Barefoot, she picked her way among the beach stones. It-was getting on toward evening. In the shade of the trees it was cool, and inside her cabin it was chilly. She plunged into
STARFARERS 9
the shower. The sun-warmed water splashed over her. After
a few minutes she stopped shivering.
Toweling her short straight hair, she turned the heat on under the kettle for a warm drink.
"J.D. ?"
She started and wrapped the towel around her.
"Zev, you're so quiet. You scared me."
"I never meant to." The diver stood in the doorway. Fine white-gold hair clothed his mahogany body in a translucent sheen. He looked awkward, seeking her out on land. She felt awkward, talking to him when she did not have any clothes on. That was strange, because she swam naked with him and his family, divers and orcas alike.
"Sit down, excuse me a minute." She fumed her back and took a last swipe with the towel beneath her heavy breasts, then pulled on a shirt and a pair of baggy black pants.
"I thought to find you in the sea," Zev said.
J.D. deliberately finished tying the drawstring. "I hoped to find you there. But I can't stay in the water forever."
"We were talking," he said- He lowered his gaze and glanced at her sideways, with an expression both mischievous and shy. "We sometimes talk for a long time."
"I've noticed that." On the solar stove, the kettle steamed. Being in a wilderness area, the cabin had to be rustic. It contained no electronics beyond her web link. Nothing operated by voice activation. Now that she knew how everything worked, it amused her to remember how long it took her to figure out all the mechanical switches. But it had not been very funny at the time.
"Do you want a hot drink? I'm cold, and my fingers and toes are shriveled up like prunes."
Zev looked at his own hands, turning them over, spreading his fingers, stretching out the translucent swimming webs.
"My fingers never do that." he said. "Why not?"
"I haven't the faintest idea," J.D. said. "Physiology isn't one of my specialties. Don't you know?"
"We are different," he said.
"That's for sure." The kettle hissed. "What did you decide? Do you want some tea, or maybe some cocoa?''
"Some ice cream?" he said.
J.D. laughed. "Sure."
10 Vonda N. Mcintyre
He perched on the window seat, his knees pulled up, his feet apart, completely unconscious of his nakedness. When she first met him she wondered about his gender, for he had no external genitals. His people had engineered their basically human bodies into a more streamlined form: male genitals drawn inside, female breasts small and flat. Both genders possessed a layer of subcutaneous fat that burned away during any long underwater exertion, leaving the individual ethereal and with an appetite like a shark. Zev always amazed her with how much he could eat. She made herself some tea, gave him a dish of ice cream, and sat on the rag rug in a patch of sunlight. She still fell cold. She sipped her tea, glad of its sweet spicy warmth.
"What was your family talking about?" she said.
"Oh," he said. "You, of course. That was why we did not invite you out today.''
"I don't see that it would have made much difference," she said, "since I can't understand your language yet."
"You will never begin to understand true speech, as you are." He spoke quite matter-of-factly. "I will never understand it completely, either. But the next generation will."
If there is one, J.D. thought, but she kept her silence. She found the idea intolerable, that the divers might be permit-ted—or encouraged—to die out. It was all too possible, if the new administration acted on its prejudice against genetic engineering.
"Besides," Zev said, "it is rude to talk about someone in front of them when they cannot understand. Is that right?"
"That's right. Some people would say it's rude to talk about someone behind her back, though, too."
"Oh. We did not know. We did not mean to be rude." He hesitated. "J.D. ?"
"Yes?"
"When is it polite to talk about someone?"
"Good question," she said. "Anytime they don't know it,
I guess."
"That is strange."
"Yes, it is," J.D. said. "But never mind. Everybody does it, anyway. What did you say about me? Or can you tell me?"
"No one said I should not. But perhaps you would rather have a surprise."
STARPARERS 11
"I'd rather know."
"It is all right, then." He put down the empty ice cream bowl. "We played and talked. Some said you were strange, swimming masked against the sea."
I might as well have stayed in the city, J.D. thought. The divers aren't the only people who think I'm strange.
"But I said you felt the sea as well as any diver, and would feel it more deeply when you could dispense with your machines."
Zev moved his hands like waves. Underwater the divers communicated by sound, and by touch when they were close enough. On land they retained the very human quality of adding to their speech with gestures.
"We are aware that we know things you would like to understand. And we all agreed that you know a large number of things about which we have fallen into ignorance."
"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,