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It’s to punish me! The thought flooded Simone Rocksack’s mind. She saw it all. The C/P wondered, then, what sort of punishment Vata might have in mind for Gallow.
It was then the C/P noted that the sloshing from the Vata Pool was not all resulting from the activity inside. The decks themselves heaved in the same slow rhythm.
“What’s happening?” The C/P caught herself muttering the question and glanced around to see that she had not been overheard.
A series of tight-throated moans from Vata, then another explosive, breathless “Yes!” Duque was nearly undetectable under her rippling flanks and hamlike hands.
The C/P’s eyes widened in horror and humiliation as she realized that Vata’s performance with Duque was a grotesque parody of her last hours with Gallow. Her position wouldn’t even allow her to leave the room, to escape the heat that crept outward from the collar of her blue robe to burn her cheeks and her breasts. A trace of sweat graced her upper lip and temples.
Someone burst into the room and shouted, “The kelp!” The voice strained to reach over the babblings of a crowd that was well into a serious hysteria. “The kelp’s rocking the Island. It’s rocking the whole fucking sea!”
The little stump-legged messenger clapped a fingerless hand over his mouth when he caught sight of the C/P.
There were three sudden cries that brought a chill to the C/P’s spine; Vata’s thighs shuddered in their grip on Duque and Vata fell back into the pool, wide-eyed and smiling, still anchored to him by their short but stout tether.
The heavy rocking of the decks slackened. The crowd at poolside had stilled with the outburst from Vata. The C/P knew better than to lose this moment. She swallowed hard, lifted her robe to clear her ankles and knelt at the rim of the quieting pool.
“Let us pray,” she said, and bowed her head. Think, she thought to herself, think! Her eyes squinted shut against fear, reality and those difficult traitors, tears.
Chapter 43
Physically, we are created by our reverie—created and limited by our reverie—for it is the reverie which delineates the furthest limits of our minds.
—Gaston Bachelard, “The Poetics of Reverie,” from The Handbook of the Chaplain/Psychiatrist
On the way down to confront Gallow, Twisp ignored the spying devices in the ceiling and spoke openly to Nakano. Twisp no longer doubted that Nakano was playing a devious double game. What did it matter? Meeting the carpenter, Noah, had heartened Twisp. Gallow would have to accept the new realities of Pandora. The kelp wanted him dead and would have him dead. The open land belonged to everyone. Gallow could only delay the inevitable; he could not prevent it. He was a prisoner here. All of his people were prisoners here.
Nakano only laughed when Twisp spoke of this. “He knows he’s a prisoner. He knows Kareen and Scudi are out there, one step out of reach.”
“He’ll never get them!” Twisp said. “Maybe not. But he has the Chief Justice. A bargain may be possible.”
“It’s strange,” Twisp said. “Before I met that carpenter up there, I didn’t really know what I was bargaining for.”
“What carpenter?” Nakano asked.
“The man I was talking to topside. Noah. Didn’t you hear him talking about the ark and Ship speaking to him?”
“There was no man up there! You were alone.”
“He was right there! How could you have missed him? Long beard down to here.” Twisp passed a hand across his belt line. “He was calling for a child—Abimael.”
“You must’ve been hallucinating,” Nakano said, his voice mild. “You were probably narced by the dive.”
“He gave me a cake,” Twisp whispered.
Remembering the fruity flavor of the cake, the sticky feeling of it on his fingers, Twisp lifted his right hand to the level of his eyes and rubbed his fingers together. There was no stickiness. He smelled the fingers. No smell of the cake. He touched his tongue to his fingers. No taste of the cake.
Twisp began to tremble.
“Hey! Take it easy,” Nakano soothed. “Anyone can be narced.”
“I saw him,” Twisp whispered. “We spoke together. Ship made him a promise: ‘I will not again curse the ground for mankind’s sake.’“
Nakano took a backward step away from Twisp. “You’re crazy! You were standing out in the sun all alone.”
“No workshop?” Twisp asked, his voice plaintive. “No bearded man in the shadows?”
“There were no shadows. You probably had a touch of the sun. No hat. Big Sun beating down on you. Forget it.”
“I can’t forget it. I felt him touch me, his finger on my face. He was blind.”
“Well, put it behind you. We’re about to see GeLaar Gallow and if you’re going to bargain with him you’ll need your wits about you.”
The moving cubicle came to a stop and the hatch opened onto a passage. Nakano and Twisp emerged and were flanked immediately by six armed Mermen.
“This way,” Nakano said. “Gallow is waiting for you.”
Twisp took a deep, trembling breath and allowed himself to be escorted along the Merman corridor with its sharp corners and hard sides, its unmoving, solid deck.
That Noah was really there, Twisp told himself. The experience had contained too much sense of reality. The kelp! He tingled out to the tips of his fingers with realization. Somehow, the kelp had insinuated itself into his mind, taken dominion over his senses!
The realization terrified him and his step faltered. “Here! Keep up, Mute!” one of the escort barked.
“Easy does it,” Nakano cautioned the guard. “He’s not used to a deck that doesn’t move.”
Twisp was surprised by the friendliness in Nakano’s voice, his sharpness with the escort. Does Nakano really sympathize with me?
They stopped at a wide, rectangular hatchway open to the passage. The room exposed beyond it was large by Islander standards—at least six meters deep and about ten or eleven meters wide. Gallow sat before a bank of display screens near the back wall. He turned as Twisp and Nakano entered, leaving the escort in the passage.
Twisp was immediately struck by the even regularity of Gallow’s features, the silkiness of that long golden mane, which reached almost to the Merman’s shoulders. The cold blue eyes studied Twisp carefully, pausing only briefly on
Twisp’s long arms. Gallow came to his feet easily as Nakano and Twisp stopped about two paces from him.
“Welcome,” Gallow said. “Please do not consider yourself our prisoner. I look upon you as a negotiator for the Islanders.
Twisp scowled. So Nakano had revealed everything!
“Not you alone, of course,” Gallow added. “We will be joined presently by Chief Justice Keel.” Gallow’s voice was softly persuasive. He smiled warmly.
A charmer, Twisp thought. Doubly dangerous!
Gallow studied Twisp’s face a blink, those cold blue eyes peeling the Islander. “I’m told”—he glanced at Nakano standing near Twisp’s left shoulder, then back to Twisp—“that you do not trust the kelp.”
Nakano pursed his lips when Twisp glanced at him. “It’s true, isn’t it?” Nakano asked
.
“It’s true.” The admission was wrenched from Twisp.
“I think we have created a monster in bringing the kelp to consciousness,” Gallow said. “Let me tell you that I have never believed in that part of the kelp project. It was demeaning … immoral … treachery against everything human.”
Gallow waved his hand, the gesture saying clearly that he had explained himself sufficiently. He turned to Nakano. “Will you ask the guard out there if the Chief Justice has recovered enough to be brought in here?”
Nakano turned on one heel and went out into the passage where a low-voiced conversation could be heard. Gallow smiled at Twisp. Presently, Nakano returned.
“What’s wrong with Keel?” Twisp demanded. “Recovered from what?” And he wondered: Torture? Twisp did not like Gallow’s smile.
“The Chief Justice, as I prefer to call him, has a digestion problem,” Gallow said.
A scuffling sound at the entrance to the room brought Twisp’s attention around. He stared hard as two of the escort brought Chief Justice Ward Keel into the room, supporting him as he shuffled stiffly along.
Twisp was shocked. Keel looked near death. Where his skin was visible it was pale and moist. There was a glazed look in his eyes and they did not track together—one peering back toward the passage, the other looking down where he placed each painful step. Keel’s neck, supported by that familiar prosthetic framework, still appeared unable to support the man’s large head.
Nakano brought a low chair from the side and placed it carefully behind Keel. The escort eased Keel gently into the chair, where he sat a moment, panting. The escort departed.
“I’m sorry, Justice Keel,” Gallow said, his voice full of practiced commiseration. “But we really must use what time we have. There are things that I require.”
