It was then the C/P noted that the sloshing from the Vata Pool was not all resulting from the activity inside. The decks themselves heaved in the same slow rhythm.

"What's happening?" The C/P caught herself muttering the question and glanced around to see that she had not been overheard.

A series of tight-throated moans from Vata, then another explosive, breathless "Yes!" Duque was nearly undetectable under her rippling flanks and hamlike hands.

The C/P's eyes widened in horror and humiliation as she realized that Vata's performance with Duque was a grotesque parody of her last hours with Gallow. Her position wouldn't even allow her to leave the room, to escape the heat that crept outward from the collar of her blue robe to burn her cheeks and her breasts. A trace of sweat graced her upper lip and temples.

Someone burst into the room and shouted, "The kelp!" The voice strained to reach over the babblings of a crowd that was well into a serious hysteria. "The kelp's rocking the Island. It's rocking the whole fucking sea!"

The little stump-legged messenger clapped a fingerless hand over his mouth when he caught sight of the C/P.

There were three sudden cries that brought a chill to the C/P's spine; Vata's thighs shuddered in their grip on Duque and Vata fell back into the pool, wide-eyed and smiling, still anchored to him by their short but stout tether.

The heavy rocking of the decks slackened. The crowd at poolside had stilled with the outburst from Vata. The C/P knew better than to lose this moment. She swallowed hard, lifted her robe to clear her ankles and knelt at the rim of the quieting pool.

"Let us pray," she said, and bowed her head. Think, she thought to herself, think! Her eyes squinted shut against fear, reality and those difficult traitors, tears.

***

Physically, we are created by our reverie - created and limited by our reverie - for it is the reverie which delineates the furthest limits of our minds.
- Gaston Bachelard, "The Poetics of Reverie," from The Handbook of the Chaplain/Psychiatrist

On the way down to confront Gallow, Twisp ignored the spying devices in the ceiling and spoke openly to Nakano. Twisp no longer doubted that Nakano was playing a devious double game. What did it matter? Meeting the carpenter, Noah, had heartened Twisp. Gallow would have to accept the new realities of Pandora. The kelp wanted him dead and would have him dead. The open land belonged to everyone. Gallow could only delay the inevitable; he could not prevent it. He was a prisoner here. All of his people were prisoners here.

Nakano only laughed when Twisp spoke of this. "He knows he's a prisoner. He knows Kareen and Scudi are out there, one step out of reach."

"He'll never get them!" Twisp said.

"Maybe not. But he has the Chief Justice. A bargain may be possible."

"It's strange," Twisp said. "Before I met that carpenter up there, I didn't really know what I was bargaining for."

"What carpenter?" Nakano asked.

"The man I was talking to topside. Noah. Didn't you hear him talking about the ark and Ship speaking to him?"

"There was no man up there! You were alone."

"He was right there! How could you have missed him? Long beard down to here." Twisp passed a hand across his belt line. "He was calling for a child - Abimael."

"You must've been hallucinating," Nakano said, his voice mild. "You were probably narced by the dive."

"He gave me a cake," Twisp whispered.

Remembering the fruity flavor of the cake, the sticky feeling of it on his fingers, Twisp lifted his right hand to the level of his eyes and rubbed his fingers together. There was no stickiness. He smelled the fingers. No smell of the cake. He touched his tongue to his fingers. No taste of the cake.

Twisp began to tremble.

"Hey! Take it easy," Nakano soothed. "Anyone can be narced."

"I saw him," Twisp whispered. "We spoke together. Ship made him a promise: 'I will not again curse the ground for mankind's sake.'"

Nakano took a backward step away from Twisp. "You're crazy! You were standing out in the sun all alone."

"No workshop?" Twisp asked, his voice plaintive. "No bearded man in the shadows?"

"There were no shadows. You probably had a touch of the sun. No hat. Big Sun beating down on you. Forget it."

"I can't forget it. I felt him touch me, his finger on my face. He was blind."

"Well, put it behind you. We're about to see GeLaar Gallow and if you're going to bargain with him you'll need your wits about you."

The moving cubicle came to a stop and the hatch opened onto a passage. Nakano and Twisp emerged and were flanked immediately by six armed Mermen.

"This way," Nakano said. "Gallow is waiting for you."

Twisp took a deep, trembling breath and allowed himself to be escorted along the Merman corridor with its sharp corners and hard sides, its unmoving, solid deck.

That Noah was really there, Twisp told himself. The experience had contained too much sense of reality. The kelp! He tingled out to the tips of his fingers with realization. Somehow, the kelp had insinuated itself into his mind, taken dominion over his senses!

The realization terrified him and his step faltered.

"Here! Keep up, Mute!" one of the escort barked.

"Easy does it," Nakano cautioned the guard. "He's not used to a deck that doesn't move."

Twisp was surprised by the friendliness in Nakano's voice, his sharpness with the escort. Does Nakano really sympathize with me?

They stopped at a wide, rectangular hatchway open to the passage. The room exposed beyond it was large by Islander standards - at least six meters deep and about ten or eleven meters wide. Gallow sat before a bank of display screens near the back wall. He turned as Twisp and Nakano entered, leaving the escort in the passage.

Twisp was immediately struck by the even regularity of Gallow's features, the silkiness of that long golden mane, which reached almost to the Merman's shoulders. The cold blue eyes studied Twisp carefully, pausing only briefly on Twisp's long arms. Gallow came to his feet easily as Nakano and Twisp stopped about two paces from him.

"Welcome," Gallow said. "Please do not consider yourself our prisoner. I look upon you as a negotiator for the Islanders.

Twisp scowled. So Nakano had revealed everything!

"Not you alone, of course," Gallow added. "We will be joined presently by Chief Justice Keel." Gallow's voice was softly persuasive. He smiled warmly.

A charmer, Twisp thought. Doubly dangerous!

Gallow studied Twisp's face a blink, those cold blue eyes peeling the Islander. "I'm told" - he glanced at Nakano standing near Twisp's left shoulder, then back to Twisp -"that you do not trust the kelp."

Nakano pursed his lips when Twisp glanced at him. "It's true, isn't it?" Nakano asked.

"It's true." The admission was wrenched from Twisp.

"I think we have created a monster in bringing the kelp to consciousness," Gallow said. "Let me tell you that I have never believed in that part of the kelp project. It was demeaning ... immoral ... treachery against everything human."

Gallow waved his hand, the gesture saying clearly that he had explained himself sufficiently. He turned to Nakano. "Will you ask the guard out there if the Chief Justice has recovered enough to be brought in here?"

Nakano turned on one heel and went out into the passage where a low-voiced conversation could be heard. Gallow smiled at Twisp. Presently, Nakano returned.

"What's wrong with Keel?" Twisp demanded. "Recovered from what?" And he wondered: Torture? Twisp did not like Gallow's smile.

"The Chief Justice, as I prefer to call him, has a digestion problem," Gallow said.

A scuffling sound at the entrance to the room brought Twisp's attention around. He stared hard as two of the escort brought Chief Justice Ward Keel into the room, supporting him as he shuffled stiffly along.

Twisp was shocked. Keel looked near death. Where his skin was visible it was pale and moist. There was a glazed look in his eyes and they did not track together - one peering back toward the passage, the other looking down where he placed each painful step. Keel's neck, supported by that familiar prosthetic framework, still appeared unable to support the man's large head.

Nakano brought a low chair from the side and placed it carefully behind Keel. The escort eased Keel gently into the chair, where he sat a moment, panting. The escort departed.

"I'm sorry, Justice Keel," Gallow said, his voice full of practiced commiseration. "But we really must use what time we have. There are things that I require."

Keel raised his attention slowly, painfully to look up at Gallow. "And what Gallow wants, Gallow gets," Keel said. His voice came out faint and trembling.

"They say you have a digestion problem," Twisp said, looking down at the familiar figure of the Islander who had served so long as a center of topside life.

One of Keel's oddly placed eyes moved to take in Twisp, noting the long arms, the Islander stigmata. Twisp's Islander accent could not be denied.

"You are?" Keel asked, his voice a bit stronger.

"I'm from Vashon, sir. My name's Twisp, Queets Twisp."

"Oh, yes. Fisherman. Why're you here?"

Twisp swallowed. Keel's skin looked like pale sausage casing. The man obviously needed help, not this demanding confrontation with Gallow. Twisp ignored Keel's question and turned on Gallow.

"He should be in a hospital!"

A faint smile tugged at Gallow's mouth. "The Chief Justice has refused medical help."

"Too late for that," Keel said. "What's the purpose of this meeting, Gallow?"

"As you know," Gallow said, "Vashon is grounded near one of our barriers. They have survived a storm, but took severe damage. For us, they are now a sitting target."

"But you're trapped here!" Twisp said.

"Indeed," Gallow agreed. "But then, not all of my people are with me. Others are placed strategically throughout Merman and Islander society. They still do my bidding."

"Islanders work for you?" Twisp demanded.

"The C/P among them." Again, that faint smile touched Gallow's mouth.

"That's remarkable after what he did to Guemes," Keel said. He spoke almost normally, but the effort of sitting upright and carrying it off was apparent. Perspiration dotted his wide forehead.

Gallow pointed a finger at Twisp, eyes glittering. "You have Kareen Ale, fisherman Twisp! Vashon has Vata. I will have both!"

"Interesting," Keel said. He looked at Twisp. "You really have Kareen?"

"She's out there in our foil, just within the kelp line where Gallow and his people can't go."

"I think Nakano could go there," Gallow said. "Nakano?"

"Perhaps," Nakano said.

"The kelp passed him unmolested coming in here," Gallow said, smiling at Twisp. "Doesn't it appear likely that Nakano has immunity from the kelp?"

Twisp looked at Nakano, who once more stood passively at one side, obviously listening but not focusing his eyes on any of the speakers.

It came to Twisp then that Nakano did, indeed, belong to the kelp. The big Merman had made some kind of pact with the monster presence in the sea! To Twisp, Nakano appeared the embodiment of Merman killer-viciousness, all of it concealed within a warmly reasonable mask. Was that Nakano's value to the kelp? There could be no missing the fanatic's tone when Nakano spoke of the kelp.

"The kelp is my immortality." That was what Nakano had said.

"Really, there should be no need for violence and killing," Gallow said. "We are all reasonable men. You have things you want; I have things I want. Surely there must be some common ground where we can meet."

Twisp's thoughts darted back to that odd topside encounter with the carpenter, Noah. If that was really the kelp projecting hallucination into his mind, what was the purpose? What was the message?

Slaughter was wrong. Even if Ship commanded it, slaughter was wrong. Twisp had felt this strongly in Noah's manner and words.

The ark has grounded and the land no longer will be cursed by Ship. Twisp knew vaguely of the ark legend ... was there a message from Ship here, sent through the kelp?

Gallow, on the other hand, represented treachery, a man who would do anything to gain his ends. Did the C/P really work for him? If so, an evil pact had been forged.

And what if Noah was just hallucination? Nakano could be right: I might have been narced.

Nakano focused abruptly on Twisp and asked: "Why aren't you nauseated?"

It was such a startling question, suggesting Nakano had read Twisp's mind, that Twisp was a moment focusing on the possible implications.

"Are you also sick?" Keel asked, peering up at Twisp.

"I am quite well," Twisp said. He tore his gaze away from Nakano and looked more closely at Gallow, seeing the marks of self-indulgence in the man's face, the sly twist of the smile, the frown lines in the forehead, the downturned creases at the corners of the mouth.

Twisp returned then to the knowledge of what he had to do. Speaking slowly and distinctly, directing his words at Gallow, Twisp said: "The imagination of your heart has been evil from your youth."

Ship's words as reported by Noah came easily from Twisp's mouth and once he had said them, he felt their lightness.

Gallow scowled, then: "You're not much of a diplomat!"

"I'm a simple fisherman," Twisp said.

"Fisherman, but not simple," Keel said. A chuckle turned into a weak, dry cough.

"You think Nakano has immunity from the kelp," Twisp said. "I was his passport. Without me, he would have joined the others. He has told you about the others that the kelp drowned, hasn't he?"

"I tell you the kelp is out of control!" Gallow said. "We have loosed a monster on Pandora. Our ancestors were right to kill it off!"

"Perhaps they were," Twisp agreed. "But we'll not be able to do it again."

"Poisons and burners!" Gallow said.

"No!" The word was torn from Nakano. He glared at Gallow.

"We will only prune it back to manageable size," Gallow said, his voice soothing. "Too small a number to be conscious but large enough to preserve our dead forever."

Nakano nodded curtly but did not relax.

"Tell him, Nakano," Twisp ordered. "Could you really return to the foil without me?"

"Even if the kelp passed me, the crew probably wouldn't let me aboard," Nakano said.

"I don't see how you're going to sink Vashon when it's already aground," Keel said. A painful smile curved the edges of Keel's mouth.

"So you think I'm helpless," Gallow said.

Twisp glanced back at the open hatchway into the passage, the guards clustered there trying to make it appear that they were not listening.

"Don't your people know how you've trapped them?" Twisp demanded, his voice loud and carrying. "As long as you live, they're prisoners here!"

Blood suffused Gallow's face. "But Vashon -"

"Vashon is in a perimeter of kelp that you can't penetrate!" Twisp said. "Nobody you send against Vashon can get through!" He looked at Keel. "Mr. Justice, isn't that -"

"No, no," Keel husked. "Go on. You're doing fine."

Gallow made a visible attempt to control his anger, taking several deep breaths, squaring his shoulders. He said: "LTAs can -"

"LTAs are limited in what they can do," Nakano interrupted. "You know what happened to the one I was on. They are vulnerable."

Gallow looked at Nakano as though seeing the man for the first time. "Do I hear my faithful Nakano correctly?"

"Don't you understand?" Nakano asked, his voice softly penetrating. "It doesn't matter what happens to us. Come, I will go into the kelp with you. Let it take us."

Gallow backed two steps away from Nakano.

"Come" Nakano insisted. "The Chief Justice obviously is dying. The three of us will go together. We will not die. We will live forever in the kelp."

"You fool!" Gallow snapped. "The kelp can die! It was killed once and that could happen again!"

"The kelp does not agree," Nakano said. "Avata lives forever!" His voice lifted on the last sentence and a wild light came into his eyes.

"Nakano, Nakano, my most trusted companion," Gallow said, his voice pitched to its most persuasive tone. "Let us not permit the heat of the moment to sway us." Gallow sent an apprehensive glance toward the listening guards at the hatchway. "Of course the kelp can live forever ... but not in such numbers that it threatens our existence."

Nakano's expression did not change.

Keel, watching the scene through pain-glazed eyes, thought: Nakano knows him! Nakano does not trust him!

Twisp entertained a similar thought and knew he had found the ultimate leverage to use against Gallow. Nakano can be turned against his chief.

Gallow constructed a rueful smile, which he turned toward Keel. "Mr. Justice Keel, let us not forget that the C/P is still mine! And I will have the hyb tanks."

That's his best shot! Keel thought.

"I'll bet the C/P doesn't know it was you who sank Guemes," Keel managed.

"Can anyone carry such an accusation to her?" Gallow asked. He looked blandly around him.

Is that our death warrant? Twisp wondered. Will we be silenced permanently? He decided on a bold attack.

"If we do not return to the foil, they will broadcast that accusation and Bushka's statement confirming it."

"Bushka?" Gallow's eyes showed both shock and glee. "Do you mean Bushka, the Islander who stole our sub?" Gallow smiled at Nakano. "Do you hear that? They know where to find the sub thief."

Nakano did not change expression.

Gallow glanced at the chrono beside his communications terminal. "Well, well! It's almost time for the midday meal. Fisherman Twisp, why don't you stay here with the Chief Justice? I'll have food sent in. Nakano and I will dine together and consult on possible compromises. You and the Chief Justice can do the same."

Gallow moved to Nakano's side. "Come, old friend," Gallow said. "I didn't save your life to provide myself with an opponent."

Nakano glanced at Twisp, the thought plain on the big face. Why did you save my life?

Twisp chose to answer the unspoken question. "You know why." And he thought: I saved you simply because you were in danger. Nakano already knew this.

Nakano resisted the pressure on his arm.

"Do not quarrel with me, old friend," Gallow said. "Both of us will go to the kelp in time, but it's too soon. There's much yet for us to do."

Slowly, Nakano allowed himself to be guided from the room.

His muscles trembling so hard that his great head shook with visible tremors, Keel lifted his attention to Twisp. "We do not have much time," Keel said. "Clear that table at the end of the room and help me to stretch out on it."

Moving quickly, Twisp swept the objects off the table, then returned to Keel. Slipping his long arms under the Chairman, Twisp lifted the old body, shocked at how light the man was. Keel was nothing but thin bones in a loose sack of skin. Gently, Twisp carried the Chairman across the room and eased him onto the table.

Weakly, Keel fumbled with the harness of his prosthesis. "Help me get this damned thing off," he gasped.

Twisp unbuckled the harness and slipped the prosthesis away from Keel's back and shoulders, letting it drop to the floor.

Keel sighed with relief. "I prefer to leave this world more or less as I came into it," he grated, every word draining him. "No, don't object. Both of us know I'm dying."

"Sir, isn't there anything I can do to help you?"

"You've already done it. I was afraid I'd have to die in the midst of strangers."

"Surely, we can do something to ..."

"Really, there's nothing. The best doctors on Vashon have conveyed to me the verdict of that higher Committee on Vital Forms. No ... you are the perfect person for this moment ... not so close to me that you'll become maudlin, yet close enough that I know you care."

"Sir ... anything I can do ... anything ..."

"Use your own superb good sense in dealing with Gallow. You've already seen that Nakano can be turned against him."

"Yes, I saw that."

"There is one thing."

"Anything."

"Don't let them give me to the kelp. I don't want that. Life should have a body of its own, even such a poor body as this one I'm about to leave."

"I'll -" Twisp broke off. Honesty forced him to remain silent. What could he do?

Keel sensed this confusion. "You will do what you can," he said. "I know that. And if you fail, I am not your judge."

Tears filled Twisp's eyes. "Anything I can do ... I'll do."

"Don't be too hard on the C/P," Keel whispered.

"What?" Twisp bent close to the Chairman's lips.

Keel repeated it, adding: "Simone is a sensitive and bitter woman and - and you've seen Gallow. Imagine how attractive he would seem to her."

"I understand," Twisp said.