"'Cause you don't have to. You're all ready to join the Mermen on their open land, on their terms."
Bushka found no words to answer. He had always been proud of his Merman-normal appearance. He could pass without surgery.
Twisp pounded his fist against the rim of the coracle. It startled the caged squawks, who sat up and fluffed their feathers in frustration.
"She wanted kids ... with me," Twisp said. "Can you imagine that? Think of the surprises you'd find in the nursery when all these corrected, lying Mutes started bedding each other. And what about the kids growing up to find out that they're Mutes while their parents appear to be norms? Not for me!" His voice was husky. "No way."
Twisp fell silent, lost in his own memories.
Bushka listened to the slep-slep of waves against the coracle's sides, the faint rustling of the squawks preening and stretching in their cage. He wondered how many love affairs drowned on Twisp's style of principles.
"Damn that Jesus Lewis!" Twisp muttered.
Bushka nodded to himself. Yes, that was where the problem had started. Or, at least, where it was precipitated. The question remained for the historian: What made Jesus Lewis? Bushka looked at Twisp's arms - muscular, well-developed, tan and over half a length too long. The Island mating pool was still a genetic lottery, thanks to Jesus Lewis and his bioengineering experiments.
Twisp was still angry. "Mermen will never understand what growing up an Islander is like! Someone around you is always frail or dying ... someone close. My little sister was such a nice kid ..." Twisp shook his head.
"We don't say 'mutation' much except when we're being technical," Bushka prompted. "And deformity is a dirty word. 'Mistakes,' that's what we call them."
"You know what, Bushka? I deliberately avoid people with long arms. There are only a few of us in this generation." He raised his arm. "Are these a mistake? Does that make me a mistake?"
Bushka didn't answer.
"Damn!" Twisp said. "My apprentice, Brett, he's sensitive about the size of his eyes. Shit, you can't tell anything just by looking at him, but you can't tell him that. Ship! Can he ever see in the dark! Is that a mistake?"
"It's a lottery," Bushka said.
Twisp grimaced. "I don't envy the Committee's job. You have any idea of the grotesques and the dangerous forms they have to judge? How can they do it? And how can they guess at the mental mistakes? Those don't usually show up until later."
"But we have good times, too," Bushka protested. "Mermen think our cloth is the best. You know the price we get for Islander weaving down under. And our music, our painting ... all of our art."
"Sure," Twisp sneered. "I've heard Mermen pawing over our stuff. 'How bright! Such fun. Oh! Isn't this pretty? Islanders are so full of fun.'"
"We are," Bushka muttered.
Twisp merely looked at him for a long time. Bushka wondered if he had committed some unforgivable blunder.
Suddenly, Twisp smiled. "You're right. Damn! No Merman knows how to have a good time the way we do. It's either grief and despair or dancing and singing all night because somebody got married, or born, or got a new set of drums, or hauled in a big catch. Mermen don't celebrate much, I hear. You ever see Mermen celebrating?"
"Never," Bushka admitted. And he remembered Nakano of Gallow's crew talking about Merman life.
"Work, get a mate, have a couple of kids, work some more and die," Nakano had said. "Fun is a coffee break or hauling a sledge to some new outpost."
Was that why Nakano had joined Gallow's movement? Precious little fun or excitement down under. Rescue an Islander. Work at building a barrier. Bushka did not think of life down under as grim for people like Nakano. Just drab. They hadn't the lure of an intellectual goal, nor even the nearness of grief to make them snatch at joy. But topside, there you found dazzle and color and a great deal of laughter.
"If we go back to the open land, it'll be different," Bushka said.
"What do you mean, 'if'? Just a few minutes ago you were saying it was inevitable."
"There are Mermen who want only an undersea empire. If they -"
Bushka broke off as Twisp suddenly pointed ahead and blurted, "Ship's balls! What is that?"
Bushka turned and saw, almost directly ahead of them, a gray tower with a lace of white surf at its base. It was like a thick stem to the great flower of sky, a blue flower edged in pink. The storm that had been skirting them for the past few hours framed the scene in a halo of black cloud. The tower, almost the same drab shade as the clouds, climbed up like a great fist out of the depths.
Twisp stared in awe. It wasn't visible for fifty klicks, as Bushka had first stated, but it was impressive. Ship! He'd not expected it to be so big.
Beyond the gray press of sea and sky, the clouds began to open. The interrupted horizon became two bright flowers and neither man could take his gaze off the launch tower. It was the center of a giant stormcloud whirlpool.
"That's the Launch Base," Bushka said. "That's the heart of the Merman space program. Every political faction they have will be represented there."
"You'd never mistake it for something floating on the surface," Twisp said. "No movement at all."
"It clears high water by twenty-five meters," Bushka said. "Mermen brag about it. They've only sent up unmanned shots. But things are moving fast. That's why Gallow and his people are acting now. The Mermen expect a manned shot into space soon."
"And they control the currents with the kelp?" Twisp asked. "How?"
"I don't really know. I've seen where they do it but I don't understand it."
Twisp looked from the tower to Bushka and back to the tower. The foaming collar of surf around its base had expanded as the coracles drew closer, opening up a wider view. Twisp estimated their distance from the base at more than five kilometers, and even from that distance he saw that the surf reached left and right of the tower for several hundred meters on either side. More human activity could be seen there. One of the big Merman foils stood off in the calmer water beyond the surf with smaller craft shuttling back and forth to the tower. A Lighter-Than-Air hovered nearby, either for observation or use as a sky-crane. The coracles were close enough now to make out Mermen on the breakwater that fanned out from the base near the tower.
The hydrofoil with its hydrogen ramjets sticking out like big egg sacks astern drew Twisp's attention. He had seen them only at a distance and in holos before this. The thing was at least fifty meters long, riding there easily on its flotation hull with the planing foils hidden underwater. A wide hatch stood open in its side with much Merman activity around the opening - bulky objects being lowered on an extruded crane.
Bushka sat with one arm resting on the cuddy top, his other arm hanging loosely at his side. His head was turned away from Twisp, attention fixed on the Launch Base and its commanding tower. There was no sign yet that the Mermen had taken notice of the approaching coracles, but Twisp knew they had been seen and their course plotted. Bushka's reason for bringing them to this particular place seemed clear, if you believed his story about Gallow. There was little chance that Gallow's people would be the only ones at this base. And there would be Merman attention on every detail of this operation. All factions would hear Bushka's story. Would they believe it?
"Have you thought about how they're going to receive you and your story?" Twisp asked.
"I don't think my chances are very good no matter where I turn up," Bushka answered. "But better here than anywhere else." He brought his gaze around to meet Twisp's questioning stare. "I think I'm a dead man any way you look at it. But people have got to know."
"Very commendable," Twisp said. He cut the motor and pulled the tiller into his stomach, holding it there until the two boats circled slowly around each other. Time to apprise Bushka of the facts as Twisp saw them after a night's reflection.
"What're you doing?" Bushka demanded.
Twisp stretched both arms across the tiller and stared at Bushka. "I came out here to find my apprentice. Kin
da stupid of me, I know. I tell you true I didn't believe there was such a thing as that base, but I thought there would be something, and I came with you because what you said about help from the Mermen made sense."
"Of course it does! Somebody probably picked him up already and -"
"But you're in trouble, Bushka. Deep shit. And I'm in it, too, just by being with you. I wouldn't feel right about just dumping you or handing you over to them." He nodded toward the tower. "Especially if your story about this Gallow happens to be true."
"If?"
"Where's the proof?"
Bushka tried to swallow. Mermen already would be bringing in the Guemes dead and the survivors. He knew this. There was no turning back. Someone at the Launch Base already had these coracles and their occupants on a screen. Somebody would be sent to investigate or to warn them off.
"What do I do?" Bushka asked.
"You sank a whole fucking island," Twisp growled. "And you're just now asking yourself that?"
Bushka merely lifted his shoulders and let them fall in a futile shrug.
"Guemes must've had small boats out, some in sight of the Island," Twisp said. "There'll be survivors and they'll have their story to tell. Some of them may have seen your sub. You any idea what they'll be reporting?"
Bushka cringed under the weight of accusation in Twisp's voice.
"You were the pilot," Twisp said. "They'll put you through more than this. You did it and they'll get every detail out of you before you talk to anybody outside of Merman Security. If you ever get outside their Security."
Bushka lowered his chin to his knees. He felt that he might vomit. With a terrible sense of wonder, he heard coming from his own mouth a groan that pulsed in a rising pitch: nnnnnh nnnnnnh nnnnnnh.
There's nowhere I can run, Bushka thought. Nowhere, nowhere.
Twisp was still speaking to him but Bushka, lost in his own misery, no longer understood the words. Words could not reach into this place where his consciousness lay. Words were ghosts, things that would haunt him. He no longer felt that he could tolerate such haunting.
The thrum of the coracle's little motor being switched on brought Bushka's attention back from its hiding place. He did not dare look up to see where Twisp might be taking them. All of the wheres were bad. It was just a matter of time until someone somewhere killed him. His mind floated on a sea while his muscles pulled him into a tighter and tighter ball so that he might fit into that sea without touching anything there. Voices cried to him, high-pitched screeches. His mind exposed glimpses of a universe fouled by carnage - the shredded Island and its broken shards of flesh. Dry heaves shook his body. He sensed movement in the coracle, but only vaguely. Something inside of him had to come out. Hands touched his shoulders and lifted him, laying him over the thwart. A voice said: "Puke over the side. You'll choke to death in the bilge." The hands went away, but the voice left one last comment: "Dumb fuck!"
The acid in Bushka's mouth was bitterly demanding, stringy. He tried to speak but every sound felt like sandpaper bobbing in his larynx. He vomited over the side, the smell strong in his nostrils. Presently, he dropped a hand into the passing sea and splashed cold salt water over his face. Only then could he sit up and look at Twisp. Bushka felt emptied of everything, all emotion drained.
"Where can I go?" he asked. "What can I tell them?"
"You tell 'em the truth," Twisp said. "Dammit. I never heard of anybody as dumb as you, but I do believe you're a dumb fuck, and I don't think you're a killer."
"Thanks," Bushka managed.
"What you did," Twisp said, "you've marked yourself. No Mute will ever get the stares you'll get. You know what? I don't envy you one bit."
Twisp nodded toward the tower ahead. "Here comes someone to get us. One of their little cargo boats. Ship! I'm done for! I know it."
***
At any given moment of history it is the function of associations of devoted individuals to undertake tasks which clear-sighted people perceive to be necessary, but which nobody else is willing to perform.
- A. Huxley, The Doors of Perception, Shiprecords
After seeing Scudi expose the master control panel for her father's quarters, find the hatch controls and trace out the exit hatch circuiting, Brett was ready to believe his new friend a genius. She quickly argued against this when he praised her.
"Most of us learn how to do this very young." She giggled. "If your parents try to lock you in ..."
"Why would they lock you in?"
"Punishment," she said, "if we -" She broke off, threw a circuit breaker and closed the panel cover. "Quick, someone is coming." She leaned close to Brett's ear. "I have set the emergency hatch on manual and the same with the main hatch. Emergency is the little hatch in the middle of the big one."
"Where do we go when we get out?"
"Remember the plan. We have to leave here before they guess what I've done." Scudi took his hand and hurried Brett out of the service room, down a passage and into the entry lounge.
Hastings and Lonfinn were already there and involved in a heated conversation with Keel.
The Chief Justice raised his voice as Brett and Scudi entered the room: "And furthermore, if you try to blame Islanders for the Guemes massacre, I shall demand an immediate committee of investigation, a committee you will not control!"
Keel rubbed his eyelids with both hands. The eye looking directly at Hastings focused a hard glare on him. Keel found he enjoyed the small shudder that the man could not hide.
"Mr. Justice," Hastings said, "you are not helping yourself or those youngsters." He glanced briefly at Brett and Scudi, who had stopped just inside the room.
Keel studied Hastings for a moment, thinking how abruptly the mood had turned ugly. Two hatchetmen! He passed a glance across Hastings and Lonfinn, noting that they blocked the way to the exit hatch.
"I was always told there were no dangerous insects down under," Keel said.
Hastings scowled but his partner did not change expression. "This is not a joking matter!" Hastings said. "Ambassador Ale has asked us to -"
"Let her tell me herself!"
When Hastings did not respond, Keel said: "She lured me down here under false pretenses. She saw to it that I didn't bring any of my own staff. Her stated reason, even as sketchy as that was, does not wash. I have to conclude that I am a prisoner. Do you deny that?" Again, he sent a cold gaze across the two men standing between him and the hatch.
Hastings sighed. "You are being protected for your own good. You are an important Islander; there has been a crisis -"
"Protected from whom?"
Keel watched Hastings deciding what to say, choosing and discarding alternatives. Several times Hastings started to speak and thought better of it.
Keel rubbed the back of his neck where the prosthetic support already had begun to chafe his neck raw after his brief rest.
"Are you protecting me from whoever destroyed Guemes?" he prompted.
The two Mermen exchanged an unreadable glance. Hastings looked back at Keel. "I would like to be more candid with you, but I can't."
"I already know the structure of what's happening," Keel said. "Very powerful political forces are on a collision course among the Mermen."
"And topside!" Hastings snapped.
"Oh, yes. The two wild cards - my Committee and the Faith. Wiping out Guemes was a blow at the Faith. But liquidating me would not deter the Committee; they would simply replace me. It's more effective to keep me incommunicado. Or, if I were liquidated, Islanders would be distracted enough while selecting a new Chief Justice that Mermen could take advantage of the confusion. I no longer think I can stay down here. I am returning topside."
Hastings and his companion stiffened.
"I am afraid that is impossible just now," Hastings said.
Keel smiled. "Carolyn Bluelove will be the next Chief Justice," he said. "You won't have any better luck with her than you have with me."
Impasse, Keel thought.
; A loaded silence fell over the room while Hastings and Lonfinn studied him. Keel could see Hastings composing new arguments and discarding them. He needed the Chief Justice's cooperation for something - blind cooperation. He needed agreement without revealing the thing to which Keel must agree. Did Hastings think an old political infighter could not see through this dilemma?
Where they stood just inside the room, Scudi and Brett had listened carefully to this argument. Scudi now leaned close to Brett's ear and whispered. "The guest head is that hatch over to the right. Go in there now and open the sealed switch plate by the hatch. Throw a glass of water into the switch. That will short out all the lights in this section. I will unlock the emergency hatch. Can you find it in the dark?"
He nodded.
"We can be out before they even know we're running," she whispered.
"The passageway lights will shine in through the emergency hatch when you open it."
"We have to be quick," she said. "They will try to use the main controls. It will be a blink before they realize they'll have to use the manual system."
He nodded again.
"Follow me and run fast," she said.
Where he stood confronting Keel, Hastings had decided to expose part of his knowledge.
"Justice Keel, you are wrong about the next Chief Justice," he said. "It'll be Simone Rocksack."
"GeLaar Gallow's choice?" Keel asked, working from the knowledge he had gained at the late Ryan Wang's comconsole.
Hastings blinked in surprise.
"If so, he's in for another surprise," Keel said. "C/Ps are notoriously incorruptible."
"Your history's slipping," Hastings said. "Without the first Pandoran C/P, Morgan Oakes, Jesus Lewis would've been just another lab technician."
A solemn expression settled over Keel's face. Petitioners before him on the high bench had seen this look and trembled but Hastings only stared at him, waiting.
"You work for Gallow," Keel said. "Of course you want total political and economic control of Pandora and you're going to work through the Faith. Did the C/P know you were going to destroy her family on Guemes to do it?"
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