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Twisp s of him as "the boy" Sixteen years was more than boyhood, and a season at the nets had hardened his eyes and thickened his hands

Twisp often wondered what had h to Merood life there

He&039;s self-conscious about his eyes, Twisp thought But that&039;s soe, but not grotesque Those eyes could see well in almost total darkness, which turned out to be handy for round-the-clock fishing

That&039;s so the Merht They&039;re good at using people

A sudden lurch of the net caught both of them off-balance and they reached siain, the lurch

"Brett!" Twisp shouted, "Get us some slack while I haul in"

"But we can&039;t haul in," the boy said, "we&039;d have to dump the catch "

"There&039;s a Merman in the net! A Merman will drown if we don&039;t haul in" Tas already dragging in the heavy netlines hand-over-hand Theforearms nearly burst the skin with the effort This was one of those times he was thankful he had a ht behind hiraphed a frantic twisting and jerking froht, and strained even harder He prayed he could get hiht The first Merman he&039;d seen netbound was a woman Beautiful He shook off the memory of the crisscross lines, the net-burns in her perfect, paledead skin He hauled harder

Thirtyhis eyes and small blades of pain seared his back

"Queets!"

He looked from the net back to Brett and sahite-eyed terror Twisp followed the boy&039;s gaze What he saw three or four hundred meters to starboardoutcry that told That his eyes were barely able to confirm

"A hunt of dashers!"

He al his rock-hard palms

"Helpat the net Out of the corner of one eye he saw the boy grab the port line, out of the other he watched the steady froth of the oncoht Shit

"What&039;ll they do?" Brett&039;s voice cracked again

Twisp knew that the boy had heard stories Nothing could e forepaws and saberlike canines killed for the sheer bloody love of it These dashers wanted that Merun he kept wrapped in oiled cloth in the cuddy Frantically, he scrabbled for the weapon, but the first of the dashers hit the net head-on and their momentu on the flanks like a fist Twisp felt the two hard hits as he ca claws and fangs opened it wide The rest of the hunt closed in, scavenging bits of meat and bone thrown clear of the frothy mess that had been a Merman One dasher nipped another and, primed to kill, the rest turned on their wounded ore splattered the side of the coracle

No need wasting a lasgun charge on that iven up the hope they ht exterminate these terrible creatures

Twisp shook himself alert, fumbled for his knife and cut the netlines

"But why?"

He didn&039;t answer Brett&039;s protest, but toggled a switch under the scull housing One of the dashers froze not aback and forth, back and forth like a feather falling on a breezeless day The others made passes at the coracle but retreated once they felt the edge of the stunshield on their noses They settled for the stunned dasher, then thrashed their way out to sea

Twisp rewrapped his lasgun and wedged it under his seat

He switched off the shield then and stared at the ragged shards that had been their net

"Why&039;d you cut loose the net?" Brett&039;s voice was petulant, deht And losing the catch

"They tore the net to get theto get him," Twisp explained "We&039;d have lost the catch anyway"

"We could&039;ve saved soht here" Brett slapped the riainst a harsh blue sky

Twisp sighed, aware that adrenaline could arouse frustrations that needed release

"You can&039;t activate a stunshield with the lines over the side like that," he explained "It&039;s got to be all the way in or all the way out With this cheap-ass model, anyway " His fist slammed one of the thwarts

I&039;ht He took a deep breath, ran his fingers through the thick kinks of his black hair and calnal on his radio That would locate them and reassure Vashon

"They&039;d have turned on us next," he said He flicked a finger against the material between thwarts "This stuff is one thin membrane, two centimeters thick - what do you think our odds were?"

Brett lowered his eyes He pursed his full lips, then stuck the lower lip out in a half-pout His gaze looked away past a rising of Big Sun co Sun, just ahead of the horizon, a large silhouette glowed orange in the water

"Home," Twisp said quietly "The city"

They were in one of the tight trade currents close to the surface It would allow thedeal," Brett said "We&039;re broke"

Twisp sht," he said "And we&039;re alive"

The boy grunted and Twisp folded his meter-and-a-half ars and cast a grotesque shadow on the water He stared up across one of the elbows - caught as he so on the uniqueness of his led in his wayover at all But his arh bred for it

Maybe they were, he mused Who knows any uncoth and their wraparound quality, though Compensation

Maybe it&039;s the illusion of security, he thought, and his s but secure Nobody ent down to the sea was secure, and anybody who thought so was either a fool or dead

"What will Maritime Court do to us?" Brett&039;s voice was low, barely audible over the splashings of the waves and the continued ruffled s of the two squawks

Twisp continued to enjoy the drift and the warnawed his thin lips for a blink, then said, "Hard to say Did you see a Merman marker?"

"No"

"Do you see one now?"

He listened to the faint rustle across the coracle and knew that the boy scanned the horizon Twisp had picked the boy for those exceptional eyes That, and his attitude

"Not a sign," the boy said "He must&039;ve been alone"

"That&039;s not likely," Twisp said "Mermen seldom travel alone But it&039;s a sure bet soo to court?"

Twisp opened his eyes and saw the genuine fear in Brett&039;s downturned mouth The boy&039;s wide eyes were impossible moons in his unstubbled face

"Yep"

Brett plopped down on the thwart beside Twisp, rocking the little boat so hard that water lapped over the sides

"What if we don&039;t tell?" he asked "Hoould they know?"

Twisp turned away from the boy Brett had a lot to learn about the sea, and those orked it There were many laws, and most of them stayed unwritten This would be a hard first lesson, but what could you expect of a kid fresh fros like this didn&039;t happen at Center Life there wasnice Scilla andin the Island&039;s inner circle, they weren&039;t creatures with patterns and lives and a bright final flutter in the pal," Twisp said flatly "They know"

"But the dashers," Brett insisted, "ot the other Merman, too If there was another one"

"Dasher fur has hollow cells," Twisp said "For insulation and flotation They can&039;t dive worth a damn"

Twisp leveled his black eyes at the kid and said, "What about his fa back home? Now shut up"

He knew the kid was hurt, but what the hell! If Brett was going to live on the sea he&039;d better learn the way of it Nobody liked being surprised out here, or abandoned Nobody liked being boat-bound with ato feel the proximity and inevitable discoht he&039;d better start figuring out their case Netting a Merman was serious business, even if it wasn&039;t your fault

The fearful can be the ain power They becos of all that life around theths as well as the weaknesses, they fasten only on the weaknesses

- Shipquotes, the Histories

Except for the movements of the operators, and their occasional co, a stillness insulated froht topside beneath a hundred meters of water and the thick walls of this Merman complex The subdued remoteness filled Iz Bushka with disquiet He knew his senses were being assaulted by Mereness, an environment alien to most Islanders, but the exact source of his unease escaped hiht of water over his head gave Bushka no special concern He had overco his compulsory service in the Islander subs The attitude of superiority that he could detect in the Merlanced left to where his fellow observers stood slightly apart, keeping their distance from the lone Islander in this company

GeLaar Gallow leaned close to the woman beside him, Kareen Ale, and asked: "Why is the launch delayed?"

Ale spoke in a softly modulated voice: "I heard someone say there was an order fro"

Gallow nodded and a lock of blonde hair dropped to his right eyebrow He brushed it back with a casual movement Galloas quite the od, if the histories were to be credited As an Islander historian by avocation, Bushka believed the histories Gallow&039;s golden hair was long and softly waved His dark blue eyes looked de they encountered His even, white teeth flashed sh he displayed the perfect teeth in that perfect face only for the benefit of onlookers Soers and toes but that could be a jealous lie

Bushka studied Ale covertly It was said that Mer Ale toAle&039;s face was an exquisitely proportioned oval with full lips, widely spaced blue eyes Her nose, slightly upturned, showed a seline Her skin - perfectly set off by her dark red hair - was a pinkish translucence that Bushka thought would require salves and ointments when her duties took her topside into the harsh presence of the suns

Bushka looked past theraphic operational keys and large screens One screen showed brilliant light on the ocean surface far above thehter-Than-Air hydrogen sonde was being prepared for its upward drift and launch into Pandora&039;s turbulent atround

On Bushka&039;s right, a triple thickness of plazglas also revealed the LTA launch base with Mer around it Soen, all encased in their tight-fitting dive suits Others carried across their backs the organic airfish that Islander bioengineering had pioneered for sustained work undersea

We can produce it, but we cannot have the freedom of the undersea in which to use it

Bushka could see where the leechmouth of an airfish attached itself to a nearby Merined the thousands of cilia puen into the worker&039;s bloodstream Occasionally, a worker equipped with an airfish vented carbon dioxide in a strea bubbles from the corner of his mouth

How does it feel to float freely in the sea, dependent on the syht full of Islander resent surpassed that of the Merobbled up in the terrible need for valuable exchange