“Hi, mermaid.” He was smiling a small careful smile, obviously trying not to scare her away. “Hoped you were gonna come back.”
Now that he was in front of her, Luce wasn’t sure where to start. “You look better.”
“I feel better. You know, I saw my own death that night. Turns out that a good shot of terror was the best medicine for me. And maybe there was something in that unreal voice of yours too.”
“I’m glad . . . it helped,” Luce murmured. He was gazing at her with such powerful curiosity that she was almost overwhelmed by shyness.
“But you don’t actually want to talk to me, do you? I mean— you’re gorgeous and magical and whatever the hell else you are. You didn’t stop by to shoot the . . . the breeze with me. So what do you want?”
He was right, of course, but Luce felt obscurely guilty that it was so obvious. “I just wanted . . . I wondered if I could ask you some questions?”
He just stared at her, his pale blue eyes glittering in the faded lamplight. It was hard to keep going. The immense emptiness above them seemed to press on Luce’s shoulders, and a rusty glow hazed across the sky.
“That night, you said you’d been a stevedore?” Luce asked.
“Eight years, after Nam. Unloaded all those ships pulling into the port of Oakland.”
“I was wondering . . . Maybe you know about the Golden Gate. You could tell me . . .” Luce didn’t want to give away too much; there was no way to know for sure if she could trust him. “Well, would it be possible to close it?”
The old man swayed a little from surprise. “Close it? The Golden Gate? Who the hell would want to do that?”
“Say, if the government, or the army . . . if they wanted to keep anything from getting through, could they do that?”
He tilted his head, thinking it over. “I guess the navy could do some kind of blockade. If there was a threat from foreign ships, not that this would ever happen, but they could line up their boats and keep ’em out.”
“But . . .” Luce knew she might be saying too much, but she didn’t see any other way. “What about under the water?”
“Because a sea serpent was gunning for Frisco, or the kraken was rising?” He laughed, a little too wildly. “Then they’ve got plenty of submarines. And they could plant mines.”
“I was wondering more about, if maybe they could close it down with a giant metal gate? Like, if they wanted to stop things that were smaller than ships or . . . or sea serpents.”
Luce watched understanding open inside his blue eyes, watched his lips purse thoughtfully. “And it’s the U.S. government that you think might be doing this ‘closing down,’ Miss Mermaid? Can’t say I’m their biggest fan.” He grimaced. “I have indeed seen a dab too much to be. Anyhow, I don’t think that’s something you should get yourself in a big tizzy about.”
“Because it’s impossible?” Luce asked hopefully. She was grateful that he wasn’t asking her too many questions.
“Might be possible, though it sure wouldn’t be easy. That’s not why they’ll never do it, though. They’d have the shipping companies and God knows who all screaming bloody murder if they tried it. One of the busiest ports in the country? They’re going to just stop that dead? Don’t think so.”
Luce’s tail had started twitching from excitement even before she consciously understood the implications of what he’d just said to her. “You’re saying they couldn’t afford to let that much business stop? So if it did . . .”
“You know how they say that blood is thicker than water, mermaid? I’ll tell you what’s thicker than blood. Blend up a stack of dollar bills and you’ve got yourself the thickest substance known to man, and it’s the goddamned stickiest!”
Luce was barely listening to him anymore. The Golden Gate Bridge wasn’t visible from here; all the buildings of downtown San Francisco were in the way. But she was gazing in its approximate direction anyway, her tail flicking in narrow loops behind her.
“Step your foot in that gunk, don’t care what kind of principles you think you’ve got; you’re trapped for life. Like a poor mouse in one of those glue traps, gnawing your own legs.”
No. Her idea was completely insane. It would take so many mermaids, probably thousands more than she had with her, and they’d all have to be so powerful. Luce could control an impressive volume of water, and Imani and some of the others were getting pretty good as well, but what she had in mind—it just wasn’t realistic.
“Hey, Miss Mermaid?”
Luce glanced back at him, though her thoughts were still far away. No matter how much she told herself she was being ridiculous, she was still longing to dash off and find Imani and the others.
“You have any clue how famous you are now?” His pale eyes shone with an expression Luce couldn’t identify, although the word “questing” occurred to her. He was looking for something, she thought. Then what he’d asked hit her, and she reeled a little.
“What are you talking about?” Luce demanded. Though actually, maybe she already had an idea . . .
“How about that you’ve gone Hollywood? How about a gigabillion views of that little movie you starred in? I wanted to see if I could learn anything about you after you saved my life. Hit the computers at this community center I go to, and hot damn if it wasn’t the exact same fishtailed Girl Wonder looking back at me from the screen.”
Luce’s mouth opened wordlessly. Of course she’d seen those humans pointing their camera at her, and she knew the government had found out she’d been sighted. But she hadn’t seriously considered the possibility that the video would wind up on the Internet or if it did that anyone would be interested. “You’re saying . . . I saw them holding a camera, but I didn’t really think they’d . . . or that anybody would believe . . .”
“Huge. It’s gotten huge. They put it out there, you better believe it, and now it’s all over the place.”
“Do people think it’s real?” Luce asked. How could they, though?
The old man shrugged. “If I hadn’t met you personally I wouldn’t have known what to think, Miss Mermaid who ought to be friendly enough to tell me her name, already. See, though, what you might want to think about . . .”
Luce was still disoriented by the news he’d just given her. It took her a second to focus. “Um, what?”
“Well, if you’ve got something you’d like to tell all the folks out here in humanland, they’ll probably listen. You’ve already got their attention.”
Luce thought about that. Of course she had a lot of things she wanted to say to the humans: so many that she had no idea where she should start. But she couldn’t take the risk that the divers would find out where she was. If they came looking for her, they’d find everyone else, too.
How much harm had that video already done?
“You said you’d help me!” Luce began as the panic hit her. “You said I knew who to ask!”
The old man shook his head, surprised by her vehemence. “I did, sure. And you do. What did I say? How am I not trying to help?”
“No one—this is really, really important, okay?—no one can know I’m here! You can’t tell anyone!”