Then he felt a pair of hands closing on his calf, hard, and shoved his heel back in the direction where he guessed the face must be. He didn’t have much time left. “Hey! Mermaids! I’m General Luce’s dad! I need to see her!”
A black boat zoomed in, almost colliding with Andrew’s head. He tried to dive under it, but those hands were still jerking him backwards, and now someone else was leaning in from above and twisting his right arm sharply up behind his back. His body rocked crazily from side to side as he tried to pull free. But more hands kept closing on him, and the mermaids were singing indifferently in the distance. Had they even heard him? He was already hauled halfway out of the water, the boat’s edge digging into his stomach, when he felt a horrible staticky buzzing at his temple. He heard his own sharp scream as his limbs spasmed, and for a while the world was smeared black and senseless.
He came to face-down on the boat’s curved bottom, his wrists shackled behind him and his legs somehow immobilized. Water sloshed against his cheek and his sodden clothes encased him in stiffness and cold. Someone was rummaging through his pockets.
“No ID on this guy, then?” a man asked behind him. The voice was all wrong, prickly and distorted. Like it was coming through some kind of speaker.
Someone else laughed, a little nastily. Somehow laughter sounded even worse than speech did through that veil of electrical noise. “Didn’t you hear? We don’t need ID. Guy already said who he is—and he wasn’t talking to us, either.”
“I heard him shouting something about General Luce. He isn’t the first of these berserkers who’s—”
“He said he’s her dad. And I’d say he looks right too.”
There was a stunned pause, and then the first man whooped. “We got Andrew Korchak? About time. God, we’ve been hearing enough about it.”
“I figured he’d turn up here eventually. What do you think they’ll charge him with? You think aiding and abetting the enemy will stick?”
Great job there, pal, Andrew thought. Great job on the getting to Luce. Great job explaining everything.
The curved shell of the boat vibrated as the motor roared. Air rushed across Andrew’s back. With an effort, he just managed to crane his head far enough to catch a last glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge, falling into a wild gray sky. The last velvety resonance of the mermaids’ song faded away.
It was mid-afternoon the next day when Moreland went to visit Anais, an even odder smile than usual on his face. “Hello there, tadpole.”
Anais hesitated for only a second before swimming over, but she didn’t look up at him. Moreland stood with his hands spread on the glass, enjoying her lowered eyes and cowed expression. “What do you want me to do now?”
Moreland couldn’t resist pushing his luck a little. “Aren’t you happy to see me, tadpole? All alone in this tank all day, nothing to do. But you know I always bring the fun. Don’t I?”
“It’s not the same,” Anais barely muttered. She looked very pale, her golden hair matted in places. Maybe her sky blue tail was losing a bit of its iridescence as well.
“What’s not the same, dear?”
“Singing to people. It’s not as fun anymore, with you always telling me what to do, and I can’t even see them. And I just did the last one, like, yesterday!”
“Perhaps I can address your concerns this time. I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be allowed to watch the effects of your singing . . . on our newest subject.”
“What are you talking about?” Anais was looking up at him now, her eyes wide and her lids dark and puffy.
“Tell me something. I’m very curious to know what would happen to someone who was obliged to listen to your death song for an extended period of time. That is, if there was no water available to . . . relieve the pressure. What do you think the results would be?”
Anais gave her habitual bewildered glare while she tried to understand what he’d just said. Then she released a kind of astonished squeal. “You mean if I sang to somebody and they couldn’t drown themselves? They’d go crazy!”
Moreland nodded. Mermaids’ voices slopped heavily in his brain, a wave made of cold, ringing metal. “Indeed. They’d go crazy. Permanently, do you suppose?”
He’d listened to that recording of mermaid song for precisely twenty-eight seconds before he’d tried to drown himself, and each one of those seconds seemed to carry more weight than the entire rest of his life. He didn’t actually doubt that someone forced to listen to Anais’s death song for several minutes would sustain irreversible damage. He didn’t expect Anais to give him any information that he didn’t already know from personal experience.
He asked instead for the peculiar pleasure of watching Anais try to think, of hearing how she’d reply. Her face contorted as she mulled the question.
“I don’t know! How am I supposed to know that? It’s not like I ever let anybody live—when I was still with the tribe! Why do you always have to ask me these questions?”
For the first time, Moreland wondered if she genuinely missed her slaughtered friends; if, perhaps, she even regretted surviving. “Let’s assume permanently, then. The victim would be left permanently utterly insane. A gibbering idiot. It would be apparent to anyone who observed him afterward that he was mad and that nothing he’d ever said should be believed. For example, his outlandish claims that mermaids are lost little girls who’ve been terribly hurt somehow.”
Anais tipped her head. The strain of following his reasoning showed vividly on her face. “Mermaids—but girls do change because they get hurt! Except for, like, me.”
“Oh, I know that. Tadpole, of course we know things—you and I do, I mean—that we’d prefer the American public didn’t know. And if someone goes around telling them those things, we’d much prefer if they didn’t take him seriously.”
“But—who are you talking about? I don’t know what—”
“Ah, tadpole, quite a prize. A prize and a surprise for you. I hope you’ll be pleased.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Whom in all the wide world would you most enjoy hurting, Anais?”
“I—you mean Luce? Did you catch her? But me singing wouldn’t make another mermaid go crazy!”
“I’d like to propose that you can wound Luce most effectively by destroying someone she loves.” Moreland grinned. “Now are you happy to see me? I have Lucette Korchak’s father in shackles just down the hall, and when you’re ready I’ll bring him to you.”
Anais didn’t look happy at the news. Moreland was genuinely surprised. She blanched and hunched her shoulders.
“You see, dear? You don’t have to try to track down his phone number anymore because we’ve conveniently brought him straight to you. And, given what an unholy nuisance he’s turned out to be, I’d have to surmise that his bitch of a daughter must take after him.” Anais’s expression didn’t change. Moreland felt the first twinge of worry that she might actually refuse to do what he wanted. “Anais? You will collaborate with me on this little project, won’t you? You wouldn’t want me to think that you’ve . . . outlived your usefulness. Of course not.”
“You wouldn’t do anything to hurt me! Not after—I’ve helped you so much! You wouldn’t . . .”
Moreland glowered at her sternly until her voice trailed away. She was much too precious to him to be killed, but there was no reason to let her know that. “Just follow my instructions, tadpole. That way there won’t be any need for us to find out what I would do if I were ever forced to deal with your disobedience.”