“You mean like a school?”

The baby Kiint hesitated. Corpus says yes.

“Do you go to it?”

No. I am still receiving many primary educationals from the Corpus and my parents. First I must understand them fully. That is a hardness. When I have understanding I can begin to expand my own thoughts.

“Oh, I get it. That’s like the way we do it, too. I have to receive a lot of didactic courses before I can go on to university.”

You will go to university?

“I suppose so. I don’t know how on Lalonde, though. There might be one in Durringham. Mummy will tell me when she comes back and things get better.”

I hope for you.

They had reached the lake’s shore. Its water was very dark, even when Jay stood on the shaggy grass-analogue right at the edge and peered over cautiously she couldn’t see the bottom. The surface reflected her image back at her. Then it started to ripple slightly.

Haile was walking out towards the white towers. Jay paused for a moment to watch her friend. There was something not quite right about the scene, something obvious which her mind couldn’t quite catch.

Haile was about ten meters from the shore when she realized Jay wasn’t following. She swung her head round to look at the girl. Vyano is in here. Do you not want to meet him?

Very slowly, Jay cleared her throat. “Haile, you’re walking on the water.”

The baby Kiint looked down at where her feet-pads were dinting the surface of the lake. Yes. Query puzzlement. Why do you find wrongness?

“Because it’s water!” Jay shouted.

There is stability for those wishing to attend the locus. You will not fall in.

Jay glared at her friend, though intense curiosity was a strong temptation. Tracy’s warning rang clear in her mind. And Haile would never trick her. She put a toe cautiously on the water. The dark surface bent ever so slightly as she began to apply pressure, but her shoe couldn’t actually break the surface tension and get wet. She put even more weight on her foot, allowing her whole sole to rest on the water. It supported her without any apparent strain.

A couple of tentative steps, and Jay glanced from side to side, giggling. “This is brilliant. You don’t need to build bridges and stuff.”

You have happiness now?

“You bet.” She started to walk towards Haile. Slow ripples expanded out from under her shoes, clashing and shimmering away. Jay couldn’t stop the giggles. “We should have had this in Tranquillity. We could have got out to that island, then.”

Rightness.

Smiling happily, Jay let Haile’s arm tip wrap round her fingers, and together they walked over the lake. After a couple of minutes the towers of the locus seemed no closer. Jay began to wonder just how big they were.

“Where’s Vyano, then?”

He comes.

Jay scanned the base of the towers. “I can’t see anybody.”

Haile stopped, and looked down at her feet, head swaying from side to side. I have sight.

Promising herself she wouldn’t yelp or anything, Jay looked down. There was movement beneath her feet. A small pale-grey mountain was sliding through the water, twenty metres beneath the surface. Her heart did sort of go thud, but she clamped her jaw shut and stared in amazement. The creature must have been bigger than any of the whales in her didactic zoology memories. There were more flippers and fins than Earth’s old behemoths, too. A smaller version of the creature was swimming along beside it, a child. It curved away from its parent’s flank, and started to race upwards, its fins wriggling enthusiastically. The big parent rolled slowly, and dived off into the depths.

“Is this Vyano?” Jay exclaimed.

Yes. He is a cousin.

“What do you mean cousin? He’s nothing like you.”

Humans have many sub-species.

“No we don’t!”

There are Adamists and Edenists, white skin, dark skin; more shades of hair than colours in the rainbow. This I have seen for myself.

“Well, yes, but . . . Look here, there’s none of us live underwater. That’s just totally different.”

Corpus says human scientists have experimented with lungs that can extract oxygen from water.

Jay recognized that particular mental tone of pure stubbornness. “They probably have,” she conceded.

The aquatic Kiint child was over fifteen metres long; flatter than a terrestrial whale, with a thick tractamorphic tail that was contracting into a bulb as it neared the surface. Its other appendages, six buds of tractamorphic flesh, were spaced along its flanks. To help propel it through the water, they were currently compressed into semicircular fans that undulated with slow power. Perhaps the most obvious pointer to a shared heritage with landbound Kiint was the head, which was simply a more streamlined version that had six gills replacing the breathing vents. The same large semi-mournful eyes were shielded with a milky membrane.

Vyano broke surface with a burst of spray and energetic waves, which churned outward. Jay was suddenly trying to keep her balance as the lake’s surface bounced about underneath her like some hyperlastic trampoline. Haile was bobbing up and down beside her, in almost as much trouble, which was slightly reassuring. When the swell had eased off, a mound of glistening leaden flesh was floating a couple of metres away. The aquatic Kiint formshifted one of its flank appendages into an arm, tip spreading out into the shape of a human hand.

Jay touched palms.

Welcome to Riynine, Jay Hilton.

“Thank you. You have a lovely world.”

It has much goodness. Haile has shared her memories of your Confederation worlds. They are interesting also. I would like to visit after I am released from parental proscription.

“I’d like to go back, too.”

Your plight has been spoken of. I grieve with you for all that has been lost.

“Richard says we’ll pull through. I suppose we will.”

Richard Keaton is attuned to Corpus,haile said. He would not tell untruths.

“How could you visit the Confederation? Does that jump machinery of yours work underwater as well?”

Yes.

“But there wouldn’t be much for you to see, I’m afraid. Everything interesting happens on land. Oh, except for Atlantis, of course.”

Land is always small and clotted with identical plants. I would see the life that teems below the waves where nothing remains the same. Every day is joyfully different. You should modify yourself and come to dwell among us.

“No thank you very much,” she said primly.

That is a sadness.

“I suppose what I mean is, you wouldn’t be able to see what humans have achieved. Everything we’ve built and done is on the land or in space.”

Your machinery is old to us. It holds little attraction. That is why my family returned to the water.

“You mean you’re like our pastorals?”

I apologise. My understanding of human references is not complete.

“Pastorals are people who turned away from technology, and lived life as simply as they can. It’s a very primitive existence, but they don’t have modern worries, either.”

All races of Kiint embrace technology,haile said. The providers cannot fail now; they give us everything and leave us free.

“This is the bit about you which I don’t really get. Free to do what?”

To live.

“All right, try this. What are you two going to be when you grow up?”

I shall be me.

“No no.” Jay would have liked to stamp her foot for emphasis. Given what she was standing on, she thought better of it. “I mean, what profession? What do Kiints spend all day doing?”

You know my parentals were helping with the Laymil project.

All activity has one purpose,vyano said. We enrich ourselves with knowledge. This can come from simply interpreting the observed universe or extrapolating thoughts to their conclusion. Both of these are complementary. Enrichment is the result life is dedicated to. Only then can we transcend with confidence.