The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  Zev splashed into the shallow water, pushed forward, swam a few strokes, kicked his heels in the air, and vanished.

  “He’s eager,” Victoria said, a smile in her voice. She stopped beside J.D.

  “He’s homesick, I think.”

  “He doesn’t act it.”

  “He doesn’t mope... but... when you spend time with the divers, you get used to a lot of contact. A lot of touch. He doesn’t get that here.”

  “He doesn’t?” Victoria sounded skeptical, and amused. “Could have fooled me.”

  “Not like back at his home.”

  The dune grass ended abruptly. J.D. and Victoria crossed the beach: soft deep dry white sand, a narrow line of drying seaweed and small shells, then damp, yielding dark sand. It was easier to walk, here where the tide had just gone out, where the siphon-holes of clams pocked the surface and squirted when J.D. stamped her foot.

  Out in the low breakers, Zev surfaced, waved, beckoned, and disappeared again.

  “Are you going to join him?”

  “In a while,” J.D. said. “Let’s go over by that piece of driftwood.” She scooped up the beach blanket, and then she thought: Driftwood?

  The huge, gnarled tree trunk lay above the high-water line, down where the beach began to curve out to a low headland. Its twisted, weather-silvered roots reached into the air. The trunk itself was larger in diameter than J.D. was tall. The top of the trunk had been broken off in a jagged point, as if wind had uprooted it and the fall had shattered it.

  If it had ever lived.

  J.D. touched the trunk. It felt like wood, and when she knocked against it with her knuckles, it resounded with a familiar, woody thunk.

  “It is wood! I thought it’d be rock foam. How — ?”

  Victoria grinned. “Realistic, eh? Cellulose and lignin and what-all. Crimson sculpted it. She said any self-respecting beach should have cedar driftwood on it.”

  “It’s handsome.” J.D. stroked the smooth, weathered surface. “I miss big trees.”

  “There are some, over on the wild side. Twenty years old, from one of the O’Neills.”

  “Twenty years old?” J.D. smiled. The broken end of the driftwood revealed the sculpted growth rings. “This would be hundreds of years old.”

  “Crimson’s good, isn’t she? She told me she’d grown it layer by layer, and cooked the sculptural material so even the isotopic ratios would be right.”

  “She’s very talented.” J.D. let her day pack slide off her shoulders, spread out the blanket beside the tree trunk, and sank down crosslegged.

  “I don’t remember the last time I went swimming,” Victoria said. “I’ve never swum in Starfarer’s ocean.” She took off her floppy red t-shirt and kicked off her sandals. She was wearing a shiny blue two-piece bathing suit.

  Zev had paced them as they walked along the shore. He waved again, called to J.D., bodysurfed halfway to the beach, then did a flip-turn and vanished into the waves again.

  “Good lord, he’s going to break his neck!” Victoria said.

  “No, don’t worry. He knows where the bottom is.”

  “Shall we swim?”

  “I want to talk to you for a minute, first.”

  Victoria knelt beside J.D.

  “I’m listening.”

  o0o

  Zev was used to older adults gathering to talk while the younger adults swam and played. He was patient, and he knew J.D. would join him soon. He looked forward to casting off the restrictive land manners for a few hours, and he wished he had someone to swim with now while he waited for J.D. and Victoria. He wondered if Victoria’s presence meant he and J.D. would have to maintain land manners. How would Victoria know diver manners?

  Victoria’s intensity both scared and intrigued him. He knew she did not altogether approve of his being along on the expedition. Still, she had let him accompany the alien contact department, so she must like him just a little.

  Among the divers, Zev had spoken for J.D. to Lykos; J.D. must have spoken for him to Victoria.

  While he waited for J.D., he swam through the shallow ocean.

  The starship spun one direction; he swam the other direction, minus-spin, because it felt as if he were swimming downhill. The sensation amused him.

  Paralleling the shore, he followed the wide curve of the crescent beach, rounded the headland, and skirted close to the dangerous and exciting rough water. He probed the ocean with sound. He heard and tasted the weathered gnarls of the rock, and the seaweed and barnacles, periwinkles and limpets, anemones and starfish that inhabited the intertidal zone. Offshore, a school of fish scintillated past.

  On the other side of the headland, the beach sloped shallowly into the sea, then rose again to form a barrier island half a kilometer offshore. Zev swam through the channel, staying on the surface. The water was silty and brackish and the bottom sand turned to mud. The taste of algae and reeds, shrimp and crabs and the bottom-dwellers of sheltered bays, filled his mouth and nose. He stroked toward shore till he could stand, chest deep, in the water. He put his feet into the deep warm mud of the river delta, for the pleasure of feeling the life it succored vibrating against his skin. He pushed off backwards and kicked along like an otter, looking up, tracing out the shore of Starfarer’s ocean belt.

  He passed the end of the island. Another headland stretched into the sea, separating the delta from an open beach. Zev swam around it and into cold, exhilarating water. He dove, touched bottom, pushed off, exploded all the way out of the water at the apex of his jump, and splashed back into the waves.

  Ahead he heard the steady splash of another swimmer. Not J.D. or Victoria, someone swimming near the small crescent beach. Zev turned over and swam hard, glad to find a swimmer to play with. When J.D. was ready, she would call his name and he would hear her.

  He reminded himself to maintain his land manners, even though he was in the water. The ordinary humans owned this place, and the customs of divers carried no weight.

  Even J.D. had taken time to get used to diver manners. He remembered how shy she had been at first. For at least a week, when she came to live with his family back on Earth, she had worn a bathing suit that covered most of her body. Sometimes she even wore a wet suit. Zev could not imagine swimming in clothes. Now J.D. swam naked, just like a diver. She was not shaped like a diver, but that was all right. He remembered the first time she had joined in playing with him and his siblings and cousins; he remembered the first time he had swum beneath her and stroked her body from her throat to her knees. He loved the way her body felt against his hands, against his skin. He loved the weight of her breasts, the taste of her tongue. He liked it when they played together in the water, and he liked land sex as well. It felt more serious to Zev, somehow, though that might be because it was just him and J.D. and they concentrated only on each other.

  He felt excited. The tip of his penis protruded from his body, into the cold water.

  He gave up trying to figure it all out. Making love seriously, making love playfully: he liked both.

  Ahead of him, the other swimmer churned the water. Zev remembered how astonished Chandra had been by the differences between male divers and male human beings. He did not want to startle the other swimmer. He let his penis withdraw again.

  He touched the second swimmer with his voice. She did not react: she did not know how to listen.

  At first he did not recognize her. She looked different underwater. People always did, with their bodies made transparent by echoes. But he was close enough to see her with his eyes. It was Ruth Orazio, the United States Senator. Suddenly wary, Zev wondered if she had been involved in deciding that divers should work for the military.

  He hung back, ready to dive and disappear, but willing to be friends. He cried out, in the air, with a questioning whistle, a sound of greeting.

  She glanced over her shoulder, saw him, and stopped swimming. She turned toward him, treading water, and lifted one hand above the surface in a tentative greeting. Zev ducked, s
troked once, and came up beside her. While he was underwater he traced her with his voice more completely, so he would be sure to recognize her immediately next time he saw her swimming. Her bathing suit made it harder to see all the way through her. But not impossible.

  “Hi,” she said. “Getting some exercise, too?”

  “Exploring the sea,” he said. He reached up and pushed his wet hair off his forehead with his webbed hand.

  “You’re Zev, right?”

  “Yes. And your name is Ruth Orazio.” A strange way to be introduced, by speaking the other person’s name, Zev thought. He wondered how two land people introduced themselves if they did not know each other. In the sea, when divers or orcas met, they gave their own names.

  “Just Ruth. I’m beat. God, the water’s cold today. I need to get where I can sit down, okay?”

  Zev followed her toward shore. The waves were very gentle here. Soon Ruth could stand up and walk. She wrung the water from her hair.

  Zev stood up and waded beside her. When she was thigh-deep in the gentle surf, she turned to look out over the sea, toward the rocky cliffs of Starfarer’s end.

  “It’s so beautiful down here, I’m surprised there aren’t more people. And more houses.”

  Zev fell to his knees before her, hugged her hips, and pillowed the side of his face against her belly. She stiffened, startled, then relaxed a little and looked at him curiously.

  “What are you...?”

  “I can’t hear it, not yet.” Zev smiled at Ruth Orazio, blissfully. “It’s very little!”

  She paled. “How did you...?”

  “I saw, of course. Can I help teach it to swim?” It would be wonderful to have some youngsters here. He missed his little sister and his cousins. He splashed back in the water, gazing up at Ruth.

  “You saw?”

  “Underwater.”

  She did not understand.

  “Everything’s transparent,” he said.

  “Oh. Sound. Of course. Everything would be.”

  Her expression was so different than what he expected: he was afraid he had misunderstood. He stood up.

  “Aren’t you... aren’t you going to keep it? I — I thought since you chose it, you would...” He stumbled to a stop.

  He had not discussed this with J.D. But he had told her, as it was only polite to do, that he had not chosen to be fertile. She had assured him in turn that she too was in control of her reproductive abilities. So ordinary humans were like divers in the matter of deciding to bear children. Or J.D. was even more extraordinary than Zev already knew.

  Or something had gone wrong, and Ruth had to make a decision about it.

  He felt confused and embarrassed, when he only wanted to feel joy for Ruth Orazio and her coming child.

  “Did you choose?” he asked.

  “Yes — of course I did. I want it...” She stopped and took a long, deep breath. “Zev, promise me something.”

  “If I can.”

  “My lover and I have been trying to have kids for a long time. I’ve had a couple of miscarriages.” She hesitated. “Do you know what that means?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.” Divers had an even higher rate of miscarriage than ordinary human beings. That did not make the loss any easier.

  “It’s hard to handle, when that happens” she said. “It’s even harder when everybody knows, and then you have to tell them you’ve lost it.”

  No diver would have to be told; it would be obvious.

  But it would be hard, Zev thought, if someone tried to congratulate you on your happiness, and you had to tell them you were sad instead.

  “Yes,” he said again.

  “So... please don’t tell anyone you know. Till I’m sure I won’t lose it. All right?”

  He could not help feeling that she was not telling him something — but he could not think what it might be.

  “All right.” He agreed reluctantly; he did not know what else to do. “I have to go. A friend is waiting for me.”

  “Go ahead,” she said. “And — thanks for giving me your word.”

  He waded toward deeper water. When the waves rose around his chest, he glanced back.

  “I didn’t mean to... to trouble you,” he said. “Do you have friends to be with?”

  “Sure,” she said quickly. “Sure I do. You go on, now.”

  He stroked forward through the waves, and dove.

  o0o

  J.D. wondered why it was so hard to discuss, on land, a subject that was so easy and natural in the sea. She wondered why it was so hard to discuss it with Victoria, who found her attractive, whom she had kissed.

  “Divers and ordinary humans have different manners,” she said to Victoria. “Zev behaves differently on land than in the water. So do I, but it’s easier for me. The land manners, I mean, because they’re what I’m used to. It took me a while to get used to the way divers behave with each other, back on Earth. They play a lot. And their play’s very sexual.” The words for sex and play were nearly indistinguishable in true speech, the language divers learned from the orcas.

  “Yes?” Victoria said.

  J.D. glanced out at the sea, and obliquely overhead. The ocean extended in a blue and silver circle all the way around this end of Starfarer. She could see nearly three-quarters of the circle; directly overhead it vanished behind the brilliance of the light tube, and she could not look in that direction.

  “If it will make you uncomfortable,” J.D. said to Victoria, “for either of us to touch you while you’re swimming, I’ll tell Zev that we’re using land manners in the ocean today.”

  “It wouldn’t make me uncomfortable to touch you,” Victoria said. “Quite the opposite. And Zev... intrigues me. The question is, what do you want to do?”

  “I’d like... I’m looking forward to playing. With both of you.”

  Victoria grinned. “That sounds like fun, eh?”

  J.D. smiled in return. “Yes. It does. Let’s go swimming.”

  She flipped off her sandals with her toes, stood up, and unbuttoned her shirt. She was not wearing a bathing suit, and she felt shy about undressing in front of Victoria. She faced the ocean and took off her pants. She was built like a long-distance swimmer, medium tall and stocky. She had done competitive endurance swimming when she was in school. Recently her endurance swimming had consisted of trying to keep up with the divers, a task an order of magnitude harder than swimming a sea race. Taking a deep breath, she let it out and dropped her shirt on the sand. Nearby, Victoria dropped her bathing suit on the sand.

  “Let’s go!” She sprinted for the water, laughing, free and excited.

  o0o

  Swimming underwater, Zev heard his name-sound, in J.D.’s voice with her unique true-speech accent. He replied. He could hear her from both directions: without mechanized craft making engine noises, sound could bounce around and around the cylinder. He could hear multiple sets of echoes, each one fainter, than the last.

  J.D.’s voice came a moment sooner from in front of him than from behind him. He had swum more than halfway around the cylinder. The shortest way to return, and the most fun, was to swim the rest of the way around in the minus-spin direction. He plunged ahead. The faster he swam, the steeper downhill slope he perceived. He would be back to his starting point in a short time.

  Suddenly aware of the restrictions in his movements, the small size of Starfarer, Zev felt closed in. Orcas could travel a hundred kilometers in a day. He was on board a vessel a few kilometers in circumference, twice that in length. Its ocean took up only a narrow ring along one end.

  Swimming hard through the cold water, anxious to meet J.D., Zev passed the source of the chill current: a small glacier, flowing and dripping down one narrow angle of the cylinder’s end. Zev swam as fast as he could. Bits of ice, calved by the glacier, bobbed on the waves. They were too small to be icebergs, or even ice floes. They were ice cubes, nearly freezing the water, chilling the air. His breath steamed.

  Zev was not arctic adap
ted. Divers had discussed adapting themselves for polar life, but Zev liked the temperate climate of the Puget Sound wilderness. During most seasons back home, the water was cold. But not this cold. He had never swum in such cold water before. His body reacted, his metabolism kicking into high gear, pumping out heat as fast as the cold drained it.

  The webs between his fingers paled as his capillaries contracted, conserving heat within his body. He pushed himself to keep going. He could hear the end of the cold water, not very far ahead: his searching voice echoed against the rough interface where the cold current plunged beneath the warm gulf stream.

  In the distance, J.D. swam toward him. But she was slower than usual. She was swimming plus-spin. She would feel as if she were going uphill.

  Zev asked Arachne if the current was always this cold, and found that the computer web was attempting to solve the problem of the unseasonably warm weather. He began to shiver, deep and hard. He called out to J.D.

  She answered, greeting him, teasing him. New energy propelled him.

  J.D. heard Zev’s call. She replied to him, caressing him with her voice. She heard a change in the water. She paused for a moment to look ahead. The surface turned from soft blue to dark, dense blue. Zev was fifty meters past the boundary. She did not know what the difference was until she plunged into the frigid current. She gasped and nearly stopped, kicked her metabolic enhancer, and ploughed into the swirling mix of currents.

  Zev swam doggedly forward, his stroke rough and noisy instead of smooth and silent.

  “Whew!” J.D. said in true speech. “It’s cold over here!”

  She flip-turned beside him and matched his speed and direction. She laughed in delight at the change from plus-spin to minus-spin, as if she had caught a wave.

  She swam very close to Zev, letting her motion pull him along. Zev let his arms relax against his sides, and rode J.D.’s strength through the rough boundary.

  They broke out of the cold, into a current so warm it felt tropical. Zev whistled in pleasure and relief, spiraled out of J.D.’s wake, and let himself sink.