.
“Our homing frequency,” the pilot explained. “It won’t stay on target.”
“We can’t find the outpost without locking on the right frequency,” Nakano said. There was fear in his voice.
The pilot withdrew his hand and this revealed once more the display for the launch broadcast. The picture was gone, replaced by wavelike lines and pulsing colored ribbons.
“Try your radio,” Nakano ordered. “Maybe they can talk us in.”
“I am trying it!” the pilot said. He flipped a switch and cranked up the volume control. A keening, rhythmic sound filled the gondola.
“That’s all I’m getting!” the pilot said. “Some kind of interference. Weird music.”
“Tones,” Panille murmured. “Sounds like computer music.”
“What’s that?”
Panille repeated it. He glanced back at Kareen. Why wouldn’t she meet his eyes? She was very pale. Had they drugged her?
“Our altimeter just went out,” the pilot called. “We’re adrift. I’m taking us up above this weather.”
He punched buttons and moved his controls. There was no apparent response from the LTA.
“Damn!” the pilot swore.
Panille stared once more at the screen on the pilot’s board. The pattern was familiar, though he wouldn’t tell Nakano. It was a pattern Panille knew he had seen on his own screens in Current Control—a kelp response. It was what they saw when the kelp complied with an instruction to shift the great currents in Pandora’s sea.
Chapter 34
The repressed share the psychoses and neuroses of the caged. As the caged run when released, the repressed explode when confronted with their condition.
—Raja Thomas, the Journals
17 Alki, 468. In captivity at Outpost 22.
Jealousy is a great teacher if you allow it. Even the Chief Justice can learn much from his jealousy of Mermen. Compared to Mermen, we Islanders live squalid lives. We are poor. There are no secrets among the poor. The squalor and close sweat of our lives oozes information and rumor. Even the most clandestine arrangements become public. But Mermen thrive on secrecy. It is one of their many luxuries.
Secrecy begins with privacy.
As Chief Justice of the Committee on Vital Forms I enjoy private quarters. No more stacked cubbies pressed head to foot along some rimside bulkhead. No more feet stepping on hands in the night or grunting lovers bumping against your back.
Privilege and privacy, two words that share the same root. But down under, privacy is the norm.
My imprisonment represents a special kind of privacy. These Green Dashers do not understand that. My captors appear exhausted and a little bored. Boredom opens paths into secrecy, thus I anticipate learning something of their lives because their lives are now my life. How little they understand of true secrecy. They do not suspect the chanting in my head that records these things that I may share with others if I wish … and if I survive that long. These fanatics give no quarter. Guemes is proof that they can commit murder skillfully and easily … perhaps even cheerfully. I have few illusions about my chances here.
Little can survive me except my record on the Committee. I admit to a little pride about that record. And some regrets about my other choices. The child that Carolyn and I should have had … she would have been a daughter, I think. By now there would be grandchildren. Did I have the right to prevent that generation out of fear? They would have been beautiful! And wise, yes, like Carolyn.
Gallow wonders why I sit here with my eyelids opened only to slits. Sometimes, he laughs at what he sees. Gallow dreams of dominating our world. In that, he is no different from Scudi’s father. Ryan Wang fed people to control them. GeLaar Gallow kills. Their other differences are just as profound. I suppose death is a form of absolute control. There are many kinds of death. I see this because I have no grandchildren. I have only those whose lives have passed through my hands, those who have survived because of my word.
I wonder where Gallow sent that big assistant, Nakano? What a monster … on the outside. The very vision of a terrorist. But Nakano’s goals are not on the surface. No one could call him transparent. His hands are gentle when there is no need for his great strength.
They have suspended this foil beneath the surface. More secrecy. More privacy. Such stillness can be frightening. I am beginning to find it captivating—I see that my mind jokes with me in its choice of words. Privacy, too, is captivating. Islanders do not know this reality of life down under. They imagine only the privacy. They envy the privacy. They do not imagine the stillness. Will my people ever encounter this immense quiet? I find it difficult to believe that the C/P will order all Islanders to move down under. How could she do this? Where could the Mermen put us and not lose their precious privacy? But even more than fear of Ship, our envy would cause us to obey. I cannot believe that Ship enters into such a scheme except by innuendo. And the innuendo of Ship suffers a sea of change in human interpretation. A moment’s reflection back through the histories, especially upon the writings of that maverick C/P, Raja Thomas, makes this as clear as plaz. Ah, Thomas, what a brilliant survivor you were! I thank Ship that your thoughts have come down to me. ForI,too,knowwhatitistobecaged. Iknowwhatitistobe repressed. And I know myself better because of Thomas. Like him, I can turn to my memory for company, and he is there, too. Now, with kelp to record us, no lock seals the hatchway to memory … ever.
Chapter 35
If you don’t know about numbers you can’t appreciate coincidence.
—Scudi Wang
Brett marveled at Scudi’s control. All during the ordeal in the control cabin her attention remained on the operation of the foil. She kept them skimming along the edge of the kelp in the bright light of morning, avoiding stray tangles of leaves that might catch the struts. There were moments when Brett thought the kelp opened special channels for the foil. Directing them? Why would it do that? Scudi’s eyes widened from time to time. What did she see in the kelp channels to cause that reaction? Her tan face paled at what she heard behind her where Twisp and Bushka argued, but she kept the foil cruising smoothly toward its rendezvous with Gallow.
Her reaction was not natural, Brett thought. Bushka was crazy to think they could surprise Gallow and overcome him—just the four of them here. Vashon had to learn what was happening. Scudi must realize this!
Within an hour they came out of the heaviest kelp infestation onto open water where the seas were steeper and the motions of the foil more abrupt.
Bushka sat alone on the command couch at the rear of the cabin, forcing Twisp to sit on the floor well away from him. Between them, trussed like a kelp-tangled dasher, their captive Merman lay quiet. Occasionally he opened his eyes to study his surroundings.
Twisp bided his time. Brett understood the big fisherman’s silent waiting. There was a limited future arguing with a man holding a lasgun.
Brett studied Scudi’s profile, the way she kept her attention on the water ahead of them, the way she tensed when she corrected course. A muscle in her cheek trembled.
“Are you all right?” Brett asked.
Her knuckles whitened on the wheel and the tremble disappeared. She looked childlike in that big seat with the spread of instruments around her. Scudi still wore her dive suit and he could see a red irritation where it rubbed against her neck. This made him acutely conscious of the constrictions in his own suit.
“Scudi?”
She barely whispered: “I’m OK.”
She too
k a deep breath and relaxed against the padded seat. He saw the whiteness retreat from her knuckles. The foil lurched and shuddered along the wavetops and Brett wondered how long it could take such punishment. Twisp and Bushka began a conversation too low for Brett to make out more than the occasional word. He glanced back at them and focused on the lasgun still held firmly in Bushka’s hands. Its muzzle pointed in the general direction of Twisp and the Merman.
What was Bushka really doing? Was it only rage? Surely Bushka could never escape memories of his part in the Guemes massacre. Killing Gallow wouldn’t erase those memories, it would only add more.
Scudi leaned toward Brett then and whispered, “It’s going to be a bad storm.”
Brett jerked his attention around and looked out the sweep of plaz, aware for the first time that the weather was changing dramatically. A gusting wind from port had begun to blast the tops off the waves, whipping scuds of foam along the surface. A gray curtain of rain slanted into the sea ahead, closing the tenuous gap between black clouds and gray water. The day suddenly had the feel of cold metal. He glanced up at the position vector on the overhead screen and tried to estimate their time to Gallow and his hunt of Green Dashers.
“Two hours?” he asked.
“That’s going to slow us.” Scudi nodded toward the storm line ahead. “Fasten your safety harness.”
Brett swung the shoulder strap across his chest and locked it in place.
They were into the rain then. Visibility dropped to less than a hundred meters. Great pelting drops roared on the foil’s metal fabric and overcame the airblast wipers on the cabin plaz. Scudi backed off the throttle and the foil began to pitch even more with the steepening waves.
“What’s going on?” Bushka demanded.
“Storm,” Scudi said.
“Look at it.”
