"I have a big mouth," Scudi said. "I find someone at last who can really be my friend and I offend him."
"Islanders aren't lazy," Brett said.
Scudi reached out impulsively and took his right hand in hers. "I have only to look at you and I know the stories are lies."
Brett pulled his hand away. He still felt hurt and bewildered. Scudi might say something soothing to smooth it over, but the truth had come out involuntarily.
I work hard, for an Islander!
Scudi got to her feet and busied herself removing the dishes and the remains of their meal. Everything went into a pneumatic slot at the kitchen wall and vanished with a click and a hiss.
Brett stared at the slot. The workers who took care of that probably were Islanders permanently hidden from view.
"Central kitchens and all this space," he said. "It's Mermen who have things easy."
She turned toward him, an intent expression on her face. "Is that what Islanders say?"
Brett felt his face grow hot.
"I don't like jokes that lie," Scudi said. "I don't think you do, either."
Brett swallowed past a sudden lump in his throat. Scudi was so direct! That was not the Islander way at all, but he found himself attracted by it.
"Queets never tells those jokes and I don't either," Brett said.
"This Queets, he is your father?"
Brett thought suddenly about his father and his mother - the butterfly life between intense bouts of painting. He thought about their downcenter apartment, the many things they owned and cared for - furniture, art work, even some Merman appliances. Queets, though, owned only what he could store in his boat. He owned what he truly needed - a kind of survival selectivity.
"You are ashamed of your father?" Scudi asked.
"Queets isn't my father. He's the fisherman who owns my contract - Queets Twisp."
"Oh, yes. You do not own many things, do you, Brett? I see you looking around my quarters and ..." She shrugged.
"The clothes on my back were mine," Brett said. "When I sold my contract to Queets, he took me on for training and gave me what I need. There isn't room for useless stuff on a coracle."
"This Queets, he is a frugal man? Is he cruel to you?"
"Queets is a good man! And he's strong. He's stronger than anyone I've ever known. Queets has the longest arms you've ever seen, perfect for working the nets. They're almost as long as he is tall."
A barely perceptible shudder crossed Scudi's shoulders. "You like this Queets very much," she said.
Brett looked away from her. That unguarded shudder told it all. Islanders made Mermen shudder. He felt the pain of betrayal deep in his guts. "You Mermen are all the same," he said. "Mutants don't ask to be that way."
"I don't think of you as a mutant, Brett," she said. "Anyone can see that you're normalized."
"There!" Brett snapped, glaring at her. "What's normal? Oh, I've heard the talk: Islanders are having more 'normal' births these days ... and there's always surgery. Twisp's long arms offend you? Well, he's no freak. He's the best fisherman on Pandora because he fits what he does."
"I see that I've learned many wrong things," Scudi said, her voice low. "Queets Twisp must be a good man because Brett Norton admires him." A wry smile touched her lips and was gone. "Have you learned no wrong things, Brett?"
"I'm ... after what you did for me, I should not be talking to you this way."
"Wouldn't you save me if I were caught in your net? Wouldn't you ..."
"I'd go in after you and damn the dashers!"
She grinned, an infectious expression that Brett found himself answering in kind.
"I know you would, Brett. I like you. I learn things about Islanders from you that I didn't know. You are different, but ..."
His grin vanished. "My eyes are good eyes!" he snapped, thinking this was the difference she meant.
"Your eyes?" She stared at him. "They are beautiful eyes! In the water, I saw your eyes first. They are large eyes and ... difficult to escape." She lowered her gaze. "I like your eyes."
"I ... I thought ..."
Again, she met his gaze. "I've never seen two Islanders exactly alike, but Mermen are never exactly alike, either."
"Everyone down under won't feel that way," he accused.
"Some will stare," she agreed. "It is not normal to be curious?"
"They'll call me Mute," he said.
"Most will not."
"Queets says words are just funny ripples in the air or printed squiggles."
Scudi laughed. "I would like to meet this Queets. He sounds like a wise man."
"Nothing much ever bothered him except losing his boat."
"Or losing you? Will that bother him?"
Brett sobered. "Can we get word to him?"
Scudi touched the transphone button and voiced his request over the grill in the wall. The response was too quiet for Brett to hear. She did it casually. He thought then that this marked the difference between them more firmly than his own overlarge eyes with their marvelous night vision.
Presently, Scudi said: "They will try to get word to Vashon." She stretched and yawned.
Even yawning, she was beautiful, he thought. He glanced around the room, noting the closeness of the two cots. "You lived here with just your mother?" he asked. Immediately, he saw the sad expression return to Scudi's face and he cursed himself. "I'm sorry, Scudi. I should not keep reminding you of her."
"It's all right, Brett. We are here and she is not. Life continues ... and I do my mother's work." Again, that gamin grin twisted her mouth. "And you are my first roommate."
He scratched his throat, embarrassed, not knowing the moral rules between the sexes down under. What did it mean to be a roommate? Stalling for time, he asked: "What is this work of your mother's that you do?"
"I told you. I mathematic the waves."
"I don't know what that means."
"Where new waves or wave patterns are seen, I go. As my mother did and both her parents before her. It is a thing for which our family has a natural talent."
"But what do you do?"
"How the waves move, that tells us how the suns move and how Pandora responds to that movement."
"Oh? Just from looking at the waves, you ... I mean, waves are gone just like that!" He snapped his fingers.
"We simulate the waves in a lab," she said. "You know about wavewalls, I'm sure," she said. "Some go completely around Pandora several times."
"And you can tell when they'll come?"
"Sometimes."
He thought about this. The extent of Merman knowledge suddenly daunted him.
"You know we warn the Islands when we can," she said.
He nodded.
"To mathematic the waves, I must translate them," she said. She patted her head absently, exaggerating her gamin appearance. "Translate is a better word than mathematic," she said. "And I teach what I do, of course."
Of course! he thought. An heiress! A rescuer! And now an expert on waves!
"Who do you teach?" he asked, wondering if he could learn this thing she did. How valuable that would be for the Islands!
"The kelp," she said. "I translate waves for the kelp."
He was shocked. Was she joking, making fun of Islander ignorance?
She saw the expression on his face because she went on, quickly: "The kelp learns. It can be taught to control currents and waves ... when it returns to its former density, it will learn more. I teach it some of the things it must know to survive on Pandora."
"This is a joke, isn't it?" he asked.
"Joke?" She looked puzzled. "Don't you know the stories of the kelp as it was? It fed itself, it moved gases in and out of the water. The hylighters! Oh, I would love to see them! The kelp knew so many things, and it controlled the currents, the sea itself. All of this the kelp did once."
Brett gaped at her. He recalled schooltime stories about the sentient kelp, one creature alive as a single identity in all of its parts. But that
was ancient history, from the time when men had lived on solid land above Pandora's sea.
"And it will do this again?" he whispered.
"It learns. We teach it how to make currents and to neutralize waves."
Brett thought about what this might mean to Island life - drifting on predictable currents in predictable depths. They could follow the weather, the fishing ... An odd turn of thought put this out of his mind. He considered it almost unworthy, but who could know for certain what an alien intelligence might do?
Scudi, noting his expression, asked: "Are you well?"
He spoke almost mechanically. "If you can teach the kelp to control the waves, then it must know how to make waves. And currents. What's to prevent it from wiping us out?"
She was scornful. "The kelp is rational. It would not further the kelp to destroy us or the Islands. So it will not."
Again, she stilled a yawn and he recalled her comment that she had to go back to work soon.
The ideas she had put into his head whirled there, though, leaving him on edge, driving away all thought of sleep. Mermen did so many things! They knew so much!
"The kelp will think for itself." He recalled hearing someone say that, a conversation at the quarters of his parents - important people talking about important matters.
"But that could not happen without Vata," someone had said in response. "Vata is the key to the kelp."
That had begun what he remembered as a sprightly and boo-inspired conversation, which, as usual, ran from speculative to paranoid and back.
"I'll turn out the light for your modesty," Scudi said. She giggled and touched the light down through dim to barely shadow. He watched her fumble her way to her bed.
It's dark to her, he thought. For me she just turned down the glare. He shifted on the edge of his bed.
"You have a girlfriend topside?" Scudi asked.
"No ... not really."
"You have never shared a room with a girl?"
"On the Islands, you share everything with everyone. But to have a room, two people alone, that's for couples who are new to each other. For mating. It is very expensive."
"Oh, my," she said. In the shadow-play of his peculiar vision he watched her fingers dance nervously over the surface of her cot.
"Down under we share for mating, yes, but we also share rooms for other reasons. Work partners, schoolmates, good friends. I mean only for you to have one night of recovery. Tomorrow there will be others and questions and tours and much noise ..." Still her hands moved in that nervous rhythm.
"I don't know how I can ever repay you for being so nice to me," he said.
"But it is our custom," she said. "If a Merman saves you, you can have what the Merman has until you ... move on. If I bring life into this compound, I'm responsible for it."
"As though I were your child?"
"Something like." She sighed, and began undressing.
Brett found he could not invade her privacy and averted his eyes.
Maybe I should tell her, he thought. It's not really fair to be able to see this way and not let her know.
"I would prefer not to interfere with your life," he said.
He heard Scudi slip under her blankets. "You don't interfere," she said. "This is one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to me. You are my friend; I like you. Is that enough?"
Brett dropped his clothes and slipped under the covers, pulling them to his neck. Queets always said you couldn't figure a Merman. Friends?
"We are friends, not so?" she insisted.
He offered his hand across the space between the beds. Realizing that she couldn't see it, he picked up hers in his own. She pressed his fingers hard, her hand warm in his. Presently, she sighed and removed her hand gently.
"I must sleep," she said.
"Me, too."
Her hand lifted from the bed and found the switch on the wall. The whale sounds stopped.
Brett found the room exquisitely quiet, a stillness he had not imagined possible. He felt his ears relaxing, then, an alertness ... suddenly listening for ... what? He didn't know. Sleep was necessary, though. He had to sleep. His mind said: "Something is being done about informing your parents and Queets." He was alive and family and friends would be happy after their fears and sadness. Or so he hoped.
After several nervous minutes, he decided the lack of motion was preventing sleep. The discovery allowed him to relax more, breathe easier. He could remember with his body the gentle rocking motion topside and thought hard about that, tricking his mind into the belief that waves still lifted and fell beneath him.
"Brett?" Scudi's voice was little more than a whisper.
"Yes?"
"Of all the creatures in hyb, the ones I would like most are the birds, the little birds that sing."
"I've heard recordings from Ship," he said, his voice sleepy.
"The songs are as painfully beautiful as the whales. And they fly."
"We have pigeons and squawks," he said.
"The squawks are ducks and they do not sing," she said.
"But they whistle when they fly and it's fun to watch them."
Her blankets rustled as she turned away from him.
"Good night, friend," she whispered. "Sleep flat."
"Good night, friend," he answered. And there, at the edge of sleep, he imagined her beautiful smile.
Is this how love begins? he wondered. There was a tightness in his chest, which did not go away until he fell into a restless sleep.
***
The child Vata slipped into catatonia as the kelp and hylighters sickened. She has been comatose for more than three years now and, since she carries both kelp and human genes, it is hoped that she can be instrumental in restoring the kelp to sentience. Only the kelp can tame this terrible sea.
- Hali Ekel, the Journals
It was not so much that Ward Keel noticed the stillness as that he felt it all over his skin. Events had conspired to keep him topside throughout his long life, not that he had ever felt a keen desire to go down under.
Admit it, he told himself. You were afraid because of all the stories - deprivation shock, pressure syndrome.
Now, for the first time in his life there was no movement of deck under his bare feet, no nearby sounds of human activity and voices, no hiss of organic walls against organic ceilings - none of the omnipresent frictions to which Islanders adjusted as infants. It was so quiet his ears ached.
Beside him in the room where Kareen Ale had left him "to adjust for a few moments" stood a large plazglass wall revealing a rich undersea expanse of reds, blues and washed greens. The subtlety of unfamiliar shadings held him rapt for several minutes.
Ale had said: "I will be nearby. Call if you need me."
Mermen well knew the weaknesses of those who came down under. Awareness of all that water overhead created its own peculiar panic in some of the visitors and migrants. And being alone, even by choice, was not something Islanders tolerated well until they had adjusted to it ... slowly. A lifetime of knowing that other human beings were just on the other side of those thin organic walls, almost always within the sound of a whispered call, built up blind spots. You did not hear certain things - the sounds of lovemaking, family quarrels and sorrows.
Not unless you were invited to hear them.
Was Ale softening him up by leaving him alone here? Keel wondered. Could she be watching through some secret Merman device? He felt certain that Ale, with her medical background and long association with Islanders, knew the problems of a first-timer.
Having watched Ale perform her diplomatic duties over the past few years, Keel knew she seldom did anything casually. She planned. He was sure she had a well-thought-out motive for leaving an Islander alone in these circumstances.
The silence pressed hard upon him.
A demanding thought filled his mind: Think, Ward! That's what you're supposed to be so good at. He found it alarming that the thought came to him in his dead mother's voice, touching
his aural centers so sharply that he glanced around, almost fearful that he would see a ghostly shade shaking a finger of admonishment at him.
He breathed deeply once, twice, and felt the constriction of his chest ease slightly. Another breath and the edge of reason returned. Silence did not ache as much nor press as heavily.
During the descent by courier sub, Ale had asked him no questions and had supplied no answers. Reflecting on this, he found it odd. She was noted for hard questions to pave the way for her own arguments.
Was it possible that they simply wanted him down here and away from his seat on the Committee? he wondered. Taking him as an invited guest was, after all, less stressful and dangerous than outright kidnapping. It felt odd to think of himself as a commodity with some undetermined value. Comforting, though; it meant they would probably not employ violence against him.
Now, why did I think that? he wondered.
He stretched his arms and legs and crossed to the couch facing the undersea view. The couch felt softly supportive under him in spite of the fact that it was of some dead material. The stiffness of age made the soft seat especially welcome. He sensed the dying remora within him still fighting to survive. Avoid anxiety, the medics told him. That was most certainly a joke in his line of work. The remora still produced vital hormones, but he remembered the warning: "We can replace it, although the replacements won't last long. And their survival time will become shorter and shorter as new replacements are introduced. You are rejecting them, you see." His stomach growled. He was hungry and that he found to be a good sign. There was nothing to indicate a food preparation area in the room. No speakers or viewscreens. The ceiling sloped upward away from the couch to the view port, which appeared to be about six or seven meters high.
How extravagant! he thought. Only one person in all this space. A room this size could house a large Islander family. The air was a bit cooler than he liked but his body had adjusted. The dim light through the view port cast a green wash over the floor there. Bright phosphorescence from the ceiling dominated the illumination. The room was not far under the sea's surface. He knew this from the outside light level. Plenty of water over him, though: millions of kilos. The thought of all that weight pressing in on this space brought a touch of sweat to his upper lip. He ran a damp palm over the wall behind the couch - warm and firm. He breathed easier. This was Merman space. They didn't build anything fragile. The wall was plasteel. He had never before seen so much of it. The room struck him suddenly as a fortress. The walls were dry, testimony to a sophisticated ventilation system. Mermen topside tended to keep their quarters so humid he felt smothered by the air. Except for Ale ... but she was like no other human he had ever met, Islander or Merman. The air in this room, he realized, had been adjusted for Islander comfort. That reassured him.
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