"So I've heard," he said. "What do you do - besides rescues?"
"I mathematic the waves," she said. "That is my true work."
Mathematic the waves? He had no idea what that meant. It forced him to reflect on how little he knew about Merman life. Brett glanced around the room. The walls were hard but he was mistaken about the cold. They were warm, unlike the locker-room walls. Scudi, too, did not seem cold. As she had led him here along the solid passages, they had passed many people. Most had nodded greeting as they chattered with friends or workmates. Everyone moved quickly and surely and the passageways weren't full of people jostling shoulder-to-shoulder all the way. Except for workbelts, many had been naked. None of that outside bustle penetrated to this little room, though. He contrasted this to topside, where the organics tended to transmit even the smallest noises. Here, there was the luxury of noise and the luxury of quiet within a few meters of each other.
Scudi did something above her work area and the room's walls suddenly were brightly colored in flowing sweeps of yellow and green. Long strands of something like kelp undulated in a current - an abstraction. Brett was fascinated at how the color-motion on the walls accompanied the whalesong.
What do I say to her? he wondered. Alone with a pretty girl in her room and I can't think of anything. Brilliant, Norton! You're a glittering conversationalist!
He wondered how long he'd been with her. Topside, he kept good track of time by the light of the suns and the dark patches between. Down here, all light was similar. It was disorienting.
He looked at Scudi's back while she worked. She pressed a wall button and he heard her murmur something on a Merman transphone. Seeing the phone there impressed him with the technological gulf between Islanders and Mermen. Mermen had this device; Islanders were not offered it in the mercantile. He didn't doubt that some Islanders got them through the black market, but he didn't know how it would be of any use to them unless they dealt with Mermen all the time. Some Islanders did. Islander sub crews carried portable devices that picked up some transphone channels, but this was for the Mermen's convenience as well as Islanders'. Mermen were so damned snobbish about their riches!
There was a faint hiss of pneumatics at the counter where Scudi worked. She turned presently, balancing a tray carrying covered bowls and utensils. She placed the tray on the deck between the two cots and pulled up a cushion for her own back.
"I don't cook much myself," she said. "The central kitchen is faster, but I add my own spices. They are so bland at central!"
"Oh?" He watched her uncover the bowls, enjoying the smells.
"People already want to know of you," she said. "I have had several calls. I told them to wait. I'm hungry and tired. You, too?"
"I'm hungry," he agreed. He glanced around the room. Only these two cots. Did she expect him to sleep here ... with her?
She pulled a bowl and spoon up to her lap. "My father taught me to cook," she said.
He picked up the bowl nearest him and took a spoon. This was not like Islander feeding ritual, he noticed. Scudi already was spooning broth into her mouth. Islanders fed guests first, then ate whatever the guests left for them. Brett had heard that this didn't always work well with Mermen - they often ate everything and left nothing for the host. Scudi licked a few drops of broth from the back of her hand.
Brett tasted a sip from his spoon.
Delicious!
"The air is dry enough for you?" Scudi asked.
He nodded, his mouth full of soup.
"My room is small but that makes it easier to keep the air the way I like it. And easier to keep clean. I work topside very often. Dry is comfort to me now and I don't feel comfortable with the humidity in passages and public places." She put the bowl to her lips and drained it.
Brett copied her, then asked, "What will happen to me? When will I go back topside?"
"We'll talk of this after food," she said. She brought up two more bowls and uncovered them, revealing bite-sized chunks of fish in a dark sauce. With the bowl she handed him a pair of carved bone chopsticks.
"After food," he agreed and took a bite of the sauced fish. It was peppery hot and brought tears to his eyes but he found the aftertaste pleasant.
"It is our custom," Scudi said. "Food sets the body at ease. I can say, 'Brett Norton, you are safe here and well.' But I know down under is alien to you. And you have been in danger. You must speak to your body in the language it understands before sense returns to you. Food, rest - these are what your body speaks."
He liked the rational sense of her words and returned to the fish, enjoying it more with each bite. Scudi, he saw, was eating as much as he even though she was much smaller. He liked the delicate flick of her chopsticks into the bowl and at the edge of her mouth.
What a beautiful mouth, he thought. He remembered how she had given him that first breath of life.
She caught him staring and he quickly returned his attention to his bowl.
"The sea takes much energy, much heat," she said. "I wear a dive suit as little as possible. Hot shower, much hot food, a warm bed - these are always needed. Do you work the Islander subs topside, Brett?"
Her question caught him off guard. He'd begun to think that she had no curiosity about him.
Maybe I'm just some kind of obligation to her, he thought. If you save someone, maybe you're stuck with them.
"I'm a surface fisherman for a contractor named Twisp," he said. "He's the one I most want to get word to. He's a strange man, but the best in a boat that I've seen."
"Surface," she said. "That's much danger from dashers, isn't it? Have you seen dashers?"
He tried to swallow in a suddenly dry throat. "We carry squawks. They warn us, you know." He hoped that she wouldn't notice the dodge.
"We're afraid of your nets," she said. "Sometimes visibility is bad and they can't be seen. Mermen have been killed in them."
He nodded, remembering the thrashing and the blood and Twisp's stories of other Mermen deaths in the nets. Should he mention that to Scudi? Should he ask about the strange reaction of the Maritime Court? No ... she might not understand. This would be a barrier between them.
Scudi sensed this, too. He could tell because she spoke too quickly. "Would you not prefer to work in your subs? I know they are soft-bellied, not like ours at all, but ..."
"I think ... I think I'd like to stay with Twisp unless he goes back to the subs. I'd sure like to know if he's all right."
"We will rest and when we wake, you will meet some of our people who can help. Mermen travel far. We pass along the word. You will hear of him and he of you ... if that's your wish."
"My wish?" He stared at her, absorbing this. "You mean I could choose to ... disappear?"
She shrugged her eyebrows, accenting the gamin look. "Where you want to be is where you should be. Who you want to be is the same, not so?"
"It can't be that simple."
"If you have not broken the law, there are possibilities down under. The Merman world is big. Wouldn't you like to stay here?" She coughed and he wondered if she had been about to say "stay here with me?" Scudi suddenly seemed much older, more worldly. Talk among the Islanders gave Brett the impression that Mermen had an extra sophistication, a sense of belonging anywhere they went, of knowing more than Islanders.
"Do you live alone?" he asked.
"Yes. This was my mother's place. And it's close to where my father lived."
"Don't Merman families live together?"
She scowled. "My parents ... stubborn, both of them. They couldn't live together. I lived with my father for a long time, but ... he died." She shook her head and he saw the memories pain her.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Where's your mother?"