Crashlander   ::   Нивен Ларри

I did not expect to fall asleep.

* * *



Asleep, feverish with sunburn. The Surgery program tickles blocks of nerves, plays me like a complex toy. In my sleep I feel raging thirst, hear a thunderclap, taste cinnamon or coffee, clench a phantom fist.

My skin wakes. Piloerection runs in ripples along my body, then a universal tickle, then pressure … like that feather-crested snakeskin Sharrol put me into for Carlos's party …

* * *



Sharrol, sliding into her own rainbow-scaled bodysuit, stopped halfway. «You don't really want to do this, do you?»

«I'll tough it out. How do I look?» I'd never developed the least sense of flatlander style. Sharrol picked my clothes.

«Half man, half snake,» she said. «Me?»

«Like this snake's fitting mate.» She didn't really. No flatlander is as supple as a crashlander. Raised in Earth's gravity, Sharrol was a foot shorter than I, and weighed the same as I did. Stocky.

The apartment was already in child mode: rounded surfaces everywhere, and all storage was locked or raised to eyeball height (mine). Tanya was five and Louis was four and both were agile as monkeys. I scanned for anything that might be dangerous within their reach. Louis stared at us, solemn, awed. Tanya giggled. We must have looked odder than usual, though given flatlander styles it's a wonder that any kid can recognize its parents. Why do they change their hair and skin color so often? When we hugged them goodbye, Tanya made a game of tugging my hair out of shape and watching it flow back into a feathery crest. We set them down and turned on the Playmate program.

The lobby transfer booth jumped us three time zones east. We stepped out into a vestibule, facing an arc of picture window. A flock of rainbow-hued fish panicked at the awful sight and flicked away. A huge fish passed in some internal dream.

For an instant I felt the weight of all those tons of water.

I looked to see how Sharrol was taking it. She was smiling, admiring.

«Carlos lives near the Great Barrier Reef, you said. You didn't say he lived in it.»

«It's a great privilege,» Sharrol told me. «I spent my first thirty years under water, but not on the Reef. The Reef's too fragile. The UN protects it.»

«You never told me that!»

She grinned at my surprise. «My dad had a lobster ranch near Boston. Later I worked for the Epcot-Atlantis police. The ecology isn't so fragile there, but — Bey, I should take you there.»

I said, «Maybe it's why we think alike.