Chapter 6

Right is self-evident. It needs no defense, just good witness.

—Ward Keel, Chief Justice (deceased)

BEATRIZ TATOOSH woke from a dream of drowning in kelp to the three low tones that announced her ferry’s arrival on the submersible deck. Her overnight bag and briefcase made a lumpy pillow on the hard waiting-room bench. She blinked away the blur of her dream and cleared the frog from her throat. Beatriz always had drowning dreams at the Merman launch site, but this one started a little early.

It’s the ungodly press of water everywhere …

She shuddered, though the temperature of this station down under was comfortably regulated. She shuddered at the aftermath of her dream, and at the prospect of escorting the three Organic Mental Cores into orbit. The thought of the brains without bodies that would navigate the void beyond the visible stars always laced her spine with a finger of ice. Temperature was also comfortably regulated aboard the Orbiter, where she was scheduled to be shuttled in a matter of hours. It would be none too soon. Life groundside did not attract her anymore.

Somehow the surgical vacuum of space surrounding the Orbiter never bothered her at all. Her family had been Islanders, driftninnies. Hers had been the first generation to live on land in four centuries. Islanders took to the open spaces of land life better than Mermen, who still preferred their few surviving undersea settlements. Logic couldn’t stop Beatriz from squirming at the idea of a few million kilos of ocean overhead.

The humidity in the ferry locks clamped its clammy hand over her mouth and nose. It would be worse at the launch site. Most of the full-time workers down under were Mermen and they processed their air with a high humidity. She sighed a lot when she worked down under. She sighed again now when her ferry’s tones warned her that she would be under way to the launch site in a matter of minutes. The loading crowd of shift workers bound for the site rumbled the deck on the level above her.

The drone of hundreds of feet across the metal loading plates made Beatriz squeeze her eyelids tighter yet to keep her mind from conjuring their faces. The laborers were barely more active, had barely more flesh on their bones than the refugees that clustered at Kalaloch’s sad camps. The laborers’ eyes, when she’d seen them, reflected the hint of hope. The eyes of the people in the camps were too dull to reflect anything, even that.

Imagine something pretty, she thought. Like a hylighter crossing the horizon at sunset.

It depressed Beatriz to take the ferries. By her count she’d slept nearly five hours in the waiting room while a hyperalert security squad leader sprang a white-glove search on the ferry, its passengers and their possessions. She reminded herself to check all equipment when the security was done—a discipline she picked up from Ben. HoloVision’s equipment was junk so she, Ben and their crews built their own hardware to suit themselves. It would be tempting to a security with cousins in the black market. She sighed again, worried about Ben and worried about the insidious business of the security squad.

I know that he and Rico are behind that Shadowbox, she thought. They have their distinctive style, whether they shuffle the deck and deal each other new jobs or not.

About a year ago, the second time Shadowbox jammed out the news and inserted their own show, she nearly approached Rico, wanting in. But she knew they’d left her out for a reason, so she let it go and took out the hurt on more work. Now she thought she knew the real reason she’d been left out.

They need somebody on the outside, she thought. I’m their wild card.

She had been called in to replace the missing Ben on Newsflash last night, reading, “… Ben Ozette … on assignment in Sappho …” knowing full well that his assignment this Starday, as it had been every Starday for six weeks, had been Crista Galli herself, inside the Director’s personal compound and under the Director’s supervision.

He was with her at the time she was missing, his presence wasn’t mentioned anywhere. He’s missing, too, and the HoloVision high brass is covering it up.

That scared her. Orders to cover up whatever happened to Ben made the whole thing real.

She had thought somehow that she and Ben and Rico were immune to the recent ravages of the world. “Paid witnesses,” Ben had called the three of them. “We are the eyes and ears of the people.”

“Lamps,” Rico had laughed, a little buzzed on boo, “we’re not witnesses, we’re lamps …”

Beatriz had read on the air exactly what the Newsflash producer had written for her because there hadn’t been time for questions. She saw now how deliberate it had been to catch her off guard. HoloVision had incredible resources in people and equipment and she meant to use them to see that Ben didn’t disappear.

Ben’s not just a witness this time, she cautioned herself. He’ll ruin everything.

She had loved him, once, for a long time. Or perhaps she had been intimate with him once for a long time and had just now come to love him. Not in the other way of loving, the electric moments, it was too late for that. They had simply lived through too much horror together that no one else could understand. She had recently shared some electric moments with Dr. Dwarf MacIntosh, after thinking for so long that such feelings would never rise in her again.

Beatriz blinked her raw eyes awake. She turned her face away from the light and sat up straight on a metal bench. Nearby, a guard coughed discreetly. She wished for the clutter of her Project Voidship office aboard the Orbiter. Her office was a few dozen meters from the Current Control hatch and Dr. Dwarf MacIntosh. Her thoughts kept flying back to Mack, and to her shuttle flight to him that was still a few hours away.

Beatriz was tired, she’d been tired for weeks, and these constant delays exhausted her even more. Now today she was doing three jobs, broadcasting from three locations. She hadn’t had time to think, much less rest, since the Director had her shuttling between the Project Voidship special and the news. She rode to the Orbiter on the shoulders of the greatest engines built by humankind. When she blasted off Pandora her cluttered office aboard the Orbiter became the eye of the storm of her life. No one, not even Flattery, could reach her there.

The tones sounded again and seemed distinctly longer, sadder. Final boarding call. The tones once again made her think of Ben, who was still not found, who might be dead. He was no longer her lover, but he was a good man. She rubbed her eyes.

A young security captain with very large ears entered the waiting-room hatch. He nodded his head as a courtesy, but his mouth remained firm.

“The search is finished,” he said. “My apologies. It would be best for you to board now.” She stood up to face him and her clothing clung to her in sleepy folds.

“My equipment, my notes haven’t been released yet,” she said. “It won’t do me a bit of good to—”

He stopped her with a finger to his lips. He had two fingers and a thumb on each hand and she tried to remember which of the old islands carried that trait.

Orcas? Camano?

He smiled with the gesture, showing teeth that had been filed to horrible points—rumored to be the mark of one of the death squads that called themselves “the Bite.”

“Your belongings are already aboard the ferry,” he said. “You are famous, so we recognize your needs. You will have the privacy of a stateroom for the crossing and a guard to escort you.”

“But …”

His hand was on her elbow, guiding her out the hatchway.

“We have delayed the ferry while you board,” he said. “For the sake of the project, please make haste.”

She was already out in the passageway and he was propelling her toward the ferry’s lower boarding section.

“Wait,” she said, “I don’t think …”

“You have a task already awaiting you at the launch site,” the captain said. “I am to inform you that you will be doing a special Newsbreak there shortly after arrival and before your launch.”

He handed her the messenger that she usually carried at her hip.

“Everything’s in here,” he said, and grinned.

Beatriz felt that he was entirely too happy for her own comfort. Certainly the sight gave her no comfort at all. She was curious, in her journalistic way, about the hows of his teeth and whys of the death squads. Her survival instinct overrode her curiosity. The security escort met them at the gangway. He was short, young and loaded down with several of her equipment bags.

“A pleasure to have met you,” the captain said, with another slight bow. He handed her a stylus and an envelope. “If you please, for my wife. She admires you and your show very much.”

“What is her name?”

“Anna.”

Beatriz wrote in a hasty hand, “For Anna, for the future,” and signed it with the appropriate flourish. The captain nodded his thanks and Beatriz climbed aboard the ferry. She had barely cleared the second lock when she felt it submerge.