The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  Nemo touched Zev’s face with the tip of one long tentacle.

  “You have had your children.”

  “Me?” Zev said, startled, yet flattered. “No, I’ve never been asked to father a child. Not yet.”

  Nemo’s short tentacles wuffled in a complex wave.

  “You’re a juvenile.”

  “I’m grown!”

  Nemo pulled the tentacle sharply back. Zev leaned toward the squidmoth and touched the purple fur.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” Zev said.

  “Zev’s an adult,” J.D. said. “But divers wait till they’re older, usually, before they reproduce.”

  “Humans change to divers,” Nemo said.

  J.D. was having trouble following Nemo’s reasoning, though the insubstantial food made her feel intense as well as dizzy, able to make great leaps of intuition. Unfortunately, figuring out what Nemo meant, or what Nemo wanted to know, was too great a leap even for J.D.

  “Divers started out as human beings. But we changed ourselves. My grandparents did.”

  “Divers are not the adult form of human beings.”

  “No,” J.D. said. “I mean, that’s right. Humans can change to divers and divers can change to humans, but we usually don’t.”

  “I was never an ordinary human being,” Zev said. “And we breed true. Diver genes are dominant. If J.D. and I had children, they’d be divers.”

  “There’s another difference between Zev and me,” J.D. said. “Zev is male and I’m female.”

  She was glad to have a relatively neutral way of bringing up the subject of sex and gender. Though Nemo had not balked at any of J.D.’s questions so far, she had felt shy of asking about the reproductive strategies of squidmoths. And though J.D. assured herself that a squidmoth would be shy of completely different subjects than the ones human beings found difficult and delicate, she did not find broaching the question of sex any easier.

  “Europa is a female and Androgeos is a male,” Nemo said.

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “This is significant for your reproduction.”

  “Yes. For us, and for most of the higher animals and plants on Earth. To reproduce, we need a male and a female. How does it work for you?”

  “We exchange genetic material, then save it for our reproductive phase.”

  Male first, and then female, J.D. thought. Or hermaphroditic —

  Then: You’re doing it again, she thought. Trying to fit Nemo into familiar terms. Just because you think you’ve pinned something down, just because you’ve named it, doesn’t mean it fits in the box you’ve made of the name.

  “How often do you reproduce?” J.D. asked.

  “One time.”

  “Do you have children, then? Young ones, offspring?” Nemo was a being of great age; J.D.’s impression was that Nemo was an elder of the squidmoths.

  “I have no offspring yet.”

  “How do you decide when to have them?”

  “I decide when the juvenile phase of my life is finished.”

  J.D. started to say something, then stopped, for she had been about to interpret Nemo’s comment without double-checking her assumptions.

  “Do you mean that you decide when to become an adult — when to become sexually mature?”

  “I decide when to enter my reproductive phase.”

  “Is that when you become an adult?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you still a juvenile?”

  “I’m still a juvenile.”

  “I thought you were old,” Zev said. “Older than Europa, even.”

  “I am older than Europa,” Nemo said.

  “And still a juvenile!” J.D. said, amazed.

  Maybe that’s why Nemo’s willing to talk to us, J.D. thought. Just a crazy kid.

  “Nemo, how long is your lifespan?”

  Nemo hesitated.

  I wonder, J.D. thought, if Nemo is afraid I’ll say, “Take me to your mother”?

  “I’m nearly a million subjective years old,” Nemo said.

  Some juvenile! J.D. thought. If Nemo’s a juvenile, how old and wise the adults must be!

  “Did Civilization increase your lifespan, too, like Europa’s?” J.D. asked. “Or do you naturally live a long time?”

  Again, Nemo paused before replying. Would the squidmoth start behaving like Europa and Androgeos, withholding information because it was valuable, and human beings had so little to trade for it? She could not bear to think that after all, Nemo would send the humans away.

  If everyone in Civilization is four thousand years old, a million years old, J.D. thought, no wonder they think of us as immature. But... do they have kids of their own? Europa gave me the idea there were a lot of different people out here. Where do they put their population? She wondered, feeling depressed, if the people of civilization crammed themselves together, like human beings in some of Earth’s cities, and comforted themselves by calculating how many people could be packed into a given area, and still have a spot of ground to stand on.

  “Civilization helped my people naturally live this long,” Nemo said.

  “Do you build in a long life-span? Instead of prolonging it with outside treatments?”

  “More or less,” Nemo said.

  “Who decides who gets to make those changes?”

  “With enough knowledge, you can change yourselves.”

  J.D. sighed. “We’ll have to discover the knowledge on our own, I’m afraid,” she said.

  “When you come back, Civilization will give you another opportunity to ask for it,” Nemo said.

  “We don’t want gifts!” J.D. said. “Not now, not in five hundred years! We want partnership. We want friendship and communication.” She stood up, too agitated to remain lounging on the soft silk floor. “I know it isn’t very long-sighted to care that I’ll be dead when we get another chance. But I do care! I want to see the interstellar civilization for myself. Can’t anybody out here understand that?”

  “I understand.”

  Europa had referred to the squidmoths with contempt. J.D. thought Europa’s assessment of Nemo’s people was wrong. J.D. though Nemo might know more about the inner workings of civilization than Europa did, more about the power structure, more about the cosmic string.

  On the other hand, J.D. could not imagine Europa living anywhere for four thousand years — for one year — and not scoping out the power structure.

  “And... I’m selfish,” J.D. said. “Now that I’ve met you, how can I go home and know I’ll never get to talk to you again?”

  “I’ll be sorry when our talks end, too,” Nemo said.

  “They shouldn’t have to, though, that’s the point,” J.D. said. “The nuclear missile was a mistake. Bad luck, and misunderstanding, and error. It wouldn’t happen again in a hundred years. In five hundred! Especially if people back on Earth knew about Civilization.”

  “The nuclear missile was bad luck,” Nemo said.

  J.D. chose to interpret the expressionless comment as agreement, rather than as a question, or as skepticism.

  “I have to find the other people, Nemo. The ones who came before. I have to explain what happened, so they’ll stop withdrawing the cosmic string.”

  “There are no other ones anymore, J.D.”

  J.D. sank down. Androgeos had said the same thing, but J.D. had stopped believing Androgeos when he tried to steal Victoria’s transition algorithm. Hearing Nemo say the same thing shocked her. She trusted and believed Nemo.

  “How do you know? How can you know the other ones are gone?”

  “There haven’t been any in a million years.”

  “Maybe you just never met any,” J.D. said. “The galaxy’s a big place.”

  “Have you been everywhere?” Zev asked. Several of Nemo’s attendants had gathered at Zev’s feet, snuffling at his toes, at his semi-retractile claws. He petted them like kittens, like the baby octopuses the divers liked to keep around.

  “I haven’t been everywher
e,” Nemo said.

  “So there might be some you don’t know about.” J.D. smiled sadly, but she felt hopeful again.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “We’ve got to keep looking. Maybe I’m too arrogant, but I think our people would be an asset to Civilization. And maybe I’m not arrogant enough, but I don’t think our nuclear missiles are a threat to any of you. Even our military thinks interstellar war would be stupid and unwageable.”

  “Stupid isn’t equivalent to lacking destructive power,” Nemo said.

  J.D. slumped, her hands lying limp on her knees. It was essential to her, even if selfish and simple-minded, to return to Earth with a successful expedition. She was terrified at what would happen — not only to her and her renegade colleagues, but to their whole planet — if they returned a failure.

  The rush of Nemo’s insubstantial food had vanished, leaving her drained and shaky. She was too tired to think, too tired to talk. She could not remember the last time she had rested. She goosed her metabolic enhancer, but it too had exhausted itself.

  “Where do you come from?” Zev asked.

  Nemo did not reply.

  “Bad question?” Zev asked.

  Nemo’s long tentacles writhed and coiled slowly around the half-formed bag; their sound was of waves caressing dry sand.

  “No question is bad,” Nemo replied.

  “But you didn’t answer.”

  “I come from here,” Nemo said.

  “From Sirius, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s lonely here,” Zev said. “No other people. No life on the planets.”

  “My people didn’t evolve here,” Nemo said.

  “Then where?”

  Nemo’s tentacles twined, quivered, relaxed.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know how.”

  J.D. saw in her mind the glimmer of a star map. Zev brought it from the Chi’s onboard computer and sent it through his link. The sun was a point of light in the center; its near neighbors spread out around it. J.D. closed her eyes and looked at the map in her mind.

  “Can you see this all right?” Zev asked.

  “Make it bigger.”

  The scale changed. The dark space containing a few sparks changed into a crowded field of stars.

  “How’s that?”

  “Make it bigger.”

  Zev scaled it all the way up to the Milky Way and its neighboring galaxies, bright multicolored spirals and ellipses, dark dusty clouds.

  “Big enough?”

  “Not that big,” Nemo said.

  “Can you travel between galaxies?” J.D. asked.

  “We are not so advanced.”

  Zev showed Nemo a representation of the Milky Way.

  “On the other side,” Nemo said.

  The galaxy rotated. But its other side was dark and empty, for no human being knew what lay beyond the crowded stars and dust clouds of the galaxy’s center.

  “We don’t have that information,” J.D. said.

  “I could show you...” Nemo said, then, “No, I cannot, because of your link.”

  Zev let the map fade. J.D. sighed, and opened her eyes, more determined to enhance her link as soon as she could.

  “You’ve come a long way,” Zev said.

  “My people have.”

  A lifeliner scuttled into the chamber, trailing silk. Right behind it, Victoria swung around the edge of the curtain. Ecstatic, she strode toward Nemo.

  “Nemo, your center — I want to know all about it! Is it neutronium? How did you build it? How does it make you move?” She switched from using her link to speaking aloud. “J.D., are you okay?” She dropped to her knees next to J.D. and put her arm around J.D.’s shoulders. J.D. leaned against her gratefully.

  “Just tired,” she said.

  “My center’s difficult to explain,” Nemo said.

  “Try me.”

  J.D. could hear the dryness in Victoria’s tone; she wondered if Nemo could.

  “I mean difficult physically.”

  “How so?”

  “Your link is like J.D.’s,” Nemo said.

  “It’s too narrow,” J.D. said. “None of us can take in everything Nemo could show us.”

  “Arachne and I could exchange information,” Nemo said, “about my center, about the galaxy.”

  J.D. glanced at Nemo, then quickly at Victoria.

  “No,” Victoria said. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t think that’s possible.”

  “Talking is enjoyable, but slow, and imprecise, and insufficient,” Nemo said.

  “Maybe... limited access to Arachne?” J.D. said softly.

  Victoria twitched her head sideways, a quick, definite negative. Full access to Arachne meant access to Victoria’s algorithm. Limited access... who could tell how deeply Nemo might delve? The algorithm was the only thing Starfarer had, the only thing Earth had, that Civilization had shown the least interest in. Once Civilization possessed it, human beings had nothing left to bargain with.

  “I’m sorry, Nemo,” Victoria said. “That isn’t a decision I can make myself. I’ll have to discuss it with my colleagues. Do you understand?”

  “No,” Nemo said.

  How could Nemo understand? J.D. thought. All alone here, with the power to go anywhere, and do anything...

  “Human beings and divers talk about what they do,” Zev said. “And about what they did and about what they plan. Sometimes it’s boring, but it’s very serious.”

  Nemo touched Zev’s forehead, then J.D.’s cheek, with one soft tentacle. The other two tentacles continued to guide the spinners around and around and around the edge of another pouch.

  “I must think, and you must all talk together.”

  “Yes,” J.D. said. “As soon as Satoshi and Stephen Thomas get back —”

  “They’ll meet you at the airlock.”

  It was the first time Nemo had interrupted her. J.D.’s gaze met Victoria’s. Victoria looked thoughtful. J.D. felt stricken. She had been dismissed.

  Chapter 4

  The observers’ chamber was a transparent, flattened bubble attached to the side of the explorer spacecraft, with a clear view in every direction except immediately back toward the Chi. It was J.D.’s favorite place in the explorer. She sometimes sat out here all alone when they were traveling, just to watch the stars.

  She took her place in the circle of couches. Her couch faced outward, directly toward Nemo’s crater. Several hundred meters distant, above the crater rim, the variegated silken surface caught the brilliant light of Sirius and flung it outward.

  J.D. felt too tired to talk, too tired even to think. But her colleagues back on Starfarer had been waiting for hours for this conference. It was not fair to ask them to wait any longer.

  Zev and Victoria were already there, waiting for her. With her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her jeans, Victoria stood outside the circle, gazing toward Nemo’s crater.

  Zev lounged in the auxiliary couch to the left of J.D.’s seat. He grinned at J.D.

  “Nemo reminds me of home,” Zev said.

  J.D. stroked the young diver’s arm fondly. His fur, so delicate it was nearly invisible against his mahogany skin, felt warm and soft.

  “Nemo’s not like anything back in Puget Sound,” J.D. said. “Not anything like.”

  “I know. But he reminds me anyway. He doesn’t look like he’s been swimming in a long time.”

  “Nemo can’t go swimming,” J.D. said, a little impatiently. Imagine a being the size of Nemo, the size of the planetoid, swimming anywhere.

  “Not now,” Zev said. “But critters like Nemo don’t always look the same.”

  Zev was right. Nemo could have gone through more than one form. Maybe that was why Europa called Nemo a squidmoth. J.D. added Zev’s observation to the list of subjects she wanted to discuss with the alien being.

  Through her link, J.D. reached out tentatively to Nemo.

  “Ne
mo?” she asked. “I’m going to talk to everybody back on board Starfarer. You can join in, if you like.”

  She waited. She received no reply.

  I know how Nemo feels, J.D. said to herself. I’d like to sit quietly all alone for a while and think about everything that’s just happened. No. First I’d like to get some sleep.

  The image of Gerald Hemminge appeared nearby. The assistant chancellor of Starfarer also acted as the alien contact department’s liaison to the starship.

  “Are you ready?” he asked. “Everyone’s anxious to start.”

  “In a minute, Gerald, thank you,” J.D. said. “We’re still getting ourselves together.”

  “Very well.” As he turned, he faded out.

  Stephen Thomas entered and crossed the transparent floor of the circle. He had changed to a Starfarer t-shirt and a clean pair of long pants with the Starfarer logo on the thigh, unusually subdued clothes for Stephen Thomas. But he no longer looked as bedraggled as when he came out of Nemo’s crater.

  He stopped beside Victoria, but he did not speak and he did not touch her. He stared out the transparent side of the observer’s circle, his gaze on Nemo’s spiky curtains of silk. The severity of his hair, pulled tight and tied at the back of his neck, made him cold, and aloof.

  J.D. wondered what he was thinking about. The alien museum, on a harsh little airless world not too different from this one, fusing and destroying itself as he watched? The collapse of the genetics department around him? The changing virus turning him into a diver? No... none of those, of course. He was thinking about Feral, wondering how the enthusiastic young journalist would have reacted to Nemo. He was mourning the delight Feral would never feel. Mourning Feral.

  Then Victoria briefly touched her younger partner’s hand, and they turned to join the circle. Stephen Thomas looked straight at J.D., completely expressionless, and she had no idea what he was thinking.

  She glanced away, embarrassed to be staring at him, and blinked fast to clear her eyes of tears.

  Victoria took her place in the seat across from J.D. Stephen Thomas sat at J.D.’s right.

  Satoshi came in a moment later. He always moved so smoothly, so athletically: he nonchalantly carried two brimful mugs of tea. He handed one to J.D.

  “Careful. It’s hot.”