The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “It was for you!” Zev cried, and threw himself into J.D.’s arms.

  His tears fell on her shoulder, hot, then cold, as they trickled down her skin. She stroked his wet hair and his velvety back.

  “Shh, shh,” she said. “Stop crying.”

  She was afraid that she knew what had happened.

  Zev drew back. He ducked his head for a moment, putting his face underwater and scrubbing his eyes and his runny nose.

  He sat up straight again.

  “When my mother asked you to become a diver, we thought you would accept. I thought you would. Lykos had the sensitizer to give you. You can just take it like a pill, it’s hard to kill that stuff.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t want to be a diver —”

  “It wasn’t that simple. Never mind. Go on.”

  “ — so we destroyed the sensitizer. I was sorry, J.D. I was the person who was allowed to help you become a diver. I was chosen to bring the changer to you.”

  “I see,” J.D. said.

  “When I came to Starfarer I didn’t worry. I didn’t even think about it. I couldn’t give it to you or to anybody else because you didn’t have the sensitizer. Without the sensitizer, it dies out. My body rejected it. It’s probably all gone now.”

  J.D. took a deep breath and let it out very slowly.

  “Professor Thanthavong said she thought we were all right,” Zev said, “when we came out of the genetics building. But Stephen Thomas... he was injured, and he must have been exposed to sensitizer that way. But I didn’t know. And I stopped the bleeding where he got cut...”

  “Oh, dear,” J.D. said.

  “Satoshi was so worried,” Zev said. “He thought Stephen Thomas would bleed to death. He wouldn’t, but it did look scary.” Zev touched his own forehead in the place where Stephen Thomas had been gashed in the collapse. “Lots of blood vessels. Lots of blood. So I just put my tongue on the place.”

  Bleeding could be fatal in the sea. It could attract sharks. So divers intensified the clotting ability of their blood with a component of their saliva.

  Zev glanced sidelong at J.D., a little amused despite everything. “Victoria thinks I’m a vampire, I think.”

  “Of course she doesn’t,” J.D. said.

  Zev sobered again. “And that’s how it happened. All by mistake. Stephen Thomas will be mad, won’t he?”

  “He’ll probably be a bit put out, yes,” J.D. said.

  “Are you mad?”

  J.D. tried to sort out her feelings. “Not mad,” she said. “I’m... jealous.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He got a gift that was meant for me. A gift I wish I’d had the courage to take. He won’t even want it. They’ll mix up a viral depolymerase and he’ll take it and it will make him just the way he was before. You’ll be the only diver left on board.”

  “I’m sorry,” Zev said again.

  “I know it. Oh, Zev...” She remembered not to shake her head, just in time. The inner ear and the rotation of the starship interacted to produce strange sensory illusions if one shook one’s head or nodded. “We’d better go back to the partnership’s house and tell them what happened.”

  “I don’t want to. I’m...” He shrugged.

  “Embarrassed?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Have you ever heard of Murphy’s Law?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “‘Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.’”

  Zev thought about Murphy’s Law.

  “That would be funny,” he said. “Some other time.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Zev stood up. Lake water streamed from his body. They waded ashore. Sand stuck to J.D.’s feet. She had no towel. Still damp, she put on her pants and her shirt. Her cotton clothes turned clammy in the cold night air. She shivered and brushed futilely at her feet, trying to get rid of the worst of the sand.

  “Do I have to get dressed?” Zev asked.

  “I think it would be a good idea for you to tell Stephen Thomas what happened. I know it’s scary, Zev, but it would be bad manners not to talk to him.”

  “That isn’t what I asked,” Zev said. “I just want to know if I have to put on my pants.” He stood there naked, holding the baggy pants.

  “I’m afraid so. People are pretty informal up here, but I don’t think the informality extends to complete nudity. I thought you liked your suit.”

  “I did. At first. But it itches. And it rubs my fur.”

  J.D. stroked the place on Zev’s hip where the waistband of the trousers had chafed away at his fine golden pelt, leaving a raw place on his skin. All divers bore the scars and marks of their outdoor life, and Zev was no different. Even J.D. carried healed cuts from rocks and oysters and barnacles. This was the first mark Zev had gained in his new life. Somehow, it was not the same.

  “Wear your trousers for now,” J.D. said. “We’ll find something else later.”

  “I thought clothes would be fun. But I don’t like them after all. Why do you wear them?”

  “Modesty. Custom.”

  “But I have nothing to be modest about,” Zev said. “Unless I choose.”

  “You have quite a lot to be modest about.”

  Reluctantly, Zev slipped into the trousers and fastened them. J.D. led the way along the trail, carrying her shoes.

  “The clothes Stephen Thomas wears look like they wouldn’t hurt,” Zev said. “But after I talk to him he probably won’t want to lend me any.”

  o0o

  Infinity woke the moment the sun tubes radiated the first rays of light into Starfarer. He had only had a couple of hours of sleep, but he had been waiting, anxious about both the mechanism and the control programs. He was glad they were back on track, but he would be uncomfortable until he found out what had gone wrong.

  Beside him, Esther slept with a delicate, buzzing snore. He was usually sensitive to sounds at night; strange that her snoring never kept him awake.

  He slid out of bed and tucked the blankets in around her shoulders. She never stirred.

  The day brightened as the sun tubes reflected more light from Tau Ceti into Starfarer.

  He looked around for his clothes. The AS had not taken anything to the laundry. He kicked yesterday’s jeans with his bare foot, caught them, and put them on. Maybe the web crash had scrambled the programming of his housekeeper as well as the sun tubes. He went outside.

  The direction of the sunlight, always from straight overhead, no longer bothered him. It used to, when he was working on the space construction team that built the starship. When the sun tubes first became operational, he would wake up, every daybreak, convinced he had slept till noon.

  No one else ever even noticed the straight-down sunlight. Infinity mentioned it to a couple of co-workers, including Esther, and got no reaction but blank incomprehension. They were all city folks, accustomed to sunlight coming only from above. The bulk of huge buildings cut off the morning light, the evening light, the sunrises and sunsets.

  The dewy grass washed his bare feet. He shivered in the coolness of the morning.

  The other side of the cylinder was covered with clouds, a heavy concentration for morning. The common weather pattern within Starfarer consisted of night showers and clear days, with a few daytime clouds thrown in for visual interest.

  Today, clouds covered even the desert. This worried him, because if the desert received too much shade, too little heat and energy, its temperature would not increase, the air above it would not heat and rise toward the center of the cylinder, and the weather patterns would stagnate.

  Ordinarily he would assume that the ecology department had the weather well under control, and keep his opinions to himself. He was, after all, a gardener. His responsibility was to what grew from the ground, not what fell from the sky. But after talking to Alzena, he knew that someone else would have to assume responsibility for the weather. The ecology department would not do it anymore. There was no ecology
department

  The cactus in his garden looked unhappier today than it did yesterday. Grass sprouted around it. Not weeds: Starfarer had, by definition, no weeds. The plants on board had been considered, chosen, imported, and carefully placed. Nevertheless, every species did not always grow exactly according to plan.

  Infinity sat on his heels and pulled up the sprouts of grass. This was the job he had asked the household AS to concentrate on. Most of its internal memory was dedicated to knowing when something was growing where it should not. Infinity reached out into the web to call the household robot.

  He could not find it.

  o0o

  J.D. and Zev returned to the partnership’s house as morning brightened Starfarer. The grass was very wet, the day colder than usual. J.D. supposed Arachne must vary the temperature. The climate was supposed to be mild and constant, but not static.

  Satoshi was sitting on the front porch, leaning his head back against one of the porch supports, his eyes closed.

  J.D. stopped. She did not want to wake Satoshi, who had apparently come outside for some quiet. Beyond him, in the main room, several graduate students, Avvaiyar, and Iphigenie were eating breakfast, buffet style, with Victoria and Feral. The fragrance of French toast made J.D.’s stomach growl.

  Zev fidgeted in clothes made more uncomfortable by being damp. His claws scraped on the rock-foam path.

  Satoshi jerked awake. “I’m not asleep!” he said, then saw J.D., and remembered where he was.

  “I can see that,” J.D. said. “Why aren’t you?”

  Satoshi gave a wry grin. “I hate to nap,” he said. “If I take a nap I feel like a zombie for hours. And I don’t have time to sleep all day. So I thought I’d stay up. I was only resting.”

  “I must talk to Stephen Thomas,” Zev said.

  “He’s in his room eating breakfast. Do you want some?”

  “Yes,” Zev said. “Do you want some fish?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a good-sized trout, still so fresh its scales were shiny.

  Satoshi accepted the fish with considerable equanimity.

  “Thanks. I don’t know how to cook a fish...”

  “You don’t have to cook it, you can just eat it. I already ate one. I could get some more.”

  “... but Feral might.” Satoshi stood up. “You’re supposed to use salt-water fish for sashimi.”

  “It tasted good. You should try it.”

  “Maybe I will, if you try it cooked. Deal?”

  “Sure.”

  o0o

  Bits of fog drifted through the garden, giving the sunlight a silver cast, as if it were shining on a scene in a Romantic novel.

  Stephen Thomas was sitting up in his bed, surrounded by the tangle of his bright quilt, wearing a purple hapi coat, balancing on his lap a tray that held the remains of his breakfast, both French toast and fresh trout. The bruises around his eyes had nearly faded, and the cut on his forehead healed. He did not look at all ill; rather, a few degrees more ascetic than usual, the acute grace of his features honed by fever.

  J.D. watched him as he listened to Zev. Her first reaction to him, that of speechless astonishment at his beauty, had never moderated. She hoped she was getting better at concealing it.

  Stephen Thomas acted as if he were more interested in breakfast than in what Zev was telling him. He separated the last bite of fish from the skeleton and ate it delicately; he picked up his coffee cup and sipped from it.

  “I am very sorry, Stephen Thomas,” Zev said. “I didn’t mean it.”

  Stephen Thomas put down his coffee cup. The silence of the touch of the cup to the saucer was the only indication of how carefully he was controlling himself, his reactions.

  “Christ on a crustacean,” he said. “You’re telling me I’m turning into a diver.”

  “Um,” Zev said. “Yes.”

  Stephen Thomas took another sip of coffee and ate the last corner of a piece of toast.

  “Professor Thanthavong can change you back,” Zev said. “J.D. told me so. Before anybody even notices.”

  Stephen Thomas poked at the fish bones, found one final morsel, and nibbled it from the tip of one tine of his fork.

  “Maybe I should have tried this raw, like Satoshi did,” he said.

  “Can’t she change you back?” Zev said. “Satoshi didn’t like it raw.”

  “Professor Thanthavong just developed viral depolymerase, she doesn’t keep a lock-hold on it,” Stephen Thomas said. “I can change me back.”

  “Then everything is all right.” Zev sounded relieved.

  “If I decide to.”

  J.D. was shocked. “You aren’t considering —”

  “Why not?” Stephen Thomas said.

  “Because...”

  “Think about it for a minute. It might be interesting to change that way.”

  “I have thought about it.” J.D. tried to keep the bitterness from her voice. “I’ve thought about it for a lot more than a minute.” The reasons she had turned down the divers’ invitation had nothing to do with her apprehension — though she had been apprehensive — about the physical changes involved in becoming a diver.

  “What do you think, Zev?” Stephen Thomas asked. “How would you like it if you weren’t the only diver on board?”

  Zev fidgeted, looked through the open window into the garden, glanced at J.D., and pressed his hands against his knees, spreading the swimming webs.

  “I’m already not,” he said. “J.D. is one of us even though she doesn’t look like us. You’d look like us, Stephen Thomas, but you wouldn’t be one of us. You’ve never lived with the orcas and you don’t know true speech.”

  “I speak a little French,” Stephen Thomas said, trying to make a joke.

  “That’s a start,” Zev said.

  “On true speech?” Stephen Thomas asked, surprised.

  “Most of the divers speak French,” J.D. said. “The ones in Puget Sound, anyway. I used to think they learned it because they traveled between the United States and Canada all the time. But now I wonder if they haven’t been planning to apply for political asylum in Canada for a long time. Zev, do you know?”

  Zev shrugged. “I don’t get to help make decisions till I’m older. Lykos always talked to me in French and English. For a long time I thought there were only two languages — true speech and lander.”

  Stephen Thomas put his breakfast tray on the floor. The dishes and utensils rattled.

  “So you think I should cure myself from being a diver.”

  “I think you should do as you please,” Zev said. “It would be nice for J.D. and me to have somebody else to swim with. Do you like to swim?”

  “I know how,” Stephen Thomas said. He got most of his exercise through the intramural team sports that set up competitions between the departments on campus. “I played water polo one semester.”

  “Divers aren’t allowed to compete in water polo,” Zev said. “Not with ordinary people. We have an unfair advantage.”

  “Don’t you think,” J.D. said, impatient, “that you ought to tell Victoria and Satoshi what’s happened?” She stood up.

  “I guess so,” Stephen Thomas said.

  J.D. went to call them.

  “Get Feral to come, too,” Stephen Thomas said without any more explanation.

  Victoria and Satoshi and Feral returned with J.D.

  Victoria still looked worried, Satoshi distracted. Feral, as always, remained prepared to participate in any story that came his way.

  “Have you seen the housekeeper?” Satoshi said.

  “What? No. Why? I couldn’t even get it to bring me a glass of juice.”

  “I thought it might be buried in here someplace.”

  “Very funny. Sit down, you guys. I have something to tell you.”

  o0o

  Infinity tried a couple of different pathways, searching for his AS garden weeder. It was smart enough to get itself repaired, if it started to break down, but Repairs had no record of it. It did n
ot need a new battery and it was not in the house recharging.

  Gerald Hemminge had made a foolish threat, back in the meeting, but he could not have been serious.

  Infinity called emergency services to find out if the artificials had been recalled. All he got was a busy signal. And he still could not find his garden weeder.

  He went back in the house. Esther slept, buried under the blankets with just her curly hair and the tips of her fingers showing. Infinity sat on the edge of the bed.

  Esther erupted out of the blankets and pounced on him, pulling him sideways. Infinity yelped with surprise. Esther started laughing and kissing him, and he found himself laughing too, with Esther on top of him, straddling his hips.

  “You get up so early!” she said. “My Native American samurai, do all Native American samurai get up so early?”

  “Don’t know,” he said. “I thought I was the only one.”

  “Can I take your clothes back off?” She unbuttoned the top button of his pants.

  “I can’t find the AS,” he said.

  “Kinky,” she said.

  He stroked her sides and her waist and her hips with the palms of his hands, with his fingertips. She opened the rest of the buttons.

  Infinity bent his knees and pushed himself up so he could slide his pants off. Esther tried to help without changing her position. The pant legs bunched and crumpled around his ankles. He sat up, with Esther, giggling, in his lap, holding him hard between her knees, tangling her hands in his long black hair. Infinity tried to kiss her, cradle her breast in one hand, and free himself of his pants all at the same time. He finally kicked his jeans aside as she pushed him back onto the bed, taking him, not laughing now, hungry and intense.

  o0o

  Stephen Thomas told Zev’s story, with additions and corrections and apologies from the diver.

  “God, what a great story!” Feral said. “You are so lucky — We’ve got to document how it feels.”

  Victoria buried her face in her hands.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said. “I can’t stand it. What did we do to deserve everything going wrong?”

  “Hey, Victoria, it isn’t that bad.”

  “No matter what, you’re going to be sick for another couple of weeks. Damn! How soon can you start reverting?”