Through the hatch they went into a chamber where the water was quickly flushed out and replaced by air. Brett found himself standing in a dripping puddle facing the young woman, who shed water as though she and her translucent suit had been oiled.
"My name is Scudi Wang," she said. "What is yours?"
"Brett Norton," he said. He laughed self-consciously. "You ... you saved my life." The statement sounded so ridiculously inadequate that he laughed again.
"It was my watch for search and rescue," she said. "We're always extra alert during a wavewall if we're near an Island."
He had never heard of such a thing but it sounded reasonable. Life was precious and his view of the world said everyone felt the same, even Mermen.
"You are wet," she said, looking him down and up. "Are there people who should know you are alive?"
Alive! The thought made his breathing quicken. Alive!
"Yes," he said. "Is it possible to get word topside?"
"We'll see to it after you're settled. There are formalities."
Brett noticed that she'd been staring at him much the same way he'd been intent on her. He guessed her age at close to his own - fifteen or sixteen. She was small, small-breasted, her skin as dark as a topside tan. She stared at him calmly out of green eyes with golden flecks in them. Her pug nose gave her a gamin look - the look of wide-eyed corridor orphans back on Vashon. Her shoulders were sloping and muscular, the muscles of someone who kept in top shape. The airfish scar glowed at her neck, a livid pink against the dark wash of her wet black hair.
"You are the first Islander I've ever rescued," she said.
"I'm ..." He shook his head, finding that he did not know how to thank her for such a thing. He finished lamely: "Where are we?"
"Home," she said with a shrug. "I live here." She dropped her ballast belt at the jerk of a knot and slung it over a shoulder. "Come with me. I'll get us both some dry clothes."
He slopped after her through a hatch, his pants dripping a trail of wetness. It was cold in the long passage where the hatchway left them, but he was not too cold to miss the pleasant bounce of Scudi Wang's body as she walked away from him. He hurried to catch up. The passage was disturbingly strange to an Islander - solid underfoot, solid walls lighted by long tubes of fluorescence. The walls glowed a silvery gray broken by sealed hatches with colored symbols on them - some green, some yellow, some blue.
Scudi Wang stopped at a blue-coded hatch, undogged it and led him into a large room with storage lockers lining the sides. Benches in four rows took up the middle. Another hatch led out the opposite side. She opened a storage locker and tossed him a blue towel, then bent to rummage through another locker where she found a shirt and pants, holding them up while she looked at Brett. "These'll probably fit. We can replace them later." She tossed the faded green pants onto the bench in front of him along with a matching pullover shirt. Both were a light material that Brett didn't recognize.
Brett dried his face and hair. He stood there indecisively, his clothes still dripping. Mermen paid little attention to nudity, he had been told, but he was not used to being unclothed ... much less in the company of a beautiful woman.
She removed her dive suit unselfconsciously, found a singlesuit of light blue in another locker and sat down to pull it over her body, drying herself with a towel. He stood up, looking down at her, unable to avoid staring.
How can I thank her? he wondered. She seems so casual about saving my life. Actually, she seemed casual about everything. He continued to stare at her and blushed when he felt the tightening erection beginning in his cold wet pants. Wasn't there a partition or something where he could get out of sight and dress? He glanced around the room. Nothing.
She saw him looking around and chewed her lower lip.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I forgot. They say Islanders are peculiarly modest. Is that true?"
His blush deepened. "Yes."
She pulled her singlesuit up and zipped it closed quickly. "I will turn around," she said. "When you have dressed, we will eat."
Scudi Wang's quarters were the same silvery gray as the passages, a space about four meters by five, everything squared corners and sharp edges alien to an Islander. Two cot-sized bed-settees extruded from the walls, both covered with blankets of bright red and yellow in swirling geometric patterns. A kitchen counter occupied one end of the room and a closet the other. A hatch beside the closet stood open to show a bath with a small immersion tub and shower. Everything was the same material as the walls, deck and ceiling. Brett ran a hand across one of the walls and felt the cold rigidity.
Scudi found a green cushion under one of the cots and tossed it onto the other cot. "Be comfortable," she said. She threw a switch on the wall beside the kitchen counter and odd music filled the room.
Brett sat down on the cot expecting it to be hard, but it gave way beneath him, surprisingly resilient. He leaned against the cushion. "What is that music?"
She turned from an open cupboard. "Whales. You have heard of them?"
He looked toward the ceiling. "They're on the hyb tank roster, I've heard. A giant earthside mammal that lives down under."
She nodded toward the small speaker grill above the switch. "Their song is most pleasant. I'll enjoy listening to them when we recover them from space."
Brett, listening to the grunts and whistles and thrills, felt their calming influence like a long fetch of waves in a late afternoon. He failed to focus immediately on what she had said. In spite of the whalesong, or perhaps because of it, there was a sense of deep quiet in the room that he had never before experienced.
"What do you do topside?" Scudi asked.
"I'm a fisherman."
"That's good," she said, busying herself at the counter. "It puts you on the waves. Waves and currents, that's how we generate our power."
"So I've heard," he said. "What do you do - besides rescues?"
"I mathematic the waves," she said. "That is my true work."
Mathematic the waves? He had no idea what that meant. It forced him to reflect on how little he knew about Merman life. Brett glanced around the room. The walls were hard but he was mistaken about the cold. They were warm, unlike the locker-room walls. Scudi, too, did not seem cold. As she had led him here along the solid passages, they had passed many people. Most had nodded greeting as they chattered with friends or workmates. Everyone moved quickly and surely and the passageways weren't full of people jostling shoulder-to-shoulder all the way. Except for workbelts, many had been naked. None of that outside bustle penetrated to this little room, though. He contrasted this to topside, where the organics tended to transmit even the smallest noises. Here, there was the luxury of noise and the luxury of quiet within a few meters of each other.
Scudi did something above her work area and the room's walls suddenly were brightly colored in flowing sweeps of yellow and green. Long strands of something like kelp undulated in a current - an abstraction. Brett was fascinated at how the color-motion on the walls accompanied the whalesong.
What do I say to her? he wondered. Alone with a pretty girl in her room and I can't think of anything. Brilliant, Norton! You're a glittering conversationalist!
He wondered how long he'd been with her. Topside, he kept good track of time by the light of the suns and the dark patches between. Down here, all light was similar. It was disorienting.
He looked at Scudi's back while she worked. She pressed a wall button and he heard her murmur something on a Merman transphone. Seeing the phone there impressed him with the technological gulf between Islanders and Mermen. Mermen had this device; Islanders were not offered it in the mercantile. He didn't doubt that some Islanders got them through the black market, but he didn't know how it would be of any use to them unless they dealt with Mermen all the time. Some Islanders did. Islander sub crews carried portable devices that picked up some transphone channels, but this was for the Mermen's convenience as well as Islanders'. Mermen were so damned snobbish about their riches!
There was a faint hiss of pneumatics at the counter where Scudi worked. She turned presently, balancing a tray carrying covered bowls and utensils. She placed the tray on the deck between the two cots and pulled up a cushion for her own back.
"I don't cook much myself," she said. "The central kitchen is faster, but I add my own spices. They are so bland at central!"
"Oh?" He watched her uncover the bowls, enjoying the smells.
"People already want to know of you," she said. "I have had several calls. I told them to wait. I'm hungry and tired. You, too?"
"I'm hungry," he agreed. He glanced around the room. Only these two cots. Did she expect him to sleep here ... with her?
She pulled a bowl and spoon up to her lap. "My father taught me to cook," she said.
He picked up the bowl nearest him and took a spoon. This was not like Islander feeding ritual, he noticed. Scudi already was spooning broth into her mouth. Islanders fed guests first, then ate whatever the guests left for them. Brett had heard that this didn't always work well with Mermen - they often ate everything and left nothing for the host. Scudi licked a few drops of broth from the back of her hand.
Brett tasted a sip from his spoon.
Delicious!
"The air is dry enough for you?" Scudi asked.
He nodded, his mouth full of soup.
"My room is small but that makes it easier to keep the air the way I like it. And easier to keep clean. I work topside very often. Dry is comfort to me now and I don't feel comfortable with the humidity in passages and public places." She put the bowl to her lips and drained it.
Brett copied her, then asked, "What will happen to me? When will I go back topside?"
"We'll talk of this after food," she said. She brought up two more bowls and uncovered them, revealing bite-sized chunks of fish in a dark sauce. With the bowl she handed him a pair of carved bone chopsticks.
"After food," he agreed and took a bite of the sauced fish. It was peppery hot and brought tears to his eyes but he found the aftertaste pleasant.
"It is our custom," Scudi said. "Food sets the body at ease. I can say, 'Brett Norton, you are safe here and well.' But I know down under is alien to you. And you have been in danger. You must speak to your body in the language it understands before sense returns to you. Food, rest - these are what your body speaks."
He liked the rational sense of her words and returned to the fish, enjoying it more with each bite. Scudi, he saw, was eating as much as he even though she was much smaller. He liked the delicate flick of her chopsticks into the bowl and at the edge of her mouth.
What a beautiful mouth, he thought. He remembered how she had given him that first breath of life.
She caught him staring and he quickly returned his attention to his bowl.
"The sea takes much energy, much heat," she said. "I wear a dive suit as little as possible. Hot shower, much hot food, a warm bed - these are always needed. Do you work the Islander subs topside, Brett?"
Her question caught him off guard. He'd begun to think that she had no curiosity about him.
Maybe I'm just some kind of obligation to her, he thought. If you save someone, maybe you're stuck with them.
"I'm a surface fisherman for a contractor named Twisp," he said. "He's the one I most want to get word to. He's a strange man, but the best in a boat that I've seen."
"Surface," she said. "That's much danger from dashers, isn't it? Have you seen dashers?"
He tried to swallow in a suddenly dry throat. "We carry squawks. They warn us, you know." He hoped that she wouldn't notice the dodge.
"We're afraid of your nets," she said. "Sometimes visibility is bad and they can't be seen. Mermen have been killed in them."
He nodded, remembering the thrashing and the blood and Twisp's stories of other Mermen deaths in the nets. Should he mention that to Scudi? Should he ask about the strange reaction of the Maritime Court? No ... she might not understand. This would be a barrier between them.
Scudi sensed this, too. He could tell because she spoke too quickly. "Would you not prefer to work in your subs? I know they are soft-bellied, not like ours at all, but ..."
"I think ... I think I'd like to stay with Twisp unless he goes back to the subs. I'd sure like to know if he's all right."
"We will rest and when we wake, you will meet some of our people who can help. Mermen travel far. We pass along the word. You will hear of him and he of you ... if that's your wish."
"My wish?" He stared at her, absorbing this. "You mean I could choose to ... disappear?"
She shrugged her eyebrows, accenting the gamin look. "Where you want to be is where you should be. Who you want to be is the same, not so?"
"It can't be that simple."
"If you have not broken the law, there are possibilities down under. The Merman world is big. Wouldn't you like to stay here?" She coughed and he wondered if she had been about to say "stay here with me?" Scudi suddenly seemed much older, more worldly. Talk among the Islanders gave Brett the impression that Mermen had an extra sophistication, a sense of belonging anywhere they went, of knowing more than Islanders.
"Do you live alone?" he asked.
"Yes. This was my mother's place. And it's close to where my father lived."
"Don't Merman families live together?"
She scowled. "My parents ... stubborn, both of them. They couldn't live together. I lived with my father for a long time, but ... he died." She shook her head and he saw the memories pain her.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Where's your mother?"
"She is dead too." Scudi looked away from him. "My mother was net-bound less than a year ago." Scudi's throat moved with a convulsive swallow as she turned back to him. "It has been difficult ... there is a man, GeLaar Gallow, who became my mother's ... lover. That was after ..." She broke off and shook her head sharply.
"I'm sorry, Scudi," he said. "I didn't mean to bring back painful -"
"But I want to talk about it! Down here, there is no one I can ... I mean, my closest friends avoid the subject and I ..." She rubbed her left cheek. "You are a new friend and you listen."
"Of course, but I don't see what ..."
"After my father died, my mother signed over ... You understand, Brett, that my father was Ryan Wang, there was much wealth?"
Wang! he thought. Merman Mercantile. His rescuer was a wealthy heiress!
"I ... I didn't ..."
"It is all right. Gallow was to be my stepfather. My mother signed over to him control of much that my father left. Then she died."
"So there's nothing for you."
"What? Oh, you mean from my father. No, that is not my problem. Besides, Kareen Ale is my new guardian. My father left her ... many things. They were friends."
"What ... you said there's a problem."
"Everyone wants Kareen to marry Gallow and Gallow pursues this."
Brett noted that Scudi's lips tightened every time she spoke Gallow's name. "What is wrong with this Gallow?" he asked.
Scudi spoke in a low voice. "He frightens me."
"Why? What's he done?"
"I don't know. But he was on the crew when my father died ... and when my mother died."
"Your mother ... you said a net ..."
"An Islander net. That is what they said."
He lowered his gaze, remembering his recent experience with a Merman in the net.
Seeing the look on his face, Scudi said: "I have no resentment toward you. I can see that you are sorry. My mother knew the danger of nets."
"You said Gallow was with your parents when they died. Do you ..."
"I have never spoken of this to anyone before. I don't know why I say it to you, but you are sympathetic. And you ... I mean ..."
"I owe you."
"Oh, no! It is nothing like that. It's just ... I like your face and the way you listen."
Brett lifted his gaze and met her staring at him. "Is there no one who can help you?" he asked. "You said Kareen Ale ... ever
yone knows about her. Can't she -"
"I would never say these things to Kareen!"
Brett studied Scudi for a moment, seeing the shock and fear in her face. He already had a sense of the wildness in Merman life from the stories told among Islanders. Violence was no stranger down here, if the stories were to be believed. But what Scudi suggested ...
"You wonder if Gallow had anything to do with the deaths of your parents," he said.
She nodded without speaking.
"Why do you suspect this?"
"He asked me to sign many papers but I pleaded ignorance and consulted Kareen. I don't think the papers he showed her were the same ones he brought to me. She has not said yet what I should do."
"Has he ..." Brett cleared his throat. "What I mean is ... you are ... that is, sometimes Islanders marry young."
"There has been nothing like that, except he tells me to hurry and grow up. It is all a joke. He says he is tired of waiting for me."
"How old are you?"
"I will be sixteen next month. You?"
"I'll be seventeen in five months."
She looked at his net-calloused hands. "Your hands say you work hard, for an Islander." Immediately, she popped a hand over her mouth. Her eyes went wide.
Brett had heard Merman jokes about lazy Islanders sunning themselves while Mermen built a world under the sea. He scowled.
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