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Boggs crawled up beside his mother so that his face was even with hers She had the wide-set eyesockets of herblue eyes Now a faint filain, and thrust the scraggly clump where she could see it
"You knohat this means," he said The crawl, the effort at talk exhausted hied at her hair and it, too, came out in a clump "You are, too Look here"
Her bleared eyes slowly tracked on the evidence that she didn&039;t need, and she nodded
"Take it," was all she said She bent her knee up to her skinny chest and Boggs clumsily unwound the line froe, and as far as he could see down to the shore others were crawling out of holes, out from under pieces of cloth and rubbish Here and there a wisp of ss found his cane, propped hiht and stuht himself too skinny to sweat, but sweat poured out of him nonetheless It was a cold sweat at first, but the effort of picking his way through the rubbish and the dying war tide It was an a and five or six e tossed a few breakers over the black rock, soaking the dozen licensed fishers over a half-hour to e to the base of the jetty His vision was failing, but he scanned the tidelands for signs of the security patrol
"Demon patrol," he muttered
Vashon security sent regular patrols through refugee areas Their stated purpose was to protect the people against hooded dashers and, lately, the terrifying boils of nerve runners that raced up fros shuddered He had seen a boil of runners attack a fah their eyes to clutch their sliht the fa It was not a pretty sight, and the patrol took their sweet ti them out
Everyone knew security&039;s real reason for patrolling the beach It was to keep the people fro the harvests that he said threatened the econon of these harvests yet, nor had he seen any sign of an econoht him the word, but to him it would always be just a word
A pyre smoldered to his left Three sher than high tide The poor couldn&039;t even h of them accu theuns They called it nerve runner practice
Souarded the pyre on the other side of the rocks, and when Boggs edged closer he could see that it was Silva He stopped and caught his breath Silva was a girl his own age, and the ruer sisters and brother while they slept No one raised a hand against her now as she tended their pitiful fire Boggs hoped she wouldn&039;t see hiht for it
He got down on all fours and crawled to the edge of the heap He reached a hand up, felt around the hot rocks until he touched so that didn&039;t feel like rock He jerked, jerked harder and so on one side, cold on the other He couldn&039;t bring hirabbed his cane and scuttled away Silva hadn&039;t seen hi her a fish," he promised himself "I&039;ll catch fish for mother and the boys, and one for Silva"
The quartertide patrol was nowhere to be seen
They&039;ve gone through already, he thought They&039;ve gone through and checked the licenses and now they&039;re up the beach checking for caches in the rocks
Boggs stood apart froht turn hihtfully theirs They ht steal his fish and line, and beat him as they had beaten his father onc
ut they&039;ll wait until I have the fish, he thought That&039;s what I&039;d do
He hunkered down against the jetty so that he was barely visible from the shore, tied a rock onto his line and baited the hooks from the charred mess he clasped in his fist
"It&039;s bait," he reminded hih energy to plunk his bait out very far, so he left it on the bottom about a half dozen h to takenow and then to h bait for two, possibly three ruff voice behind him startled hi
"You&039;re late getting out here if you got a license You only get one day, can&039;t afford to waste it"
Sogs sat wedged into a cleft He was skinny and salloith a wisp of a beard on his chin and no hair on his head The skin on the top of his head was peeling and sores dotted his face
"I&039;ured it was s, fingered the bait and put it doith a grunt
"Saal, it was ashahter, then it nearly jerked his arot one, boy," the old man said In his exciteot one, boy I&039;ll hel"
"No!"
Boggs wrapped the line around his wrist and levered it in about aand strong enough that it didn&039;t have to surface to fight But Boggs kept ainst a boulder and putting his skinny back into the pull He figured he had about twofor the black spots swirunt in surprise and scra left to pull with Boggs just lay there, wedged in the rock, the excess line tangled around both arms
The water broke with a rush in front of hiht hihed
"You caught a big one, boy!" it bellowed "Can you show h
"Are yo are yo ?"
"Security?" the voice asked, pulling hi his skinny buttocks on the rock "You bet your ass, boy Let&039;s see that license"
Hand over hand the security pulled Boggs closer Face to face, Boggs could see the breathing device dangling fro forehead
"You ain&039;t got one, do you?" He picked Boggs up and gave him a shake Every bone in his dried-up body rattled "Do you?"
"No, n "
"Stealing food froht to decide who&039;ll live and who&039;ll die? Only the Director has that right Well, fishbait, I&039;ll show you where the big ones are"
With that the man stuck his ainst his chest and fell backith hihed once at the tickle of water in his nose, then choked as it exploded into his frail lungs He saw nothing but light overhead where it fanned out from the surface, and the bubbles from his mouth where they joined it like a blossom to its stem
Kill therefore with the sword of wisdonorance that lies in your heart Be one in self-harreat warrior, arise
- from Zavatan Conversations with the Avata, Queets Twisp, elder
A silent Twisp and athered the spore-dust of the two fulfilled hylighters into their bags and trudged their loads to the high reaches Twisp had spent little tienerally an unsuspicious lot who sees Few of theh if others kneas certain they still would not interfere
The carnage beloould not reach theht him this Twisp tossed back his mantle, tucked up his sleeves and enjoyed his foray into the sun For these few hours, at least, he could put aside the es and codes and other accoutreht be called on to e Pandora forever Until that hour, he wanted to feel Pandora&039;s sunlight and the feh reaches
He and Mose sweated in the spore-dust gathering, and sweat plastered the fine blue dust to their hot skins The soul of Avata, bound up in the dust, leaked its way into his pores Twisp&039;s body picked its way up the trail, oblivious to the way his mind raced the kelpways of the past
He who controls the present controls the past, a voice in his mind told him, and he who controls the past controls the future
It was so he&039;d read in the histories, but he&039;d also heard it before from the invisible ht It enetic past, which helps us to plot a true course for our future
He watched his feet fall, one in front of the other, without the expense of thought They stepped over sharp stones, sidestepped a flatwing, all without interference from whatwatching another being, but froht, and smiled
Mose hunize He wondered where the younghim such a tune He had too much respect for another man&039;s reverie to ask him
Each contact with the kelp or the spore-dust had taken Twisp deeper into the details of humanity and deeper into his own past Yes, the loss of a love was painful and it seemed no less painful replayed Most of thesehis mother&039;s breast for the first time, the taste of the sweet round the swish-swoosh, swish-swoosh of her Islander heart
Twice the kelp had taken him further than that, into the past of his ancestors, into the void fro es He acquired wisdoes, a separateness from the worldly machinations of people like Flattery This hy the Director eventually discouraged, then finally forbade the kelp ritual
"Do you want your children to know your hts, your desires, all those dreams you couldn&039;t tell them?" he would ask
This warned Twisp far more about Flattery&039;s depth of paranoia than it did of the dangers of the kelp
Flattery successfully discouraged most Pandorans, at least the ones dependent on his settlements and his handouts His isolation of a kelp neurotoxin made the people even more cautious His development of an antidote became popular, since contact with the kelp was virtually unavoidable in many traditional professions
It could&039;ve been a placebo, Twisp thought What people expect the kelp to do to their minds is prettytheir dead up to the kelp had been all but abandoned Now the dead were burned, their memories dissipated with sed with his si bodies wash up on the beaches," he said "What little tideland we have stinks with the remains of our dead"
Twisp shook his head to clear it of Flattery, of the , nasal voice and supercilious e he wished the dust to lead hiht the deeper currents of history to address the probleer
"Humans have enslaved hualaxy shouldn&039;t require a new solution"
How had ancient huer?
With death, a voice in his mind told him Death freed the afflicted, or death freed them from the afflictor
Tanted Pandorans to be better than that Flattery&039;s as starvation, assassination, pitting cousin against cousin The footprints Twisp sought in the dust ood does it do for -armed murderer for a tall one