“Didn’t she call you?”
“No. Isn’t that odd... Maybe she forgot our appointment, too,” J.D. said hopefully. “Excuse me, I’d better try to reach her and apologize, at least.”
Her eyelids flickered closed and she fell silent as she connected with the web.
Letting the hot-pack drift in place, Victoria took a sandwich from a service module, tore off a corner of the wrapper, and pulled off a bite-sized piece of the sandwich. She left the rest inside the paper so it would not shed crumbs. She ate the bite, then ate the corner of the wrapper as well.
Feral watched her with an expression that indicated he thought Victoria was pulling his leg.
“Rice paper,” Victoria said. The crinkly film dissolved on her tongue. “We try to make everything we can from renewable resources, and as recyclable as possible.” She grinned. “One way or another.”
She ate another bite of her sandwich, and another corner of the rice-paper wrapping.
J.D. opened her eyes again. “I left her a message.” She sighed. “How could I just forget? I guess I’ll have to do some seriously apologetic groveling when she comes on board.”
“You folks didn’t exactly make it hard for your opponents to take pot-shots at the expedition,” Feral said. “You’re taking along artists, and grandparents, and the social structure is a pretty weird mix — ”
“Should I take that comment personally?” Victoria asked.
“Only if you want to. You’ve got to admit that polygamy is unusual.”
“But my family isn’t polygamous.”
“What, then?”
“The technical term is ‘family partnership.’ It isn’t as rigidly defined as polygamy. A family partnership is gender-transparent. It doesn’t require a particular mix, like several members of one gender and one member of the other.”
“But that’s what yours has.”
Victoria forced herself to answer without hesitation. “It does right now. But it doesn’t have to.”
“Can I have an exclusive on your next engagement?”
“I was only speaking theoretically.” Victoria tried to smile, but the idea of bringing in another partner hurt too much. It would not be replacing Merit — no one could replace Merit — but it would feel like trying. “Besides, the last time somebody wrote about our personal lives, we got insults from weirdos who think we’re reactionary, even stranger messages congratulating us on our traditional values, and a handful of proposals from people who thought they’d fit right in. It takes too long to answer the mail.”
“Why’d you choose the arrangement, if I’m not being too nosy? Are you... I don’t know what the parallel term for ‘monogamous’ would be for a family partnership, but you know what I mean. Don’t you trust the Thanthavong viral depolymerase?”
Victoria found herself more amused than offended by Feral’s unapologetic nosiness.
“I admire Professor Thanthavong tremendously. She’s the head of the department where my partner Stephen Thomas has tenure, and he’s eloquent about her achievements.”
“Her work made a big difference,” said J.D., who was older than either Victoria or Feral. “It’s hard to explain how scared everybody was, to anybody who’s too young to remember.”
“Then why the partnership?”
“U.S. law provides for it, and it helps ease some of the problems of a multinational family arrangement,” Victoria said. “But the real reason is... it seemed like a good idea at the time. It still does. But it’s a long story. I’ll tell it to you someday. I have a couple of things to do before we dock, so I’ll meet you both in the observation bubble. All right?”
Feral looked disappointed. Victoria had learned, in their short acquaintance, that Feral would talk about anything for as long as anyone else could stand it.
“I wouldn’t mind the condensed version — ”
“The orcas have an interesting social structure.” J.D. gave Victoria a sympathetic glance as she interrupted Feral without appearing to. “You can draw parallels between it and a family partnership...”
Victoria extricated herself gratefully.
She felt a bit guilty about implying that she had some kind of important errand to run before the transport docked. In fact, she wanted to take a shower and change clothes.
Zero-g showers amused her. The water skimmed over her, pulled across her body by a mild suction at one side of the compartment. When she was wet, she turned off the water and lathered herself with soap, scraped off most of the suds with an implement like the sweat-scraper of an ancient Greek athlete — or a racehorse — and turned the water on again till the last of the soap washed away. It felt like standing in a warm windy rain. When she finished, she was covered all over with a thin skin of water. She scraped herself off again, got out of the shower and closed the door, and turned the vacuum on high to vent the last of the water out of the compartment and into the recycler. Her whole body felt tingly and refreshed.
As she dressed in her favorite new fancies, the warning signal sounded softly through the ship. A few minutes later, microgravity replaced zero-g as the transport decelerated.
Victoria hurried to the observation bubble, anxious to be home.
o0o
All alone, Zev swam through the cold water toward the harbor. He had come this way by himself a hundred times, maybe a thousand, and he had never felt alone. Before, he always knew he would find J.D. in the cove or on the shore, and his family back in the open water.
The tidal outflow from the harbor, just perceptibly warmed by the sun, flowed over him. He swam between the headlands that protected the beach.
When he reached J.D.’s anchored dock, he stopped and floated beneath its shadow. He could hear the artificial lung respiring in its compartment, waiting and waiting for someone who might never return. It was full of oxygen, ready, with a willingness bred into its cells, to give up the oxygen whenever a human needed it. It had no consciousness, of course, no brain, only the bare minimum of nerve tissue necessary to make it function. Yet Zev had the urge to reach in and stroke it, comfort it, like a pet.
Instead he dove deeper and swam toward shore along the harbor bottom, taking the environment into his memory like a baleen whale scooping up plankton to store up energy before its long migration. He gathered the details of scarlet and yellow and green anemones, great gooseneck barnacles kicking their feet in the water to draw in their food, long strands of kelp reaching up toward sunlight, a pretty little octopus, watching curiously, following him cephalopod-fashion, squirting water and trailing its legs.
Zev’s cousins, the orcas, did not forage for plankton. They hunted: they hunted what they found wherever they found themselves.
He had always done the same; he would continue to do the same, despite a changed environment. He kicked hard and burst through the surface, nearly leaving the water before he splashed down again.
A human stood on the beach. He did not mistake this human for J.D., though he had met precious few other true humans in his life. J.D. was gone.
The water became too shallow to swim in. He stood up on the rocky shelf and waded forward.
The human saw him coming and hurried toward him. She was different from J.D., her eyes without pupils and all gray. She wore a wet suit and carried a mask and fins.
“Hello,” he said. “I am Zev.”
“My name’s Chandra. I don’t suppose you ever heard of me, either. Do you know where J.D. Sauvage is?”
“She left for the starship.”
“Oh, great.”
He had no idea why her voice held anger, nor why she smelled of fear. Smells carried poorly in air, compared to water, and the wet suit covered all the places that would send off useful odors.
Chandra extended her hand to Zev. Zev slid his fingertips along her knobby fingers, up the back of her hand, and along the wrist. He felt her start to draw away, then relax again.
“Good-bye,” he said.
“Wait! Where are you going?”
“To represent the divers on the deep space expedition.”
“Hey, great, maybe I’ll see you on board. Will I find other divers in the water?”
“Where else?” he asked, amused.
“I mean nearby.”
“No,” he said.
“Where are they?”
“They have gone somewhere else.”
Zev started up the beach.
He heard more humans coming toward the cove. They were still out of sight, beyond the hill and among the Douglas firs. He glanced back at Chandra.
“Are your friends coming to swim with you? I’m sure the orcas would not mind, if you asked, but you are supposed to ask.”
“It’s just me,” she said. “I was supposed to dive with Sauvage, but since she’s not here I’m going in anyway.”
A group of people, all dressed the same, appeared between the tree. They crashed down the slope, not bothering to be quiet.
“Military exercises, maybe?” Chandra said. “Those folks are in uniform, and they’re carrying guns.”
Zev hesitated. He was not entirely sure what the military was, but he knew they were responsible for the difficulties his family faced. He did know the meaning of the word “gun.” Guns were not permitted in the wilderness.
Zev was fearless, but he was not foolish. If he knew a shark was nearby and he was all alone, he would avoid it if he could. If the family were around, that might be different. But his family was far away.
He walked back down the beach and waded into the water.
“Wait!” Chandra called. “I’ll go with you!”
He could tell she knew nothing about swimming as soon as she pushed off into the low waves. Instead of diving into them she tried to rise above them. They splashed her in the face and made her cough and choke and try to find her footing. Instead of turning back, she floundered on toward the dock. Terror poured out of her, the flavor carried strongly by the sea. Zev wondered what frightened her so.
He stroked beside her. “Put on your mask,” he said.
She had jumped in so quickly that the mask still dangled from her arm by its strap, further hampering her attempts to swim. Zev moved closer to her, put one arm around her, and held her steady. She pushed the mask over her head. It pressed against the growths on her face. Zev wondered if it hurt. He pulled a few locks of her hair from beneath the edges of the mask, and hoped it would not leak.
The other humans reached the shore. They saw Zev and Chandra in the water. They broke into a run. Their feet made loud noises on the rocks. J.D. sometimes wore shoes, but not great heavy ones. The humans wore thick clothing and wide web straps from which depended chunks of metal and plastic. The smell of oil and fire drifted across the water.
Zev dragged Chandra toward the dock.
“Hold your breath!”
“No — wait — ”
She gasped and got a mouthful of water as he pulled her under. She struggled. He let her go and she rose toward the surface. She came up in the airspace beneath the dock, coughing again. Strips of bright sunlight poured through the cracks between the dock’s floorboards.
“What’s this all about?” she said. Her voice shook, and the water transmitted the trembling of her body. Excitement flushed her face. She had not trained herself to draw the blood from her skin and from her extremities while she swam in cold water.
“I do not know for sure,” he said. “But I think they are dangerous to me. Perhaps not to you. I should not have pulled you like that, but you said you wanted to come and I thought you were in distress. Do you want to use the lung, or do you want to go back to shore by yourself?”
“I want the lung,” she said.
“Take one deep breath, hold it, and relax.” Though his request further intensified her fear, she did as he asked.
Zev pulled her underwater. He freed the lung and urged it toward her. When it touched her she shuddered, but she did not fight. The lung fitted against her and extended its processes toward the mask. When it had established itself, when Chandra could breathe its oxygen, Zev towed her deeper underwater and swam away with her, leaving the other, stranger humans behind on the beach.
o0o
Satoshi stretched, arching his back and spreading his arms. His research image, displayed above him in the air, cast colored light over him and across half the geography theater. His hands moved through the reflection of delicate lines.
He pressed his head back against the contour couch, tensing all his muscles, then relaxing them. He had barely moved for four hours, as he put all his attention and energy into the map overlays. He kneaded his trapezius muscles.
Stefan Tomas of the world’s best back rubs, Satoshi thought, where are you when I need you?
The display was so pretty he hated to put it away, but it took up half the theater. Though it was past eight o’clock, someone else might want to use the theater later on.
“Give me a projection,” he said to Arachne. “Hard copy. Then file and store.”
A two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional representation of a four-dimensional problem was little more than a reminder of what he was doing. Nevertheless, he enjoyed the artistic aspects of it. He rolled up the hard copy and slid it into the accordion pocket of his cargo pants.
Twenty minutes to transport docking. Twice as much time as he needed to get to the waiting room, but he was eager to see Victoria. He wanted to be there when she arrived.
Pausing near the only other patch of light in the theater, he regarded the overlays critically.
“What do you think?”
Fox peered out from beneath the display. Its lights striped and shadowed her face.
“Not bad,” Satoshi said. He looked at her quizzically. “You don’t have to spend twenty-four hours a day in here, you know. I’m already on your side.”
“Is that what you think?” she said belligerently. “That I hang around here all the time just to impress my thesis professor? Thanks a lot.”
“You’re welcome,” Satoshi said, nettled. Fox had that effect. She did not want sympathy. She wanted to stay with the expedition.
“Maybe I wanted to get the damned research done before I get kicked out. Maybe I’m trying to age myself six months prematurely so I can get exempted from the stupid rules.”
“Maybe you’re lucky to be up here at all. I’m surprised your family let you stay this long. How did you arrange that?”
“I do creative hysteria very well,” Fox said sulkily.
“I’m sorry,” Satoshi said. “I’m afraid you’ve reached the limits of creative hysteria. Even if your uncle approved — ”
“Don’t call him that!” She looked around, theatrically. “Jeez, I’ll never live it down if people start finding out the president is my uncle!”
“There’s nobody else in here. Even if he approved of the expedition, he wouldn’t be able to exempt you. He doesn’t have the authority, and pulling strings would look bad.”
“I don’t much care how it would look,” Fox said. “All I care about is that I want to go on the expedition, and you won’t let me.”
“I know you’re disappointed,” Satoshi said. “But I did all I could. Now I’m leaving. Don’t stay too late.”
She made a sound of anger and frustration and disappeared beneath the research display.
The conversation had taken up most of Satoshi’s extra time. Fortunately, the theater lay at the same end of the cylinder as the docking hatch. He went outside, blinking in the bright daylight.
Satoshi jogged to the end of campus, where the floor of the cylinder blended into the cylinder’s conical end, forming a steep slope. He sprinted up the hill. As he climbed, the gravity fell. His strides turned to long leaps. He bounded across a surface nearly perpendicular to the floor of the cylinder.
Satoshi jumped over the transition between the rotating cylinder and the stationary axis, grabbed the rungs of a guide ladder, and drew himself fast through the zero-g environment of the central cylinder. He cl
imbed past the ends of the solar mirrors and ducked through the hatch that led to the docking port. Spotting Stephen Thomas on the other side of the waiting room, he threaded his way among the other people here to greet returning friends. The crowd was much smaller than it would have been a few weeks ago. A lot of people had been recalled. If the United States continued to insist on the conversion of the starship to military purposes, even the Canadians would pull out in protest. Satoshi had no idea what he and Stephen Thomas and Victoria would do then.
Satoshi drifted to a stop. Stephen Thomas, who hated zero g, waited uneasily with one hand clamped around a grip. He managed to smile when he saw Satoshi. Satoshi floated to his side and put one arm around him. Stephen Thomas hugged him with his free arm, then massaged the junction of Satoshi’s neck and shoulder. Satoshi groaned as the tight muscles started to loosen.
“Thanks. That feels great.”
A hologram created itself in the center of the waiting room. As the image of the transport approached the image of the cylinder, all the people within the volume of the hologram drifted out of it and surrounded it, watching. The bulky, asymmetrical transport touched the docking port. The faint vibration of its attachment quivered around them.
Victoria had been away for less than two weeks. It felt like months.
Stephen Thomas patted Satoshi’s shoulder. “I’ll give you a proper massage when we get home.”
“It’s better already.” He let himself drift in the quiet air. Stephen Thomas did his best to appear nonchalant about the lack of gravity.
“When are you going to let me take you out for a space walk?” Satoshi said.
Stephen Thomas pushed back his hair with his free hand. As usual, he had come into zero-g with his hair flying loose.
“Probably never.”
“You’d like it.”
“Probably get sick in my spacesuit,” Stephen Thomas said.
Satoshi let the subject drop. He was convinced that Stephen Thomas would learn to like zero-g if he experienced the complete freedom of an untethered space walk, but Stephen Thomas grew sullen if he was pushed to do something he preferred to avoid. Gentle encouragement worked better.
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