"There are political sensitivities -" She broke off. "Ward, our space project will continue whether I'm successful with you or not."

"Successful? With me?" There seemed to be no end to her manipulative schemes.

Ale exhaled, more of a hiss than a sigh. "If I fail, Ward, the chances for the Islanders look bad. We want to start a civilization, not a war. Don't you understand? We're offering the Islanders land for colonization."

"Ahhhh, the bait!" he said.

Keel thought about the impact such an offer might have on Islanders. Many would leap at it - the poor Islanders, such as those of Guemes, the little drifters living from sea to mouth. Vashon might be another matter. But Merman riches were being exposed in this offer. Many Islanders harbored deep feelings of jealousy over those riches. It would worsen. The complexity of what Ale proposed began to lay itself out in his mind - a problem to solve.

"I need information," he said. "How close are you to going into space?"

"Shadow," Ale said.

Panille punched keys on his console. The screen in front of him displayed a pair of images with a dividing line down the middle. On the left was an underwater view of a tower,- its dimensions not clear to Keel until he realized that the tiny shapes around it were not fish, but Mermen workers. The view on the right showed the tower protruding from the sea and, with the proportions clear from the left screen, Keel realized that the thing must lift fifty meters above the surface.

"There will be one space launch today or tomorrow, depending on the weather," Ale said. "A test, our first manned shot. It won't be long after that when we go up after the hyb tanks."

"Why has no Island reported that thing?" Keel asked.

"We steer you away from it," Panille said with a shrug.

Keel shook his aching head.

"This explains the sightings you've heard of, the Islander claims that Ship is returning," Ale said.

"How amusing for you!" Keel blurted. "The simple Islanders with their primitive superstitions." He glared at her. "You know some of my people are claiming your rockets as a sign the world is ending. If you'd only brought the C/P into this ..."

"It was a bad decision," she said. "We admit it. That's why you're here. What do we do about it?"

Keel scratched his head. His neck ached abominably against the prosthetic braces. He sensed things between the lines here ... Panille coming in on cue. Ale saying mostly what she had planned to say. Keel was an old political in-fighter, though, aware that he could not tip his hand too soon. Ale wanted him to learn things - things she had planned for him to learn. It was the concealed lesson that he was after.

"How do we make Islanders comfortable with the truth?" Keel countered.

"We don't have time for Islander philosophizing," she said.

Keel bristled. "That's just another way of calling us lazy. Just staying alive occupies most of us full-time. You think we're not busy because we're not building rockets. We're the ones who don't have time. We don't have time for pretty phrases and planning -"

"Stop it!" she snapped. "If the two of us can't get along, how can we expect better of our people?"

Keel turned his head to look at her with one eye and then with the other. He suppressed a smile. Two things amused him. She had a point, and she could lose her composure. He lifted both hands and rubbed at his neck.

Ale was instantly solicitous, aware of Keel's problem from their many encounters on the debate floor. "You're tired," she said. "Would you like to rest and have a cup of coffee or something more solid?"

"A good cup of Vashon's best would suit me," he said. He tugged at the prosthetic on his right. "And this damned thing off my neck for a while. You wouldn't happen to have a chairdog, would you?"

"Organics are rare down under," she said. "I'm afraid we can't provide Islander comforts for everything."

"I just wanted a massage," he said. "Mermen are missing a bet by not having a few chairdogs."

"I'm sure we can find you a massage," Kareen said.

"We don't have the high incidence of health problems that you have topside," Panille interrupted. Again, his eyes were on the screen filled with numbers and he spoke almost out of another consciousness. Still, Keel couldn't let the remark pass.

"Young man," he said, "I suspect you are brilliant in your work. Don't let the confidence of that accomplishment spill over into other areas. You have a great deal yet to learn."

Turning to lean on Ale's arm, he allowed himself to be assisted out into the passageway, feeling the stares that followed them. He was glad to get out of that room. Something about it wriggled chills up and down his spine.

"Have I convinced you?" Ale asked. He shuffled along beside her, his legs aching, his head filled with bits of information that he knew would soon inflict themselves upon his people.

"You have convinced me that Mermen will do this thing," he said. "You have the wealth, the organization, the determination." He lurched and caught himself. "I'm not used to decks that don't roll," he explained. "Living on land is hard for an old-timer."

"Everyone can't go onto the land at once," she said. "Only the most needy at first. We think other Islands will have to be moored offshore ... or rafts may be built for such nearby moorage. They'll be temporary living quarters until the agricultural system is well along."

Keel thought about this a moment, then: "You have been thinking this out for a long time."

"We have."

"Organizing Islanders' lives for them and -"

"Trying to figure out how to save the lot of you!"

"Oh?" He laughed. "By putting us on bedroom rafts near shore?"

"They'd be ideal," she said. He could see a genuine excitement in her eyes. "As the need for them vanished, we could let them die off and use them for fertilizers."

"Our Islands, too, no doubt - fertilizer."

"That's about all they'll be good for when we have enough open land."

Keel could not keep the bitterness out of his voice. "You do not understand, Kareen. I can see that. An Island is not a dead piece of ... of land. It's alive! It is our mother. It supports us because we give it loving care. You are condemning our mother to a bag of fertilizer."

She stared at him a moment, then: "You seem to think Islanders are the only ones giving up a way of life. Those of us who go back to the surface -"

"Will still have access to the deeps," he said. "You are not cutting the umbilical cord. We would suffer more in the transition. You seem willing to ignore this."

"I'm not ignoring it, dammit! That's why you're here."

Time to end the sparring, he thought. Time to show her that I don't really trust her or believe her.

"You're hiding things from me," he said. "I've studied you for a long time, Kareen. There's something boiling in you, something big and important. You're trying to control what I learn, feeding me selected information to gain my cooperation. You -"

"Ward, I -"

"Don't interrupt. The quickest way to gain my cooperation is to open up, share everything with me. I will help if that's what should be done. I will not help, I will resist, if I feel you are concealing anything from me."

She stopped them at a dogged hatch and stared at it without focusing.

"You know me, Kareen," he prompted. "I say what I mean. I will fight you. I will leave ... unless you restrain me ... and I will campaign against -"

"All right!" She glared up at him. "Restrain you? I wouldn't dare consider it. Others might, but I would not. You want me to share? Very well. The bad trouble has already started, Ward. Guemes Island is under the waves."

He blinked, as if blinking would clear away the force of what she'd said.

An entire Island, under the waves! "So," he growled, "your precious current controls didn't work. You've driven an Island onto -"