long life, not that he had ever felt a keen desire to go down under.
Admit it, he told himself. You were afraid because of all the stories - deprivation shock, pressure syndrome.
Now, for the first time in his life there was no movement of deck under his bare feet, no nearby sounds of human activity and voices, no hiss of organic walls against organic ceilings - none of the omnipresent frictions to which Islanders adjusted as infants. It was so quiet his ears ached.
Beside him in the room where Kareen Ale had left him "to adjust for a few moments" stood a large plazglass wall revealing a rich undersea expanse of reds, blues and washed greens. The subtlety of unfamiliar shadings held him rapt for several minutes.
Ale had said: "I will be nearby. Call if you need me."
Mermen well knew the weaknesses of those who came down under. Awareness of all that water overhead created its own peculiar panic in some of the visitors and migrants. And being alone, even by choice, was not something Islanders tolerated well until they had adjusted to it ... slowly. A lifetime of knowing that other human beings were just on the other side of those thin organic walls, almost always within the sound of a whispered call, built up blind spots. You did not hear certain things - the sounds of lovemaking, family quarrels and sorrows.
Not unless you were invited to hear them.
Was Ale softening him up by leaving him alone here? Keel wondered. Could she be watching through some secret Merman device? He felt certain that Ale, with her medical background and long association with Islanders, knew the problems of a first-timer.
Having watched Ale perform her diplomatic duties over the past few years, Keel knew she seldom did anything casually. She planned. He was sure she had a well-thought-out motive for leaving an Islander alone in these circumstances.
The silence pressed hard upon him.
A demanding thought filled his mind: Think, Ward! That's what you're supposed to be so good at. He found it alarming that the thought came to him in his dead mother's voice, touching his aural centers so sharply that he glanced around, almost fearful that he would see a ghostly shade shaking a finger of admonishment at him.
He breathed deeply once, twice, and felt the constriction of his chest ease slightly. Another breath and the edge of reason returned. Silence did not ache as much nor press as heavily.
During the descent by courier sub, Ale had asked him no questions and had supplied no answers. Reflecting on this, he found it odd. She was noted for hard questions to pave the way for her own arguments.
Was it possible that they simply wanted him down here and away from his seat on the Committee? he wondered. Taking him as an invited guest was, after all, less stressful and dangerous than outright kidnapping. It felt odd to think of himself as a commodity with some undetermined value. Comforting, though; it meant they would probably not employ violence against him.
Now, why did I think that? he wondered.
He stretched his arms and legs and crossed to the couch facing the undersea view. The couch felt softly supportive under him in spite of the fact that it was of some dead material. The stiffness of age made the soft seat especially welcome. He sensed the dying remora within him still fighting to survive. Avoid anxiety, the medics told him. That was most certainly a joke in his line of work. The remora still produced vital hormones, but he remembered the warning: "We can replace it, although the replacements won't last long. And their survival time will become shorter and shorter as new replacements are introduced. You are rejecting them, you see." His stomach growled. He was hungry and that he found to be a good sign. There was nothing to indicate a food preparation area in the room. No speakers or viewscreens. The ceiling sloped upward away from the couch to the view port, which appeared to be about six or seven meters high.
How extravagant! he thought. Only one person in all this space. A room this size could house a large Islander family. The air was a bit cooler than he liked but his body had adjusted. The dim light through the view port cast a green wash over the floor there. Bright phosphorescence from the ceiling dominated the illumination. The room was not far under the sea's surface. He knew this from the