"The sub couldn't go fast in kelp. They'd have to cut their way through." He pulled himself closer to her along their belt line. "But that's not what's scaring you."
Scudi didn't say anything, she floated on her back under a swatch of kelp, conscious of a heavy iodine smell from the leaves. The weight of the kelp frond on her head was like an old, kindly hand. She knew they should be going. Daylight must not find them in sight of the foil. Her hand on the concealing kelp, she turned and a bit of the kelp came away in her grip. Immediately, she was thrust into the euphoria she had felt underwater. There was wind all around. A sea bird she had never seen shrieked somewhere in perfect time with the waves. The hypnotic effect unfocused her eyes, then centered them on a human being - prone and very old. An old woman. The old woman existed in a glowing space without any sense of world around her. The vision moved closer and Scudi tried to relax an intense pressure in her stomach. Monotony of waves and the shrieking bird helped, but the vision would not fade.
The old, old woman lay on her back in the blur of light. Alone ... breathing. Scudi noticed a clump of white hair jutting from a mole near the old woman's left ear. The eyes were closed. The old woman did not appear to be a mutant. Her skin was dark and heavily wrinkled. It gave off a greenish cast like the beginning patina on a piece of old brass.
Abruptly, the woman sat up. Her eyes remained closed but she opened her mouth to say something. The old lips moved slow as cold oil. Scudi watched the play of wrinkles released across the face by movement. The woman spoke, but there was no sound. Scudi strained to hear, pressing close to the wrinkled lips.
The vision dissolved and Scudi found herself coughing, retching, held across her floating survival kit by strong hands.
"Scudi!" It was Brett's voice in a loud whisper close to her ear. "Scudi! What's happening? You started to drown. You just sank under the water and ..."
She coughed up warm water and took in a choking breath.
"You just started sinking," Brett said. He was struggling to balance her on the kit. She pushed herself across its rasping surface and slipped back into the water, holding the kit by one hand. She saw immediately what Brett had done - set the kit's hydrostatic controls for surface and used it as a platform to support her.
"It was like you just went to sleep," Brett said. The worry in his voice seemed amusing to her, but she restrained a laugh. Didn't he know yet?
Brett glanced back at the foil about a kilometer away. Had they heard?
"Kelp," Scudi choked. Her throat hurt when she spoke.
"What about it? Did you get tangled?"
"The kelp ... in my mind," she said. And she remembered that old face, the open mouth like a black tunnel into a strange mind.
Slowly, hesitantly, she described her experience.
"We've got to get out of here," Brett said. "It can take over your mind."
"It wasn't trying to hurt me," she said. "It was trying to tell me something."
"What?"
"I don't know. Maybe it didn't have the right words."
"How do you know it wasn't trying to hurt you? You almost drowned."
"You panicked," she said.
"I was afraid you were drowning!"
"It let go of me when you panicked."
"How do you know?"
"I ... just ... know." Without waiting for more argument, she reset her survival kit's controls, pulled it under and began swimming away from the foil.
Brett, attached to Scudi by the belt line, was forced to follow, towing his own kit and sputtering.
Much later, on the coracle with Twisp and Bushka, Scudi debated recounting the kelp experience. It was late morning now. Still no sign of Vashon on the horizon. Brett and Bushka had fallen asleep. Before they had reached the coracle, Brett had warned her to say nothing of the kelp experience to Twisp, but she felt that this time Brett could be wrong.
"Twisp will think we're crazy as shit pumpers!" Brett had insisted. "Kelp trying to talk to you!"
It really happened, Scudi told herself. She looked from the sleeping figure of Brett to Twisp at the coracle's tiller. The kelp tried to talk to me ... and it did talk!
Brett came abruptly awake as Scudi shifted her position. She leaned back now with her elbows over the thwart. He looked up and met her eyes, realizing immediately what she had been thinking.
About the kelp!
He sat up and looked around at an empty horizon. The wind had picked up and there was spray in the air, scudding off the wavetops. Twisp swayed with a rhythm that marked both the pitch of the waves and the throb of the engine. The long-armed fisherman stared off across the water ahead of him the way he always did when they were chugging along in the fish runs. Bushka remained asleep near the bow cuddy.
Scudi met Brett's gaze.
"I wonder if they got their doctor," Brett said.
Scudi nodded. "I wonder why they needed one. Nearly everyone down under is trained as a med-tech."
"It was something pretty bad," Brett said. "Had to be."
Twisp shifted his position. He did not look at any of them and said, "You got doctors to spare down under."
Brett knew what the older man meant. Twisp had spoken of it bitterly many times, as had many Islanders. Topside technology, predominantly organic, meant that most topside biologists who might otherwise go into medicine were lured by higher-status maintenance positions in the cash business of the Islands' bioengineering labs. It was an ironic twist that had them keeping an Island itself fit while the Islanders made do with a handful of med-techs and a family shaman.
Bushka sat up, awakened by their voices, and immediately returned to his insistent fear. "Gallow will have that sub after us!"
"We'll be at Vashon by tomorrow," Twisp said.
"You think you can get away from Gallow?" Bushka snorted.
"You sound like you want him to catch us," Twisp said. He pointed ahead. "We'll be in kelp pretty soon. A sub would think twice about going in there."
"They're not Islander subs," Bushka reminded him. "These have burners and cutters." He sat back with a sullen expression.
Brett stood, one hand steadying him against a thwart. He stared ahead where Twisp had pointed. Still no sign of Vashon, but the water about a kilometer ahead gave off the dark, oily slackness of a heavy kelp bed. He sank back onto his haunches, still steadying himself against the top roll of the boat.
Kelp.
He and Scudi had inflated one of the rafts while still in the kelp bed and perilously close to the foil. Brett had been surprised how easily a raft glided over the big fronds. The kelp did not drag at the raft the way it did on a coracle's hull. The raft slid across the fronds with only the barest whisper of a hiss. But the stubby paddles, fitted into sleeve pockets of their dive suits, splashed water into the raft. And the paddles tended to pick up torn pieces of kelp.
Remembering, Brett thought: It happened. No one will believe us but it happened.
Even in memory, the experience remained frightening. He had touched a piece torn from the kelp. Immediately, he had heard people talking. Voices in many pitches and dialects had blended into the hiss of the raft's passage. He had known at once that this was not a dream or hallucination. He was hearing snatches of real conversation.
As he touched the torn bits of kelp in the night, Brett had felt it trying to reach up to him, seeking his hands on the paddles.
Scudi Scudi Scudi Brett Brett Brett