The Twice Lost

And Luce went and stood up for him anyway and told the world to believe whatever he said . . .

Yeah, he still knew exactly who Luce was. That was his girl, all right, and he never should have let himself doubt her. And he urgently needed to find her, no matter what it took, and explain how that reporter had distorted what he’d said in his video. He’d hitchhiked the rest of the way to San Francisco, and now—well, he still had a little bit farther to go.

“Hey!” The teenage boy’s eyes had flown open, carried on some tremulous gust in the music. “Hey, aren’t you—from that video? The guy who came out and told everyone about them? General Luce’s father? You are!”

Great. Somehow this wasn’t a possibility that had occurred to him—and attracting attention was hardly going to help him get past the line of scowling cops he could make out now between the close-pressed bodies ahead. His first irritated impulse to deny his identity, though, almost instantly shifted into the idea that he might be able to turn it to his advantage.

“Shhh,” Andrew hissed. He made his tone confiding, conspiratorial. “I’ve got to get to her.”

As he’d hoped, the boy nodded, but then he kept on nodding as if he were too entranced to stop. “That won’t be easy. They’re stopping everyone. Boats, anyone who tries to swim. I’ve seen like five people get arrested since midnight. I don’t know how you can.”

“How ’bout you distract the cops so I can get a head start?”

“There are police boats patrolling too, though. And then I think the mermaids have their own guards, and they might think you were trying to attack them or something.”

“If I can just make it as far as the mermaid guards, they’ll bring me to Luce,” Andrew whispered with far more assurance than he actually felt. “They’re not about to piss their general off by drowning her dad.”

Well, maybe they wouldn’t. But he’d worry about that once he got to them.

“Okay,” the boy said dreamily. “Okay. But hey, will you tell her I helped you?”

So there it was. The kid would do a better job if he was feeling really motivated. “Yeah, I absolutely will. What’s your name?”

“Josh Byrd. Tell her—I really believe in what she’s doing? I know people are complaining that it’s bad for the economy, but I think she’s right to try to protect the mermaids? Tell her—”

There was a sudden clamor of jabbering voices, moaning half-musical cries, and screams from the edge of the water. Andrew tipped his head, and he and Josh elbowed their way through bodies that were now so compressed that they seemed more like some squirming inhuman substance than like actual people. Once they fought their way through to the front, they saw what was causing this fresh disturbance: five mermaids were floating only twenty feet away, looking at the crowd with what appeared to be a kind of stage fright. They were so beautiful that the sight of their faces seemed to burn Andrew’s eyes.

“Um, hi?” one of the mermaids ventured, her shyness contrasting strangely with her ferocious loveliness. “General Luce says it’s okay for us to talk to you.”

The crowd yowled, several people who were carrying signs swung them recklessly, and the mermaid glanced around at her friends and started backing away.

“Don’t scare them!” Josh yelled. “Everybody act calm! Don’t scare them!”

One brown-skinned mermaid flicked her way just a little closer, gazing with obvious pity at someone Andrew couldn’t see. Someone on the shore to his left, probably standing right at the front of the crowd. “I, uh, God, there’s something I have to tell you. About Melinda. We were friends, and she—”

The mermaid broke off in alarm, but this time what had spooked her wasn’t the crowd’s uproar but an even more abrupt and disturbing silence. She visibly gathered her courage and kept speaking.

“I’m sorry I have to tell you this! Melinda’s dead. I saw her get killed—by those divers with the helmets. They got her in the throat with a spear. I saw it, and I couldn’t do anything to help her! I couldn’t—I barely got away! But Melinda . . .”

Horror pitched sharply through the mermaid’s voice, and Andrew suddenly noticed the long, imperfectly healed, crimson slash that began at her left shoulder and disappeared where the water covered her chest. It must have been the distracting power of her beauty that had stopped him from seeing sooner that she was hurt. He had the funny feeling that everyone watching the mermaid had noticed her wound at the same moment he did. People around him gasped, sobbed . . .

And then a woman pitched headlong into the water, bobbing limply face-down as if she’d fainted.

Beside her floated the sign she’d been carrying, emblazoned with the name Melinda Crawford above an enormous photo of a beaming honey-haired teenager. Water sloshed across the girl’s smiling face, dragging it under . . .

Police were in the water, grappling with that unconscious body; around Andrew people screamed and tried to surge toward the spot; someone else dived and was instantly caught and flung back toward the shore. In the corner of his eye, he saw Josh leap forward shouting, crashing into three of the cops and toppling one of them.

As distractions went, it was all pretty prime—and then those mermaids were so close. What with how crazy everyone was acting, they’d probably never come this close again.

The only thing still separating him from the water was a low embankment of heaped rocks. Andrew stepped up onto it, seeing Melinda Crawford’s face half erased by green darkness, seeing the single police officer who turned to stare at him with a look of furious realization—and hurled himself over the edge.

Gray and salt and cold. The violent rhythmic thrashing of his arms as he propelled himself forward, beating the low waves. Up ahead he caught a glimpse of blue frightened eyes as a mermaid turned to gape at him. He spat out salt water and called, “Luce! General Luce! I need to talk to her!”

The rush and whorl of mermaid song was much louder inside the water than it had been onshore. His brain seemed to tremble and melt into strange new shapes, rippling wave forms. His vision was divided between the gray of the sky above and the slopping green confusion of the water. He lurched high enough to peer across the water’s surface, trying to catch sight of those brilliant blue eyes, of the flash of fins.

They didn’t seem to be there anymore. Maybe just a little farther ahead? He kicked harder, his jeans and sneakers dragging at the water.

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