Undertow by Elizabeth Bear Page A

chest with both hands. “Oaf!”
    André pressed her down.
    Kroc rose from his chair. Wiry, a little bowlegged, most of his weight rested on the outside edges of his feet. “It’s not close enough,” he said; the floor lurched up and thumped André in the knees and elbows on the fourth syllable. Cricket grunted against his chest. He lifted his chest and hips; she wriggled free, palm on his shoulder, elbow pressing his upper arm, and eeled away.
    The atmospheric shock wave hit a moment later, the poly groaning as André’s ears popped, the sound a thud like a crushed drum. Cricket had one knee down, one palm flat. She squeaked like something stepped-on and clapped her hands to the sides of her head. André knelt, staring at Kroc. “It could have been a nuke.”
    “My eyes haven’t melted.” Kroc slipped his hands under Cricket’s armpits and pulled her to her feet, then scrubbed palms and fingers on his shorts. He walked to the window, padding over rag rug and plascrete. The red glare of the explosion had faded, but firelight limned Kroc’s cheek and temple as he pressed his face to the window.
    “Lighter crash?”
    “Looks like a barge exploded on the bay,” Kroc said. “It’s burning to the water.” He put his back to it. “Hell of a thing. You know, there was just one the other night. Getting to be a habit.”
    André pushed to a crouch. His back protested. He’d skinned a knee. “Cricket, you all right?”
    Her lip curled, but whatever she’d been about to say, she thought better of it and looked down. “Thanks,” she said. “Although if it had been a nuke, it wouldn’t have helped.”
    André shrugged around his grin. “You don’t think I’m radiation-proof?” He turned to Kroc, caught a glimpse of the tiny, burning shape a mile or so out on the water. “Shit—”
    A thumping sound was rescue craft, their lights playing over the water. There couldn’t have been much warning. André expected fruitless sweeps, perhaps doll-small figures sliding in harness to pluck bodies from the water. But as he watched they dropped rescue harnesses, hauled up kicking women or men.
    It was strange, seeing it all through a chunk of clear plastic, barely augmented, unskinned. It was flat, without hyperlinks. He couldn’t zoom. He couldn’t access histories or burn context.
    Just what was out there, reality primitive as an oil painting. Even with the augments, he hadn’t seen the world this way since his teens. Since he got out of his mom’s house and started making some real money.
    And this was how Kroc lived all the time?
    André wet his lips with his tongue. He didn’t know quite what he’d say, but he thought he’d find out when it got out of his mouth.
    Whatever it was going to be, he never heard it; there was a thumping at the door and he startled. Kroc brushed past him, one hand steadying André’s shoulder, and strode to the door. “I’m not feeding anybody else,” Cricket called over the noise of the kettle boiling.
    The entry was dark. André couldn’t see what security measures Kroc took, but it was a minute before he opened the door. When he did, he jerked it abruptly. What André saw past him was not human, with its teardrop-shaped body, thick indistinguishable neck smoothing to sloped shoulders, and thick-thighed, crooked legs. The ranid steadied itself on the doorframe, the other knobby forelimb akimbo and firelight lending unnaturally green skin a mucilaginous shine. It crouched between its knees, eyes tilted up at Kroc, and darted hand-gestures this way and that. It wore only a woven belt, no slate and no pass-tags. Not an employee of Rim, then. A wild froggie, a savage. André tensed, though he couldn’t make out a weapon.
    Kroc stepped back. “André,” he said without turning his head, “go home.”
    André glanced over his shoulder at Cricket. She did not look up from her fussing by the cooker. “By water, now?”
    The scooter had a shallow draft, and there wouldn’t be