Later, when it was all over, and Heineman was back in the boat, he was hard put to believe that he had ever been down in the sea. The lights of the ship had virtually failed, and only a dim dying-coal glow came from the depths.
        "Coffee," said Dug.
        "I don't need," said Heineman.
         The very thought of managing a cup of coffee in the sea-slurching boat was too much to cope with. But Dug Mantis was not to be so easily put off. He loomed out of the night, consolidated shadow blanking out the navigating stars. He sat next to Heineman, his heat telling of Heineman's cold. His bulk cancelled the lean night wind.
        "Coffee," said Dug, as if it were a mantra.
         Heineman could hear Atlanta's voice, excited, elated, boastful. He could see her gesticulating. A dying gell-torch was still on her wrist, and was jerked this way and that by her enthusiasms, like a star strapped to an acrobatic yo-yo. Its patterns were a kind of calligraphy, dimly alphabetizing as she gesticulated. Gestures underlined speech: but what she was saying he could not tell, for her meanings were blanked by the moaning sobs of one of the foreigners recovered from the depths.
        "Count off your boats," cried Zinjanthrop. "Boatmasters, count your boats and tell me."
         The old man's voice was hard and firm in the darkness. Heineman realized that old man Zinjanthrop had been really smart to get himself to La Lantis and get himself into the vug machine. The old man was too ancient to stand up well to the rigors of a hard night out in the boats, but, as a vug, only his head and his hands were exposed to the night air; the rest of him was warm and dry in La Lantis. Furthermore, being able to float freely in the air must have made it easy for him to keep track of all that was going on.
         Dug Mantis shouted a report to Zinjanthrop, then stooped to Heineman.
        "Drink," said Dug Mantis.
        "I'm drinking," said Heineman.
         The cup was a hardness in Heineman's hands, a warmth of heated steel which emphasised the cold of the rest of the cosmos. He drank, finding the coffee a thickness of sugar, of sweetness, of warmth. It made his throat apparent, created his stomach and made that stomach bloom warm. Thanks to the coffee, Heineman was less of a ghost. He became a creature with a gastro-intestinal tract. The last of the sugar was a sliding slurry of sticky slickness, reminding him of childhood indulgences and childhood illnesses.
         Dug Mantis took the cup, refilled it, passed it back to Heineman, urged him to drink again.
        " —  almost tore his arm off — "
         That was Atlanta, Heineman's indestructible sister, half a hand taller than he was, and stronger, and smarter. But he was alive, he had managed, he had done everything she had, it wasn't his fault if she was taller than he was.
        "I'm off," cried Zinjanthrop, and shut down the flashing strobe beacon, and started drifting away through the darkness in the direction of Eastport and La Lantis.
         With the lights of the Zuzu Magore having lapsed, the sea was surfaced with darkness, a glinting darkness which caught the raveling colors of the sky, the flaring of oil-lanterns and the gelid light of a luminous night-buoy. Now that it was all over, Heineman had a horror of those lamprey depths of darkness. The nightslop sea made him think of sharks, and, worse, of the groping clutches of the gigantic squids which had traumatized him in the vilest nightmares of his childhood nights.
         Heineman closed his eyes, and strange hooked patterns crawled across his field of vision. Those fragmentary dream-images echoed the secret shorthand of the accountants of the Family Jubiladilia accountants. Their significance was archaeological: they were pieces of a past life lived long, long ago, in the distant ages of a scholarly civilization, in the time before he became a wreck-diver. To Heineman's distress, he could not read that oh-so-familiar shorthand. Its shapings had become glyphs, strange ideograms in a dead tongue. He had lost the learning. He tried to pick up a pen to practice, but his hands had turned to rocks.
         Then someone was shaking him awake.
        "More coffee."
         It was Dug Mantis again, and his words were not a question but an order.
         Awake, Heineman drank. He realized they were on their way back to shore, had been making for shore for some time. He had been asleep. For how long? Years, he supposed.
        "You're cold," said Dug.
        "I'm all right," said Heineman.
         But he was shivering, and exhausted. Whenever he closed his eyes he lapsed into sleep, only to be woken almost immediately by a lurch of the boat, by a cry, or by the bite of the cold itself. He had lost his body-heat to the sea, and was suffering a muzzy confusion, a loss of functional intelligence which was consequent upon hypothermia.
         Then a crunching of boat against sand told him they had grounded: the prau was on the beach. People were tugging him, hauling him. Dug had his hands beneath his armpits.
        "I'm all right," said Heineman.
         And jumped into darkness, plunged into waist-deep sea, and was grabbed, was seized, was salvaged and hauled, was floursacked ashore amidst a jostle of laughter and exclamation. There was the grit of pearlsand beneath his knees, he was being toweled, a rough and scratchy woollen blanket was being thrown around his vulnerability, there was more hot coffee, and someone was shaking him.
        "Into the house," said Dug.
         But his voice had grown strangely high, not growl-guttural but flute-clear, piercing. Then Heineman realized it was not Dug's voice but Atlanta's.
        "I'm all right," said Heineman.
         And staggered, and almost fell, but his sister Atlanta was there to catch him.
         Even in his weakness, Heineman was resentful of Atlanta's strength, annoyed that she had held out better than he had, had proved better at handling the rigors of the sea.
          "Give him a hot bath," said someone.
         Heineman thought it was Zinjanthrop, but Zinjanthrop was not yet back from La Lantis. It was Kansko Chansko, Heineman's father, making himself useful for once.
         And, before Heineman knew it, his blanket was being pulled away and he was being bundled into the mainbath of the House Jubiladilia, a huge affair which could bathe twenty full-grown skinmasters at one time. The water was hot from the geothermal mainspring which fed the House Jubiladilia. Entering it was like being licked by a dragon.
        "Down!" said his father, pushing him into the water as he struggled to rise.
         Someone laughed, and Heineman knew it was Atlanta.
         Automatically, Heineman's water-lung began to function, and heat flooded his flesh. The sea was being pumped through his blood-rich water-lung, the heat of the water feeding promptly to his blood, and he grew warm without effort.
        "Leave him be," said Kansko Chansko. "He's okay now."
         Then the others left, and Heineman was alone in the big bath, where he fell asleep.
         Heineman did not know how long he lay sleeping. When he woke, he opened his eyes to find his face had slipped beneath the water. He was lying on the bottom of the mainbath, lying in the heated depths like a drowned corpse, with only the reliable octopus activity of his water-lung to sustain his life. Embalmed in heat, he lay on the roughstone floor of the bath, looking up through the greenish flood, up and up to the vial of lightwine which was tied to the rafters high overhead.
         Heineman realized he had woken because he was hungry, ferociously hungry, more hungry than he had ever been before in his whole life. He twisted in the water, and struck out for the surface. He scattered cascades of light as he hauled himself out of the bath, the light from the overhead vial waterfall-flashing as the water slip-slicked from Heineman's skin and scales. Though most of him was human-fleshed, albeit silverskinned, his arms were covered in scales, the sea's armor, the truth of his heritage.
         He kneaded water from his hair, that hair which was white despite his youth and strength. He flicked water from the scales of his arms, slapped his thighs, wiped his hands over his torso, and thus shed what water he could, then exited to the towel room.
         No dry towels! And no sign of his clothes, either. And all the light cotton house-smocks had gone, snatched up by firstcomers like Dug Mantis. Heineman had to delve into the laundry basket for a damp towel, and use that to rub himself down. Then, with no smocks or regular clothes in sight, and with Heineman's hunger overriding all sartorial concerns, he wrapped the towel around himself then made for the eastern garden. He could hear an uproarious babble of laughter and talk coming from that direction, and suspected a barbecue.
        "Heineman!" said Dug Mantis, greeting him with an upraised beer as he stepped out onto the lawn.
         Then everyone cheered, because the mood of the night was so ebullient that a cheer was demanded. Besides, Heineman was entitled to a cheer because he had made himself a hero: the nature of his heroism being that he had done an expert's job with an amateur's training.
         Then a beer was being thrust into Heineman's hand, and he was guzzling it, and then there was steak, and slabs of bread dripping with butter, and sausages, and grease, and tomato ketchup, and he ate and he ate, astonished at his own gluttonous greed.
         He quaffed a mug of orange juice, burped, and found in his mouth the strongest imaginable taste of yeast. Now he understood, for in the past he had sometimes experienced that taste, though only mildly, when a meal was overdue.
         The taste of yeast was a sign of the activity of that bacterium known to Chalakanesian science as sashum voshum: a symbiotic organism which lived in the gut of all those who were descended from the sealines. Those who owed genes to the sea had intestinal tracts which were shorter than the human norm, since their water-lungs took up space which would otherwise have been occupied by intestinal coils. To extract the full food-value from what they ate, they needed the fermentative powers of the sashum voshum bacterium to accelerate the digestion of their food.
        (For this reason, those bred from the Mer could not take antibiotics, since any antibiotic would kill off the sashum voshum, leaving the antibiotic-taker without the means to properly digest food, the aftermath of such a disaster being either grave sickness or death).
         Now, after the vast expenditure of energy needed to work underwater, to fight against the cold of the sea, and to supply nutrition to the adaptive skin which had merged with him, Heineman was possessed of a furious hunger. He could eat and eat and eat and eat. Attuned to the needs of his body, the sashum voshum bacteria in his gut were working furiously, hence the strength of the taste of yeast in his mouth.
         Heineman had always known about this on a technical level, just as the average virgin knows, on a theoretical level, about the pangs of childbirth. But he had never before experienced in his own flesh this incredible hunger, this rage of appetite.
         Powered by appetite, Heineman gave himself to the feeding, to the beer-drinking, to the laughter and talk, and was soon drunk, wildly drunk amidst a crowd of his own kind.
         He was still feeding when Vignis Vo Gorkindachina lurched upon the scene. Gorkindachina was unsteady on his feet because he had recently damaged his left leg. Gorkindachina claimed he had hurt his leg in a brawl with would-be muggers, though Zinjanthrop had put it about that Gorkindachina had been injured as a consequence of being shunted.
        "Congratulations," said Gorkindachina, bowing to Heineman. "I hear you did very well today."
         Then Heineman did not know quite how to respond, for Gorkindachina was, technically at least, his enemy, his rival, the man with whom he was locked in a struggle to decide who would be president of the Federated States of Chalakanesia.
         Heineman was undecided as to how he should respond to Gorkindachina, and was glad to be rescued by Oscar Fax Teladex, the man who was Director of La Lantis and who was also accredited as the Conference's ambassador to Islam Demaxus, where he represented the interests of both the Gulf of Heaven and the Chasms of Hell.
        "I hear you made a name for yourself today," said Teladex.
         He was a tall, friendly man, broad-shouldered, with a big shock of red hair. He was very popular in Lexis, for he had made several significant speeches apologizing for Hell's part in those was of the past which had devastated Chalakanesia. He was independently wealthy, and generous with his money, making hefty donations to several Chalakanesian charities.
        "I'm glad to have been of service to La Lantis," said Heineman. "I'm only sorry your ship went down. The loss of life was tragic."
         Beer, heat, bath, meat: these things had restored Heineman's coherence. His tongue was eloquence once more, and he was sufficiently in command of himself to know that social forms required the lamenting of the wrecked ship, the recital of conventional griefs. Heineman, being a conservative creature, observed the social forms automatically, even though he did not think that the day's disaster had been particularly tragic. After all, people died all the time, and the dead crewmen of the Zuzu Magore had been strangers to him. But Heineman knew he had to observe the pieties. Zinjanthrop had not needed to teach him that.
        "Tragic, yes," said Teladex, with graveness which matched Heineman's own. "Tragic, doubtless. But it must not be allowed to stand in the way of progress."
        "Progress?" said Atlanta, angling in on Teladex uninvited. "How do we know what's progress? Your wrecked ship, is that progress?"
        "Atlanta," said Heineman, pained. "Don't you have a child to look after?"
        "Thousands of years of civilization," said Atlanta, "and nobody's improved on death. Still the same old death, same old termination. So what does that say for your progress?"
         Was she drunk? Or just crazy? Heineman, for the life of him, couldn't work it out. He looked despairingly at Teladex, who responded with a tolerant smile.
        "I think you have a point, Atlanta," said Teladex, "at least if we want to turn philosophical. We have our gadgets, true, but the human condition never changes. The species gets more technically adroit, yes, but certainly not wiser."
        "But the skyships," said Heineman, distressed to find Teladex making concessions to Atlanta, "the skyships, they're wonderful."
        "When they don't crash," said Atlanta.
        "Exactly," said Teladex. "So we must work harder to make sure they don't crash in future."
        "We?" said Atlanta. "Where does this we come into it?"
        "I'll be happy to work with you," said Heineman, "when I'm president. It'll be my pleasure."
        "If you're president," said Atlanta.
         Teladex smiled. As he did so, Atlanta turned, saw someone she wanted to have a word with, and quit their company without so much as a murmur of apology.
        "I have to apologize for my sister," said Heineman. "It's been tough for her, what with the child and everything."
        "I hear that the child is very much the favorite of the Family," said Teladex, with another of his frequent smiles. "Little boy Loki, isn't it?"
        "Yes, yes, but," said Heineman, "we were talking about the, the skyship."
         Heineman was keen to be involved with the skyship, with progress, with the marvels of the technology of east and west, and did not want the conversation to wander off into gossip about his sister's illegitimate son.
        "The skyship, yes," said Teladex, a bit regretfully, as if he would like to have been able to avoid being straightjacketed into the role of representing the device. "There are obviously some bugs in our much-cherished machinery. Hence the tragedy with the Zuzu Magore. I believe our technicians are going to run some tests with a normalizer, to gather more data."
        "A normalizer?" said Heineman.
         Heineman was scrupulous in his intellectual habits. If he didn't understand something, he asked. It was a habit which had been instilled in him at school by Miss Davlix Keats, a much-loved teacher who had taught him at the age of eleven. In the years of Heineman's working life, that habit of inquiry had been confirmed by the practice of accountancy — in particular, by his work as an auditor. If an auditor doesn't understand something, then he makes it a priority to find out.
        "A normalizer," said Teladex, "is a gadget. Something for the technicians to play with. They have a pet name for it — they call it an omagulous toad, I've no idea why."
        "So what is it, exactly?" said Heineman.
         Teladex spread his hands in a gesture which disavowed all knowledge.
        "I know about as much about this as I know about plumbing," said Teladex. "That is to say, just about nothing. Still, if you're interested, come up to La Lantis. I'll get you a briefing. Any time."
        "I may take you up on that," said Heineman, who had caught sight of Gorkindachina, and found what he saw distracting.
         Gorkindachina, Heineman's presidential rival, had fallen into conversation with Belinda Skin Damsup Del Dorn, the woman who chaired Heineman's fund-raising committee.
        "Shall I make a time?" said Teladex, pulling out an appointment book.
        "I may get back to you on that," said Heineman.
        "A pleasure," said Teladex, bowing.
         And, with that, Teladex removed himself, for he had divined that Heineman had things on his mind which were more important than any technical gadgets up at La Lantis. A presidential election was coming: and Heineman, at all costs, wanted to be president.