“You bet.” She started to walk towards Haile. Slow ripples expanded out from under her shoes, clashing and shimmering away. Jay couldn’t stop the giggles. “We should have had this in Tranquillity. We could have got out to that island, then.”
Rightness.
Smiling happily, Jay let Haile’s arm tip wrap round her fingers, and together they walked over the lake. After a couple of minutes the towers of the locus seemed no closer. Jay began to wonder just how big they were.
“Where’s Vyano, then?”
He comes.
Jay scanned the base of the towers. “I can’t see anybody.”
Haile stopped, and looked down at her feet, head swaying from side to side. I have sight.
Promising herself she wouldn’t yelp or anything, Jay looked down. There was movement beneath her feet. A small pale-grey mountain was sliding through the water, twenty metres beneath the surface. Her heart did sort of go
“Is this Vyano?” Jay exclaimed.
Yes. He is a cousin.
“What do you mean cousin? He’s nothing like you.”
Humans have many sub-species.
“No we don’t!”
There are Adamists and Edenists, white skin, dark skin; more shades of hair than colours in the rainbow. This I have seen for myself.
“Well, yes, but . . . Look here, there’s none of us live underwater. That’s just totally different.”
Corpus says human scientists have experimented with lungs that can extract oxygen from water.
Jay recognized that particular mental tone of pure stubbornness. “They probably have,” she conceded.
The aquatic Kiint child was over fifteen metres long; flatter than a terrestrial whale, with a thick tractamorphic tail that was contracting into a bulb as it neared the surface. Its other appendages, six buds of tractamorphic flesh, were spaced along its flanks. To help propel it through the water, they were currently compressed into semicircular fans that undulated with slow power. Perhaps the most obvious pointer to a shared heritage with landbound Kiint was the head, which was simply a more streamlined version that had six gills replacing the breathing vents. The same large semi-mournful eyes were shielded with a milky membrane.
Vyano broke surface with a burst of spray and energetic waves, which churned outward. Jay was suddenly trying to keep her balance as the lake’s surface bounced about underneath her like some hyperlastic trampoline. Haile was bobbing up and down beside her, in almost as much trouble, which was slightly reassuring. When the swell had eased off, a mound of glistening leaden flesh was floating a couple of metres away. The aquatic Kiint formshifted one of its flank appendages into an arm, tip spreading out into the shape of a human hand.
Jay touched palms.
Welcome to Riynine, Jay Hilton.
“Thank you. You have a lovely world.”
It has much goodness. Haile has shared her memories of your Confederation worlds. They are interesting also. I would like to visit after I am released from parental proscription.
“I’d like to go back, too.”
Your plight has been spoken of. I grieve with you for all that has been lost.
“Richard says we’ll pull through. I suppose we will.”
Richard Keaton is attuned to Corpus,haile said. He would not tell untruths.
“How could you visit the Confederation? Does that jump machinery of yours work underwater as well?”
Yes.
“But there wouldn’t be much for you to see, I’m afraid. Everything interesting happens on land. Oh, except for Atlantis, of course.”
Land is always small and clotted with identical plants. I would see the life that teems below the waves where nothing remains the same. Every day is joyfully different. You should modify yourself and come to dwell among us.
“No thank you very much,” she said primly.
That is a sadness.
“I suppose what I mean is, you wouldn’t be able to see what humans have achieved. Everything we’ve built and done is on the land or in space.”
Your machinery is old to us. It holds little attraction. That is why my family returned to the water.
“You mean you’re like our pastorals?”
I apologise. My understanding of human references is not complete.
“Pastorals are people who turned away from technology, and lived life as simply as they can. It’s a very primitive existence, but they don’t have modern worries, either.”
