Brett lay curled up, asleep.
"We don't know what they're saying on the radio," Bushka said. He looked at the device near Twisp's knee. When Twisp didn't respond, Bushka closed his eyes.
Scudi, shifting her attention from one Islander to the other during this exchange, watched a deep listlessness come over Bushka. The man gave up so easily! What a contrast with Brett.
Scudi thought hard about the escape from Gallow, paddling and sailing, homing on the locator beam from the coracle's transmitter. They had inflated only one of the small rafts from the survival kits, holding the other in reserve. Even this they had delayed until they were more than a kilometer from the foil.
It had been heavy going at first in the thick glut of kelp. The two of them, linked by a single belt line, tended to tangle in the surface fronds. Scudi had led the first stage of their flight, holding them hydrostatically balanced with their dive suit controls just under the surface. When they came up for air it was always beneath a cover of kelp and each time they expected to hear sounds of search and pursuit.
Once, they heard the foil start up, but it shut down immediately. Under the protective cover of a kelp frond, Brett whispered to Scudi: "They don't dare chase after us right now. Capturing that other foil is too important to them."
"The doctor?"
"Something more important than that, I think."
"What?"
"I don't know," Brett whispered. "Let's keep going. We have to be out of sight of them by daybreak."
"I keep worrying that we'll run into dashers."
"I'm keeping a grenade handy. They like to sleep in the kelp. We'll have to dive for it if we surprise one."
"I wish I could see better."
Brett took her hand and they moved through the water as silently as possible.
As they brushed through the thick fronds in their maddeningly slow passage, an odd sense of calm came over both of them. They began to feel almost invulnerable to dashers - any variety, green or black. Under the water, touching the kelp, they moved to deep and stately music, something not quite heard but recognized. When they surfaced for air, the world became different, another reality. The air felt clean and satisfying.
Breaking through a profound shyness, they told each other about this feeling. They both imagined telling the other and the telling came out just as they had imagined. They thought they could go on forever this way, that nothing could harm them.
At one break for air, Brett could no longer contain the sense of an alien experience. He put his mouth close to Scudi's ear. "Something's happening down there."
Both of them had grown up on stories of the old kelp days, the mystical detritus of their history, and each suspected what the other was thinking now. Neither of them found it easy to put into words.
Scudi looked back at the foil, which lay in a low outline under its anchor lights. It still seemed much too close. The foil itself appeared so innocent, its hatch a wink against the night.
"You hear me, Scudi?" Brett whispered. "Something's happening to us when we're under water." When she remained silent he said, "They say when you're under water sometimes it's like a narcotic."
Scudi knew what he meant. Cold and the deeps could do things to your body that you did not notice until your mind started to come apart at the dreams. But this was no depth narcosis. And the dive suits kept them warm. This was something else and, here on the surface, knowing they should not delay long, she felt suddenly terrified.
"I'm scared," she whispered, staring at the foil.
"We'll get away from them," Brett said, seeing the direction of her gaze. "See? They're not chasing after us."
"They have a sub."
"The sub couldn't go fast in kelp. They'd have to cut their way through." He pulled himself closer to her along their belt line. "But that's not what's scaring you."
Scudi didn't say anything, she floated on her back under a swatch of kelp, conscious of a heavy iodine smell from the leaves. The weight of the kelp frond on her head was like an old, kindly hand. She knew they should be going. Daylight must not find them in sight of the foil. Her hand on the concealing kelp, she turned and a bit of the kelp came away in her grip. Immediately, she was thrust into the euphoria she had felt underwater. There was wind all around. A sea bird