"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. Would the Mermen believe? Even if they did believe, would they act on that belief in a way to protect Islanders?
Never trust a great man's love.
Keel looked down from the observation platform onto a nightmare scene of controlled pandemonium - rescue sleds wallowed into a small docking basin, coming through hatches lining the far wall of the courtyard below him. This was no nightmare, Keel reminded himself. Triage teams moved among the human shapes that littered the deck. Trauma teams conducted emergency surgery on the scene while other survivors were carried or carted off. The dead, and Keel had never imagined that much death, were stacked like the meat they were against the wall to his left. A long, oval port above the hatches gave a sea view of the arriving rescue sledges queued up and waiting their turns at the hatches. Trauma teams serviced these, too, as best they could.
Behind Keel, Brett uttered a sharp gasp as the shreds of someone's lower jaw tumbled to the deck from a body bag in transit to the mounting pile of similar bags against the wall. Scudi, standing beside Brett, shook with silent sobs.
Keel felt numb. He began to understand why Kareen Ale had sent Scudi to fetch him and Brett. Ale had not really grasped the enormity of this tragedy. Seeing it, she had wanted Islander witnesses to the fact that Mermen were doing everything physically possible for the survivors.
And she'll bring up the dirty work of the dead, he thought.
Keel glimpsed Ale's red hair among the medics working over the few survivors scattered across the courtyard. From the piles of dead, it was obvious that survivors were not even meeting the odds of pure chance. They were a tiny minority.
Scudi moved up beside him, her attention fixed on the deck below them. "So many," she whispered.
"How did it happen?" Brett demanded, speaking from beside Keel's left elbow.
Keel nodded. Yes, that was the real question. He did not want to conjecture on the matter, he wanted to be certain.
"So many," Scudi repeated, louder this time.
"The last census put Guemes at ten thousand souls," Keel said. This statement surprised him even as it escaped his mouth. Souls. The teachings of Ship did come to the surface in a crisis.
Keel knew he should assert himself, use the power of his position to demand answers. He owed it to the others if not to himself. The C/P would be after him the minute he returned, for one thing. Rocksack still had family on Guemes, of this Keel was certain. She would be angry, terribly angry in spite of her training, and she would be a force to reckon with.
If I return.
Keel felt sickened by the sight on the deck below him. He noted Scudi swiping at her tears. Her eyes were red and swollen. Yes, she had been helping down there, right in the middle of it, during the worst pressures.
"No need for you to stay here with me, Scudi," Keel said. "If they need you down -"
"I've been relieved of duty," she said. She shuddered, but her gaze remained on the receiving area.
Keel, too, could not take his attention from that scene of carnage. The receiving area had been cordoned off into sections by color-coded ropes. Emergency medical teams worked throughout the area, bending over pale flesh, moving patients onto litters for transfer.
A squad of Mermen entered from beneath the platform where Keel stood with Brett and Scudi. The Mermen began sorting through the sacks of bodies, opening them to attempt identification. Some of the bags contained only shreds and pieces of flesh and bone. The identification teams moved in a businesslike fashion, but where their jaws were visible, Keel detected clenched muscles. All of them appeared pale, even for Mermen. Several of the workers took pictures of faces and identifying marks. Others made notes on a portable trans-slate. Keel recognized the device. Ale had tried to interest his Committee in this system, but he had seen it as another way to keep the Islands in economic bondage. "Everything you write on the transmitter-slate is sorted and stored in the computer," Ale had said.
Some things are best not recorded, he thought.
A man cleared his throat behind Keel. Keel turned to find Lonfinn and another Merman standing there. Lonfinn carried a plaz box under his left arm.
"Mr. Justice," Lonfinn said. "This is Miller Hastings of Registration."
In contrast to the dark, heavyset Lonfinn, Hastings was a tall, dark-haired man with a thick lower jaw and unwavering blue eyes. Both men wore crisp Merman suits of plain gray cloth - the kind of smoothly pressed and well-tended clothing Keel had come to identify with the worst Merman officiousness.
Hastings had turned his attention to Brett standing a few steps to one side. "We were told we would find a Brett Norton up here," Hastings said. "There are a few formalities ... for yourself, too, I'm afraid, Mr. Justice."
Scudi moved behind Keel and took Brett's hand, an action that Keel's wide peripheral vision took in with some surprise. She was clearly frightened.
Hastings focused on Keel's mouth. "Our job, Mr. Justice, is to help you adjust to this tragic -"
"Shit!" Keel said.
Brett wondered whether he had heard correctly. The look of surprise on Hastings' face made it apparent that the Chief Justice and Chairman of the Committee on Vital Forms had, indeed, said "Shit." Brett looked at the Chief Justice's face. Keel had positioned himself with one eye on the two Mermen and the other eye still looking down on that bloody deck below them. It was a split of attention that appeared to disconcert the two Mermen. Brett found it natural; everyone knew that some Islanders could do this.
Hastings made another try: "We know this is difficult, Mr. Justice, but we are prepared for such matters and have developed procedures, which -"
"Have the decency to leave before I lose my temper," Keel said. His voice betrayed no sign of a quaver.
Hastings glanced at the plaz box under Lonfinn's arm, then at Brett.
"Hostility is an expected reaction," Hastings said. "But the sooner we overcome that barrier, the sooner -"
"I say it plain," Keel said, "leave us. We have nothing to say to you."
The Mermen exchanged glances. The looks on their faces told Brett that this pair had no intention of leaving.
"The young man should speak for himself," Hastings said. His tone was even and cordial. "What do you say, Brett Norton? Just a few formalities."
Brett swallowed. Scudi's hand in his felt slick with perspiration. Her fingers were tense sticks clenched between his own. What was Keel doing? More important, perhaps: Could Keel get away with it? Keel was an Islander and a powerful one, someone to admire. This was not the Island, however. Brett squared his shoulders in sudden decision. "Stuff your formalities," he said. "Any decent person would come another time."
Hastings let out a long breath slowly, almost a sigh. His face darkened and he started to speak but Keel cut him short.
"What the young man is saying," Keel said, "is that it's pretty insensitive of you to come here with your formalities while your cousins stack the bodies of our cousins against that wall down there."
The silence between the two groups became stiff. Brett could find no particular familial feeling toward the mangled dead being brought in from the depths, but he decided that the Mermen didn't need to know this.
Them and us.