The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “They will visit if you wish. Believe me. I had to train them very hard before they gave up and accepted me as a hermit.”

  Griffith stopped, staring at the man who sat hunched on the window seat. Griffith was more familiar with him as he had looked when he was younger, but age could not distort the wide, high cheekbones, the square line of the jaw. It only intensified the unusual gray streaks in the man’s dark hair.

  “My god!” Griffith said. “You are Cherenkov!”

  The younger man jumped to his feet, startled; the elderly woman flinched. The old man turned toward Griffith.

  “Yes.” His voice was as calm as before. “But I prefer my acquaintances to address me as Kolya. Who are you?”

  “Griffith, GAO. I heard your voice, I recognized it. Sir, I just want to express my admiration for your exploits, your bravery — ”

  “I was very young,” Cherenkov said. Suddenly he sounded tired. “Only young people are foolish enough for that kind of bravery. Will you join us? This is Mr. Mendez, who is an artist of the Earth. This is Ms. Brown, who has just moved here.”

  “You frightened me,” the old lady said with frail dignity.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Griffith said. He looked her up and down. Grandparents in Space was a program he intended to use against the expedition. With Ms. Brown as the program’s first member, he thought his attack would be even more effective.

  “Will you have some tea?” Ms. Brown said.

  The chance to talk to Cherenkov lured him in.

  “Sure.”

  As Griffith entered the room, Mendez sank down on the edge of the bed. Griffith could feel his attention, his suspicion, his fear. He was a strange-looking character, with long thick black hair tied up on the top of his head. He wore a couple of earrings and a grubby, fringed leather vest. Dirt was ground permanently into the knees of his pants. Pretending to be oblivious to the younger man’s discomfort, Griffith sat next to him. Cherenkov had the window seat, and Ms. Brown the only chair. The old woman leaned forward and tremulously poured another cup of tea.

  “What is GAO?” Cherenkov asked. “I’m not familiar with that branch of the military.”

  “GAO’s the Government Accountability Office, sir,” he said. “It isn’t military at all. I’m just here to do a few surveys. Check the outlays and so forth.”

  “Ah. By your carriage, I took you for a military man.”

  Griffith made himself chuckle. “Well, sir, the drill sergeant would accept that as a compliment. She said I was hopeless. I did my time, General, like everybody else.”

  “Your sergeant drilled into you too much military courtesy. You must not call me ‘general’ or ‘sir.’ If you must use a title, ‘tovarishch’ will do. I still prefer ‘Kolya.’”

  “I’ll try to remember, sir, er... Kolya. It wasn’t the sergeant who drilled that into me so much as ten years in government.” Cherenkov put him off balance. He sipped his tea to cover his discomfort, to conceal the intensity of his interest. He wondered if he could get Cherenkov to talk about the past without putting his own cover at risk. Griffith glanced at Mendez, sitting beside him and holding a teacup with surprising delicacy. “So you’re part of one percent for art,” he said.

  “I’m a gardener,” Mendez said.

  “But the general said — ”

  “It was a joke,” Mendez said, looking down, embarrassed.

  “A joke!” Cherenkov said. “Hardly. You are an artist, and my admiration is sincere. Floris, did you admire Infinity’s work when you walked through the garden?”

  “I used to have roses,” she said. “But when I moved, there wasn’t any room for roses.”

  “We don’t have too many roses up here yet,” Infinity said. “We needed ground cover first. Annuals are fastest. Roses take a while to get established, and they need a lot of hand labor.”

  “Oh.” Ms. Brown’s voice was small and sad and disappointed.

  “I could try to get some, though,” Infinity said.

  Griffith decided the old woman was self-centered at best and getting on toward senile at worst, and he did not understand what she was doing here. The one percent program was bad enough; who ever heard of an art department on a scientific expedition? But grandparents? Next thing, they would be shipping kids up, or having their own. He supposed that if he were planning to create a generation ship he might want to begin with a complete age-mix. He filed the information away for further use.

  “Floris,” Cherenkov said, “will you consent to be my neighbor for a week? If at the end of that time you prefer to move, I will speak to the housing committee on your behalf. I have some credibility here.”

  She hesitated, watching him and blinking, like some elderly cold-blooded reptile waiting for the sun to warm her enough that she could move and think.

  “They said I had to stay even if I didn’t like it,” she said. “I had to sign a paper.” She waited expectantly.

  “Transportation is expensive,” Cherenkov said. “But papers can sometimes be changed. This I cannot promise, but if in a week you ask for my help in the respect of returning to Earth, I will do what I can.”

  Though it would be better for Griffith’s purposes if Ms. Brown stayed, he thought Cherenkov would be doing the expedition a favor to have the old woman sent home whether she wanted to go or not. He could not imagine anyone refusing a request that Cherenkov made.

  “I’d like to go to my house now.”

  Ms. Brown made Griffith feel creepy, the way she responded to comments without really acknowledging them.

  “Excellent,” Cherenkov said. “Infinity, I will entrust Floris’s comfort to you. I must hurry — I have another obligation.”

  He left the room. Griffith put his cup down with a clatter and hurried after him.

  “Sir! I mean, Kolya — ”

  He caught up to Cherenkov, who continued without pause. The cosmonaut had a strange, careful way of walking, as if he feared that gravity would trap him forever on the ground.

  “You said your name was Griffith,” Cherenkov said. “Is that your surname or your given name?”

  “Surname.”

  “And your given name?”

  Griffith felt a blush rising. He had not blushed for years. He hoped his tan concealed it; he hoped Cherenkov did not notice. Then Cherenkov glanced at him, and Griffith knew that even if his tan did conceal the blush, Cherenkov noticed it.

  “It’s Marion, sir.”

  “It’s Kolya, sir,” Cherenkov said, mocking him a little.

  “I don’t use my given name.” Griffith tried to keep his reaction cool, his tone cold.

  “Everyone uses given names here. The informality is refreshing.”

  Griffith kept his silence.

  “You do not agree.”

  “I think informality leads to sloppiness. There’s no clear chain of command here. I think that’s dangerous, especially in an environment as severe as space.”

  “Spoken like a military man,” Cherenkov said, “or a government worker,” he added before Griffith could object. “But you are wrong. In such a self-contained environment, a certain democratic sloppiness can be turned to advantage. Why did you follow me?”

  “You said you were going outside. Would you let me tag along?”

  “Outside? I think not. That is dangerous without training.”

  “Just to the staging area, I mean.”

  “You may do that without my permission. The ship is open to inhabitants and visitors alike. You may be required to pass training to engage in certain activities, but no one is denied the opportunity to attempt the training.”

  Griffith frowned. “That seems awfully loose to me.”

  “Spoken like a true — government man.”

  Griffith wondered again if Cherenkov were laughing at him, deep down under the intensity of his gaze. And yet even if the cosmonaut had pegged him as a military observer, what could he do? Exposed, Griffith might expect some uncomfortable moments. The more recalcitrant exped
ition members might denounce him. It would be verbal, not physical, abuse, of that he was certain. If Cherenkov blew his cover, Griffith would have to return to Earth. Having to send another observer could delay Griffith in implementing his plans. On the other hand, he already had most of the information he needed. A few more days...

  He found it difficult to understand the core of resistance against the changes that had to occur. The deep space expedition was all very well when it was planned, two decades ago in a time of prosperity, civil international relations, and silence from the Mideast Sweep. All of that had changed. Starfarer had to change, too.

  Griffith’s job would have been much easier if he had not had to deal with the researchers, the stubborn, self-centered idealists. As the starship had to change, the people had to change, too.

  If Griffith could arrange to antagonize a few more countries into withdrawing from the expedition, the remaining personnel would not be able to continue alone.

  He was doing a good job. No one would fault him for giving himself a few minutes. He wanted to get Cherenkov to talk about his experiences, and he knew it would not be easy. The general obviously felt no nostalgia for the past. Griffith held no power over this man; he could not demand a reply. He would have to be patient.

  o0o

  Kolya wished the young officer would follow someone else. It mattered little to him if Griffith were here under false pretenses. Kolya ignored politics with the strength of visceral aversion. He hated politics almost as much as he hated violence.

  He also did not like to be followed. Nikolai Petrovich Cherenkov had been followed by people who wanted to kill him and by people who wanted to worship him. The two experiences were not all that different.

  He had become more and more private over the past two decades. One morning in the company of Infinity Mendez and Floris Brown tired him to a startling degree. The effort of remaining civil, pleasant, even cheerful, had drained him of the anticipatory energy he experienced before his spacewalks. Human contact affected him with a kind of sensory overload that only the emptiness and completeness of space could overcome.

  Kolya entered the elevator to the outside, hoping Griffith would remain at the inner surface.

  “It is boring and dark down there,” Kolya said. “Unpleasant. Stay in the sunshine.”

  “It’s all right,” Marion Griffith said. “I want to see.” The officer stayed with him.

  Griffith made Kolya uncomfortable. He showed too much interest in Cherenkov’s past. But Cherenkov did not exist anymore. Only Kolya existed. Kolya was not a pioneering cosmonaut or a heroic anti-terrorist or a terrorist traitor. Kolya was an old man who loved space.

  The elevator fell through the inner skin of fertile dirt, through the underground water level, through the massive radiation-stopping shell of lunar rock.

  Paying Griffith no more attention, Kolya analyzed his reasons for letting Infinity persuade him to talk to Floris Brown. What did it matter to Kolya if she lived on the bottom level of his hill, or in the guest house, or back on Earth, or out in the garden in the dew? Thanthavong never bothered him — she was no recluse, but she did spend all her time in the genetics lab. That was what she had come up here for, after all, to escape the demands of achievement and publicity and public adoration, to get on with her work. Like Kolya, but with more meaning to her life.

  A lonely old woman living downstairs would demand attention, whether from Kolya or from others who would visit. Kolya could see nothing coming from the change but an invasion of his privacy.

  He felt no obligation to offer anything to Floris, but Infinity was different. Kolya thought Infinity was far more admirable than any of the scientists, who worked in their minds, or he himself, who did not work at all anymore, except at tasks he chose, tasks that took him into space. It would have been possible to program an AS to do most of what Kolya chose to do, and an AI to do the rest. But no one had ever succeeded in programming an expert system to replicate a master gardener. To approximate, yes. Not to replicate. There was something about technological complexity, mechanical complexity, that machines could handle, and something about organic and aesthetic complexity that befuddled them. Kolya thought the gardeners, like Infinity, to be the most important people on board the starship.

  The elevator stopped. Assuming a strong young military officer would be embarrassed to have his discomfort noticed, Kolya said nothing to explain the strange sensation produced by riding an elevator through a rotating environment. If Griffith had neglected to read his introduction manual on the way to Starfarer, that was his problem.

  The artificial gravity was perceptibly stronger here, nearly one g. The radius of the cylinder’s outer skin was significantly longer than the distance from the axis to the inner surface. The increased radial acceleration increased the sensation of weight.

  At the outer surface of the cylinder, the corridors were solid, rough, and ugly. Few people came this far down. If they wanted to space-walk, they went out at the axis and avoided the rotation. Kolya liked the rotation. He climbed into his pressure suit as Griffith watched.

  “That doesn’t look too hard,” Griffith said, breaking the silence for the first time since they left the inner surface. “How long does the training take?”

  Kolya had already drifted into the strange and vulnerable state to which he surrendered in space. Without a word, he stepped into the airlock and sealed it, leaving Griffith behind as abruptly as he had left Floris and Infinity.

  The pump drew the air from the lock and back into the ship. Surrounded by vacuum, Kolya opened the outer hatch. He let the radial acceleration press him past the skin of the cylinder and into the harder vacuum of space. With the ease of long practice, he lowered himself onto the narrow framework that crept over the cylinder’s surface. He stood in the same orientation as he had inside the cylinder, with his head toward the axis of rotation. The outer skin of the cylinder lay a couple of meters above him. Nothing separated him from space except the cables of the inspection net.

  Beneath him, the wild cylinder and the furled sail slipped past. Kolya sank to his knees, then inched flat. He let his arms dangle toward the stars. Someday, he thought, he would let himself slip from the framework and be flung away into space. But not quite yet. He was not quite ready yet.

  Rotation took him out from between the cylinders. Before him, the stars made a fine, spangled sheet.

  He lay there, still and silent, staring at the galaxy.

  Chapter 7

  The transparent skin of the sailhouse placed no barrier between the room, and space and stars and the sail outside. People floated in zero-gravity along one side of the curved glass wall: fewer people than should have gathered to watch the first full test of Starfarer’s solar sail.

  Satoshi floated farther into the transparent chamber. The sensors surrounded him with melodic chords. Iphigenie DuPre, the sailmaster, drifted with eyes closed, listening to the musical reports, invisibly connected to the computers and control strands of the sail. Her long, lithe, dark limbs reacted with reflexive, minuscule motions as she ordered a strand tightened here, balanced there.

  The sail, untwisting from its cable configuration, now appeared as a great sheet of silver, closely pleated.

  Victoria and J.D. and Feral joined Satoshi. Still inside the access tunnel, Stephen Thomas hesitated. He pushed off gingerly, awkwardly, with one hand. In the other he carried a sack, which he had avoided explaining.

  Satoshi looked around. Almost everyone in the sailhouse was faculty or staff. There were a few sponsored reporters, and Feral, and a number of remotes transmitting the event back to Earth, but none of the VIP visitors the expedition had prepared for. Chancellor Blades had chosen not to attend the test, and he had not even sent his usual deputy, Gerald Hemminge, the assistant chancellor.

  Feral pushed off and started interviewing people, setting the background for his story. Starfarer navigated from one star system to the next via cosmic string. But once it reached a destination, it requi
red other methods of propulsion: primarily the sail. Cosmic string provided macronavigation, the sail, micronavigation, though it sounded strange to apply the term “micro” to distances measured in millions of kilometers.

  The sail was slow, but near a star it was steady. It had the great benefit of operating without reaction mass or onboard fuel. It would propel the starship from its entrypoint into the star system to a point from which it could re-enter the twisted space-time of a cosmic string. The alien contact team had a small, fast explorer to use in traveling between Starfarer and a new system’s worlds.

  Feral drifted over to the sailmaster.

  Iphigenie DuPre’s astonishing mathematical ability reached so deep that it appeared instinctual to anyone who overlooked her years of experience and practice. She was one of the first people to build a sail-ship and to sail it in space. She had designed most of the sail systems that racers used down around the O’Neill colonies. Once her sails started winning races, she retired from amateur competition and put her time into developing and marketing. She was probably the wealthiest person on board Starfarer, thanks to the popularity of sail-ship racing.

  The challenge of a starship’s esoteric combination of propulsions had brought her to EarthSpace, and to Starfarer.

  “Ms. DuPre — ” Feral said.

  “Hush, now,” she said quietly. The tempo of the sensor melodies quickened.

  Everyone fell silent, and the change began.

  Tension eased at the ends of the pleated surface. The folds turned to close-set ripples.

  The sail opened.

  Liquid silver spread over blackness, widened, flowed like a flooding lake across the path of the Milky Way, and cut off the stars. One edge quivered. A vibration shimmered through the satin film. The shivering threatened to twist the surface out of shape, but control strands shifted and tightened and eased away the oscillation.

  The sail grew.

  Its complex harmonies filled the sailhouse. No one spoke.

  The sail shivered with one final ripple, then lay quiet, stretched out across space. Satoshi imagined that he could see a slight curve in the surface, as the sail filled with the invisible solar wind. He imagined he could already feel the acceleration, already detect the most infinitesimal widening of the starship’s orbit.