Free Undertow by Elizabeth Bear Page A

his flesh before he pulled back. The half-moon marks blanched, then reddened on pale gold skin inside his wrist—so much lighter than his scarred knuckles, than the back of his arm.
    “Nothing to do with God,” he answered, and patted her on the shoulder, feeling her bones shift as she shrugged, before he moved away.
    “I’m glad you survived Kroc’s invitation, André. And by the way, I quit.” She smoothed her hair, and then invoked the unholy, the name of André’s sister. “I have to live with Zoë.”
             
    André parked his scoot in front of Jean Kroc’s minifab and paused at the bottom of the floating dock, looking around. He wasn’t surprised to see Cricket sitting spread-kneed on the second step, shucking peas into a bucket set between her sandals. She looked up when he crunched up the seashell-and-broken-plascrete path.
    She never changed. Her eyes were still the brown of weak tea or swamp water, and you could see the flecks in them when you got close enough, like loam or bits of leaf. She was skinny and not too tall, blue veins visible under the skin of her throat. Her fine black hair rat-tailed in the humid heat.
    She stood up, bucket swinging, colander full of peas set aside on the steps. “Jean’s waiting for you.”
    “You know,” André said, before he pocketed his shades, wiped the sweat off his temples, and stole a kiss, “you can buy those.”
    “Taste better if you grow them yourself,” she answered, and grabbed a fistful of beard to kiss him back. Her shoulders were tense under the light-colored blouse, though, and her back hunched as if she fought the urge to cringe.
    He didn’t withdraw until she’d smoothed one hand across his bald scarred scalp. “Oh, I have time to do that search for you tomorrow if you still need it.”
    “No,” he said, shifting his weight. “I took care of it myself.”
    A tight smile and a small nod. “Power down, André. No devices inside.”
    He blinked. “All I’ve got is a headset. You know—”
    “Power
down
.” She bent over enough to pick up the colander and balanced it inside the bucket, and André didn’t brush against those promising haunches. This time. “Nothing that happens in Jean’s house enters a data hold.”
    She swung the bucket into his hand. He took it reflexively, then watched her ass sway up the steps. She paused with her hand on the door, eyebrows raised as she glanced over her shoulder. He sighed and rolled his eyes skyward, where a sticky haze did nothing to cut the heat, and toggled his headset off.
    The world went flat. Isotherms, stock ticker, weather report, chat group, reality skins dropped off his display, leaving his head and his vision curiously empty. Even in the mornings, when he ran, he wasn’t this naked.
    As if it were a security blanket, he kept the sense augment on. Not even Jean could complain about that. “You want my hardware, baby?”
    “No,” said Cricket. “Jean Gris isn’t worried about your guns.”
             
    The body was tangled in the cables, halfway down.
    And every time Gourami let the nictitating membranes flicker across se eyes, se remembered. So Gourami tapped the slate on the bar beside se cup to summon another glass of poison, and drew webbed fingery feet up in the rung of the humen-type stool where they wouldn’t get stepped on, balancing awkwardly with knees drawn up to either side of se shoulders.
    Gourami was the only person in the tavern. Not that persons were forbidden to enter humen taverns, but generally they kept to themselves, slept wet, stayed low. The contractors didn’t like it if the persons caused trouble. And a lot of humen didn’t care to take the time to understand, to parse a slate or study hand gestures.
    But the people’s bars weren’t open yet; everybody was still on shift. And Gourami had badly, badly needed a drink.
    Because the body had been tangled in the cables, halfway down, and none of the humen on the tender had been