The droplets she flung away vanished into the fog that still lay flat on the glassy water.
She tried to link up with the web, but the interference remained. Scared, J.D. looked around, hoping rather than fearing to see one of the divers or one of the whales.
She remained alone.
She had failed to find her bearings while swimming with the divers. This time she could not afford to fail.
52 Vonda N. Mcfntyre
If she chose the right direction, she would eventually end up somewhere on the long north coast where her cabin lay. Choosing the right direction was the problem. If she got turned around, no other land lay within her range.
J.D- spat into her mask, swished it around with seawater, emptied it, and put it back on. The air of the artificial lung was the only warmth in the world.
She dove, but remained near the surface. If the fog cleared she wanted to know it immediately.
By the slant of the seafloor and the movement of the water relative to the fog, she chose a direction and set out swimming. Tiny jellyfish passed overhead, bobbing just beneath the interface of air and water.
J.D. swam, refusing to listen to the voice in her mind telling her she needed the web, clear sight, and the help of the divers to find her way anywhere.
Her muscles already ached from the long swim out, from the abuse by enhancer overdose. The lung tired, too, and its air grew cool and thin. She rose to the surface and sidestroked, saving the lung's capacity in case she struck rough water. The darkness of deep water lay beneath her.
The current was a presence that surrounded her. Without
a fixed point she could not tell its direction. It might be strong enough to sweep her completely past the island, no matter which direction she swam.
Her breath came in a sob. The metabolic enhancer reached
its limit, like the artificial lung. Successive doses did nothing
but shoot pain through her exhausted muscles.
When she thought she could not swim another stroke, when she had convinced herself that she was swimming in circles and would never find her way back, her link began faintly to respond. Though its connection was too feeble for any useful information, its return encouraged her to continue.
The link grew stronger.
All at once she burst from the fog into clear skies, clear sea. As if the mist defined the limits of the interference, the link returned full force. The north shore lay a hundred meters away. She recognized a headland a kilometer east of her cabin.
She was afraid she could not cover the distance without a rest, but she was also afraid to stop. She forced herself onward.
STARFARERS 53
She fetched up on the gravelly shore, gasping for breath like a drowning victim, and dragged herself beyond the wa-teriine. tf she passed out with the tide coming in, she might wake up in the sea again.
She never quite lost consciousness, though a long time passed before she wanted to move. Exposed to dry air, the artificial lung shrank against her back. All she could do was feel sorry for it.
Warm hands held and rubbed her cold fingers. A soft crooning noise, a double-noted hum, surrounded her.
Zev crouched beside her. He stopped humming, but kept hold of her hand. Even his swimming webs felt warm.
"J.D., J.D., I am sorry. We did not think when we let you leave by yourself. We forgot about the interference and we forgot that you cannot hear the seafloor. We thought only that you wished to be left alone. Then I remembered! How did you find your way?"
"Beats the hell out of me," J.D. said. She could barely speak. Her mouth was dry. This struck her as funny.
"Oh, you would make such a good diver," he said.
J.D. freed her hands from his grasp, pushed herself to her feet, and wobbled back to the water. The idea of diving again nauseated her. She peeled off the lung and immersed it. Its unhealthy drying dark red color bloomed to deep pink.
"Zev, would you do me a favor?"
"Yes."
She looked at him askance. He agreed without hesitation or question, still trusting her despite everything.
"I'm going to walk home," J.D. said. "I'd appreciate it if you'd put the lung in its place underneath the floating dock."
"That is easy," he said, sounding downcast. "Would you not like to swim? We could help you." He gestured: offshore, several of the orcas circled, waiting. "They would even let you ride."
"No. I wouldn't like to swim. Tell them thank you." The orcas did not enjoy letting human beings ride them.
Zev walked down the beach.
"Zev . . . goodbye."
He faced her. " 'Goodbye* means for a long time."
"Yes."
"But you could come with us! Then we'd all be safe'"
54 vonda N. Mdntyre
"It isn't that easy. You're free out here, but I have connections to the land worid, and they could make me come back.
Then ... I might not be able to help putting you all in more danger than I've already done."
"But where will you go?**
"To the starship. If they'll still have me."
"What if they will not?"
"Then . . . I'll have to wing it.'*
He looked at her. "I did not know you could fly, too:"
J.D. laughed.
"I will miss you."
"I'll miss you, too, Zev."
"Come wade in the water."
"Why?"
"So that I can hug you when I say goodbye."
It was too complicated to try to explain why she had told him not to touch her yesterday, but why it would have been all right for him to hug her now. She walked with him into the water until they were knee-deep, and then she hugged him and stroked his curly hair. He spread his fingers against her back, and she felt the silky swimming webs against her skin.
"Goodbye." His breath whispered warm on her breast.
Zev took the lung and slid beneath the surface. J.D. did not see him again.
Floris Brown rested in the soft grip of a zero-g lounge, held gently against it with elastic straps. At first, weightlessness had disoriented her, but by the time the spaceplane docked with the transport she had begun to find it welcome and comforting. It eased the pains of eighty years of fighting gravity, and even the bruises of seven minutes of crushing acceleration.
The braided strands of her hair floated in weightlessness.
She let three patches grow long, but shaved the rest of her hair to a soft short fuzz. The shells and beads strung into the braids clinked and rattled softly- The end of the longest braid drifted in the comer of her vision. It was completely white.
The central patch was streaked with bright pink, the right-
hand strands were green. But she always kept the leftmost
long patch the natural color of her hair. She also left her eyes
STARFARERS 55
their natural blue, but wore heavy black eye makeup on her upper and lower eyelids and her eyelashes.
She gazed out the wide bubble window. It provided an unending source of interest. ,
As the transport powered gently out of low earth orbit, it passed within sight of the deserted Soviet space station. To the unaided eye it looked like any other satellite, moving from sunlight to shadow. With binoculars it looked old.
Though the vacuum of space protected it from rust or other deterioration, cables dangled and twisted eerily; and the antennae all hung motionless, aimed at nothing.
Floris remembered the vigor and assurance of the Soviet space program, as it outdistanced that of her own country when she was very young. All its promise had been lost, its lunar base abandoned and its Mars expedition never begun, when the Mideast Sweep gained power and eliminated the space program as useless, extravagant, an insult to the face of god, a tool of Satan. It made Floris sad to look at the old space station, drifting dead in its orbit, kept as a monument to the past.