A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski Page A

between two of the stalks and steadied herself. Beyond, over the beast’s hide, shafts of light flickered and danced through the crisscrossing cables that harnessed it fast to the raft. Those cables, made of coldstone, were gotten from the trader nowadays, Lystra reminded herself sourly. Were it up to her, though—
    Enough of that: she had to be ready for the mindguide, the instrument that would tell the starworm what pattern of groans to make. Did Elonwy have the mindguide? No, Elonwy was whitening as her breathmicrobes used up their oxygen, so she swam over to the airbell. Elonwy’s pregnancy was showing now, in the soft round of her belly; a couple of months more, and the Gathering would see that she sat out awhile.
    Yinevra came to the starworm. From her hand dangled the black, curling fingers of the mindguide. Yinevra’s chin jutted critically, but Lystra would do this right. She took the mindguide and set its tendrils behind a radial stalk, just over the proper neural node. The mindguide would release a timed sequence of hormones, in a simple code. Simple messages would result: Merwen the Impatient Home Safe with Valan Child. Strain Ler Is on Way to Aial-el. This was a fungal strain to cure an outbreak of lethal fever; Usha had made the cure and sent a sample by clickfly to the lifeshaper of Aial-el. And lastly, to be repeated twice, Motorboats Drown Starworm Song; Stop Use. Yinevra had long suspected that Valan motors caused the troubling upsurge in ocean noise,
which at times shortened transmission range to only a few hundred kilometers. Now she was certain, and even Merwen had no answer to this.
    The black tendrils of the mindguide had settled, and their hormones would take effect within half an hour. Everyone would have to surface before then, because the song of the starworm, though below the frequency range of human hearing, was so loud underwater that its power could kill. So Lystra went to the airbell for a quick gulp of air, took Spinel, and rushed him up to a raft branch before his miserable breath gave out.
    In an instant Yinevra swung up beside her. Her inner eyelids retracted, releasing the pent-up fury in her eyes. Her foot scooped up water and showered Lystra. “Why late today? You’re never late. You know it’s not fair to the other rafts if we overrun our time. You know I have to get to the Gathering. And whatever did you bring that idle Valan creature for, to drain off an airbell all morning?” Yinevra pointedly kept her back to Spinel. Fine wrinkles spanned her scalp, though she still had the chest and arms of a veteran wormrunner. Yinevra the Unforgiving was even surer about Valans than Lystra was, and she was older than Merwen.
    â€œI’m sorry about the airbell.” The pneumatophores that grew from it conducted air only so fast. “But I had to keep him from mischief,” Lystra added. “We’re going to the trader. I thought you might like a look at him, after all the fuss.”
    â€œA skinny runt, isn’t he? Merwen thinks I’ll take pity on him and forget how the traders drove my daughter mad.”
    Lystra grew numb. She did not want to think about Yinevra’s daughter.
    â€œYes,” said Yinevra, “I know your mother well. When will you take a selfname and join the Gathering? You of all sisters will add weight to the Doorclosers—”
    â€œNo. I’m not ready.” Don’t ask me why, she pleaded in silence.
    Yinevra watched, her mouth twisting slowly. “Well, then. When you visit the trader, let him share ten lengths of cable. Several starworm moorings need repair.”
    Lystra was dismayed. “So soon? He asked for a whole boatload of seasilk, the last time.”
    â€œBring medicines, then. Usha makes the best.”

    Lystra flushed at this praise of her mothersister. “Usha came home thin as silkweed. She works herself to the bone, in any case.”
    â€œIf the starworms break loose