He remembered distantly the long days … the Skimmers … “Wait!” he called. Rosa was through the passage and into the calm beyond. “Wait!” She went on.

Where he had seen logs he now saw something bloated and grotesque, sick. He shook his head. His vision cleared—or did it? he wondered—and now he could not tell what waited for Rosa on the glimmering sand.

He lost sight of her as the raft followed deflected currents around the island. The trade wind was coming fresh. He felt it on his skin like a reminder, and the sunset sat hard and bright in the west. Automatically he tacked out free of the reef and turned WSW. When he looked back in the soft twilight it was hard to see the forms struggling like huge lungfish up onto their new home. Under the slanted light the wind broke the sea into oily facets that became a field of mirrors reflecting shattered images of the burnt-orange sky and the raft. He peered at the mirrors.

The logs on the beach … He felt the tug of the twine and made a change in heading to steady a yaw.

He gathered speed. When the thin scream came out of the dusk behind him he did not turn around.

PART THREE

2076 RA

One

Nigel watched Nikka carefully arrange her kimono. It was brocaded in brown and blue and, as tradition dictated, was extravagant by more than ten centimeters. Nikka drew it up until the hem was just level with her heels, once, twice—at the fifth try he stopped counting and fondly watched her turn this way and that before the polished-steel mirror. She arranged a red silk cord at her waist and smoothed down the slack of the kimono. Then came the obi: a broad, stiff sash, fully five meters long. She wrapped it around herself at breast level, frowned, wrapped it again. Each time he watched this ceremony it seemed more subtle, revealed more of her shifting mind. He murmured a detailed compliment and a knot of indecision in her dissolved; she firmly fastened the two small cords that secured the obi. This layering and sure smoothing done, she tried a brass front buckle. Pursed her lips. Changed it to an onyx clasp. Turned, studied the effect. Plunged an ivory comb into her butterfly chocho mage crown of hair. Then a pale, waxy comb. Next, a brilliant yellow one. Then back to the ivory. He loved these pensive, hovering moments when she revealed the light and childlike core of herself. Lancer tended to iron out the graceful, momentary interludes, he thought, and replace them with clear, sharp decisive certainties.

“You must have the largest wardrobe on board.”

“Some things are worth the trouble,” she said, fitting on zori of worn, woven stalks. And smiled, knowing he too sensed how important such age-honored moments were to her.

A knock at the door. He went for it, knowing that Bob Millard and Carlotta Nava would be there, coming a bit early. The shipscene multifass began in ten minutes: time-bracketed communality.

Lancer was organized in the now-accepted mode. Whenever possible, decisions about work were made at the lowest level, involving the most workers possible. The intricately structured weave of social and political forces was a sophisticated descendant of an old cry—ownership of the means of production by the workers!—without the authoritarian knee jerks Marx left in the original model. It was flexible; it allowed Nigel to work on whatever odd bit of astronomical data caught his eye, as long as he also pitched into overall drudge jobs as they came up. The details were worked out by small labor cells.

To break down the ever-forming rigidities of hierarchy, the Shipwide Multifaceted Social Exchange blended all workers together; Mixmastering them into a classless puree. There were a minimum of classlike distinctions. Ship command officers ate the same boring commissary food and griped about it in the same sour, hopeless way. They wore the same blue jump suits and had no privileges. Nigel had some perks because of his age, not his rank; within the limits of efficiency, there were no ranks. Ted Landon headed the shipwide assembly, but his vote weighed the same as an obscure techtype’s.

Nigel liked it: smorgasbord socialism, without a true profit motive, since Lancer had only to return to Earth to be a success. This simplified the sociometric analysis; consensus communities, as the jargon had it, were notably stable. Nigel ignored most of the earnest entreaties that he participate more. He liked the community well enough, while distrusting its bland surface, its solicitous sensitivity. But the swelling exuberance of the multifass could sweep him along, drown his reserve. Bright, young people had an undeniable momentum.

“Hi.”

Carlotta kissed him. “Had another face smoothing, I see.”

“No, I decided to skip that and go straight to embalming. How’s it look?”

“It’s you, dahling. Are those laugh lines or an irrigation project?”

Bob shook hands in his good-ole-boy persona. “You figure there’s much on fer tonight?”

Nigel fetched drinks. “The free-form sex is down the hall, second left.”

“Don’t look for him there,” Carlotta said. “Nigel gets all tired out just struggling with temptation.”

Nigel handed her a drink. “Hot-blooded kid. I suppose you’ll be playing hopscotch tonight with real Scotch?”

“Si. You’re so much wittier after I’ve had a few drinks.”

“You two!” Nikka shook her head. “One could never guess you had spent the night together.”

“Mating rituals of the higher primates,” Carlotta said, taking a long pull. She stroked Nikka’s kimono. “Madre! It’s so attractive on you.”

Nigel wondered why women spoke that way when presumably it was men who were best qualified to judge attraction, yet men seldom used the term. Curious. Though of course in this case his generalization fell on its face. In their first hand touch they reestablished a lazy, familiar sensuality.

He watched Carlotta approach Nikka, speaking rapidly and approvingly, and then move away, and then return, an unconscious push-pull to draw Nikka out. Carlotta’s heavy, springy hair flowed with these movements. In marked contrast, her large brown eyes did not share this social gavotte. He liked the rigor of those eyes and the unashamed way they locked on whatever interested her, holding it for rapt attention.

Her intensity was too much for Nikka’s mood, so soon after the reflective dressing in the kimono. Nikka escaped into the kitchen for hors d’oeuvres. Carlotta reached out a hand as if to delay her and then drew back, seeing that she had stirred up some unintended current. She turned, her long scarlet skirt flowing, and studied a sunsomi triptich nearby. Nigel watched her eyes narrow from some inner effort. There was some reservoir of emotion she was tapping that eluded him. Something deep, another fulcrum for her personality. Which proved that merely sleeping with a woman did not open her to you fully, no matter how you might try.

Bob started in about shipboard work policy and Nigel joined in, glad of the diversion. A musical theme chimed: multifass.

“Ummm,” Carlotta murmured and turned to Nikka to try again. “What are you doing under the new job rotation?” A relatively neutral subject.

“Odd jobs here and there.” Nikka retreated behind a blank mildness. He recognized this as an old habit, common to Japanese, though Nikka had returned to it only in the last few years, as a day-to-day shield aboard Lancer. In this case, she was uncomfortable because a small deception was involved. He and Nikka had agreed to collaborate, without appearing to do so, filling in each other’s weak areas. That would help keep their labor ratings above minimum. It seemed a prudent tactic for the oldest members of the crew. “And you?”

“Well, systems analysis of the microbio inventory, of course, from the first flyback probe.”