Free Undertow by Elizabeth Bear Page B

particularly concerned. They’d given Gourami the rest of the day off when se’d brought it up—all limp dangling and waterlogged mammal flesh. But what se’d seen cutting across the green water toward the anchor platform wasn’t a humen hearse or ambulance, but a black-windowed limousine—
    The bartender slid a clean glass of cold green tea across the bar and retrieved the dirty one. It wasn’t as poisonous to people’s physiology as alcohol, but had enough of a sting to make one woozy—a pleasant recreational toxin rather than a life-threatening one.
    The humen had brought all sorts of interesting things.
    Including disrespect for their dead.
    Gourami nursed the tea, cupping the humen-shaped drinking vessel between spidery handfingers, the webs tucked together so they wouldn’t cling to the glass. Se rolled the fluid around se mouth, pushing it back and forth through the same fluted cartilaginous plates used for straining water weed and insects from the marshes, if one did not have soup.
    It made gums and tongue and palate numb.
    Se swallowed and became aware of a shadow darkening the sun-warmth that dappled se back. Gourami disentangled handfingers from the glass and turned, nictitating for a better view. A human stood there, tall and male, by the ringlets of fur on his face. He dropped his hand on Gourami’s shoulder, the dry mammal warmth chafing through se protective mucous gloss.
    Gourami pulled back automatically.
    —
Stand up,
the human mouthed.
Stand up, frog.
    Lips moved, breath brushed across Gourami’s face. Se heard nothing but squeaks and rumbles, and could not have duplicated them to save se life. The frequency of humen voices was all wrong. But se could lipread much humen speech from se job as liaison. And humen body language, too, after a fashion.
    Se was in grave trouble.
    Gourami could have run; could have fought, exploded off the bar stool and barreled through the big human that stood making exaggerated lip movements and calling se “Froggie.” The humen who weren’t contractors always said they couldn’t tell one person from another.
    Except the human was making eye contact, was making physical contact, and while Gourami knew that humen did that to intimidate, between the tea and the endorphins released by the kinesthetic signals, se was too relaxed to initiate violent movement.
    —Stand up!
The human shaped again, and then made some other short noises and tossed his head, shaking shaggy mud-brown fur out in every direction. Then he reached for Gourami’s slate, grabbing with frustration.
    But Gourami did not wish to relinquish it, and so, with the eye and hand contact broken, stood.
    The human stepped back a pace, fumbling at his belt. But then Gourami wobbled—standing at full extension required balance, and after…several…helpings of poison, se had little left—and sank back.
    Se toefingers curled on the hard dry floor, contracting automatically to protect the delicate webs, but still seeking purchase. The bar rose on the swell of a taxiing lighter. Gourami could have run, again, but still fumbled with the slate, hoping to explain or to obtain an explanation of the human’s odd behavior, when the human managed to slip the shocker from his belt and touch it to the base of Gourami’s skull, above the retracted neck, behind the ear membrane.
    Nobody intervened. It was a humen bar.

4
    IF CRICKET HAD A MAN, IT WOULD BE ANDRÉ DESCHÊNES. But she didn’t. And after last night, she was doubly glad. She hadn’t wanted a man before and she didn’t want one now. They had both been happier with the sort of halfway state in which—
things
—stood, the one where nobody owned either one of them.
    And now there was Lucienne.
    She knew what he’d say if she asked him. It was business, and he didn’t talk about business.
    She wondered if she would ever forgive him. Even if Jean was right. She wondered if she would ever
want
to forgive. So she let her fingertips brush his palm when she