Frank Herbert - The Lazarus Effect

Keel didn't remember Islander life that way at all. It was crowded beyond Merman belief, true. Islands stank, also true. But there was incomparable color and music everywhere, always a good word. And who could explain to someone under the sea the incredible pleasure of sunrise, warm spring rain on face and hands, the constant small touchings of person to person that proved you were cared for merely by being alive.

"Mr. Justice," Gallow said, "you're not drinking your wine. Is the quality not to your liking?"

It's not the wine. Keel thought, but the company. Aloud, he said, "I have a stomach problem. I have to take my wine slow. I generally prefer boo."

"Boo?" Gallow's eyebrows lifted in genuine surprise. "That nerve-runner concoction? I thought it -"

"That only degenerates drank it? Perhaps. It's soothing, and to my taste even if it is dangerous to collect the eggs. I don't do the collecting." That's one he can relate to.

Gallow nodded, then his lips pressed into a firm, white line. "I heard that boo causes chromosome damage," he said. "Aren't you Islanders pushing your luck with that stuff?"

"Chromosome damage?" Keel snorted. He didn't even try to suppress a laugh. "Isn't that a little like roulette with a broken wheel?"

Keel sipped his wine and sat back to see Gallow fully. The look of disgust that shadowed the Merman's face told Keel that Gallow had been reached.

Anyone who can be reached can be probed. Keel thought. And anyone who can be probed can be had. His position on the Committee had taught him this.

"You can laugh at that?" Gallow's blue eyes blazed. "As long as you people breed, you endanger the whole species. What if ... ?"

Keel raised his hand and his voice. "The Committee concerns itself with matters of 'what if,' Mr. Gallow. Any infant that carries an endangering trait is terminated. For a people trained in life-support, this is a most painful event. But it guarantees life to all the others. Tell me, Mr. Gallow, how can you be so sure that there are only harmful, ugly or useless mutations?"

"Look at yourself," Gallow said. "Your neck can't support your head without that ... thing. Your eyes are on the sides of your head -"

"They're different colors, too," Keel said. "Did you know that there are more brown-eyed Mermen than blue-eyed by four to one? Doesn't that strike you as a mutation? You're blue-eyed. Should you, then, be sterilized or destroyed? We draw the line at mutations that actually endanger life. You prefer cosmetic genocide, it seems. Can you justify that to me? Can you be sure that we haven't 'bred' some secret weapons to meet the contingency you've presented us?"

Find his worst fears, Keel thought, and turn them on himself.

The clatter of loose dishes sounded from the hatchway and a small cart bounced over the threshold. The young man who pushed it stood in obvious awe of Gallow. His eyes took in every move his boss made and his hands shook as they distributed the dishes on a small folding table. He served the steaming food into bowls and Keel smelled the delicious tang of fish stew. When the steward finished laying out the bread and a small cake dessert he picked up a small dish of his own and spooned a taste of everything.

So, Keel thought, Gallow's afraid he's going to be poisoned. He was glad to see the orderly delicately taste Keel's portions, as well. Things are not going quite as Gallow would like us to believe. Keel couldn't let the moment pass.

"Do you taste to educate your palate?" he asked.

The orderly shot a quizzical look at Gallow and Gallow smiled back. "All men in power have enemies," he said. "Even yourself, I'm told. I choose to encourage protective habits."

"Protection from whom?"

Gallow was silent. The orderly's face paled.

"Very astute," Gallow said.

"By this you imply that murder is the current mode of political expression," Keel said. "Is this the new leadership you offer our world?"

Gallow's palm slapped the tabletop and the orderly dropped his bowl. It shattered. One shard of it skidded up to Keel's foot and spun there like an eccentric top winding down. Gallow dismissed the orderly with a sharp chop of his hand. The hatch closed quietly behind him.

Gallow threw down his spoon. It caught the edge of his bowl and splattered Keel with stew. Gallow dabbed at Keel's tunic with his cloth, leaning across the rickety table.

"My apologies, Mr. Justice," he said. "I'm generally not so boorish. You ... excite me. Please, relax."

Keel nursed the ache in his knees and folded them under the short table.

Gallow tore a piece of bread from the loaf and handed Keel the rest.

"You have Scudi Wang prisoner?" Keel asked.

"Of course."

"And the young Islander, Norton?"

"He's with her. They are unharmed."

"It won't work," Keel said. "If you hinge your leadership on stealth and prisoners and murder then you set yourself up for a long reign of the same thing. No one wants to deal with a desperate man. Kings are made of better stuff."

Gallow's ears pricked at the word "king." Keel could see him trying it on his tongue.

"You're not eating, Mr. Justice."

"As I said before, I have a stomach problem."

"But you have to eat. How will you live?"

Keel smiled. "I won't."

Gallow set his spoon down carefully and dabbed at his lips with his cloth. He knit his smooth brow in an expression of concern.

"If you choose not to eat, you will be fed," Gallow warned. "Spare yourself that unpleasantry. You won't starve yourself out of my care."

"Choice has nothing to do with it," Keel said. "You snatched inferior merchandise. Eating causes pain, and the food merely passes undigested."

Gallow pushed himself back from the squat table.

"It's not catching, Mr. Gallow."

"What is it?"

"A defect," Keel said. "Our bioengineers helped me up to this point, but now the Greater Committee takes matters out of our hands."

"The Greater Committee?" Gallow asked. "You mean that there is a group topside more powerful than yours? A secret clan?"

Keel laughed, and the laugh added frustration and confusion to Gallow's otherwise perfect face.

"The Greater Committee goes by many names," Keel said. "They are a subversive bunch, indeed. Some call them Ship, some call them Jesus - not the Jesus Lewis of your school-day histories. This is a difficult committee to confront, as you can see. It makes the threat of death at your hands not much of a threat at all."

"You're ... dying?"

Keel nodded. "No matter what you do," he said, smiling, "the world will believe that you killed me."

Gallow stared at Keel for a long blink, then blotted his lips with the napkin. He extricated himself from the table.

"In that case," Gallow announced, "if you want to save those kids, you'll do exactly as I say."

From his position at the foil's controls, Brett watched the late afternoon sun kindle a glow in the cloud bank ahead of him. The foil drove easily across deep storm swells, picking up speed on each downslope, losing a bit on each advancing wave. It was a rhythm that Brett had come to understand without conscious attention. His body and senses adjusted.

A gray wall of rain skulked a couple of hundred meters above the wavetops to the right. A line storm, it appeared to be rolling away from them.

Brett, his attention divided between the course monitor above him and the seas ahead, abruptly throttled back. The foil dropped off its step and moved with minimal headway beside a kelp bed that stretched away into the storm track.

The change in motion aroused the others, who, except for Bushka and the captive Merman, whom Bushka had locked in the cargo bay with the survivors of the LTA, were sprawled around the cabin catching what rest they could. Bushka sat in regal isolation on the couch at the rear of the cabin, his eyes oddly indrawn, his face a mask of concentration as he stroked a fragment of kelp that lay across his lap. The bit of kelp had come up from the sea on Twisp's rescue line and had attracted little attention until Bushka plucked it off and kept it.