larger boat. Twisp ran a hand absently along the smooth organic tube of the thing, feeling its automatic response. He sighed. What could he hope to find on the bottom even if it did get shallow enough? He removed his hand from the little driftwatcher and lifted his attention to his surroundings.
The air felt warm, almost balmy and quite moist after the rains. The seas were calmer. Only that shifting, boiling current stretched ahead of him and for more than a kilometer on both sides. Odd. He had never seen a current quite like it, but then Pandora was always turning up new things. The one constant was the weather: It changed and it changed fast. He looked east at the cloud bank there, noting how far toward the horizon Little Sun had moved. Big Sun would come up soon - more light, more visibility. He glanced back at the strip of rich blue along the horizon. Yes, it was clearing. The dark bank of clouds east of him receded faster than his motor and the current chased it. Sunlight tapped his cheeks, his arms. He settled back beside the tiller, feeling the warmth like an old friend. It was as though Pandora had smiled upon his venture. He knew he was very close to where the wave wall had struck Vashon, and now visibility opened up. He moved his gaze around the horizon, seeking a black speck that was not the sea.
I'm here, kid.
His gaze, sweeping left, glimpsed a distinct line of froth. The sight of it prickled the hairs on his neck and sent a chill down his spine. He sat stiffly upright, staring.
A white line on the sea!
Wavewall? No ... it wasn't growing larger or receding. Just off to the left of his course and dead ahead a white line of foam grew more distinct as he approached. Sonar read fifty meters. He slipped the little driftwatcher from its container and fixed it to the coracle's side with the corneal end underwater. Fitting his forehead to the mouth aperture, he stared downward.
When his eyes adjusted, the view took a moment shaping itself into something identifiable. It was not the rolling contour of the deeps, which he had seen from the subs. It was not the jagged, surreal landscape of the danger areas. This bottom climbed high, almost to the surface. Twisp tore his gaze away from the driftwatcher and looked at the sonar reading: twenty meters!
He returned his attention to the bottom. It was so shallow he could see delicate, sinewy steps - curving terraces covered with kelp fronds. Rock buttresses and walls guarded the outer edges of the terraces. It all looked artificial ... manmade.
A core of the Merman kelp project! he thought.
He had seen many segments of the project, but this was vastly different and, he suspected, much larger. Merman engineers experimented with the kelp, he knew that. Supposedly some of the beds would live and grow even on land - if there ever was such a thing. Now Twisp found himself much closer to believing - if this bed was an example. Mermen were doing all that they claimed they'd do. He'd seen the fine latticework strung for kilometers undersea, a structure where the kelp could climb and secure itself. Undersea walls of rock sheltered other plantations. Islanders had complained about the latticework supports, arguing that they were nets to entangle the fishing subs. Twisp had doubted this argument, remembering all the stories of net-bound Mermen. Islander complaints had not stopped the project.
He gave up studying the bottom and looked at the foam line again. The silvery current that carried him curved off to starboard, sweeping close to that disquieting line. He guessed the intersection to be about five klicks off. A distant, recurrent roar accompanied the surfline.
Could it be waves foaming across one of the latticeworks? he wondered.
Both coracles bobbed heavily in a cross-chop, the towed craft pulling at its line and making his job at the tiller a tough one.
Surf! he thought. I'm actually seeing surf.
Islanders had reports of this phenomenon, few of them reliable. It occurred to him that they were unreliable only because the incidents were so infrequent. The great Island of Everett, almost as large as Vashon, had reported a surf sighting just before crashing bottom in a swing-surge of Pandora's sea that left it suddenly awash in a mysterious shallows. Everett had been lost without survivors, bottomed out, thirty years back.
The course beeper sounded.
Twisp boxed up the driftwatcher,