The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “Satoshi, I’m sorry, but we must admit that the expedition is a failure,” Gerald said.

  “I’ll admit no such thing,” Victoria said, “and we’re back where we started. It’s pointless to go around in circles like this. We’re preparing for liftoff.”

  She ended the transmission.

  “I didn’t handle that well,” she said. “I didn’t handle it well at all.”

  “You didn’t have much to work with,” J.D. said.

  o0o

  Preparing for liftoff included, among other things, straightening the kitchen. As she wiped off the table, J.D. giggled.

  “What?” Satoshi said.

  “This ought to be part of our record,” J.D. said. “Intrepid explorers on kitchen duty.”

  “‘Wash the dishes, or no superluminal travel for you today’?”

  “Exactly. All you ever read about in history books is the heroism, you never hear about the drudgery.”

  “Right,” Stephen Thomas said. “Peary got the credit for getting to the north pole, but Matthew Henson did most of the work, and if they got to the pole at all he got there first.”

  “When did you develop such an interest in ancient history?” Satoshi said.

  “Researching our family.”

  “Are we related to Peary?”

  “Uh-uh. Probably not to Henson, either, though I thought we might be. I figured that Victoria and Grangrana must have heroic predecessors. So I was reading about intrepid black explorers.”

  “We had heroic predecessors, all right, and they did come north,” Victoria said. “But they stopped in Nova Scotia for a couple of generations.” She fell silent, polishing a bit of counter top that was already clean. J.D. saw the worry return to her face. Like J.D.’s complex but remote family, and Stephen Thomas’s difficult father, and Satoshi’s exemplary parents, Victoria’s great-grandmother remained back on Earth with no way of knowing whether Starfarer, or anyone on board, had survived the military carrier’s assault.

  Zev’s mother, Lykos, and the other divers and orcas could not even be sure he had reached the starship and joined the expedition. The military carrier had jammed Starfarer’s normal space communications for several hours before the starship reached transition.

  Now the expedition was cut off from home. Communication was theoretically possible but thoroughly impractical, for only an enormous mass could reach transition energy. If it was possible to send electronic communications through transition, no one yet had figured out how.

  Victoria carefully clipped the polishing cloth into its place so it would not drift around when they returned to zero g.

  “Everybody get on your best behavior,” she said. Her voice and her demeanor had returned to normal. “We start transmitting as soon as we get back to the circle. I promise to try not to argue with Gerald anymore.”

  o0o

  The collapsed alien dome appeared in the middle of Infinity’s living space, then dwindled in the distance to a gray dimple on the silken surface of the satellite’s arid and airless plains.

  “Look,” Esther said. “Arachne’s back.”

  Infinity sat up in bed and watched the scene change as the Chi lifted off, transmitting the view behind it. The flat land gradually curved; the sharp horizon came into view, the bright silver gray of the rock stopping abruptly at the edge of the black sky. Within a couple of minutes, the holographic image displayed the entire satellite of Tau Ceti II.

  The gray of the satellite intensified, turning blue, blue-green, brilliant white, as Arachne’s attention turned to Tau Ceti II and the planet’s image faded in over that of the satellite.

  Infinity reached out to his link, checking the web. Arachne’s reply felt tenuous, tentative. The computer was testing itself, first diffidently transmitting the Chi’s hologram, now allowing a few essential people and services to interconnect while it tried its own strength. Infinity found himself near the top of the web’s access list. Being singled out made him uncomfortable.

  He detached himself from the web, got up, and collected his clothes. Esther sat crosslegged in the tangle of sheets, watching him dress. He reached through the hologram to pick his vest up off the floor.

  “I better get back to work. Make yourself at home.” He slipped into his vest.

  “Are you going outside?

  “I’ve been lounging around about enough.”

  “What, six hours rest in the last two days?”

  “Rest? Oh. Is that what you call it?”

  Esther grinned. “I’ll come with you. Toss me my pants, will you?”

  He did; she grabbed them out of the air and put them on without getting up, sticking her feet through the leg openings and into the air. She sat up and hitched the pants over her hips, then grabbed the fluorescent jacket and put it on again. She had left her shoes by the door

  “I wish you’d signed up for the expedition,” Infinity said.

  “I think I did,” she said, her tone dry.

  “I mean formally.”

  “Not enough flying involved,” she said. “The alien contact team didn’t request a pilot. And I’m a lousy gardener.”

  “Have you ever tried it?”

  “No.”

  “Would you want to help with damage control?”

  “Sure.”

  They left his house and walked through the garden, passing through the edge of the desert patch.

  Infinity stopped.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  He squatted beside the cactus and slid his fingers in between the thorns. Frowning, he stroked the leathery skin.

  “It looks okay to me,” Esther said.

  Infinity shrugged unhappily.

  “Maybe it’s got cactus blight,” Esther said.

  “It shouldn’t have anything. It’s cloned from a cell stock. Virus free.”

  “Certifiers can screw up.”

  “I hope they didn’t,” Infinity said. “If they made a mistake on this, they could make a mistake on the other stuff. If anything happens to the plants, we’re in big trouble. The ecosystem will crash.”

  “It’s just a cactus, Infinity,” Esther said. “The ecosystem doesn’t depend on one cactus. How can you tell something’s wrong with a cactus, anyhow?”

  “I don’t know,” Infinity said again.

  “I thought you grew up in cactus country.”

  “Me? No, I grew up in Brazil. I’ve never even seen a cactus in the wild.”

  “Oh. Then I have more experience with cactuses than you do. And I can tell you, you can never be sure what’s going on with a cactus. I had one once, in a window box, and it was dead for six months before I noticed.”

  Infinity stood up. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “It’s just supposed to show you that cactuses never reveal whether they’re dead or alive. So yours is probably okay.”

  “Or dead,” Infinity said.

  He glanced back once as they left his garden. The skin of the cactus had felt spongy, not solid and firm as he had expected. He worried.

  “How did you figure out there was something wrong with your cactus?” he asked Esther.

  “The cat knocked it over, and it didn’t have any roots.”

  Infinity winced.

  The trail led past Florrie Brown’s house, a triplex built beneath a hill, with balconies and windows nestled against the slope. Professor Thanthavong lived in the middle house, and Kolya Cherenkov had the top floor. A field separated the house from the trail. Late crocuses, daffodils, and irises glowed in the grass, forming a carpet of Byzantine pattern and complexity. Hyacinths and lilies of the valley had just begun to poke their rolled outer foliage from the ground. The herd of miniature horses stood knee-deep in blossoms.

  “They’re going to eat your flowers!” Esther exclaimed.

  “That’s okay,” Infinity said.

  “Wait a minute. You’re upset because one cactus might be dead, but you don’t mind th
e minis eating your flowers?”

  “They’re mostly eating the grass. Besides, they’re supposed to eat the plants. The cactus isn’t supposed to die.”

  Half the mares had foaled. Fillies and colts scampered and squealed, their hooves tapping the ground. They were no bigger than long-legged cats.

  The herd’s stallion was a five-hand appaloosa with a temper in inverse proportion to his size. But at the moment he was standing on the porch of Florrie’s house, nuzzling Florrie’s hand, looking for treats. Fox, one of the expedition’s graduate students, scratched the little stud behind the ears.

  Florrie saw Infinity and waved. Infinity waved back.

  “Let’s go say hi,” he said to Esther. “Be sure she’s okay.”

  “Sure.”

  He left the trail and entered her yard, Esther beside him. They passed the newly-dug area where Infinity had put in rose bushes, protecting them with a spun-glass mesh on bamboo stakes.

  “I remember her,” Esther said. “She was on one of the last passenger transports. Why’s she in mourning? I didn’t hear that anybody died.”

  “Nobody did. She just dresses like that, mostly in black. She likes black eye makeup, too.”

  At their approach, the appaloosa stud jerked away from Fox and Florrie, stamped his forefoot, snorted, and clattered off the porch. Squealing and nipping, he rounded up the patient, indulgent mares and their excitable foals. The herd moved ten or fifteen meters before the mares stopped to graze again.

  Fox laughed. “You embarrassed him, you guys. He wasn’t enjoying himself, nope, not him.”

  “We’ll have to plant him some carrots,” Florrie said.

  On Fox’s arm, Florrie started toward Infinity and Esther. Moving carefully, she planted one foot on the porch and stepped sideways to the ground. Tiny bells, braided into one of the three long locks of her hair, jingled in a high register.

  A hologram of Tau Ceti II followed her.

  “Hi, Florrie,” Infinity said. “Hi, Fox.”

  “Infinity.” Florrie’s voice, always soft, sounded feathery.

  “This is my friend Esther Klein. Is everything all right?”

  “Yes. Yes. I never thought — Esther, is it? Hello, do you know Fox? — I never believed I’d see this. A new star system, a new world.”

  Infinity smiled. People reacted strongly, for or against, to the Grandparents in Space program. Infinity had always thought it was a good idea. It had taken Florrie a while to get her bearings here, and she was a little eccentric. Everybody on board Starfarer was eccentric. The quality had nothing to do with age.

  Florrie was doing fine. Fox had practically adopted her. Or maybe it was the other way around.

  “Thank you for the roses,” Florrie said.

  “You’re welcome.” Roses took a lot of hand labor, a lot of care, but he did not begrudge it to her. “It might be a while before they bloom.”

  “No,” she said. “Look.”

  She moved to the bushes, where they could get a better look past the fence.

  The white bud of a rose had just begun to open.

  o0o

  In the Chi, Victoria waited while Gerald Hemminge, brusque and disapproving, signed off after liftoff. She signed off in her turn, and transferred the public channel to an exterior view.

  She let her breath out in a short, sharp sigh.

  “No arguments, anyway,” she said. “This time.”

  “That was masterful,” Stephen Thomas said.

  If she had been in a gravity field, Victoria would have let herself flop back in her couch. As it was, in zero g, she reached over her head and grabbed the top of her couch, pulled herself back against the cushions, and shook herself all over.

  “Masterful! I sounded like a zombie!”

  “You did keep your voice flat. Restrained. Our friend Gerald, on the other hand, showed some evidence of tension.”

  “I could barely understand him,” Zev said.

  “He was doing his upper-class Brit number on us,” Stephen Thomas said. “It doesn’t even work on Victoria. It took me weeks to figure him out. He has this weird accent he can use. From a distance it sounds like perfect English. But when you try to listen to it, none of the words make any sense.” Stephen Thomas raised his chin and made an exaggerated “o” with his mouth. “Too many rounded tones,” he said, extending all the vowels. He did sound just like Gerald, nearly as incomprehensible. “You’re supposed to be intimidated.”

  “I was confused,” Zev said. “I thought perhaps he was ill.”

  Stephen Thomas laughed out loud.

  “The accent used to intimidate me,” Victoria admitted. “Until I spent some time in England. It’s all a game. I quit playing it.”

  Stephen Thomas let the image of Sea coalesce in front of him as he unbuckled his safety straps and floated out of his couch.

  “I’m going to take a nap before we orbit.”

  “It’s awfully early,” Victoria said.

  “So?” he said impatiently. “What’s the big deal? I want to be rested when we land. Maybe having a black eye makes you tired.” He paddled through the micro-gravity and disappeared into the body of the Chi.

  Frowning, Victoria watched him leave.

  “I’ve never known him to take a nap during the day,” she said to J.D.

  Satoshi chuckled. “Go to bed, yes, but sleep?”

  “Maybe things just caught up with him,” J.D. said. “I know my physical energy feels low.”

  Victoria felt physically and emotionally stressed, but intellectually aroused and on edge. She let go of the head-rest of her couch and stretched her arms forward, rounding her spine. Her vertebrae cracked, one after the other, an inaudible pitter-patter from the base of her neck to the small of her back. She wished Stephen Thomas had stayed a few more minutes. He gave the world’s best back rubs, and she could use a back rub just now. She wondered how hard it was to give a back rub in micro-gravity.

  “I’m anxious to reach Sea.” Victoria raised her head and glanced across at J.D. “I keep hoping that something, somewhere along the line, will work out the way we planned for the expedition.”

  J.D. managed to smile.

  o0o

  The holographic globe of Sea hovered in the center of the observer’s circle. Beyond the hologram, beyond the transparent wall, Sea itself grew perceptibly larger.

  Alone in the circle, Victoria slid into Arachne’s web. It was like walking through a new house, all the rooms clean and uncluttered, a house as yet unfurnished.

  How much did we lose? she wondered uneasily. If she had been walking, she might have stumbled at the sudden shock of apprehension. If the web crash had wiped out all the data bases...

  She had stored her new transition algorithm outside the web. In fact the only place it was stored was outside the web. In a moment of sheer paranoia that had embarrassed her at the time, she had taken all her research on transition approach vectors, archived it in hard form, and erased it from Arachne’s memory. Only in retrospect were her actions eminently sensible.

  Under ordinary circumstances, the web kept everything for everyone: research data, operating instructions, health profiles, meeting announcements, interdepartmental sports standings, love letters, recipes, entertainment schedules... everything.

  Victoria tried to reassure herself. It could not all have been lost, or the ship would not now be functioning as well as it was. The web must want to increase its strength before it replaced all the multifarious sets of information from its continuous backups. The web had recreated its linkages, the paths along which information could travel and in which information could be placed.

  And then, as she watched, and listened, and perceived, the web began to fill itself with information.

  A sharp signal attracted Victoria’s attention. Avvaiyar, a member of the astronomy department, wanted to talk to her by direct connection. Victoria hesitated. Like most people, she found it unnerving to communicate with another person directly through the web links.
Victoria could never quite escape her feeling that it was too intrusive, too close a communication.

  But it was private, and under normal conditions it was very fast. Its speed was a major reason for Victoria’s trepidation: the speed made it too easy to say something without thinking about it first.

  Stephen Thomas is the only person I know who can get away with talking before he thinks, she said to herself, and smiled.

  Victoria connected herself to the web. With Arachne back on Starfarer and Victoria on board the Chi, the inevitable time-lag of distance both interfered with the communications speed and intensified Victoria’s discomfort. Now she could reply too quickly, and have to suffer through the lag while a message crossed space to its recipient, as yet unheard, but irretrievable.

  “It’s the system survey,” Avvaiyar said, her voice as clear and as distinctive as if she were standing, invisible, nearby.

  “That was quick!” Victoria replied.

  “I’m not nearly done. Only five percent. But what I’ve found in the five percent — !”

  “Tell me.”

  “Look.”

  Victoria took a bit of her attention and glanced at Avvaiyar’s representation of the Tau Ceti system. The web poured the information directly into her vision centers.

  She jerked back, startled by the brilliance of the conical volume Avvaiyar had surveyed. Tangled brushstrokes of lambent blue filled space above and below the plane of the system, and faint fine strands passed through the plane, between the paths of the orbits.

  “What!” Victoria exclaimed, more an expression of surprise than of confusion.

  “It’s cosmic string,” Avvaiyar said.

  “I know, but...”

  “A whole skein of interstellar string. Even if the other ninety-five percent of the system is completely bare of the stuff, even if I just managed to luck onto an unusual concentration — ‘Unusual’!” Her strained, disembodied laugh made the image of the star system pale. “Victoria, it’s as if we drove out of the back woods on a gravel road, and ended up on the world’s biggest freeway interchange!”

  It was wonderful. The false color of the strings twined above, below, and through the system. In the small mapped segment, fully ten separate strands twisted through space. The more kinks, the more possibilities for changing direction and distance. Her eyes closed, Victoria gazed with rapture at the map.