still out of sight, beyond the hill and among the Douglas firs.
He glanced back at Chandra.
"Are your friends coming to swim with you? I'm sure the orcas would not mind, if you asked, but you are supposed to ask."
"It's Just me," she said. "I was supposed to dive with Sauvage, but since she's not here I'm going in anyway."
A group of people, all dressed the same, appeared between the trees. They crashed down the slope, not bothering to be quiet.
"Military exercises, maybe?" Chandra said. "Those folks are in uniform, and they're carrying guns."
Zev hesitated. He was not entirely sure what the military was, but he knew they were responsible for the difficulties
his family faced. He did know the meaning of the word "gun." Guns were not permitted in the wilderness.
Zev was fearless, but he was not foolish. If he knew a shark was nearby and he was all alone, he would avoid it if he could. If the family were around, that might be different. But his family was far away.
He walked back down the beach and waded into the water.
"Wait!" Chandra called- "I'll go with you!"
He could tell she knew nothing about swimming as soon as she pushed off into the low waves- Instead of diving into them she tried to rise above them. They splashed her in the face and made her cough and choke and try to find her footing. Instead of turning back, she floundered on toward the dock. Terror poured out of her, the flavor carried strongly by the sea. Zev wondered what frightened her so.
He stroked beside her. "Put on your mask," he said.
She had jumped in so quickly that the mask still dangled from her arm by its strap, further hampering her attempts to swim. Zev moved closer to her, put one arm around her, and held her steady. She pushed the mask over her head. It pressed against the growths on her face. Zev wondered if it hurt. He
68 vonda N. Mcfntyre
pulled a few locks of her hair from beneath the edges of the mask, and hoped it would not leak.
The other humans reached the shore. They saw Zev and Chandra in the water. They broke into a run. Their feet made loud noises on the rocks. J.D. sometimes wore shoes, but not great heavy ones. The humans wore thick clothing and wide web straps from which depended chunks of metal and plastic. The smell ofoli and fire drifted across the water-
Zev dragged Chandra toward the dock.
"Hold your breath!"
"No—wait—"
She gasped and got a mouthful of water as he pulled her under. She struggled. He let her go and she rose toward the surface. She came up in the airspace beneath the dock, coughing again. Strips of bright sunlight poured through the cracks between the dock's floorboards.
"What's this all about?" she said. Her voice shook, and the water transmitted the trembling of her body. Excitement flushed her face. She had not trained herself to draw the blood from her skin and from her extremities while she swam in cold water.
"I do not know for sure," he said. "Bul I think they are dangerous to me. Perhaps not to you. I should not have pulled you like that, but you said you wanted to come and I thought you were in distress. Do you want to use the lung, or do you want to go back to shore by yourself?"
"I want the lung," she said.
"Take one deep breath, hold it, and relax." Though his request further intensified her fear, she did as he asked.
Zev pulled her underwater. He freed the lung and urged it toward her. When it touched her she shuddered, but she did not fight. The lung fitted itself against her and extended its processes toward the mask. When it had established itself. when Chandra could breathe its oxygen, Zev towed her deeper underwater and swam away with her. leaving the other, stranger humans behind on the beach.
Satoshi stretched, arching his back and spreading his arms.
His research image, displayed above him in the air. cast colored light over him and across half the geography theater.
His hands moved through the reflection of delicate lines.
STARPARERS 6 9
He pressed his head back against the contour couch, tensing all his muscles, then relaxing them. He had barely moved for four hours, as he put all his attention and energy into the map overlays. He kneaded his trapezius muscles.
Stefan Tomas of the world's best back rubs, Satoshi thought, where are you when I need you?
The display was so pretty he hated to put it away, but it took up half the theater. Though it was past eight o'clock, someone else might want to use the theater later on.
"Give me a projection," he said to Arachne. "Hard copy.
Then file and store."
A two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional representation of a four-dimensional problem was little more than a reminder of what he was doing. Nevertheless, he enjoyed the artistic aspects of it. He rolled up the hard copy and slid it into the accordion pocket of his cargo pants.
Twenty minutes to transport docking. Twice as much time as he needed to get to the waiting room, but he was eager to see Victoria. He wanted to be there when she arrived.
Pausing near the only other patch of light in the theater, he regarded the overlays critically.
"What do you think?"
Fox peered out from beneath the display. Its lights striped and shadowed her face.
"Not bad," Satoshi said. He looked at her quizzically.
"You don't have to spend twenty-four hours a day in here, you know. I'm already on your side."
"Is that what you think?" she said belligerently. "That I hang around here all the time just to impress my thesis professor? Thanks a lot."
"You're welcome," Satoshi said, nettled. Fox had that effect. She did not want sympathy. She wanted to stay with the expedition.
"Maybe I wanted to get the damned research done before I get kicked out. Maybe I'm trying to age myself six months prematurely so I can get exempted from the stupid rules."
"Maybe you're lucky to be up here at all. I'm surprised your family let you stay this long. How did you arrange that?"
"I do creative hysteria very well," Fox said sulkily.
"I'm sorry," Satoshi said. "I'm afraid you've reached the limits of creative hysteria. Even if your uncle approved—"
7 0 vonda N. Mcintyre
"Don't call him thai!" She looked around, theatrically.
"Jeez, I'll never live it down if people start finding'out the president is my uncle!"
"There's nobody else in here. Even if he approved of the expedition, he wouldn*t be able to exempt you. He doesn't have the authority, and pulling strings would look bad."
"I don't much care how it would look," Fox said. "All I care about is that I want to go on the expedition, and you won't let me."
"I know you're disappointed," Satoshi said. "But I did alt I could. Now I'm leaving. Don't stay too late."
She made a sound of anger and frustration and disappeared beneath the research display.
The conversation had taken up most of Satoshi's extra time. Fortunately, the theater lay at the same end of the cylinder as the docking hatch. He went outside, blinking in the bright daylight.
Satoshi jogged to the end of campus, where the floor of the cylinder blended into the cylinder's conical end, forming a steep slope. He sprinted up the hill. As he climbed, the gravity fell. His strides turned to long leaps. He bounded across a surface nearly perpendicular to the floor of the cylinder.
Satoshi jumped over the transition between the rotating cylinder and the stationary axis, grabbed the rungs of a guide ladder, and drew himself fast through the zero-g environment of the central cylinder. He climbed past the ends of the solar mirrors and ducked through the hatch that led to the docking port. Spotting Stephen Thomas on the other side of the waiting room, he threaded his way among the other people here to greet returning friends. The crowd was much smaller than it would have been a few weeks ago. A lot of people had been recalled. If the United States continued to insist on the conversion of the starship to military purposes, even the Canadians would pull out in protest. Satoshi had no idea what he and Stephen Thomas and Victoria would do then.