But I wonder if they would have been happy?'
8 vonda N. Mcintyre
J.D. gazed out at space, at earth, where the oceans dominated. A weather system had just passed over the Pacific Northwest, leaving the area clearly visible.
The clicks and squeals and stutters of the orcas echoed across the inlet. The cold, clear water moved with a gentle, irresistible power, rolling fist-sized stones one against the other on the rocky shore, creating a rumble of counterpoint to the calling of the whales.
J.D. swam. The artificial lung, nestled against her back, absorbed oxygen from the sea and transferred it to her mask.
Kelp waved below. A bright orange nudibranch swam past, propelled by its frilly mantle. At the limit of J.D.'s vision, a salmon flashed silver-blue in the filtered light.
She shivered. Her metabolic enhancer could produce only so much heat. She could have worn a wet suit, but it limited her contact with the sea.
Soon she would have to swim away from the mouth of the inlet and return to shore. She stroked upward and broke the surface of the clear green water. Before her, the inlet opened out into a part of Puget Sound where no one could go without an invitation. Apparently the divers would not invite J.D. into the wilderness today.
The orcas remained out of sight around the headland. She could imagine them playing, oblivious to the cold, their sleek black and white bodies cutting the swells. By morning they would be gone. They could swim a hundred kilometers between one dawn and the next. Orcas never stayed in one place for long.
The sun on her face made the water feel even colder. J.D. turned and swam toward shore. Her cabin stood back among the Douglas firs that grew to the edge of the stony beach.
Just offshore, she stopped at the anchored deck. She teased the artificial lung from her back and tethered it beneath the planks, where it would feed and breathe and rest and pump seawater through itself until she needed it again. She dove from the deck and swam easily home. Without the lung. she no longer felt a part of the sea.
Barefoot, she picked her way among the beach stones. It-was getting on toward evening. In the shade of the trees it was cool, and inside her cabin it was chilly. She plunged into
STARFARERS 9
the shower. The sun-warmed water splashed over her. After
a few minutes she stopped shivering.
Toweling her short straight hair, she turned the heat on under the kettle for a warm drink.
'J.D. ?'
She started and wrapped the towel around her.
'Zev, you're so quiet. You scared me.'
'I never meant to.' The diver stood in the doorway. Fine white-gold hair clothed his mahogany body in a translucent sheen. He looked awkward, seeking her out on land. She felt awkward, talking to him when she did not have any clothes on. That was strange, because she swam naked with him and his family, divers and orcas alike.
'Sit down, excuse me a minute.' She fumed her back and took a last swipe with the towel beneath her heavy breasts, then pulled on a shirt and a pair of baggy black pants.
'I thought to find you in the sea,' Zev said.
J.D. deliberately finished tying the drawstring. 'I hoped to find you there. But I can't stay in the water forever.'
'We were talking,' he said- He lowered his gaze and glanced at her sideways, with an expression both mischievous and shy. 'We sometimes talk for a long time.'
'I've noticed that.' On the solar stove, the kettle steamed. Being in a wilderness area, the cabin had to be rustic. It contained no electronics beyond her web link. Nothing operated by voice activation. Now that she knew how everything worked, it amused her to remember how long it took her to figure out all the mechanical switches. But it had not been very funny at the time.
'Do you want a hot drink? I'm cold, and my fingers and toes are shriveled up like prunes.'
Zev looked at his own hands, turning them over, spreading his fingers, stretching out the translucent swimming webs.
'My fingers never do that.' he said. 'Why not?'
'I haven't the faintest idea,' J.D. said. 'Physiology isn't one of my specialties. Don't you know?'
'We are different,' he said.
'That's for sure.' The kettle hissed. 'What did you decide? Do you want some tea, or maybe some cocoa?''
'Some ice cream?' he said.
J.D. laughed. 'Sure.'
10 Vonda N. Mcintyre
He perched on the window seat, his knees pulled up, his feet apart, completely unconscious of his nakedness. When she first met him she wondered about his gender, for he had no external genitals. His people had engineered their basically human bodies into a more streamlined form: male genitals drawn inside, female breasts small and flat. Both genders possessed a layer of subcutaneous fat that burned away during any long underwater exertion, leaving the individual ethereal and with an appetite like a shark. Zev always amazed her with how much he could eat. She made herself some tea, gave him a dish of ice cream, and sat on the rag rug in a patch of sunlight. She still fell cold. She sipped her tea, glad of its sweet spicy warmth.
'What was your family talking about?' she said.
'Oh,' he said. 'You, of course. That was why we did not invite you out today.''
'I don't see that it would have made much difference,' she said, 'since I can't understand your language yet.'
'You will never begin to understand true speech, as you are.' He spoke quite matter-of-factly. 'I will never understand it completely, either. But the next generation will.'
If there is one, J.D. thought, but she kept her silence. She found the idea intolerable, that the divers might be permit-ted—or encouraged—to die out. It was all too possible, if the new administration acted on its prejudice against genetic engineering.
'Besides,' Zev said, 'it is rude to talk about someone in front of them when they cannot understand. Is that right?'
'That's right. Some people would say it's rude to talk about someone behind her back, though, too.'
'Oh. We did not know. We did not mean to be rude.' He hesitated. 'J.D. ?'
'Yes?'
'When is it polite to talk about someone?'
'Good question,' she said. 'Anytime they don't know it,
I guess.'
'That is strange.'
'Yes, it is,' J.D. said. 'But never mind. Everybody does it, anyway. What did you say about me? Or can you tell me?'
'No one said I should not. But perhaps you would rather have a surprise.'
STARPARERS 11
'I'd rather know.'
'It is all right, then.' He put down the empty ice cream bowl. 'We played and talked. Some said you were strange, swimming masked against the sea.'
I might as well have stayed in the city, J.D. thought. The divers aren't the only people who think I'm strange.
'But I said you felt the sea as well as any diver, and would feel it more deeply when you could dispense with your machines.'
Zev moved his hands like waves. Underwater the divers communicated by sound, and by touch when they were close enough. On land they retained the very human quality of adding to their speech with gestures.
'We are aware that we know things you would like to understand. And we all agreed that you know a large number of things about which we have fallen into ignorance.'
