"They call me Noah," Noah said. "Go to the records and look up the histories. I call my first-born Abimael. Do you dream strange things, Twisp? I used to dream about a big boat, called an ark, in the time when the original Terrahome was flooded. The ark saved lots of humans and animals from the flood ... kinda like the hyb tanks in that, you know?"

Twisp found himself fascinated by the carpenter's voice. The man was a storyteller and knew the trick of flexing his voice to hold a listener's attention.

"The ones who didn't get on the ark, they all died," Noah said. "When the sea went down, they found the stinking carcasses for months. The ark was built so animals and people couldn't climb aboard unless they were invited and the ramp was lowered."

Noah mopped sweat from his brow with a purple cloth. "Stinking carcasses everywhere," he muttered.

A slight breeze came over the cliff walls and wafted the heavy stink of burned things across Twisp. He could almost smell the rotting flesh Noah described.

The carpenter hefted two joined pieces of wood and hung them on a peg in the wall behind him.

"Ship made a promise that Noah would live," Noah said. "But watching that much death was very bad. When so many die and so few live, think how dead the survivors must feel! They needed the miracle of Lazarus and it was denied them."

Noah turned away from the wall and his blind eyes glittered in reflected light. Twisp saw that tears rolled unchecked down the man's cheeks and onto his dark, bare chest.

"I don't know whether you'll believe it," Noah said, "but Ship has talked to me."

Twisp stared at the tear-stained face, fascinated. For the first time in his life, Twisp felt himself to be in the presence of an authentic mystery.

"Ship spoke to me," Noah said. "I smelled the stink of death and saw bones on the land still clotted with rotting flesh. Ship said: 'I will not again curse the ground for mankind's sake.'"

Twisp shuddered. Noah's words came with a compelling force that could not be rejected.

Noah paused, then went on: "And Ship said, 'The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.' What do you think of that?"

For mankind's sake, Twisp thought.

Noah frightened him then by speaking it once more aloud: "For mankind's sake! As though we begged for it! As though we couldn't work out something better than all that death!"

Twisp began to feel a deep sympathy for the carpenter. This Noah was a philosopher and a profound thinker. For the first time, Twisp began to feel that Islander and Merman might achieve a common understanding. All Mermen were not Gallows or Nakanos.

"You know what, Twisp?" Noah asked. "I expected better of Ship than slaughter. And to say He does it for mankind's sake!"

Noah came across the shadowed work area, skirting the bench as though he could see it, and stopped directly in front of Twisp.

"I hear you breathing there," Noah said. "Ship spoke to me, Twisp. I don't care whether you believe that. It happened." Noah reached out and grasped Twisp's shoulder, moved the hand downward and explored the length of Twisp's left arm, then returned to trace a finger over Twisp's face.

"Your arm is long," Noah said. "Don't see anything wrong in that if it's useful. You got a good face. Lots of wrinkles. You live outside a lot. You see any sign of my Abimael yet?"

Twisp swallowed. "No."

"Don't you be frightened of me just because I talk to Ship," Noah said. "This new ark of ours is out on dry land once and for all. We're going to leave the sea."

Noah pulled away from Twisp and returned to the workbench.

A hand touched Twisp's right arm. Startled, he whirled and confronted Nakano. The big Merman had approached without a sound.

"Gallow wants to see you now," Nakano said.

"Where is that Abimael?" Noah asked.

Duque ignored the gasps of the watchers ringed around the constant gloom of the Vata Pool. His ears did not register the strangled moan that came clearly from the wide, flaccid throat of the C/P. The heavy fist that Vata clamped to his genitals captured Duque's attention completely. Her fervor hurled him painfully out of pseudosleep, but her touch softened with every blink. The poolside gasps were replaced by sporadic mutterings and a few hushed giggles. When Duque's hand began its complementary stroking of Vata's huge body the room stilled. Vata moaned. The poolside watchers were soaked by the wave set up under the rhythmic strokes of her mighty hips.

"They're going to pair!"

"Her eyes are open," one said, "and look, they move!"

Vata licked her lips, pinned Duque to the bottom of the pool and straddled him there. Her head and the tops of her shoulders broke the surface and she gasped great, long breaths with her head thrown back.

"Yes!" Vata said, and the C/P's mind registered, Her first word in almost three hundred years. How could the circumstances of that first word be explained to the faithful?

It's to punish me! The thought flooded Simone Rocksack's mind. She saw it all. The C/P wondered, then, what sort of punishment Vata might have in mind for Gallow.

It was then the C/P noted that the sloshing from the Vata Pool was not all resulting from the activity inside. The decks themselves heaved in the same slow rhythm.

"What's happening?" The C/P caught herself muttering the question and glanced around to see that she had not been overheard.

A series of tight-throated moans from Vata, then another explosive, breathless "Yes!" Duque was nearly undetectable under her rippling flanks and hamlike hands.

The C/P's eyes widened in horror and humiliation as she realized that Vata's performance with Duque was a grotesque parody of her last hours with Gallow. Her position wouldn't even allow her to leave the room, to escape the heat that crept outward from the collar of her blue robe to burn her cheeks and her breasts. A trace of sweat graced her upper lip and temples.

Someone burst into the room and shouted, "The kelp!" The voice strained to reach over the babblings of a crowd that was well into a serious hysteria. "The kelp's rocking the Island. It's rocking the whole fucking sea!"

The little stump-legged messenger clapped a fingerless hand over his mouth when he caught sight of the C/P.

There were three sudden cries that brought a chill to the C/P's spine; Vata's thighs shuddered in their grip on Duque and Vata fell back into the pool, wide-eyed and smiling, still anchored to him by their short but stout tether.

The heavy rocking of the decks slackened. The crowd at poolside had stilled with the outburst from Vata. The C/P knew better than to lose this moment. She swallowed hard, lifted her robe to clear her ankles and knelt at the rim of the quieting pool.

"Let us pray," she said, and bowed her head. Think, she thought to herself, think! Her eyes squinted shut against fear, reality and those difficult traitors, tears.