"My father cared for both Islanders and Mermen," Scudi said. "His money made the Search and Rescue system a system."

"Show me his den," Keel said. "I would like to use his comconsole."

She stood and crossed to a passage hatch on the far side of the atrium. "This way."

Keel motioned for Brett to stay behind while he followed Scudi. Perhaps if the young woman were away from the distractions of Brett's presence she might think more clearly - less defensive, more objective.

When Keel and Scudi had gone, Brett turned to the locked hatch. He and Keel and Scudi had been sealed away from whatever the exterior Merman world might reveal. Ale had wanted them to see that world, but others objected. Brett felt this the complete answer to his present isolation.

What would Queets do? he wondered.

Brett felt it unlikely that Queets would stand vacant-eyed in the middle of a strange room and stare stupidly at a locked hatch. Brett crossed to the hatch and ran a finger around the heavy metal molding that framed the exit.

Should've asked Scudi about communications systems and the ways they move freight, he thought. He could remember nothing of the passageways except their sparse population - sparse by crowded Islander standards.

"What are you thinking?"

Scudi's voice from close behind him startled him. Brett hadn't heard her approach over the soft carpet.

"Do you have a map of this place?" he asked.

"Somewhere," she said. "I'll have to look."

"Thanks."

Brett continued to stare at the locked hatch. How had they locked it? He thought of Island quarters, where the simplest slash of a knife would let you through the soft organics separating most rooms. Only the laboratories, Security's quarters and Vata's chamber could be said to have substantial resistance to entry - but that was as much a function of the guards as of the thickness of the walls.

Scudi returned with a thin stack of overlays, on which thick and thin lines with coded symbols indicated the layout of this Merman complex. She put it into Brett's hands as though giving away something of herself. For no reason he could explain, Brett found her gesture poignant.

"Here we are," she said, pointing to a cluster of squares and rectangles marked "RW."

He studied the overlays. This was not the free-flowing, action-dictated environment of an Island, where the idiosyncrasies of organic growth directed the kind of changes that flaunted individuality. Islands were personalized, customized, carved, painted and dyed - shaped to the synergistic needs of support systems and those the systems supported. The schematic in Brett's hands reeked of uniformity - identical rows of cubicles, long straight passages, tubing and channels and access tunnels that ran as straight as a sun's rays through dust. He found it difficult to follow such uniformity, but forced his mind to it.

Scudi said: "I asked the Justice if a volcano might have destroyed Guemes."

Brett raised his attention from the schematic. "What did he say?"

"There were too many people shredded and not burned." She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyelids. "Who could do ... that?"

"Keel's right about one thing," Brett said, "we need to find out who as soon as possible."

He returned his attention to the stack of colloids and its mysterious mazes. All at once he was awash with the simplicity of it. It was clear to him that Mermen must find it impossible to travel any Island, where sheer memory guided most people. He set about memorizing the schematics, with their lift shafts and transport tubes. He closed his eyes and confidently read the map that displayed itself behind his eyelids. Scudi paced the room behind him. Brett opened his eyes.

"Could we escape from here?" he asked, nodding toward the locked hatch.

"I can get us through the hatch," she said. "Where would you go?"

"Topside."

She looked at the hatch, her head shaking a slow "no" from side to side. "When we open the hatch, they will know. An electronic signal."

"What would those men do if we left here together?"

"Bring us back," she said. "Or try. The odds favor them. Nothing moves down under without someone knowing. My father had an efficient organization. That's why he hired men like those." She nodded at the hatch. "My father directed a very large business - a food business. He had much trade with Islanders ..."

Her eyes shifted away from his, then back. She indicated the walls and ceiling. "This was his building, the whole thing. As high as the docking tower, all of it." She defined an area on the schematics with a finger. "This."

Brett drew slightly away from her. She had defined an area as large as some of the smaller Islands. Her father had owned it. He knew that by Merman law she probably inherited it. She was no simple worker in the seas, an apprentice physicist who mathematicked the waves.

Scudi saw the look of withdrawal in his eyes and touched his arm. "I live my own life," she said, "as my mother did. My father and I hardly knew each other."

"Didn't know each other?" Brett felt shocked. He knew himself to be estranged from his own parents, but he had certainly known them.

"Until shortly before he died, he lived at the Nest - a city about ten kilometers away," Scudi said. "In all that time I never saw him." She took a deep breath. "Before he died, my father came to our room one night and spoke to my mother. I don't know what they said but she was furious after he left."

Brett thought about what she had said. Her father had owned and controlled enormous wealth - much of Merman society. Topside, such matters as Ryan Wang controlled were the property of families or associations, never of one person. Community was law.

"He controlled much of your Islands' food production," she continued. A flush bloomed across her cheeks. "A lot of it he accomplished through bribery. I know because I listened, and sometimes when he was gone I used his comconsole."

"What is this place, the Nest?" Brett asked.

"It is a city that has a high Islander population. It was the site of the first settlement after the Clone Wars. You know of this?"

"Yes," he said. "One way or another, we all came from there."

Ward Keel, standing in the shadows of the open passage from Ryan Wang's den, had been listening to this exchange for several minutes. He shuddered, wondering whether he should interrupt and demand some answers of this young woman. The anguish in her voice held Keel in place.

"Did those Islanders in the Nest work for your father?" Keel asked.

She didn't turn away from Brett to answer. "Some of them. But no Islander has any high position on anything. They are controlled by a government agency. I think Ambassador Ale is in charge of it."

"It seems to me that an Islander should head an agency that deals with Islanders," Brett said.

"She and my father were to be married," Scudi said. "A political matter between the two families ... a lot of Merman history that isn't important now."

"Your father and the ambassador - that would have linked the powers of the government and the food supply under one blanket," Brett said. The insight came so quickly that it startled him.

"That's all ancient history," Scudi said. "She'll probably marry GeLaar Gallow now." Her words came out with an underlying misery that held Brett speechless. He could see the dark confusion in her eyes, the frustration of being a piece in some unruled game.

In the shadows of the passage, Ward Keel nodded to himself. He had shuffled back from Wang's den with a feeling of helpless anger. It was all there for the discerning eye - the shifts of control, the quiet and remorseless accumulation of power in a few hands, an increase in local identity. A term from the Histories kept rattling in his memory: Nationalization. Why did it give him such a feeling of loss?