little, got his shoulders under the weight and bore it up. The water went from the normal dusky green of these depths to a flaring bluegreen, like a

liquid set on fire. All around them, if it was possible for water to feel wetter than water already was, it did. The personality of the local ocean,

partly aware, washed through both Kit and S'reee, intent on washing away resistance over time, as it always had.

Kit had no intention of being washed anywhere. Slowly and carefully he and S'reee started to put their case, defining a specific area on which they

desired to operate, telling the ocean what they wanted to do and why it was going to be a good thing.

They were reminding the ocean how things had once been: a long discussion, setting aside for the moment its outrage over having been systematically

polluted. But then the local waters were a different issue from the greater, world-girdling Sea, which was a whole living thing, a Power in its own

right and the conduit through which the whales' own version of wizardry came to them.

The Sea stood in the same relationship to the ocean as the soul stood to the body, and the ocean, merely physical as it was, had its own ideas about the

creatures that had come over the long ages to populate it. To the ancient body of water, which had suddenly found itself playing host to the first and

simplest organisms, everything biological looked suspiciously like pollution. The merely physical ocean, remembering that most ancient, blood-saline

water, had for a long time resisted the idea of anything living in it. Many times life had tried to get started as the seas cooled, and many times it

had failed before the one fateful lightning strike finally lanced down and stirred the reluctant waters to life.