Metaphase

by Vonda N. Mcintyre Неизвестный Автор

  drifting between his shoulder blades. Warm water crept up his face, covered his lips, covered his eyes. He could hardly tell the water from the steamy, humid air.

  Stephen Thomas plunged his head the rest of the way underwater and took a fast, deep breath.

  The water filled his throat and gushed into his lungs, choking him. He erupted from the bath, gasping. He leaned over the side of the tub, coughing water onto the floor. He nearly threw up.

  Finally he collected himself, and hunched in the cooling bath. His chest and his throat hurt. The ache travelled downward and lodged in his belly. I guess I'm not a diver yet, he thought.

  He opened the drain, stood up, and splashed out of the tub. Droplets of water sparkled all down his body, trapped by the gold pelt. He curried off the water as he had curried away the air bubbles. He needed a sweat-scraper, the kind grooms used on horses or on Bronze Age athletes.

  Rubbing himself with a towel, he went down the hall to his room. But in the doorway, he hesitated. He turned away from his comfortable, familiar mess and went to the end of the hall, to the room that would have been Merry's, to the room Feral had slept in. The partnership had never used it before Feral came to visit.

  The futon was made up; the shelf doors were closed. It was as if no one had ever stayed here. As if Feral had never existed.

  Stephen Thomas slid open the door to the built-in shelves. Feral's few extra clothes lay in a neat stack.

  Stephen Thomas closed the shelf door again. He hung his towel carefully on the rack, got into Feral's bed, curled up around the deep pain of his pelvic bone, and fell asleep.

  LIKE THE STROKES OF A BRUSH PAINTING, beach grass covered the soft dunes. Beyond the dunes lay Starfarer's ocean.

  J.D. walked along a path too narrow to have been made by human feet. She wondered who or what had formed the path-and saw a tiny hoofprint, a small pile of horse droppings. The tough, sharp-edged grass would be little temptation for the miniature horses, but they might like the salt, and the flat freedom of the beach.

  J.D. climbed the gentle rise of the dune. At the top, she paused to look across the shore.

  The ocean circled the park end of

  Starfarer's campus cylinder. It was the pulse of the starship's ecosystem, and the breath of its weather. The smell of salt sparkled in the onshore breeze, and the dry grains of sand hissed as they spun past J.D.'s feet.

  Open ocean created long crescents of white beach, separated by headlands and smoothed by the surf. Fqr overhead, on the shore beyond the sun tube, opposite this point on the cylinder, barrier islands protected salt marshes. The lowlands buffered the air and the water and offered shelter and spawning grounds to many of Starfarer's creatures.

  The hill that formed the cap of the cylinder rose from the far edge of the ocean, at the rim. The hill supported an ice field on one slope, hot springs on another. Their cold and warm currents circulated the seawater and helped drive the weather.

  Zev stopped beside her, staring out at the ocean. He glanced at J.D., his face glowing.

  "You go on ahead," she said softly. "I want to talk to Victoria for a minute."

  He hesitated, then whooped in excitement and took out for the sea. He skidded down the face of the dune and dropped the beach blanket. Racing across the narrow crescent beach, kicking up bright showers of dry sand, he flung off his shirt; he hopped on one foot, then the other, while he stripped off his shorts.

  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 docsn'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 highwater 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."

  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 bottomdwellers 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 man ners. 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. fie 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, stroked once, and came up beside her. While he was underwater he traced her with his voice more completely, so he would be sure to recog-

  nize 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 . . . T'

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

  She paled. "How did you . . . T'

  "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? 1-1 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 knrw.

  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.

  ,,Afl 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.

  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 1, 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 oth
er, 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. Nearby,

  Victoria dropped her bathing suit on the sand.

  "Let's go!" She sprinted for the water, laughing, free and excited.

  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.

  JDA 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.