Twisp tried to catch snatches of the conversations from below them, but mostly it was words of nervousness that permeated this place. Gallow was not immune to it.
"The hyb tanks will be coming down soon," he said, "and I'll have them!"
Twisp looked out at all that kelp, remembering Nakano's words. "He needs your help."
"How will you recover the tanks?" Twisp asked, his tone reasonable. He felt no need to mention the ring of kelp around this rocky outcrop lifting from the sea. From this vantage, it appeared to Twisp that the kelp was even closer than it had been when he and Nakano had swum away from the foil.
"LTAs," Gallow said, pointing at the partly filled bags of three LTAs waiting on their pad. The Mermen working around the LTAs appeared to be the only purposeful figures in the basin.
"It would help, of course, if we had your foil," Gallow said. "I'm prepared to offer a great deal in return for that."
"You have a foil," Twisp said. "I saw it anchored next to the lee side of this place." He kept his tone casual, thinking how like so many other times this was - bargaining for the best price on his catch.
"We both know the kelp won't give passage to our foil," Gallow said. "But if you were to return to your foil with Nakano ..."
Twisp took a deep breath. Yes, this was like bargaining for his catch, but there was a profound difference. You could respect the fish-buyers even while you opposed them. Gallow revolted him. Twisp fought to keep this emotion out of his voice.
"I don't know that you have anything to offer me," he said.
"Power! A share in the new Pandora!"
"Is that all?"
"All?" Gallow appeared truly surprised.
"Seems to me the new Pandora's going to happen anyway. I don't see where you're going to have much influence in it, the kelp wanting your hide and all."
"You don't understand," Gallow said. "Merman Mercantile controls most of the food sources, the processing. Kareen Ale can be bent to our needs and her shares will -"
"You don't have Kareen Ale."
"With your foil ... and the people in it ..."
"From what I could see, Shadow Panille has Kareen Ale. And as far as Scudi Wang is concerned -"
"She's a child who -"
"I think maybe she's a very wealthy child."
"Exactly! Your foil and the people in it are the key!"
"But you don't have that key. I have it."
"And I have you," Gallow said, his voice hard.
"And the kelp has Chairman Keel," Twisp said.
"But it does not have me and I still have the means of recovering the hyb tanks. The LTAs will be clumsier and slower, but they can do it."
"You're offering me a subordinate position in your organization," Twisp said. "What's to prevent me from grabbing it all once I'm back on the foil?"
"Nakano."
Twisp chewed his lip to keep from laughing. Gallow had very little buying power. None at all, really, with the kelp against him and the foil in the hands of someone who wanted to beat him to the tanks. Twisp looked up at the sky. The tanks would be coming down within sight of this place, Gallow said. His people at the Launch Base had alerted Gallow. And that was another consideration: Gallow had followers in many places ... Islanders as well.
But the hyb tanks!
Twisp could not prevent a deep sense of excitement at the thought of them. He had grown up on stories speculating about the tanks' contents. They were a bag of prizes meant to humanize Pandora.
Could the kelp prevent that?
Twisp turned and looked at the LTAs. No doubt those things could move above the kelp's reach. But would the kelp let airborne humans pluck the prize from the sea? It all depended on where the tanks came down. There was kelp-free sea surface visible from this high point. A very uncertain lottery, though.
Gallow moved up beside Twisp to "share his view of the outpost's interior basin and its waiting LTAs.
"There's my fallback position," Gallow said. He nodded toward the LTAs.
Twisp knew what he would do now if this were bargaining for his catch. Threaten to go to another buyer. Get caustic and let this buyer know he had no status in the larger game.
"I think you're nothing but eelshit," Twisp said. "Concentrate on the facts. If the tanks land in kelp, you're finished. Without hostages, you're just a pitiful handful of people on one little bit of land. You may have followers elsewhere but I'm betting they'll desert you the second they recognize how powerless you really are."
"I still have you," Gallow grated. "And don't make any mistakes about what I can do to you!"
"What can you do?" Twisp asked, his voice at its most reasonable. "We're alone up here. All I have to do is grab you and dive off this place into the sea. The kelp will get us both."
Gallow smiled and slipped a lasgun from the pouch pocket at his waist.
"I thought you'd have one of those," Twisp said.
"I would take great pleasure in cutting you into pieces slowly," Gallow said.
"Except that you need me," Twisp said. "You're no gambler, Gallow. You like sure things."
Gallow scowled.
Twisp inclined his head toward the LTAs. The bags were beginning to swell. Someone was pumping hydrogen into them.
"Those are not a sure thing," Twisp said.
Gallow forced his features into a semblance of a smile. He looked down at the weapon in his hand. "Why are we arguing?"
"Is that what we're doing?" Twisp asked.
"You are stalling," Gallow said. "You want to see where the tanks come down."
Twisp smiled.
"For an Islander, you're pretty smart," Gallow said. "You know what I'm offering. You could have anything you want - money, women ..."
"How do you know what I want?" Twisp asked.
"You're no different from anyone else in that," Gallow said. He sent his glance along Twisp's long arms. "There might even be a few Mermen women who wouldn't find you objectionable."
Gallow pocketed his lasgun and displayed his empty hand. "See? I know what'll work with you. I know what I can give you."
Twisp shook his head slowly from side to side. Again, he looked at the LTAs. Objectionable? One step and he would have his long arms on the most objectionable human he had ever met. Two more steps and they would be over the side into the sea.
But then I might never know how it came out.
He thought about finding himself conscious in the kelp's vast reservoir of awareness. He shared Keel's revulsion to that end. Damn! And I couldn't help the old man! Gallow owes us for that!
A shadow passed across Twisp, bringing an immediate coolness from the breeze that tugged at him. He thought it just another cloud but Gallow gasped and something touched Twisp's shoulder, his cheek - a long and ropy something.
Twisp looked up into the base of a hylighter then, seeing the long, dark tentacles all around, feeling them grab him. Somewhere, he could hear screaming.
Gallow?
A flawless voice filled Twisp's senses, seeming to come at him along every nerve channel - hearing, touch, sight ... all of him was caught up in that voice.
"Welcome to Avata, fisherman Twisp," the voice said. "What is your wish?"
"Put me down," Twisp gasped.
"Ahhh, you wish to retain the flesh. Then Avata cannot put you down here. The flesh would be damaged, very likely destroyed. Be patient and have no fear. Avata will put you down with your friends."
"Gallow?" Twisp managed.
"He is not your friend!"
"I know that!"
"And so does Avata. Gallow will be put down, as you so quaintly phrase it, but from a great height. Gallow is no longer anything but a curiosity, no more than an aberration. Better to consider him a disease, infectious and sometimes deadly. Avata is curing the infected body."
Twisp grew aware then that he dangled high in the air, wind blowing past him. A great expanse of kelp spread out far below him. A sudden feeling of vertigo tightened his chest and throat, filled him with dizziness.
"Do not fear," the flawless voice said. "Avata cherishes the friends and companions of beloved Scudi Wang."
Twisp slowly twisted his head upward, feeling the ropy tentacles holding him tight around the waist and legs, seeing the dark underside of the bag that suspended this twining mass.
Avata?
"You see what you call hylighter," the voice told him. "Once more Avata spawns in the mother-sea. Once more there is rock. That which humans destroyed, humans have restored. Thereby, you learn from your mistakes."
A great feeling of bitterness welled up in Twisp. "So you're going to fix everything! No more mistakes. Everything perfect in the most perfect of worlds."
A sense of laughter without sound permeated Twisp then. The flawless voice came light and cajoling: "Do not project your fears upon Avata. Here is only the mirror that reveals yourself." The voice changed, becoming almost strident. "Now! Here below you have your friends. Treat them well and share your joys with them. Have not Islanders learned this lesson well from the human errors of the past?"
If war does come, the best thing to do will be to just stay alive and thus add to the numbers of sane people.
- George Orwell, Shiprecords
The forward bulk of Vashon was close enough in the darkness that Brett could pick out the lights of the more prominent structures. He sat beside Scudi in the control seats of the foil, hearing the low-voiced conversations behind him. Most of the Shipclones had been deposited on the outpost amidst the fearful and chastened Green Dashers. The task of feeding all those newcomers had become a primary problem. Only a representative few of the people from the hyb tanks remained in the foil. The Clone called Bickel stood close behind Brett, watching the same night view of their approach to Vashon.
That Bickel would be one to watch, Brett thought. A demanding, powerful man. And large. All of these Shipclones were big! This amplified the food problem in a daunting way.
Someone came up from the rear of the cabin and stopped near the big Shipclone.
"There will be a lot of debriefing once we get there." The voice was Kareen Ale's.
Brett heard Twisp cough at the rear of the cabin. Debriefing? Probably. Some of the old routines still had value. Twisp's experience in the grip of the hylighter must be added to all of the other new knowledge.
... beloved Scudi Wang.
Brett glanced at Scudi's profile outlined in the dim lights from the instruments ahead of her. Something filled his breast at the very thought of Scudi. Beloved, beloved, he thought.
The twin lane of blue lights that marked Vashon's main harbor entrance loomed dead ahead. Scudi dropped the foil down onto its hull.
"They'll have medical people waiting for Bushka," Scudi said. "Better get him back to the hatch."
"Right." Ale could be heard leaving.
"Is that land just beyond the Island?" Bickel asked.
Brett shuddered. The newcomers always sounded so loud!
"It's land," Scudi said.
"It must be at least two hundred meters high," Brett said. He had to remind himself that neither this newcomer nor Scudi could see the land mass as clearly as he could.
The foil was into the enclosing arms of Vashon's harbor then. Brett popped the cabin emergency hatch beside him and leaned out into the wind, seeing the familiar outline of this haven he had known so intimately. That other time of intimacy with this place seemed to him now eons in the past. His position in the foil's control cabin gave him a commanding view of the approach - the rimlights, Islanders racing to grab the foil's lines as Scudi backed the jets. The hissing of the jets went silent. The foil rocked and then was snugged against the bubbly at the dockside. Scudi turned on the cabin lights.
Familiar faces looked up at Brett - Islander faces he had noticed in passing many times. And with them came the old familiar stench of Vashon.
"Whew!" Bickel said. "That place stinks!"
Brett felt Scudi's arm go around his neck and her head bent close to his. "I don't mind the smell, love," she whispered.
"We'll clean it up when we get on land," Brett said. He looked up at the great mass of starlighted rock that dominated the sky behind Vashon. Was that where he and Scudi would go? Or would they return down under and work to reclaim other places like this one?
A voice called up to them from dockside. "That you, Brett Norton?"
"Here I am!"
"Your folks are waiting at the Hall of Art. Say they're anxious to see you."
"Would you tell them we'll meet them at the Ace of Cups?" Brett called. "I've got some friends I want them to meet."
"Jesus Christ!" Bickel's voice was a sharp exhalation behind Brett. "Look at the deformities! How the hell can those people live?"
"Happily," Brett said. "Get used to it, Shipclone. To us, they're beautiful." Gently, he pressed back against Scudi, indicating that he wanted to get out of the control seats.
Together, they slid out of the seats and looked up at the towering figure of Bickel.
"What'd you call me?" Bickel demanded.
"Shipclone," Brett said. "Every living human being Ship brought to Pandora was a Clone."
"Yeah ... yeah." Bickel rubbed at his chin and glanced out at the throng on dockside. The newcomers emerging there towered over the Islanders.
"Jesus help us," Bickel whispered. "When we created Ship ... we never suspected ..." He shook his head.
"I would be careful who you tell your story of Ship's origin," Brett cautioned. "Certain WorShipers might not like it."
"Like it or lump it," Bickel growled. "Ship was created by men like me. Our goal was a mechanical consciousness."
"And when you achieved this ... this consciousness," Scudi said, "it ..."
"It took over," Bickel said. "It said it was our god and we were to determine how we would worship it."
"How strange," Scudi murmured.
"You better believe it," Bickel said. "Does anyone here have any idea how long we were in hybernation?"
"What difference does it make?" Brett asked. "You're alive here and now and that's what you'll have to deal with."
"Hey, kid!" It was Twisp calling from the passageway. "Come on! I've been waiting for you dockside. Lots of things happening. We've got Merman Patrols underwater all around that land mass - burning dashers. Dashers want back on the land, too."
"We're coming." Brett took Scudi's hand and headed toward the passage.
"Vata and Duque are gone," Twisp said. "Someone broke open the Vata Pool and they're just gone."
Brett hesitated, feeling the sweat start in his hand against Scudi's. Gallow? No ... Gallow was dead. Then some of Gallow's people? He quickened his pace.
A raucous sound came from the dockside, echoing up the passage.
"What was that?" Scudi asked.
"Haven't you ever heard a rooster crow?" Bickel demanded from close behind them.
"A hylighter brought them," Twisp called ahead of them. "Chickens, they're called. They're something like a squawk."
In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.
- The Christian Book of the Dead
Vata lolled on a buoyant bed of kelp fronds, her head held high to give her a view across Duque nestled sleeping in the curve of her great left arm. The dawnlight of Little Sun cast a sharp horizontal illumination across the scene. The sea lifted and fell in gentle waves, their crests damped by the giant leaves.
When either of them hungered, minuscule cilia from the kelp wormed into a vein and nutrients flowed - kelp to Vata ... kelp to Duque. And back from Vata flowed the genetic information stored in its purest form within her cells: Vata to Avata.
What a wonderful awakening, Vata thought.
Probing kelp tendrils had crept through the walls of her pool in the depths of Vashon, admitting a great wash of sea water that swept away the watchers and the Chaplain/Psychiatrist. The swiftly darting tendrils had encased Duque and herself, pulling them out into the sea and up to the nighttime surface. There, a swift current had hurried them away from Vashon's injured bulk.
At some distance from the Island, hylighter tendrils had plucked the two of them from the sea and brought them to this place where only the sea prevailed.
In the grasp of the hylighter tendrils, Vata had found her true awakening.
How marvelous ... all of the stored human lives ... the voices ... what a wonderful thing. Strange that some of the voices objected to their preservation in the kelp. She had heard the exchange between Avata and one called Keel.
"You're editing me!" That was what Keel had said. "My voice had flaws and I could always hear them. They were part of me!"
"You live in Avata now." How all-encompassing, how calming that beautiful voice.
"You've given me an unflawed voice! Stop it!"
And true enough, when next she heard Keel's voice it had a different tone, something of hoarseness in it, throat clearings and coughs.
"You think you speak the language of my people," Keel accused. "What nonsense!"
"Avata speaks all languages."
That was telling him, Vata thought. But Duque, sharing her awareness of this internalized conversation, had grinned agreement with Keel.
"Every planet has its own language," Keel said. "It has its own secret ways of communication."
"Do you not understand Avata?"
"Oh, you have the words down well enough. And you know the language of actions. But you've not penetrated my heart or you wouldn't have tried to edit me and improve me."
"Then what would you have of Avata?"
"Keep your hands off me!"
"You do not wish to be preserved?"
"Oh, I have enough curiosity to accept that. You've showed us your Lazarus trick and I'm thankful I no longer have that old body's pains."
"Is that not an improvement, then?"
"You can't improve me! I can only improve myself. You and Ship can stuff your miracles! That's one of the real secrets of my language."
"A bit uncouth but understandable."
"That language was born on the planet where Lazarus lived and died and lived. My kind first learned to speak there! The original Lazarus knew my meaning. By all the gods, he knew!"
When Vata awakened Duque and expressed her puzzlement to him, Duque laughed. "You see?" he shouted. "We care who forces our dreams onto us!"
