"But the Island moves as it drifts!"
"So do the muree, and that's all that's important."
Brett twisted the dials, homed on the signal and read the coordinates. "There's your course," he said, pointing to the dial above the RDF. "Is that sun-relative or compass?"
"Compass."
"Doppler distance reads five hundred and ninety klicks. That's a long way!"
"Seven plus hours," she said. "We can run ten hours without stopping to recharge fuel. We can regenerate our own hydrogen from seawater during daylight hours, but we'll be sitting squawks if they come after us or try to block us from some station up ahead."
"They could do that?"
"I'm sure they'll try. There are four outposts along our course."
"We would need more fuel," he said.
"And they'll be looking for us from down under."
"What about one of the smaller Islands?"
"I saw the latest plot on the current board yesterday. Vashon's closest by more than five hundred klicks."
"Why can't I get on the emergency frequency and tell Vashon what we know. We should report in anyway," he added.
"What do we know?" she asked, adjusting the throttle. The foil lurched slightly and tipped, climbing one of the periodic high waves.
"We know they're holding the Chief Justice against his will. We know there are a lot of dead Islanders."
"What about his suspicions?"
"They're his suspicions," Brett said, "but don't you think he deserves a hearing?"
"If he's right, have you thought about what may happen if the Islands try to force his return?"
Brett felt a lump in his throat. "Would they kill him?"
"Somewhere, there seem to be people who kill," she said. "Guemes proves that."
"Ambassador Ale?"
"It occurs to me, Brett, that Hastings and Lonfinn may be watching her to see that she does not do something dangerous to them. My father was very rich. He warned me often that this created danger for everyone around him."
"I could just call in and tell Vashon I'm safe and returning," he said. He shook his head. "No. To those that listen in --"
"And they are listening," she added.
"It would be the same thing as just spilling the story right now," he said. "What'll we do?"
"We will go to the Launch Base," she said. "Not to Outpost Twenty-two."
"But you told Justice Keel --"
"And if they force him to talk, they will look for us in the wrong place."
"Why the Launch Base?" he asked.
"No single group controls that," she said. "That's a part of all of our dreams -- get the hyb tanks down from where Ship left them in orbit."
"It's still a Merman project."
"It is all Merman. We will say our piece there. Everyone will hear it. Then all will know what a few people may be doing."
Brett stared straight ahead. He knew he should feel elation at their escape. He was in the biggest vessel he had ever seen, rocketing along the wavetops at more than eighty knots, faster than he had ever gone before. But unknowns crowded in on him. Keel did not trust the Mermen. And Scudi was Merman. Was she being honest? Had he heard her real reasons for wanting him to avoid the radio? He looked at Scudi. For what other reason could she help him escape?
"I've been thinking," Scudi said. "If no word has reached them, your family will be sick with worry about you. And your friend, Twisp. Call Vashon. We'll make do. Maybe my suspicions are foolish."
He saw her throat pulse with a swallow and he remembered her tears over the heaped bodies of the Islanders.
"No," he said, "we should go to your Launch Base."
Again, Brett concentrated on the sea ahead of them. The two suns lifted heat-shimmers off the water. When he had been much younger, seeing the Island rim for the first time, the heat shimmers had created images for him. Long-whiskered sea dragons coiled above the ocean surface, giant muree and fat scrubberfish. The shimmer play now was nothing but heat reflected off water. He felt the warmth on his face and arms. He thought of Twisp leaning back against the coracle's tiller, eyes closed, soaking up the heat through his hairy chest.
"Where is this base?" he asked.
She reached up and turned a small dial below the overhead screen. Beside the dial, an alphanumerical keyboard glowed with its own internal lights. She typed HF-i, then LB-1. The screen flashed 141.2, then overprinted a spray of lines with a common focal point. A bright green spot danced at the wide outer arc of the lines. Scudi pointed at the spot.
"That's us." She pointed to the base of the spray. "We go here on course one forty-one point two." She pointed to a dial with a red arrow on the console in front of them. The arrow indicated 141.2.
"That's all there is to it?"
"All?" Scudi smiled. "There are hundreds of transmitter stations all around Pandora, a whole manufacturing and servicing complex -- all to insure that we get from here to there."
Brett looked up at the screen. The spray of lines had pivoted until the bright green dot lay centered on course. The 141.2 still glowed in the lower left corner of the screen.
"If we require a course change, it will sound a klaxon and show the new numbers," she said. "Steeran homing on LB-one."
Brett looked out across the water beside them, seeing the spray kicked up by the foils, thinking how valuable such a system would be to Vashon's fishing fleet. The sun burned hot on him through the plaz, but the air felt good. Rich topside air blew in the vents. Scudi Wang was at his side and suddenly Pandora didn't seem to be the adversary that he'd always imagined. Even if it was a deadly place, it had its measure of beauty.
One measure of humanity lies in the lengths taken to right the wrongs perpetrated against others. Recognition of wrongdoing is the first crucial step.
-- Raja Thomas, the Journals
Shadow Panille covered the dead Mute. He washed his hands in the alcohol basin beside the litter. The rest of the room bustled with the clink of steel instruments against trays. Low-voiced, one-word commands and grunts came from several busy groups of doctors and med-techs. Panille looked back over his shoulder at the long row of litters strung down the center of the room, each one surrounded by medics. Splashes and blotches of blood stained gray gowns and the eyes above the antiseptic masks looked more tired, more hopeless every hour. Of all the survivors brought in by the pickup teams, only two had escaped physical harm. Panille reminded himself that there were other kinds of harm. What the experience had done to their minds . . . he hesitated to think of them as survivors.
The Mute behind Panille had died under the knife for lack of replacement blood. The medical facility had been unprepared for bleeders on such a tremendous scale. He heard Kareen Ale snap off her gloves behind him.
"Thanks for the assist," she said. "Too bad he didn't make it. This was a close one."
Panille watched one of the teams lift a litter and carry it toward the recovery area. At least a few would make it. And one of his men had said they were herding together the few fishing boats that had escaped and fled the drift. Panille rubbed his eyes and was immediately sorry. They burned from the touch of alcohol and started streaming tears.
Ale took him by the shoulder and led him to the sink beside the hatchway. It had a tall, curved spout that he could get his head under.
"Let the water run over the eyes," she said. "Blinking helps the rinse."
"Thanks."
She handed him a towel. "Relax," she said, "that's the last of them."
"How long have we been at it?"
"Twenty-six hours."
"How many made it?"
"Not counting those in shock, we have ninety still breathing in recovery. Several hundred with only minor injuries. I don't know. Fewer than a thousand, anyway, and six still under the knife here. Do you believe what this one told us?"
"About the sub? It's hard to write it off to hallucinations or delirium, considering the circumstances."
"He was clear-headed when they
brought him in. Did you see what he managed to do with his legs? It's too bad he didn't make it; he tried harder than most people."
"Both legs severed below the knees and he managed to stop the bleeding himself," Panille said. "I don't know, Kareen. I guess I don't want to believe him. But I do."
"What about the part about the sub rolling upside-down before its dive?" Ale asked. "Couldn't that mean somebody just lost control of the machine? Surely no Merman would do something like that deliberately."
"That patient" -- Panille waved towards the litter behind them -- "claimed that a Merman sub deliberately sank their Island. He said he saw the whole thing, the sub came directly up through their center and --"
"It was an Islander sub," she insisted. "Must've been."
"But he said . . ."
Kareen inhaled deeply and sighed. "He was mistaken, my dear," she said. "And to avoid serious trouble, we'll have to prove it."
They both stepped aside as two attendants carried the litter with the dead Mute out the hatchway, bound for the mortuary. Kareen began to recite what Panille knew would become the Merman line: "He was a Mute. Mutes don't have all of their faculties, even under the best of circumstances."
"You've been spending too much time with Gallow," Panille said.
"But look at what we had to work with here," she said. Her voice bordered on a whisper. Panille didn't like it, nor did he like the turn of conversation. Frustration and fatigue brought out a side of Kareen Ale that he had not known existed. "Missing parts, extra parts, misplaced parts." She gestured with a whimsical wave of her hand. "What their medical people do for an anatomy class boggles the mind. No, Shadow, it must have been an Islander sub. Some interior score they were settling. What could any of us gain by such an act? Nothing. I say we should have a drink. Just have a drink and forget it. How about it?"
"What he described was not an Islander sub," Panille insisted. "What he described was a kelp sub, with cutters and welders."
Kareen pulled him aside, as a mother might take a troublesome child aside during WorShip. "Shadow! You're not making sense. If Mermen sank that Island, then why go to all the trouble to man the pickup teams? Why not just let them go? No, we worked hard here to save what we could. Not that it mattered."
"What do you mean, 'Not that it mattered'?"
"You saw them, their condition. The best of them were starving. Leather on bone. They looked like furniture."
"Then we should feed them," Panille said. "Ryan Wang didn't develop the largest food distribution in history just to let people starve."
"Feeding them's a lot easier than hauling them in dead," she said.
"These are people!" Panille snapped.
Ale's quick eyes flicked from Panille, around the room to the surgical and trauma teams, then back. Her lips were trembling, and he saw with surprise that she was only barely under control.
"That patient may have been a Mute, but he was no fool," Panille insisted. "He reported what he observed, and he did it clearly."
"I don't want to believe him," Ale said.
"But you do." Panille put an arm around her shoulders.
Ale trembled at his touch. "We must talk," she said. "Would you go back to my quarters with me?"
They rode the tubes, Ale's head lolling on his shoulder. She snored a little, caught herself and settled closer against him. He liked the feeling of her warmth soaking into him. When their car started into a curve he held her shoulder a little tighter to keep the movement from waking her, giving himself time to think. Kareen wanted to talk. Did she want to persuade? How would she argue? With her body?
Panille decided this thought was unworthy of him. He rejected it.
Twenty-six hours in surgery, he thought. Soon Ale would face the difficult politics that the surgery represented. He had noticed the deepening circles of sleepless nights settling under Ale's beautiful eyes. Panille was glad for one aspect of the surgery -- it brought out the doctor in Ale, a part of her personality that had become more ghostlike during her brief association with Ryan Wang. Though she'd been alert and awake during the whole frustrating business with the Guemes Islanders, Ale had fallen asleep almost before the transport hatch closed on them. As the Islanders died under the knife one by one, he had watched her blue eyes darken over her mask.
"They're so frail," she had said. "So poor!"
The replacement blood had run out in two hours. Plasma and oxygen were gone in sixteen. Surgical supervisors suggested sterilizing sea water and using that for plasma, but Ale refused.
"Stick with what we know," she said. "This is not the time for experimentation."
In her sleep, Ale's hand reached around Panille's waist and pulled him closer. Her hair smelled of antiseptics and perspiration, but he found the mixture comforting because it was her. He liked the brush of her hair against his bare neck. The hours of sweat in his own hair made him glad he'd kept it braided. He ached for a shower even more than he ached for a bed. Panille caught himself dozing off just as they jerked to a stop. The panel above their heads flashed the message: Organization and Distribution.
"Kareen," he said, "we're here."
She sighed and squeezed his waist tighter. He pressed the hold button on the panel with his free hand.
"Kareen?"
Another sigh. "I heard you, Shadow. I'm so tired."
"We've arrived," he said. "You'll be more comfortable inside."
She looked up at him but didn't move away. Her eyes were red and puffy from lack of sleep but she managed a smile. "I just got acquainted with you," she said. "I thought I knew you, but now I'm not letting you out of my sight."
He placed a finger against her lips. "I'll just take you to your quarters. We can talk later."
"What makes this mysterious Shadow Panille tick?" she asked in a whisper. Then she kissed him. It was a brief kiss, but warm and powerful. "You don't mind, do you?" she asked.
"What about Gallow?"
"Well," she said, "the sooner we get out of here the sooner life goes on."
They uncurled themselves from each other. He liked the way the warm spots lingered and tingled on his skin. Ale stepped out of the hatch onto the docking bay and reached back a slender hand to pull him through.
"You're beautiful," he said, and her strong grip pulled him right up to her, then she hugged him close. Again, he put down his doubts about her.
"You have a way with words," she said.
"Runs in my family."
"You could've been a surgeon," she said. "You have good hands. I'd like to spend more time studying your hands."
"I'd like that," he murmured against her hair. "I've always wanted to know you better. You know that."
"I have to warn you, I snore."
"I noticed," he said. They held each other and swayed on the docking bay. "You drool, too," he said.
"Don't be crude." She pinched him in the ribs. "Ladies don't drool."
"What's this wet spot on my shoulder?"
"How embarrassing," she said. Then she took his hand and guided him up the walkway toward her building. She glanced back at him and said, "Nobody lives long enough for dillydallying. Let's get to it."
Panille realized right then that the pace of his life had just turned itself up a full notch. Tired as he had been, he sparked with the measure of energy that she injected into the air around them. There was a new bounce to her step that he hadn't noticed in surgery. Her body moved smoothly, quickly across the black-tiled foyer and he matched her step-for-step. When they walked into the ambassadorial quarters they were still holding hands.
Pattern is his who can see beyond shape: Life is his who can tell beyond words.
-- Lao Tzu, Shiprecords
Both suns stood high in the dark sky, raising heat shimmers off the water. Brett's sensitive eyes, shielded by dark glasses Scudi had found in the foil's lockers, scanned the sea. The foil cut through the waves with an ease that thrilled him. He marveled at how quickly his senses had adapted to speed. A feeling of freedom
, of escape soothed him. Pursuit could not move this fast. Danger could only lie ahead, where heat shimmers distorted the horizon. Or, as Twisp called it, "the Future."
When Brett had been quite young, standing with his mother at Vashon's edge for the first time, the heat-dazzled air had been inhabited by coils of long-whiskered dragons. Today's sun felt new on his arms and face, glistening through the canopy onto the instruments. The suns ignited golden glints in Scudi's black hair. There were no dragons.
Scudi bent intently over the controls, watching the sea, the dials, the guidance screen above her head. Her mouth was set in a grim line, which softened only when she looked at Brett.
A wide stretch of kelp drew a dark shadow on the water off to his right. Scudi steered them into the lee of the kelp, finding smoother water there. Brett stared out at an ovoid green mat within the kelp. At the very center of the oval, this particular green was a vivid reflector of the sunlight. The green darkened away from the center until the kelp patch became yellowed and brown at the edges.
Seeing where he was looking, Scudi said, "The outer edges die off, curl under and fortify the rest of the patch."
They rode without speaking for a time.
Abruptly, Scudi shocked him by shutting down the foil's engines. The big craft dropped off the step with a rocking lurch.
Brett looked wildly at Scudi, but she appeared calm.
"You start us," Scudi said.
"What?"
"Start us up." Her voice was calmly insistent. "What if I were injured?"
Brett sank into his seat and looked down at the control panel. Below the screen near the center of the cockpit lay four switches and a sticker labeled "Starting Procedure."
He read the instructions and depressed the switch marked "Ignition." The hot hiss of the hydrogen ram came from the rear of the foil.
Scudi smiled.
As the instructions told him, Brett glanced up at the guidance screen. A miniature line-drawing of a foil appeared around a green dot on the screen. A red line speared outward from the green dot. He touched the button marked forward and pushed the throttle gently ahead, gripping the wheel tightly with his free hand. He could feel sweat under his palms. The craft began to lift, tipping on the flank of a wave.
DV 3 - The Lazarus Effect Page 24
