Undertow Read Free Page B

to gnawing children and unwary pets.
    Not tomatoes, leeks, ramps, radishes. Not maize, red and white and golden, single kernels pushed down in their mounds with a thumb, the hole closed and scattered round with bean and squash seeds. Not marigolds, just as effective against the native pests of Greene’s World as they were against those of Earth, and which Cricket was planting now, seating each one in its carefully dug hole amid the vegetables, a scatter of compost under the roots. She pressed each one into place with the side of her thumbs and smiled. Not much in the way of tomatoes, but the early peas were almost ready, their billowing pink and white flowers faded. She should pick some now, while they were sweet.
    As if reading her mind—which might, in fairness, have been possible if both of them hadn’t had their headsets and connex shut down—Lucienne came out of the minifab with a bucket in her hand. It was Lucienne’s garden, though not Lucienne’s house. Or, more precisely, Lucienne stayed there. But the house belonged to her lover, Jean.
    The garden, however, he stayed out of, except for purposes of rambling through—and, when they were ripe, picking the occasional tomato. It was Lucienne’s, and Lucienne shared it with Cricket.
    And that was pretty good.
    Lucienne crouched beside Cricket and held out a damp rag. “Is that the last of the marigolds?”
    Cricket, wiping her hands, nodded. “It should be all in.”
    “Good.” Lucienne Spivak rattled the bucket as she rose to her feet. “Let’s take some back out again.”
    Lucienne was a tall, curvy sort of woman, the skin of her brown thighs slightly dimpled below the ragged hems of her white shorts. She wore real cloth, old-fashioned, which was a side effect of living with Jean as well. He liked to talk about mature technologies, the redundancy and robustness of biological systems over technological ones.
A human being is more than just a biomechanical machine
.
    Cricket was never exactly sure if she believed him, or if all the world really was predetermined, and consciousness some cruel joke of the wide ironic universe. Jean had to disagree: he was a conjure man, and changing the future was his livelihood. But Cricket knew a fair number of scientists who would swear that even the measurable statistical effects of coincidence engineering meant nothing about free will, because the act of the engineering and its outcomes had already been determined.
    Of course, as far as Cricket was concerned, it didn’t make any real difference. You were still stuck not knowing one way or the other until it happened, and even if it didn’t matter what you did, when the anxiety hit, it sure felt like it.
    She picked up the watering can and watered the last marigold, then stood, pushing herself off her knees flat-handed. Lucienne caught her under the elbow and gave her a boost. Lucienne’s thick, dark-brown braid fell over her shoulder, banging Cricket on the ear. Lucienne’s first name was French and her last name was Ukrainian, but she herself looked Indian or Pakistani. And Cricket still had to keep reminding herself that none of that mattered on the Rim, where there were no nationalities.
    Or rather, there were. There were the
important
nationalities. Like, Rim company man, and alien, and colonial, and Coreworlder, and criminal. By which the Rim meant people like Lucienne. Revolutionaries, Greens, fair-trade activists, native-rights agitators.
    But not like Cricket. No matter what Cricket had done in her other life.
    Though if Lucienne kept asking, you never knew. She might become a criminal again. Of a better sort, this time.
    They moved along the row of peas in stooped, companionable silence. Pods pattered into the bucket, first a thin layer and then handfuls. Some plants still held sprays of blossom among the nearly ripe legumes and their curling tendrils. Cricket snapped one off and tucked it into her thin creepery hair; Lucienne, laughing silently, copied. The