Bushka found no words to answer. He had always been proud of his Merman-normal appearance. He could pass without surgery.

Twisp pounded his fist against the rim of the coracle. It startled the caged squawks, who sat up and fluffed their feathers in frustration.

"She wanted kids ... with me," Twisp said. "Can you imagine that? Think of the surprises you'd find in the nursery when all these corrected, lying Mutes started bedding each other. And what about the kids growing up to find out that they're Mutes while their parents appear to be norms? Not for me!" His voice was husky. "No way."

Twisp fell silent, lost in his own memories.

Bushka listened to the slep-slep of waves against the coracle's sides, the faint rustling of the squawks preening and stretching in their cage. He wondered how many love affairs drowned on Twisp's style of principles.

"Damn that Jesus Lewis!" Twisp muttered.

Bushka nodded to himself. Yes, that was where the problem had started. Or, at least, where it was precipitated. The question remained for the historian: What made Jesus Lewis? Bushka looked at Twisp's arms - muscular, well-developed, tan and over half a length too long. The Island mating pool was still a genetic lottery, thanks to Jesus Lewis and his bioengineering experiments.

Twisp was still angry. "Mermen will never understand what growing up an Islander is like! Someone around you is always frail or dying ... someone close. My little sister was such a nice kid ..." Twisp shook his head.

"We don't say 'mutation' much except when we're being technical," Bushka prompted. "And deformity is a dirty word. 'Mistakes,' that's what we call them."

"You know what, Bushka? I deliberately avoid people with long arms. There are only a few of us in this generation." He raised his arm. "Are these a mistake? Does that make me a mistake?"

Bushka didn't answer.

"Damn!" Twisp said. "My apprentice, Brett, he's sensitive about the size of his eyes. Shit, you can't tell anything just by looking at him, but you can't tell him that. Ship! Can he ever see in the dark! Is that a mistake?"

"It's a lottery," Bushka said.

Twisp grimaced. "I don't envy the Committee's job. You have any idea of the grotesques and the dangerous forms they have to judge? How can they do it? And how can they guess at the mental mistakes? Those don't usually show up until later."

"But we have good times, too," Bushka protested. "Mermen think our cloth is the best. You know the price we get for Islander weaving down under. And our music, our painting ... all of our art."

"Sure," Twisp sneered. "I've heard Mermen pawing over our stuff. 'How bright! Such fun. Oh! Isn't this pretty? Islanders are so full of fun.'"

"We are," Bushka muttered.

Twisp merely looked at him for a long time. Bushka wondered if he had committed some unforgivable blunder.

Suddenly, Twisp smiled. "You're right. Damn! No Merman knows how to have a good time the way we do. It's either grief and despair or dancing and singing all night because somebody got married, or born, or got a new set of drums, or hauled in a big catch. Mermen don't celebrate much, I hear. You ever see Mermen celebrating?"

"Never," Bushka admitted. And he remembered Nakano of Gallow's crew talking about Merman life.

"Work, get a mate, have a couple of kids, work some more and die," Nakano had said. "Fun is a coffee break or hauling a sledge to some new outpost."

Was that why Nakano had joined Gallow's movement? Precious little fun or excitement down under. Rescue an Islander. Work at building a barrier. Bushka did not think of life down under as grim for people like Nakano. Just drab. They hadn't the lure of an intellectual goal, nor even the nearness of grief to make them snatch at joy. But topside, there you found dazzle and color and a great deal of laughter.

"If we go back to the open land, it'll be different," Bushka said.

"What do you mean, 'if'? Just a few minutes ago you were saying it was inevitable."

"There are Mermen who want only an undersea empire. If they -"

Bushka broke off as Twisp suddenly pointed ahead and blurted, "Ship's balls! What is that?"

Bushka turned and saw, almost directly ahead of them, a gray tower with a lace of white surf at its base. It was like a thick stem to the great flower of sky, a blue flower edged in pink. The storm that had been skirting them for the past few hours framed the scene in a halo of black cloud. The tower, almost the same drab shade as the clouds, climbed up like a great fist out of the depths.

Twisp stared in awe. It wasn't visible for fifty klicks, as Bushka had first stated, but it was impressive. Ship! He'd not expected it to be so big.

Beyond the gray press of sea and sky, the clouds began to open. The interrupted horizon became two bright flowers and neither man could take his gaze off the launch tower. It was the center of a giant stormcloud whirlpool.

"That's the Launch Base," Bushka said. "That's the heart of the Merman space program. Every political faction they have will be represented there."

"You'd never mistake it for something floating on the surface," Twisp said. "No movement at all."

"It clears high water by twenty-five meters," Bushka said. "Mermen brag about it. They've only sent up unmanned shots. But things are moving fast. That's why Gallow and his people are acting now. The Mermen expect a manned shot into space soon."

"And they control the currents with the kelp?" Twisp asked. "How?"

"I don't really know. I've seen where they do it but I don't understand it."

Twisp looked from the tower to Bushka and back to the tower. The foaming collar of surf around its base had expanded as the coracles drew closer, opening up a wider view. Twisp estimated their distance from the base at more than five kilometers, and even from that distance he saw that the surf reached left and right of the tower for several hundred meters on either side. More human activity could be seen there. One of the big Merman foils stood off in the calmer water beyond the surf with smaller craft shuttling back and forth to the tower. A Lighter-Than-Air hovered nearby, either for observation or use as a sky-crane. The coracles were close enough now to make out Mermen on the breakwater that fanned out from the base near the tower.

The hydrofoil with its hydrogen ramjets sticking out like big egg sacks astern drew Twisp's attention. He had seen them only at a distance and in holos before this. The thing was at least fifty meters long, riding there easily on its flotation hull with the planing foils hidden underwater. A wide hatch stood open in its side with much Merman activity around the opening - bulky objects being lowered on an extruded crane.

Bushka sat with one arm resting on the cuddy top, his other arm hanging loosely at his side. His head was turned away from Twisp, attention fixed on the Launch Base and its commanding tower. There was no sign yet that the Mermen had taken notice of the approaching coracles, but Twisp knew they had been seen and their course plotted. Bushka's reason for bringing them to this particular place seemed clear, if you believed his story about Gallow. There was little chance that Gallow's people would be the only ones at this base. And there would be Merman attention on every detail of this operation. All factions would hear Bushka's story. Would they believe it?

"Have you thought about how they're going to receive you and your story?" Twisp asked.

"I don't think my chances are very good no matter where I turn up," Bushka answered. "But better here than anywhere else." He brought his gaze around to meet Twisp's questioning stare. "I think I'm a dead man any way you look at it. But people have got to know."

"Very commendable," Twisp said. He cut the motor and pulled the tiller into his stomach, holding it there until the two boats circled slowly around each other. Time to apprise Bushka of the facts as Twisp saw them after a night's reflection.