"I mean ..."
"I know what you mean! We're really small-time now. Losing that catch cost me everything: depth gear, nets, new stunshield charges, food, the scull ..."
Brett was almost breathless trying to keep up with the older man's longer, firmer strides. "But we can make another start if ..."
"How?" Twisp asked with a toss of one long arm. "I can't afford to outfit us. You know what they'll advise me in Fisherman's Hall? Sell my boat and go back to the subs as a common crewman!"
The concourse widened into a long ramp. They walked down without speaking and out onto the wide second-level terrace with its heavily cultivated truck gardens. Mazelike access lanes crooked their way to the high railing overlooking the wider first level. As they emerged, gaps began to appear in the overcast and one of Pandora's suns made liars out of the meteorologists at Weather. It bathed the terrace in a welcome yellow light.
Brett pulled at Twisp's sleeve. "Queets, you wouldn't have to sell the boat if you got a loan and -"
"I've got loans up to here!" Twisp said, touching his neck. "I'd just cleared my accounts when I brought you on. I won't go through that again! The boat goes. That means I have to sell your contract."
Twisp sat on a mound of bubbly at the rail and looked out over the sea. The wind-speed was dropping fast, just as he'd expected. The surge at the rim of the Island was still high but the spume shot straight up now.
"Best fishing weather we've had in a long time," Brett said.
Twisp had to admit this was true.
"Why did Maritime let us off so easy?" Twisp muttered. "We had a Merman in the net. Even you know that, kid. Something funny's going on."
"But they let us off, that's the important thing. I thought you'd be happy about it."
"Grow up, kid." Twisp closed his eyes and leaned back against the rail. He felt the cool water breeze against his neck. The sun was hot on his head. Too many problems, he thought.
Brett stood directly in front of Twisp. "You keep telling me to grow up. It looks to me like you could do some growing up yourself. If you'd only get a loan and -"
"If you won't grow up, kid, then shut up."
"It couldn't have been a tripod fish in the net?" Brett persisted.
"No way! There's a different feel. That was a Merman and the dashers got him." Twisp swallowed. "Or her. Up to something, too, from the look of things." Without changing his position against the rail, Twisp listened to the kid shift from foot to foot.
"Is that why you're selling the boat?" Brett asked. "Because we accidentally killed a Merman who was where he wasn't supposed to be? You think the Mermen will be out to get you now?"
"I don't know what to think."
Twisp opened his eyes and looked up at Brett. The kid had narrowed his overly large eyes into a tight squint, his gaze steady on Twisp.
"The Merman observers at Maritime didn't object to the court's decision," Brett said.
"You're right," Twisp said. He jerked a thumb upward toward the Maritime offices. "They're usually ruthless in cases like this. I wonder what we saw ... or almost saw."
Brett moved to one side and plopped himself onto the bubbly beside Twisp. They listened for a time to the thlup-thlup-thlup of waves against the Island's rim.
"I expected to be sent down under," Twisp said. "And you with me. That's what usually happens. You go to work for the dead Merman's family. And you don't always come back topside."
Brett grunted, then: "They'd have sent me, not you. Everybody knows about my eyes, how I can see when it's almost dark. The Mermen would want that."
"Don't give yourself airs, kid. Mermen are damned cautious about who they let into their gene pool. They call us Mutes, you know. And they don't mean something nice when they say it. We're mutants, kid, and when we go down under it's to fill a dead man's dive suit ... nothing else."
"Maybe they didn't want this job filled," Brett said.
Twisp tapped a fist on the resilient organics of the rail. "Or they didn't want anybody from topside to know what that Merman's job was."
"That's crazy!"
Twisp did not respond. They sat quietly for a while as the lone sun dipped lower. Glancing over his shoulder, Twisp stared at the horizon. It bent away in the distance to a bank of black sky and water. Water everywhere.
"I can get us outfitted," Brett said.
Twisp was startled but remained silent, looking at the kid. Brett, too, was staring off at the horizon. Twisp noticed that the boy's skin had become fisherman-dark, not the sickly pale he had displayed when he first boarded the coracle. The kid looked leaner, too ... and taller.
"Didn't you hear me?" Brett asked. "I said -"
"I heard you. For somebody who pissed and moaned most of the time he was out there fishing, you sound pretty anxious to get back on the water."
"I didn't moan about -"
"Just joking, kid." Twisp raised a hand to stop the objections. "Don't be so damned touchy."
His face flushed, Brett looked down at his boots.
Twisp asked, "How would you get this loan?"
"My parents would loan it to me and I'd loan it to you."
"Your parents have money?" Twisp studied the kid, aware that this revelation did not surprise him. In all the time they'd spent together, though, Brett had never talked about his parents and Twisp discreetly had never asked. Islander etiquette.
"They're close to Center," Brett said. "Next ring out from the lab and Committee."
Twisp whistled between his teeth. "What do your parents do that gets them quarters at Center?"
Brett's mouth turned up in a crooked grin. "Slurry. They made their fortune in shit."
Twisp laughed in sudden awareness. "Norton! Brett Norton! Your folks are the Nortons?"
"Norton," Brett corrected him. "They're a team and they bill themselves as one artist."
"Shitpainting," Twisp said. He chuckled.
"They were the first," Brett said. "And it's nutrient, not shit. It's processed slurry."
"So your folks dig shit," Twisp teased.
"Come on!" Brett objected. "I thought I got away from that when I left school. Grow up, Twisp!"
"All right, kid," he laughed, "I know what slurry is." He patted the bubbly beside him. "It's what we feed the Island."
"It's not that simple," Brett said. "I grew up with it, so I know. It's scraps from the fish processors, compost from the agraria, table scraps and ... just about everything." He grinned. "Including shit. My mother was the first chemist to figure out how to color the nutrient like they do now without hurting the bubbly."
"Forgive an old fisherman," Twisp said. "We live with a lot of dead organics, like the membrane on the hull of my coracle. Islandside, we just pick up a bag of nutrient, mix it with a little water and spread it on our walls when they get a little gray."
"Don't you ever try the colored stuff and make a few of your own murals on your walls?" Brett asked.
"I leave that to the artists like your folks," Twisp said. "I didn't grow up with it the way you did. When I was a kid, we only had a bit of graffiti, no pictures. It was all pretty bland: brown on gray. We were told they couldn't introduce other colors because that interfered with absorption by the decks and walls and things. And you know, if our organics die ..." He shrugged. "How'd your folks stumble onto this?"
"They didn't stumble! My mother was a chemist and my father had a flair for design. They went out with a wall-feeding crew one day and did a nutrient mural on the radar dome near the slurryside rim. That was before I was born."
"Two big historical events," Twisp joked. "The first shit painting and the birth of Brett Norton." He shook his head in mock seriousness. "Permanent work, too, because no painting lasts more than about a week."