began to make love with him standing behind her, facing the mirror.
The vision ended with an angry white flash and the name Gallow blared across his consciousness. What he saw when he refocused on Vata's eye was danger.
"Danger," he muttered. "Gallow danger. Simone, Simone."
Vata's great brown eye closed and Duque felt relieved of a massive, clawlike grip that had held his guts tight. He lay back, breathing deeply, and listened as the knot of watchers grew and the babble of their speculations lulled him back to sleep.
When the C/P came to poolside there was nothing visible of the strange thing the watchers reported.
***
To survive Pandora's time of madness, we were forced to go mad.
- Iz Bushka, The Physics of Political Expression
Brett woke at dawn, feeling the coracle riding gently under him. Scudi lay curled against his side. Twisp sat at his usual place by the tiller but the boat chugged along on autopilot. Brett could see the little red traveler lights blinking across the face of the receiver, keeping them on course to Vashon.
Scudi sniffed in her sleep. A light tarp kept the damp night air from both of them. Brett inhaled a deep breath through his nose and faced the fact that he would never again accept the stench that surrounded every place Islanders lived. He had experienced the Mermen's filtered air. Now, the fish odors, the thick miasma from Twisp's body, all of it forced Brett to think even more deeply about how his life had been changed.
I smelled like that, he thought. It's a good thing Scudi met me in the water.
Mermen joked about Islander stink, he knew. And Islanders returning topside spoke longingly of the sweet air down under.
Scudi had said nothing on meeting Twisp, nor on boarding the coracle. But the distaste on her face had been evident. She had tried to hide it for his sake, he knew, but the reaction was unmistakable.
Brett felt guilty about his sudden embarrassment.
You shouldn't be embarrassed by your friends.
The first long shaft of dawn washed across the coracle, a lazy pink.
Brett sat up.
Twisp, his voice low and muffled at the stern, said, "Take the watch, kid. I'll need a few winks."
"Right."
Brett whispered to keep from waking Scudi. She lay curled up close, her back and hips fitting into the socket of his body as if they were built together. One hand lay flung backward around Brett's waist. He gently disengaged her light grip.
Looking up at the clear sky, Brett thought, It's going to be a hot one. He slid out from beneath the tarp and felt the damp bow spray wet his hair and face.
Brett brushed a thick lock of hair from his eyes and crept aft to take the tiller.
"Gonna be a hot one," Twisp said. Brett smiled at the coincidence. They thought alike now, no question about it. He scanned the horizon. The boats still glided down a narrow avenue of current between the hedging kelp.
"Aren't we going kinda slow?" Brett asked.
"Eelcells are getting low," Twisp said. He gestured with a foot at the telltale pink of discharge on the cellpack set into the deck. "Gonna have to stop and charge them or raise sail."
Brett wet a finger in his mouth and raised it to the air. There was only the coolness of their own passage - flat calm everywhere he looked, and gently undulating kelp fronds as far as the eye could see.
"We should be raising Vashon pretty soon," Twisp said. "I caught the Seabird program while you were asleep. Everything's going well, so they say."
"I thought you wanted some shut-eye," Brett said.
"Changed my mind. I wanta see Vashon first. 'Sides, I miss all the times we'd just sit up and shoot the shit. I've just been dozing and thinking here since I relieved you at midnight."
"And listening to the radio," Brett said. He indicated the half-earphone jacked into the receiver.
"Real interesting, what they had to say," Twisp said. He kept his voice low, his attention on the mound that was the sleeping figure of Bushka.
"Things are going well," Brett prompted.
"Seabird says Vashon is in sight of land that is well out of the water. He describes black cliffs. High cliffs and waves foaming white at the base. People could live there, he says."
Brett tried to visualize this.
Cliff was a word Brett had heard rarely. "How could we get people and supplies up the cliff?" Brett asked. "And what happens if the sea rises again?"
"Way I see it, you'd have to be part bird to