Twisp renewed his alertness, sensitive to any shift in Bushka's position. The coracle would transmit such movement ... should Bushka try to take him.
"You'd better believe it's happening," Bushka said. "There'll be no place for Islands pretty soon."
"Radio says Ward Keel's gone down under on some fact-finding mission," Twisp said. "You suppose he knew about it all along?"
A foot scraped the deck as Bushka shifted his weight. "According to Gallow, they did it without word topside."
Silence settled between them for a time. Twisp kept his attention on the guiding arrow, a red glowing pointer. How could some of the things Bushka said be believed? The barrier above the sea was real, though. And there was no doubt Bushka had run-for-it fever - something truly big and ugly chased him.
For his part, Bushka lay prisoned in his own thoughts. I should've had the guts to kill them. But the thing Gallow represented was bigger than Gallow. No mistaking that. To a historian, it was a familiar pattern. Ship's surviving records reported a plenitude of violence, leaders who tried to solve human problems by mass killing. Until the madness of Guemes, Bushka had thought such things distantly unreal. Now, he knew the madness, a thing with teeth and shadows.
Chapter 14
Pale dawn lightened the wavetops and revealed Twisp working over a small cooking burner on the seat beside him. Bushka wondered whether, in the growing clarity of daylight, Twisp might not rather foreclose on the loan of the kid's shirt and pants.
Seeing Bushka's attention on him, Twisp asked, "Coffee?"
"Thanks." Then: "How could I have been that blind and ignorant?"
Twisp stared at Bushka silently for a while, then asked, simply, "Going along with them, or letting them go?"
Bushka coughed and cleared his throat. His mouth felt full of lint as soon as he swallowed the hot coffee.
I'm still afraid, he thought. He looked up at Twisp, cooling his coffee at the tiller. "I've never been that afraid," he said.
Twisp nodded. The signs of fear on Bushka were easily read. Fear and ignorance drifted the same currents. There would be anger soon, when the fear receded. For now, though, Bushka's mind was chewing on itself.
"Pride, that's what made me do it," Bushka said. "I wanted Gallow's story, history in the making, political ferment - a powerful movement among the Mermen. One of their best took a liking to me. He knew I'd work hard. He knew how grateful I'd be ..."
"What if this Gallow and his crew are dead?" Twisp asked. "You scuttled their sub and only you are left to say what happened at Guemes."
"I tell you, I made sure they could escape!"
Twisp suppressed a grim smile. The anger was beginning to surface.
Bushka studied Twisp's face in the gray light. The fisherman was dark in the way of many Islanders who worked out in the weather. Vagrant breezes whipped Twisp's shaggy brown hair across his eyes. A two days' growth of beard shadowed his jaws and caught an occasional strand of hair. Everything in the man's manner - the steady movement of his eyes, the set of his mouth - spoke to Bushka of strength and resolution. Bushka envied the untroubled clarity in Twisp's gaze. Bushka was sure that no mirror would ever again return such clarity to his own eyes - not after the Guemes massacre. Bushka could see his own death in that butchery.
How could anybody believe I didn't know what was happening until it happened? How can I believe it?
"They tricked me good," Bushka said. "And oh, was I ready! I was all ready to trick myself."
"Most people know what it's like to be tricked," Twisp agreed. His voice was flat and almost devoid of emotion. It kept Bushka talking.
"I won't sleep for the rest of my life," Bushka muttered.
Twisp looked away at the surging sea around them. He didn't like the note of self-pity in Bushka's tone.
"What about the survivors of Guemes?" He spoke flatly. "What about their dreams?"
Bushka stared at Twisp in the growing light. A good man trying to save a partner's life. Bushka scrunched his eyes tightly closed but the images of Guemes imprinted themselves on his eyelids.
His eyes snapped open.
Twisp was staring intently off to the right ahead of them.
"Where's this Launch Base we're supposed to see at dawn?"
"It'll show before long."
Bushka stared at the lowering sky ahead of them. And when the Launch Base did show ... what then? The question tightened a band around his chest.