In that instant, Twisp saw that the man was blind. The eyes were cloud-gray and empty of recognition. Hesitantly, Twisp accepted the cake and sampled it. Rich brown fruit in the cake sweetened his tongue.
Again, Twisp looked at the scene in the bowl of open land. He had seen pictures and holos from the histories but nothing had prepared him for this experience. He felt both attracted and repelled by what he saw. This land would not drift willy-nilly on an uncertain sea. There was a sense of absolute assurance in the firmness underfoot. But there was a loss of freedom in it, too. It was locked down and enclosed … limited. Too much of this could narrow a man’s vision.
“One more cake, Abimael, and then you go home,” the carpenter said.
Twisp stepped back from the carpenter, hoping to escape silently, but his heel encountered a stone and he tumbled backward, sitting sharply on another stone. An involuntary cry of pain escaped him.
“Now, don’t you cry, Abimael!” the carpenter said. Twisp heaved himself to his feet. “I’m not Abimael,” he said.
The carpenter aimed his sightless eyes toward Twisp and sat silent for a moment, then: “I hear that now. Hope you liked the cake. You see Abimael anywhere around?”
“No one in sight but the men with the flamethrowers.”
“Damned fools!” The carpenter swallowed a cake whole and licked the syrupy coating off his fingers. “They’re bringing Islanders onto the land already?”
“I … I think I’m the first.”
“They call me Noah,” the carpenter said. “You can take it as a joke. Say I was the first out here. Are you badly deformed, Islander?”
Twisp swallowed a sudden rise of anger at the man’s bluntness.
“My arms are rather long but they’re perfect for pulling nets.”
“Don’t mind the useful variations,” Noah said. “What’s your name?”
“Twisp … Queets Twisp.”
“Twisp,” Noah said. “I like that name. It has a good sound. Want another cake?”
“No, thank you. It was good, though. I just can’t take too much sweetness. What’re you making here?”
“I’m working with a bit of wood,” Noah said. “Think of that! Wood grown on Pandora! I’m fashioning some pieces that will be made into furniture for the new director of this place. You met him yet? Name’s Gallow.”
“I haven’t had that … pleasure,” Twisp said.
“You will. He sees everybody. Doesn’t like Mutes, though, I’m afraid.”
“How were you … I mean, your eyes?”
“I wasn’t born this way. It was caused by staring at a sun too long. Bet you didn’t know that, did you? If you stand on solid ground so you don’t move around, you can stare right at the sun … but it can blind you.”
“Oh.” Twisp didn’t know what else to say. Noah seemed resigned to his fate, though.
“Abimael!” Noah raised his voice into a loud call.
There was no answer.
“He’ll come,” Noah said. “Saved a cake for him. He knows it.”
Twisp nodded, then felt the foolishness of the gesture. He stared across the enclosed basin. The land glared at him from all sides, everything highlighted by the brightness of Big Sun. The buildings were stark white, shot through with streaks of brown. Water or the illusion of water shimmered in a flat area near the far cliffs. The flamethrowers had been silenced and the Merman workers had gone into a building toward the center of the basin. Noah returned to his woodworking. There was no wind, no sound of seabirds, no sound of Abimael, who was supposed to be coming to his father’s call. Nothing. Twisp had never before heard such silence … not even underwater.
“They call me Noah,” Noah said. “Go to the records and look up the histories. I call my first-born Abimael. Do you dream strange things, Twisp? I used to dream about a big boat, called an ark, in the time when the original Terrahome was flooded. The ark saved lots of humans and animals from the flood … kinda like the hyb tanks in that, you know?”
Twisp found himself fascinated by the carpenter’s voice. The man was a storyteller and knew the trick of flexing his voice to hold a listener’s attention.
“The ones who didn’t get on the ark, they all died,” Noah said. “When the sea went down, they found the stinking carcasses for months. The ark was built so animals and people couldn’t climb aboard unless they were invited and the ramp was lowered.”
Noah mopped sweat from his brow with a purple cloth. “Stinking carcasses everywhere,” he muttered.
A slight breeze came over the cliff walls and wafted the heavy stink of burned things across Twisp. He could almost smell the rotting flesh Noah described.
The carpenter hefted two joined pieces of wood and hung them on a peg in the wall behind him.
“Ship made a promise that Noah would live,” Noah said. “But watching that much death was very bad. When so many die and so few live, think how dead the survivors must feel! They needed the miracle of Lazarus and it was denied them.”
Noah turned away from the wall and his blind eyes glittered in reflected light. Twisp saw that tears rolled unchecked down the man’s cheeks and onto his dark, bare chest.
“I don’t know whether you’ll believe it,” Noah said, “but Ship has talked to me.”
Twisp stared at the tear-stained face, fascinated. For the first time in his life, Twisp felt himself to be in the presence of an authentic mystery.
“Ship spoke to me,” Noah said. “I smelled the stink of death and saw bones on the land still clotted with rotting flesh. Ship said: ‘I will not again curse the ground for mankind’s sake.’”
Twisp shuddered. Noah’s words came with a compelling force that could not be rejected.
Noah paused, then went on: “And Ship said, ‘The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.’ What do you think of that?”
For mankind’s sake, Twisp thought.
Noah frightened him then by speaking it once more aloud: “For mankind’s sake! As though we begged for it! As though we couldn’t work out something better than all that death!”
Twisp began to feel a deep sympathy for the carpenter. This Noah was a philosopher and a profound thinker. For the first time, Twisp began to feel that Islander and Merman might achieve a common understanding. All Mermen were not Gallows or Nakanos.
“You know what, Twisp?” Noah asked. “I expected better of Ship than slaughter. And to say He does it for mankind’s sake!”
Noah came across the shadowed work area, skirting the bench as though he could see it, and stopped directly in front of Twisp.
“I hear you breathing there,” Noah said. “Ship spoke to me, Twisp. I don’t care whether you believe that. It happened.” Noah reached out and grasped Twisp’s shoulder, moved the hand downward and explored the length of Twisp’s left arm, then returned to trace a finger over Twisp’s face.
“Your arm is long,” Noah said. “Don’t see anything wrong in that if it’s useful. You got a good face. Lots of wrinkles. You live outside a lot. You see any sign of my Abimael yet?”
Twisp swallowed. “No.”
“Don’t you be frightened of me just because I talk to Ship,” Noah said. “This new ark of ours is out on dry land once and for all. We’re going to leave the sea.”
Noah pulled away from Twisp and returned to the workbench.
A hand touched Twisp’s right arm. Startled, he whirled and confronted Nakano. The big Merman had approached without a sound.
“Gallow wants to see you now,” Nakano said.
“Where is that Abimael?” Noah asked.
Chapter 42
And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off.
—Genesis 8:11, The Christian Book of the Dead
Duque ignored the gasps of the watchers ringed around the constant gloom of the Vata Pool. His ears did not register the strangled moan that came clearly from the wide, flaccid throat of the C/P. The heavy fist that Vata clamped to his gen
itals captured Duque’s attention completely. Her fervor hurled him painfully out of pseudosleep, but her touch softened with every blink. The poolside gasps were replaced by sporadic mutterings and a few hushed giggles. When Duque’s hand began its complementary stroking of Vata’s huge body the room stilled. Vata moaned. The poolside watchers were soaked by the wave set up under the rhythmic strokes of her mighty hips.
“They’re going to pair!”
“Her eyes are open,” one said, “and look, they move!”
Vata licked her lips, pinned Duque to the bottom of the pool and straddled him there. Her head and the tops of her shoulders broke the surface and she gasped great, long breaths with her head thrown back.
“Yes!” Vata said, and the C/P’s mind registered, Her first word in almost three hundred years. How could the circumstances of that first word be explained to the faithful?
It’s to punish me! The thought flooded Simone Rocksack’s mind. She saw it all. The C/P wondered, then, what sort of punishment Vata might have in mind for Gallow.
It was then the C/P noted that the sloshing from the Vata Pool was not all resulting from the activity inside. The decks themselves heaved in the same slow rhythm.
“What’s happening?” The C/P caught herself muttering the question and glanced around to see that she had not been overheard.
A series of tight-throated moans from Vata, then another explosive, breathless “Yes!” Duque was nearly undetectable under her rippling flanks and hamlike hands.
The C/P’s eyes widened in horror and humiliation as she realized that Vata’s performance with Duque was a grotesque parody of her last hours with Gallow. Her position wouldn’t even allow her to leave the room, to escape the heat that crept outward from the collar of her blue robe to burn her cheeks and her breasts. A trace of sweat graced her upper lip and temples.
Someone burst into the room and shouted, “The kelp!” The voice strained to reach over the babblings of a crowd that was well into a serious hysteria. “The kelp’s rocking the Island. It’s rocking the whole fucking sea!”
The little stump-legged messenger clapped a fingerless hand over his mouth when he caught sight of the C/P.
There were three sudden cries that brought a chill to the C/P’s spine; Vata’s thighs shuddered in their grip on Duque and Vata fell back into the pool, wide-eyed and smiling, still anchored to him by their short but stout tether.
The heavy rocking of the decks slackened. The crowd at poolside had stilled with the outburst from Vata. The C/P knew better than to lose this moment. She swallowed hard, lifted her robe to clear her ankles and knelt at the rim of the quieting pool.
“Let us pray,” she said, and bowed her head. Think, she thought to herself, think! Her eyes squinted shut against fear, reality and those difficult traitors, tears.
Chapter 43
Physically, we are created by our reverie—created and limited by our reverie—for it is the reverie which delineates the furthest limits of our minds.
—Gaston Bachelard, “The Poetics of Reverie,” from The Handbook of the Chaplain/Psychiatrist
On the way down to confront Gallow, Twisp ignored the spying devices in the ceiling and spoke openly to Nakano. Twisp no longer doubted that Nakano was playing a devious double game. What did it matter? Meeting the carpenter, Noah, had heartened Twisp. Gallow would have to accept the new realities of Pandora. The kelp wanted him dead and would have him dead. The open land belonged to everyone. Gallow could only delay the inevitable; he could not prevent it. He was a prisoner here. All of his people were prisoners here.
Nakano only laughed when Twisp spoke of this. “He knows he’s a prisoner. He knows Kareen and Scudi are out there, one step out of reach.”
“He’ll never get them!” Twisp said. “Maybe not. But he has the Chief Justice. A bargain may be possible.”
“It’s strange,” Twisp said. “Before I met that carpenter up there, I didn’t really know what I was bargaining for.”
“What carpenter?” Nakano asked.
“The man I was talking to topside. Noah. Didn’t you hear him talking about the ark and Ship speaking to him?”
“There was no man up there! You were alone.”
“He was right there! How could you have missed him? Long beard down to here.” Twisp passed a hand across his belt line. “He was calling for a child—Abimael.”
“You must’ve been hallucinating,” Nakano said, his voice mild. “You were probably narced by the dive.”
“He gave me a cake,” Twisp whispered.
Remembering the fruity flavor of the cake, the sticky feeling of it on his fingers, Twisp lifted his right hand to the level of his eyes and rubbed his fingers together. There was no stickiness. He smelled the fingers. No smell of the cake. He touched his tongue to his fingers. No taste of the cake.
Twisp began to tremble.
“Hey! Take it easy,” Nakano soothed. “Anyone can be narced.”
“I saw him,” Twisp whispered. “We spoke together. Ship made him a promise: ‘I will not again curse the ground for mankind’s sake.’“
Nakano took a backward step away from Twisp. “You’re crazy! You were standing out in the sun all alone.”
“No workshop?” Twisp asked, his voice plaintive. “No bearded man in the shadows?”
“There were no shadows. You probably had a touch of the sun. No hat. Big Sun beating down on you. Forget it.”
“I can’t forget it. I felt him touch me, his finger on my face. He was blind.”
“Well, put it behind you. We’re about to see GeLaar Gallow and if you’re going to bargain with him you’ll need your wits about you.”
The moving cubicle came to a stop and the hatch opened onto a passage. Nakano and Twisp emerged and were flanked immediately by six armed Mermen.
“This way,” Nakano said. “Gallow is waiting for you.”
Twisp took a deep, trembling breath and allowed himself to be escorted along the Merman corridor with its sharp corners and hard sides, its unmoving, solid deck.
That Noah was really there, Twisp told himself. The experience had contained too much sense of reality. The kelp! He tingled out to the tips of his fingers with realization. Somehow, the kelp had insinuated itself into his mind, taken dominion over his senses!
The realization terrified him and his step faltered. “Here! Keep up, Mute!” one of the escort barked.
“Easy does it,” Nakano cautioned the guard. “He’s not used to a deck that doesn’t move.”
Twisp was surprised by the friendliness in Nakano’s voice, his sharpness with the escort. Does Nakano really sympathize with me?
They stopped at a wide, rectangular hatchway open to the passage. The room exposed beyond it was large by Islander standards—at least six meters deep and about ten or eleven meters wide. Gallow sat before a bank of display screens near the back wall. He turned as Twisp and Nakano entered, leaving the escort in the passage.
Twisp was immediately struck by the even regularity of Gallow’s features, the silkiness of that long golden mane, which reached almost to the Merman’s shoulders. The cold blue eyes studied Twisp carefully, pausing only briefly on
Twisp’s long arms. Gallow came to his feet easily as Nakano and Twisp stopped about two paces from him.
“Welcome,” Gallow said. “Please do not consider yourself our prisoner. I look upon you as a negotiator for the Islanders.
Twisp scowled. So Nakano had revealed everything!
“Not you alone, of course,” Gallow added. “We will be joined presently by Chief Justice Keel.” Gallow’s voice was softly persuasive. He smiled warmly.
A charmer, Twisp thought. Doubly dangerous!
Gallow studied Twisp’s face a blink, those cold blue eyes peeling the Islander. “I’m told”—he glanced at Nakano standing near Twisp’s left shoulder, then back to Twisp—“that you do not trust the kelp.”
Nakano pursed his lips when Twisp glanced at him. “It’s true, isn’t it?” Nakano asked
.
“It’s true.” The admission was wrenched from Twisp.
“I think we have created a monster in bringing the kelp to consciousness,” Gallow said. “Let me tell you that I have never believed in that part of the kelp project. It was demeaning … immoral … treachery against everything human.”
Gallow waved his hand, the gesture saying clearly that he had explained himself sufficiently. He turned to Nakano. “Will you ask the guard out there if the Chief Justice has recovered enough to be brought in here?”
Nakano turned on one heel and went out into the passage where a low-voiced conversation could be heard. Gallow smiled at Twisp. Presently, Nakano returned.
“What’s wrong with Keel?” Twisp demanded. “Recovered from what?” And he wondered: Torture? Twisp did not like Gallow’s smile.
“The Chief Justice, as I prefer to call him, has a digestion problem,” Gallow said.
A scuffling sound at the entrance to the room brought Twisp’s attention around. He stared hard as two of the escort brought Chief Justice Ward Keel into the room, supporting him as he shuffled stiffly along.
Twisp was shocked. Keel looked near death. Where his skin was visible it was pale and moist. There was a glazed look in his eyes and they did not track together—one peering back toward the passage, the other looking down where he placed each painful step. Keel’s neck, supported by that familiar prosthetic framework, still appeared unable to support the man’s large head.
Nakano brought a low chair from the side and placed it carefully behind Keel. The escort eased Keel gently into the chair, where he sat a moment, panting. The escort departed.
“I’m sorry, Justice Keel,” Gallow said, his voice full of practiced commiseration. “But we really must use what time we have. There are things that I require.”