"What do we know?" she asked, adjusting the throttle. The foil lurched slightly and tipped, climbing one of the periodic high waves.
"We know they're holding the Chief Justice against his will. We know there are a lot of dead Islanders."
"What about his suspicions?"
"They're his suspicions," Brett said, "but don't you think he deserves a hearing?"
"If he's right, have you thought about what may happen if the Islands try to force his return?"
Brett felt a lump in his throat. "Would they kill him?"
"Somewhere, there seem to be people who kill," she said. "Guemes proves that."
"Ambassador Ale?"
"It occurs to me, Brett, that Hastings and Lonfinn may be watching her to see that she does not do something dangerous to them. My father was very rich. He warned me often that this created danger for everyone around him."
"I could just call in and tell Vashon I'm safe and returning," he said. He shook his head. "No. To those that listen in -"
"And they are listening," she added.
"It would be the same thing as just spilling the story right now," he said. "What'll we do?"
"We will go to the Launch Base," she said. "Not to Outpost Twenty-two."
"But you told Justice Keel -"
"And if they force him to talk, they will look for us in the wrong place."
"Why the Launch Base?" he asked.
"No single group controls that," she said. "That's a part of all of our dreams - get the hyb tanks down from where Ship left them in orbit."
"It's still a Merman project."
"It is all Merman. We will say our piece there. Everyone will hear it. Then all will know what a few people may be doing."
Brett stared straight ahead. He knew he should feel elation at their escape. He was in the biggest vessel he had ever seen, rocketing along the wavetops at more than eighty knots, faster than he had ever gone before. But unknowns crowded in on him. Keel did not trust the Mermen. And Scudi was Merman. Was she being honest? Had he heard her real reasons for wanting him to avoid the radio? He looked at Scudi. For what other reason could she help him escape?
"I've been thinking," Scudi said. "If no word has reached them, your family will be sick with worry about you. And your friend, Twisp. Call Vashon. We'll make do. Maybe my suspicions are foolish."
He saw her throat pulse with a swallow and he remembered her tears over the heaped bodies of the Islanders.
"No," he said, "we should go to your Launch Base."
Again, Brett concentrated on the sea ahead of them. The two suns lifted heat-shimmers off the water. When he had been much younger, seeing the Island rim for the first time, the heat shimmers had created images for him. Long-whiskered sea dragons coiled above the ocean surface, giant muree and fat scrubberfish. The shimmer play now was nothing but heat reflected off water. He felt the warmth on his face and arms. He thought of Twisp leaning back against the coracle's tiller, eyes closed, soaking up the heat through his hairy chest.
"Where is this base?" he asked.
She reached up and turned a small dial below the overhead screen. Beside the dial, an alphanumerical keyboard glowed with its own internal lights. She typed HF-i, then LB-1. The screen flashed 141.2, then overprinted a spray of lines with a common focal point. A bright green spot danced at the wide outer arc of the lines. Scudi pointed at the spot.
"That's us." She pointed to the base of the spray. "We go here on course one forty-one point two." She pointed to a dial with a red arrow on the console in front of them. The arrow indicated 141.2.
"That's all there is to it?"
"All?" Scudi smiled. "There are hundreds of transmitter stations all around Pandora, a whole manufacturing and servicing complex - all to insure that we get from here to there."
Brett looked up at the screen. The spray of lines had pivoted until the bright green dot lay centered on course. The 141.2 still glowed in the lower left corner of the screen.
"If we require a course change, it will sound a klaxon and show the new numbers," she said. "Steeran homing on LB-one."
Brett looked out across the water beside them, seeing the spray kicked up by the foils, thinking how valuable such a system would be to Vashon's fishing fleet. The sun burned hot on him through the plaz, but the air felt good. Rich topside air blew in the vents. Scudi Wang was at his side and suddenly Pandora didn't seem to be the adversary that he'd always imagined. Even if it was a deadly place, it had its measure of beauty.
One measure of humanity lies in the lengths taken to right the wrongs perpetrated against others. Recognition of wrongdoing is the first crucial step.
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."