thumb and forefinger still held in position over the vat.
This event redoubled C/P Simone Rocksack's efforts to effect the Islander move down under. Stories of "The Wrath of Vata" circulated freely and no one on the C/P's staff made any effort to sort fact from fantasy. Rocksack silenced one underling who objected to the rumors by saying, "A lie is not a lie if it serves a higher moral purpose. Then it is a gift."
Vata herself, locked inside her tank and her skull while generation after generation of her people evolved around her, explored her world with the tender new frond-tips of the kelp.
Kelp was fingertip and ear to her, nose and eye and tongue. Where massive stalks lazed on the sea's bright surface she witnessed pastel sunrises, the passage of boats and Islands, the occasional ravages of a hunt of dashers. Scrubberfish that cleaned the kelp's broadest leaves whiskered the deep crevasses of her opulent flesh.
Like herself, the kelp was single, incomplete, unable to reproduce. Mermen took cuttings, rooted them in rock and mud. Storms ripped whole vines loose from the mother plant and some of the wounded stragglers wedged safely into rock and grew there. For two and a half centuries, at least, the kelp had not bloomed. No hylighter broke the surface of the sea to rise on its hydrogen bag and scatter its fresh spores to the winds.
Sometimes in her sleep Vata's loins pulsed with an ancient rhythm and a sweet emptiness ached in her abdomen. These were the times she curled close to Duque, her massive body engulfing him in a frustrating approximation of an embrace.
Now her frustration focused on GeLaar Gallow. A jungle of kelp strained each strand to reach the walls and hatchways of Outpost 22, with no success. The perimeter was too wide, the stalks too short.
New pairs of eyes joined the kelp to reveal Gallow's treachery. The clearest of these eyes belonged to Scudi Wang. Vata enjoyed the company of Scudi Wang, and it became more difficult to let her go each time they met.
Vata met Scudi in the kelp. A few bright glimpses of a fresh young mind, and she searched for Scudi daily. When Vata dreamed the terrors of kelp, storm-ripped from its ballast-rock and dying, the touch of Scudi's skin on vine or frond smoothed those churning dreams to a warm calm. Those times Vata, in turn, dreamed back to Scudi. She dreamed small histories, images and visions, to keep the fear of kelp-madness out of Scudi's head. Vata had dreamed to others who had never come out of the dream. She knew now that Scudi's mother was one of those lost dreamers. Stunned by the hot dream sparking into her from the kelp, the woman had floated wide-eyed and helpless into a passing net. The tender airfish at her neck was crushed and she drowned. And the Merman crew supporting her had made no move to rescue her. Deliberate!
Vata watched the strange odyssey that worked its way back toward Outpost 22. She flexed her kelp when the gondola went down and acquainted herself with Bushka and Shadow Panille. This Panille, he was blood to her.
Brother, she thought, and marveled over the word. She trusted Bushka and Panille to Scudi's presence. The message she sent Scudi was simple and clear: Find Gallow, drive him out. Kelp will do the rest.
***
Life is not an option, it is a gift. Death is the option.
- Ward Keel, Journal
It was late evening, but Ward Keel had lost all inclination to sleep. He accepted the buzz of fatigue as a logical consequence of captivity. His eyes refused to stay closed. They blinked slowly and he glimpsed the brush of his long lashes in the plaz beside him. His brown eye faced itself in the plaz. It was a small dark blur. Beyond it lay the perimeter of kelp, almost gray at this depth. His prison cubby was warm, warmer even than his quarters on Vashon, but the gray of down under washed his psyche cold.
Keel had been watching the kelp for hours as Gallow's men streamed into the outpost. At first the kelp pulsed as usual with the current. Fronds waved at full extension downcurrent like a woman's long hair in an evening breeze. Now there was a different rhythm. And the larger kelp fronds downcurrent of the outpost stretched directly toward Keel. The currents were no longer consistent. The outpost was being battered by sudden changes of current that had the kelp