"Yes," Gray sighed, "we are afraid of each other, aren't we? Even you and I. Up there," he nodded upcoast, "they're wary, but they're not afraid."
"What did you do about your report? Did yo... ?"
"Did I expose their happiness? Did I betray the only sign of humanity I've witnessed in almost twenty years? No. No, I lied, and I made sure my camera lied. But I'm not as brave as you think. I know what Flattery suspected - that there were settlements, illegal food. But I also know what Flattery wanted. He wanted it to be rag-tag, not worth going after, because he doesn't have the force to stop it! Look around you, Doob." Gray swept his arm, taking in the horizon on all sides. "This takes every bit of manpower he's got, and he's losing it. There were riots in the settlement today, big riots, and there will be more. The news is not news, it's fiction outlined by Flattery and written by his personal fools. His lies keep us small, and as long as we're small he keeps control.
"No, he didn't want there to be anything big upcoast, so when I showed him a few raggedy-assed dirtpokers, it made him happy. So, maybe he'll stay here. His major forces are here and in Victoria, with a lot of sea patrols on the fishing fleet. The world is a lot bigger than that, Doob. It's a lot bigger, and getting bigger every day. I think you and Stella should go up there."
"What?"
Doob banged his head coming out of the control panel. "Are you crazy? She's going to hav... . I mean, we can't think about anything like that right now. We've got to stay put."
"Doob, I know she's going to have a baby. Stella told Billie and Billie told me this morning. She can't hide it much longer, anyway. You'll have to make new food coupon applications, people may visit your place, you can't risk that."
Doob sighed, then spit out the driver's porthole.
"Shit," he muttered.
"Listen," Gray said. "There's a way out of this. How's the Cushette over water?"
"Well, it's OK when it's running. No match for a foil, though, or one of those security pursuit boats."
Gray looked back at the bed of the track. It was a dumpable storage bin two meters wide by four meters long. Doob made his coupons hauling equipment for construction crews up and down the beaches of Kalaloch.
"Can you get three hundred klicks out of this thing over rough terrain?"
Doob shook his head. "No way. Two hundred, tops. With a converter, and access to seawater, I could probably drive around the world."
"Yeah," Gray said, pulling at his chin. "But there's no seawater inland, and converters won't work in streams or lakes. I have an old high-pressure tank at my place, that would get you the whole way."
"What are you talking about?" Doob ran a nervous hand through his kinky brown hair. "You think we can just drive this track upcoast as bold as you please? They'll crisp our butts before we hit the high reaches."
"That's why you don't go that way," Gray said. "I have a map, and I have a plan. If I can get you, Stella and this track upcoast to my Zavatan contacts, would you go?"
Doob looked up in time to see a security detachment leave the perimeter and start toward the track across the rocks. They were still a couple hundred meters off, but they didn't look happy.
"Shit," Doob said.
He replaced the control panel cover and started the engine. He began to pivot his machine on its left track to go back home.
"No," Gray shouted. "We set out to get a starter for that Cushette, and that's what we'll do. Give them a wave."
Gray waved at the security squad, and so did Doob. The squad leader waved back, and the men turned back to the perimeter road where it was easier going.
"See?" Gray hollered. "It's like that everywhere. Learn what's easiest for them, and you can get by. We'll talk more about the upcoast trip on the way back. I've got it all figured, don't worry."
He flashed Doob a smile, a big one, and Doob caught himself smiling back.
Gardens, he thought. Stella will love that for sure.
***
Not by refraining from action does one attain freedom from action. Not by mere renunciation does one attain supreme perfection.
Twisp always thought that "chambers" was well-named. There were, indeed, many chambers beneath the rock - one for each of the council and several for support staff, as well as general meeting rooms and sleeping quarters. The complex was crude by Merman standards, primitive by the Director's standards. Repair crews worked throughout the area cleaning up the last of the damage of last year's great quake, already going down in oral history as "the great quake of '82."
Across the passageway from the elevator a hatch opened into Twisp's personal chamber, hewn out of glassy black rock. He swung the hatch open and motioned the gaping Mose inside.
"Sit here."
Twisp indicated a low couch to the left of the hatchway. The couch was organic, like the chairdog. It was a distinctly Islander cubby. The entire room measured barely four paces square.
Shelves filled up most of the black-rock walls, and on these shelves stood hundreds of books. They were the old kelp-pulps, a well-scarred library. Twisp had been a fisherman without holo or viewscreens. Bleached kelp pulp and hand presses in every little community turned out literature and news that was affordable and could be passed around.
Twisp dogged the hatch, then smiled.
"Borrow any books you like," he said. "They don't do anybody any good on the shelf."
Mose hung his head.
"... I never told you," he stammered. One nail-bitten hand wrung the other.
"I can't read."
"I know," Twisp said. "You cover it well, it took me a long time to figure it."
"And you didn't say nothin... ?"
"Only you could know when the time is right. There is always someone willing to teach, but that's no good until the pupil is ready to learn. Reading is easy. Writing, now that's a whole different story."
"I've never been very good at learning things."
"Cheer up," Twisp said. "You learned to talk, didn't you? Reading's not so different. We'll have coffee every day for a month, and you'll be reading well by the end of the month. How about if we start with coffee now and a lesson later today?"
Mose nodded, and his look brightened. Topside, among the Zavatans, he did not often get coffee since the Director had taken over production. But he'd wedded himself to Zavatan poverty, which was a step up from his family poverty. Among the Zavatans he'd found that nothing was to be expected, everything enjoyed. Twisp bent to the preparations, his long arms akimbo in front of the table.
A fold-out table and stone washbasin jutted from the wall across the room, beside the inset stove and cooler. Mose reclined into the old couch and let it suit his forms. He found it indescribably nicer than his pallet topside. One shelf beside the couch held several holo cubes. Most of the pictures on them were of a young, red-haired man and a small, dark-skinned girl.
"The meeting begins soon, Mose," Twisp said. The older man sighed without turning, and his gangly arms sagged a bit. He spooned out some of the odorful coffee into a small cooker.
"We will all share a soup there, in the old custom, or I would offer you something here. My cubby is your cubby. That hatchway leads to the head. This hatch," with a nod he indicated their entry, "leads to the general council chambers. Prepare yourself for a confusion of people doing strange things."
"That's the way things have been all my life."