The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  The sensor melody decreased to a whisper.

  “Full deployment.”

  Iphigenie’s quiet statement filled the sailhouse like a shout. Her voice held suppressed laughter and excitement. She opened her unusual cinnamon-brown eyes. For a few seconds, no one else made a sound. Satoshi released the breath he had been holding.

  “Watch it!”

  The shout and an explosive “pop!” broke the silence. It sounded like damage, like decompression, like a breach of the sailhouse wall into the vacuum of space. Satoshi tensed, forcing himself not to jerk toward the noise. Any quick movement in freefall would send him tumbling.

  A projectile shot past.

  The champagne cork slammed into the transparent wall beyond him. It rebounded nearly as fast, hit the glass on the other side, and bounced again. It narrowly missed Satoshi and several other faculty members.

  Somersaulting slowly backwards, Stephen Thomas laughed as the cork flung itself around the glass cylinder until it used up its momentum. Champagne pressed itself out of the bottle he held. Without gravity, the bubbles formed on the sides and bottom of the bottle instead of exploding upward; their pressure pushed the champagne out. As Stephen Thomas tumbled he left a liquid rope twisting in his wake. It fizzed softly.

  Stephen Thomas looked like the star of some weird zero-gravity sport, celebrating a championship by trying to spray his teammates with champagne, but being defeated by weightlessness.

  He’d have to be the star of something yet to be invented, Satoshi thought. He’s wrong for the most popular Earth sports: too slender for football, not tall enough for basketball, and far too beautiful for hockey.

  Stephen Thomas spoiled the effect by bumping into the wall and snatching awkwardly at a glass handhold to stop his tumble. He came to a halt, still laughing, still holding the bottle. The twisting stream of champagne broke itself into spherical globules that drifted among the spectators.

  “I was wondering how to split it up,” Stephen Thomas said. The pressure of the bubbles slowly pushed the last of the champagne into the air.

  The cork tumbled lazily, having lost most of its momentum without hitting anyone in the eye. Everyone was looking at Stephen Thomas rather than at the sail.

  He tossed his head. His long blond hair flipped back for a second, then fell forward again to drift in front of his eyes. He tucked it behind one ear.

  “Congratulations, Iphigenie,” he said.

  “Yes,” Victoria said. “Iphigenie, the sail’s beautiful.”

  “Thank you.” She reached out and waved a rippling sphere of champagne toward her, placed her lips against it, and drank it with a kiss. Unlike most zero-g workers, she kept her hair long, but she wore it in a smooth mass of thin, heavy braids caught up at the back of her neck.

  Iphigenie’s action broke the tension of waiting for deployment, and the fright of Stephen Thomas’s exploding champagne cork. Everyone clustered around Iphigenie, sphering her with their congratulations, surrounding her like the bubbles surrounding the wine; people caught and drank the fizzing globules of champagne that drifted and trembled in the air currents. Satoshi kissed one and let it flow between his lips. It dissolved against his tongue, dry and gentle and ephemeral.

  Nearby, J.D. floated alone, watching the sail, occasionally glancing at the celebration with a slight smile on her lips. Satoshi waved a bubble of champagne in her direction.

  “J.D., catch!”

  Instead of reaching for the rippling bubble, she pushed her hand toward it to create a counter-draft in Satoshi’s direction.

  “Thank you,” she said. “It’s very kind of you, but I don’t drink. I quit when I started diving.”

  Stephen Thomas paddled awkwardly toward them.

  “Are you guys playing tennis with my good champagne?” He tried to capture it with the air-pressure of a gesture, and succeeded only in breaking it into several smaller drops. Satoshi caught one in his mouth and pushed one toward Stephen Thomas.

  “Victoria! Feral!”

  They joined him. Together, they drank the last bubbles.

  “I knew I’d think of something good to drink this with,” Stephen Thomas said.

  Satoshi chuckled. Victoria smiled and drifted close enough to brush her lips against his cheek.

  In one direction, the sail lay taut. In the other, the twin cylinders of the campus rotated, one clockwise, one counter-clockwise, toward each other, and away. Beyond campus, at a great distance, the Earth hung in space, one limb bright and the rest of its face dark, a new Earth.

  o0o

  Most of the spectators had left the sailhouse. Stephen Thomas floated near the transparent wall. For once he felt almost comfortable in freefall.

  Maybe, he thought, I ought to combine it with champagne more often.

  “Are you coming?” Victoria asked.

  “I’ll be along in a little while.”

  Satoshi passed the sailmaster. “Thanks for the show, Iphigenie.”

  “My pleasure,” she replied, too experienced in zero-g to disturb her equilibrium by turning.

  Stephen Thomas watched his partners glide out of the sailhouse. He envied their grace. He knew he would get the hang of navigating in weightlessness soon enough — it had better be soon, because he hated feeling physically incompetent and off-balance, baffled and awkward.

  Stephen Thomas was the last spectator. Intent on the sail, Iphigenie paid him no attention.

  The sail lay almost motionless in space, but every now and again the silver surface shimmied. When it did that it looked alive, like some huge aether-breathing animal, twitching its flank to drive off a fly.

  Stephen Thomas wondered if a space-living creature would have an aura. Idly, he narrowed his eyes and focused his vision beyond the center of the sail. He had never thought of seeking the aura of an inanimate object. The idea amused him. He did not expect to find anything.

  He looked.

  Gradually, as if the act of searching for it caused it to appear and grow, a pale violet light glimmered along the edges of the sail. It flowed down the feedback lines and crept across the sail’s face.

  Stephen Thomas gazed at the lavender light until it swept all the way to the sailhouse, surrounded the transparent cylinder, and wrapped it in a transparent gauze of illumination.

  Iphigenie did not react to it, though every now and again she glanced out at the sail as if her eyes and her instincts could tell her more than the feedbacks and computers and musical sensors. Stephen Thomas said nothing of the aura. She would probably shrug it off or laugh or refuse to look for it, or all three.

  It always amazed him when he saw something so direct, so spectacular, and everyone else was oblivious to it. He could never persuade his partners to try to see what he could see. Victoria, in particular, was so open-minded about other things: she had to be, or she would never have won her job.

  The effort of seeing began to tire him. He let his concentration wander. The perception vanished as if he had snapped off the current powering the violet light. The sail billowed silently before him, plain silver again.

  o0o

  Chandra tried to persuade herself that being on the run, hiding out from — who were those guys? — in a fishing camp would be good stuff to record, but the truth was that she hated this part of it. The cabin smelled stale and fishy. The bed was both lumpy and too soft. The window, which could have looked out on the water, opened onto a grotty gravel driveway sprouting dusty weeds. And the bathroom was really nasty.

  The diving sequence would be great. It would reproduce her utter terror at being pulled underwater, her certainty that she was about to drown. But this place would ruin the rest of the experience. It would do nothing for either her reputation or her bank account. It had to go. She had to end the sequence somehow, but she did not see how she would find the time to do any restaging and still make it onto the spaceplane.

  “How do the folks who own this place make a living?” she said. “We’re the only ones here. I bet we’re t
he only ones who were ever here.”

  “It is not fishing season,” Zev said. “This is a place where humans fish. I mean where they sleep when they are too tired to fish.”

  “Oh.”

  “If it had not been here,” the diver said, “you would still be swimming.”

  “Listen,” she said, “that was a great sequence. That was real terror. Nobody has ever gotten anything that intense before. They all think their sex scenes are so great. Hah.”

  The young diver wandered around the wooden cubicle, touching things at random: the rough, threadbare ticking on the mattress, the frame supporting the upper bunk, the planks of the drafty door, the doorknob.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Chandra said.

  The diver looked at the handle curiously. “Why? Will it break?”

  “I mean I don’t think you should go outside. Those guys are probably still looking for you.”

  “Oh.”

  “What do they want?”

  “All I wanted was to join the deep space expedition.”

  “Distler hasn’t made that a criminal offense,” Chandra said. “Not the last time I heard, anyway. There must be something else.”

  The diver took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “They want divers to do things for them that we do not wish to do. I think they would have taken me away and kept me until they made my family come back from Canada.”

  “They were going to kidnap you?”

  The diver shrugged and changed the subject. “What is that room?”

  “It’s the bathroom. Only there isn’t any bath. I guess you don’t need to take baths out in the ocean.”

  “We like to rub ourselves on smooth rocks or scrub ourselves with sand.”

  “Close enough. Turn on the faucets in the sink if you need water. Do you have to stay wet like the guy in that old tv series?”

  “No. Do you like that show? I do, too. But divers are not from Atlantis. There is no such place. Divers can live on land. I never have, though. I am not used to it.”

  Suddenly something protruded from the diver’s crotch. Chandra watched, startled, as the male diver, whom she had assumed to be female, extruded his penis and began to pee on the floor.

  “Wait! Stop! What are you doing?”

  His penis slid back inside. “Peeing,” he said, equally startled. He looked down. “I never did it on land before. It is not very aesthetic, is it?”

  “No, especially if you do it on the floor!”

  “What should I do?”

  “Wipe it up, to begin with.”

  “But I need to pee.”

  Chandra sighed and showed him the toilet, then fled, embarrassed, when he started to use it in front of her. Very few things embarrassed her, but this sequence of events was getting weird.

  He came out of the bathroom, carrying their single ragged towel. “Why did you run away?”

  “Because — Wait!” she said again. “This isn’t a hotel.” She snatched the towel, put it back in the bathroom, and threw him a wad of paper tissue. “I don’t think we get maid service and clean towels every day with this room.”

  He wiped the floor, gazed at the sodden paper for a moment, then carried it into the bathroom and got rid of it.

  “I didn’t run away,” Chandra said when he came back. “I left to give you some privacy. It isn’t polite to piss in front of other people.”

  Fine gold hair, nearly transparent, almost invisible except when the light struck it just right, covered his whole body. His pubic hair was slightly thicker, slightly coarser. She stared at the smooth flesh between his legs. She could stare at anyone or anything, anytime she liked, because no one could tell where her eyes were focused.

  “It is not considered polite to piss on land, you mean,” the diver said. “Divers think nothing of it. I did wonder what that small room in the corner of J.D.’s cabin was. She always kept the door closed.”

  “J.D.! J.D. Sauvage? Do you know her?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is all her fault!”

  “I do not believe it,” the diver said. “She would not lend herself to this occurrence. Please do not talk of my friend that way.”

  “She was supposed to be there! Where does she get off, forgetting our appointment?”

  “She left for the starship,” the diver said. “And if she had not, she would be hiding along with us.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” Chandra scowled. The nerve ridges on her forehead twisted. “Serve her right.”

  “She would probably know what to do,” he said.

  Chandra glared at him, but the silver-gray nerve tissue that hid her eyes and allowed her to stare also prevented her from glowering effectively.

  Zev changed the subject. “Are you allowed to eat in front of each other?”

  “Of course. What a dumb question.”

  “Why ‘dumb’? You do not pee in front of each other. I do not understand why eating is so different. I know only one land-bound human. J.D. is almost a diver herself. I cannot compare her customs with yours.”

  “Okay, I see your point. Are you a guy, or are all divers built like you?” Chandra said.

  “I am male, if that is what your question means. I am physiologically mature, though I have not yet fathered anyone.”

  “You mean you’re a virgin?” Then she had to explain “virgin.” The diver laughed.

  “No — how foolish. We don’t even have a word for that. We play all the time — whenever we meet another family. J.D. says regular humans don’t do that. And she said regular humans have to learn how not to be fertile. You have to concentrate on it. Divers have to learn how not to be sterile.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s how we designed ourselves. External genitals would cause hydrodynamic drag.”

  Chandra waited for him to continue, but he seemed to think that told her all she needed to know.

  “Nobody ever put it quite like that to me before,” she said. “Which is probably a good thing, since I haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Male humans have to learn to raise their temperature in order to become sterile — you know this?”

  “Sure.”

  “I had to learn to extend my scrotum — do you understand? And when I father someone, when a diver from another family chooses me, I will have to leave it extended long enough to overcome the sterility my body temperature causes.”

  “Sounds dangerous, if a hungry shark comes along...”

  “If a hungry shark came along, I think I would not mind putting off parenthood a few more weeks in order to withdraw myself.” Zev grinned.

  “What about women?”

  “Women who are divers learn to ovulate, and do so only when they choose someone to conceive with.”

  “How did we get off on this subject?”

  Zev looked hurt. “You expressed interest.”

  “I guess so. But I’m a lot more interested in how we ended up being here.”

  “That does not interest me anymore. I am interested in how to get out.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Excuse me a moment,” Zev said. “I must tell my mother where I am.” His eyelids flickered.

  “Wait!” Chandra grabbed him and shook him roughly before he could hook into the web.

  He opened his eyes again. “What is wrong?”

  “The web’s probably being monitored!”

  “Oh. I did not know that was allowed.”

  “Maybe not, not usually, but I bet they’re doing it.”

  “Lykos will be worried.”

  “She’ll be a lot more worried if they catch you!”

  “That is true,” Zev said.

  o0o

  Kolya came in from outside, drugged with dizziness and wonder. The path of stars lay before him, a web passing across his image of reality. The vision would remain for a while; then, as it faded, he would be drawn to the stars again.

  He opened the fastenings of his spac
esuit.

  He had watched the sail unfurl. He hated it. It cut off a significant portion of the sky. But he loved it, too, because every increment of time added another increment of velocity to the ship’s speed, pulling it toward the stars. Soon —

  “General Cherenkov? Is everything all right?”

  Kolya started violently and stumbled in the awkward half-removed suit. Marion Griffith lunged forward, caught him, and held him on his feet.

  “Bojemoi,” Kolya said, “don’t you know it’s dangerous to startle a — someone with a background like mine? Have you been waiting all this time?”

  “Yessir. My apologies, sir, I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you saw me... and then I couldn’t tell.”

  “Several hours outside will affect the vision. Why are you still here?”

  “I wanted to talk to you, and since you said I couldn’t go outside, I decided to wait.”

  “If I reward your preposterous devotion, will I encourage its continuation?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean, sir.”

  “I mean that I like my privacy. I have not made that sufficiently clear to you. What do you want?”

  “Only to hear what it was like in the early days, in space. When you didn’t have all this. When it was tough, and dangerous. About the years when you went back to Earth. And about coming back up here, when you knew you’d never be able to leave again.”

  “I believe that the expedition will be both tough and dangerous. More than we can conceive. As for the rest — all that is in the archives. I sat for the cameras answering questions for... far too long.”

  “I know,” Griffith said. “I saw you. I watched the tapes. But it isn’t all, there’s nothing about the years when you disappeared. And it isn’t the same as hearing it straight, being able to ask questions...”

  “The years when I... disappeared... are not fit stories for civilized people. Are you civilized, Marion?”

  “I... I think so.”

  “I’m going to walk back to my house,” Kolya said. “If you wish, you may walk with me, and I will answer what questions I choose. In return you must promise not to trouble me again.”