Mermen repel the sea to survive. Their living space benefits from a kind of stability underfoot. Historically, I must admit, humans show a preference for a firm surface underfoot, air to breathe freely (although theirs is depressingly damp) and solid things all around. They produce an occasional webbed foot or hand but that, too, was common all down the lineage of the species. Merman appearance is that of humans for as long as likenesses have been recorded; that much we can see for ourselves. Besides, Clone Wars happened. Our immediate ancestors wrote of this. Jesus Lewis did this to us. The visible evidence of other is inescapable.
But I was writing about Merman nature. It is their self-proclaimed mission to restore the kelp. But will the kelp be conscious? Kelp once more lives in the sea. I have seen the effects in my lifetime and expect we've just about seen the last of wavewalls. Exposed land will surely follow. Yet, how does that subtract from this nature that I see in the Mermen?
By bringing back the kelp, they seek to control the sea. That is the Merman nature: control.
Islanders float with the waves and the winds and the currents. Mermen would control these forces and control us.
Islanders bend with things that might otherwise overwhelm them. They are accustomed to change but grow tired of it. Mermen fight against certain kinds of change - and are growing tired of that.
Now, I come to my view of what Ship did with us. I think it is the nature of our universe that life may encounter a force that could overwhelm it if life cannot bend. Mermen would break before such a force. Islanders bend and drift. I think we may prove the better survivors.
***
We bear our original sin in our bodies and on our faces.
The cold slap of a sudden wave over the side snapped Queets Twisp full awake. He yawned, unkinked his overlong arms where they had tangled themselves in the tarp. He wiped the spray from his face with his shirtsleeve. Not yet full sunrise, he noted. The first thin feathers of dawn tickled the black belly of the horizon. No thunderheads cluttered the sky and his two squawks, their feathers preened and glistening, muttered contentedly on their tethers. He rubbed the circulation back into his long arms and felt in the bottom of the coracle for his tube of thick juice concentrates and proteins.
Blech.
He made a wry face as he sucked down the last of the tube. The concentrate was tasteless and odorless, but he balked at it just the same.
You'd think if they made it edible they could make it palatable, he thought. At least dockside we'll get some real food. The rigors of setting and hauling fishing nets always built his appetite into a monumental thing that concentrates could support, but never satisfy.
The gray ocean yawned away in all directions. Not a sign of dashers or any other threat anywhere. The occasional splatter of a sizable wave broke over the rim of the coracle but the organic pump in the bilge could handle that. He turned and watched the slaw bulge of their net foam the surface behind them. It listed slightly with its heavy load. Twisp's mouth watered at the prospect of a thousand kilos of scilla - boiled scilla, fried scilla, baked scilla with cream sauce and hot rolls ...
"Queets, are we there yet?" Brett's voice cracked in its adolescent way. Only the shock of his thick blonde hair stuck out from under their tarp - a sharp contrast to Twisp's headful of ebony fur. Brett Norton was tall for sixteen, and his pile of hair made him seem even taller. This first season of fishing had already begun to fill in some of his thin, bony structure.
Twisp sucked in a slow breath, partly to calm himself after being startled, partly to draw in patience.
"Not yet," he said. "Drift is right. We should overtake the Island just after sunrise. Eat something."
The boy grimaced and rummaged in his kit for his own meal. Twisp watched as the boy wiped the spout nearly clean, unstoppered it and sucked down great gulps of the untantalizing brown liquid.
"Yum."
Brett's gray eyes were shut tight and he shuddered.
Twisp smiled. I should quit thinking of him as "the boy." Sixteen years was more than boyhood, and a season at the nets had hardened his eyes and thickened his hands.
Twisp often wondered what had made Brett choose to be a fisherman. Brett was near enough to Merman body type that he could have gone down under and made a good life there.
He's self-conscious about his eyes, Twisp thought. But that's something few people notice.
Brett's gray eyes were large, but not grotesque. Those eyes could see well in almost total darkness, which turned out to be handy for round-the-clock fishing.
That's something the Mermen wouldn't let out of their hands, Twisp thought. They're good at using people.
A sudden lurch of the net caught both of them off-balance and they reached simultaneously for the rimline. Again, the lurch.
"Brett!" Twisp shouted, "Get us some slack while I haul in."
"But we can't haul in," the boy said, "we'd have to dump the catch ..."
"There's a Merman in the net! A Merman will drown if we don't haul in." Twisp was already dragging in the heavy netlines hand-over-hand. The muscles of his long forearms nearly burst the skin with the effort. This was one of those times he was thankful he had a mutant's extra ability.
Brett ducked out of sight behind him to man their small electric scull. The netlines telegraphed a frantic twisting and jerking from below.
Merman for sure! Twisp thought, and strained even harder. He prayed he could get him up in time.
Or her, he thought. The first Merman he'd seen netbound was a woman. Beautiful. He shook off the memory of the crisscross lines, the net-burns in her perfect, pale ... dead skin. He hauled harder.
Thirty meters of net to go, he thought. Sweat stung his eyes and small blades of pain seared his back.
"Queets!"
He looked from the net back to Brett and saw white-eyed terror. Twisp followed the boy's gaze. What he saw three or four hundred meters to starboard made him freeze. The squawks set up a fluttering outcry that told Twisp what his eyes were barely able to confirm.
"A hunt of dashers!"
He almost whispered it, almost let slip the netlines creasing his rock-hard palms.
"Help me here," Twisp shouted. He returned to the frantic tugging at the net. Out of the corner of one eye he saw the boy grab the port line, out of the other he watched the steady froth of the oncoming dashers.
A half-dozen of them at least, he thought. Shit.
"What'll they do?" Brett's voice cracked again.
Twisp knew that the boy had heard stories. Nothing could match the real thing. Hungry or not, dashers hunted. Their huge forepaws and saberlike canines killed for the sheer bloody love of it. These dashers wanted that Merman.
Too late, Twisp dove for the lasgun he kept wrapped in oiled cloth in the cuddy. Frantically, he scrabbled for the weapon, but the first of the dashers hit the net head-on and their momentum rocked the coracle. Two others fanned to the sides, closing on the flanks like a fist. Twisp felt the two hard hits as he came up with the lasgun. He saw the net go slack as slashing claws and fangs opened it wide. The rest of the hunt closed in, scavenging bits of meat and bone thrown clear of the frothy mess that had been a Merman. One dasher nipped another and, primed to kill, the rest turned on their wounded mate and tore him to bits. Fur and green gore splattered the side of the coracle.
No need wasting a lasgun charge on that mess! It was a bitter thought. Islanders had long ago given up the hope they might exterminate these terrible creatures.