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breeze, and the dry grains of sand hissed as they spun past J.D.'s feet.
Open ocean created long crescents of white beach, separated by headlands and
smoothed by the surf. Fqr overhead, on the shore beyond the sun tube,
opposite this point on the cylinder, barrier islands protected salt marshes.
The lowlands buffered the air and the water and offered shelter and spawning
grounds to many of Starfarer's creatures.
The hill that formed the cap of the cylinder rose from the far edge of the
ocean, at the rim. The hill supported an ice field on one slope, hot
springs on another. Their cold and warm currents circulated the seawater
and helped drive the weather.
Zev stopped beside her, staring out at the ocean. He glanced at J.D., his
face glowing.
"You go on ahead," she said softly. "I want to talk to Victoria for a
minute."
He hesitated, then whooped in excitement and took out for the sea. He
skidded down the face of the dune and dropped the beach blanket. Racing
across the narrow crescent beach, kicking up bright showers of dry sand,
he flung off his shirt; he hopped on one foot, then the other, while he
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stripped off his shorts.
Zev splashed into the shallow water, pushed forward, swam a few strokes,
kicked his heels in the air, .and vanished.
"He's eager, , Victoria said, a smile in her voice. She stopped beside J.D.
"He's homesick, I think."
"He doesn't act it."
"He doesn't mope . . . but . . . when you spend time with the divers, you
get used to a lot of contact. A lot of touch. He doesn't get that here."
"He docsn't?" Victoria sounded skeptical, and amused. "Could have fooled
me."
"Not like back at his home."
The dune grass ended abruptly. J.D. and Victoria
162 VONDA N. McINTYRE
crossed the beach: soft deep dry white sand, a narrow line of drying seaweed
and small shells, then damp, yielding dark sand. It was easier to walk, here
where the tide had just gone out, where the siphon-holes of clams pocked the
surface and squirted when J.D. stamped her foot.
Out in the low breakers, Zev surfaced, waved, beckoned, and disappeared
again.
"Are you going to join him?"
"In a while," J.D. said. "Let's go over by that piece of driftwood." She
scooped up the beach blanket, and then she thought: Driftwood?
The huge, gnarled tree trunk lay above the highwater line, down where the
beach began to curve out to a low headland. Its twisted, weather-silvered
roots reached into the air. The trunk itself was larger in diameter than
J.D. was tall. The top of the trunk had been broken off in a jagged point,
as if wind had uprooted it and the fall had shattered it.
If it had ever lived.
J.D. touched the trunk. It felt like wood, and when she knocked against it
with her knuckles, it resounded with a familiar, woody thunk
"It is wood! I thought it'd be rock foam. How-?"
Victoria grinned. "Realistic, eh? Cellulose and lignin and what-all.
Crimson sculpted it. She said any self-respecting beach should have cedar
driftwood on it."
"It's handsome." J.D. stroked the smooth, weathered surface. "I miss big
trees."
"There are some, over on the wild side. Twenty years old, from one of the
O'Neills."
"Twenty years old?" J.D. smiled. The broken end of the driftwood revealed
the sculpted growth rings. "This would be hundreds of years old."
"Crimson's good, isn't she? She told me she'd grown it layer by layer, and
cooked the sculptural material so even the isotopic ratios would be right."
"She's very talented." J.D. let her day pack slide off her shoulders,
spread out the blanket beside the tree trunk, and sank down crosslegged.
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METAPHASE 163
"I don't remember the last time I went swimming," Victoria said. "I've
never swum in Starfarer's ocean." She took off her floppy red T-shirt and
kicked off her sandals. She was wearing a shiny blue two-piece bathing
suit.
Zev had paced them as they walked along the shore. He waved again, called
to J.D., bodysurfed halfway to the beach, then did a flip-turn and
vanished into the waves again.
"Good lord, he's going to break his neck!" Victoria said.
"No, don't worry. He knows where the bottom is."
"Shall we swim?"
"I want to talk to you for a minute, first."
Victoria knelt beside J.D.
"I'm listening."
Zev was used to older adults gathering to talk while the younger adults
swam and played. He was patient, and he knew J.D. would join him soon. He
looked forward to casting off the restrictive land manners for a few
hours, and he wished he had someone to swim with now while he waited for
J.D. and Victoria. He wondered if Victoria's presence meant he and J.D.
would have to maintain land manners. How would Victoria know diver
manners?
Victoria's intensity both scared and intrigued him. He knew she did not
altogether approve of his being along on the expedition. Still, she had
let him accompany the alien contact department, so she must like him just
a little.
Among the divers, Zev had spoken for J.D. to Lykos; J.D. must have spoken
for him to Victoria.
While he waited for J.D., he swam through the shallow ocean.
The starship spun one direction; he swam the other direction, minus-spin,
because it felt as if he were swimming downhill. The sensation amused
him.
Paralleling the shore, he followed the wide curve of
164 VONDA N. McINTYRE
the crescent beach, rounded the headland, and skirted close to the dangerous
and exciting rough water. He probed the ocean with sound. He heard and
tasted the weathered gnarls of the rock, and the seaweed and barnacles,
periwinkles and limpets, anemones and starfish that inhabited the intertidal
zone. Offshore, a school of fish scintillated past.
On the other side of the headland, the beach sloped shallowly into the sea,
then rose again to form a barrier island half a kilometer offshore. Zev
swam through the channel, staying on the surface. The water was silty and brackish and
the bottom sand turned to mud. The taste of algae and reeds, shrimp and crabs and the
bottomdwellers of sheltered bays, filled his mouth and nose. He stroked toward shore till
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he could stand, chest deep, in the water. He put his feet into the deep warm mud of the
river delta, for the pleasure of feeling the life it succored vibrating against his skin. He
pushed off backwards and kicked along like an otter, looking up, tracing out the shore of
Starfarer's ocean belt.
He passed the end of the island. Another headland stretched into the sea, separating the
delta from an open beach. Zev swam around it and into cold, exhilarating water. He dove,
touched bottom, pushed off, exploded all the way out of the water at the apex of his jump,
and splashed back into the waves.
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