"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 ourselves 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.

"You use those beautiful separation membranes and the high pressure of deep water," she said.

"Score one for organics."

"But organics are not the best way to build a whole technology," she said. "Look how it's bogged you down. Your technology should support and protect you, help you to progress."

"That was argued out generations ago," he said. "Islanders know what you think about organics."

"That argument is not over," she insisted. "And with the hyb tanks ..."

"You're coming to us, now," he said, "because we have a way with tissues." He allowed himself a tight smile. "And I note that you also come to us for the most delicate surgery."

"We understand that organics once represented the most convenient way for you to survive topside," she said. "But times are changing and we -"

"You are changing them," he challenged. He backed off at the frustration visible in her clenched jaw, noting the flash of something bright in her blue eyes. "Times are always changing," he said, his voice softer. "The question remains: How do we best adapt to change?"

"It requires all of your energies just to maintain yourselves and your organics," she snapped, not softening. "Islands starve sometimes. But we do not starve. And within a generation we will walk beneath open sky on dry land!"

Keel shrugged. The shrug irritated the prosthetic supports for his large head. He could feel his neck muscles growing tired, snaking their whips of pain up the back of his neck, crowning his scalp.

"What do you think of that old argument in light of this change?" she asked. It was voiced as a challenge.

"You are creating sea barriers, new surflines that can sink Islands," he said. "You do this to further a Merman way of life. An Islander would be foolish not to ask whether you're doing this to sink the Islands and drown us Mutes."

"Ward." She shook her head before continuing. "Ward, the end of Island life as you know it will come in our lifetime. That's not necessarily bad."

Not in my lifetime, he thought.

"Don't you understand that?" she demanded.

"You want me to facilitate your kind of change," he said. "That makes me the Judas goat. You know about Judas, Kareen? And goats?"

A shadow of unmistakable impatience crossed her face. "I'm trying to impress on you how soon Islanders must change. That is a fact and it must be dealt with, distasteful or not."

"You're also trying to get our hydrogen facilities," he said.

"I'm trying to keep you above our Merman political squabbles," she said.

"Somehow, Kareen, I don't have confidence in you. I suspect that you don't have the approval of your own people."

"I've had enough of this," Panille interrupted. "I warned you, Kareen, that an Islander -"

"Let me handle this," she said, and quieted him with a lift of her hand. "If it's a mistake, it's my mistake." To Keel, she said, "Can you find confidence in retrieving the hyb tanks or settling the land? Can you see the value in restoring the kelp to consciousness?"

It's an act, he thought. She's playing to me. Or to Shadow.

"To what end and by what means?" he asked, stalling for more time.

"To what end? We'll finally have some real stability. All of us. It's something that'll pull all of us together."

She seems so cool, so smooth, he thought. But something's not quite right.

"What're your priorities?" he asked. "The kelp, the land or the hyb tanks?"

"My people want the hyb tanks."

"Who are your people?"

She looked at Panille, who said, "A majority, that's who her people are. That's how we operate down under."

Keel looked down at him. "And what are your priorities, Shadow?"

"Personally?" His eyes left the screen reluctantly. "The kelp. Without it this planet's an endless struggle for survival." He gestured to the screens, which, Keel reminded himself, somehow had Islander lives balancing on them. "You saw what it can do," Panille said. "Right now it's keeping Vashon in deep water. That's handy. It's survival."

"You think that's a sure thing?"

"I do. We have everything that was recovered from the old Redoubt after the inundation. We've a good idea what's in the hyb tanks. They can wait."

Keel looked at Ale. "Sure, things worry me. I know what's supposed to be in those tanks. What do your records say?"

"We have every reason to believe the hyb tanks contain earthside plant and animal life, everything Ship considered necessary for colonization. And there may be as many as thirty thousand human beings - all preserved indefinitely."

Keel snorted at the phrase "every reason to believe." They don't know after all, he thought. This is a blind shot. He looked up at the ceiling, thinking of those bits of plasteel and plaz and all that flesh swinging in a wide loop around Pandora, year after year.

"There could be anything up there," Keel said. "Anything." He knew it was fear speaking. He looked accusingly at Ale. "You claim to represent a majority of Mermen, yet I sense a furtiveness in your activities."