the countless Islander dead consigned to the sea by mourning relatives. How many of those had been absorbed by the kelp?
"So the kelp doesn't respond to you any better than it does to us," Nakano said.
"I fear not," Keel agreed.
"Kelp has a mind of its own," Nakano said. "I've said that all along."
Keel thought then about the enormous undersea gardens of kelp, forests of gigantic, ropy strands reaching upward toward the suns. He had seen holos of Mermen swimming through those green forests, flashing silvery figures among the fish and fronds. But no Merman had ever before reported kelp responding in the way it had done for the first humans on Pandora. This must mean full sentience was returning. It must be an avalanche of consciousness sweeping through the sea! Mermen thought they controlled the kelp and, through this, controlled the currents.
What if ...
Keel felt his heartbeat stutter.
A Merman sub had been crushed. He imagined those gigantic strands of kelp wrapped around the sub's hard surface. Cutters and burners flashed in his imagination. And the kelp writhed, sending out its messages of self-protection. What if the kelp had learned to kill?
"Where are we right now?" Keel asked.
"Near the Launch Base. There's no harm in your knowing; you can't escape."
Keel let his body feel the lift and fall of the craft around him. The light through the louvered vents had begun to dim. Nightfall? The foil rode on extremely calm seas, for which he was thankful. Vashon needed calm seas just now.
Near the Launch Base, Nakano says. How near? But even a short swim was impossible for this old body with its head supported on a prosthetic brace. He was a cripple in this environment. A Mute. No wonder these monsters sneered at him.
The foil's motion became even steadier and the light dimmer. Nakano flipped a switch, bringing soft yellow illumination into the room from lamps near the ceiling.
"We are going down to commune with the kelp," Nakano said. "We are in old kelp here, the kind that's most apt to respond to us."
Keel thought about this craft sinking into a forest of kelp. Whatever had happened to Tso the kelp now knew. How would the kelp use that knowledge?
I know what I would do with such people in my power, Keel thought. I'd squash them. They are lethal deviants.
***
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.
- William Blake, Shiprecords
Twisp considered abandoning the tow coracle with its supplies. A second foil had passed nearby without slowing down and he was worried.
We could pick up a few more knots that way, he thought. It galled him that the foils, already lost below the horizon, would be at Vashon by nightfall. The first one probably was arriving right now. He had to plod along in this damned creeping coracle!
He laughed at his own frustration. It relaxed him to laugh, even if it was just his usual short bark. Vashon might be aground, but the Island had touched bottom before, and in perilously more dangerous weather. Pandora had subsided into a calmer phase; his fisherman's instincts felt this. It had to do with the looping interrelationship of the two suns, distance from primaries and, just possibly, the kelp. Perhaps the kelp had finally reached an influential population density. Certainly, kelp fronds were more evident on the surface and the kelp's nursery effect showed itself in the recent fish population boom.
Winters on the open sea were easier every year. The familiar drone of the little engine, the balmy warmth under scattered clouds and the coracle's rhythmic wallow toward Vashon reminded Twisp that he would get there in his own good time.
And when I do, I'll straighten out this Bushka's story.
Vashon was not a community to take lightly. There was influence there, power and money.
And Vata, he thought. Yes, we have Vata. Twisp began to see the presence of Vata on his home Island in a new light. She was more than a link with humanity's Pandoran past. Living evidence that a myth had substance - that was what Vata and her satellite Duque represented.
"That last foil must've seen us," Bushka said. "Our position is known."
"You really think they'll alert your Green Dashers?" Twisp asked.
"Gallow has friends in high places," Bushka growled. He glanced significantly at Scudi, who was sitting back against a thwart, looking at Brett with a quizzical expression.