Scudi almost drowned. That is a fact.

"There's a sub coming behind us," Twisp said.

All of them peered back along their course but the surface gave no sign of what might be under it.

"They have us on their locator," Twisp said, "and they mean to sink us."

Scudi turned around and dipped both hands into the passing kelp.

"Help us," she whispered. "If you know what help is."

Bushka sat silent, pale-faced and shuddering at the entrance to the tiny cuddy in the bow. "It's Gallow," he said. "I told you."

With a slow stateliness the channel ahead of them began to close. A passage opened to the left. Current surged into it, swinging the coracles wide. The towed supply boat pulled far to the right. Twisp fought the tiller to center his craft in the new channel.

"The channel's closing behind us," Brett said.

"The kelp is helping us," Scudi said. "It is."

Bushka opened his mouth and closed it without speaking. All of them turned to stare where he pointed. A black conning tower broke surface, tipped and sank from sight. Kelp curled over the scene. Giant bubbles began breaking the surface, thick rainbows of air and oil. Small waves surged under the boats, forcing the four people in the coracle to hold on to the rimlines.

As quickly as it had started, the turbulence subsided. The coracles continued their agitated rocking. Water splashed across the gunwales. This, too, quieted.

"It was the kelp," Scudi said. "The sub cut into the kelp trying to follow us."

Twisp nodded to where the kelp still curled among a few small bubbles. He gripped the tiller with both hands, guiding them through a channel that curved open ahead of them, once more aiming toward Vashon. "The kelp did that?"

"It clogged the sub's intakes," Scudi said. "When the crew tried to blow ballast and surface, the kelp jammed vines into the ballast ports. When the crew tried to get out, the kelp tore them apart and crushed the sub." She jerked her hands out of the water, breaking contact with the kelp.

"I warned you it was dangerous," Brett said.

A stricken look on her face, Scudi nodded. "It's finally learned to kill."

Duque woke to a nudge, a deliberate jostling intended to do the waking. He had been prodded, pricked, rubbed, shocked, bled and rocked in his liquid cradle with the great Vata, but this was the first time since childhood that he had been nudged. What surprised him was that it was Vata who did it.

You're awake! he thought, but there was no answer. He felt a focus, a channeling of her presence such as he had never felt before. For this he roused himself, twisted an arm up to his face and fisted his good eye open.

That brought the watchers to the Vata Pool on the double. What he saw with his one eye was worth calling those fools poolside. One of Vata's huge brown eyes, her left one, was pressed nearly to his own. It was open. Duque swallowed hard. He was sure she could see him.

Vata? He tried it aloud: "Vata?"

The growing crowd gasped, and Duque knew that the C/P would push her way to them soon.

He felt something breeze through his consciousness like a heavy sigh. It was a wind with hidden thoughts in it. But he felt them. Something big, waiting.

Duque was shocked. He had long been used to the mind-rocking power Vata could hurl between his eyes. This was the way she threw tantrums, by jamming whatever frustrated her right into his head. Now, she sent him a vision of the C/P, naked, dancing in front of a mirror. For some time now Vata had kept the naked female thoughts out of his head. Anger! Vata contained anger. He blocked out the anger and riveted his inner eye on the supple, firm-breasted Chaplain/Psychiatrist who thrust her pale hips again and again at the mirror. The tank was unbearably warm.

Simone Rocksack's favorite robe lay in a trampled blue heap at her feet. Everything in Duque strained to touch this vision, this body of raw beauty that the C/P locked away from the world.

That was when he saw the hands. A pair of large, pale hands snaked around her from behind and he watched in the mirror as they cupped her swaying breasts while she moved in a rhythmic step-slide, step-slide. It was a man, a large man, and he continued his intense caress of her body until she slowed her dance and stopped, quivering, while his lips brushed her shoulders and breasts, her abdomen, those glistening thighs. The man's shock of blonde hair was magnet to her fingers. Her hands pulled him close, closer, and they began to make love with him standing behind her, facing the mirror.

The vision ended with an angry white flash and the name Gallow blared across his consciousness. What he saw when he refocused on Vata's eye was danger.

"Danger," he muttered. "Gallow danger. Simone, Simone."

Vata's great brown eye closed and Duque felt relieved of a massive, clawlike grip that had held his guts tight. He lay back, breathing deeply, and listened as the knot of watchers grew and the babble of their speculations lulled him back to sleep.

When the C/P came to poolside there was nothing visible of the strange thing the watchers reported.

Brett woke at dawn, feeling the coracle riding gently under him. Scudi lay curled against his side. Twisp sat at his usual place by the tiller but the boat chugged along on autopilot. Brett could see the little red traveler lights blinking across the face of the receiver, keeping them on course to Vashon.

Scudi sniffed in her sleep. A light tarp kept the damp night air from both of them. Brett inhaled a deep breath through his nose and faced the fact that he would never again accept the stench that surrounded every place Islanders lived. He had experienced the Mermen's filtered air. Now, the fish odors, the thick miasma from Twisp's body, all of it forced Brett to think even more deeply about how his life had been changed.

I smelled like that, he thought. It's a good thing Scudi met me in the water.

Mermen joked about Islander stink, he knew. And Islanders returning topside spoke longingly of the sweet air down under.

Scudi had said nothing on meeting Twisp, nor on boarding the coracle. But the distaste on her face had been evident. She had tried to hide it for his sake, he knew, but the reaction was unmistakable.

Brett felt guilty about his sudden embarrassment.

You shouldn't be embarrassed by your friends.

The first long shaft of dawn washed across the coracle, a lazy pink.

Brett sat up.

Twisp, his voice low and muffled at the stern, said, "Take the watch, kid. I'll need a few winks."

"Right."

Brett whispered to keep from waking Scudi. She lay curled up close, her back and hips fitting into the socket of his body as if they were built together. One hand lay flung backward around Brett's waist. He gently disengaged her light grip.

Looking up at the clear sky, Brett thought, It's going to be a hot one. He slid out from beneath the tarp and felt the damp bow spray wet his hair and face.

Brett brushed a thick lock of hair from his eyes and crept aft to take the tiller.

"Gonna be a hot one," Twisp said. Brett smiled at the coincidence. They thought alike now, no question about it. He scanned the horizon. The boats still glided down a narrow avenue of current between the hedging kelp.

"Aren't we going kinda slow?" Brett asked.