She watched a frown form on Mosul’s handsome sea-browned face. How old is Ruben?the semi-apologetic thought came.

She told him and had to stifle a laugh as the surprise and faint disapproval spilled out of his mind despite a frantic effort to cover them up. Gets them every time.

You shouldn’t tease people so,Oenone said. He’s a nice young man, I like him.

You always say that.

I only voice what you feel.

The quay was balanced on big cylindrical flotation drums which rode the swell in long undulations. Thick purple-red tubes ran along the edge, carrying nutrient fluid out to the boats. Leaky couplings dribbled the dark syrupy fluid into the water.

Syrinx stood to one side as a couple of servitor chimps carrying boxes passed by. They were wildly different from the standard habitat housechimps, with a scaled reptilian skin a mild blue-green in colour. Their feet were broad, with long webbed toes.

The boat that waited for them was called the Spiros , a seventeen-metre sailing craft with a white composite hull. Bitek units were blended into the structure with a skill that went far beyond mechanical practicality, it was almost artistry. The digestive organs and nutrient-reserve bladders were in the bilges, supporting the sub-sentient processor array and the mainsail membrane, as well as various ancillary systems. Her cabin fittings were all wooden, the timber coming from trees grown in the island’s central park. She was used by Mosul’s whole family for recreation. Which explained why the cabin was in a bit of a mess when they came on board.

Mosul stood in the galley clutching his box of supplies and looking round darkly at the discarded wrappers, unwashed pans, and crusty stains on the work surface. He muttered under his breath. My younger cousins had her out a couple of days ago,he apologized.

Well, don’t be too hard on them, youth is a time to be treasured.

They’re not that young. And it’s not as though they couldn’t have detailed a housechimp to clean up afterwards. No damn thought for others.there were more curses when he went forward and found the bunks in the same state.

Syrinx overheard a furious affinity conversation with the juvenile offenders. Smiling to herself she started stowing supplies.

Mosul unplugged the quay’s nutrient-feed veins from their couplings on the Spiros ’s aft deck, then cast off. Leaning over the taffrail Syrinx watched the five-metre-long silver-grey eel-derived tail wriggling energetically just below the surface, nudging the boat away from the quay. The tightly whorled sail membrane began to unfurl from its twenty-metre-high mast. When it was fully open it was a triangle the colour of spring-fresh beech leaves, reinforced with a rubbery hexagonal web of muscle cells.

It caught the morning breeze, filling out. A small white wake arose, curling around the bow. The tail straightened out, giving just the occasional tempestuous flick to maintain the course Mosul had loaded into the processor array.

Syrinx made her way forward carefully. The decking was damp below her rubber-soled plimsolls, and they had already picked up a surprising turn of speed. She leaned contentedly on the rail, letting the wind bathe her face. Mosul came up and put his arm round her shoulder.

You know, I think I’m finding this ocean more daunting than space,syrinx said as pernik fell astern rapidly. I know space is infinite, and that doesn’t bother me in the slightest, but Atlantis looks infinite. Thousands of kilometres of empty ocean conjures up a more readily accessible concept for the human mind than all those light-years.

To your mind,mosul said. I was born here, to me it doesn’t seem infinite at all, I could never be lost. But space, that’s something else. In space you can set out in a straight line and never return. That’s scary.

They spent the morning talking, exchanging the memories of particularly intense or moving or treasured incidents from their respective lives. Syrinx found herself feeling slightly envious of his simplistic life of fishing and sailing, realizing that was the instinctive attraction she had felt at their first meeting. Mosul was so wonderfully uncomplicated. In turn he was almost in awe of her sophistication, the worlds she’d seen, people she’d met, the arduous naval duty.

Once the sun had risen high enough to be felt on her skin, Syrinx stripped off and rubbed on a healthy dose of screening cream.

That’s another difference,she said as mosul ran his hands over her back, between her shoulder blades where she couldn’t reach. Look at the contrast, I’m like an albino compared to you.

I like it, he told her. All the girls here are coffee coloured or darker, how are we supposed to tell if we’re African-ethnic or not?

She sighed and stretched out on a towel on the cabin’s roof, forward of the sail membrane. It doesn’t matter. All our ethnic ancestors disowned us long ago.

There’s a lot of resentment in that thought. I don’t know why. The Adamists we get here are pleasant enough.

Of course they are, they want your foodstuffs.

And we want their money.

The sail creaked and fluttered gently as the day wore on. Syrinx found the rhythm of the boat lulling her, and coupled with the warmth of the sun she almost went to sleep.

I can see you,Oenone whispered on that unique section of affinity which was theirs alone.

Without conscious thought she knew its orbit was taking it over the Spiros. She opened her eyes and looked into boundless azure sky. My eyes aren’t as good as your sensor blisters. Sorry.

I like seeing you. It doesn’t happen often.

She waved inanely. And behind the velvet blueness she saw herself prone on the little ship, waving. The boat dropped away, becoming a speck, then vanishing. Both universes were solid blue.

Hurry back,Oenone said. I’m crippled this close to a planet.

I will. Soon, I promise.

They sighted the whales that afternoon.

Black mountains were leaping out of the water. Syrinx saw them in the distance. Huge curved bodies sliding out of the waves in defiance of gravity, crashing down amid breakers of boiling surf. Fountain plumes of vapour rocketing into the sky from their blow-holes.

Syrinx couldn’t help it, she jumped up and down on the deck, pointing. “Look, look!”

I see them,mosul said, amusement and a strange pride mingling in his thoughts. They are blue whales, a big school, I reckon there’s about a hundred or more.

Can you see?syrinx demanded.

I can see,Oenone reassured her. I can feel too. You are happy. I am happy. The whales look happy too, they are smiling.

Yes!syrinx laughed. their mouths were upturned, smiling. A perpetual smile. And why not? Such creatures’ existing was cause to smile.

Mosul angled Spiros in closer, ordering the edges of the sail to furl. The noise of the school rolled over the boat. The smack of those huge bodies as they jumped and splashed, a deep gullet-shaking whistle from the blow-holes. She tried to work out how big they were as the Spiros approached the school’s fringes. Some, the big adult bulls, must have been thirty metres long.

A calf came swimming over to the Spiros ; over ten metres long, spurting from his blow-hole. His mother followed him closely, the two of them bumping together and sliding against each other. Huge forked tails churned up and down, flukes slapping the water, while flippers beat like shrunken wings. Syrinx watched in utter fascination as the two passed within fifty metres of the boat, rocking it alarmingly in their pounding wake. But she hardly noticed the pitching, the calf was feeding, suckling from its mother as she rolled onto her side.