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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
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out the blanket beside the tree trunk, and sank down crosslegged.
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 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.
Ahead he heard the steady splash of another swimmer. Not J.D. or Victoria,
someone swimming near the small crescent beach. Zev turned over and swam hard,
glad to find a swimmer to play with. When J.D. was ready, she would call his
name and he would hear her.
He reminded himself to maintain his land manners, even though he was in the
water. The ordinary humans owned this place, and the customs of divers carried
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