The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  How determined would they be to avoid contact with warlike creatures? she wondered.

  “I hope it’s empty,” she whispered. “I hope it was uninhabited.”

  Victoria swung toward her, unexpectedly clumsy in the spacesuit. After a long silence, she replied.

  “I hope so, too.”

  o0o

  On the far side of the dome, a single projection, the pointed end of the dome’s teardrop-shaped footprint, remained standing. If igloos were made of rock foam, this would be the entrance. There was no door, only an opening that led into darkness.

  J.D. stepped toward it, drawn involuntarily by her curiosity, by her despair at the destruction. If she could find something intact, something to hint at who had built this place —

  Victoria and Stephen Thomas both grabbed her at the same time, one on each arm.

  “I just want to —”

  “It’s too hot.” Victoria spoke in a matter of fact tone that brought J.D. back to reality faster than condescension or anger.

  “Of course,” J.D. said. “Of course it is. How long will it take to cool?”

  “A few hours of darkness should do it. Say, morning, our time.”

  “All right.”

  “Shall I send in the AS?”

  J.D. hesitated, surprised at the intensity of her resistance to the sensible suggestion.

  “Yes, that’s a good idea.”

  The AS picked its way along, using its spider-legs rather than rolling. J.D. watched it till it reached the rock-foam projection, then turned her attention to its transmission. Her spacesuit receivers formed a tiny image for her.

  The AS crept forward, casting a shadow unrelieved by any scattered light. J.D. strained her vision, seeking irregularity in the darkness, seeking a pattern, as she had sought it in the original transmission. Again, she could make out nothing. It turned on its lamp. The light flashed, then faded.

  “Look,” Satoshi said softly.

  J.D. glanced away from the darkened hologram and into the real world again.

  The AS backed away from the entrance of the dome. Or, rather, it swiveled its body on its legs and stumbled in what was now its forward direction.

  “What the — !” Victoria took one quick step forward.

  J.D. made a connection with the AS through the Chi’s computer. Looking at its instructions, she found that it had nothing left in its programming but a single scrambled walk default.

  Her hands on her hips, Victoria watched the AS lurch away from the ruined alien structure.

  “Something still works, inside that dome,” she said. “And it’s pretty smart. But it isn’t perfect.”

  o0o

  Sitting cross-legged on her couch, Victoria rested her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists.

  “I don’t like the idea of your going in there,” she said.

  “I’ll be all right,” J.D. said. She wished Victoria would stop fussing, stop worrying, because she was making J.D. nervous.

  “I’ll go with you!”

  “Thank you, Zev. One person is enough. It’s my job.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means... I promised to do it.”

  “It doesn’t mean you promised to put yourself in unnecessary danger,” Victoria said.

  J.D. looked at her askance. “Victoria, don’t be silly. Of course it does. That’s exactly what I promised.”

  Beyond the Chi’s transparent wall, the dome lay like a beached, dying jellyfish.

  “I said ‘unnecessary,’” Victoria said. “If we were facing a building full of alien beings and they said, ‘We’ll talk to you, but only one of you,’ that would be something else. This...” She tried to smile. “We’ve had enough buildings collapse on people for one week.”

  “I’m not going to take any foolish risks,” J.D. said. “But I think this is a necessary one.”

  “Look, J.D.,” Stephen Thomas said. “I could go —”

  “No!” J.D. said.

  She startled them all. They had not expected to see her angry.

  “No,” she said again, more calmly. “It comes down to me. This is what I’m here for. If we’d had the time we were supposed to, so we could get to be a team, you wouldn’t even be arguing the point. But we didn’t, so you’re just going to have to trust me.”

  Victoria let her hands fall, and straightened up. “We do trust you. You’re right.”

  J.D. managed to smile. “Besides,” she said, “for all we know, the dome might turn me around and send me back like the artificial stupid.”

  “I don’t think that’s the least bit funny,” Victoria said.

  o0o

  The Chi’s living quarters provided a cabin for each person on board. J.D.’s room was on one side of the central corridor; on the other side, the family partnership had three cabins in a row. J.D. assumed that Victoria, Satoshi, and Stephen Thomas folded back the interior walls and shared the space.

  J.D. wondered if she would be able to sleep, or even to rest, as she waited for the dome to cool enough to enter.

  She led Zev to the unused room next to her own. “This can be yours, I’m sure,” she said. “Zev, my dear, you didn’t bring anything with you at all, did you?”

  “I have my suit,” he said solemnly.

  Zev had probably never worn clothing before he left his family to join the deep space expedition. The suit was part of the fake identity he had used to get on board the starship. He had already abandoned the identity. But he kept the suit. It was unfashionable, loose and baggy. J.D. kept trying to come up with another metaphor for how he looked, but the only one that fit was that he swam within it.

  “You should take it off to sleep,” she said. “That way it won’t get more wrinkled.” She was learning to assume nothing when it came to what Zev did know of the land world and what he did not.

  “All right,” he said.

  “When we’re in zero g, you’ll want to use the sleeping net. Did you learn how, when you came up on the transport?”

  “Yes.”

  He unfastened the edges of the net and rolled it aside, for it was only necessary in weightlessness.

  “Sleeping in zero g is like sleeping in the water,” Zev said. “When I was with Chandra, I slept a little on land. Zero g is better.”

  o0o

  Stephen Thomas took off the red satin running shorts and the loose white silk shirt he was wearing. He let them fall to the floor.

  God, he thought, I’m glad to be out of zero-g.

  He was too keyed up to sleep. He took advantage of the gravity to take a shower without having to fight with the water. In zero g, it spread and formed a thin clinging layer. He had to scrape it off his skin, then wait for the drain to suck the water back to recycling.

  He stayed under the hot water longer than he needed to, longer than he should, holding out his hands and letting the heat soak in. Strange, after everything that had happened, only his hands ached.

  Toweling his hair, he glanced at himself in the mirror, and turned immediately away.

  Jesus, he thought, I look like shit.

  People with black eyes were always being described as looking like raccoons. He looked nothing like a raccoon. There was nothing cute about having two black eyes.

  He had planned to change the bandage on his forehead, but decided to leave it one more day. If he changed it, he would have to stare at himself in the mirror. Weird that the cut on his forehead showed almost no bruising.

  He went back to his room. Still too troubled to sleep, he called the partnership’s house. Arachne continued to ignore personal communications, so he had to do without the holographic display.

  Feral’s image appeared on the hard link.

  “Stephen Thomas!” When he smiled, his mobile, expressive lips curved like those of the hero in a Renaissance painting, and his short curly chestnut hair added to the impression.

  “Hi, Feral. I’m glad you’re still up.”

  “I just got back from the sailh
ouse. I stopped at the liaison office, but Gerald is doing a Cerberus imitation over communications.”

  “He wouldn’t let you call us?”

  “To put it politely.” He grinned, wryly. “He was protecting the channel with all three heads.”

  “Shit. He’s supposed to be facilitating. It isn’t his fucking job to decide who we should talk to.”

  Stephen Thomas scowled, and rubbed the palm of his right hand over the knuckles of his left.

  “He might listen to that point if it came from you.” Feral hesitated. “Are you okay?”

  “He might listen to Satoshi. I’m okay aside from looking like someone beat the crap out of me.”

  “You look like you hurt your hands.”

  Stephen Thomas stopped massaging his hands, turned them palm-up, turned them palm-down, spread his fingers.

  “I tried to punch Gerald —”

  Feral laughed.

  “Something’s funny?”

  “You guys are supposed to be pacifists.”

  “Everybody has a breaking point. He went past mine. It was a stupid fight, though. He never touched me, and I didn’t think I’d hit him.” He looked at his hands again. They both ached. “I must have.” But he was certain he had not hit Gerald twice.

  “Tell me what it’s like out there, Stephen Thomas,” Feral said. “Next to the alien base. Tell me what isn’t coming over the public broadcast.”

  They talked for quite a while. When the alien dome destroyed itself, Stephen Thomas had pushed away his reactions of shock and fear, the flashback to being inside the genetics building when it collapsed. He had no time for the memories, no place. Feral asked questions that brought them to the surface.

  “Maybe tomorrow J.D. will find something to make sense out of what’s happened,” Stephen Thomas said. “I hope so. Except... I don’t know what she could find that would make things turn out all right. Christ, I sound whiny!”

  “You sound like someone who’s seen a tragedy,” Feral said quietly.

  Stephen Thomas took a long breath.

  “Yeah,” he said, more an exhalation than a word. He collected himself. “Yeah.”

  “I miss you,” Feral said.

  “I miss you too. I wish you were with us.”

  Feral hesitated. “All it takes is an invitation,” he said, his tone light. “You’d better get some sleep.”

  His image faded.

  Stephen Thomas stretched, and rubbed his hands up his body, up the back of his neck, through his hair. It had grown past his shoulders. He knew he should cut it, if he was going to spend much time in zero gee, but he liked it long.

  He felt revitalized. His edginess had passed, and being free of the stress of weightlessness was almost as good as a night’s sleep.

  The partition between his room and Satoshi’s was ajar. Satoshi and Victoria had already gone to bed.

  Maybe they’ll wake up when I come in, Stephen Thomas thought hopefully. But he knew his partners were exhausted. Perhaps he should let them sleep.

  Maybe, he thought, I ought to sleep alone tonight...

  But Stephen Thomas did not like to sleep alone, and he did not really want to sleep alone.

  Naked, he slid through the gap into Satoshi’s room. Satoshi and Victoria lay nestled together on the upholstered sleeping surface, wrapped in a light blanket.

  He always woke his partners up when he got into bed in zero g. Last time he had caught his toes in the mesh of the sleeping net and pulled the open edge free of the wall, sending Victoria and Satoshi floating off into the middle of the room. He was glad that tonight he did not have to open the net and try to decide the best way to get in beside them.

  On the other hand, he wished they had not gone to sleep so quickly, so soundly. He wanted more than to crawl in beside them and go to sleep. He wanted more than a half-waking murmur of welcome, the unyielding power of Satoshi’s long runner’s muscles against his body, Victoria’s cool cedar scent. He wanted to arouse Satoshi till his skin radiated heat like a blast furnace into his hands, he wanted to make Victoria quiver in his hands, and feel her soft, springy hair against his lips.

  He slid under the blanket beside her.

  “Stephen Thomas?” Victoria said, half awake, languorous.

  “What?” Satoshi sounded querulous, and more awake than he really was.

  “It’s only me,” Stephen Thomas said. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Okay.” Satoshi stretched and fell asleep again. The cabin’s indirect illumination, the light of Tau Ceti II, stroked a blue glow across his gold skin.

  “You can have the middle, if you want,” Victoria whispered.

  Stephen Thomas slipped past her into the center of the bed. His fingers brushed her hip, her breast.

  Stephen Thomas snuggled down next to Satoshi. Victoria, behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist. Satoshi woke long enough to gently kiss the outer curve of his eyebrow, where the bruising began.

  “I’m sorry you got hurt,” Satoshi said.

  “It could have been a lot worse,” Stephen Thomas said. “It would have been, if you hadn’t been there.”

  “I s’pose.” Satoshi turned over and burrowed into the corner.

  “You guys looked pretty strange, sitting there with just your heads sticking out of the fog,” Victoria said.

  Stephen Thomas shivered, turned toward her, and embraced her, drawing her close. “All I remember is, it was cold.”

  The liquid nitrogen had flowed out of the broken freezers of the genetics department, filling the collapsed rooms and hallways with unbreathable vapor. Satoshi and Victoria had to drag Stephen Thomas out of the building. He had fainted at the sight of his own blood.

  Victoria spread her fingers across his back. Her hair tickled his shoulder. Stephen Thomas slid his hand up her side, stroked her arm, and brought her hand to his lips. He kissed her palm. She sighed, sleepily. He guided her hand down his chest and down his belly.

  Victoria wrapped her fingers around his, a comforting motion, but one that stopped him.

  “I have to get some sleep, my dear,” she said. “I’m so tired, I’m trembling.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “okay. Me, too, I guess.” He pretended not to care. Probably he just would have disappointed her.

  “E pur si muove,” he muttered.

  “What?” Victoria said, already half asleep.

  “Nothing,” Stephen Thomas said.

  Chapter 3

  J.D. faced the dark opening of the tunnel. Remembering what had happened to the artificial stupid, she regretted her flippant remark about being turned around and sent back out of the dome. As Victoria had said, it did not sound the least bit funny.

  J.D. thought she had done a fairly good job of acting confident. But she was scared, and being watched by a phalanx of recording devices did not help her nerves. Large ones watched from the Chi. Smaller recorders of various sorts, little tiny machines, nestled in crannies around her gilded facemask. The LTMs would see what she saw, and both transmit and record it.

  She wondered if Chandra, the sensory artist, whose entire body was a recording device, ever experienced attacks of nerves. Did she ever wonder how her clients, watching and feeling what she saw and felt, perceived her reactions? J.D. was glad the recorders attached to her could detect only exterior events.

  “J.D.” Victoria spoke softly in her ear.

  “Yes, Victoria.” She glanced back. Her teammate stood beside the Chi’s foot, her face unreadable behind the gold facemask.

  Victoria raised one hand in a gesture of support. J.D. waved back. Her lifeline swayed in the low gravity.

  J.D. sank down on one knee and rubbed her gloved fingertips against the crusted surface. The rasp of the fabric against stone startled her, sharp and loud, transmitting itself to her through her suit.

  An alien sound on an alien world, her first alien world.

  She stood up and walked forward, cautiously but without any more hesitation.

  The entrance to the
dome cut off the direct yellow light of Tau Ceti and the reflected blue light of Tau Ceti II. J.D. stood within the entrance like an archaeologist entering a long-lost cave, expecting or hoping to discover fabled paintings. In a moment she would turn on the lights attached to her suit helmet, and find out the reality of what lay within the dome.

  She toggled on the headlamp with a touch through its link.

  The light pooled on the shiny floor ahead of her. It looked like sunshine on a deep stream, for the floor had a depth to it, and a texture like flowing quiet water.

  With no dust to diffuse the beam, the light was invisible except when it touched the floor or ceiling or walls. The tunnel was rather wider than high, the surfaces blending into each other in graceful curves.

  J.D. flashed the light around. The circle of illumination darted from spot to spot, finding nothing but polished rock. The light reflected back and forth: everywhere she turned she faced a bright circle. Behind it, washed out by the headlight’s beam, moved her own distorted multiple image.

  “Your signal’s strong.” Victoria’s voice came softly through the suit radio. “We’re receiving fine. What about you?”

  “No problems,” J.D. said. “I’m going deeper.”

  “Okay.”

  Her safety line lengthened from the reel at her waist. She walked forward again. The path curved, and rose, and fell, branching and twisting into the alien station. The safety line snaked after her in eerie silence.

  What is it about these people and mazes? J.D. thought.

  Walking through the smooth, flowing tunnels in the low gravity made J.D. think about swimming in the sea with the divers. Swimming underwater, with the artificial lung hugging her back and feeding warm, moist oxygen into her face mask. She experienced an abrupt, astonishing rush of homesickness. She managed to push it away.