She would probably shrug it off or laugh or refuse to look for it, or all three.
It always amazed him when he saw something so direct, so spectacular, and everyone else was oblivious to it. He could never persuade his partners to try to see what he could see. Victoria, in particular, was so open-minded about other things: she had to be, or she would never have won her job.
The effort of seeing began to tire him. He let his concentration wander. The perception vanished as if he had snapped off the current powering the violet light. The sail billowed silently before him, plain silver again.
Chandra tried to persuade herself that being on the run. hiding out from—who were those guys?—in a fishing camp would be good stuff to record, but the truth was that she hated this part of it. The cabin smelled stale and fishy. The bed was both lumpy and too soft. The window, which could have looked out on the water, opened onto a grotty gravel driveway sprouting dusty weeds. And the bathroom was really nasty.
The diving sequence would be great. It would reproduce her utter terror at being pulled underwater, her certainty that she was about to drown. But this place would ruin the rest of the experience. It would do nothing for either her reputation or her bank account. It had to go. She had to end the sequence somehow, but she did not see how she would find the time to do any restaging and still make it onto the spaceplane.
"How do the folks who own this place make a living?"
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she said. "We're the only ones here. I bet we're the only ones who were ever here."
"It is not fishing season," Zev said. "This is a place where humans fish. I mean where they sleep when they are too tired to fish."
"Oh."
"If it had not been here," the diver said, "you would still be swimming."
"Listen," she said. "that was a great sequence. That was real terror. Nobody has ever gotten anything that intense before. They all think their sex scenes are so great. Hah."
The young diver wandered around the wooden cubicle, touching things at random: the rough, threadbare ticking on the mattress, the frame supporting the upper bunk, the planks of the drafty door, the doorknob.
"1 don't think that's a good idea," Chandra said.
The diver looked at the handle curiously. "Why? Will ii break?"
"I mean I don't think you should go outside. Those guys are probably still looking for you."
"Oh."
"What do they want?"
"All I wanted was to join the deep space expedition."
"Distler hasn't made thai a criminal offense," Chandra said. "Not the last time I heard, anyway. There must be something else."
The diver took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "They want divers to do things for them that we do not wish to do.
I think they would have taken me away and kept me until they made my family come back from Canada."
"They were going to kidnap you?"
The diver shrugged and changed the subject. "What is that room?"
"It's the bathroom. Only there isn't any bath. I guess you don't need to take baths out in the ocean."
"We like to rub ourselves on smooth rocks or scrub ourselves with sand."
"Close enough. Turn on the faucets in the sink if you need water. Do you have to stay wet like the guy in that old tv series?''
"No. Do you like that show? I do, too. But divers are not 132 Vonda N. Mclntyre
from Atlantis. There is no such place. Divers can live on land. I never have, though. I am not used to it."
Suddenly something protruded from the diver's crotch.
Chandra watched, startled, as the male diver, whom she had assumed to be female, extruded his penis and began to pee on the floor.
"Wait! Stop! What are you doing?"
His penis slid back inside. "Peeing," he said, equally startled. He looked down. "I never did it on land before. It is not very aesthetic, is it?"
"No, especially if you do it on the floor!" "What should I do?"
"Wipe it up, to begin with."
"But I need to pee."
Chandra sighed and showed him the toilet, then fled, embarrassed, when he started to use it in front of her. Very few things embarrassed her, but this sequence of events was getting weird.
He came out of the bathroom, carrying their single ragged towel. "Why did you run away?"
"Because—wait!" she said again. "This isn't a hotel."
She snatched the towel, put it back in the bathroom, and threw him a wad of paper tissue. **I don't think we get maid service and clean towels every day with this room."
He wiped the floor, gazed at the sodden paper for a moment, then carried it into the bathroom and got rid of it.
"I didn't run away," Chandra said when he came back. "I
left to give you some privacy. It isn't polite to piss in front
of other people."
Fine gold hair, nearly transparent, almost invisible except when the light struck it just right, covered his whole body.
His pubic hair was slightly thicker, slightly coarser. She stared at the smooth flesh between his legs. She could stare at anyone or anything, anytime she liked, because no one could tell where her eyes were focused.
"It is not considered polite to piss on land, you mean," the diver said. "Divers think nothing of it. I did wonder what that small room in the comer ofJ.D.'s cabin was. She always kept the door closed."
"J.D. ! J.D. Sauvage? Do you know her?"
"Yes."
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"This is all her fault!"
"I do not believe it," the diver said. "She would not lend herself to this occurrence. Please do not talk of my friend that way."
"She was supposed to be there! Where does she get off, forgetting our appointment?"
"She left for the starship," the diver said. "And if she had not, she would be hiding along with us."
"Yeah. Maybe." Chandra scowled. The nerve ridges on her forehead twisted. "Serve her right."
"She would probably know what to do," he said.
Chandra glared at him, but the silver-gray nerve tissue that hid her eyes and allowed her to stare also prevented her from glowering effectively.
Zev changed the subject. "Are you allowed to eat in front of each other?"
"Of course. What a dumb question."
"Why 'dumb'? You do not pee in front of each other. I do not understand why eating is so different. I know only one land-bound human. J.D. is almost a diver herself. I cannot compare her customs with yours."
"Okay, I see your point. Are you a guy, or are all divers built like you?" Chandra said.
"I am male, if that is what your question means. I am physiologically mature, though I have not yet fathered anyone."
"You mean you're a virgin?" Then she had to explain "virgin." The diver laughed.
"No—how foolish. We don't even have a word for that.
We play all the time—whenever we meet another family. J.D. says regular humans don't do that. And she said regular humans have to learn how not to be fertile. You have to concentrate on it. Divers have to leam how not to be sterile."
"Why?"
"Because that's how we designed ourselves. External genitals would cause hydrodynamic drag."
Chandra waited for him to continue, but he seemed to think that told her all she needed to know.
"Nobody ever put it quite like thai to me before," she said. "Which is probably a good thing, since I haven't got the faintest idea what you're talking about."
134 Vonda N. Mclntyre
"Male humans have to leam to raise their temperature in order to become sterile—you know this?"
"Sure,"
"I had to learn to extend my scrotum—do you understand?
And when I father someone, when a diver from another family chooses me, I will have to leave it extended long enough to overcome the sterility my body temperature causes."
"Sounds dangerous, if a hungry shark comes along . . ."