“Sorry.” Panille bent to his controls. “But the kelp gives us a control that has kept Vashon out of real danger through this area for the past few years. Other Islands, too.”
What an astonishing claim! Keel thought. He noted from the edge of his vision how carefully Ale watched every move Panille made. The young man nodded at something on his readouts.
“Watch this,” he said. “Landro!” An older woman across the room glanced back and nodded. Panille called out a series of letters and numbers to her. She tapped them into her console, paused, hit a key, paused. Panille bent to his own board. A flurry of movement erupted from his fingers across the keys.
“Watch Shadow’s screen,” Ale said.
The screen showed a long stretch of waving kelp, thick and deep. The V-200 still blinked in the corner square. From it, Keel estimated he was looking at kelp more than a hundred meters tall. As he watched, a side channel opened through the kelp, the thick strands bending aside and locking onto their neighbors. The channel appeared to be at least thirty meters wide.
“Kelp controls the currents by opening appropriate channels,” Ale said. “You’re seeing one of the kelp’s most primitive feeding behaviors. It captures nutrient-rich colder currents this way.”
Keel spoke in a hushed whisper. “How do you make it respond?”
“Low-frequency signals,” she said. “We haven’t perfected it yet, but we’re close. This is rather crude if we believe the historical records. We expect the kelp to add a visual display to its vocabulary at the next stage of development.”
“Are you trying to tell me you’re talking to it?”
“In a crude way. The way a mother talks to an infant, that kind of thing. We can’t call it sentient yet, it doesn’t make independent decisions.”
Keel began to understand Panille’s know-it-all look. How many generations had Islanders been on the sea without even coming close to such a development? What else did Islanders lack that Mermen had perfected?
“Because it’s crude we allow plenty of margin for error,” Ale said.
“Four kilometers … that’s safe?” Keel asked.
“Two kilometers,” Panille said. “That’s an acceptable distance now.”
“The kelp responds to a series of signal clusters,” Ale said.
Why this sudden candor with Vashon’s highest Islander official? Keel wondered.
“As you can see,” Ale said, “we’re training the kelp as we use it.” She took his arm and stared at the widening channel through the kelp.
Keel saw Panille glance at Ale’s intimate grip and caught a brief hardening of the young man’s mouth.
Jealous? Keel wondered. The thought flickered like a candle in a breezy room. Perhaps a way to put Panille off-balance. Keel patted Ale’s hand.
“You see why I brought you in here?” Ale asked.
Keel tried to clear his throat, finding it painfully restricted. Islanders would have to learn about this development, of course. He began to see Ale’s problem—the Merman problem. They had made a mistake in not sharing this development earlier. Or had they?
“We have other things to see,” Ale said. “I think the gymnasium next because it’s closest. That’s where we’re training our astronauts.”
Keel had been turning slightly as she spoke, scanning the curve of screens across the room. His mind was only partly focused on Ale’s words and he heard them almost as an afterthought. He lurched and stumbled into her, only her strong grip on his arm kept him steady.
“I know you’re going after the hyb tanks,” he said.
“Ship would not have left them in orbit if it was not intended for us to have them, Ward.”
So that’s why you’re building your barriers and recovering solid ground above the sea.”
“We can launch rockets from down here but that’s not the best way,” she said. “We need a solid base above the sea.”
“What will you do with the contents of the tanks?”
“If the records are correct, and we’ve no reason to doubt them, then the riches of life in those tanks will put us back on a human path—a human way.”
“What’s a human way?” he asked.
“Why, it’s … Ward, the life forms in those tanks can …”
“I’ve studied the records. What do you expect to gain on Pandora from, say, a rhesus monkey? Or a python? How will a mongoose benefit us?”
“Ward … there are cows, pigs, chickens …”
“And whales, how can they help us? Can they live compatibly with the kelp? You’ve pointed out the importance of the kelp …”
“We won’t know until we try it, will we?”
“As Chief Justice on the Committee on Vital Forms, and that is who you’re addressing now, Kareen Ale, I must remind you that I have considered such questions before.”
“Ship and our ancestors brought—”
“Why this sudden religious streak, Kareen? Ship and our ancestors brought chaos to Pandora. They did not consider the consequences of their actions. Look at me, Kareen! I am one of those consequences. Clones … mutants … I ask you, was it not Ship’s purpose to teach us a hard lesson?”
“What lesson?”
“That there are some changes that can destroy us. You speak so glibly of a human way of life! Have you defined what it is to be human?”
“Ward … we’re both human.”
“Like me, Kareen. That’s how we judge. Human is ‘like me.’ In our guts, we say: It’s human if it’s ‘like me.’”
“Is that how you judge on the Committee?” Her tone was scornful, or hurt.
“Indeed, it is. But I paint the likeness with a very broad brush. How broad is your brush? For that matter, this scornful young man seated here, could he look at me and say, ‘like me’?”
Panille did not look up but his neck turned red and he bent intently over his console.
“Shadow and his people save Islander lives,” she remarked.
“Indeed,” Keel said, “and I’m grateful. However, I would like to know whether he believes he is saving fellow humans or an interesting lower life form?
“We live in different environments, Kareen. Those different environments require different customs. That’s all. But I’ve begun to ask myself why we Islanders allow o
urselves to be manipulated by your standards of beauty. Could you, for example, consider me as a mate?” He put up a hand to stop her reply and noticed that Panille was doing his best to ignore their conversation. “I don’t seriously propose it,” Keel said. “Think about everything involved in it. Think how sad it is that I have to bring it up.”
Choosing her words carefully, spacing them with definite pauses, Ale said, “You are the most difficult … human being … I have ever met.”
“Is that why you brought me here? If you can convince me, you can convince anyone?”
“I don’t think of Islanders as Mutes,” she said. “You are humans whose lives are important and whose value to us all should be obvious.”
“But you said yourself that there are Mermen who don’t agree,” he said.
“Most Mermen don’t know the particular problems Islanders face. You must admit, Ward, that much of your work force is ineffective … through no fault of your own, of course.”
How subtle, he thought. Almost euphemistic.
“Then what is our ‘obvious value’?”
“Ward, each of us has approached a common problem—survival on this planet—in somewhat different ways. Down here, we compost for methane and to gain soil for the time when we’ll have to plant the land.”
“Diverting energy from the life cycle?”
“Delaying,” she insisted. “Land is far more stable when plants hold it down. We’ll need fertile soil.”
“Methane,” he muttered. He forgot what point he was going to make in the wake of the new illumination dawning on him. “You want our hydrogen facilities!”
Her eyes went wide at the quickness of his mind.
“We need the hydrogen to get into space,” she said.
“And we need it for cooking, heating and driving our few engines,” he countered. “You have methane, too.”
“Not enough.”
“We separate hydrogen electronically and—”
“Not very efficient,” he said. He tried to keep the pride out of his voice, but it leaked through all the same.