on whether they had rescued the kid. Besides, the little he knew about Mermen made him that much more fascinated by them, and the prospect of contact excited him for its own sake.
Twisp began to build a fantasy - a dream-truth that Mermen had saved Brett. He scooped a handful of the kelp and found himself daydreaming that Brett had been rescued by a beautiful young Merman girl and was falling in love somewhere down under.
Damn! I've got to stop that, he thought. The dream collapsed. Bits of it kept coming back to him, though, and he had to repress them sharply.
Hope was one thing, he thought. Fantasy was quite another thing ... and dangerous.
***
This may be the better age for the Faith, but this is certainly not an age of Faith.
- Flannery O'Connor, from her letters, Shiprecords
Those who watched Vata that day said her hair was alive, that it clutched her head and shoulders. As Vata's agitation grew her shudders became a steadily progressing convulsion. Her thick spread of hair snaked itself around her and curled her gently into a fetal ball.
The convulsions tapered off and ceased in two minutes, twelve seconds. Four minutes and twenty-four seconds after that, the tendrils of her hair became hair again. A thick spread of it fanned out behind her. She stayed in that position, tight and rigid, through three full shifts of watchers.
The C/P was not the first to equate the agitation in the tank with the sinking of Guemes, nor was she the last. She was, however, the only one who wasn't surprised.
Not now! she thought, as though she could ever have found a convenient time for thousands of people to die. That was why she needed Gallow. This was something she could live with if it were done, but it was not something that she could do. None of that diminished the horrors she was forced to imagine as Vata lay writhing in her tank.
And scooped up like that by her hair! This thought raised every thin stalk on the back of the C/P's shoulders and neck.
At Vata's first abrupt stirrings, Duque had stiffened, flinched, then slipped quickly and deeply into shock. His only coherent utterance was a high-pitched, quickly blurted, "Ma!"
Those med-techs among the watchers, Islander and Merman alike, vaulted the rim of the pool.
"What's wrong with him?" a young clerk asked. She was chinless and hook-nosed, but not at all unpretty. The C/P noticed her wide green eyes and the white eyelashes that flickered as she spoke.
Rocksack pointed at the telltales above the monitor center across the pool. "Fast, high heartbeat, agitation, shallow breathing, steadily dropping blood pressure - shock. Nothing touched him and they've ruled out stroke or internal bleeding." The C/P cleared her throat. "Psychogenic shock," she said. "Something scared him almost to death."
***
Forceful rejection of the past is the coward's way of removing inconvenient knowledge.
- the Histories
The weather around Twisp had shifted from scattered showers to a warm wind with clear skies directly overhead. Little Sun was wending its way toward the horizon. Twisp checked the rain water he had recovered - almost four liters. He removed the cockpit cover, rolled it forward and lashed it in place where it could be snatched back quickly if the weather changed once more.
He thought only briefly of the daydream he had entertained about Brett and a beautiful Merman woman. What nonsense! Mermen wanted normal children. Brett would only find disappointment down under. One look at his big eyes and parents would steer their daughters away from him. Islander births might be stabilizing, more births in the pattern of Gerard's girls, more near-normals like Brett every season, but that changed nothing in basic attitudes. Mermen were Mermen and Islanders were Islanders. Islanders were catching up, though: fewer lethal deviants and longer life spans.
The warning beeper on Twisp's depth finder sounded once, and again. He glanced at it and reset the lower limit. The sea had been shallowing here for some time. Only seventy-five meters now. Fifty meters and he could start trying to see bottom. One of his dockside gifts had been a small driftwatcher, organic and delicately beautiful. It held corneal material at one end that would focus at his demand. At the other end, a mouth-like aperture fitted itself over his eyes. The thing could only exist immersed most of the time in nutrient, and it grew inexorably, eventually becoming too large for a small boat. Custom dictated that it then be passed along to a