Starfarers

Nervous and excited and rushed and lale, J. D. Sauvage hurried down the corridor of the terminal. The satchel carrying her personal allowance thumped against her hip. The other passengers had already begun to board the spaceplane.

"J.D. '"

Victoria Fraser MacKenzie strode toward her. J. D. was aware of the attention of the other people in the waiting area, surely recognizing Victoria, perhaps also wondering who the heavy-set, sunburned newcomer might be. Victoria was the sort of person one noticed. Though she was small and compact, she had a powerful presence. Everything about her was intense:

her energy, her eyes, the black of her hair, her passionate defense of the deep space expedition. She had been much in the news lately.

She extended her hand. J.D. took it. The contrast of Victoria's hand, dark and smooth, the nails well groomed, to her own, the skin roughened by exposure to wind and sea. the nails pared down as short as they could get, made J.D. wish she had had more time to prepare for this trip.

"I'm glad to see you," Victoria said.

"Were you afraid I'd changed my mind again?"

"No. Not once you agreed. J. D. . . . I know how important your research is to you. But the expedition is unique.

The orcas will still be here when we get back. The divers, too."

1 hope so, J.D. thought, but she did not say it aloud.

"Come on," Victoria said. "We'd better hurry."

2 vonda N. Mcintyre

They walked into the entry tunnel and joined the end of the line.

"This is your first trip up. eh?" Victoria said. "Is there anything you want to know thai they didn't cover at the orientation?"

"Urn ... I missed the orientation."

"You missed it?"

"I was down at cargo. It took longer than I expected."

"Was there a problem?"

"They didn't want to load my equipment."

"Whyever not?"

"Because it didn't look like equipment to them. They tried to redefine it as personal and make me take only what I could fit in my allowance."

"What kind of equipment is it?"

"Information, mostly."

"Why didn't you put it on the web? Arachne can always give it back to you."

"Most of it is books, and most of the books I have aren't in any databases."

"You could have had them scanned."

"Some of them are unique, though, and they get so beat up when you send them out for scanning. I didn't have time to do it myself."

"What kind of books are you talking about?"

"Old ones. You won't understand until you see them." ,

"How many did you bring?"

"Three hundred fifty-seven kilos."

"Good lord."

"That isn't really very much, when you're talking about books."

"And it isn't half what any experimental physicist would bring. As for a geneticist—" Victoria laughed. "Considering all the stuff Stephen Thomas brought, you'd think he was single-handedly in charge of diversity and cloning."

"Is he?"

"No, that's his boss. Professor Thanthavong."

"I'm really looking forward to meeting her," J.D. said.

"Do you think I'll get a chance to?"

"Sure. She's not standoffish at all. The more you can forget she's famous, the better you'll get along with her, eh? Any-

STARFARERS 3

way, Stephen Thomas still does some bioelectronics. though that's pretty much been taken over by the developers. He's branched out into theories of non-nucleic-acid inheritance. Exogenetics. One of our celebrated 'nonexistent' disciplines. The equipment he needs is pretty standard lab stuff, but when he came up, he brought a lot of extraneous things."

"How did he talk it all through cargo?"

Victoria made a strange little motion of her shoulders, a gesture of amused disbelief. J.D. wondered why she did not simply shake her head. Maybe it had something to do with her being Canadian. J.D. had studied a number of different cultures, but had never looked past the superficial resemblance of Canadian culture to the majority culture of the U:S. She decided not to admit that to Victoria.

"If you ask Arachne for the definition of 'charm,' " Victoria said. "it gives you back a picture of Stephen Thomas Gregory."

J.D. followed Victoria to their places. Victoria helped her transfer her allowance into a string bag, then showed her how to strap in against the upright lounge. It held her in a position with her hips and knees slightly flexed.

"Where are the controls for this thing?" J.D. looked for the way to turn the lounge into a chair. "How do you sit down?"

"You don't," Victoria said. "It takes a lot of energy to keep your body in a sitting position in microgravity. It's much easier to lie nearly flat. Or stand, depending on how you look at it."

J.D. thought about how it would feel to sit and stand and lie stretched out in space, comparing it to her diving experience.

"Okay," she said. "I see. That makes sense." She grasped the armrests. Fright tinged her excitement, not unpleasantly.

Her fingers trembled. Victoria noticed her nervousness and patted her hand. The sound patterns changed as the space-plane readied itself for takeoff. J.D. would have sworn that like a bird or a dolphin she could fee! the increase in the magnetic field, the shift and slide of it as il oriented itself to thrust the spaceplane down the long rails. Of course that was absurd.

Victoria finished transferring her own allowanc from the 4 Vonda N. Mclntyre

carrier to the compartment. She had several acceleration-resistant packages, but most of her allowance consisted'of fancy clothes, similar to what she was wearing.

"Victoria," J.D. said hesitantly, "do people dress, um, more formally on board then they would back here?"

Victoria was wearing an embroidered shirt and wide suede trousers caught at her ankles with feathered ties.

"Hmm?" Victoria closed the compartment and gave J.D.'s satchel to the artificial stupid waiting to take them off the plane. Getting out of earth's gravity well was too expensive to spend the acceleration on suitcases. The AS buzzed away,

"I couldn't help but notice what you're wearing. I didn't bring anything like that, if that's what's called for on the ship."

Victoria glanced at her, then chuckled. J.D. shifted uncomfortably. She had thrown away most of her beat-up old clothes, and ordered new ones that she packed without trying on. She had not had time even to consider buying anything formal.

"I'm not laughing at you," Victoria said quickly. "Just imagining going to the lab in this outfit. We're pretty casual on campus. But sometimes I get tired of casual. I always fill up the extra comers of my personal allowance with silly clothes- You can get necessities back home. It's the things you can do without that you start to miss."

"I see," J.D. said, relieved-

"Don't worry, you'll fit right in. There's no dress code, and the environment is moderate. Too moderate, I think. We don't have weather, we have climate. I wouldn't mind some snow, or a thunderstorm. Satoshi thinks it's too cold, but he's spoiled—he grew up in Hawaii."

Victoria leaned against her couch and fastened the straps.

"I'm ready," she said. "So let's get going."

"I should tell you something," J.D. said.

"Oh?"

The careful neutrality in Victoria's tone told J.D. that her own original decision—to turn down the invitation to join Siarfarer's alien contact department—had had an effect mat would take time to overcome.

"I resigned from the Department of State," J.D. said.

"And turned back my grant."

"Did you? I'm glad. I'm sorry I snapped at you about STARFARERS 5

having such close ties to your government. But these days you never know when they might slap 'classified' all over your research." Suddenly Victoria grinned. "Though if you were still an ambassador, that would put you higher on the protocol list than the chancellor, eh?"

"I was more on the level of special attache, and anyway the orcas don't use titles. They don't even understand them, as far as I could ever tell. It's one of those human concepts like ownership or jealousy that if you finally get through a hint of what it means, they just think it's funny. We're pretty funny to them in general. I used to wonder if they let me hang around for my entertainment value."

"What made you decide to quit?" Victoria asked bluntly.

"I thought about what you said, about the arguments between the U.S. government and EarthSpace. I worried."

"As do we all."

"I didn't want divided loyalties." J.D. felt guilty for making two true statements and implying a direct connection between them. For the moment, though, she could not explain to Victoria, to anyone, her real reasons for all her decisions of the last few days.

She stared out the window at the mountain slope, the tree-line a few hundred meters below, the peaks receding to blue in the distance.

"Don't worry," Victoria said, mistaking her distraction.

"The acceleration isn't bad at all."

"I'm sure I'll be fine."

The plane jolted slightly as it released itself from the gate. J.D. gasped and clutched Victoria's hand.

Victoria smiled and let J.D. hold on as the plane slid forward.

Victoria loved riding the spaceplane. She enjoyed the landings, but she liked the takeoffs even better.

The plane accelerated, racing over its magnetic rails, its delta-vee increasing, pressing Victoria against her couch. The plane reached the bottom of the long fast slope and pulsed forward along the magnetic lines of force, driven faster and faster by a great roller coaster with a single unending rise.

The magnetic rail flung the plane off its end and into the air. The acceleration ceased abruptly: heart-fall hit.

"Wow" J.D. said, breathless.

6 vonda N. Mcintyre

"What do you think?"

"That's the first time I ever rode a roller coaster that I liked."

Victoria felt the slight pressure of her body against the seat belts as, in weightlessness, gravity no longer held her against her couch. Beside her, J.D. peered eagerly through the roof window as the blue sky gave way to a deep indigo that gradually faded to starry black.

"It's just beautiful."

"It is, isn't it?"

The spaceplane rotated around its long axis and thfc earth came into view through the roof window. Despite the lack of gravity, the arrangement of the couches made the window feel like "up." Earth appeared to loom above her. Pofher first few trips into space, Victoria had tried to cultivated attitude of nonchalance about the sight of earth spinning slowly before her. Gradually, though, she realized that even the veterans of space travel never lost their awe, never grew hardened. No matter how matter-of-fact they acted about the dangers or the hardships of the early days, they never pretended to have the same cool indifference to earth, vulnerable and without boundaries, whole in their sight, a sphere they could cup in their hands.

Victoria glanced at J.D., who stared up through the window with her mouth slightly open. Her short lank hair stood out from her head as if she were underwater.

"1 never thought . . . I've imagined this, I've seen it in pictures and on film, even on sensory recording. I thought I'd know what it felt like. But it's different, seeing it for real."

"It is," Victoria said. "It's always different, seeing it for real."

The earth fell behind. The spaceplane slid smoothly into an orbit to catch up and dock with the transport to Starfarer.

"What's it like to swim with the orcas?" Victoria said.

"It's like this," J.D. said.

"Like space travel?"

"Uh-huh. Looking at earth from space is the nearest thing I've ever felt to being underwater and suddenly realizing that the light at the limit of your vision is the white patch on an' orca's side. Then when they come closer . . . They're magical. Until now I thought that if I could find the right words,

STARFARERS 7

I'd be able to explain it to everyone. But no one ever found the right words to explain—to me, anyway—how it feels to look at earth from space. Maybe no one can explain either."

"Damn," Victoria said. "I wish we'd had this conversation a couple of days ago."

"Why?"

"Because I'd have stolen your line, when I talked to the premier last night. And I wish I'd thought of saying that to your Mr. Distler, when I testified last year."

"/ didn't vote for him," J.D. said. "Not for senator—1 don't even come from the same state—or when he ran for president. Never mind, I know what you mean."

"That's what I should have told him—that he couldn't understand why we wanted to be here unless he came and saw it for himself." Victoria made herself relax, balancing her body between the contour couch and the seat belts. She sighed. "Probably even that wouldn't have helped."

"The orcas are interested in Starfarer," J.D. said.

"The orcas? The divers, you mean?"

"There's a diver who's interested, yes. But I mean the orcas themselves discussed applying to the expedition."

"Outlandish," Victoria said.

"Why do you say that?" J.D. asked mildly.

"I can't imagine a cetacean on board a starship."

"That's the trouble," J.D. said. "Nobody imagined it when they designed the cylinders- The ecosystem was evolved around salt marshes, but there isn't much Jeep water."

"Would you have proposed transporting an orca to Star-farer if there was deep water?''

"Not one—several. They're social beings,-even more so than us. They get bored and slowly go crazy and die, all alone. They don't like to be confined, either, but they pointed out that when humans used to catch them they lived in much smaller places than the largest bodies of water on Starfarer, for longer than the expedition is planned to last."

"Then you think it's a good idea."

"I think it would be wonderful to have two different kinds of intelligent beings along on the expedition. I love the orcas, though. I love their freedom. They would have been willing to risk it, and I think they could have survived. But I wonder if they would have been happy?"

8 vonda N. Mcintyre

J.D. gazed out at space, at earth, where the oceans dominated. A weather system had just passed over the Pacific Northwest, leaving the area clearly visible.

The clicks and squeals and stutters of the orcas echoed across the inlet. The cold, clear water moved with a gentle, irresistible power, rolling fist-sized stones one against the other on the rocky shore, creating a rumble of counterpoint to the calling of the whales.

J.D. swam. The artificial lung, nestled against her back, absorbed oxygen from the sea and transferred it to her mask.

Kelp waved below. A bright orange nudibranch swam past, propelled by its frilly mantle. At the limit of J.D.'s vision, a salmon flashed silver-blue in the filtered light.

She shivered. Her metabolic enhancer could produce only so much heat. She could have worn a wet suit, but it limited her contact with the sea.

Soon she would have to swim away from the mouth of the inlet and return to shore. She stroked upward and broke the surface of the clear green water. Before her, the inlet opened out into a part of Puget Sound where no one could go without an invitation. Apparently the divers would not invite J.D. into the wilderness today.

The orcas remained out of sight around the headland. She could imagine them playing, oblivious to the cold, their sleek black and white bodies cutting the swells. By morning they would be gone. They could swim a hundred kilometers between one dawn and the next. Orcas never stayed in one place for long.

The sun on her face made the water feel even colder. J.D. turned and swam toward shore. Her cabin stood back among the Douglas firs that grew to the edge of the stony beach.

Just offshore, she stopped at the anchored deck. She teased the artificial lung from her back and tethered it beneath the planks, where it would feed and breathe and rest and pump seawater through itself until she needed it again. She dove from the deck and swam easily home. Without the lung. she no longer felt a part of the sea.

Barefoot, she picked her way among the beach stones. It-was getting on toward evening. In the shade of the trees it was cool, and inside her cabin it was chilly. She plunged into

STARFARERS 9

the shower. The sun-warmed water splashed over her. After

a few minutes she stopped shivering.

Toweling her short straight hair, she turned the heat on under the kettle for a warm drink.

"J.D. ?"

She started and wrapped the towel around her.

"Zev, you're so quiet. You scared me."

"I never meant to." The diver stood in the doorway. Fine white-gold hair clothed his mahogany body in a translucent sheen. He looked awkward, seeking her out on land. She felt awkward, talking to him when she did not have any clothes on. That was strange, because she swam naked with him and his family, divers and orcas alike.

"Sit down, excuse me a minute." She fumed her back and took a last swipe with the towel beneath her heavy breasts, then pulled on a shirt and a pair of baggy black pants.

"I thought to find you in the sea," Zev said.

J.D. deliberately finished tying the drawstring. "I hoped to find you there. But I can't stay in the water forever."

"We were talking," he said- He lowered his gaze and glanced at her sideways, with an expression both mischievous and shy. "We sometimes talk for a long time."

"I've noticed that." On the solar stove, the kettle steamed. Being in a wilderness area, the cabin had to be rustic. It contained no electronics beyond her web link. Nothing operated by voice activation. Now that she knew how everything worked, it amused her to remember how long it took her to figure out all the mechanical switches. But it had not been very funny at the time.

"Do you want a hot drink? I'm cold, and my fingers and toes are shriveled up like prunes."

Zev looked at his own hands, turning them over, spreading his fingers, stretching out the translucent swimming webs.

"My fingers never do that." he said. "Why not?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," J.D. said. "Physiology isn't one of my specialties. Don't you know?"

"We are different," he said.

"That's for sure." The kettle hissed. "What did you decide? Do you want some tea, or maybe some cocoa?''

"Some ice cream?" he said.

J.D. laughed. "Sure."

10 Vonda N. Mcintyre

He perched on the window seat, his knees pulled up, his feet apart, completely unconscious of his nakedness. When she first met him she wondered about his gender, for he had no external genitals. His people had engineered their basically human bodies into a more streamlined form: male genitals drawn inside, female breasts small and flat. Both genders possessed a layer of subcutaneous fat that burned away during any long underwater exertion, leaving the individual ethereal and with an appetite like a shark. Zev always amazed her with how much he could eat. She made herself some tea, gave him a dish of ice cream, and sat on the rag rug in a patch of sunlight. She still fell cold. She sipped her tea, glad of its sweet spicy warmth.

"What was your family talking about?" she said.

"Oh," he said. "You, of course. That was why we did not invite you out today.''

"I don't see that it would have made much difference," she said, "since I can't understand your language yet."

"You will never begin to understand true speech, as you are." He spoke quite matter-of-factly. "I will never understand it completely, either. But the next generation will."

If there is one, J.D. thought, but she kept her silence. She found the idea intolerable, that the divers might be permit-ted—or encouraged—to die out. It was all too possible, if the new administration acted on its prejudice against genetic engineering.

"Besides," Zev said, "it is rude to talk about someone in front of them when they cannot understand. Is that right?"

"That's right. Some people would say it's rude to talk about someone behind her back, though, too."

"Oh. We did not know. We did not mean to be rude." He hesitated. "J.D. ?"

"Yes?"

"When is it polite to talk about someone?"

"Good question," she said. "Anytime they don't know it,

I guess."

"That is strange."

"Yes, it is," J.D. said. "But never mind. Everybody does it, anyway. What did you say about me? Or can you tell me?"

"No one said I should not. But perhaps you would rather have a surprise."

STARPARERS 11

"I'd rather know."

"It is all right, then." He put down the empty ice cream bowl. "We played and talked. Some said you were strange, swimming masked against the sea."

I might as well have stayed in the city, J.D. thought. The divers aren't the only people who think I'm strange.

"But I said you felt the sea as well as any diver, and would feel it more deeply when you could dispense with your machines."

Zev moved his hands like waves. Underwater the divers communicated by sound, and by touch when they were close enough. On land they retained the very human quality of adding to their speech with gestures.

"We are aware that we know things you would like to understand. And we all agreed that you know a large number of things about which we have fallen into ignorance."

"Thank you for the compliment," J.D. said.

"My family thinks it is too bad that you are still entirely human. Many of us wonder if you have considered changing your nature."

J.D. clenched her hands around the mug of tea, oblivious to its heat.

"J.D. ?" Zev said. "I have surprised you. I did not mean to. Are you angry?"

"Not angry," she said. "Stunned. Zev . . . all I ever hoped for was that you'd invite me to stay in the open water—that you'd give me permission to bring my boat so I wouldn't have to come back to the cabin every evening. What you've asked me is more than I dreamed. Is it possible?"

"Of course," he said. "You have visited our lab. We know what to do. We were never born from human and orca, as some say. Nor did people throw little children into the ocean and say, *Swim, grow fins and extra lungs!' We chose our creation, like alt changelings."

"I know where divers came from—but no one's gone from human to diver in a generation," J.D. said. "Where are you going to get the biotechs?"

"My family has resources."

J.D. blew on her tea and sipped from the cooling surface, taking time to think.

What Zev offered her was attractive. It was also illegal.

12 vonda N. Mclntyre

Even before becoming U.S. president last fall. Senator Dist-ler had repeatedly sponsored a bill to force the divers to change back into ordinary humans. J.D. feared that now, as president, he might be able to force the bill through Congress. The divers had few vocal supporters, and they employed no lobbyists. It would be terrible public relations for the government if it rounded them up and forced them to undergo reversion against their will. That might be the divers'. only protection. After all, any individual could decide to revert at any time. The divers chose to remain as they were.

As far as Distler and his supporters were concerned, preventing genetic diseases was one thing, changing the human

species something quite different. The enthusiasm for human engineering had peaked and faded rapidly, leaving a sizable group of divers and a few other changelings. Only the divers had increased their numbers.

"How will you decide?" Zev asked.

"I don't know," J.D. said slowly. "I feel like saying yes without even thinking about it. But I should think about it."

"But how will you decide? With divers, the whole family plays and talks. Then we decide. Will you go to your family and talk with them? Will you play? You should play more,

J.D."

She laughed, though Zev's was a perfectly serious comment.

"My family—" She started to describe her family, halfsiblings, half-parents, step-siblings, step-parents, dispersed and recombined. It was an unusual family even in these modern times.

"My family never swims together," she said, and left it at that. "This is a decision I'll have to make by myself. May I have some time?"

"My mother will talk to you tomorrow," Zev said. "That

will be the real invitation. But I think . . . you will have to

decide quickly."

That was the last thing she had expected Zev to say. She had never known the divers to make an important decision in haste.

"Why?"

"I cannot tell you," Zev said. He scooped up the melted

ice cream on the bottom of the bowl with his finger and licked

STARFARERS 13

the chocolate from his knuckle and from the swimming web.

He stood up. "Thank you for the ice cream."

"You're welcome."

He crossed to her and hugged her, holding her close. He was shorter than she. He laid his head on her shoulder, and the curis of his pale hair tickled her skin just below the hollow of her throat. J.D. put her arms around Zev, giving him a big-sisteriy pat on the shoulder. On land the heat of his body was even more noticeable than in the water.

He sighed deeply and stroked her breast. Startled, she put her hand on his, moved his fingers, and drew away.

"What is wrong?"

"You shouldn't do that."

"But why? We touch each other when we're swimming."

"It's different on land, Zev. In the sea it's just playing. On

land, touching is more serious."

"Oh," he said. "You see? We need you, to tell us these things we have forgotten, so we will not forget everything about living on land."

His semi-retractile claws clicked on the linoleum, then his feet scrunched in the gravel of the beach. He moved with a languorous grace, as if he were already in the water. He waded through the gentle surf. The water rose around his legs. When it reached his hips he breaststroked forward and vanished. The waves obliterated the ripple he left behind.

Each wave reached a handsbreadth higher on the beach.

J.D. watched the tide come in. Her tea grew cold.

The invitation gave her more than one decision to make.

Accepting it would completely change her life. She would be able to resurrect her career, though she would have to restrict its focus to a single blended society. The story of the integration of the divers with the orcas deserved to be told. If she accepted, she would be in a position to tell it.

I should have accepted on the spot, J.D. thought.

She could not come up with a single good reason to re-fuse—aside, of course, from the fact that she could be put in jail for becoming a changeling. This frightened her more than she cared to admit. She had been raised to obey authority, not defy it.

This is the best chance you're ever going to have to practice your profession, she told herself. If your application to Star-

14 Vonda N. Mcintyre

farer hadn't been rejected, things might be different. But you were turned down. And, anyway, why should human contact with aliens off the earth be more important than human contact with the beings that live on the same world, and still are alien to us?

The change in her life would include her form. She would become not only a chronicler of the divers, but a diver herself. Somewhere, somehow, the divers would obtain the sensitizing virus, and the changing viruses; they would inoculate her with the one, then with the others. As the changing viruses spread through her body and integrated themselves into her genes, she would begin to change.

She imagined her lungs enlarging, altering, the tissue- of one lobe of each transmuting into a substance like the artificial lung. In that respect the divers differed from other marine mammals: they could breathe underwater, absorbing oxygen directly from the sea.

She would dispense with the metabolic enhancer, because her body would gain the ability to accelerate into a more efficient state. Spreading her strong square hands, she imagined swimming webs between her fingers. She imagined her light complexion darkening to protect her from exposure to the sun, and wondered if her brown hair would pale to gold or red.

She curled her toes to feel phantom claws extending, scratching the floor. Her breasts were heavier and her hips wider than any diver's, and her imagination failed when she tried to think of her body changing to resemble their sleek shape. She wondered if her breasts would shrink and flatten, if her hips would narrow, if the changing virus could alter even a person's bone structure.

The idea of the change both frightened and intrigued her.

She wondered what her family would say. They would not object. Her dad might make one of his offhand remarks, so dry that J.D. often found herself laughing before she realized what was funny, so offbeat she could not imagine what it would be.

The shadows of the Douglas firs lengthened across the beach and pierced the water with their tips. The breeze freshened. J.D. felt cold again, as if she had never really been warm.

STARFARERS 15

She had to give herself time before deciding. So many factors came into the mix. The opportunity of joining a group of beings that she loved, of telling their story, had to be balanced against the possibility—indeed the probability—that academic colleagues would no longer take seriously the work of a researcher who had, in the old-fashioned phrase, gone native.

And she had to face the legal question of making the change.

Perhaps a few years ago it would not have mattered. It was possible that even now, no one would notice. But if they did, the current fashion of despising science and technology would cause her a great deal of trouble. And that did worry her.

So did Zev's uncharacteristic reluctance to tell her why she would have to make her choice so quickly.

The sun set. Darkness crept into the cabin.

Needing the familiarity of simple actions, J.D. put her teacup in the sink, puttered around straightening up the cabin, and, for the first time all day, asked her web link for mail and messages and the day's report.

It reported.

Victoria's invitation to join the alien contact team suddenly made her life even more complicated.

Victoria watched J.D. as she gazed back at earth. She was glad the contact specialist had agreed to join the expedition on such short notice, after Nakamura quit.

It must have been hard on her, Victoria thought, to be turned down and then invited again. It takes a lot of guts to put aside hurt feelings.

Nevertheless, she wished she knew all the reasons J.D. had changed her mind about staying with the divers. Victoria felt certain that she did not yet have the whole story.

"J.D. ?"

J.D. continued to stare out the window for a moment.

When she turned to Victoria, her expression was wistful,

lonely.

"Time to board the transport."

In low earth orbit, the spaceplane docked with the EarthSpace transport, an ungainly-looking but efficient craft, one of the trucks that ferried cargo and passengers from low

16 Vonda N. Mcintyre

earth orbit to the O'Neil! colonies and the labs, to lunar orbit, and to Starfarer.

As Victoria helped J.D. negotiate the zero-g path from the plane to the transport, she glanced over the passengers sharing the journey. The spaceplane, which should have been full with a waiting list, was half-empty. These days, too few people traveled out to Starfarer. Far too many traveled away, recalled by their governments, or, like Nakamura, giving up in despair.

While the plane resembled a regular jetliner, with well-maintained upholstery and paint, the transport looked more like a tramp freighter. Its workings hung out in plain sight, exposed, growing shabby with age and use.

"Quite a difference," J.D. said, glancing around. She held the net bags stuffed with her and Victoria's personal allowances. Her possessions were drab next to the bright colors and textures that showed through the mesh of Victoria's bag.

"There's one new transport," Victoria said. Towing J.D. by one hand, she pushed off down a corridor. "They always schedule it so it's the one that picks up the VIPs on their junkets. I never have figured that out. if we let them see the old equipment, we might gel enough money to keep it properly maintained."

"Can I try this myself?" J.D. said.

"Sure." Victoria took the two mesh bags, "Remember

that even though you haven't got any weight, you still have

mass and momentum."

J.D- planted her feet, kicked, and headed for the far wall too fast and too hard. Victoria winced and pushed off after her, but somehow J.D. managed to turn in midair, catch herself on her toes against the bulkhead, and bounce back, awkward but safe. Victoria used her arms and legs as springs to give all her momentum to the metal surface. She floated beside J.D., who hung upside down nearby, laughing. Her hair, short and limply dry from exposure, flew around her head.

"Even better than diving," she said. "And you don't need

half as much force to get you where you're going. I'll leam to compensate. I thought maybe I'd let my hair grow, but I think I'll keep it short."

They found their closet-sized cubicles, where they could rest during the trip to the starship.

STARFARERS 17

"One of Satoshi's department members says the transport reminds him of his college days," Victoria said. "He used to travel cross-country in a bus. But I think of the transport as the China Clipper. Crossing space like a prop plane crossing the Pacific." The transport was less luxurious but safer, not as unbearably romantic.

"The middle of the Pacific is scarier," J.D. said.

The transport freed itself from the spaceplane with a low clang and a vibration that trembled through the ship. J.D. started, then flushed with excitement when the gentle acceleration provided microgravity.

"We're really on our way, aren't we?"

"We really are," Victoria said.

Starfarer lay in the far distance, barely visible to the naked eye. Charge-coupled binoculars brought the ship into view, its dual cylinders spinning, the mirrors lined with light, the sailhouse an eerie glow floating among the cables, and beyond h all a silver line that soon would unfold into a tremendous solar sail.

Each house in the campus cylinder of Starfarer lay underground, partly hidden by a low hill, daylit by one whole wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. In the house where Victoria lived, her partner Satoshi Lono trudged into the main room, looking for coffee, anticipating its smell. Grass mats rustled under his bare feet. He yawned. He had stayed late at a lab meeting, with no solution in sight to the problem of one of his graduate students. Fox could not apply for a permanent position on the expedition because her twenty-first birthday fell six months after the starship's departure.

When the meeting ended, knowing he would not be able to sleep, he had spent several more hours on the web, analyzing map complexes- When he finally slept, he dreamed those maps. Bright images of stacks of contour descriptions still filled his mind.

He stopped.

A weird piece of equipment stood in the middle of the main room. The AS that cleaned the house circled the contraption, like a cat stalking a gigantic insect. The AS rolled forward, its antenna outstretched. It backed off and circled again.

19

20 Vonaa N. Mcintyre

The piece of equipment, complicated in form but primitive

in design, consisted of twisted glass tubes fastened together and supported by a metal rack. The feet of the rack dug into one of Satoshi's better grass mats.

The AS, hovering, tapped the glass tubes again.

"It's all right," Satoshi said- "Look at it and remember it and leave it alone." The AS hesitated, assimilated the information. then rotated and rolled away. When the partnership first got it, it had had the same reaction to, and the same instructions about, the shins Stephen Thomas stored on the floor. Satoshi wondered how Stephen Thomas so often contrived to leave things lying around that the cleaner could not figure out what to do with. Satoshi liked living in a 'neat environment. It irritated him to be put in the position of having the urge to pick up after one of his partners.

"It's too early for this," Satoshi muttered. Deciding to assimilate his own advice, he deloured around the mess in the middle of the main room and stopped in the kitchen nook, wondering what had happened to his coffee.

He was not at his best in the morning.

Everything did not always go exactly as planned on Star-farer. The campus was rough and new, the equipment at the shakedown stage. But the kitchen nook was hardly leading-edge technology. It should have had his coffee ready for him. Instead, the pot stood on the counter, half full of cold, malodorous dregs. He poured it out and started over.

Stephen Thomas strolled into the main room, put his arms around Satoshi from behind, and rested his chin on Satoshi's shoulder. His long blond hair tickled Satoshi's neck.

"Good morning."

"Did you drink my coffee?"

"Huh? I drank some last night when I got in, why?"

"Dammit—!" Satoshi woke up enough to be irritated.

"You could have left it the way you found it."

'*! didn't think of it. It was late and I was tired."

"It's early and I'm still asleep!"

"God, all right, I'm sorry. I'll make you some."

"It's done now." Satoshi took the cup to the table and sat in a patch of sunlight by the sliding windows. He deliberately ignored the contortion of glass tubing.

For the thousandth or the millionth time, he missed Merit. STARFARERS 21

Times like these reminded him of before the accident, when the everyday details of the partnership ran smoothly, practically unnoticeably, under Merry's management. It was weird how something as inconsequential as a cup of coffee could bring back the grief. He hunched his shoulders and sipped

the bitter coffee and tried to put the feelings away.

Satoshi loved Stephen Thomas, of course, but living with him the past couple of weeks had not been easy. Satoshi could ftot figure out why his youngest partner's idiosyncrasies and occasional blithe self-centeredness bothered him more with Victoria away.

"You're mad at me," Stephen Thomas said.

Satoshi took a gulp of coffee. "No, I'm not. Yes, I am. I don't know. It's early and I'm still tired and I just wanted some coffee."

"I offered to make you some."

"You give strangers more respect than you give the people you sleep with."

Stephen Thomas laughed and kissed him. "I respect you in the morning. Except maybe right after you wake up." He left Satoshi sitting in the sunlight, returned to the kitchen nook, and started opening drawers and cupboards looking for something for breakfast.

Satoshi made allowances for Stephen Thomas. He thought of Victoria as the strongest one in the partnership, and of himself as the calmest in a crisis, and of their younger partner as the most flighty. But only Stephen Thomas had kept his center after the accident. Satoshi doubted the partnership would have survived without him.

He wished he could get coffee to taste right. Starfarer was not yet self-sufficient for food; half of what they used they had to import, not from earth, but from the O'Neill colonies. Maybe coffee plants could grow properly only on earth, the way some types of vegetables and fruit grew properly only in certain places. Like Walla Walla onions. No amount of research or experiment ever reproduced that sort of biological synergy.

Satoshi found it some comfort to suspect the existence of unknowable secrets, like perfect coffee. Walla Walla onions, and his younger partner's lab equipment.

He would be glad when Victoria got home. It seemed like

22 vonda N. Mdntyre

forever since they had talked. Before she left they had all agreed to communicate via the web, which was relatively cheap, rather than by voice link from Starfarer to earth, which was expensive. What with the eagle eye being kept on campus expenses, everyone was on their best behavior about keeping personal calls on their own accounts.

She'll be back soon, Satoshi reminded himself. She'll'even be back in time for the solar sail's first full test.

Stephen Thomas returned from the kitchen nook carrying a bowl of white rice with a raw egg on top, a plate of pickles, and a cup of milky tea. He knew better than to offer any of it to Satoshi.

"I miss her, too," he said.

"Yeah," Satoshi said, then, "Dammit, I wish you wouldn't do that. h bothers me, and it drives Victoria crazy."

Stephen Thomas laughed. "You guys act like I was reading your minds. I don't read minds—"

"Of course not, but you do answer questions before people ask them, and you comment on things people haven't even said yet."

"—I read auras."

Satoshi groaned. He wished Stephen Thomas would stop this silly joke, even if he believed it, because it did nothing either for his credibility or for that of the alien contact team. Stephen Thomas was unusually sensitive to other people's moods and feelings—when he wanted to be. That, Satoshi believed. But he did not believe Stephen Thomas could see something nonexistent.

"Let's splurge and call her." Stephen Thomas said.

Satoshi sipped his coffee, tempted.

"Come on," Stephen Thomas said. "She's on the transport, it won't cost that much."

"Okay."

They connected with Arachne.

Because the hypertext link was on, as usual, the web boxed recent references to Victoria Fraser MacKenzie. The screen refreshed, adding a new article about the banquet that British Columbia's premier had hosted in Victoria's honor. Curious, Satoshi brought it up to read.

"Oh, my god," he said.

"What?"

STARFARERS 2 3

"Look."

"Dr. Victoria Fraser MacKenzie, when asked whether she could describe the scientific advances we may expect to achieve from the voyage of the Starfarer, replied with a single word: 'No.'

"Last night, British Columbia's premier hosted Dr. Victoria Fraser MacKenzie, the Canadian physicist-astronaut who heads the deep space expedition's alien contact team, at a formal dinner. This is Fraser MacKenzie 's last trip to earth before Starfarer departs for an alien star system, overcoming relativity's limits on speed and achieving superluminal transition energy via the 'cosmic string' that has moved within range of our solar system during the past decades.''

"Cosmic string" and "superluminal transition energy"

were highlighted, indicating that the reader could obtain fuller

explanations of the terms through the hyper. Satoshi and Stephen Thomas continued reading the main body of the article.

"After dinner, Fraser MacKenzie conversed informally with the premier and others about the expedition. The first question put to her concerned the U. S. proposal that Starfarer be converted into a mini-0 'Neilt colony, to help relieve earth's population pressure. Eraser MacKenzie acquitted the starship 's cause well, pointing out that the 0 'Neill colonies were constructed not as population valves, but as bases which would create and supply the necessities: food, water, air, and shelter from the vacuum, in order to permit human beings to live in space without draining earth's resources.

" 'Starfarer,' Fraser MacKenzie stated, 'is much smaller than the existing O'Neills, neither of which have made any difference whatever in the population of earth, nor were ever intended to.' She also explained cogently why the starship had to be large enough to sustain its own ecosystem. 'Sending the expedition out in a traditional ship would be extremely costly,' she explained. "The starship was created out of leftover lunar material from the 0 'Neills. By living within a functional ecosystem, we can plan to be self-sufficient. Madame Premier, we hope to return within a year or two, but the truth is that we have no idea how long we might be gone.

We don't know what we 're going to find or how far we 're going to have to go to find it. If we set out with nothing but processed stores, we run the risk of running out of every-

24 vonda N. Mclntyre

thing: food, water, and air. Mechanical recycling, as on a traditional ship, isn't efficient enough.'

"It was at that juncture that the premier asked Fraser MacKenzie for a description of the benefits to be gained from the expedition, and Fraser MacKenzie declined to offer one.

"The premier, reacting with surprise, pressed her for a more complete reply to her concerns about what the country might expect to gain from our enormous investment.

" 'Madame Premier,' Fraser MacKenzie said, 'f cannot tell you what scientific advances will result from the deep space expedition. If I could, there would be no need for us to go on the voyage at all. I could speculate,' Fraser MacKenzie continued. 'So could anyone with a minimal level of scientific literacy. But speculation is a game. The history of humanity is a record of explorations intended for one purpose that have completely different effects. People didn 'I walk east across the Bering land bridge, or sail west across the Atlantic, because they expected to find North America. We didn't go to Mars expecting to break through to superconducting bio-electronics.'

"The premier pointed out that we did go to Mars with a purpose in mind. Fraser MacKenzie agreed, and suggested that anyone who wished could access a library database and inspect half a thousand gigabytes of information on the experiments already planned for Starfarer- However. Fraser MacKenzie would not describe any benefits that would surely accrue to society on account of these experiments.

"The head of Starfarer's alien contact team offered two reasons for her refusal. The first was the pure science mode of many of the proposals. 'Science,' she insisted, 'is not meant to create useful applications of scientific knowledge.' Her second reason was more esoteric. 'A proven hypothesis may have useful applications,' Dr. Eraser MacKenzie stated. 'However, a scientist does not do an experiment to prove a hypothesis.

A scientist does an experiment to test a hypothesis. You may guess about the answer that nature might give back to you.

You may even hope for nature to give you a particular answer. But you can't know what answer you 'II get until you 've performed the experiment. If you did, or if you thought you did. you 'd be back two thousand years when experimentation was looked upon as unnecessary and vulgar, or, worse, back

STARFARERS 2 5

a thousand years when belief was more important than knowledge, and people who challenged beliefs with knowledge were burned at the stake.'

' 'The premier observed that the new president of the United Slates, Mr. Distler, occasionally behaved as if he would like to consign research scientists in general and scientists attached to Starfarer in particular to precisely that fate. Eraser MacKenzie admitted that she had, on occasion, felt singed by some of his comments. 'Science involves risks,' she explained. 'One of the risks involved is that of failure. President Distler, unfortunately, chooses not to acknowledge the possibility of risks, or of failure.' Fraser MacKenzie added that she did not expect the expedition to fail—after all, her life will be at risk if it does fail. But the risk of failure is a possibility.

"The premier then asked Dr. Fraser MacKenzie if one risk could be that Canada's investment in the starship might result in no benefits at all.

"Victoria Eraser MacKenzie replied with a single word:

'Yes.' "

Satoshi read the article, frowning, but Stephen Thomas laughed with delight.

"About time somebody said straight out that we're not up here to discover the twenty-first-century version of Tenon!"

"The Tenon hypothesyi slides down more easily."

"No, it'll be great. People love mystery, and that's what we're heading for."

"I wish you were right," Satoshi said. "But you're not."

"Hey, Satoshi?" Stephen Thomas said.

"Hmm?"

"Does Victoria really talk like that when she's in Canada, or was it just the reporter?"

"A little of both. You've been to Vancouver with Victoria, didn't you notice she uses more Canadian and British speech habits there?"

"I noticed her accent got stronger, but I was putting most of my energy into trying to make friends with her greatgrandmother. For all the good it did me."

"Grangrana's okay. She disapproves of the partnership in theory but she likes us as individuals."

"She likes you. She's not so sure about me," Stephen

2 6 vonda N. Mdntyre

Thomas said, with his usual certainty about the accuracy of his perceptions. "Why did the article keep calling Victoria 'Fraser MacKenzie'?"

"They don't much go for middle names—that's a British tradition, I think. They figure Victoria's got one of those unhyphenated double last names- Like Conan Doyle.

"Wonder what they'd do with my name?"

"Probably figure you didn't have any last name at all."

Stephen Thomas laughed and hit him, light and playful, in the ribs.

The message filter suddenly beeped and started to fill up with call requests, mostly from strangers, mostly from people outside Starfarer, and mostly for Victoria. Satoshi' sifted through them.

"Good lord," he said. "If we call these people back, we'll use up our communications budget for the next six months."

"Call them collect," Stephen Thomas said. "And tell them Victoria isn't here."

"How to win reporters and influence public opinion, by Stephen Thomas Gregory," Satoshi said.

The message filter in Victoria's cubicle signaled and then sang. Still half-asleep, disoriented by darkness, Victoria tried to sit up. The restraints of her sleeping web held her gently in place and she remembered where she was. A streak of light fell across her; the fabric door did not quite close.

"Answer," she said. "Hello?"

After the short time-delay, Satoshi spoke.

"Love, have you seen the news today?"

"I'm not even awake yet." She was surprised to hear his voice. "I think I slept the clock around. What time is it?

Never mind, what's up?" she said quickly, not waiting through the reply delay of Starfarer communications laser-to-satellite-to-transport and back. She did not want to waste expensive time on trivialities.

"You have a huge slug of messages from admirers of your interview," Stephen Thomas said.

"What interview?"

"I'm not sure you can call them all admirers," Stephen Thomas said.

STARFARERS 2 7

"Some are from people up here," Satoshi told her, "but a lot are from earth."

Victoria waited through the delay. She and Satoshi had perfected the technique of holding two simultaneous conversations on the communications laser, letting their comments cross and recross, one exchange being held during the reply delays of the second. To his own irritation, Stephen Thomas had not quite got the hang of it. Keeping him in the discussion, Victoria restricted herself to one line of thought and talk.

"The web's reporting on your banquet," Satoshi said.

"And your conversation with the premier. You'd better look at it. They emphasized your not wanting to speculate on what benefits Starfarer might bring back."

Victoria fell a hot flush of embarrassment spread across her face.

"I'll read it, of course. I thought I was having a conversation, not doing an interview for the record. Nobody was introduced to me as a reporter, and who ever reports Canadian news, eh?" She sighed. "I never met the premier before. She's honorable, I admire her. I wanted to tell her the truth, so she could understand what it is we're about."

With growing unease, she waited out the delay. Despite her cynical remark about Canadian news, she should have realized that anything the head of Starfarer^ alien contact department said to the premier of British Columbia was fair game for reporters.

It was late and I was tired and keyed up, she told herself. And then there were those toasts . . .

But I know better, she thought. I know better than to let my guard down, ever, and still sometimes I do it. What is it about people? Why do they prefer it when we claim we know everything? What's wrong with the truth, that not everything's been discovered?

"I understand what you were trying to do," Satoshi said.

"But I wonder if there's any way to downplay it after the fact?"

"Oh, bull," Stephen Thomas said. "Don't do that! You said just what needed to be said, Victoria, and anybody who doesn't back you on it has shit for brains."

"I can defend my comments. I can't retract them, Satoshi,

28 vonda N. Mclntyre

not if I was quoted correctly. And it sounds like what I said is what got reported."

Victoria was glad of the privacy scramble that kept inquisitive types with backyard antennae from listening in on laser calls. She had more or less become accustomed to the casual profanity Stephen Thomas used, but in public it still embarrassed her. And the first time he swore in front of Grangrana . . .

"We just wanted to make sure you'd seen the articfe,"

Satoshi said. "So you'd have some warning if people pounce on you about it. We'd better get off the line. I love, you. Goodbye."

"Wait," Stephen Thomas said. "Did Sauvage finally show, or not? And I love you too."

"Yes, she's on board. I'll tell all about that when I get home. It's complicated. I love you both. I wish we had a picture. Bye."

She ended the connection.

Why did I feel so comfortable about telling the premier the cold hard truth about science? Victoria wondered. I was ready to back off if I picked up disapproval, if she wasn't prepared to hear it.

She had not picked up on disapproval because the premier had not shown any. Whatever her reactions to Victoria's comments, she had let Victoria make them. She had listened, and Victoria still believed she had understood.

Victoria closed her eyes, linked with the web, and let it play the article behind her eyes. When it ended, she decided it had been written without malice, but with an eye for the flashy line.

Victoria sighed and unfastened the restraint net. She wished she were already home, in bed with Satoshi and Stephen Thomas. She felt so lonely. She grabbed her shirt and struggled into it and swiped her sleeve across her eyes, pretending her vision had not blurred. Right now Satoshi and Stephen Thomas were almost as far out of her reach as Merry. But she was on her way home.

Chandra left the inn and used the pedestrian tunnel to cross beneath the highway. The cold damp tunnel smelled of cement. On the other side she stepped out into dry hot sunlight.

STARFARERS 2 9

Traffic rushed past on the magnetic road behind her. All last evening the other guests had babbled interminably about the good weather. Chandra, however, felt cheated. She had come to visit a rain forest. She expected rain.

She started recording, waited until the nerve clusters gnari-ing her face and hands and body started to throb, and stepped beneath the trees. The light dimmed to a weird gold-green, and the temperature dropped from uncomfortably hot to cool.

She hurried deeper into the forest, hoping to outdistance the

sound of the traffic as well as the next group of visitors. At first she walked gingerly, preparing for pain to catch up to her, waiting for the dullness of too much medication. To her surprise, her body worked fine, swinging along the trail. She had balanced the pills perfectly against the pain, astonishingly intense, of having spent all the previous day on horseback. This morning the muscles of her inner thighs had hurt like hell. Until she took a painkiller she could barely walk.

Time pressed too hard for her to give herself a day off to recover, so she masked injury with drugs and hoped to get the dosage and the mixture right. If she had to wipe any recordings because of distorted body reactions, those images would be lost forever.

Chandra intended never to repeat an experience. She could reMve them on recording, if she felt like it, but she wanted every bit of reality to be new.

The nerve clusters that ridged her face felt hot and swollen.

She left the sunlight behind. Inside the forest, the light possessed more dimensions. The trail led through cool green shadows. To her left, dusty gold light hung suspended in a shaft that passed through a rare break in the cover. In every direction, great tree trunks stretched a hundred meters high. Chandra stepped off the path, though she was not supposed to, and spread her arms against a tree she could not begin to span. Three people might have reached halfway around it.

Moss covered the bark. She rubbed her cheek against it.

Its softness astonished her. She compared the feel to feathers, to fur, but neither description acknowledged the gentle green irregularity. She looked up. Every branch bore a coat of moss that looked like it had dripped on, then begun to solidify.

The ends of the branches, the new year's growth of intense green needles, had begun to outdistance the relentless creep

30 voncfa N. Mcintyre

of the moss. When the branch stopped growing for the season, the moss would catch up. The cycle would continue, another turn.

Some other artist would have watched the tree long enough to detect the growth of the moss. With a few hours' observation, Chandra could have stored enough images for fractal extrapolation. But she had no interest in electronic manipulation of the images she collected. She edited when she wanted to—she despised no-cut purists—but her aim was to collect as many images as she could, as accurately as she could, to preserve every sensation and impression. She-rose and walked farther, deeper into the jungly forest.

The sounds of vehicles faded. The tourists passed beyond her hearing while she stood out of sight off the trail. More people would soon follow. She wanted and needed solitude.

Not even the Institute had been able to persuade the park service to close the park and the highway for a few hours while she made her recordings. It had been difficult enough to get an entry reservation out of turn. Ordinary people, tourists, signed up two years in advance.

Knowing she would be ejected, perhaps arrested and prosecuted, if anyone detected her presence off the trail, Chandra moved on.

She passed into a different silence than she had ever experienced. It was a cool, damp quiet, far from total. A stream, rushing steep from pool to pool, created a transparent wash of background. The electronic Doppler of a passing mosquito added a bright sharp line. An invisible bird warbled an intermittent curtain of sound. Chandra sat on the bank of the stream and let the smell and sight and sound and feel of the rain forest permeate her body. She gathered in the foaming rush of negative ions. The whole world smelled green.

At the top of the slope, the waterfall split. One rivulet splashed into a bubbling, swirling cauldron of water whitened by the agitation. The other spilled over a curved stone and ran smoothly into a still, clear pool. When she leaned over, her translucent gray eyes peered back at her.

Chandra stripped off her clothes. Naked, she climbed down the bank and slowly thrust herself into the frigid water. The numbing coldness crept up her gnarled feet and along her nerve-streaked legs. The flowing water rose into her pubic

STARFARERS 31

hair, lifting it as if with a static charge. She never hesitated when the icy stream touched her powerfully sensitive clitoris. She gasped and sank in deeper. Her nipples were always erect from the extra nerves; now they throbbed and ached as the water caressed her. Her toes dug in among the round, smooth stones.

She let the chill seep into her till all pleasure faded. She shivered uncontrollably, as if the glacier upstream had taken over her whole body. She turned and clambered awkwardly onto the bank. too numb to feel stones or roots, almost too numb to grab them and haul herself from the water.

The stream made a narrow break between the trees. A bit of sunlight crept in through the leaves. Chandra crawled to it and collapsed, exhausted and trembling and elated by what she had captured. As she sprawled in the sunlight, trying to regain the full use of her body, she could not resist replaying the stream's sensations.

When the playback ended and her experiential body rejoined her physical form. she shuddered with the shock of the change from intolerably cold to nearly warm again.

As she rested, seeking the strength to rise and continue, she stretched out to touch everything within her reach. The range of softnesses in the forest amazed her: the green and feathery softness of the moss, the crisp softness of a liny-leafed vascular plant growing amidst the moss, the unresisting plasticity of a circle of slime mold. The top of a fungal shelf felt like damp velvet- A slug glistened out from beneath a fallen branch. It was slick as wet silk, but it left behind a sticky, insoluble secretion on her ridged fingers.

A mosquito landed on her arm. She watched it dispassionately. Unlike a fly, it wasted no time with careful grooming.

It set itself among the fine dark hairs and plunged its proboscis into her skin. She submitted to the thin, keen pain. She had read that the insect would bite, drink, and neutralize its own hemolytic enzymes before it withdrew.

The mosquito had read different texts. It filled itself with Chandra's blood and whined away; then Chandra watched the itchy lump of the mosquito bite swell and darken. She concentrated on the unpleasant sensation.

When she had added the bite to her store, she realized that the cold of the stream had brought back the ache of her mus-

32 vonda N. Mcintyre

cles. She quickly disconnected the recording, grabbed up her clothes and fumbled through her pockets, took another pill, and waited for the soreness to dissipate. She reconnected and got dressed as if nothing had happened.

Chandra climbed the stream bank and entered the trees again. Ferns grew in clumps and clusters, but the ground level was surprisingly clear. She had to make her way around an occasional enormous fallen tree. Whenever a tree tell, it opened a passage for sunlight and encouraged new growth.

Saplings sprouted on the logs, then grew to full-sized trees, reaching around and to the ground with long gnarled roots. Sometimes the nurse log rotted away completely, leavmg a colonnade of six or eight trees rising on roots like bowlegs.

Disconnected from the web, Chandra passed through the forest in ignorance of the names of most of the plants. She wanted to make a record of perceptions uncolored by previous knowledge. Anyone who wanted to use her piece as a study tape could do so by hooking into the web and requesting an information hypertext link. Chandra thought that would be like using a Rembrandt as a color chart.

Ahead, the sun streamed through a break in the upper story of the forest, illuminating a cluster of large, flat leaves that glowed gold-green. Light shimmered over the thick silver hairs covering their stalks. Chandra walked toward the plant, concentrating on its color, on the way the leaves spread themselves to the light, each parallel to all the others, as if the bush were arranged and lighted by some alien attention.

The silvery covering on the stems consisted not of soft hairs, but of sharp, wicked thorns. Chandra touched one with the nerve-thick pad of her forefinger. Like the mosquito, the thorn pierced her skin. The pain of the stab burst into acid agony, and she had to exert her will to keep from snatching her hand away. Her blood welled in a glistening drop around the thorn, spilled thick and warm down her finger, and pooled in her palm.

She expected the pain to fade. Instead, it increased. Her hand burned. Angry at herself, she jerked away from the thorn: too fast. Its tip broke off beneath her skin. She snarled a curse and put her hand to her mouth, trying to suck out the point. Her blood tasted bitter, as if it were poisoned.

Pain and shock separated Chandra from terror- Though her STARFARERS 3 3

band felt hot, the rest of her body felt as cold as if she were still in the pool. Chandra stumbled away from the gold-green plant. She had no idea which direction to move to meet the trail. If she kept going she must hit it eventually, for it made a complete circle, and she was inside. Hoping to extricate herself, she kept going as long as she could.

The thornbush disappeared behind and among a thousand tall, straight tree trunks. Chandra sank to the ground. The illusion of softness disappeared when the rotting evergreen needles poked through her clothes and scratched her skin.

She cursed again and sent a Mayday to the web.

She waited.

Pain altered Chandra's perceptions. Time stretched out to such a distance that she feared she would use up all her sensory storage. Yet when she checked the remaining volume, she had filled it only halfway.

She heard the ranger approach; she raised her head slowly.

He towered above her, scowling.

"Whatever possessed you to leave the trail?" His face wavered. When it solidified again, it carried an expression mixed of pity and horror. "Good lord! What happened to you?"

She lifted her hand. Blood obscured the swelling. He knelt down and looked carefully at the place where the thorn had penetrated.

"I got a lot of good stuff," she said, to reassure him and herself.

"You stuck yourself with a devil's club thorn," he said, both unimpressed and contemptuous. "But. . ."He touched the other swellings, the ridges of nerves tracing her fingers and palm.

"That isn't pan of it," Chandra said. Talking tired her. "I mean, it's part of me." She took a deep and frustrated breath and blew it out again. "Don't you know who I am?" Exhaustion tangled her words. "I'm supposed to be like that."

He was staring at her eyes. The biosensors covered her eyes with a film of translucent gray.

"My eyes, too," she said.

The ranger kept his expression neutral as he returned her to the lodge.

Chandra slept for a long time. When she woke, the medication had caused her hand nearly to finish healing. Only a

34 vonda N. Mcfntyre

residual swelling remained, but it was enough to squeeze the

accessory nerves and disrupt all her finer sensations. As for the pain, it had faded till the persistent ache took more of her attention.

She spun into the web. Her agent and her manager were fighting with each other, the one urging her to take care of herself, the other urging her to get back to work. Ignoring them both, she called for her schedule to look at which experiences had been arranged, which arrangements were causing problems, and what she might have to rearrange.' She resented the delay, but her results would be worth it.

She thought she would still have time for the sea-wildemess visit before catching the spaceplane to Starfarer. The starship contained no oceans, only shallow salt marshes and freshwater lakes. Chandra wanted to collect diving beneath the ocean before she left earth. Since she hated to swim, since the whole idea of diving made her claustrophobic, the coming task was a challenge. Ordinarily she preferred to go out on her own. but this once she was glad she would be accompanied by an expert-

Before her schedule appeared, the web displayed a priority message. The ranger had written her a ticket for leaving the trail. The fine was considerable. She could contest it if she wished.

She thought of staying, in order to explain about the results being worth it, but that would mean more delay. She could stay and explain and record, but lots of people made recordings of court cases. Chandra was not interested in repeats.

She signed the ticket so it could subtract the fine from her account.

It was worth it. She had a lot of good stuff.

Victoria and J.D. floated near the transparent wall of the observation room, watching the stars and the distant starship.

"I thought the sky was beautiful from the wilderness,"

J.D. said. "But this . . ."

Victoria gazed at the region of doubled images created by the local strand of cosmic string.

"Could you see the lens effect from where you were? There it is." She pointed, tracing out the line where the string bent light from the stars behind it.

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"I see it," J-D. said. "But you've been out there."

"I've been as close as anyone. Yet." Cosmic string had fascinated Victoria from the time she was a child. It drew her to astronomy, thence to physics.

Cosmic string, a remnant of creation, formed a network through the galaxy. The strings vibrated in a cycle measured in eons, a cycle now taking a strand past the solar system and within reach of earth's current technology.

The cosmic string made Starfarer possible. The starship would use the moon's gravity to catapult it toward the string. Then it would grasp the string with powerful magnetic fields, and tap the unlimited power of its strange properties. Starfarer would rotate around the strand, building up the transition energy that would squeeze it out of Einsteinian space-time and overwhelm the impossible distances between star systems. When it returned to the starting point of its rotation-

It would not return to its starting point. From the point of view of those left behind, the starship would vanish. It would reappear . . . somewhere else.

That was the theory. Victoria had spent the better part of her career working on that theory.

"It's incredible it could be so close and not affect the solar system," J.D. said.

"We're lucky," Victoria said. "If it came close enough to cut through the sun, then we'd*ve seen some effects." She touched her thumbs together, and her fingertips, forming a sphere with her hands. "The string distorts space-time so thoroughly that a circle around it is less than three hundred sixty degrees. So if the string passes through a region that's full of mass . . ." She slid the fingers of her right hand beneath the fingers of her left. "Double-density starstuff. Instant nova." She snapped open her hands. "Blooie." She grinned, "But that missing part of the circle gives us an opening out of the solar system."

"What do you think of the idea that the string is a lifeline?"

Victoria chuckled. "Thrown to us by a distant civilization?

I think it makes a great story."

J.D. smiled, a bit embarrassed. "I find the idea very attractive."

36 vonda N. Mcintyre

"I'll admit that I do, too—though I might not admit it to anyone else. I'd need some evidence before I got serious about it. And let's face it, a civilization that could directly manipulate cosmic string—they'd think we were pretty small potatoes. Or maybe small bacteria."

"Excuse me ... You are Victoria MacKenzie, aren't you?"

Victoria glanced around. The youth smiled at her hopefully.

"Yes," Victoria said- "And this is J.D. Sauvage."

"J.D. Sauvage! I'm glad to meet you, too."

"Thank you."

"And you are—?" • '

"Feral Korzybski." He offered Victoria a card.

"Really—!" She took the card and glanced at the printing: a sketch of a quill pen, his name, his numbers.

"I've seen your articles," Victoria said. "I think you do an excellent job." Victoria had not expected to encounter the public-access journalist here.

He blushed at her exclamation. "I just read your interview," he said, "and I wanted to tell you how much I admire your straightforwardness. I wonder . . . would you like to expand on what you said? I thought your comments made the beginning of a provocative piece."

Despite his name, he looked quite domesticated. Victoria regarded him. He was not at all the way she would have imagined from his name and his articles. He had curly red-brown hair cut all the same length. In weightlessness it fluffed out around his head. His eyes were a gentle brown. His chin was round, his lips mobile and expressive.

"It wasn't exactly an interview, and I think I've said as much as I need to ... or want to." Victoria smiled to take the sting out of turning him down. "I mean .-. . I said what I meant. If I start explaining myself, it would sound like weaseling."

"When I interview somebody," he said,, "they only sound like they're weaseling if they really are weaseling."

"I don't have anything more to say right now. Maybe the opportunity will come up while you're visiting Starfarer, eh?

I'm sure you'll find most people happy to talk to you."

Feral Korzybski wrote about the space program. He had resisted jumping on the new U.S. president's anti-tech band-

STARFARERS 3 7

wagon. As far as Victoria knew, all his articles appeared in public-access, not in sponsored news or feature information services.

"I really would like to talk to both of you about the alien contact team."

"Have you been in space before?" Victoria said, changing the subject without much subtlety.

"No, first trip. First time I could afford it."

"You've got a sponsor, then. Congratulations."

"Sponsors are nothing but unfilled censors!" he said with startling vehemence. "When you read sponsored stuff, you're paying extra for the privilege of reading work that's been gutted to make it acceptable. If I can't make my name as an independent, I don't want to do it at all."

"How'd you get up here?"

"By saving for a ticket, like any other tourist."

"But tourists can't come onto Starfarer anymore. We're too close to final maneuvers." "That took a lot of persuasion and a lot of calling in obligations. Including a few nobody owed me yet." He looked away, obviously embarrassed by the admission of any flaw in his independence.

'*If I can help you find your way around," Victoria said,

"I'd be glad to."

He smiled shyly from beneath his heavy eyebrows. "I'd appreciate that. A lot. Will you talk to me off the record? 'Deep background,' we call it in the trade."

"Of course I'll talk to you," Victoria said. "I just like to be warned when somebody's about to start quoting me. All right?"

"Sure. What do you think about the Senate bill to transform Starfarer into a military base with remote sensing capabilities?"

"You don't ease into anything, do you?"

"No," he said cheerfully. "The argument is that we need more information about the Mideast Sweep, and more defenses against it."

"I understand the argument, but the proposal has already damaged the expedition. You know about the recalls. I'm sure."

38 vonda N. Mcfntyre

He nodded. "It's last century's space station all over again."

"That's right. We lost a couple of decades' worth of original research and intercultural cooperation right there. Now, as soon as we start to recover, as soon as there's hope for peaceful applications, your country is making the same damned mistake. You contributed more than half the funding and more than half the personnel, so your president thinks he can get away with this bullying."

"He's not my president. I didn't vote for him."

Victoria quirked her lips in a sardonic smile. "Nobody did, it seems like. Nevertheless, he is your president and he is bullying us. He's violating several treaties. Unfortunately, your country is still sufficiently powerful that you can tell everybody else to take a high dive if we don't like your plans."

"What about the Mideast Sweep?"

"What about it?"

"Don't you want to keep an eye on them?"

"JProm here? You con do remote sensing from very high orbits, but why would you want to? You might as well use the moon. You don't need something the size of Starfarer for spying. You don't even need it for a military base powerful enough to blow the whole world to a cinder. Starfarer as a military base—even as a suspected military base—becomes vulnerable. 1 hope it won't come to that. Look, Feral, your country is trying to make itself so powerful that it's becoming paralyzed. When you rely solely on your weapons, you lose the art of compromise that created the U.S. in the first place. Soon your only choice will be between staying in the comer you've backed into, doing nothing ... or blasting the whole building down."

"Do you think we can talk the Mideast Sweep around to a reasonable position?''

Victoria had no fondness for the Mideast Sweep. To begin with, there was the sexual and racial discrimination they practiced. If she lived under its domination she would subsist at a level so low that it would barely count as human.

"I don't know how much can be achieved with talk. But I hope—1 have to believe—that the United States is a country

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too ethical to destroy a whole population because it lives under the control of an antagonistic hierarchy."

"Does everybody else on the crew agree with you?"

Victoria chuckled. "Getting everybody to agree on anything is one of our biggest problems. One thing we do agree on, though, is that we aren't 'crew.' "

"What, then?"

^Starfarer isn't a military ship—not yet, anyway, and not ever if most of us on board have anything to say about it. It's only a ship in the sense that it can move under its own power. There's a hierarchy of sorts, but it isn't based on a military structure. There's faculty and staff and technical support. It's more like a university. Or a university town. Most of the decisions about how things are run, we try to decide by consensus."

"That sounds awkward," Feral said.

"Only if you hate five-hour meetings," Victoria said, straight-faced.

"Don't you have to be able to react fast out here? If there's an emergency and there's nobody to give the order to do something about it, doesn't that put everyone at risk?"

^Starfarer has redundancies of its redundancies. With most emergencies you have plenty of time. As for the others . . . everyone who lives there takes an orientation course that includes possible emergencies and what to do about them- You have to pass it if you expect to stay. That's how fast you'd have to react to an acute emergency—you wouldn't have time to call some general and ask for permission."

"What about sabotage?"

"There's much more reason to sabotage a military instal-

lation than a civilian one. And a lot more explosive-type stuff sitting around to use to sabotage it with." Victoria laughed. "Besides, in a group run by consensus, all a saboteur would have to do is come to meetings and block every proposal.

That wouldn't stop us cold, but it would slow everything down and drain a lot of energy." She sighed. "Sometimes I think we already have a few saboteurs aboard."

"How would you respond to an attack?"

"We have no response to attack. We're unarmed. We had to fight to remain unarmed, but it's an important part of the philosophy of the mission."

4 0 Vonda N. Mcintyre

"I meant response to an attack from earth, or on earth. If you were armed—suppose somebody attacked the U.S. or Canada. What could you do?"

"Not much. Even if we were armed, Slarfarer's in a lousy strategic orbit. It's too far from earth to be of use as a defensive or offensive outpost. Any of the O'Neill colonies would be more effective. And nobody is talking about making them into military bases."

"Yet," Feral said.

"Yeah," Victoria said. "Yet."

"You're pretty emphatic about Slarfarer in relation to solving earth's problems. Or not solving them."

Victoria frowned. "I hoped you were on our side."

"I'm not on anybody's side! It's my job to ask questions."

"All right. People want the expedition to promise to go out and find easy, quick solutions. We can't."

"Promise it, or do it?"

"Either- We already know how to solve a lot of our problems. Take food. I don't know the exact numbers—my partner Satoshi could tell you—but if we stopped the expansion of a couple of deserts for one year, we'd gain more arable land than ten Starfarers. If the U.S. hadn't opposed family planning in the 1990s—"

"There's not much we can do about that," Feral said.

"After all."

"But don't you see? We act in stupid and shortsighted ways and then we behave as if we didn't have any responsibility for those actions. Somehow that justifies our continuing to behave in the same shortsighted ways. Instead of trying to change, we hope it works better this time."

"Do you see the expedition as a change?"

"Yes. I hope it is."

"You use the word 'hope' a lot," Feral said.

"I guess I do."

"What do you hope for the expedition?"

"I'm the head of the alien contact department," Victoria said. "That should give you an idea of what I hope for."

Nearby, a nondescript passenger listened to the unguarded conversation. Griffith, of the General Accounting Office, had hidden himself so deeply within his objectivity that he would not permit the comments of Victoria MacKenzie to anger him. He filed them away, along with the opinions of the journalist, for future reference and use.

He wished he had the observation room to himself, so he could look at the stars in silence and solitude. He envied the early space explorers, who had put their lives on the line. He wished he had been one of the Apollo astronauts. Not the ones who landed on the lunar surface: the one who remained in the capsule, orbiting all alone, completely cut off from every other human being, from every other life form, out of contact even by radio during the transit behind the moon.

But those times were long over. Nowadays, traveling into space meant a few minutes of discomforting acceleration and a few hours or days of weightlessness. He had already heard several people complaining about the trip: complaining of boredom' The journey from low earth orbit to Starfarer's li-bration point took too much time for them; they were bored and restless and a few even complained about the lack of gravity.

They've seen too many mo"ies, Griffith thought. They don't understand anything about the way things work. Why did they come up here? If they wanted earth-normal gravity, they should have stayed on earth. These are the people who think

41

42 vonda N. Mdntyre

they know how to use space. Researchers. An old woman. A writer. An alien contact specialist, for God's sake!

In disgust, he left the observation room and floated through the cramped corridors of the transport. If he had anything to say about it, this would be the last transport taking civilian personnel to Starfarer.

He wished he had pulled some rank and seniority in order to demand a larger private compartment. But that would have been as suspicious as getting into an argument with MacKenzie and the journalist about the proper function of Star-farer. Griffith of the General Accounting Office could reasonably expect only the same sleeping closet as any regular passenger.

He made another circuit of the transport's corridors.

Though he tried returning to the observation room, all the conversations he heard angered him with the self-centered shortsightedness of their participants.

Having failed to tire himself, he sought out his cubicle,

wrapped himself in the restraint blanket, and made himself fall immediately asleep. He would keep himself asleep until the transport reached the starship.

J.D. sailed slowly through the corridor, trying to keep herself an even distance from alt four walls. In some ways free-fall was easier than diving; in some ways more difficult. Everything happened faster, so her reactions needed some retraining.

She passed one of the other passengers, going the other direction.

"Hello," she said.

He passed her without speaking, without acknowledging

her presence- The second time they passed, she respected his

privacy. After that, he disappeared.

J.D. had begun to reaccustom herself to what she thought of as the real world. She felt both more crowded and lonelier. Since returning from the wilderness, she had touched no one more closely than a handshake. Several times she had to remind herself not to hug someone, or stroke their arm, or pat their shoulder. In this world such behavior was unacceptable. With the divers it was expected. Perhaps it was necessary.

STARFARERS 4 3

The wilderness had begun to feel like a dream, yet a dream of such intensity that she could bring it back in vivid memory.

Three orcas breached, one after the other, bursting free, turning, splashing hard and disappearing beneath the slate-blue water. A moment later they leaped again, heading the opposite direction. The white spring sunlight glazed their black flanks and the stark white patches on their sides.

Walking down the path to her cabin, J.D. watched the beautiful, elegant creatures, and wondered how she could even consider leaving them.

The three half-grown orcas swam to the mouth of the harbor, cutting the choppy surface with their sharp dorsal fins. They joined a larger group of whales. Without her binoculars, J.D. could no longer tell which three had leaped and played.

The whole pod swam toward shore. Five or six divers, sleek in the water, swam with them.

J.D. expected Zev to clamber out and greet her, but orcas and divers alike swam to where the beach shelved off into deeper water. There, they stopped. One of the divers—she thought it might be Zev—waved and gestured to her.

She sent a signal to her metabolic enhancer and scrambled down the bank. A rush of heat radiated from beneath the small scar on her side. The enhancer kicked her metabolism into high gear. Stripping off her clothes, she left them in a pile on the rocks and waded into the frigid water. She gasped when the water reached the level of her nipples. She hesitated, shivering, then plunged underwater.

When she surfaced, Zev bobbed in front of her. A wave

slapped her face, reminding her that she was in an alien element. She sputtered and moved past Zev so she could turn her back to the swells.

"We came to talk to you," he said. "Will you come?"

"Of course," she said. "But I have to get my lung."

He swam with her to the anchored platform. The orcas and the other divers accompanied them. The dorsal fins all around reminded her of the trunks of the trees in the center of the forest, primordial and eternal, multiple yet individual. The water transmitted the pressure of the orcas1 passing, and the vibrations of the first level of their speech. She could hear them with her body as well as her ears.

At the platform she put on her swim fins and let the arti-44 Vonda N. Mdntyre

ficial lung slide onto her back. Warm, a little slimy, it spread itself across her shoulders. She slipped her mask on. By the time she had cleared it. it had connected with the lung. She breathed in the musky, warm, highly oxygenated air.

J.D. sank beneath the choppy waves. The peacefulness of the sea enfolded her, and the atienness and fear vanished.

Here she was at home.

She wondered if space would have surrounded her with the same experience. She supposed she would never find out. She had decided to choose the ocean over space, the divers over

the starship.

Zev dove with her. His sleek body and pale hair collected light and bounced it back. Even under the gray surface, he

glowed.

J.D. swam farther from shore, till the surf rolling onto the beach faded to a sound like the wind in new spring leaves.

The whales encircled her, each great ebony body a shadow in the wavery light, the white patches glowing like Zev. The young diver accompanied her like a puppy, dashing ahead, spiraling around her, falling behind and speeding past.

The change in the current, the drop in water temperature, told her they had left the inlet.

They traveled for a long way. Except for Zev, the other divers formed an outer circle beyond her range of vision.

J.D. swam much more slowly than Zev, never mind the orcas. They moved at quarter speed to accommodate her.

Squeaks and clicks flowed through the water and through her body. She recognized the phrases of encouragement to very young whales. She managed to smile. But if she really were a young orca, an adult would be swimming close beside her, drawing her along within the pressure wave formed by its body in the water.

She struggled onward, resolute. Her legs began to ache.

She breaslstroked for a moment. That slowed her even farther. She kicked in the metabolic enhancer again, knowing she would pay for it tomorrow.

She wondered how far they had come, and where they were. Drifting upward, she broke the surface. The offshore fog-bank, a pretty white curtain, had moved in with a vengeance.

It flowed over the water like a second sea. J.D. could see nothing of the island, nothing but a few meters of ocean, no

STARFARERS 4 5

longer choppy but glassy calm. Even the dorsal fins were dim, imagined shadows in a distance impossible to estimate. A smooth wake of tiny parallel ripples angled across her. One of the orcas swam past, and out of sight.

She trod water. Uneasily, she circled. The view was the same in all directions: flat water, dense fog.

Surfacing had not restored her link with the information web. The contact, which diving always interfered with, re-ftised to re-form. Reflexively she looked up, as if she could see the electromagnetic radiation pouring out of the sky, somehow misdirected, and could call it to her. But the web remained silent.

One of the orcas surfaced beside her and blew, exhaling explosively and drawing in a deep breath. Its dorsal fin cut the fog in swirls. The whale raised its head above water and looked at her. Unlike ordinary humans, the orcas—and the divers—could see equally well in water and in air. It spoke to her in phrases beyond her vocabulary. She could recognize the tone. If she had been a young orca, or a diver child, the tone would have been patient. But she was an outsider, she was an adult, and she was tediously slow.

Orcas were easily bored.

J.D. let herself sink, wishing she had never surfaced. She tried to shake off fright. Nothing could hurt her, for she was with powerful predators who had no enemies. They themselves had no malice; she trusted the orcas. They could injure her or kill her without effort or consequence. For that reason she found herself able to place herself in their power equally without effort or fear.

The divers, however, were more mysterious. Essentially human, they retained human motives, human rationalization.

What if this is a test? she thought. What if they plan to bring me out here and leave me, to see if I can make my way back to shore by myself? Lots of cultures won't accept a new member without proof of the person's competence.

The loss of the link gained a stronger and more sinister significance. With it, she could start from the center of the Pacific, if she liked, and navigate to any shore within a meter's error. Without it, she was helpless and disoriented. Left alone in the fog, she might swim in circles as if she were walking in the desert.

Vonda N. Mclntyre

46

She struck out swimming.

Zev appeared before her and guided her in a slightly different direction. This drained the last of her confidence, because she thought she had resumed swimming in her original

direction.

J.D. spoke to Zev, awkwardly, with her arms and her body and vibrations from her throat, a sort of two-toned hum, telling him she was frightened and confused and tired. He encouraged her, and again she found herself surrounded by whale baby-talk. No explanations accompanied the encouragement, which quivered at the edge of impolite urgency.

J.D. swam on. She shivered, oblivious to another jolt from the metabolic enhancer.

The texture of the water changed. Abruptly the opaque depths turned translucent, transparent, as the sea bottom shelved toward land. Wavelets lapped softly at the precipitous rock sides of a tiny island.

The divers and the whales gathered in a sheltered cove.

The shore rose gently to tide pools. J.D. stroked gratefully into shallow, warm water. She stood, waist-deep, and pushed her mask to the lop of her head. Her legs trembled with fatigue. The lung stopped breathing for her and clung to her

back.

Beyond the tide pools, fresh water bubbled from a hot spring. It spilled into the salt water, billowing steam. The hot spring raised the temperature of the shallowest part of the cove. Within the steam, the ghostly shapes of divers lounged and played. The whales remained in the deeper, colder water.

J.D. knew Zev well, and she had spent time with the younger divers, the adventurous adolescents of the family.

She had met a few of the standoffish older divers, the adults. The youngest divers, children and babies, stayed close to a parent or to an auntie, whether diver or orca. Now here they all were, two dozen of them, newboms to mature adults, waiting for her.

Zev beckoned. J.D. followed.

"Mother," Zev said, "this is my friend J.D."

J.D. accepted the diver's gesture to join her, and sank onto the rough rock in the warm water.

"My name is Lykos," Zev's mother said.

"I'm honored to meet you," J.D. said.

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Zev resembled his mother closely, beyond the genetically engineered changes, common to all divers, of body type, dark

skin, and dark, large eyes. Lykos had a square, strong face and deepset eyes of a coppery brown. Her close-cropped curly hair was red-gold, her skin a deep mahogany. The other divers arrayed themselves around and behind her, watching J.D., content for the moment to let Lykos speak for them all.

A few drifted with only their heads out of water: intense faces haloed by bright hair of any shade from white through gold and auburn.

"Zev told you of our discussion."

J.D. glanced at Zev, wondering if he knew his mother knew he had spoken to J. D., and if she should admit it. He glanced at her sidelong, embarrassed, yet smiling.

"I could not keep it secret," he said.

"This is a flaw in Zev's character," Lykos said. "However, he is working to improve himself.'' She eased her criticism with a fond look.

"I didn't tell her—"

"I will tell her the rest," Lykos said, interrupting. "J.D., what Zev told you is true. This family of divers and orcas invites you to join us. Have you considered?"

"Yes," J.D. said. "And decided. But it frightens me. It would be . . ." She searched for words. Unable to think of anything strong enough, she ended up with a comment of complete inconsequentiality. "It will be a big change."

"And it is illegal."

"It is."

"Does this trouble you?" Lykos asked.

"It does," J.D. admitted. She had tried to persuade herself that no one would even notice, unless she went out of her way to make it public. Whether she could publish without declaring what she had done was another matter entirely. J.D. had never deliberately broken a law in her life, even an unnecessarily paternalistic one. She kept reminding herself that her action would affect no one but herself.

Lykos nodded, more to herself than to J.D. "Zev thought it might. He describes you as an honorable being."

"That's kind of him."

"He is perceptive."

J.D. felt the diver's gaze like a physical touch. Behind her,

4 8 vonda N. Mdntyre

the orcas hovered at the edge of the shallows. They, too, watched and listened.

"We are also honorable beings, I think," Lykos said. "I must not permit you to accept without telling you everything that is involved."

"What do you mean?"

"Before I speak, I must ask you to promise not to repeat what I say. To anyone."

Her voice and her expression were serious. The other divers waited, listening, intent on J.D.'s reply. Even the orcas stopped spouting and ruining the water with their nippers and flukes.

J.D. hesitated. She was not in the habit of breaking confidences- But Lykos was so serious-

"I promise," she said. She sounded more confident than she felt. She had thought the decision was hers alone, but the divers could refuse to accept her if they thought she did not trust them, if she made it impossible for them to trust her.

' 'You are aware of... increasing tensions between human countries."

"The permafrost," J.D. said.

"I do not understand—?"

"They used to call it the cold war—hostility, aggression, but no direct physical attack of armies. Now, there still isn't any shooting war, but the hostility is so cold and so hard it never thaws. Permafrost."

Lykos nodded. "I see. It is a good metaphor. But not, perhaps, eternal."

"It's better than the alternative,"

"There are two alternatives. The other is peace. You are correct, though, in that the most preferred alternative is the least likely. I think it is possible that the worst possibility may be provoked."

A psychic chill replaced the comfortable warmth that had dispersed the physical chill of J.D.'s body. She waited in silence for Lykos to continue.

"We are in an unusual position with regard to your government," Lykos said. "They do not approve of us, yet they permit us to cross freely over the boundary of their country;

they have set aside a portion of wilderness within which no ordinary human may travel without our invitation and per-

STARFARERS 4 9

mission. They are willing to expend resources to maintain this prohibition. They have expended other resources on us.

"Now," she said, "they claim us as their debtors, and demand repayment."

"Repayment! What do they want?"

"They want us to spy."

"But . . . what about the treaty?" "They speak of setting it aside."

"Can they do that?"

"Can they be prevented from doing it?"

"I ... I don't know." J.D. thought: I guess I can't blame the military for wanting help against the Mideast Sweep.

"We are much less detectable than mechanical devices,"

Lykos said. "We are also more vulnerable. And ... I think the demands would soon include other tasks than spying."

"What are you going to do?"

"We do not wish to spy."

"I don't blame you. It's terrifying! I wouldn't . . ." She stopped. "But I would have to, wouldn't I? That's why you're telling me this, isn't it? So I'll know what I'll have to do if I accept your invitation." She shivered. J.D. thought of herself as having less than the average amount of bravery, and doubted she would make much success of spying.

"We do not intend to comply with the demands. We will not comply. We do not believe in boundaries, or hostilities between intelligent beings- However, we must take the demands seriously. Your government may rescind our right to live here, they may interfere with our research." Lykos gestured around her, at the beautiful island and the sky and the water. "We have accepted the boundary of the wilderness, though we never learned to like it. We do think of this territory as our home. In order to resolve our problems, we must give it up. We will travel north to Canada. We will not be able to come back. That is what you must know." She paused.

"Soon the government will demand that we act—"

Oh, no, J.D. thought. This is all my fault. It's my publications that brought this on the divers! I described their abilities, their incredible stamina and speed, their knowledge of coastal geography . . .

"Lykos, stop it, please! Don't tell me any more. I'm sorry,

I didn't realize—I shouldn't have let you tell me this much."

5 0 vonda N. Mdntyre

Lykos stopped. Zev splashed to J.D.'s side, distressed by her fear. He stroked her arm.

"J.D., what is wrong? It will be exciting!"

"Zev, I'm sorry . . . Lykos, I said I wouldn't tell, and I'll do my best not to—not to tell anything more about youl But it may be too late. If you resist, there's no telling how our government will react, much less the Sweep. You'll be fugitives, unprotected—you must have some idea of the power you'll be opposing."

"I think we have no choice, J.D. It is true that I cannot see all the implications of our plan. Your knowledge of the land world is one of the reasons—though not the only 'one—

we asked you to join us."

"I can't," J.D. said, her voice fiat with pain and disappointment and guilt. "I thought I could, but I can't- I'd be more of a danger to you than a help.''

"Yet you know the government will react unfavorably, perhaps even behave badly, if we act."

"But that's obvious," J.D. said. "They wouldn't have any choice."

"It is not obvious to me. Nor is it obvious why the Mideast Sweep would have any interest in us at all."

The chill that centered in J.D.'s spine, just behind her heart, had nothing to do with wind or water or waves. She had to stop talking with Lykos before she found out more things that could injure the divers if she were compelled to say what she knew. But they accepted her, and she admired them, and she wanted to warn them.

"If you said publicly your reasons for rebelling, the Mideast Sweep would see that you might be a threat against them.

I don't think it would matter that you'd chosen not to be.

Maybe you'd change your mind, or maybe you'd be forced to act against them. You wouldn't be safe in the open sea."

Lykos placed her hand flat on the water, swimming webs spread, and thoughtfully watched her hand rise and fall, tilt and rock with the motion of the wavelets. J.D. blinked back sudden tears.

"We understood that we would not be safe if we agreed.

No one suggested we would not be safe if we refused."

"I wish I were wrong," J-D. said. "But I don't think I am." She had watched the rising level of paranoia in her own

STARFARERS 51

country. She feared it. And she knew that in the Sweep, the third of the world that was closed and suspicious, the paranoia was even stronger.

One of the orcas spouted suddenly behind her. It articulated a train of clicks that she could both hear as sound and feel as vibration. The other divers nodded and murmured.

"You are correct," one of the other divers said. "You have made an observation that is obvious only after it is made."

"It is true," Lykos said. "J.D., please join us. We have the facilities to support your change. You would be welcome with us, and you would be valuable. You might make our survival possible."

J.D. shook her head. "I can't." Water splashed as she rose. "You don't understand, this is all my fault."

Lykos and Zev and the other divers gazed at her, bemused, not yet comprehending.

J.D. was afraid to remain, to see, inevitably, the change in the divers' feelings about her. She was afraid to see the look of pain and betrayal in Zev's face when he understood what she had done. And she was perversely angry at the divers for waiting until a crisis to offer their invitation.

She turned and plunged between two orcas, dragged her mask down over her eyes and nose, and hit the boundary between warm spring and frigid sea. She swam into the tide.

Soon she had left the small harbor behind. Every shadow of a ripple through the water startled her, though she knew that the divers would not force her to return against her will.

As she swam she tried to clear her faceplate. Only after she failed did she realize she was crying. She stopped swimming, let herself rise to the surface, and pulled off the mask. It was hard to tread water while she was crying. She struggled to get herself under control. Blinking away the tears, she ducked her face into the water and shook her head.

The droplets she flung away vanished into the fog that still lay flat on the glassy water.

She tried to link up with the web, but the interference remained. Scared, J.D. looked around, hoping rather than fearing to see one of the divers or one of the whales.

She remained alone.

She had failed to find her bearings while swimming with the divers. This time she could not afford to fail.

52 Vonda N. Mcfntyre

If she chose the right direction, she would eventually end up somewhere on the long north coast where her cabin lay. Choosing the right direction was the problem. If she got turned around, no other land lay within her range.

J.D- spat into her mask, swished it around with seawater, emptied it, and put it back on. The air of the artificial lung was the only warmth in the world.

She dove, but remained near the surface. If the fog cleared she wanted to know it immediately.

By the slant of the seafloor and the movement of the water relative to the fog, she chose a direction and set out swimming. Tiny jellyfish passed overhead, bobbing just beneath the interface of air and water.

J.D. swam, refusing to listen to the voice in her mind telling her she needed the web, clear sight, and the help of the divers to find her way anywhere.

Her muscles already ached from the long swim out, from the abuse by enhancer overdose. The lung tired, too, and its air grew cool and thin. She rose to the surface and sidestroked, saving the lung's capacity in case she struck rough water. The darkness of deep water lay beneath her.

The current was a presence that surrounded her. Without

a fixed point she could not tell its direction. It might be strong enough to sweep her completely past the island, no matter which direction she swam.

Her breath came in a sob. The metabolic enhancer reached

its limit, like the artificial lung. Successive doses did nothing

but shoot pain through her exhausted muscles.

When she thought she could not swim another stroke, when she had convinced herself that she was swimming in circles and would never find her way back, her link began faintly to respond. Though its connection was too feeble for any useful information, its return encouraged her to continue.

The link grew stronger.

All at once she burst from the fog into clear skies, clear sea. As if the mist defined the limits of the interference, the link returned full force. The north shore lay a hundred meters away. She recognized a headland a kilometer east of her cabin.

She was afraid she could not cover the distance without a rest, but she was also afraid to stop. She forced herself onward.

STARFARERS 53

She fetched up on the gravelly shore, gasping for breath like a drowning victim, and dragged herself beyond the wa-teriine. tf she passed out with the tide coming in, she might wake up in the sea again.

She never quite lost consciousness, though a long time passed before she wanted to move. Exposed to dry air, the artificial lung shrank against her back. All she could do was feel sorry for it.

Warm hands held and rubbed her cold fingers. A soft crooning noise, a double-noted hum, surrounded her.

Zev crouched beside her. He stopped humming, but kept hold of her hand. Even his swimming webs felt warm.

"J.D., J.D., I am sorry. We did not think when we let you leave by yourself. We forgot about the interference and we forgot that you cannot hear the seafloor. We thought only that you wished to be left alone. Then I remembered! How did you find your way?"

"Beats the hell out of me," J.D. said. She could barely speak. Her mouth was dry. This struck her as funny.

"Oh, you would make such a good diver," he said.

J.D. freed her hands from his grasp, pushed herself to her feet, and wobbled back to the water. The idea of diving again nauseated her. She peeled off the lung and immersed it. Its unhealthy drying dark red color bloomed to deep pink.

"Zev, would you do me a favor?"

"Yes."

She looked at him askance. He agreed without hesitation or question, still trusting her despite everything.

"I'm going to walk home," J.D. said. "I'd appreciate it if you'd put the lung in its place underneath the floating dock."

"That is easy," he said, sounding downcast. "Would you not like to swim? We could help you." He gestured: offshore, several of the orcas circled, waiting. "They would even let you ride."

"No. I wouldn't like to swim. Tell them thank you." The orcas did not enjoy letting human beings ride them.

Zev walked down the beach.

"Zev . . . goodbye."

He faced her. " 'Goodbye* means for a long time."

"Yes."

"But you could come with us! Then we'd all be safe'"

54 vonda N. Mdntyre

"It isn't that easy. You're free out here, but I have connections to the land worid, and they could make me come back.

Then ... I might not be able to help putting you all in more danger than I've already done."

"But where will you go?**

"To the starship. If they'll still have me."

"What if they will not?"

"Then . . . I'll have to wing it.'*

He looked at her. "I did not know you could fly, too:"

J.D. laughed.

"I will miss you."

"I'll miss you, too, Zev."

"Come wade in the water."

"Why?"

"So that I can hug you when I say goodbye."

It was too complicated to try to explain why she had told him not to touch her yesterday, but why it would have been all right for him to hug her now. She walked with him into the water until they were knee-deep, and then she hugged him and stroked his curly hair. He spread his fingers against her back, and she felt the silky swimming webs against her skin.

"Goodbye." His breath whispered warm on her breast.

Zev took the lung and slid beneath the surface. J.D. did not see him again.

Floris Brown rested in the soft grip of a zero-g lounge, held gently against it with elastic straps. At first, weightlessness had disoriented her, but by the time the spaceplane docked with the transport she had begun to find it welcome and comforting. It eased the pains of eighty years of fighting gravity, and even the bruises of seven minutes of crushing acceleration.

The braided strands of her hair floated in weightlessness.

She let three patches grow long, but shaved the rest of her hair to a soft short fuzz. The shells and beads strung into the braids clinked and rattled softly- The end of the longest braid drifted in the comer of her vision. It was completely white.

The central patch was streaked with bright pink, the right-

hand strands were green. But she always kept the leftmost

long patch the natural color of her hair. She also left her eyes

STARFARERS 55

their natural blue, but wore heavy black eye makeup on her upper and lower eyelids and her eyelashes.

She gazed out the wide bubble window. It provided an unending source of interest. ,

As the transport powered gently out of low earth orbit, it passed within sight of the deserted Soviet space station. To the unaided eye it looked like any other satellite, moving from sunlight to shadow. With binoculars it looked old.

Though the vacuum of space protected it from rust or other deterioration, cables dangled and twisted eerily; and the antennae all hung motionless, aimed at nothing.

Floris remembered the vigor and assurance of the Soviet space program, as it outdistanced that of her own country when she was very young. All its promise had been lost, its lunar base abandoned and its Mars expedition never begun, when the Mideast Sweep gained power and eliminated the space program as useless, extravagant, an insult to the face of god, a tool of Satan. It made Floris sad to look at the old space station, drifting dead in its orbit, kept as a monument to the past.

Once they left low earth orbit, her nostalgia dissipated. The transport pilot, showing off the sights, oriented the observation window first toward earth, then toward the moon, then toward the stars. Undimmed by earth's atmosphere, the constellations stunned her. She could imagine the sky a hundred or a thousand or a million years ago, the air free of the pollution of human activities, the galaxy sweeping in a brilliant path from one horizon to the other. Back on earth she had seen the Milky Way as a fuzzy patch of light across the middle sixty degrees of the sky. Out here she knew that if she could see all the way around her, she would see the entire disk of the Milky Way. For the first time she understood why prehistoric people—and even some modern people who ought to know better—could believe that the stars contained esoteric meaning.

Occasionally one or another of the passengers came by and greeted her. She was a curiosity: not the oldest person ever

to travel into space, but the oldest to make a first trip, the first member of the Grandparents in Space program.

One of the benefits of her years was that her lifelong difficulty remembering names and faces could not be ascribed

56 vonda N. Mclntyre

to age. She smiled and nodded and said hello and thanked people for their welcome; but after five or ten she gave up trying to remember any individual.

"Ms. Brown?"

She looked around, seeking the voice.

Someone drifted into her vision from above the level of her head, upside down from her orientation.

"Please call me Floris," she said.

"Thank you. I'm Victoria Fraser MacKenzie. I'm on the faculty of Starfarer. I just wanted to welcome you into space, and see if you needed anything. I could show you around, or help you to your sleeping net."

"I'm not ready to sleep," Floris replied. She found herself tilting her head to try to get the faculty member's face right side up. "I seldom sleep more than a few hours at night."

This was not strictly true, but Floris had occasionally found the claim useful. No one had ever disputed her when she repeated the cliche about old people and sleep. "I'm just going to stay here and watch the stars."

The faculty member smiled. That's interesting, Floris thought, that a smile upside down still looks like a smile, and not like a frown. She had never had occasion to observe this before.

"They're beautiful, aren't they? The whole galaxy as if you could touch it. And in a little while I think Esther is going to orient the transport so we can see Starfarer."

"Esther?"

"She pilots this transport."

"Thank you for your welcome." Floris tried to keep her attention on the young woman speaking to her, but it was hard to talk to someone upside down. Besides, her gaze kept returning to the stars.

"If you need anything, just let me know."

"All right."

Victoria hovered solicitously, protectively, near Floris Brown. She wished she had come right out and said that she had been one of the major proponents of the Grandparents in Space program, arguing that the expedition needed a wider age-mix. Perhaps she could work it subtly into a conversation.

STARFARERS 57

Victoria felt comfortable around Floris Brown. She hoped they would be friends. No one could take the place of Victoria's great-grandmother, but Grangrana refused to apply to the expedition. Victoria would not see her again for at least a year. Probably more than a year. Already Victoria missed her.

But she liked to think of Grangrana living comfortably in the house that Merry had arranged for the partnership to buy.

On the rare occasion that property came up for sale, corporations bought it, not ordinary people. Victoria had never expected her family to own a house. But there it was. It even had some land of its own, away from the city. on the edge of the Vancouver Island wilderness.

Only yesterday she had run up the front stairs of the house for her last visit with Grangrana before the expedition departed.

The door recognized her. Expecting her, it opened. Inside, the air was hot and dry.

"Grangrana?"

She went upstairs. Soft bright tight filled the hallway, spilling through the glass wall separating the corridor from the sun porch. Beyond the windows, Victoria's great-grandmother sat sleeping in her favorite chair.

Victoria entered the room quietly, trying not to wake the eldest member of her extended family. She sat in the other chair and watched Grangrana doze. Heat radiated up at her from the black flagstone tiles. She slid out of her jacket and settled back, content to wait, comfortable despite the oppressive warmth. Grangrana had always welcomed her.

Victoria let he"- surroundings create another memory to take with her on the long trip. Grangrana wore her hair shorter these days than the way Victoria first remembered, still in an iron-gray Afro, but more subdued and easier to care for. Her black skin was smooth except for the ritual scar on her cheek, obtained on a research trip before Victoria was born. Gran-grana could have had the scar removed, but she chose to keep it. She admired the people she had visited; they refused to condescend completely to the modern world- They paid tribute to ancient traditions with a single, elegant facial scar.

Whether they still carried on their new tradition or had been forced to change, Victoria did not know. Their territory

58 vonda N. Mdntyre

had been swallowed up in the chaos of the Mideast Sweep two decades before, almost as an afterthought, a brief southern lunge of the greater wave that overtook the U.S.S.R.

Victoria hoped this house would be a haven for Grangrana, the way Grangrana's small apartment in Vancouver had been a haven for Victoria, for Grangrana's friends and colleagues and former students; even, once in a white, for a member of the group she had lived with in Africa. A few of them had been trapped in the West. They could not legally return to their homes. Victoria's most powerful recollection of them was the dignity with which they bore their grief and displacement.

Gradually they had stopped visiting; gradually even Gran-grana lost contact with them all. She believed they had returned home, no matter what they had to do to get there. No matter what happened to them when they arrived.

"Victoria?"

Victoria started awake. Grangrana stood before her, a little stooped, frailer than six months ago.

"I fell asleep," Victoria said, abashed. The heat and the few minutes' sleep made her groggy.

Grangrana smiled. "So did I."

She touched Victoria's hair, brushing her fingertips across the soft, springy surface. Victoria wore her hair shorter than Grangrana used to, longer than her great-grandmother kept hers now.

"I'm so glad to see you," Grangrana said. "I thought I might not again."

"I know," Victoria said. "I was afraid of that, too."

She stood and hugged her great-grandmother and kissed her cheek.

"I'm still afraid of that, Grangrana. We're going to be gone so long ... "

The house AS rolled into the sun-room.

"Come have tea," Grangrana said.

They sat at the white wrought-iron table in the comer, on spindly white wrought-iron chairs.

"The time will seem longer to you than to me," Grangrana said. "The older I get, the faster time passes. I think we perceive time as a proportion of our lives. A year isn't a large

STARFARERS 5 9

proportion of my life anymore. I think I'll still be here when you get back."

"I hope so. But won't you reconsider coming? Won't you at least apply?'

Grangrana shook her head. "No, I've finished my adventuring. I'll wait here for you to come back to me and tell me all about it. Tell me things now. Are you happy?"

"Worried. Distler has only been in office a couple of months, but he's already started trying to carry out his campaign promises . . ."

"Don't tell me about the United States, don't tell me about

sword-rattling. I can hear all that on the news, I can remember it from twenty years ago. forty years ago. It's all cycles. I want to hear about you. Has it been a year. since . . . ?"

"A little more," Victoria said. All the memories surrounding the accident came back to her. Time had begun to dim the pain, but she had to work to keep her voice steady. "Stephen Thomas got through it better than Satoshi and I."

"You're stilt with them both," Grangrana said hesitantly.

Victoria turned away from the window and toward Grangrana, the relative she loved most in the world. Her vision blurred and she blinked furiously. She had thought and believed she would never hear that particular querulous tone again, and never have to live through this conversation.

"Yes, Grangrana," she said. "I'm still with them. They're still with me. We're a partnership, personal and professional. The accident—Merry's death—changed things. But it didn't end the partnership."

"I thought it would," Grangrana said, softly, as if she were speaking to herself. "When it happened, I was sorry for your grief, but I thought it would release you."

"It isn't like that!" She sat on the floor at Grangrana's feet and clasped one frail hand in both of hers. "I'm not entrapped, I'm not blinded—I never was. It's true that Merry was the catalyst for the family. Merry loved falling in love and being in love and staying in love with a lot of people and managing the partnership. But . . . Why can't I explain it right to you? I love you and I want you to think well of me.

I don't want you to be ashamed of me—"

"Ashamed! Victoria, nothing you could ever do could shame me. No, I'm so proud of you. but when you told me

6 0 Vonda N. Mcintyre

about this arrangement, I remembered some of the foolish things I did when I was your age—younger than you."

"But it isn't like that. It isn't a cult. Merry didn't use charisma to keep us as pets, or worshippers, or slaves."

"Cherie, you never know it until it's over. It's so easy to persuade yourself to give up yourself for someone. Especially someone you love."

Anger mixed with despair. "I've made myself believe it happened to you, because you say it's so. Why can't I make you believe it isn't happening to me?"

"Because I'm old and stubborn and I love you." She drew Victoria up and embraced her. "I want you to be happy."

"I am, Grangrana." Victoria let her cheek rest against her great-grandmother's shoulder. She breathed the cool cedar scent of Grangrana *s perfume, the fragrance of clothing kept in cedar trunks and a huge freestanding cedar-lined cabinet, Victoria's favorite hiding place during childhood games.

"They seem like good men, Satoshi and Stephen Thomas,"

Grangrana said. "But don't stand for it if they pretend to be better than you.. Men like to do that, even when they don't realize it."

Victoria knew the struggle her great-grandmother had had to endure to succeed, in a different time. It seemed, to her, nearly as bizarre and incredible as the lives of Grangrana's great-grandparents, who had escaped to Canada from the United States during the years of slavery. Grangrana's stories of times past had taught Victoria the fragility of freedom-

"They wouldn't, Grangrana," she said. She sat down again in the wrought-iron chair, in the warm sun-room. The rays slanted through the windows, nearly horizontal, casting blacker shadows against the black flagstones. Victoria suddenly chuckled.

"What is it, cherieT'

"It's that you think my household is outrageous," Victoria said, "and all my other friends think it's terribly old-fashioned."

Next morning, orbital time, Victoria floated into the transport cafeteria. She wanted a cup of strong tea. Stephen Thomas used to tease her about the British influence on her eating habits, but once she persuaded him that a single taste of English breakfast tea with milk and sugar would not kill him, he decided he liked it. He still drank coffee the rest of the day and night, immune to the effects of caffeine, but sometimes he drank tea in the morning. Victoria thought she had done him no favor, for tea was scarcer than coffee outside earth's gravity well, and milk was expensive.

She passed Floris Brown, so far the only member of Grandparents in Space, accompanied by a member of the transport crew,

"Good morning, Ms. Brown." Victoria smiled. "I mean,

Floris. How are you enjoying the trip?"

"Oh . . . hello. It's fine, thank you." Nothing in the tone of her frail voice indicated she remembered Victoria from yesterday.

She must be tired from the stress of lift-off, Victoria thought, trying not to be disappointed.

"Victoria!"

J.D. and Feral called to her from across the room. She was impressed that they had both already learned not to make unnecessary gestures in zero-g.

Feral, who looked like he had been up for hours and had already hit his stride, pushed toward her and handed off a

61

62 vonda N. Mclntyre

hot-pack to her. He kicked against the wall and passed her again going the opposite direction, still facing her.

"Good morning. Docking in an hour."

They both reached J.D. at the same time. Feral grabbed a handhold; Victoria brushed her hand along the bulkhead, using the friction to dissipate her momentum.

Victoria extended the hot-pack's straw and sipped it. Tea, with milk and sugar.

"Thanks," she said to Feral. Most Americans, even if they had noticed how she liked her tea, would have put cream in it. "Have you guys had breakfast already?"

"Just finished," J.D. said. "I wanted to be sure to get a good spot to watch the docking."

"I don't think you'll have any trouble," Victoria said.

"Most of the folks on board are old hands. You and our new grandmother are the only new permanent residents, and Feral and that other guy are the only temps."

"What other guy?" Feral asked.

"He was in the observation bubble yesterday morning, but he disappeared and I haven't seen him since."

"I don't remember him."

' 'He has kind of brown hair, or was it blond—you know, that color that you think is blond but when you really look at it, it's brown. And . . ." She tried to remember what color his eyes were. Her image of him shifted and faded. "Medium height, maybe a little taller." Height was difficult to judge in weightlessness. "Medium build." She searched for a distinguishing characteristic.

"I saw him a couple times in the corridor," J.D. said.

"But he didn't say anything."

"I guess I didn't notice him," Feral said, frowning.

"Not much to notice. Anyway, even if he and all of us here and half the crew go to watch the docking, it won't be crowded." She sighed. "This is the first time I've ever taken a transport to Starfarer that hasn't been full."

"So Chandra's not on board?" Feral asked.

"Who?"'

"The sensory artist. I heard she was leaving earth soon. I thought I might get a chance to interview her."

"Oh, dear," J.D- said. A blush crept up her cheeks.

"What's the matter?"

STARFARERS 6 3

"I was supposed to take her diving. I completely forgot about it. I just . . . left."

"Didn't she call you?"

"No. Isn't that odd . . . Maybe she forgot our appointment, too," J.D. said hopefully. "Excuse me, I'd better try to reach her and apologize, at least."

Her eyelids nickered closed and she fell silent as she connected with the web.

Letting the hot-pack drift in place, Victoria took a sandwich from a service module, lore off a comer of the wrapper, and pulled off a bite-sized piece of the sandwich. She left the rest inside the paper so it would not shed crumbs. She ate the bite, then ate the comer of the wrapper as well.

Feral watched her with an expression that indicated he thought Victoria was pulling his leg.

"Rice paper," Victoria said. The crinkly film dissolved on her tongue. "We try to make everything we can from renewable resources, and as recyclable as possible." She grinned. "One way or another."

She ate another bite of her sandwich, and another comer of the rice-paper wrapping.

J.D. opened her eyes again. "I left her a message." She sighed. "How could I just forget? I guess I'll have to do some seriously apologetic groveling when she comes on board."

"You folks didn't exactly make it hard for your opponents to take potshots at the expedition," Feral said. "You're taking along artists, and grandparents, and the social structure is a pretty weird mix—"

"Should I take that comment personally?" Victoria asked.

"Only if you want to. You've got to admit that polygamy is unusual."

"But my family isn't polygamous."

"What, then?"

"The technical term is 'family partnership.' It isn't as rigidly denned as polygamy. A family partnership is gender-transparent. It doesn't require a particular mix, like several members of one gender and one member of the other."

"But that's what yours has."

Victoria forced herself to answer without hesitation. "It does right now. But it doesn't have to."

"Can I have an exclusive on your next engagement?"

64 vonda N. Mclntyre

"I was only speaking theoretically." Victoria tried to smile, but the idea of bringing in another partner hurt too much. It would not be replacing Merit—no one could replace Merit-but it would feel like trying. "Besides, the last time somebody wrote about our personal lives, we got insults from weirdos who think we're reactionary, even stranger messages

congratulating us on our traditional values, and a handful of proposals from people who thought they'd fit right in. It takes too long to answer the mail."

"Why'd you choose the arrangement, if I'm not being too nosy? Are you ... I don't know what the parallel term for 'monogamous* would be for a family partnership, but you know what I mean. Don't you trust the Thanthavong viral depolymerase?''

Victoria found herself more amused than offended by Fer-al's unapologetic nosiness.

"I admire Professor Thanthavong tremendously. She's the head of the department where my partner Stephen Thomas has tenure, and he's eloquent about her achievements."

"Her work made a big difference," said J.D., who was older than either Victoria or Feral. "It's hard to explain how scared everybody was, to anybody who's too young to remember."

"Then why the partnership?"

"U.S. law provides for it, and it helps ease some of the problems of a multinational family arrangement," Victoria said. "But the real reason is ... it seemed like a good idea at the time. It still does. But it's a long story. I'll tell it to you someday. I have a couple of things to do before we dock, so I'll meet you both in the observation bubble. All right?"

Feral looked disappointed. Victoria had learned, in their short acquaintance, that Feral would talk about anything for as long as anyone else could stand it.

"I wouldn't mind the condensed version—"

"The orcas have an interesting social structure." J.D. gave Victoria a sympathetic glance as she interrupted Feral without appearing to. "You can draw parallels between it and a family partnership ... "

Victoria extricated herself gratefully.

She felt a bit guilty about implying that she had some kind STARFARERS 6 5

of important errand to run before the transport docked. In fact, she wanted to take a shower and change clothes.

Zero-g showers amused her. The water skimmed over her, pulled across her body by a mild suction at one side of the compartment. When she was wet, she turned off the water and lathered herself with soap, scraped off most of the suds with an implement like the sweat-scraper of an ancient Greek athlete—or a racehorse—and turned the water on again till the last of the soap washed away. It felt like standing in a warm windy rain. When she finished, she was covered all over with a thin skin of water. She scraped herself off again, got out of the shower and closed the door, and turned the vacuum on high to vent the last of the water out of the compartment and into the recycler. Her whole body felt tingly

and refreshed.

As she dressed in her favorite new fancies, the warning signal sounded softly through the ship. A few minutes later, microgravity replaced zero-g as the transport decelerated.

Victoria hurried to the observation bubble, anxious to be home.

All alone, Zev swam through the cold water toward the harbor. He had come this way by himself a hundred times, maybe a thousand, and he had never felt alone. Before, he always knew he would find J.D. in the cove or on the shore, and his family back in the open water.

The tidal outflow from the harbor, just perceptibly warmed by the sun, flowed over him. He swam between the headlands that protected the beach.

When he reached J.D.'s anchored dock, he stopped and floated beneath its shadow. He could hear the artificial lung respiring in its compartment, waiting and waiting for someone who might never return. It was full of oxygen, ready, with a willingness bred into its cells, to give up the oxygen whenever a human needed it. It had no consciousness, of course, no brain, only the bare minimum of nerve tissue necessary to make it function. Yet Zev had the urge to reach in

- and stroke it, comfort it, like a pet.

•S' Instead he dove deeper and swam toward shore along the * harbor bottom, taking the environment into his memory like

66 vonda ft/. Mclntyre

a baleen whale scooping up plankton to store up energy before its long migration. He gathered the details of scarlet and yellow and green anemones, great gooseneck barnacles kicking their feet in the water to draw in their food, long strands of kelp reaching up toward sunlight, a pretty little octopus, watching curiously, following him cephalopod-fashion, squirting water and trailing its legs.

Zev's cousins, the orcas, did not forage for plankton. They hunted; they hunted what they found wherever they found

themselves.

He had always done the same; he would continue to do the same, despite a changed environment. He kicked hard and burst through the surface, nearly leaving the water before he splashed down again.

A human stood on the beach. He did not mistake this human for J.D.. though he had met precious few other true humans in his life. J.D. was gone.

The water became too shallow to swim in. He stood up on the rocky shelf and waded forward.

The human saw him coming and hurried toward him. She

Wu. different from J.D., her eyes without pupils and all gray. She wore a wet suit and carried a mask and fins.

"Hello," he said. "I am Zev."

"My name's Chandra. I don't suppose you ever heard of me, either. Do you know where J.D. Sauvage is?"

"She left for the starship."

"Oh. great."

He had no idea why her voice held anger, nor why she smelled of fear. Smells carried poorly in air, compared to water, and the wet suit covered all the places that would send off useful odors.

Chandra extended her hand to Zev. Zev slid his fingertips along her knobby fingers, up the back of her hand, and along the wrist- He felt her start to draw away, then relax again.

"Goodbye." he said.

"Wait! Where are you going?"

"To represent the divers on the deep space expedition."

"Hey, great, maybe I'll see you on board. Will I find other divers in the water?"

"Where else?" he asked, amused.

"I mean nearby."

STARFARERS 6 7

"No," he said.

"Where are they?"

"They have gone somewhere else."

Zev started up the beach.

He heard more humans coming toward the cove. They were

still out of sight, beyond the hill and among the Douglas firs.

He glanced back at Chandra.

"Are your friends coming to swim with you? I'm sure the orcas would not mind, if you asked, but you are supposed to ask."

"It's Just me," she said. "I was supposed to dive with Sauvage, but since she's not here I'm going in anyway."

A group of people, all dressed the same, appeared between the trees. They crashed down the slope, not bothering to be quiet.

"Military exercises, maybe?" Chandra said. "Those folks are in uniform, and they're carrying guns."

Zev hesitated. He was not entirely sure what the military was, but he knew they were responsible for the difficulties

his family faced. He did know the meaning of the word "gun." Guns were not permitted in the wilderness.

Zev was fearless, but he was not foolish. If he knew a shark was nearby and he was all alone, he would avoid it if he could. If the family were around, that might be different. But his family was far away.

He walked back down the beach and waded into the water.

"Wait!" Chandra called- "I'll go with you!"

He could tell she knew nothing about swimming as soon as she pushed off into the low waves- Instead of diving into them she tried to rise above them. They splashed her in the face and made her cough and choke and try to find her footing. Instead of turning back, she floundered on toward the dock. Terror poured out of her, the flavor carried strongly by the sea. Zev wondered what frightened her so.

He stroked beside her. "Put on your mask," he said.

She had jumped in so quickly that the mask still dangled from her arm by its strap, further hampering her attempts to swim. Zev moved closer to her, put one arm around her, and held her steady. She pushed the mask over her head. It pressed against the growths on her face. Zev wondered if it hurt. He

68 vonda N. Mcfntyre

pulled a few locks of her hair from beneath the edges of the mask, and hoped it would not leak.

The other humans reached the shore. They saw Zev and Chandra in the water. They broke into a run. Their feet made loud noises on the rocks. J.D. sometimes wore shoes, but not great heavy ones. The humans wore thick clothing and wide web straps from which depended chunks of metal and plastic. The smell ofoli and fire drifted across the water-

Zev dragged Chandra toward the dock.

"Hold your breath!"

"No—wait—"

She gasped and got a mouthful of water as he pulled her under. She struggled. He let her go and she rose toward the surface. She came up in the airspace beneath the dock, coughing again. Strips of bright sunlight poured through the cracks between the dock's floorboards.

"What's this all about?" she said. Her voice shook, and the water transmitted the trembling of her body. Excitement flushed her face. She had not trained herself to draw the blood from her skin and from her extremities while she swam in cold water.

"I do not know for sure," he said. "Bul I think they are dangerous to me. Perhaps not to you. I should not have pulled you like that, but you said you wanted to come and I thought you were in distress. Do you want to use the lung, or do you want to go back to shore by yourself?"

"I want the lung," she said.

"Take one deep breath, hold it, and relax." Though his request further intensified her fear, she did as he asked.

Zev pulled her underwater. He freed the lung and urged it toward her. When it touched her she shuddered, but she did not fight. The lung fitted itself against her and extended its processes toward the mask. When it had established itself. when Chandra could breathe its oxygen, Zev towed her deeper underwater and swam away with her. leaving the other, stranger humans behind on the beach.

Satoshi stretched, arching his back and spreading his arms.

His research image, displayed above him in the air. cast colored light over him and across half the geography theater.

His hands moved through the reflection of delicate lines.

STARPARERS 6 9

He pressed his head back against the contour couch, tensing all his muscles, then relaxing them. He had barely moved for four hours, as he put all his attention and energy into the map overlays. He kneaded his trapezius muscles.

Stefan Tomas of the world's best back rubs, Satoshi thought, where are you when I need you?

The display was so pretty he hated to put it away, but it took up half the theater. Though it was past eight o'clock, someone else might want to use the theater later on.

"Give me a projection," he said to Arachne. "Hard copy.

Then file and store."

A two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional representation of a four-dimensional problem was little more than a reminder of what he was doing. Nevertheless, he enjoyed the artistic aspects of it. He rolled up the hard copy and slid it into the accordion pocket of his cargo pants.

Twenty minutes to transport docking. Twice as much time as he needed to get to the waiting room, but he was eager to see Victoria. He wanted to be there when she arrived.

Pausing near the only other patch of light in the theater, he regarded the overlays critically.

"What do you think?"

Fox peered out from beneath the display. Its lights striped and shadowed her face.

"Not bad," Satoshi said. He looked at her quizzically.

"You don't have to spend twenty-four hours a day in here, you know. I'm already on your side."

"Is that what you think?" she said belligerently. "That I hang around here all the time just to impress my thesis professor? Thanks a lot."

"You're welcome," Satoshi said, nettled. Fox had that effect. She did not want sympathy. She wanted to stay with the expedition.

"Maybe I wanted to get the damned research done before I get kicked out. Maybe I'm trying to age myself six months prematurely so I can get exempted from the stupid rules."

"Maybe you're lucky to be up here at all. I'm surprised your family let you stay this long. How did you arrange that?"

"I do creative hysteria very well," Fox said sulkily.

"I'm sorry," Satoshi said. "I'm afraid you've reached the limits of creative hysteria. Even if your uncle approved—"

7 0 vonda N. Mcintyre

"Don't call him thai!" She looked around, theatrically.

"Jeez, I'll never live it down if people start finding'out the president is my uncle!"

"There's nobody else in here. Even if he approved of the expedition, he wouldn*t be able to exempt you. He doesn't have the authority, and pulling strings would look bad."

"I don't much care how it would look," Fox said. "All I care about is that I want to go on the expedition, and you won't let me."

"I know you're disappointed," Satoshi said. "But I did alt I could. Now I'm leaving. Don't stay too late."

She made a sound of anger and frustration and disappeared beneath the research display.

The conversation had taken up most of Satoshi's extra time. Fortunately, the theater lay at the same end of the cylinder as the docking hatch. He went outside, blinking in the bright daylight.

Satoshi jogged to the end of campus, where the floor of the cylinder blended into the cylinder's conical end, forming a steep slope. He sprinted up the hill. As he climbed, the gravity fell. His strides turned to long leaps. He bounded across a surface nearly perpendicular to the floor of the cylinder.

Satoshi jumped over the transition between the rotating cylinder and the stationary axis, grabbed the rungs of a guide ladder, and drew himself fast through the zero-g environment of the central cylinder. He climbed past the ends of the solar mirrors and ducked through the hatch that led to the docking port. Spotting Stephen Thomas on the other side of the waiting room, he threaded his way among the other people here to greet returning friends. The crowd was much smaller than it would have been a few weeks ago. A lot of people had been recalled. If the United States continued to insist on the conversion of the starship to military purposes, even the Canadians would pull out in protest. Satoshi had no idea what he and Stephen Thomas and Victoria would do then.

Satoshi drifted to a stop. Stephen Thomas, who hated zero-g, waited uneasily with one hand clamped around a grip. He managed to smile when he saw Satoshi. Satoshi floated to his

side and put one arm around him. Stephen Thomas hugged him with his free arm, then massaged the junction of Sato-

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shi's neck and shoulder. Satoshi groaned as the tight muscles started to loosen.

"Thanks. That feels great."

A hologram created itself in the center of the waiting room. As the image of the transport approached the image of the cylinder, all the people within the volume of the hologram drifted out of it and surrounded it, watching. The bulky, asymmetrical transport touched the docking port. The faint vibration of its attachment quivered around them.

Victoria had been away for less than two weeks. It felt like months.

Stephen Thomas patted Satoshi's shoulder. "I'll give you a proper massage when we get home."

"It's better already." He let himself drift in the quiet air. Stephen Thomas did his best to appear nonchalant about the lack of gravity.

"When are you going to let me take you out for a spacewalk?" Satoshi said.

Stephen Thomas pushed back his hair with his free hand.

As usual, he had come into zero-g with his hair flying loose.

"Probably never."

"You'd like it."

"Probably get sick in my spacesuit," Stephen Thomas said.

Satoshi let the subject drop. He was convinced that Stephen Thomas would leam to like zero-g if he experienced the complete freedom of an untethered spacewalk, but Stephen Thomas grew sullen if he was pushed to do something he preferred to avoid. Gentle encouragement worked better.

The docking port opened and the transport passengers entered Starfarer. The more experienced travelers came first. A couple of helpers went in to assist the novices.

Satoshi and Stephen Thomas greeted their friends and acquaintances. The people who had traveled all the way to earth stood out from those who had just visited one of the O'NeilI colonies; all the veterans returning from earth wore bright new clothes.

Victoria appeared, wearing a gold scarf around her hair, a matching vest, and a swiriy black split skirt. She soared toward him, hand in hand with a plain, heavyset woman who must be J.D. Sauvage, though Sauvage was supposed to be a novice in space. This woman moved with the assurance of a

72 vonda N. Mclntyre

veteran. Behind her she towed a young red-headed man whom

Satoshi could not place.

Victoria let go ofJ.D.'s hand and floated toward Satoshi.

They clasped wrists, tumbled one around the other, and drew close enough to embrace. Victoria kissed him.

"Oh, I missed you."

"Me, too," Satoshi said.

Victoria fended off the wall with her foot, and, in doing so, damped most of their spin and changed their direction back toward Stephen Thomas. A second touch stopped them in front of him. He embraced Victoria with his free arm, but kept hold of the grip with his other hand.

"Welcome home."

"Thanks," she whispered, not trusting her voice any louder. After a moment holding them both, she opened the circle to include the two newcomers. "J.D.," she said,

"these are my partners, Satoshi Lono and Stephen Thomas Gregory. Guys, J.D. Sauvage, our alien contact specialist.

And this is Feral Korzybski, the journalist. He's come to do a story on the expedition."

"Welcome to Starfarer."

Stephen Thomas glanced at J.D. quizzically.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, of course." She stared at Stephen Thomas. "Why do you ask?"

Satoshi hoped Stephen Thomas would leave auras out of the introductions. Sauvage apparently had some reservations about joining the team and the expedition. The last thing they needed was to have her decide Stephen Thomas was too strange to work with, and go straight back to earth on the same transport that had brought her. Never mind talking about auras in front of a reporter.

"Oh—no reason," Stephen Thomas said. "You looked worried, that's all."

"Have you been up here before?" Satoshi said.

"What?" She looked away from Stephen Thomas. "No, never."

"You look like an old hand in zero-g- But everybody knows everybody out here, and I know I've never met you."

"It must be because of diving, though there are a lot of differences. You move a lot faster than underwater." She took

STARPARERS 73

them all in with her glance. "Thank you for inviting me into the team. I know I'm going to like it. This feels . . . natural."

"Not to me," Stephen Thomas said plaintively. "Can we get back to solid ground?''

J.D. followed her new teammates from the transport waiting room, anxious for her first view of Starfarer.

Stephen Thomas disappeared over the lip of the tunnel entrance, hurrying toward the floor of the cylinder and Star-farer's normal seven-tenths gravity.

J.D. stopped short at the outlet of the tunnel, amazed by Starfarer. She sank toward the floor in the low false gravity, at the last moment remembering to get her feet under her.

The sun tubes, reflecting and dispersing sunlight from the solar mirrors, stretched along the axis of the cylinder, from above her to the distant far end. Their heat warmed J.D.'s face and shoulders and their light dazzled her.

Victoria glanced at her from a few meters down the hill.

"J.D., don't stare at the tubes'"

J.D. looked down fast. An abrupt wave of dizziness overtook her as the cylinder rolled back and forth around her. Victoria bounded to her side and grabbed her arm before she lost her balance.

"Stay still. It'll stop in a minute."

"I'm sorry." J.D. felt foolish. "I know better—about looking at the tubes am/about nodding or shaking my head."

Victoria smiled and patted her shoulder. "It's all right. Everybody 'knows' when they get up here that the light is direct from the sun, and that the inner ear reacts to the spin of the station. But the sun tubes look like great big fluorescent lights, and the acceleration feels just like gravity, so it takes a while to develop the new habits. Have you stopped spinning yet?"

"I think so." The dizziness had begun to disperse- It was a very strange sensation, one that would change depending on whether she nodded or shook or tilted her head, and depending on her relative orientation to Starfarer's spin. For the moment she had no wish to experiment with it.

Victoria let go of her elbow. "The light's filtered, so it's safer than looking at the sun, but it can damage your eyes.

Vonda N. Mdntyre

You have to be more careful in the wild cylinder, if you cross over fora visit. The light's even less filtered there."

"I'll remember." J.D. looked around, her gaze oblique to the sun tubes. "I know Starfarer is big—I knew exactly how big it is before I came up here. But I didn't realize how big it would feel.''

At the foot of the hill, the ground curved upward to her left and to her right. Far overhead, hazed by distance, the sides of the cylinder curved toward each other. The sun tubes obscured the side of the cylinder directly opposite, but the

rest lay spread above and around her like a map.

"Almost everybody has that reaction, their first time here."

"Come on, you guys'" Stephen Thomas shouted from halfway down the cylinder's end-hill. Below, the interior of the starship stretched out into the distance. Feral and Satoshi waited, ten meters down the slope. J.D. and Victoria joined them.

Feral squinted past the sun tubes toward the cylinder's far side. "Amazing how the people up there can keep their balance, walking upside down and all."

Victoria glanced sideways at him.

He grinned. "You've heard that one before, huh?"

"It's about the first oldest joke."

"I love your accent," Feral said.

"What accent?" Victoria said.

"You say 'oot' and *aboot' instead of 'out' and 'about.' "

"I don't have an accent," she said. "It's all you Americans who talk funny. Parlez.-vous franfais?"

"Huh?" Feral said.

"Un pen, " J.D. said.

"You do?" Victoria said to J.D., surprised. "I don't remember it from your vita—"

"It isn't academic French," J.D. said. "I picked it up the last few months. Most of the divers speak it."

They reached the bottom of the hill, and joined Stephen Thomas. On solid ground he was at ease. and he moved with grace and certainty. As Victoria and Satoshi came off the hill, Stephen Thomas kissed Victoria intensely, and drew Satoshi into the embrace. J.D. envied them a bit, and she felt glad for them, and a tittle embarrassed.

"I'll see you all tomorrow," she said. She started away. STARFARERS 75

"J.D.," Victoria said, "do you know where you're going?"

"Um, no, but I'm sure Arachne will get me to where I'm supposed to stay.''

"Don't be silly. We'll show you, and get you settled."

Victoria and Satoshi went with J.D., while Stephen Thomas set off with Feral to show him to the guesthouse.

Thick, weedy grass and flowers covered much of the land

of the campus. At first J.D- could not figure out why it looked

so familiar to her, until she realized that the ecosystem of

Starfarer, planned as a natural succession, reproduced the first growth in a forest after a big fire. Of course the campus lacked the black tumble of half-burned trees, snags, uprooted trunks.

They followed a small stream. J.D- tried to trace its course along the inside of the cylinder, but soon lost it among hedgerows. Above, on the other side of the cylinder, a network of silver streams patterned the raw ground and sprouting grass.

The interior radius of one end of Starfarer's cylinder was slightly shorter than that of the other end. The resulting slope formed a gentle gradient of artificial gravity that caused the streams to flow from this end of the cylinder to the other.

They erupted at the base of the hill and flowed in spirals around the interior of the campus. Every so often a stream spread out into a clear lake, or a bog or swamp thick with water hyacinths and other cleansing plants. At the far end of the cylinder lay a salt marsh, the main buffer of the ecosystem, Evaporation and transpiration and rain recycled some of the water, and some flowed underground through pumps and desalinizers, back to its starting point.

At first Victoria and Satoshi followed a resilient rock-foam path, but after a few hundred meters Victoria turned down a dirt trail that had been worn into the grass.

"Do you have deer on campus?" J.D. asked.

"Not in this cylinder. These are people trails. If one gets awfully popular, we foam it."

J.D. looked around curiously. Along the length of the cylinder she could see clearly only a few hundred meters, because windbreaks of saplings or bushes separated the fields.

She stopped short. "What's that?"

Several dog-sized animals bobbed toward her through the 76 vonda N. Mcintyre

high grass of the next field. Back on the island, a pack of half-wild dogs ran free, far more dangerous than any wolf pack or coyote band.

"That's the horse herd," Satoshi said.

"Horse herd'"

Their tiny hooves tattooed the damp ground, the thick grass. Five miniature horses skidded to a stop in front of J.D., whinnying in high-pitched voices, snorting at each other. A pinto no taller than J.D-'s knee squealed and kicked out at a bay that crowded too close. They whuffled expectantly around her feet.

Victoria reached down and scratched one behind the ears.

"I'm fresh out of carrots," she said. "Satoshi, have you got anything for them?"

He dug around in the side cargo pocket of his pants, underneath a crumpled map printout, and found a few peanuts.

He opened them, rubbing the shells to powder between his fingers before letting them fall to the ground. The miniature horses crowded closer. Satoshi gave J.D. the peanuts. The horses lipped them softly from her hands. They nuzzled the backs of her knees, her ankles, and her shoes.

** I didn't know horses liked peanuts," J.D. said.

"They might prefer apples," Satoshi said, "but the trees aren't established yet. Next year we may get some fruit.

Sugar's still fairly expensive up here, since we haven't started processing it. Lots of carrots, but peanuts are easier to carry. Drier."

Victoria chuckled. "He left a carrot in his pocket once, for I don't know how long. The laundry sent it back."

"It wasn't that bad," Satoshi said to J.D. He shrugged.

"It was more or less fossilized before anybody found it."

"Why are they here?"

"The minis, you mean, not the carrots?"

"People do better with pets around," Victoria said. "And they keep the grass from getting completely overgrown."

"I see," J.D. said. "The mini-horses are easier to keep track of than cats or dogs or hamsters—and easier on the ecosystem, too, I suppose." She sat on her heels and rubbed the soft muzzle of a seven-hand Appaloosa.

"Right. Alzena—Alzena Dadkhah, she's the chief ecolo-gist—is trying to get some birds established. A lot of people

STARFARERS 77

would like to have dogs or cats—I'd like to have my cat. But I can see her point about predators. And domestic rodents are too adaptable. According to Alzena, once you've got them, you've got them everywhere. So far we haven't had any rats, but it could happen. Then there's the waste problem."

"Sorry, little one, that's the end of the peanuts," J.D. said to the Appaloosa. "I see the point about waste. Herbivore waste isn't quite as unattractive as carnivore waste."

"Easier to compost, too," Satoshi said.

J.D. patted the Appaloosa one last time- She straightened up. The mini tossed its head, looking for another handout. It was a cute little animal.

Something about it made J.D. uncomfortable, and that was exactly the problem: it was cute. In being bred down from magnificence, the horses had been made trivial, converted from strong, powerful animals to lapdogs.

She clapped her hands sharply. The minis snorted and started and galloped away. They scattered, galloping and bucking, and re-formed their herd a hundred meters across the field.

J.D. saw her new house for the first time. She had known the houses formed part of the topography, built into hillsides with one wall of windows. But she had not expected hers to be beautiful.

"I love it," J.D. said. "It looks organic, somehow. But why do it like this? Not to conserve energy, surely." While Starfarer still flew within the solar system, the sun would provide all the power it could possibly use. Once it clamped itself to the universe's web of cosmic string, the problem would be to keep from being overwhelmed by the energy flux.

"Not here and now," Victoria said. "But we can't know all the conditions we'll face after we leave. The basic reason is aesthetic and ecological. The more plants on the surface, the less ground we cover with buildings and pathways and so forth, the more stable and resilient the ecosystem will be.

The plants keep the air fresher, they soak up the runoff from rain—"

J.D. glanced up. Starfarer was large enough to have its own weather patterns, including rain. Two different systems of clouds drifted over the land on the other side of the cylinder.

Victoria pointed at the most distant cloud system. "That far-overhead system will be near-overhead in half a rotation.

The ecosystems analysts encourage rain in the cylinders—it's easier and cheaper than air-conditioning. Smells better, too."

"No thunder and lightning, though. I'm sure," J.D. said

79

80 vonda N. Mclntyre

wistfully. That would be too risky, both because of all the electronics within Starfarer, and because of the amount of energy even a small lightning bolt can let loose.

"No, you're right." Victoria laughed. "That, they discourage."

"It's the one thing I missed in the Pacific Northwest," J.D. said. "There was lots of rain, but hardly ever any thunder."

She hesitated. She wanted to ask so many questions about Starfarer and the alien contact department. But she would have time. "I'll see you tomorrow, right?"

"First thing," Satoshi said.

"We'll come and get you and go watch the solar sail test."

They bid each other good night. J.D. watched Victoria and Satoshi walk away, hand in hand.

Griffith glanced back at earth one last time before leaving the transport. This was his first trip into space. He had known, intellectually, how far he would be from the planet, but the distance struck him emotionally only when he could hold out his hands and cup the world between them.

At this distance, it would take the very best surveillance equipment—perhaps even the next generation of surveillance equipment—to get fine detail from earth- The starship would have to move to a lower orbit.

Griffith hated waste. Starfarer should never have been built this far out to begin with. A great deal of time and money and reaction mass had gone into its construction. Even though most of its mass came from cheap lunar material, O'Neill colony leftovers, it had required a significant number of earth-to-orbit payloads.

Griffith moved into the starship, hand over hand along the grips. He was getting the hang of zero-g navigation, but he envied people with the experience to move naturally and gracefully.

He left the docking gate and entered the main body of Starfarer. He stopped at the center of the slope where he could look out into the cylinder.

Where earth had been too small to believe, the cylinder was far too large. He was amazed and appalled by the amount of space. From where he held himself, the end of the cylinder appeared to slope up to meet the walls of the cylinder, the

STARFARERS 81

living space of Starfarer. He knew, though, that when he started to travel along one of the numerous paths leading away from the gate, the apparent gravity would increase. He would perceive himself climbing down to the floor.

Disorientation dizzied him. He closed his eyes, but that only made it worse. Keeping his gaze away from the weird slope and the enormous cylinder, he found the path leading to the proper section. He drew himself onto it and gripped the rail.

Lower on the slope, the artificial gravity held him on the stairs. He released his death grip on the railing. Other people on the path at the level he had reached were leaping up and down the slope like gazelles, like moon-walkers, ignoring the switchbacks, but Griffith moved slowly and steadily and cautiously. He felt dizzy. He supposed it was a psychosomatic reaction that resulted from his knowing that the cylinder was spinning, for he was below the level at which his inner ear ought to be able to detect the spin. The dizziness bothered him, for he was not much given to psychosomatic reactions.

He made some quick calculations about the population density of the starship. Though he knew he had done the calculations correctly—he made a policy of exercising his mind in this way, so as not to become too dependent on outside da-tabases—the number struck him as so absurdly low that he sent out a line to the web and had it check his arithmetic. It was accurate. Then his amazement at the size of the cylin-der—and there were two of them, one completely uninhabited, designed and intended to remain that way—changed to resentment and envy. The people who lived here had all the space in the world . . .

He laughed, a quick sarcastic bark. Back in the world, there was arable land, there was useless land, there were restricted wildernesses, and there were cities. Not much space remained for stretching out. The spoiled academics who lived up here had no idea how fortunate they were. Or, more likely, they knew perfectly well. No doubt they had planned it this way.

They had better enjoy their luxury while it lasted. Soon everything would change.

The path forked. He let Arachne guide him to the proper track. Below him, on the slope, the pathways branched and

82 vonda N. Mcfntyre

branched again, like a river splitting and spreading its fingers across a delta. Otherwise the pathways that had begun so close together, in the center of the cylinder cap, would end at great distances from each other. By following the correct branch, Griffith could reach the proper longitude of the cylinder.

No one had come to meet him, which was as he had planned. He preferred being left to himself. He would observe in anonymity and make his recommendations without any fuss.

The departure of several of the associate nations could only help in the conversion he planned. It could be made to look as if they were grasping at a convenient excuse and cutting their losses, finding the starship project to be too big, too expensive for their budgets. And, who knew? That might even be true.

A few associates might hold out, but the change had begun and it could not be stopped. At this point, objecting to the use of the starship as a military base came close to treason. Unfortunately, it would not look good to arrest half the faculty and staff of the expedition even if Griffith found evidence against them. Never mind. Arrests would be unnecessary. By the time he finished his work, the scientists would give up and go home.

Griffith knew there must be people on board who disagreed with the majority view, but who feared to speak up against it. He hoped to discover them.

He took a mental glance at a map of the campus transmitted by the web. His perception of the transmission made it overlap his sight, like the tactical display on the window of a fighter jet. Most people had to close their eyes to receive visually oriented information from the web.

The map led him to the guesthouse. He climbed the path and walked under the hill and through the open doorway. It irked him that he would be forced to stay in an underground room. Back on earth he lived high in a skyscraper, and he had waited a long time—and paid several bribes—to get an apartment looking over the city and the flat stark plains beyond. Having paid the bribes still troubled him.

The lobby was deserted and empty. Not even an AS waited to serve him.

STARFARERS 8 3

"Hello!"

No one replied. Griffith went behind the desk, intending to go into the back and rout out whoever or whatever was supposed to be in attendance.

A sheet of paper rustled beneath his shoe. He picked it up:

a sign, blown to the floor by a breeze. It carried a notice in several languages, beginning with French. He glanced farther down and found the English version.

"We regret that we are not here to aid you. Our government has called us home for consultations."

Griffith snorted at the idea of hotel keepers* being called home for consultations. His briefing had neglected to mention that France held the guesthouse concession and that all its personnel would be gone by the time he arrived.

"Please choose a chamber from our diagram and consider our house yours during your stay. We have no locks so no code is required. Please put soiled linen into the laundry chute. Fresh linen may be retrieved from the armoire in the hallway.''

The lack of locks irked him even more than the idea of staying underground. Not that he was stupid enough to bring anything sensitive with him, but if anyone found out who he was they would not know that, and they might search his belongings. Besides, some people would snoop even without suspicions to go on.

Griffith was a very private person.

He glanced at the diagram. Two rooms out often had been spoken for. He left signing in till after he had seen what the guesthouse had to offer.

He strode along the ramp leading to a second-story hallway. The interior wall was blank. Doors to the guest apartments opened from the exterior wall. Each end of the hallway led out onto a balcony and exit ramp.

The guesthouse was more pleasant than he expected, and, though it was indeed underground, each room flowed into its own small terrace just beneath the crest of the hill. All the rooms were similar, with one wall of windows. The hillside sloped to a stream and a small grove of trees. The furnishings were Spartan: a futon, a small desk, woven mats on the floor. His shoes crunched on the floor coverings.

To give himself the most privacy, he chose the room next

84 vonda N. Mcintyre

to the most distant exit. He dumped his things, apparently at

random, on the futon, then left to lake a long exploratory walk.

FIoris Brown waited in the transport until someone came along to help her. The excitement of the trip had begun to catch up with her, and she felt tired. She dreaded the return to gravity. Weightlessness was a blessing, easing the aches of lift-off as well as the aches of age that she had suffered for twenty years.

As she waited, she looked out the dorsal port.

The bow of the transport obscured her view of the inhabited cylinder, but the wild cylinder spun slowly in the distance. Even farther away, the furled sail lay waiting for its test deployment. It looked like a huge, tautly twisted silver cable.

A young man dove into the transport, sailed through the aisle, and stopped himself just above her. She smiled at him. Everyone on the transport had been so clean-cut. This was the first person she had seen who dressed in a manner she found familiar and comfortable. He was a big man, with dark skin and hair so black it had blue highlights. He wore ragged blue jeans and a black leather vest; he was clean-shaven but his hair was long, tied back in a ponytail, fanning out behind his head. Despite his youth, sun-squint lines radiated from the comers of his eyes.

"I'm your liaison. Infinity Mendez."

"Hello." She extended her hand. "My name is FIoris Brown."

He took her hand and held it rather than shaking it. His hand completely surrounded her skinny, wrinkled fingers. She felt embarrassed by the gnaried blue veins.

"We don't shake hands much in zero-g, Ms. Brown," he said. "One more force to counteract."

"Please call me FIoris."

He unfastened her seat belts with deft and impatient movements, then turned his back to her. The fringe on his leather vest dangled raggedly.

"Grab your stuff and grab hold," he said.

The fastenings stuck. She fumbled at the net.

He made a peculiar motion of his hands and shoulders that STARFARERS 8 5

caused him to rotate toward her. Without comment, he unfastened the net, stuck it under his arm, and presented her with his fringe again. She wound her hands in the cut leather. It felt warm and slippery. He gathered his strength, like an animal about to leap.

She was afraid he would wrench out her arms, but he pushed off carefully and glided with surprising smoothness

between the seats of the transport, drawing her after him.

They were the last people to leave the passenger compartment. Even the waiting room had cleared out.

"How are you on hills?" Infinity asked.

"Slow," she said.

"Okay." He took her to an elevator. "Hold on, and keep your feet near the floor.''

He pointed to one surface, which FIoris would not necessarily have chosen as the floor except for the orientation of the grasps and the painted outlines of footprints.

"This'll feel weird. Something to do with the spin. You need a physicist to explain it, but you get used to it. Down," he said to the elevator. It complied.

At first she thought he must have told her the wrong surface to keep her feet near, for she felt a force drawing her toward the surface of the elevator at her back. Gradually, as the elevator slid toward the floor of the cylinder, the force slid, too, pulling from a more and more horizontal orientation till it fell and acted like gravity, staying steady and "down."

The elevator stopped.

"Most folks don't come this way," Infinity said. He set off toward the bright end of the tunnel.

FIoris stepped out of the elevator. She stumbled. Strange how she could have gotten so used to weightlessness in two days. She steadied herself and followed Infinity Mendez, trying to keep up.

Returning to gravity was not as hard as she had feared. Starfarer's seven-tenths g made walking easier than back on earth.

She stepped cautiously out into the cylinder, into fresh cool air. She looked around, then up. For a moment she shrank back, as if the whole incredible construction might collapse upon her. Pictures failed to reproduce the feeling of observing one's world from the inside, from above. FIoris felt as

8 6 vonda N. Mdntyre

she imagined a fifteenth-century explorer might have, had he crossed the equator and discovered the people on the other side really did walk upside down on the far side of the world. She stepped gingerly out of the tunnel, crossed the semicircle of rock foam at its base, and stood on the new grass.

She glanced at her liaison.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Not many old people on board Starfarer," he said. "Not as old as you, anyway. 1 hardly know anybody who's old."

She tried not to be offended. She wondered how many

other people on board Starfarer had grown up in space, in a

society that was missing the entire eldest generation.

"Don't you have grandparents back on earth?"

"Somewhere. 1 don't know. Come on." Carrying her things, he strode off across a bright green lawn that lay between rougher fields. His unshod feet barely marked the grass. She followed, wondering if she, too, should take off her shoes. When she glanced back, the tender new blades had sprung back from his tread, but she had left marks on the grass and on the ground.

He had already crossed half the field. She gave up trying to match his speed; it was impossible. Instead, she walked at her own pace. She wondered if the people on board Starfarer would be able to accept her limitations.

Her limitations were one of the reasons for her being here:

to help people remember the variety of human beings.

Infinity turned and watched her from a distance.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing," she said.

"Then why are you going so slow?"

"This is as fast as I can go."

"Oh."

She hoped he would come back and help her, but he simply waited, watching with puzzlement rather than impatience.

When she reached him, she wrapped her thin fingers around his elbow before he could stride off and outdistance her.

Though his forehead furrowed when she took his arm, he tolerated the touch.

Floris found it astonishing to walk inside a starship in the same way she would walk through a meadow. She tried to

STARFARERS 8 7

remember the last time she had walked through a meadow.

She had been living in the city for many years.

The starship seemed empty. Occasionally she would see someone at a distance, but Infinity took her to the next meadow, a rougher, wilder one, and after that she saw no other people.

Floris kept up as long as she could. When she was young she loved to take long walks. She hated to admit that even in low gravity she no longer could do it. Finally she let go of Infinity's arm and sank down on a boulder with a sound of distress and exhaustion.

"I'm going to get you a cart."

Floris remained silent until her heartbeat steadied. "You said it wasn't very far. But we're in wilderness! Where are the people?" Above, on the other side of the starship, there were tracks and paths, streams and buildings, and the move-

ment of small spots that she took to be human beings.

"There's lots of open space, but plenty of people live around here. Some of them have, you know, left, but they'll be back. We're almost there."

She pushed herself to her feet.

They walked through a wide, shallow valley that cut diagonally across the cylinder floor. A creek ran through its center, bubbling over jagged cracked stones to a confluence with a larger stream. Bushes grew in ragged scatters. Straight bare vertical branches crowded together along the creek bank.

"Pretty, huh?" Infinity said.

"It's half-finished. Like everything else I've seen."

He nodded. "Yeah. That's true. You should've seen it before the ground cover sprouted. Mud. What a mess. When the lilacs grow some more, it'll be solid green over there. They've already got buds. And look at the willows. See the pink and red and yellow at the tips? That's where they're growing."

Floris tried to find comfort in the faint haze of color that tipped the bare willow twigs, but the ragged landscape depressed her.

"How do you know so much?" She did not mean her tone to be so sharp.

"I planted most of it," Infinity said mildly. "There's not much call for station builders anymore, but I didn't want to

88 vonda N. Mclneyre

go back to the O'NeiHs. I like working outdoors. So I transferred to gardening."

She barely heard him. The far curve of the cylinder loomed overhead, and the bright reflected sunlight dazzled her. She wanted to get inside, beneath a roof. She wanted to rest.

"Do you even have roofs here?" she said. Her voice was faint.

"Sure," Infinity said. "How else would we keep t,he rain off?" He stopped. "And here's your roof itself."

Fforis stared, appalled. "They promised me a house," she said. She felt near tears.

It looked like pictures she had seen of ancient pueblos, abandoned for centuries. This one had been abandoned so long that even the climate had changed, and the clean dry rock was covered over with dirt and moss and growing things.

It was full of windows and doors and pathways and stairs.

She knew she would have trouble getting around in it.

"Here you are," he said. He opened a sliding window and led her inside.

"I don't want to live in a cave," she said. "They promised me a house."

"This is a house. What's wrong with it? It's as good as anybody's got, and better than most. The chancellor lives down the path a way."

He led her across a treacherous carpeting of slippery woven grass mats to a stone window seat. She sat, gratefully.

"All these mats are gifts," Infinity said. "People on campus made them for you. There's a welcome party for you tomorrow night."

The underground apartment felt dank and cold. Floris shivered.

Hearing footsteps, she glanced up. A tall figure strode past her outer doorway and vanished.

Infinity stared out the window.

"You know who that was?" Awe took his low voice down another half octave.

"I have no idea," Floris said.

"It was Nikolai Petrovich Cherenkov. He lives here, but I've only seen him a couple of times. You know, the Russian—"

"I remember."

STARFARERS 8 9

Nikolai Petrovich Cherenkov had defected when the Mideast Sweep recalled the Russian cosmonauts. Now tie lived permanently in space. He was nearly FIoris's age, and very famous. He could not return to earth because the Sweep had convicted him of treason, in absentia, and sentenced him to death.

"He lives here? In my house?"

"No, sure not. The way it works, it's easier to put together a bunch of houses at a time, then put a hill over top of them. You're in kind of a triplex arrangement, and Cherenkov has the one highest up."

"Who lives in the third part of the triplex?"

"Thanthavong. The geneticist."

Floris frowned. The strange name sounded familiar, but she could not place it.

"They say she came up here because she couldn't gel any work done back on earth. She was too famous, and the publicity just kept going on year after year."

"Publicity about what?"

"The anti-virus. She invented it- Before I was even bom, but don't you remember?"

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Vonda%20N%20McIntyre%20-%20Starfarers.txt "Oh. Yes."

"Ms. Brown—"

"Floris. Florrie."

"—I'm sure they won't bother you. I've been planting here for weeks and this is the first time I've seen Cherenkov. Than-thavong leaves for her lab at dawn and hardly ever comes back before dark. I bet you won't see Thanthavong any more than you see Cherenkov. '

"But I want to se6 people! That's why I came up here! Do you think I want to be all alone? *'

She might as well have stayed on earth. Only two things prevented her from demanding that Infinity Mendez take her back to the transport. The first was that she felt so tired. The second was that though the starship would fly into the darkness and disappear, it had a good chance of returning. Back home. entering the darkness forever was a possibility she had to face every time she worked up the nerve to leave her apartment.

"I didn't mean nobody would talk to you. Sure they wilt.

90 vonda N. Mclntyre

I meant nobody would bother you if you didn't want to be bothered."

Floris turned away from the window and huddled on the seat. When she applied to the program, it had all sounded wonderful. A house of her own, and people to talk to anytime she wished, and no worry about being sent away. Instead, here she was in an unfurnished concrete apartment, with only two neighbors, both foreigners, both so famous they .would probably not even deign to speak to her, and one of them a hermit.

And both of them, she suddenly realized, elderly.

She tried to remain calm.

"You've brought me here and put me in an old people's home," she said.

"What? No, I didn't, I mean, there isn't any such thing on Starfarer."

"I don*t believe you. My children wanted me to go to an old people's home. I can't. I'll die."

Floris pushed herself to her feet and crossed the slippery mats.

"I don't want to live here anymore," she said, and walked out into the valley.

The net bag full of presents bounced gently against Victoria's side, and the muscles ofSatoshi's back moved smoothly beneath her hand. As she walked beside him toward their house, she slid her fingers under the black tank top that

showed his shoulders to such good advantage. The heat of his skin made her shiver. He tightened his arm around her waist. Victoria covered his hand with her free hand, and laced her fingers between him.

Everything around her felt and looked and smelled and sounded sharp and clear and vivid, as if happiness had intensified all her perceptions, as if she possessed more than the normal number of senses. For tonight, she would put aside both her desire for some uninterrupted work time, and her worries about the expedition.

The low round hills had gone gray in the shadowless twilight. The sun tubes dimmed nearly to darkness as Victoria and Satoshi turned off the main path and strolled up the gentle slope toward the house. Hills formed the interior topography

STARFARERS 91

of both the campus cylinder and the wild cylinder. Hills increased the sense of privacy as well as the usable surface area, but they made Victoria feel closed in. Despite her years in Vancouver, she had spent much of her childhood in and around Winnipeg. She always expected to be able to see long distances to the horizon. Starfarer had no horizon.

Dwarf fruit trees lined the approach to the house. Because of her trip, Victoria had missed the peak of Slarfarer's first real spring. The cherry blossoms had already fallen. The petals lay in pink and white drifts across the path.

The hillside that covered Victoria's house stretched one long low ridge in a semicircle to form a courtyard in front of the main windows. Victoria and Satoshi rounded the tip of the ridge. They were home.

Victoria stopped. Scattered patches of flowers covered the inner slope of the ridge. In the fading light, the blue-gray foliage lost most of its color, but the petals glowed a brilliant, luminous white.

"They bloomed!"

Satoshi smiled. "I thought you'd be pleased."

When Victoria left for earth, the pinks she had planted had been nothing but hard gray buds. Now they spotted the slope with color and spiced the air with their scent.

Victoria bent down, cupped one of the pinks between her hands, and breathed its carnation fragrance. She left it unplucked, though there must be a thousand flowers on the hillside, white ones, pink ones, white with bright red veining.

When they spread and grew together, they would cover the bank with dusty-blue ensiform leaves.

The house was still dark—Stephen Thomas must not be home yet. As Victoria and Satoshi approached, the inside lights came on, casting bright patches across the courtyard.

French windows formed the entire exterior wall of the house.

They were, as usual, wide open- Only Stephen Thomas insisted on using the front door, which he had chosen. It was solid and opaque, a tall rock-foam slab with a rounded top.

Stephen Thomas was an unregenerate fan ofJ. R. R. Tolkien. Victoria liked to tease him that he was far too tall to live in a hobbit-house. He must be of elven stock. Sometimes she wondered.

The British countryside had influenced Victoria, too. The 92 Vonda N. Mclntyre

grass on the roof grew so long that it drooped, and occasionally Victoria trimmed the edges to resemble the thatched roof of an ancient Devon cottage. The thick shaggy grass made the house look as if it had eyebrows.

Victoria and Satoshi stepped through the open French windows. As Victoria kicked off her shoes, she noticed the contraption of glass and metal tubes that hunkered on the floor.

"I give up," Victoria said. "What is it?"

"It's a still. Stephen Thomas was going to find someplace else to put it. I guess he didn't get around to it."

"What's it/or?"

"He says that when his vines are established, and after he learns to make wine, he'll be able to distill brandy."

"What happened to the champagne he was going to make?"

Satoshi chuckled.

They circumnavigated the still.

The main room was plainly furnished. Woven mats covered the solar-fired tiles on the floor; the furniture was of rattan and bamboo. Alzena promised that soon a few trees could be harvested, but for now everyone who wanted furniture made of organic materials had to make do with members of the grass family, fast-growing annuals.

Victoria wanted a rug, but in order to get one she might have to persuade Alzena to approve growing a couple of sheep—it was probably too late to import any from the O'Neilk—then raise them and learn to shear and spin and weave the wool herself. Victoria barely had time for her garden, not to mention the problem of persuading Alzena that sheep would not denude the hillsides. As indeed they might:

one more factor Victoria would have to research if she proposed the project.

Victoria signaled the interior illumination to dim. As the last sunlight faded and the sun tubes began reflecting starlight, the wall of windows and the skylights filled the room with a soft silver illumination.

"Stephen Thomas?"

No one answered.

"He better come home soon," Victoria said. She let the

carrying net slip from her shoulder to the floor, and flung herself onto the folded futon they used for a couch.

STARFARERS 93

Satoshi joined her. Their shoulders touched, and their thighs. Satoshi's kiss left his taste on Victoria's lips.

Victoria heard Stephen Thomas's voice, low and light and cheerful, unmistakable even at a distance. A second voice replied.

Stephen Thomas strode up the path and opened the front door. Kicking off his thongs, he took two long strides and flung himself onto the couch beside his partners.

"Let's go to bed and screw like weasels," he said.

Feral Korzybski, carrying a net bag, followed him into the house.

Completely unembarrassed, Stephen Thomas kissed Victoria and Satoshi and sprawled on the lounge beside them, one arm around Satoshi's shoulders, fingertips brushing the back of Victoria's neck. Of the members of the partnership, he was—at least in public—the most physically demonstrative.

"Uh, hello, Feral," Victoria said. "Was the guesthouse full?"

Victoria felt glad that her dark complexion hid the blush mat crept up her face. Stephen Thomas was only voicing the thought all three partners had. One of the things that first attracted Victoria to him was his ability to say exactly what he thought under most circumstances; and his ability to get himself out of the trouble that sometimes caused him- She reached up and touched his coo! slender fingers where they rested against the back of her neck.

"There's hardly anybody at the guesthouse," Stephen

Thomas said. "Feral checked in, but it's kind of creepy over

there. So I invited him to stay with us."

Victoria looked at Stephen Thomas, surprised and unbelieving.

"I really appreciate the hospitality," Feral said. "I don't think I'd get a good feel for what it's like to live here if I had to stay in the hotel."

"But—" Victoria stopped, not wanting to hurt Feral's feelings.

"Let me show you to the spare room," Satoshi said quickly. He got up.

Sometimes his good manners were too good to be believed.

This was one of those times.

94 Vonda N. Mdntyre

He took Feral into the back hallway. Stephen Thomas followed.

Disgruntled, Victoria sat with her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists. After a moment she got up and went unwillingly down the hall.

The corridor was almost dark. Lit only by daylight or starlight shining through roof windows, it ran behind the main room and the bedrooms. The rough rock foam remained unfinished. No one had taken the time to pretty it up. She passed Satoshi's room and Stephen Thomas's room and her own room.

She hesitated outside the fourth bedroom, the room that should have been Merit's. Then she berated herself silently.

She would have an excuse for her feelings if anyone had ever used this room, if it had real memories in it. But the accident occurred before they ever even moved here. Overcoming her reluctance to go in, she followed her partners. Overcoming her reluctance to let a stranger use it would be more difficult.

The partnership used the room for nothing, not even storage. Victoria had seldom gone into it. The AS kept it spotless. It remained as impersonal as a hotel, with a futon folded in one comer and no other freestanding furniture, only the built-ins. Stephen Thomas stood just inside the door, suddenly uneasy, and Satoshi stood by the closed window, looking out into the front yard.

"We weren't expecting company," Victoria said.

Feral tossed his duffel bag on the floor.

"No, this is great. I don't need much, and I promise not to gel in the way. This will really help. Isolation is no good for getting decent stories."

J.D.'s house was very quiet. The thick rock-foam walls cushioned sound. Woven mats, gifts from co-workers as yet unmet, softened the floor. A futon lay in her bedroom. Victoria had apologized for the sparseness of the furnishings, but after the beach cabin this house of three rooms felt perfectly luxurious.

Still, a lot of work remained before her new place would feel like home.

She ought to try to sleep, but she was still wide awake. STARFARERS 95

The season on Starfarer was spring, and the days were lengthening. It lacked at least an hour till darkness.