Ale sipped her tea. It smelled of mint and suddenly reignited Keel's hunger. He began to eat, Islander-style, setting aside equal portions for his host. The first taste of the fish broth convinced him that it was the richest and most delicately spiced broth he'd ever shared. Was this the general diet for Mermen? He cursed his lack of down-under experience. Keel noticed that Ale enjoyed her own helping of the steaming soup and felt insulted at first.
Another cultural thing, he realized. He marveled that a simple difference in table manners could need translation to avoid international disaster. Unanswered questions still buzzed in his head. Perhaps a more devious approach was indicated - a mixture of Merman directness with Islander obliqueness.
"It's pleasantly dry in these quarters," he said, "but you don't need a sponge. You don't oil your skin. I've often wondered how you get by in a topside environment?"
She dropped her gaze from his face and held her teacup to her lips with both hands.
Hiding, he thought.
"Ward, you are a very strange person," she said as she lowered the cup. "That is not the question I expected."
"What question did you expect?"
"I prefer to discuss my immunity from the need for a sponge. You see, we have quarters down under that are kept with a topside environment. I was raised in such quarters. I'm acclimated to Islander conditions. And I adapt very quickly to the humidity down under - when I have to."
"You were chosen as an infant for topside duty?" There was hesitation and shock in his voice.
"I was chosen then for my present position," she said. "A number of us were ... set aside in the possibility that some of us would meet the mental and physical requirements."
Keel stared at her, astonished. He had never heard of such a cold dismissal of someone's entire life. Ale had not chosen her own life! And, unlike most Islanders, she had a body that in no way restricted her from any trade she chose. He remembered suddenly how she planned everything - a planned person who planned. Ale had been ... distorted. She probably saw it as training, but training was just an acceptable distortion.
"But you do live a ... a Merman life?" he asked. "You follow their customs, you swim and ..."
"Look." She unfastened her tunic at the neck and dropped the top of it, turning her breasts away from him to expose the shoulders. Her back was as clear-skinned and pale as weathered bone. At the top of her shoulder blades the skin had been pinched into a short strip of ridge adjacent to the spine. There she carried the clear pucker-mark of an airfish, but in a peculiar place. He caught the meaning immediately.
"If that mark were on your neck, Islanders might be distracted when they met you, right?" It occurred to him that she would have undergone major arterial reshifting to carry this off - a complicated surgery.
"You have beautiful skin," he added, "it's a shame they marked it up that way at all."
"It was done when I was very young," she said. "I hardly think about it anymore. It's just a ... convenience."
He resisted the urge to stroke her shoulder, her smooth strong back.
Careful, you old fool! he told himself.
She restored the top of her garment and when her gaze met his, he realized that he had been staring.
"You're very beautiful, Kareen," he said. "In the old holos, all humans look ... something like you, but you're ..." He shrugged, feeling the exceptional presence of his appliance against his neck and shoulders. "Forgive an old Mute," he added, "but I've always thought of you as the ideal."
She turned a puzzled frown on him. "I've never before heard an Islander call himself a ... a Mute. Is that how you think of yourself?"
"Not really. But a lot of Islanders use the term. Joking, mostly, but sometimes a mother will use it to get a youngster's attention. Like: 'Mute, get your grubby little paws outa that frosting.' Or: 'You go for that deal, my man, and you're one dumb Mute.' Somehow, when it comes from one of us it's all right. When it comes from a Merman - it strikes deeper than I can describe. Isn't that what you call us among yourselves, 'Mutes'?"
"Boorish Mermen might, and ... well, it's a rather common bit of slang in some company. Personally, I don't like the word. If a distinction has to be made, I prefer 'Clone,' or 'Lon,' as our ancestors did. Perhaps my quarters give me a penchant for antiquated words."
"So you've never referred to us as 'Mutes' yourself."
A rosy blush crept up her neck and over her face. He found it most attractive, but the response told him her answer.
She put a smooth, tanned hand over his wrinkled and liver-spotted fingers. "Ward, you must understand that one trained as a diplomat ... I mean, in some company ..."
"When on the Islands, do as the Islanders do."
She removed her hand. The back of his own cooled in disappointment. "Something like that," she said. She picked up her teacup and swirled the dregs. Keel saw the defensiveness in the gesture. Ale was somehow off-balance. He'd never seen her that way before, and he wasn't vain enough to attribute it to this exchange with her. Keel believed that the only thing that could bother Ale was something totally unplanned, something with no body of knowledge behind it, no diplomatic precedent. Something out of her control.
"Ward," she said, "I think there is one point that you and I have always agreed on." She kept her attention on the teacup.
"We have?" He held his tone neutral, not giving her any help.
"Human has less to do with anatomy than with a state of mind," she said. "Intelligence, compassion ... humor, the need to share ..."
"And build hierarchies?" he asked.
"I guess that, too." She met his gaze. "Mermen are very vain about their bodies. We're proud that we've stayed close to the original norm."
"Is that why you showed me the scar on your back?"
"I wanted you to see that I'm not perfect."
"That you're deformed, like me?"
"You're not making this very easy for me, Ward."
"You, or yours, have the luxury of choice in their mutations. Genetics, of course, adds a particularly bitter edge to the whole thing. Your scar is not ... 'like me,' but one of your freckles is. Your freckles have a much more pleasant quality to them than this." He tapped the neck support. "But I'm not complaining," he assured her, "just being pedantic. Now what is it that I'm not making easy for you?" Keel sat back, pleased for once about those tedious years behind the bench and some of the lessons those years had taught him.
She stared into his eyes, and he saw fear in her expression.
"There are Mermen fanatics who want to wipe every ... Mute off the face of this planet."
The flat abruptness of her statement, the matter-of-fact tone caught him off guard. Lives were precious to Islanders and Mermen, this he'd witnessed for himself innumerable times during his many years. The idea of deliberate killing nauseated him, as it did most Pandorans. His own judgments against lethal deviants had brought him much isolation in his lifetime, but the law required that someone pass judgment on people, blobs and ... things ... He could never decree termination without suffering acute personal agony.
But to wipe out hundreds of hundreds of thousands ... He returned Ale's stare, thinking about her recent behavior - the food cooked by her own hands, the sharing of these remarkable quarters. And, of course, the scar.