A Door Into Ocean Read Online Free Page A

Merwen.
    â€œCould I come right back if I don’t like it?”
    â€œWhenever you wish.”
    â€œThen I’ll go!” Spinel held out his hand, and Merwen clasped it. A shock went through him at the touch of the nailless webbed hand, though it was only a hand, after all, and not in the least slimy or scaly. What would his folks say to this?
    Suddenly he realized how late it was. He leaped to his feet. “Hey, catch you later,” he called over his shoulder, and ran all the way home.
    Â 
    Merwen watched him scamper off and thought, How deftly he swings through those branches despite his stunted fingers. There were so many kinds of in-between humans on this world. “What do you think of him, Usha?”
    A faraway look came into Usha’s eyes. “For all his headfur and fingerclaws, he would make a good daughter.”

    Merwen smiled with a twinge of sadness. Usha would be thinking of their own precious daughters, on the home world that was now a blue disk so unbelievably small in the sky.

3
    IN THE MORNING Spinel sauntered into the snug kitchen, eager to break the news to his parents. But neither of them was there. Sunlight streamed from the window, making bright diamond shapes on the cleared table.
    His married sister, Beryl, stood over the stove, stirring a pot which gave off a heavy odor of groundnuts. Her apron rode high over her pregnancy. On the floor, pudgy Oolite sat licking a porridge bowl.
    â€œWhere’s Mother?” Spinel asked.
    â€œUp in the study,” Beryl drawled to emphasize how late he had risen. Their mother was up at dawn as usual, to spend the day adding up accounts for unlettered farmers. The extra income helped make ends meet. “Hey, Spinny,” Beryl asked, “will you never tire of running errands for Mother?”
    â€œYou’ll soon sing another tune,” Spinel shot back, “when Doctor Bresius knocks on the door by and by.”
    Her complexion deepened, from her neck below the tied-up hair to her nose, which had the same crook in it as his. Spinel regretted his words, a cruel reminder that his sister’s gene quotient allowed no more than two children. He brushed her hair with a conciliatory gesture. Absently he drummed his fingers on the mosaic wainscoting. Then in three strides he crossed to the stairway. “Mother!” he yelled. “Mother, I’m leaving Chrysoport.”
    Beryl gasped behind him. “Who signed you on, a gem trader?”
    â€œWell, not exactly … .”
    The stairs creaked as his mother thumped downstairs with alarming speed for a woman her size. “You what?” she rasped, her double chin shaking. “You have a sponsor for a stonesign?”

    â€œI’m leaving Chrysoport to see another world.”
    â€œLeaving Chrysoport? Call your father! Cyan!” she shrieked downstairs toward the workshop, her beads rattling across her voluminous skirts. “Cyan, your son found a sponsor at last.” She flung her arms around Spinel with a strength that knocked his breath away. “Tell me now, which firm is it? The House of Karnak? I always said you’d do well in gem manufacturing.”
    â€œWell, they’re not really—”
    â€œWho is it?” Beryl insisted. “Come on, Spinny. What stonesign?”
    â€œWell …”
    Cyan’s broad shoulders filled the doorway. “Yes, Galena?” He eyed his wife wearily as he clapped the grit from his hands. Then all were still as a frieze, except Oolite, who burbled and turned her bowl upside down over her head.
    â€œIt’s not like that. They don’t have a stonesign.”
    â€œNo stonesign?” Galena lifted her hands in astonishment.
    â€œThey’re from the Ocean Moon. All I want is to see the moon, just for the summer … .”
    One look at his father chilled him. “Were you pestering the moonwomen again?” Cyan asked in a steely tone.
    Beryl exclaimed, “Why,