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.
