Undertow Read online

  Cricket matched Lucienne’s tone. “Are we taking a boat?”

  “No, it’s just up along the bank.” And then Lucienne giggled. “Why are we whispering?”

  “So as not to disturb the ranids?”

  “They can’t hear you.”

  Cricket stumbled. Lucienne, behind her, caught her elbow and held her up. “Can’t hear me? They’re not deaf.”

  “No—” Lucienne’s gesture set the light in her hands to wavering wildly. “They respond to a different set of frequencies, and their hearing in air is not that great. They’d just hear, I dunno, rumbling and squeaks. Like we just hear them croaking.”

  “So how will they know to meet us? How will we talk to them?”

  “You’ll see,” Lucienne said, patting a capacious cargo pocket on her thigh. “Patience.”

  Cricket was ready to swallow her tongue. Ranids shouldn’t be that exciting. She’d seen them working on the drill platforms in the distance, seen them—occasionally—scudding effortlessly through the crystalline bay. She’d watched documentaries, of course. And the popular dramas sometimes had ranids in them: real ones or—more often—holograms.

  That wasn’t the same as talking to a real alien while crouched in a swamp by moonlight.

  “Hold still,” Lucienne said, and Cricket paused midstep. “You can put your foot down.”

  The trace of a laugh in Lucienne’s voice made Cricket smile, too. Wet earth molded to her foot as her weight came down on it. She could feel the cool moisture rising from the mud even through her flexible sole. The sawtooth-edged leaves of the reeds that weren’t all that much like real reeds whispered in the darkness, leaving Cricket with the urge to whisper back. Living up to her name, she thought, and her smile broadened until it pulled at her cheeks.

  Lucienne turned off the light.

  Cricket managed not to yelp, but she couldn’t hold back a flinch. The bayou had already been huge and tangled where it stretched beyond the reach of the flashlight: slumbering softly, but infinitely old and sharp-witted. Now, before Cricket’s eyes adjusted, the sounds and scents seemed to rush at her with the darkness. She breathed deep, fixing the black-earth scent of vegetable rot at the bottom of her lungs, so she smelled it again, warmer, as her breath came back.

  Insects sawed and droned, and creatures large enough to support vocal cords made more complex noises. Something crashed, and something screamed; she didn’t know if it was a mating fight or the sound of something becoming another something’s dinner. She tried to force her eyes to adapt faster.

  The moonlight was shifting. One set of shadows, the faintest, seemed to twist about her as she watched, as if someone meant to wind her legs with ribbons. That was Flash, and it would cross the sky again two and a half times before sunrise. Arthur took a more stately route, as befitted the farthest satellite, and cast steady steel-blue shadows. Subtractive mixing—still counterintuitive to Cricket after thirty-four years in which the light from the sky had only been one color at a time—turned the intersecting shadows black.

  The third moon, Alice, was a grayish wraithlike shape with low albedo, smaller, closer, and faster than Arthur but larger and slower than Flash. It cast no appreciable light unless it was alone in the sky, and even then, only enough to guess at the motion of a hand. If the person waving it was light-skinned.

  If the Greene’s World tide charts hadn’t been in databases, they would have run to volumes.

  “What are we waiting for?” Cricket finally whispered.

  “Not waiting.” Lucienne touched her shoulder, and Cricket noticed herself shivering. The moist still air was also cool. “Looking. There, off to port.”

  Cricket turned her head and squinted. A patch of moonlight—no. Brighter than moonlight. And a greeny-yellow that neither Arthur nor Flash reflected. Bioluminescence? “Algae?”

  “Froggies,” Lucienne said. “They’re expecting us. Come on.”

  A narrow path led through the reeds, invisible from the green riverbank. Cricket reached out and swiped across the glowing patch as they walked past it, flattened reeds crunching softly underfoot. Water seeped between the aligned stems, but they kept the mud beneath from greasing her way down the bank.

  Her fingertip glowed citrine-yellow when she turned her hand over. “They use marking paint?”

  “Something like that.” Lucienne had taken the lead, for which Cricket was just as grateful, in the dark. She clutched reeds to steady herself, leaving luminescent smears behind. “Stop here.”

  Cricket had already halted. She could see the moonlit channel gleaming beyond Lucienne, its surface like oiled black opal. Cricket watched while Lucienne flipped her braid behind one broad shoulder and crouched easily in the mud. Whatever had been in her pocket was in her right hand now; it looked like a wand with green and yellow lights glowing on the handle.

  She slid it into the water and thumbed a control.

  Cricket neither heard nor felt a thing, but the lights rippled encouragingly, and Lucienne seemed satisfied as she pulled the wand up and whipped an arc of droplets off the tip.

  “And now?”

  “We wait. Some patient researcher you are.” Lucienne reached back and patted her on the ankle. Cricket sighed and squatted down, resting her elbows on her knees, trying to trap some warmth between her belly and her thighs. “Oh. When they come—don’t make direct eye contact. And don’t touch them. It breaks their mucous coating.”

  Cricket was prepared for a long, cold wait, but her expectation was mercifully disappointed. The water rippled and bulged, and one-two-three domed arrow-shaped heads emerged, arrayed in an uneven wedge. They bobbed, as if their owners floated free in the water, though Cricket couldn’t imagine it was very deep. But they slid to the bank smoothly, and she stood up and moved back as Lucienne scooted aside to give them room.

  Cricket heard herself breathing, loud as if she stood in an echo chamber. Only one of the ranids emerged from the water—a greeny-black shape with a pale mottled belly. Its arms were long, almost as long as its spindly legs, and it had spidery, webbed, opposable digits on all four limbs. It wasn’t quite as tall as Cricket, standing, which wasn’t very tall at all. It hunched forward enough, head stretching out on a neck that would collapse into the body for swimming, so that she saw pale mottles that would be butter-or cream-colored in sunlight. “We have to give them names,” Lucienne said over her shoulder. “Their names for themselves are a little beyond us. Cricket, this is Caetei. Caetei, this is Cricket.” When Lucienne addressed the froggie directly, she overpronounced, as if speaking to a child or a lip-reader.

  The ranid wore a sort of web belt, farther up its midsection than a human waist would be, above the great angular hip bones that canted it forward in such an awkward and unbalanced fashion. It flexed its legs, not quite sinking down into a high-kneed crouch, and supported itself on one hand while it unclipped a perfectly normal—if waterproofed—child’s slate from a carabiner. It settled further, a tapered cone between the high flexed knees, and began to type.

  “And do they have names for us?” Cricket asked, coming forward. She pressed her shoulder against Lucienne’s rounded biceps, soaking up radiant warmth.

  “If they do, they never tell us.” Lucienne accepted the slate from Caetei and read it quickly, angling the face so Cricket could see the backlit screen.—Plsd. U R cmng 2 hlp us?

  Inelegant, but efficient. Cricket glanced at Lucienne. Lucienne shrugged. “You can type on the slate, connex to the slate and IM, or speak directly. Caetei reads lips. Not all ranids do.”

  Cricket handed the slate back, the tips of the ranid’s spatulate fingers brushing the side of her hand. There must be claws retracted in the cool slippery flesh, because something scratched her like a burr. “Pleased to meet you, too,” she answered, a great swelling of disbelief making her wish she could shake her head and pace in circles until it sank in what she was doing here. “Lucienne thought I should come and talk to you. To help make up my mind.”

  The ran
id’s head settled back against its shoulders. It bobbed slightly and typed again. While it worked, Lucienne patted Cricket on the elbow. “You’re doing fine.”

  The slate came back. —Wld U C wht Rim ds 2 my sibs?

  “It’s not pretty,” Lucienne cautioned.

  Cricket nodded. “I will see.”

  Caetei splashed the water with one foot. The other two bobbing ranid heads emerged from the water, and neither of these two wore web belts or carried Rim equipment. One wore the seashell and seawrack vest and girdle affected by the unacculturated ranids. It was decorative, woven of tropical colors and light-catching stones, and also served to display the prowess of the ranid that wore it. Not only did the vests create drag, impeding the owner, but the best vests belonged to far-swimmers, who had traveled great distances along the surface currents, and visited many islands and become exoparents on many shores. A sensible custom, one that encouraged both the reproduction of the strongest and the wide spread of biological diversity.

  This particular far-swimmer also wore a Charter Trade harpoon gun. Which was not something any native was supposed to have. Tetra, Caetei typed, and the ranid head-bobbed. Lucienne bowed, a human equivalent, and Cricket copied her. This, she guessed, would be the bodyguard.

  And nothing like a tame froggie at all. Caetei had a distinct, moist, amphibian aroma. Tetra—or its harness—smelled of tide pools and heaped seaweed and broken shells.

  When Tetra turned to help the third ranid from the water, though, Cricket gasped. She hadn’t been able to see, when it swam partially submerged, but this froggie was disfigured. It was obviously blind in one eye, a great white scar carved down the side of its face and across the shoulder, its left arm ending below the shoulder in a knobby lump. It listed as it struggled up the bank, so Cricket suspected spinal or brain damage.

  “This is Parrot. It survived an industrial accident,” Lucienne said, because Caetei had stopped typing. “And Rim sometimes provides medical care to site workers—it’s one of the things they trade for coolie labor”—the distaste in her voice when she said coolie was acid enough to sting—“but of course if you can’t work they don’t treat you.”

  “God,” Cricket said, or shaped, anyway. She wasn’t sure she got any breath through the word.

  Not that that mattered to the ranids. Caetei reached out and brushed her bare leg, with just fingertip pads, and looked up quizzically. She glanced down. “Yes,” Cricket said. “Thank you. Please tell it—” Tell it I’m sorry.

  But the dismissive flicking gesture of Caetei’s hand needed no translation. Like scattering water on the ocean. The mutilated ranid would not understand.

  “Thank you.” Lucienne to the rescue. She swept her hand to her mouth to direct Caetei’s attention. “If you don’t need more, Caetei, thank you and Tetra and Parrot. Thank you very much.”

  Caetei patted Cricket’s calf once more quickly, and the three ranids slipped back into the brackish channel. For a moment, Cricket saw the lights of Caetei’s slate dimmed by the muddy channel, and then they were gone, along with the ranids.

  “Medical care?” Cricket asked, when the wonder had blown off her enough to allow her to talk. “They work for what any Core or Rim citizen gets as a birthright?”

  “It’s one of the things they earn. They’re not citizens.”

  “It’s exploitation.”

  “That is,” Lucienne said gently, “what I have been telling you. You’re not…shocked?”

  “No.” She wished she was. She wished she had the innocence left to be shocked. “But I am outraged.”

  “Good.” Lucienne paused, still looking out over the water. Flash already almost touched the top of the reeds in the west. “I meant you to be.”

  Cricket let the silence handle that one. “I still don’t know if I have the guts to get involved. What else do they—what else does Charter Trade barter to the ranids?”

  “They protect their sacred sites, for one thing. There are places in the deep bayou and salt marsh that the ranids hold holy. And, maybe the biggest thing…” She shrugged. “Stories.”

  “Stories?” Cricket heard herself, and lowered her voice. “Like, once upon a time?”

  “It’s their whole culture. They talk. When they get out in the deep ocean, halfway around the world they can talk. Don’t underestimate what new information is worth to them.”

  Cricket twisted her hands together. She was getting a little annoyed with feeling abashed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to sound like an idiot.”

  “Not an idiot,” Lucienne said. She flicked her flashlight on and shone it up the reedy path. Cricket, taking a hint, scrambled up. “Not even ignorant, really. But nobody talks about this stuff.”

  “Because we don’t want to know?”

  “Something like that,” Lucienne said. “Come on. I’ll run you home.”

  “I can get there myself. Just drop me at the ferry stop—”

  “Don’t worry about it.” As they emerged from the reeds atop the grassy bank, the night was cool and still. Exactly as they had left it, except the angle of the light had changed. “I was going out anyway. I have to meet somebody around midnight.”

  Raindrops pattered on the surface, the sound echoing softly through the sheltered backwater where Gourami slept and kept se treasures. Se lived in a humen-built cottage that bobbed amid rows of sixteens of similar bubbles, all on automatic moorings so that they were held more or less taut no matter how the tide changed.

  Gourami rested on one of the broad comfortable shelves that projected from the walls just below water level, spading a protein-enriched algae broth from a shallow bowl and watching larger-than-life images flicker on the wall. The splashing wavelets were warm; the heat in se sleeping bench was on. Humen toys were very pleasant.

  Se was watching a humen drama—they had drama, just like plays except they made them permanent so one could watch again and again, not just tell them—and the squiggles across the bottom of the image meant their words. So se was practicing, in addition to being entertained. Which was good. The humen liked it if one did more than one thing at a time, though Gourami thought they would be wiser to care if one did it well.

  But that was humen.

  They built good houses, anyway.

  And someone was scratching by the door of Gourami’s. Se set the half-empty bowl on a higher shelf, where water would not slop into it (imagine trying to keep water out of food! Imagine eating food served warm!) and slid through the opening in the ring-shaped shelf, dropping toward the bottom of the house and the underwater door. There was a hatch to the roof as well, for emergencies and sunbathing, reached by an ascending spiral of shelves, and some houses had a second underwater exit. But those were houses for families—endoparents with broods, or exo-groups, or sometimes both at the same time where there was a lasting attachment.

  Gourami’s place was only one bubble. As se swam under the encircling shelf of the primary living space, the flickering light of the drama provided enough glow to see by. Se’d reverse it when se came back up, if guilt won over irritation. It wasn’t very good. But it was a story, and se winced at self’s irresponsibility in letting it run itself out unregarded.

  Still. Still. Se could always reverse it. It wasn’t sacrilege, not like missing part of a play, which was ephemeral and would only continue to exist as long as there was somebody to remember it, somebody who could tell it if the need arose.

  The gate was shot; se hadn’t planned on going out until morning and the last thing se needed was a pod of snakewhites wandering in an unbarred door in the middle of the night. Se churruped, the swelling surface of se throat vibrating into the water. Beyond the gate, someone’s pale belly reflected the moving light. The other churruped back.

  Caetei was a relative, one of Gourami’s endosibs. They were kin by water rather than gametes, but some said that was the strongest bond.

  Caetei also worked for Rim.

  Gourami slipped the gate and let se kick ins
ide. —I wouldn’t expect you to still be awake.

  Caetei shot upward with a powerful flexion of legs. Se voice echoed oddly for a moment as se hauled self from full submersion to a comfortably damp perch on the ledge. —I knew you would be.

  Gourami was a night-swimmer, a noon-sleeper by preference. As everybody in three rows knew, from the flicker of stories on se walls late into the night. Se heaved onto the ledge and stood to stretch, palms sticky flat against the arched roof of the house for balance. Bubble-shaped was not just sturdy and pleasant; it was safest in a storm. —I was watching a story. But of course, Caetei was already transfixed by the flicker. Se understood humen very well, better maybe than Gourami. Se hunched forward, half-crouched, and tilted side to side as if to improve perception of the huge humen figures imbedded in Gourami’s house-wall.

  —Will you restart?

  —I watched this one before, Gourami lied. Too much exposure to humen, not to care about a drama. It’s just a story, se wanted to say. It is recorded. It will remember itself, like the stories the Other Ones took with them, when they left. But se didn’t, and was glad when se noticed the set of Caetei’s shoulders, which suggested something along the lines of: Oh. But I haven’t.

  Se didn’t actually make the noises, though, so Gourami could pretend se had been looking away. Se did not want to watch the bad movie again.

  Se did not even particularly want to watch the ending.

  But se did, and when it flicked dark and the walls took up a mellow sun-colored glow to compensate for the lost illumination of the movie, se shifted se hips on the ledge. A few spans closer to Caetei was enough to press on se attention. Caetei blinked wide high-set eyes and shuddered, shaking out of the memorizy trance. —You can have the code, Gourami said. —I won’t watch it again.

  Caetei ducked in thanks and acknowledgment; Gourami made a sweeping, paddling gesture with se handfingers. Away from the mouth, not toward. —Nothing to thank me for.

  Se sank down in the warm water and let it flow up between the ridges of se hips. Se legs stretched long, toefingers dangling over the edge of the ledge. Not a position to take in open water, when toefingers looked like food to many swimmers.