the lengths taken to right the wrongs perpetrated against others. Recognition of wrongdoing is the first crucial step.
- Raja Thomas, the Journals
Shadow Panille covered the dead Mute. He washed his hands in the alcohol basin beside the litter. The rest of the room bustled with the clink of steel instruments against trays. Low-voiced, one-word commands and grunts came from several busy groups of doctors and med-techs. Panille looked back over his shoulder at the long row of litters strung down the center of the room, each one surrounded by medics. Splashes and blotches of blood stained gray gowns and the eyes above the antiseptic masks looked more tired, more hopeless every hour. Of all the survivors brought in by the pickup teams, only two had escaped physical harm. Panille reminded himself that there were other kinds of harm. What the experience had done to their minds ... he hesitated to think of them as survivors.
The Mute behind Panille had died under the knife for lack of replacement blood. The medical facility had been unprepared for bleeders on such a tremendous scale. He heard Kareen Ale snap off her gloves behind him.
"Thanks for the assist," she said. "Too bad he didn't make it. This was a close one."
Panille watched one of the teams lift a litter and carry it toward the recovery area. At least a few would make it. And one of his men had said they were herding together the few fishing boats that had escaped and fled the drift. Panille rubbed his eyes and was immediately sorry. They burned from the touch of alcohol and started streaming tears.
Ale took him by the shoulder and led him to the sink beside the hatchway. It had a tall, curved spout that he could get his head under.
"Let the water run over the eyes," she said. "Blinking helps the rinse."
"Thanks."
She handed him a towel. "Relax," she said, "that's the last of them."
"How long have we been at it?"
"Twenty-six hours."
"How many made it?"
"Not counting those in shock, we have ninety still breathing in recovery. Several hundred with only minor injuries. I don't know. Fewer than a thousand, anyway, and six still under the knife here. Do you believe what this one told us?"
"About the sub? It's hard to write it off to hallucinations or delirium, considering the circumstances."
"He was clear-headed when they brought him in. Did you see what he managed to do with his legs? It's too bad he didn't make it; he tried harder than most people."
"Both legs severed below the knees and he managed to stop the bleeding himself," Panille said. "I don't know, Kareen. I guess I don't want to believe him. But I do."
"What about the part about the sub rolling upside-down before its dive?" Ale asked. "Couldn't that mean somebody just lost control of the machine? Surely no Merman would do something like that deliberately."
"That patient" - Panille waved towards the litter behind them - "claimed that a Merman sub deliberately sank their Island. He said he saw the whole thing, the sub came directly up through their center and -"
"It was an Islander sub," she insisted. "Must've been."
"But he said ..."
Kareen inhaled deeply and sighed. "He was mistaken, my dear," she said. "And to avoid serious trouble, we'll have to prove it."
They both stepped aside as two attendants carried the litter with the dead Mute out the hatchway, bound for the mortuary. Kareen began to recite what Panille knew would become the Merman line: "He was a Mute. Mutes don't have all of their faculties, even under the best of circumstances."
"You've been spending too much time with Gallow," Panille said.
"But look at what we had to work with here," she said. Her voice bordered on a whisper. Panille didn't like it, nor did he like the turn of conversation. Frustration and fatigue brought out a side of Kareen Ale that he had not known existed. "Missing parts, extra parts, misplaced parts." She gestured with a whimsical wave of her hand. "What their medical people do for an anatomy class boggles the mind. No, Shadow, it must have been an Islander sub. Some interior score they were settling. What could any of us gain by such an act? Nothing. I say we should have a drink. Just have a drink and forget it. How about it?"
"What he described was not an Islander sub," Panille insisted. "What he described was a kelp sub, with cutters and welders."
Kareen pulled him aside, as a mother might take a troublesome