The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “What’s this one for?” Stephen Thomas asked.

  “It’s an exercise. Where we could get from Tau Ceti; the fastest way back to Earth. Which I have no intention of using soon. But it’s just as well to have some options. And now, if you guys will excuse me...”

  “At least you have something to do,” Stephen Thomas said.

  Victoria let the display fade to transparency, a few luminous strokes of light above her.

  The image of Sea intensified in front of Satoshi. He and Stephen Thomas stared moodily at it.

  “No roads, huh?” Victoria said.

  “No roads,” Satoshi replied. “None at all.” He brought the globe in closer. Its colors changed, false colors following some pattern of geology, temperature, air pressure. “I can do some surveys. Topographical maps and ocean charts, currents and weather patterns. That sort of thing. Kind of busy work. It’s mostly automated.”

  “I can’t do anything,” Stephen Thomas said. “Not without some samples. Come on, Victoria, how can you stand it? A living world. And we’re sitting on a chunk of rock. Waiting for a bunch of archaeologists to come and dig out a broken library. What the hell use are we here?”

  Victoria gazed at the image of the globe, and through the wall of the Chi into space, toward the planet itself.

  “It is tempting,” she said.

  Stephen Thomas brightened. “We can’t stay cooped up till Starfarer arrives,” he said. “We’ll go nuts.”

  Victoria smiled. “If we go nuts in less than a week, we’re all in trouble.”

  “It’s going to take them a week to get here? Oh, shit, Victoria —”

  “It’s not going to take them a week. But, all right. Let’s talk to J.D., and if she has no objections, we’ll move to the surface of Sea.”

  o0o

  The alien contact team sat in the kitchen of the Chi, eating lunch. J.D. munched a sandwich. Zev sat across the table. He had taken his sandwich apart and was picking through the destruction of it, eating the meat and the cheese. J.D. suspected he would rather have fresh salmon. So would she.

  “I miss Feral,” Stephen Thomas said. “We ought to vote to bring along a free-lance journalist as one of the team members.”

  “I’m sure Feral would appreciate that,” Victoria said. “Until he realized you wanted him along as cook.”

  The young journalist was staying as a guest in their house, in the room that would have belonged to the eldest member of the partnership. Victoria still missed Merry desperately, and it upset her, irrationally, to have someone else staying in the room her partner had never had a chance to use.

  “I can think of a lot of things to do with Feral besides asking him to cook,” Stephen Thomas said. “And he probably wouldn’t mind at least making coffee.”

  “He wouldn’t mind anything if you asked him,” Satoshi said to Stephen Thomas, teasing him gently.

  “That’s probably true,” Stephen Thomas said, matter-of-fact.

  J.D. started to speak, then hesitated, wondering if she should keep out of the matter entirely. But Satoshi had made his comment without jealousy or anger, and Stephen Thomas replied without sounding at all defensive. J.D. knew that Feral found Stephen Thomas attractive; she did, too. It was hard not to. He was the most beautiful man she had ever met.

  “Taking a reporter along isn’t that bad an idea,” J.D. said. “When I first applied to the expedition, I proposed an alien contact team that included a poet.”

  “I didn’t know you wrote poetry, too,” Victoria said.

  “Not me. That was several years ago. I hadn’t even published a novel back then. I thought a poet was a great idea.” She smiled ruefully. “I guess the selection committee didn’t agree, since they turned down the team and my application as well.”

  “Never mind,” Victoria said. “You’re with us now, and you’re all the poet we need.”

  “Maybe. But a reporter still isn’t a bad idea.” She took another bite of her sandwich, then put it down. “I can cook, too,” she said, “but the food we brought along isn’t something you can whip up a gourmet picnic with.”

  “Is there any ice cream?” Zev said.

  “There aren’t any cows on board Starfarer,” Satoshi said.

  Zev glanced at J.D., curious, questioning.

  “Cows give milk,” she said. “And milk is what ice cream is made of.”

  “We have some goats,” Stephen Thomas said. “I wonder if you can make ice cream from goats’ milk?”

  “That sounds awful,” Satoshi said.

  “Goats’ milk isn’t so bad once you get used to it,” Victoria said. “It’s all right in tea. Ice cream, though, I don’t know.”

  “What have you decided, J.D.?” Stephen Thomas said abruptly.

  “I told you I wanted to think about it till after lunch.”

  “I thought you were done.”

  She picked up her sandwich, stubbornly, about to take another bite. She found she did not want it.

  She wanted to land on the world’s surface. She wanted it, if that were possible, even more than Stephen Thomas did. But she preferred to make decisions carefully, and she did not like to be rushed.

  She put her sandwich back down.

  “What I think,” she said, “is that I want to go explore Tau Ceti II more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life—”

  Stephen Thomas yelped with pleasure. He jumped to his feet. “Let’s go, then.”

  When he moved, when he exploded with enthusiasm like this, his charm intensified. J.D. wished she could make herself immune to him. As far as she could tell, Victoria and Stephen Thomas and Satoshi lived in a family partnership that was not sexually exclusive. But the last thing the alien contact team needed was more stress of any sort. She was doing her best to keep her feelings about Stephen Thomas concealed. Feral had noticed, though, and teased her, making her wonder if she was completely transparent. She shrugged to herself. Even if Stephen Thomas noticed, she doubted he would be interested.

  “ — but,” J.D. said.

  Stephen Thomas sat down again. “But what?”

  “But look what happened when we landed here,” J.D. said. “Kolya was right. And what if we’d been outside the Chi when the dome collapsed?”

  “There isn’t anything like the dome on the planet’s surface,” Satoshi said. “I’ve looked. Believe me, I’ve looked.”

  “I just think we should go slow,” J.D. said unhappily.

  Stephen Thomas grinned. “We can land away from the coast, and we can get Satoshi to figure out where all the crustal plates intersect. That way we won’t get hit by a tsunami or an earthquake.”

  “If you don’t start taking this seriously,” J.D. said, “I’m going to block the idea of landing on the planet’s surface. Look what’s already destroyed! Maybe if we’d waited, if we’d orbited for a while and tried to figure out...”

  Victoria reached out and gently squeezed J.D.’s hand. “We all feel the same about the dome,” she said.

  “Maybe it was inevitable that it would collapse,” J.D. said, “once we wailed in here trailing a nuclear warhead. But maybe we were meant to take the hint when the transmission ended. Maybe we were meant to stop and wait.”

  “Maybe we were,” Stephen Thomas said. “But we didn’t. Look, I was kidding, about the coast and the fault lines. But we could land away from them, and check the weather, too.”

  “What is it you’re afraid might happen,” Satoshi said, “if we land?”

  “I’m afraid... the whole planet might collapse.”

  “J.D., good heavens,” Victoria said.

  Though Satoshi said nothing, his incredulous expression spoke for him.

  “That’s fucking ridiculous,” Stephen Thomas said.

  J.D. looked away.

  “It isn’t very likely,” Satoshi said carefully. “Planets don’t just blow up, like in the movies. Maybe, once every few billion years per star system, a comet and a planet might collide —”

  “Don�
�t patronize me, please, Satoshi,” J.D. said. “I don’t need a lecture on orbital dynamics or disaster theories. Or old movies. I didn’t mean I thought we’d land, and Sea would come apart in pieces. What I’m afraid of is programmed environmental destruction.”

  The other members of the alien contact team stared at her, appalled.

  “That just doesn’t make sense,” Victoria said. “It wouldn’t make sense to destroy a whole world...”

  “I didn’t say it made sense! I said I was afraid of it!”

  The Chi’s internal communication system formed Victoria’s message symbol in the middle of the kitchen.

  Victoria waved it toward her. “I’d better see what this is,” she said, sounding profoundly grateful for the interruption. Her eyelids flickered for a moment.

  “The web’s back!” she said.

  “About time,” Stephen Thomas said. His eyelids flickered, too, and he disappeared into the communications web. Satoshi followed.

  J.D. waited forlornly, impatiently, while the others communed with the web. J.D. wished she had thought longer and harder about telling her teammates her fears. As soon as she had spoken, as soon as she heard and saw the reaction, she sounded outrageous, paranoid, ridiculous, even to herself. The beings who collapsed the dome had wanted to conceal the organized information they had assembled. There was no reason to destroy the world.

  She had read at least one science fiction story in which the ecosystem of an entire planet self-destructed in response to the landing of a single alien spaceship.

  Someday I’ll find time to scan my books into the web, she thought. It would be nice to be able to put my finger on the story and the title and the author. But there’s so much else to do.

  She did remember that the idea was intriguing, and made for an excellent one-punch ending. But like most one-punch stories, it did not bear close examination. An ecosystem that could be destroyed by one mistake, one break in the chain of cause-and-effect, would never have evolved in the first place.

  “Do you think there are people in the Sea?” Zev rose and went to one of the ports in the kitchen. He shielded his face from the interior light and gazed into the black sky, toward Tau Ceti II, rising.

  “There could be,” J.D. said. “Not people like ordinary humans, but maybe people like cetaceans.”

  “I’d like to swim with them,” Zev said. “I think they might be down there.”

  “Are you sorry you came with me, Zev?”

  He remained where he was, as if he had not heard her.

  “Zev?”

  He let his hands fall to his sides, and turned toward her. His feelings were usually so clear and clean and direct that his expression of confusion startled her.

  “I’m not sorry,” he said, no longer hesitating. “But... I do miss my other family. It’s different here, and there isn’t enough water.”

  “Starfarer has places to swim,” J.D. said. “We can visit them when we get back. You could even have a house near the water, if you wanted.”

  “You mean... not stay with you?”

  “You can stay with me as long as you like, Zev,” J.D. said. “But I want you to know what the possibilities are.”

  “I want to swim on Sea,” Zev said.

  “I don’t know if that’s a possibility. We have to be careful not to contaminate the planet, and not to let it contaminate us. We have to do a lot of tests, before we go out unprotected. I don’t think it would be the same, to swim in Sea’s oceans while you were wearing a safe suit.”

  “I’m getting used to this suit,” Zev said. “I think.” He plucked at the material of his baggy trousers with his thumb and forefinger.

  J.D. chuckled. Zev was barefoot, bare-chested; and J.D. doubted that Chandra, who had helped him get on board, had bothered to buy him any underwear. The artist struck J.D. as the sort of person who would concerned herself with more important matters than the pedestrian details of ordinary life.

  “Maybe we could get somebody to make you a pair of shorts like Stephen Thomas wears,” J.D. said. “They’d probably be more comfortable than those heavy trousers.”

  No wonder Zev had dispensed with as much of his clothing as he could. His feet, with their semi-retractile claws, must feel terribly confined within shoes. Golden fuzz covered his mahogany body. The hairs were so fine that they barely showed except in just the right light, but Zev’s delicate pelt could not make wearing clothes any easier.

  “I would like that,” Zev said. He plucked again at the trousers. “I think these wouldn’t feel very good to swim in.” He glanced over his shoulder, toward the planet Sea. “If we visit it, we must swim,” he said.

  Victoria came out of her communication fugue and resumed her conversation with J.D. as if she had never left.

  “J.D., I thought you were eager to visit Sea’s surface. How strongly do you feel about your concerns? Do you plan to block the proposal that we move from the satellite to the planet’s surface?”

  “I... No. I won’t block, and I am eager.” She shrugged apologetically. “I’ve read a lot of fiction that leans toward the outrageous, and I’ve trained myself to release my imagination. Sometimes it escapes me completely.”

  “Then we’re going?” Stephen Thomas had come back from the web without J.D.’s noticing.

  “Satoshi?” Victoria touched Satoshi’s arm.

  “Hmm?” He returned to the group. “I heard. You’ve got my vote.”

  “We’re going,” Victoria said.

  “Extravagant,” said Stephen Thomas, and grinned at J.D., his annoyance completely forgotten.

  Chapter 4

  Gerald Hemminge’s disbelief erupted into the Chi like the blast of radiation from the collapsing dome.

  “Land on Tau Ceti II? It’s out of the question!” he exclaimed.

  He had returned to his post without a word of explanation for his abrupt departure, without even referring to it. His face looked scraped and irritated. A patch of chameleon bandage, nearly imperceptible, covered a spot under his jaw.

  J.D.’s perception of him had changed now that she knew his failing. Instead of reacting to him as pompous and aloof, she pitied him. She knew she would find him even harder to deal with from now on.

  “Don’t you think it’s time to cut our losses?” Gerald said.

  J.D. pressed back against her couch, distressed by the prospect of another argument. She tried to center herself, seeking all the calm she could draw on. Stephen Thomas sat forward, ready with an angry retort. Victoria silenced him with a glance of warning. She had not yet transferred the transmission to public access, for which J.D. was grateful.

  “No,” Victoria said. “It’s time to have something besides losses.”

  “Chancellor Blades has repeated his request that you return to Starfarer,” Gerald said. “Several times.”

  “Why doesn’t he tell us that himself?” Satoshi said.

  “Because I’m the liaison, Satoshi. It’s my responsibility.”

  “Please tell the chancellor that I appreciate his advice,” Victoria said. “But he has no authority over this department. “We’ve discussed the possibilities. We’re going to the surface of Sea — to Tau Ceti II.”

  “It’s utterly foolish of you to stand on your team’s charter!” Gerald said. “These are extraordinary circumstances.”

  “Of course they are. Anything that happened once we got here would be extraordinary circumstances. The charter exists for extraordinary circumstances.”

  “You need all the expertise and advice available to you,” Gerald said, his voice curt. “You must come back to Starfarer for consultation.”

  “Next stop, Earth,” Stephen Thomas said under his breath.

  “We’re glad to hear anyone’s advice,” Victoria said. “That hasn’t changed. It won’t change.”

  “I don’t know why I bother,” Gerald said. “I should have gone on strike the moment you mutinied —”

  “Mutinied!” Victoria exclaimed. “This is a civilian �
��”

  “ — and stayed out of the aggravation. I should get up and leave right now.”

  “Why don’t you?” Stephen Thomas said.

  “Because I take my responsibilities seriously, unlike other people I could name. You’ve caused the destruction of the most significant discovery —”

  “Stop it!” All J.D. wanted was for the argument to end. “The dome collapsed because of the missile. We all know that.”

  “You can’t prove it,” Gerald said.

  “No. But tell me this. Do you believe the dome would have collapsed if we’d landed — but the missile hadn’t detonated?”

  “No,” he said grudgingly.

  “Nobody else has challenged that idea, either,” J.D. said. “Whoever left a welcome for us decided we weren’t worth welcoming. Can you blame them? They destroyed the information they left for us.”

  “There’s no evidence of any concurrent destruction on the planet’s surface,” Satoshi said. “Not even any evidence for sentient tool-using beings native to this system.”

  “The dome was a remote beacon, Gerald,” Victoria said. “It’s gone. Maybe Archaeology will be able to resurrect something, but there’s nothing left for the team to do here.”

  “Then don’t do anything at all!”

  “Doing something is our job.” Victoria’s smile was sad. “We’re going on a brief reconnaissance. A sample-collecting mission. Don’t worry about us.”

  “I’m not —” He stopped. “I didn’t mean —”

  “We all know what you meant,” Stephen Thomas said. “We appreciate your support a whole hell of a lot.”

  “Stephen Thomas, we must behave in a professional manner. I know we’ve had our difficulties —”

  Stephen Thomas laughed out loud.

  “Just a minute, Gerald,” Satoshi said. “You can’t insist that we junk the expedition plans one minute, and insist on professional behavior the next.”