Cordelia had taken the rear seat, which gave her the best view through the hull and the task of steering. She aimed them left along the shore, up toward the quiet backwaters that headed this arm of the lake. Jole enjoyed the slowly moving shoreline, and the kiss of the sun on his face and through his thin shirt. A lone, red-furred hexaped drinking from the water raised its neckless head, froze, and stared at them, its four eyes unblinking. It clacked its triangular beak a few times, then scuttered away into the undergrowth. At the lake’s shallow end, the strange-colored water plants hissed over the hull as they slid through them. The little radials were out, floating about in iridescent clouds, a confetti-celebration of the morning.
“Oh, you have to see all this,” said Cordelia, the first words she had spoken for a while. “Turn around and take a look.”
Jole shipped his paddle, grasped the thwarts, and swung around with all the due care of a fully dressed man not wishing to convert his boat ride into a swim. The canoe was broad in the beam, however, and quite stable for its class. He stared down through the hull, and then, after a moment, slid to his knees for a closer view. And then to his hands and knees.
It was like being a bird looking down through an alien forest. He could count three…six, eight different sorts of little creatures moving through the shading stems. Even more shapes than the round and six-limbed models familiar from dry land, and remarkable subtle colors, reds and blues, silvery and orange, in stripes and spots and chevrons. A larger ovoid slid past, then jerked aside; its…meal?…escaped in a gold flash and a cloud of bronze smoke, and Jole laughed half in surprise, half in delight. “What are all those things? What are they called?” And why, for all the times he’d skimmed over this very lake, had he never noticed them before?
“No idea. It’s possible most of them don’t even have names, yet. We still don’t have enough people doing basic science surveys. Even after forty years, most of this planet is a mystery. What bio-people we have got are mostly tied up doing evaluations of the proposed settlement sites, looking for hazards. Finding ’em, too, sometimes. Though generally the first colonists do a bang-up job of that all on their own.” Cordelia vented a particularly vicereinal sigh.
Jole grinned, still staring downward. “This is like looking through some magic mirror in a kids’ story. It’s like there’s this whole other, secret Sergyar down there! That no one knows about!”
“Yep.” Her voice was warm, pleased with his pleasure.
After a few more minutes of staring down, Jole waved his arm vaguely about. “Take us around. Let’s see more.”
“Aye-aye, Admiral.”
She dipped her paddle, and more strange sights slid past. His nose was nearly pressed to the plastic, now. A skatagator—a small one, no longer than his arm—scooted by just below him, close enough to have touched had this hull been the un-barrier it seemed. It bumped up curiously, or at least, reactively, against the keel, then drifted off. The canoe brought him silently over a bed of stones very near the shore, where the shapes and colors of the living things changed yet again, then on another long line through the water-forest; then, at last, out into a deeper channel, where the light fell away into mystery once more.
He sat up blinking as if from a trance, wondering when the back of his neck had acquired a prickle that was going to become a cheery red sunburn, later. Cordelia was smiling with all the fascination he had just bestowed on this surprise Sergyar, except that she was looking at him. “What?” he said.
“You like this stuff.”
“Well…yeah.” He rolled his shoulders. “I’m just wondering how I missed it, in all the time I’ve spent on this water.”
“You only came out on windy days, when the water’s too ruffled to see through? You sensibly stuck to the deep sections?”
“I guess.”
She glanced at the sun, rising high and hot, and at the chrono on her wristcom. “I suppose we’d best break off. You want to take the rear seat, going home?”
“Sure.”
He slid himself down flat on his back, centered above the keel. She grasped both thwarts and edged over him, stopping to lower herself for a kiss in passing. “Not in a canoe, I suppose,” she murmured in regret.
“I think we both would have to be much younger.”
“Ha.” She grinned into his mouth. Her smile tasted…just fine.
With them both safely upright in their respective seats once more, he dug his paddle into the silken waters and aimed them back toward Penney’s Place. “I wonder if I could get one of these glass boats?”
She glanced over her shoulder, her still-lean muscles moving smoothly under her only-slightly-age-softened skin as she swung and dipped her paddle. “Ask Penney. Or his stepson. New Hassadar, didn’t he say?”
“Ah, yes.”
“I expect you could order a sailing hull, and have both kinds of boat at once.”
“Mm, perhaps. All-purpose tends to be no-purpose, sometimes. It would depend on one’s primary aim.”
“Since when has your primary aim when presented with a lake not been sailing?”
Since about an hour ago? That…was a thought too new to examine closely, lest it pop like one of the soap bubbles the radials were not. “Moot point anyway, till I get more time.”
“That is unfortunately true.”
Time, yeah. They’d pushed theirs to the limit, and probably past. Pull up your shorts, Cinderfella, the dance is over…for now. They matched their strokes and put their backs into a straighter, mid-lake course to the distant dock.
Settling up with Penney took Jole very little time; he added a generous bonus for the extension—and, tacitly, the discretion—which made the man shake his hand, grin, and invite him to bring his guests again. Rykov had already packed their meager belongings into the aircar. Jole and Cordelia slid into the rear compartment together once more, and pressed their faces to the canopy for a last fond look as Lake Serena fell away behind them.
Jole scooted closer and slid his arm around Cordelia’s shoulders, and she snuggled into him. She’d caught a rosy touch of sun across her nose and cheeks as well. They were both a little manky in yesterday’s clothes, after two days of varied holiday activities and no wash-up but a pitcher and basin and Penney’s outdoor showerhead, but it was a good camp-people smell.
“When shall we two meet again?” he inquired lightly.
She blinked. “I’m sure there are a couple of committee meetings on the calendar this week, but I don’t think that’s what you mean.”
“We two, not we ten, yeah.”
Her lips sneaked up. “Not unless we want to put on a show, no.”
“I think not.” But then his smile was swallowed in another thought. “How, uh…I suppose we’d better get our signals straight. How do you want to play this thing, publicly?”