Twisp stood at the tiller, rocking the coracle from side to side, and clapped his hands high over his head. "You made it!" he hollered. "You made it."
Brett pulled back into the cockpit. "Scudi, take us alongside."
"So that's Queets Twisp," she said. She restarted the ram and eased them gently ahead. She rounded the coracles in a wide curve and came alongside the lead boat, opening the access hatch as the coracles drew near.
Twisp grabbed a foil brace and in less than a minute he was inside the cockpit, his long arms wrapped around Brett. His huge hands pummeled Brett's back.
"I knew I'd find you!" Twisp held Brett at a long arm's length and gestured wide to take in the foil, Scudi, his clothes and dark glasses. "What's all this?"
"A very long story," Brett said. "We're heading for a Merman Launch Base. Have you heard anything ... ?"
Twisp dropped his arms and sobered. "We've been there," he said. "At least, near enough as makes no difference." He turned, indicating the other man in the coracle. "That bit of flotsam is Iz Bushka. I tried to take him to Launch Base on a piece of very heavy business."
"Tried?" Scudi asked. "What happened?"
"Who's this little pearl?" Twisp asked, extending a hand. "I'm Queets Twisp."
"Scudi Wang," she and Brett said at once. They laughed.
Twisp stared at her, startled. Was this the beautiful young Merman rescuer he had visualized in his daydreams? No! That was foolishness.
"Well, Scudi Wang," Twisp said, "they wouldn't listen to us at the Launch Base - wouldn't let us into the base at all." Twisp pursed his lips. "Towed us away with a foil bigger than this one. Told us to stay away. We took their advice." He glanced around him. "So what're you doing here, anyway? Where's the crew?"
"We're the crew," Brett said.
Brett explained why they were heading for the base, what had happened to them, the Chief Justice and the political scene down under. Bushka stepped into the cabin as Brett was finishing. Brett's recital had a marked effect on Bushka, who grew pale and breathed in shallow gasps.
"They're ahead of us," Bushka muttered, "I know they are."
He stared at Scudi. "Wang," he said. "You're Ryan Wang's daughter."
Brett, edging toward a temper flare-up, asked Twisp, "What's wrong with him?"
"Something on his conscience," Twisp said. He, too, looked at Scudi. "Is that right? Are you Ryan Wang's daughter?"
"Yes."
"I told you!" Bushka wailed.
"Oh, shut up!" Twisp snapped. "Ryan Wang's dead and I'm tired of listening to your crap." He turned to Brett and Scudi. "The kid says you saved his life. Is that right?"
"Yes." She spoke with one of her small shrugs. Her eyes stared into the console's instruments.
"Anything else we should know?"
"I ... don't think so," she said.
Twisp caught Brett's eye and decided to get all the bad news out. He hooked a thumb toward Bushka. "This bit of dasher bait here," he said, "piloted the sub that sank Guemes. He claims he didn't know what they had in mind until the sub chewed into the bottom of the Island. Says he was tricked by the Merman commander, a guy named Gallow."
"Gallow," Scudi whispered.
"You know him?" Brett asked.
"I've seen him many times. With my father and Kareen Ale, often -"
"I told you!" Bushka interrupted. He prodded Twisp's ribs. Twisp grabbed Bushka's wrist, twisted it back suddenly, then flung it aside.
"And I told you to stow it," Twisp said. Brett and Scudi both turned to face Bushka.
He stepped back instinctively.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Bushka asked. "Twisp can tell you the whole story - I couldn't stop them -" He broke off when they continued to stare at him silently.
"They don't trust you," Twisp said, "and neither do I. But if Scudi delivered you all packaged and safe to Launch Base, that might be just what this Gallow would want. If he's a manipulator, he'll have people crawling all over a political scene like that. You might just disappear, Bushka." Twisp rubbed the back of his neck and spoke low. "We have to do this one right the first time. We'll have no way of regrouping.
"Brett and I could take the coracles and get back to Vashon," Twisp said.
"No," Brett insisted. "Scudi and I stay together."
"I should go to the base alone," Scudi said. "When they see me alone, they'll know you and I have separated and others will listen to our story."
"No!" Brett repeated. He tightened his grip on her shoulders. "We're a team. We stick together."
Twisp glared at Brett, then his expression and his bearing softened. "So that's the way it is?"
"That's the way it is," Brett said. He kept his arm firmly around Scudi's shoulders. "I know you could order me to go with you. I'm still your apprentice. But I wouldn't obey."
Twisp spoke in a mild voice. "Then I better not be giving any orders." He grinned to take the sting from his words.
"So what do we do?" Brett asked.
Bushka startled them when he spoke. "Let me take the foil and go to Launch Base alone. I could -"
"You could spread the word to your friends and tell them where to pick up a couple of slow-moving coracles," Twisp said.
Bushka paled even further. "I tell you, I'm not -"
"You're an unknown right now," Twisp said. "That's what you are. If your story's true, you're dumber than you look. Whatever, we can't afford to trust you - not with our lives."
"Then let me go back in the coracles," Bushka said.
"They'd just tow you away again. Farther this time." Twisp turned to Brett and Scudi. "You two are determined to stick together?"
Brett nodded; so did Scudi.
"Then Bushka and I go in the coracles," Twisp said. "We're better off split up, I'm sure of that, but we don't want to get out of touch again. We'll turn on our locator transmitter. You know the frequency, kid?"
"Yes, but -"
"There must be a portable RDF on this monster," Twisp said. He glanced around the cockpit.
"There are small portable direction finders in all emergency kitpacks," Scudi said. Her toe nudged a pack under the seat.
Twisp bent and looked at the small orange kit. He straightened. "You keep them handy, eh?"
"When we think it necessary," she said.
"Then I suggest we follow in the coracles," Twisp said. "If you have to take to the water, you'll be able to find us. Or vice versa."
"If they're alive," Bushka muttered.
Twisp studied Brett for a moment. Was the kid man enough to make the decision? Brett could not be shamed in front of the young woman. Scudi and Brett were, indeed, a team. One that had a bond he couldn't match. It was the kid's decision, and in Twisp's mind it was making Brett a man.
Brett's arm stroked Scudi's shoulder. "We've already shown that we work well together. We got this far. What we're going to do may be dangerous, but you always said, Twisp, that life gives you no guarantees."
Twisp grinned. Going to do ... The kid had made his decision and the young woman agreed. That was that.
"All right, partner," Twisp said. "No shilly-shally and no regrets." He turned to Bushka. "Got that, Bushka? We're the backup."
"How long can you hang around?" Brett asked.
"Count on at least twenty days, if you need that much."
"In twenty days there might not be any Islands to save," Brett said. "We'd better move faster than that."
Twisp took two of the kitpacks for the coracles, and loaded a grumbling Bushka back aboard.
Scudi slipped an arm around Brett's waist and hugged him. "We should get into those dive suits now," she said. "We may not get time later."
She pulled hers out from under her couch and draped it across the back of the seat. Brett did the same. Undressing was easy for him this time, and he thought maybe it was seeing all of those Mermen swimming around their base, most of them with only weightbelts full of tools around their waists. Maybe it was the ride out from the foil bay with his shirt open. It gave Brett a feeling of security in the integrity of his own skin. Besides, Scudi didn't react one way or another. He liked that. And he liked the fact that this time she didn't comment on his modesty. He was beginning to get a feel for the matter-of-fact Merman nudity. But he was only beginning. When Scudi slipped out of her shirt, skinning it over her head, he followed every bounce her firm breasts took and knew it would be very hard to keep from staring. He wanted to look at her forever. She kicked her deck shoes off in two easy flicks of her feet and dropped her pants behind her couch. She had a very small patch of black hair - wispy, silky and inviting.
He noted suddenly that she was standing with her head cocked to one side. She moved gently, not telling him to quit staring but letting him know that she knew what he was doing.
"You have a very beautiful body," he said. "I don't mean to stare."
"Yours, too, is nice," she said. She placed her hand in the middle of his chest, pressed her palm against him. "I just wanted to touch you," she said.
"Yes," he said, because he didn't know what else to say. He put his left hand on her shoulder, felt her strength and her warmth and the easy smoothness of her skin. His other hand came up to her shoulders, and she kissed him. He hoped that she liked it as much as he did. It was a soft, warm and breathless kiss. When she leaned against him her breasts flattened on his chest and he could feel the hard little knots of nipples focused there. He felt himself hardening against her thigh, her thigh of such strength and grace. She stroked his shoulders, then tightened both arms around his neck and kissed him hard, her small tongue tapping the tip of his own. The boat took a sudden lurch and they both fell in a heap on the deck, laughing.
"How graceful," he said.
"And cold."
She was right. The suns had set as Twisp and Bushka departed. Already there was a stiff chill in the air. It wasn't the hardness of the deck that bothered him, but the sudden shock of cold metal against his sweaty skin. When they sat up he heard the strange unpeeling sound of damp skin. It was the sound that sheets of skin made when a friend had unpeeled his sunburned back as a boy.
Brett wanted to loll with Scudi forever, but Scudi was already trying to get up amid the unsteady rocking of the foil. He took her hand and helped her to her feet. He didn't let go.
"It's nearly dark," he said. "Won't we have trouble finding the base? I mean, it's always a lot darker underwater."
"I know the way," she said. "And you have a night vision that could see for us both. We should go now ..."
This time he kissed her. She leaned against him for a blink, soft and good-feeling, then pulled back. She still held his hand, but there was an uneasiness in her eyes that Brett translated as fear.
"What?" he asked.
"If we stay here we will, you know ... we'll do what we want to do."
Brett's throat was dry and he knew he couldn't talk without his voice cracking. He remained quiet, wanting to hear her out. He didn't know much about what it was that they wanted to do, and if she could give him a few clues, he was ready. He did not want her to be disappointed and he did not know what she expected of him. Most important, he did not know how much experience she'd had in these matters and now it was important for him to find out.
She squeezed his hand. "I like you," she said. "I like you very much. If there's anyone I'd like to ... to get that close with, it's you. But there is the matter of a child."
He blushed. But it was not out of embarrassment. It was out of anger at himself for not thinking of the obvious thing, for not considering that the step from child to parent could very well happen all at once and he, too, was not ready.
"My mother was sixteen, too," she went on. "She cared for me, so she was never free. She never knew the free movement that others knew. She made the best of it, and I saw much through her. But I didn't see other children except occasionally."
"So she lost an adulthood and you lost a childhood?"
"Yes. It is not to be regretted. It is the only life I know and it is a good one. It is twice good now that I have met you. But it is not a life to repeat. Not for me."
He nodded, took her by the shoulders and kissed her again. This time their chests did not touch but their hands held tight to each other and Brett at least felt relief.
"You are not angry?" she asked.
"I don't think it's possible for me to be mad at you," he said. "Besides, we're going to know each other for a good long time. I want to be with you when the answer is 'yes.'"
... self has somewhat the character of a result, of a goal attained, something that has come to pass very gradually and is experienced with much travail.
- C. G. Jung, Shiprecords
Vata dreamed that something tangled her hair. Something crawled the back of her neck, tickling her in a legless way, and settled over her right ear. The thing was black, slick and shelled like an insect.
She heard the sounds of pain in her dream, as she had in so many dreams past, and projected all of this into Duque, where it took on more the character of consciousness. Now she recognized some of the voices as leftovers from other dreams. She had made many excursions into this void. Someone named Scudi Wang was there and the thing that slithered through Vata's hair snapped cruel jaws at Scudi's voice.
Duque realized that Vata did not like the thing. She twisted and tossed her head to get rid of it. The thing dug in, set its jaws into her hair and pulled up clumps of hair by the roots. Vata groaned a deep-throated groan, half-cough. She snatched the wet little bug out of her hair and crushed it in her palm.
The pieces slipped from her fingers and a few muffled screams faded into the dark. Duque experienced the sudden awareness that the dream-thing might be real. He had sensed other thoughts in it for just an instant - terrified human thoughts. Vata settled herself into a comfortable position and put her mind to changing the dream into something pleasant. As always, she drifted back to those first days in the valley her people had called "the Nest." Within a few blinks she was lost in the lush vegetation of that holy place where she had been born. It was all the best that Pandora's land had to offer, and it was now under many cold meters of unquiet sea. But things could be otherwise in dreams, and dreams were all the geography that Vata retained. She thought how good it felt to walk again, not letting herself know it was only in a dream. But Duque knew - he had heard those terrified thoughts in a moment of death and Vata's dreaming was no longer the same for him.
The distresses of choice are our chance to be blessed.
- W. H. Auden, Shiprecords
In that fading moment before the last of the twilight settled below the horizon, like a dimmed torch quenched in a cold sea, Brett saw the launch tower. Its gray bulk bridged a low cloud layer and the sea. He pointed.
"That's it?"
Scudi leaned forward to peer through the fading light.
"I don't see it," she said, "but by the instruments it's about twenty klicks away."
"We used up some time with Twisp and that Bushka character. What did you think of him?"
"Of your Twisp?"
"No, the other one."
"We have Mermen like that," she hedged.
"You didn't like him, either."
"He's a whiner, maybe a killer," she said. "It's not easy to like someone like that."
"What did you think of his story?" Brett asked.
"I don't know," she said. "What if he did it all on his own and the crew threw him overboard? We can't believe him or disbelieve him on the little we've heard - and all of it from him."
The foil skidded across the edge of a kelp bed, slowing then recovering as its sharp-edged supports cut through the tangled growth.
"I didn't see that kelp," Scudi said. "The light is so bad ... that was clumsy of me!"
"Will it hurt the foil?" Brett asked.
She shook her head. "No, I have hurt the kelp. We will have to come off the foils."
"Hurt the kelp?" Brett was mystified. "How can you hurt a plant?"
"The kelp is not just a plant," she said. "It's in a sensitive stage of development ... it's difficult to explain. You'll think me as crazy as Bushka if I tell you all that I know about the kelp."
Scudi reduced the throttle. The hissing roar subsided and the wallowing boat slipped down onto its hull, gently lifting with the heave of the waves. The rams subsided to a low murmur behind them.
"It is more dangerous for us to come in at night," she said. The red instrument lights had come on automatically as the light dimmed outside and she looked at Brett, his face under-lighted by the red illumination.
"Should we wait out here for daylight?" he asked.
"We could submerge and sit on the bottom," she said. "It's only about sixty fathoms."
When Brett did not respond, she said, "You don't prefer it down under, do you?"
He shrugged.
"It's too deep to anchor," she said, "but it is safe to drift if we watch. Nothing can harm us in here."
"Dashers?"
"They can't penetrate a foil."
"Then let's shut down and drift. The kelp should keep us stable. I agree with you, I don't think we should go in there at night. We want everybody to see us and know who we are and why we're there."
Scudi shut off the murmuring rams and in the sudden silence they grew aware of the slap of waves against the hull, the faint creaking of the vessel around them.
"How far is it to the base again?" Brett asked. He squinted through the twilight murk toward the tower.
"At least twenty klicks."
Brett, accustomed to judging distance out by the height of Vashon above the horizon, produced a low whistle. "That thing must be pretty high. It's a wonder Islanders haven't spotted it before this."
"I think we control the currents to keep Islands clear of the area."
"Control the currents," he muttered. "Yeah, of course." Then he asked, "Do you think they've seen us?"
Scudi punched a button on the console and a series of familiar clicks and beeps came from an overhead speaker. He'd heard these sounds from time to time as they skipped across the waves.
"Nothing's tracking us," she said. "It would howl if we were targeted. They might know we're here, though. This just means we're not under observation." Brett bent over the button Scudi had punched and read the label: "T-BEAM TEST."
"Automatic," she said. "It tells us if we're targeted by a tracking beam."
The foil lurched suddenly counter to a wave. Brett, used to the uncertain footing of Islands and coracles, was first to catch his balance. Scudi clutched his arm to right herself.
"Kelp," Brett said.
"I think so. We had better -" She broke off with a startled gasp, staring past Brett at the rear hatch.
Brett whirled to see a Merman standing there, dripping sea water, green paint striped across his face and dive suit in a grotesque pattern. The man carried a lasgun at the ready. Another Merman stood in the shadowy passage behind him.
Scudi's voice was a dry whisper in Brett's ear: "Gallow. That's Nakano behind him."
Surprise at the stealth that had allowed the Merman to come this close without detection held Brett speechless. He tried to absorb the import of Scudi's rasping whisper. So this was the Merman that Bushka blamed for sinking Guemes! The man was tall and smoothly muscled, and his dive suit clung to him like a second skin. Why the green pattern on it? Brett wondered. His eyes could not help focusing on the business end of the lasgun.
The Merman chuckled. "Little Scudi Wang! Now that's what I call luck. We've been having our share of luck lately, eh, Nakano?"
"It wasn't luck saved us when that stupid Islander sank us," Nakano growled.
"Ahhh, yes," Gallow agreed. "Your superior strength broke the bonds that held you. Indeed." He flicked a glance around the cockpit. "Where's the crew? We need your doctor."
Brett, at whom Gallow aimed the question, met Gallow's demanding stare with silence, thinking that the interchange between these two Mermen tended to confirm Bushka's odd story.
"Your doctor!" Gallow insisted.
"We don't have one," Brett said, surprised at the force of his voice.
Gallow, noting the accent, flicked a scornful glance at Scudi. "Who's the Mute?"
"A - a friend," Scudi said. "Brett Norton."
Gallow looked Brett over in the dim red light, then turned back to Scudi. "He looks almost normal, but he's still a Mute. Your daddy would haunt you!" He spoke over his shoulder. "Have a look, Nakano."
The slop-slop of wet footsteps sounded behind Gallow as Nakano turned back down the passage. He reappeared presently and spoke a single word: "Empty."
"Just the two of them," Gallow said. "Out for a little cruise in one of the big boats. How sweet."
"Why do you need a doctor?" Scudi asked.
"Full of questions, aren't we," Gallow said.
"At least we have the foil," the second man said.
"That we have, Nakano," Gallow said.
Nakano pressed past Gallow into the cockpit and Brett got a full view of the man. He was a hulking figure, his upper arms as thick as some human torsos. The scarred face filled Brett with a sense of foreboding.
Gallow strode forward to one of the command seats. He bent to read the instruments. "We watched you coming in," he said. He turned and sent a baleful glare at Scudi. "You were in one big hurry and then you stopped. That's very interesting for someone in an empty foil. What're you doing?"
Scudi looked at Brett, who blushed.
Nakano guffawed.
"Oh, my," Gallow taunted, "love nests get more elaborate every year. Yes, yes."
"Disgusting." Nakano laughed, and clicked his tongue.
"There's a watch-alert out on this foil, Scudi Wang," Gallow said. His manner sobered too quickly for Brett's comfort. "You stole it. What do you think, Nakano? Looks like the Green Dashers have captured a couple of desperadoes."
Brett looked at the grotesque green dive suits on the two Mermen. Blotches and splashes and lines of green spilled over from their suits into patterns painted on their faces.