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light had been set into this construction. Nakano operated controls at the
side of the plaz with one hand. A circular hatch opened before them. They
swam into the lock, Nakano still holding Twisp's breather valve.
It was an oval space illuminated by brilliant blue lights set into the walls.
A
plaz hatch on the inner curve revealed an empty passage beyond.
The outer hatch sealed automatically behind them and water began swirling out
of the lock through a floor vent. Nakano released his grip on Twisp when
their heads emerged from the water.
Removing his mouthpiece, Nakano said: "You're being very intelligent for a
Mute. I could've shut off your air at any time. "You'd have been eelbait."
Twisp removed his own mouthpiece but remained silent. Nothing was important
except getting to Gallow.
"Don't try anything," Nakano warned. "I could break you into small pieces
with only one hand."
Hoping Nakano was playing a part for any would-be listeners, Twisp looked at
the
Merman's heavily muscled body. Nakano's threat could be real, Twisp thought,
but the Merman might be surprised at the strength in a net-puller's arms . . .
even if those arms did appear to be mutated monstrosities.
Nakano took off his tank and harness and held the equipment in his left hand.
Twisp waited for the last of the water to swirl through the floor vent, then
shucked off his own tank. He held it loosely cradled in one long arm, feeling
the weight of it and thinking how potent a weapon this would be if hurled
suddenly.
The inner hatch swung aside and Twisp tasted hot, moist air. Nakano pushed
Twisp ahead of him through the hatchway and they emerged into a rectangular
space with no other visible exit.
Abruptly, a voice barked at them from an overhead vent: "Nakano! Send the
Mute topside. You get off at level nine and come to me. I want to know why
you didn't bring the foil straight in."
"Gallow," Nakano explained, looking at Twisp. "After I get off, you go
straight on up."
Twisp's gut felt suddenly empty. How many people did Gallow have here? Was
Gallow so confident of his Security that he could release an Islander prisoner
to wander around without a guard? Or was this a ploy to disarm the stupid
Islander?
Nakano looked up at the vent. Twisp, peering at the ceiling construction, saw
the glittering oval of a Merman remote-eye.
"This man's my prisoner," Nakano said. "I presume there are guards topside."
"The Mute can't run away anywhere up there," Gallow's voice snapped. "But he
had better wait near the lift exit. We don't want to hunt all over for him."
Twisp felt himself get heavier then and realized that the entire rectangular
room was rising. Presently, it stopped, and a thin seam in the back wall
opened to reveal a hatch and a well-lighted passage with many armed Mermen in
it.
Gallow grasped Twisp's dive tanks by the harness. "I'll take them," he said.
"Wouldn't want you using these as a weapon."
Twisp released his hold on the equipment.
Gallow went out and the hatch sealed.
Again, the room lifted. After what seemed to Twisp an interminable wait, the
room again came to a stop. The hatch opening was haloed in dim light.
Hesitantly, Twisp stepped out into hot, dry air. He looked up and around at
high, black cliffs and open sky -- dawn light, still some stars visible. Even
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as he looked, Big Sun lifted over the cliffs, illuminating a great
rock-girdled bowl with much square-edged Merman construction in it and an LTA
base in the middle distance.
Open land!
Twisp heard someone nearby using a saw. The sound was reassuring, a thing
heard often in an Island's shop areas -- metal and plastics being cut by
carpenters for assemblage into necessary nonorganic utensils.
The rocks were sharp under Twisp's bare feet and Big Sun blinded him.
"Abimael, simple one! Come here out of the sun!"
It was a man's voice and it came from a building ahead of Twisp. He saw
someone moving in the shadows. The sound of sawing continued.
The air in his lungs felt hot and dry, not the cool metallic dampness of the
dive tanks nor the warm moisture that blew so often across Vashon. The
surface underfoot did not move, either. Twisp felt this as a dangerous, alien
thing.
Decks should lift and move!
All the edges are hard, he thought.
He stepped gingerly forward into the building's shade. The sawing stopped and
now Twisp discerned a figure in the deeper shadows -- a dark-skinned man in a
diaperlike garment. Long black hair frizzed out from the man's head and he
had a gray-streaked beard. It was one of the few beards Twisp had ever seen,
reaching nearly to the man's navel. Twisp had heard that some Mermen grew
beards and the beard-gene cropped up occasionally among Islanders, but this
luxurious growth was something new.
As the man moved in the shadows, Twisp saw the evidence of great physical
strength, particularly in the shoulders and upper body. This Merman would
make a good net-puller, Twisp thought. The Merman's midsection displayed the
preliminary settlings of middle age, however. Twisp guessed the man at a
hard-
driven forty or forty-five . . . very dark-skinned for a Merman. His skin
glowed with a layer of red within the leathery tones.
"Abimael, come now," the man said. "Your feet will burn. Come have a cake
till your mama finds you."
Why does he call me Abimael? Twisp glanced around at the basin enclosed by
the high black cliffs. A squad of Mermen worked in the middle distance,
sweeping the ground with flamethrowers.
It was a dreamlike scene in the hot light of swiftly rising Big Sun. Twisp
feared suddenly that he had been narced. Panille had warned him about it:
"Don't swim off into a deep area and you be sure to breathe slow and deep.
Otherwise you could be narced."
Narc, Twisp knew, was the Merman term for nitrogen narcosis, intoxication they
sometimes encountered in the depths when using pressurized air tanks. There
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