"Drop us down another fifty meters," Gallow ordered.
Bushka obeyed, using the descent propulsion system and automatically adjusting trim. He felt proud that the sub remained straight and level as it settled. The upward display, set wide-angle, showed the entire Island as a dark shadow against the surface light. A ring of small boats dappled its edges like beads in a necklace. Bushka estimated that Guemes was no more than six klicks in diameter at the waterline. He put the depth at three hundred meters. Long strips of organics floated dreamlike in the currents around the Island. Entire bulkheads of bubbly blackened the surrounding water with dead-rot. Thatchings of thin membranous material patched the holes.
Probably spinneret webbing.
Bushka saw raw sewage pumping out of a valve off to his right, sure evidence that the Guemes nutrient plant had suffered a major breakdown.
"Can you imagine how that place smells?" Zent asked.
"Very nice on a hot day," Gallow said.
"Guemes needs help," Bushka offered.
"And they're going to get it," Zent said.
"Look at all the fish around them," Nakano said. "I'll bet the fishing's real good right now." He pointed at the upward display as a giant scrubberfish, almost two meters long, floated past the external sensor. Half of the fish's whiskers had been nibbled away and the one visible eye socket was empty and white.
"It's so rotten around here that even the scrapfish are dying," Zent said.
"If the Island's this sick, you can bet the people are in sad shape," Nakano added.
Bushka felt his face get red, and pressed his lips shut tight.
"Those boats all around, maybe they're not fishing," Zent said. "Maybe they're living on their boats."
"This whole Island is a menace," Gallow said. "There must be all kinds of diseases up there. There's probably an epidemic in the whole system of organics."
"Who could live in shit and not be sick?" Zent asked.
Bushka nodded to himself. He thought he had figured out what Gallow was doing here.
He's brought the sub in close to confirm their desperate need for help.
"Why can't they see the obvious?" Nakano asked. He patted the hull beside him. "Our subs don't need nutrient slopped all over them. They don't rot or oxidize. They don't get sick or make us sick ..."
Gallow, watching the upward display, tapped Bushka's shoulder. "Down another fifteen meters, Iz. We still have plenty of room under us."
Bushka complied and again it was that smooth, steady descent that brought an admiring look from Nakano.
"I don't see how Islanders can live under those conditions." Zent shook his head. "Sweating out weather, food, dashers, disease - any one of a hundred mistakes that would send the whole pack of them to the bottom."
"They've made that mistake, now, haven't they, Tso?" Gallow asked.
Nakano pointed at a corner of the upward display. "There's nothing but some kind of membrane where their driftwatch should be."
Bushka looked and saw a dark patch of spinnarett webbing where the large corneal bubble should have been, the observer tucked safely behind it watching for shallows, coordinating with the outwatchers. No driftwatch - Guemes probably had lost its course-correction system, too. They were in terrible condition! Guemes would probably do anything for the offer of help.
"The corneal bubble has died," Bushka told them. "They've patched it over with spinnarett webbing to keep watertight."
"How long do they think they can drift blind before scraping bottom someplace?" Nakano muttered. There was anger in his voice.
"They're probably up there praying like mad for Ship to come help them," Zent sneered.
"Or they're praying for us to stabilize the sea and bring back their precious continents," Gallow said. "And now that we're getting it whipped, they'll be crying about bottoming out on the land we've built. Well, let 'em pray. They can pray to us!" Gallow reached over Zent's shoulder and flipped a switch.
Bushka scanned the displays - up, down, forward, aft the sub's complement of tools sprang out of their hull sheaths all glittering and sharp - deadly.
So that's what Zent and Nakano had been doing out there topside! Iz realized. They'd been checking manipulators and mechanical arms. Bushka scanned them once more: trenchers, borers, tampers, cutters, a swing-boom and the forward heliarc welder on its articulated arm. They gleamed brightly in the wash of the exterior lights.
"What are you doing?" Bushka asked. He tried to swallow but his throat was too dry in spite of the humidity.
Zent snorted.
Bushka felt repelled by the look on Zent's face - a smile that touched only the corners of his mouth, no humor at all in those bottomless eyes.
Gallow gripped Bushka's shoulder with a powerful and painful pressure. "Take us up, Iz."
Bushka glanced left and right. Nakano was flexing his powerful hands and watching a sensor screen. Zent held a small needle burner with its muzzle carelessly pointed at Bushka's chest.
"Up," Gallow repeated, emphasizing the order with increased pressure on Bushka's shoulder.
"But we'll cut right through them," Bushka said. He felt his breath pumping against the back of his throat. The awareness of what Gallow intended almost gagged him. "They won't have a chance without their Island. The ones who don't drown right away will drift in their boats until they starve!"
"Without the Island's filtration system, chances are they'll die of thirst before they starve," Gallow said. "They'd die anyway, look at them. Up!"
Zent waved the needle burner casually and pressed his left phone tighter to his ear.
Bushka ignored the needle burner's threat. "Or dashers will get them!" he protested. "Or a storm!"
"Hold it," Zent said, leaning toward his left earphone while he pressed it harder. "I'm getting free sonics of some kind ... a sweeping pulse from the membrane, I think ..." Zent screamed and tore the earphone from his head. Blood trickled from his nostrils.
"Take it up, damn you!" Gallow shouted.
Nakano kicked the locks off the dive planes and reached across Bushka to blow the tanks. The sub's nose tipped upward.
Bushka reacted with a pilot's instincts. He fed power to the drivers and tried to bring them onto an even keel but the sub was suddenly a live thing, shooting upward toward the dark bottom of Guemes Island. In two blinks they were through the bottom membranes and into the Island's keel. The sub kicked and twisted as its exterior tools hacked and slashed under the direction of Nakano and Gallow. Zent still sat bent over, holding his ears with both hands. The needle burner lay useless in his lap.
Bushka pressed hard against his seatback while he watched in horror the terrible damage being done all around. Anything he did to the controls only added to the destruction. They were into the Island center now, where the high-status Islanders lived, where they kept their most sensitive equipment and organics, their most powerful people, their surgical and other medical facilities ...
The cold-blooded slashing of blades and cutters continued - visible in every screen, felt in every lurch of the sub. It was eerie that there could be this much pain and not a single scream. Soft, living tissue was no match for the hard, sharp edges that the sub intruded into this nightmare scene. Every bump and twist of the sub wrought more destruction. The displays showed bits and pieces of humanity now - an arm, a severed head.
Bushka moaned, "They're people. "They're people."
Everything he'd been taught about the sanctity of life filled him now with rebellion. Mermen shared the same beliefs! How could they kill an entire Island? Bushka realized that Gallow would kill him at the first sign of resistance. A glance at Zent showed the man still looking stunned, but the bleeding had stopped and he had recovered the burner. Nakano worked like an automaton, shuttling power where necessary as cutters and torches continued their awful havoc in the collapsing Island. The sub had begun to twist on its own, turning end for end on a central pivot.