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“Yes, well … I find it hard to believe that she’d go along with the Guemes massacre.”
“She didn’t know,” Gallow said, “but she’ll adjust. She’s a very depressing woman when you get to know her. Very bitter. Did you know that there’s a mirror on every wall in her quarters?”
“I’ve never been to her quarters.”
“I have.” Gallow’s chest swelled with the statement. “No other man has. She raves about her ugliness, tears at her skin, contorts her face in the mirror until she can bear its natural form. Only then will she leave her room. Such a sad creature.” Gallow shook his head and freshened his cup of wine.
“Such a sad human, you mean?” Keel asked.
“She doesn’t consider herself human.”
“Has she told you this?”
“Yes.”
“Then she needs help. Friends around her. Someone to—”
“They only remind her of her ugliness,” Gallow interrupted. “That’s been tried. Pity, she has a succulent body under all those wraps. I am her friend because she considers me attractive, a model of what humanity could be. She wants no child to grow up ugly in an ugly world.”
“She told you this?”
“Yes,” Gallow said, “and more. I listen to her, Mr. Justice. You and your Committee, you tolerate her. And you lost her.”
“It sounds like she was lost before I ever knew her.”
Gallow’s white smile returned. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “But there was a time when she could have been won. And I did it. You did not. That may shape the whole course of history.”
“It may.”
“You think your people will continue to revel in their deformities forever? Oh, no. They send their good children to us. You take in our rejects, our criminals and cripples. What kind of life can they build that way? Misery. Despair …” Gallow shrugged as though the matter were unarguable.
Keel didn’t remember Islander life that way at all. It was crowded beyond Merman belief, true. Islands stank, also true. But there was incomparable color and music everywhere, always a good word. And who could explain to someone under the sea the incredible pleasure of sunrise, warm spring rain on face and hands, the constant small touchings of person to person that proved you were cared for merely by being alive.
“Mr. Justice,” Gallow said, “you’re not drinking your wine. Is the quality not to your liking?”
It’s not the wine. Keel thought, but the company. Aloud, he said, “I have a stomach problem. I have to take my wine slow. I generally prefer boo.”
“Boo?” Gallow’s eyebrows lifted in genuine surprise. “That nerve-runner concoction? I thought it—”
“That only degenerates drank it? Perhaps. It’s soothing, and to my taste even if it is dangerous to collect the eggs. I don’t do the collecting.” That’s one he can relate to.
Gallow nodded, then his lips pressed into a firm, white line. “I heard that boo causes chromosome damage,” he said. “Aren’t you Islanders pushing your luck with that stuff?”
“Chromosome damage?” Keel snorted. He didn’t even try to suppress a laugh. “Isn’t that a little like roulette with a broken wheel?”
Keel sipped his wine and sat back to see Gallow fully. The look of disgust that shadowed the Merman’s face told Keel that Gallow had been reached.
Anyone who can be reached can be probed. Keel thought. And anyone who can be probed can be had. His position on the Committee had taught him this.
“You can laugh at that?” Gallow’s blue eyes blazed. “As long as you people breed, you endanger the whole species. What if … ?”
Keel raised his hand and his voice. “The Committee concerns itself with matters of ‘what if,’ Mr. Gallow. Any infant that carries an endangering trait is terminated. For a people trained in life-support, this is a most painful event. But it guarantees life to all the others. Tell me, Mr. Gallow, how can you be so sure that there are only harmful, ugly or useless mutations?”
“Look at yourself,” Gallow said. “Your neck can’t support your head without that … thing. Your eyes are on the sides of your head—”
“They’re different colors, too,” Keel said. “Did you know that there are more brown-eyed Mermen than blue-eyed by four to one? Doesn’t that strike you as a mutation? You’re blue-eyed. Should you, then, be sterilized or destroyed? We draw the line at mutations that actually endanger life. You prefer cosmetic genocide, it seems. Can you justify that to me? Can you be sure that we haven’t ‘bred’ some secret weapons to meet the contingency you’ve presented us?”
Find his worst fears, Keel thought, and turn them on himself.
The clatter of loose dishes sounded from the hatchway and a small cart bounced over the threshold. The young man who pushed it stood in obvious awe of Gallow. His eyes took in every move his boss made and his hands shook as they distributed the dishes on a small folding table. He served the steaming food into bowls and Keel smelled the delicious tang of fish stew. When the steward finished laying out the bread and a small cake dessert he picked up a small dish of his own and spooned a taste of everything.
So,
Keel thought, Gallow’s afraid he’s going to be poisoned. He was glad to see the orderly delicately taste Keel’s portions, as well. Things are not going quite as Gallow would like us to believe. Keel couldn’t let the moment pass.
“Do you taste to educate your palate?” he asked.
The orderly shot a quizzical look at Gallow and Gallow smiled back. “All men in power have enemies,” he said. “Even yourself, I’m told. I choose to encourage protective habits.”
“Protection from whom?”
Gallow was silent. The orderly’s face paled.
“Very astute,” Gallow said.
“By this you imply that murder is the current mode of political expression,” Keel said. “Is this the new leadership you offer our world?”
Gallow’s palm slapped the tabletop and the orderly dropped his bowl. It shattered. One shard of it skidded up to Keel’s foot and spun there like an eccentric top winding down. Gallow dismissed the orderly with a sharp chop of his hand. The hatch closed quietly behind him.
Gallow threw down his spoon. It caught the edge of his bowl and splattered Keel with stew. Gallow dabbed at Keel’s tunic with his cloth, leaning across the rickety table.
“My apologies, Mr. Justice,” he said. “I’m generally not so boorish. You … excite me. Please, relax.”
Keel nursed the ache in his knees and folded them under the short table. Gallow tore a piece of bread from the loaf and handed Keel the rest.
“You have Scudi Wang prisoner?” Keel asked. “Of course.”
“And the young Islander, Norton?”
“He’s with her. They are unharmed.”
“It won’t work,” Keel said. “If you hinge your leadership on stealth and prisoners and murder then you set yourself up for a long reign of the same thing. No one wants to deal with a desperate man. Kings are made of better stuff.”
Gallow’s ears pricked at the word “king.” Keel could see him trying it on his tongue.
“You’re not eating, Mr. Justice.”
“As I said before, I have a stomach problem.”
“But you have to eat. How will you live?”
Keel smiled. “I won’t.”
