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“Why you?” Brett asked. “I could—”
“You could get yourself in eelshit for no good reason. You’ve never dealt with people who want to get the best of you, kid. You’ve never had to drive the best bargain
you could for your fish. I know how to deal with such people.”
“Gallow is no fish dealer,” Bushka said.
“It’s still bargaining for your life and everything you want,” Twisp said. “The kid stays here with Panille. They keep an eye on you, Bushka, to see you don’t do something crazy. Me, I’m going to tell this Gallow just what he gets—so much and no more!”
Chapter 41
Do that which is good and no evil shall touch you.
—Raphael, Apocrypha, The Christian Book of the Dead
Within the first minute of the dive, Twisp tumbled along, flailing his long arms, his fins thrusting inefficiently. He watched helplessly as the gap between himself and Nakano widened. Why was Nakano speeding off that way?
Like most Islanders, Twisp had trained with Merman-style breathers for emergency use; he had even considered at one time that he might permit himself to become one of the rare Islanders fitted for an airfish. But airfish were a cash crop and the operation was outrageously costly. And his arms, superb for net pulling, were not suited to swimming.
Twisp struggled to keep Nakano in sight. He skimmed the bottom, his fins puffing sand along a blue-black canyon illuminated by Merman lights set into the rock. The sea above him remained a black remoteness hidden in the short-night.
When Panille had locked the foil against a rocky outcrop within the outpost’s kelp perimeter, he had warned them: “The current’s ranging between two and four knots. I don’t know where the current came from, but it’ll help you get to the outpost.”
“Kelp is making that current,” Bushka had said.
“Whatever is causing it, be careful,” Panille had said. “You’ll be moving too fast for mistakes.”
Brett, still protesting the assignment of duties, had demanded: “How will they get back to us?”
“Steal a vehicle,” Nakano had said.
As he had sealed the dive hatch behind them and prepared to flood the foil’s lock, Nakano had said: “Stay close, Twisp. We’ll be about ten minutes getting to the outpost hatch. I’ll tow you the last few meters. Make it look like you’re my prisoner.”
But now Nakano was far ahead in the chill, green-washed distance. The floppy bubbles of his exhalations raced upward behind him, creating strange prism effects in the artificial light. The Merman obviously was in his element here and Twisp was the muree-out-of-water.
I should’ve anticipated that! Twisp thought.
Abruptly, Nakano rolled to one side in a powerful turn, clutched one of the light mountings anchored in the canyon’s wall and held himself against the current, waiting for Twisp’s arrival. Nakano’s air tank glistened yellow-green along his back and his masked face was a grotesque shadow beside the rock.
Twisp, somewhat reassured by the Merman’s action, tried to change course but would have missed Nakano had not the latter pushed off smoothly and grabbed the breather valve at Twisp’s left shoulder. They rode along together then, swimming gently as the current slackened near the underwater cliff into which the outpost had been planted.
Twisp saw a wall of black rock ahead, some of it looking as though it were part of the sea’s natural basement complex, some appearing man-changed—great dark shapes piled one atop another. A wide plaz dive lock outlined in light had been set into this construction. Nakano operated controls at the side of the plaz with one hand. A circular hatch opened before them. They swam into the lock, Nakano still holding Twisp’s breather valve.
It was an oval space illuminated by brilliant blue lights set into the walls. A plaz hatch on the inner curve revealed an empty passage beyond.
The outer hatch sealed automatically behind them and water began swirling out of the lock through a floor vent. Nakano released his grip on Twisp when their heads emerged from the water.
Removing his mouthpiece, Nakano said: “You’re being very intelligent for a Mute. I could’ve shut off your air at any time. You’d have been eelbait.”
Twisp removed his own mouthpiece but remained silent. Nothing was important except getting to Gallow.
“Don’t try anything,” Nakano warned. “I could break you into small pieces with only one hand.”
Hoping Nakano was playing a part for any would-be listeners, Twisp looked at the Merman’s heavily muscled body. Nakano’s threat could be real, Twisp thought, but the Merman might be surprised at the strength in a net-puller’s arms … even if those arms did appear to be mutated monstrosities.
Nakano took off his tank and harness and held the equipment in his left hand. Twisp waited for the last of the water to swirl through the floor vent, then shucked off his own tank. He held it loosely cradled in one long arm, feeling the weight of it and thinking how potent a weapon this would be if hurled suddenly.
The inner hatch swung aside and Twisp tasted hot, moist air. Nakano pushed Twisp ahead of him through the hatchway and they emerged into a rectangular space with no other visible exit.
Abruptly, a voice barked at them from an overhead vent: “Nakano! Send the Mute topside. You get off at level nine and come to me. I want to know why you didn’t bring the foil straight in.”
“Gallow,” Nakano explained, looking at Twisp. “After I get off, you go straight on up.”
Twisp’s gut felt suddenly empty. How many people did Gallow have here? Was Gallow so confident of his Security that he could release an Islander prisoner to wander around without a guard? Or was this a ploy to disarm the stupid Islander?
Nakano looked up at the vent. Twisp, peering at the ceiling construction, saw the glittering oval of a Merman remote-eye.
“This man’s my prisoner,” Nakano said. “I presume there are guards topside.”
“The Mute can’t run away anywhere up there,” Gallow’s voice snapped. “But he had better wait near the lift exit. We don’t want to hunt all over for him.”
Twisp felt himself get heavier then and realized that the entire rectangular room was rising. Presently, it stopped, and a thin seam in the back wall opened to reveal a hatch and a well-lighted passage with many armed Mermen in it.
Gallow grasped Twisp’s dive tanks by the harness. “I’ll take them,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you using these as a weapon.”
Twisp released his hold on the equipment. Gallow went out and the hatch sealed.
Again, the room lifted. After what seemed to Twisp an interminable wait, the room again came to a stop. The hatch opening was haloed in dim light. Hesitantly, Twisp stepped out into hot, dry air. He looked up and around at high, black cliffs and open sky—dawn light, still some stars visible. Even as he looked, Big Sun lifted over the cliffs, illuminating a great rock-girdled bowl with much square-edged Merman construction in it and an LTA base in the middle distance.
Open land!
Twisp heard someone nearby using a saw. The sound was reassuring, a thing heard often in an Island’s shop areas—metal and plastics being cut by carpenters for assemblage into necessary nonorganic utensils.
The rocks were sharp under Twisp’s bare feet and Big Sun blinded him. “Abimael, simple one! Come here out of the sun!”
It was a man’s voice and it came from a building ahead of Twisp. He saw someone moving in the shadows. The sound of sawing continued.
The air in his lungs felt hot and dry, not the cool metallic dampness of the dive tanks nor the warm moisture that blew so often across Vashon. The surface underfoot did not move, either. Twisp felt this as a dangerous, alien thing. Decks should lift and move!
All the edges are hard, he thought.
He stepped gingerly forward into the building’s shade. The sawing stopped and now Twisp discerned a figure in the deeper shadows—a dark-skinned man in a diaperlike garment. Long black hair frizzed out from the man’s head and he had a gray-streaked beard. It was one of the few beards Twisp had ever seen, reaching nearly to the man’s navel. Twisp had heard that some Mermen grew beards and the beard-gene cropped up occasionally among Islanders, but this luxurious growth was something new.
As the ma
n moved in the shadows, Twisp saw the evidence of great physical strength, particularly in the shoulders and upper body. This Merman would make a good net-puller, Twisp thought. The Merman’s midsection displayed the preliminary settlings of middle age, however. Twisp guessed the man at a hard-driven forty or forty-five … very dark-skinned for a Merman. His skin glowed with a layer of red within the leathery tones.
“Abimael, come now,” the man said. “Your feet will burn. Come have a cake till your mama finds you.”
Why does he call me Abimael? Twisp glanced around at the basin enclosed by the high black cliffs. A squad of Mermen worked in the middle distance, sweeping the ground with flamethrowers.
It was a dreamlike scene in the hot light of swiftly rising Big Sun. Twisp feared suddenly that he had been narced. Panille had warned him about it: “Don’t swim off into a deep area and you be sure to breathe slow and deep. Otherwise you could be narced.”
Narc, Twisp knew, was the Merman term for nitrogen narcosis, intoxication they sometimes encountered in the depths when using pressurized air tanks. There were stories—narced divers releasing their tanks at depth and swimming away to drown, or offering their air to passing fish, or going off into a euphoric water-dance.
“I hear the flamethrowers,” the old carpenter said.
The matter-of-fact confirmation of what Twisp saw eased his fears. No … this is real land … open to the sky. I am here and I am not narced.
“They think they’ll sterilize this land and they’ll never have nerve runners here,” the carpenter said. “The fools are wrong! Nerve-runner eggs are in the sea everywhere. Flamethrowers will be needed for as long as people live here.”
The carpenter moved across his shadowed area toward a brown cloth folded on a bench. He sat on the end of the bench and opened the cloth, revealing a paper-wrapped package of cakes, dark brown and glossy. Twisp smelled the sweet stickiness rising from the cakes. The carpenter lifted a cake in thick knuckle-swollen fingers and held it toward Twisp.
