'Thank you for the compliment,' J.D. said.
'My family thinks it is too bad that you are still entirely human. Many of us wonder if you have considered changing your nature.'
J.D. clenched her hands around the mug of tea, oblivious to its heat.
'J.D. ?' Zev said. 'I have surprised you. I did not mean to. Are you angry?'
'Not angry,' she said. 'Stunned. Zev . . . all I ever hoped for was that you'd invite me to stay in the open water—that you'd give me permission to bring my boat so I wouldn't have to come back to the cabin every evening. What you've asked me is more than I dreamed. Is it possible?'
'Of course,' he said. 'You have visited our lab. We know what to do. We were never born from human and orca, as some say. Nor did people throw little children into the ocean and say, *Swim, grow fins and extra lungs!' We chose our creation, like alt changelings.'
'I know where divers came from—but no one's gone from human to diver in a generation,' J.D. said. 'Where are you going to get the biotechs?'
'My family has resources.'
J.D. blew on her tea and sipped from the cooling surface, taking time to think.
What Zev offered her was attractive. It was also illegal.
12 vonda N. Mclntyre
Even before becoming U.S. president last fall. Senator Dist-ler had repeatedly sponsored a bill to force the divers to change back into ordinary humans. J.D. feared that now, as president, he might be able to force the bill through Congress. The divers had few vocal supporters, and they employed no lobbyists. It would be terrible public relations for the government if it rounded them up and forced them to undergo reversion against their will. That might be the divers'. only protection. After all, any individual could decide to revert at any time. The divers chose to remain as they were.
As far as Distler and his supporters were concerned, preventing genetic diseases was one thing, changing the human
species something quite different. The enthusiasm for human engineering had peaked and faded rapidly, leaving a sizable group of divers and a few other changelings. Only the divers had increased their numbers.
'How will you decide?' Zev asked.
'I don't know,' J.D. said slowly. 'I feel like saying yes without even thinking about it. But I should think about it.'
'But how will you decide? With divers, the whole family plays and talks. Then we decide. Will you go to your family and talk with them? Will you play? You should play more,
J.D.'
She laughed, though Zev's was a perfectly serious comment.
'My family—' She started to describe her family, halfsiblings, half-parents, step-siblings, step-parents, dispersed and recombined. It was an unusual family even in these modern times.
'My family never swims together,' she said, and left it at that. 'This is a decision I'll have to make by myself. May I have some time?'
'My mother will talk to you tomorrow,' Zev said. 'That
will be the real invitation. But I think . . . you will have to
decide quickly.'
That was the last thing she had expected Zev to say. She had never known the divers to make an important decision in haste.
'Why?'
'I cannot tell you,' Zev said. He scooped up the melted
ice cream on the bottom of the bowl with his finger and licked
STARFARERS 13
the chocolate from his knuckle and from the swimming web.
He stood up. 'Thank you for the ice cream.'
'You're welcome.'
He crossed to her and hugged her, holding her close. He was shorter than she. He laid his head on her shoulder, and the curis of his pale hair tickled her skin just below the hollow of her throat. J.D. put her arms around Zev, giving him a big-sisteriy pat on the shoulder. On land the heat of his body was even more noticeable than in the water.
He sighed deeply and stroked her breast. Startled, she put her hand on his, moved his fingers, and drew away.
'What is wrong?'
'You shouldn't do that.'
'But why? We touch each other when we're swimming.'
'It's different on land, Zev. In the sea it's just playing. On
land, touching is more serious.'
'Oh,' he said. 'You see? We need you, to tell us these things we have forgotten, so we will not forget everything about living on land.'
His semi-retractile claws clicked on the linoleum, then his feet scrunched in the gravel of the beach. He moved with a languorous grace, as if he were already in the water. He waded through the gentle surf. The water rose around his legs. When it reached his hips he breaststroked forward and vanished. The waves obliterated the ripple he left behind.
Each wave reached a handsbreadth higher on the beach.
J.D. watched the tide come in. Her tea grew cold.
The invitation gave her more than one decision to make.
Accepting it would completely change her life. She would be able to resurrect her career, though she would have to restrict its focus to a single blended society. The story of the integration of the divers with the orcas deserved to be told. If she accepted, she would be in a position to tell it.
I should have accepted on the spot, J.D. thought.
She could not come up with a single good reason to re-fuse—aside, of course, from the fact that she could be put in jail for becoming a changeling. This frightened her more than she cared to admit. She had been raised to obey authority, not defy it.
This is the best chance you're ever going to have to practice your profession, she told herself. If your application to Star-
14 Vonda N. Mcintyre
farer hadn't been rejected, things might be different. But you were turned down. And, anyway, why should human contact with aliens off the earth be more important than human contact with the beings that live on the same world, and still are alien to us?
The change in her life would include her form. She would become not only a chronicler of the divers, but a diver herself. Somewhere, somehow, the divers would obtain the sensitizing virus, and the changing viruses; they would inoculate her with the one, then with the others. As the changing viruses spread through her body and integrated themselves into her genes, she would begin to change.
She imagined her lungs enlarging, altering, the tissue- of one lobe of each transmuting into a substance like the artificial lung. In that respect the divers differed from other marine mammals: they could breathe underwater, absorbing oxygen directly from the sea.
She would dispense with the metabolic enhancer, because her body would gain the ability to accelerate into a more efficient state. Spreading her strong square hands, she imagined swimming webs between her fingers. She imagined her light complexion darkening to protect her from exposure to the sun, and wondered if her brown hair would pale to gold or red.
She curled her toes to feel phantom claws extending, scratching the floor. Her breasts were heavier and her hips wider than any diver's, and her imagination failed when she tried to think of her body changing to resemble their sleek shape. She wondered if her breasts would shrink and flatten, if her hips would narrow, if the changing virus could alter even a person's bone structure.
The idea of the change both frightened and intrigued her.
