“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.
Chapter 13
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.
Keel patted the couch beside him and thought of Joy, how much she would like that surface. A hedonist, Joy. He tried to picture her resting on the couch. A desire for Joy’s comforting presence filled him with sudden loneliness. Abruptly, he wondered about himself. He had been mostly a loner throughout his life, only the occasional liaison. Was the proximity of death working a fearful change on him? The thought disgusted him. Why should he inflict himself on Joy, saddle her with the sorrow of a permanent parting?
I am going to die soon.
He wondered briefly who the Committee would elect as Chief Justice to replace him. His own choice would be Carolyn, but the political choice would be Matts. He did not envy whoever they chose. It was a thankless job. There were things to do before he made his final exit, though. He stood and steadied himself against the couch. His neck ached, as usual. His legs felt rubbery and didn’t want to support him at first. That was a new symptom. The deck underfoot was hard plasteel and he was thankful that it, like the walls, was heated. He waited for strength to return, then, leaning against the wall, made his way toward the door at his left. There were two buttons beside the door. He pressed the lower one and heard a panel slide back behind the couch. He looked toward the sound and his heart shifted into triple-time.
The panel had concealed a mural. He stared at it. The thing was frighteningly realistic, almost photographic. It showed a surface construction site at least half-destroyed, flames everywhere and men wriggling in the tentacles of hylighters drifting overhead.
Hylighters died with the kelp, he thought. This was either an old painting or somebody’s imaginative reconstruction of history. He suspected the former. The rich suns-set background, the intimate detail of hylighters—everything focused on one worker near the center who pointed a finger at the viewer. It was an accusing figure, dark-eyed and glaring.
I know that place, Keel thought. How is it possible? Familiarity was stronger than the flutterings of deja vu. This was real seeing, a memory. The memory told him that somewhere in this room or nearby there was a red mandala.
How do I know this?
He examined the room carefully. Couch, plaz port, the mural, bare walls, an oval hatch-door. No mandala. He walked to the view port and touched it. Cool, the only cool surface in the room. How strange the fixed view port installation was—nothing like it at all on the Islands. Couldn’t be. The flex of bubbly around the solid plaz would tear away the organics that sealed it and the heavy, solid material would turn into a thing of destruction during a storm. Drift watchers, mutated cornea, were safer in rough weather even if they did require care and feeding.
The plaz was incredibly clear. Nothing in the feel of it suggested the extreme density and thickness. A small, heavily whiskered scrubberfish grazed the outside, cleaning the surface. Beyond the fish, a pair of Mermen came into view, jockeying a heavy sledge loaded with rocks and mud. They went past him out of sight beyond a slope to his right.
Out of curiosity, Keel fisted the plaz: thump-thump. The scrubberfish continued grazing, undisturbed. Anemone and ferns, grasses and sponges waved in the current beneath the fish. Dozens of other fish, a multicolored mixed school, cleaned the surface of kelp leaves beyond the immediate growth. Larger fish poked along the soft bottom mud, stirring up puffs of gray sediment. Keel had seen this sort of thing in holos but the reality was different. Some of the fish he recognized—creatures from the labs that had been brought for judgment by the Committee before being released in the sea.
A harlequin fish came up below the scrubber and nudged the plaz. Keel remembered the day the C/P had blessed the first harlequin fish before their release. It was almost like seeing an old friend.
Once more, Keel turned to his examination of the room and that elusive memory. Why did it feel so damned familiar? Memory said the missing mandala should be to the right of the mural. He walked to that wall and brushed a finger along it, looking for another panel switch. Nothing, but the wall moved slightly and he heard a clicking. He peered at it. It was not plasteel but some kind of light, composite material. A faint seam ran down the middle of the wall. He put a palm against the surface to the right of the seam and pushed. The panel slid back, revealing a passage, and immediately he smelled food.
He opened the panel wide and walked through. The passage made a sharp turn to the left and he saw lights. Kareen Ale stood there in a kitchen-dining area, her back to him. A rich smell of strong tea and fish broth assailed his nostrils. He drew a breath to speak but stopped as he saw the red mandala. The sight of it above Kareen’s right shoulder brought a sigh from Keel. The mandala drew his consciousness into the shapes there, twisting him through circles and wedges toward the center. A single eye peered out from the center, out at the universe. It was unlidded, and rested atop a golden pyramid.
These can’t be my memories, he thought. It was a terrifying experience. Ship memories flitted through his mind—someone walking down a long, curved passage, a violet-lighted agrarium fanned out to his left. He felt powerless before the stream of visions. Kelp waved to him from someplace under the sea and schools of fish his Committee had never approved swam past his eyes.
Ale turned and saw the enraptured expression on his face, the fixed intensity with which he stared at the mandala.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Her voice shocked him out of the other-memories. He exhaled a trembling breath, inhaled.
“I’m … I’m hungry,” he said. There was no thought of revealing the weird memories he had just experienced. How could she understand when he did not understand?
“Why don’t you sit here?” she asked. She indicated a small table set for two at one end of the kitchen area beside a smaller plaz port. The table was low, Merman-style. His knees ached just thinking about sitting there.
“I’ve cooked for you myself,” Ale said.
Noting his still bemused expression, she added: “That hatchway in the other room leads to a head with shower and washbasin. Beyond it you’ll find office facilities if you require them. The exterior hatchways are out there as well.”
He crowded his legs under the table and sat with his elbows on the surface in front of him, his hands supporting his head.
Was that a dream? he wondered.
The red mandala lay directly in front of him. He was almost afraid to focus on it.
“You’re admiring the mandala,” Ale said. She busied herself once more in the kitchen area.
He lifted his attention and let his gaze trace the ancient lines along their mysterious pathways. Nothing drew him inward this time. Slowly, bits of his own memories crept into his mind, images flashed behind his eyes and stuttered like a crippled larynx, then caught. Awareness reached back to one of his earliest history lessons, a holo being played in the center of a classroom. It had been a docudrama for young children. Islanders loved theatricals and this one had been fascinating. He could not remember the title, but he did recall that it dealt with the last days of Pandora’s continents—they didn’t look small at all in the holos—and the death of the kelp. That had been the first time Keel had heard the kelp called “Avata.” Behind the holo figures playing out the drama in a command post there had been a wall … and that frightening mural from the outer room. Nearby, as the holo shifted its focus, there had been the red mandala, just as he saw it now. Keel did not want to think how long ago he had watched the drama—more than seventy years, anyway. He returned his attention to Ale.
“Is that the original mandala or a copy?” he asked.
“I’m told it’s the original. It’s very old, older than any settlement on Pandora. You seem taken by it.”
“I’ve seen it and the mural out there before,” he said. ??
?These walls and the kitchen area are more recent, aren’t they?”
“The space was remodeled for my convenience,” she said. “I’ve always been drawn to these rooms. The mandala and mural are where they’ve always been. And they’re cared for.”
“Then I know where I am,” he said. “Islander children learn history through holodramas and …”
“I know that one,” she said. “Yes, this is part of the old Redoubt. Once it stood completely out of the sea, with some fine mountains behind it, I understand.”
She brought food to the table on a tray and set out the bowls and chopsticks.
“Wasn’t most of the Redoubt destroyed?” he asked. “The documentary holos were supposed to be reconstructions of a few from before …”
“Whole sections survived intact,” she said. “Automatic latches closed and sealed off much of the Redoubt. We restored it very carefully.”
“I’m impressed.” He nodded, reassessing the probable importance of Kareen Ale. Mermen had remodeled a part of the old Redoubt for her convenience. She lived casually in a museum, apparently immune to the historical value of the objects and building surrounding her. He had never before met a Merman in a Merman environment, and he now recognized this blank spot in his experience as a weakness. Keel forced himself to relax. For a dying man, there were advantages to being here. He didn’t have to decide life and death for new life. No pleading mothers and raging fathers would confront him with creatures who could not pass Committee. This was a world away from the Islands.
Ale sipped her tea. It smelled of mint and suddenly reignited Keel’s hunger. He began to eat, Islander-style, setting aside equal portions for his host. The first taste of the fish broth convinced him that it was the richest and most delicately spiced broth he’d ever shared. Was this the general diet for Mermen? He cursed his lack of down-under experience. Keel noticed that Ale enjoyed her own helping of the steaming soup and felt insulted at first.
Another cultural thing, he realized. He marveled that a simple difference in table manners could need translation to avoid international disaster. Unanswered questions still buzzed in his head. Perhaps a more devious approach was indicated—a mixture of Merman directness with Islander obliqueness.