The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  Victoria glanced uncomfortably from Stephen Thomas to Satoshi.

  “I didn’t intend to make a big deal out of this, eh?” she said. “I thought it would be fun.”

  “Yeah,” Stephen Thomas said. “I know.”

  He and Satoshi gazed at each other. Stephen Thomas looked away.

  “I’d better drop by the lab. Don’t worry if you don’t see me till late.”

  “It’s already late,” Victoria said.

  “Are you coming back?” Satoshi asked.

  “What?”

  “Are you coming back?” Satoshi repeated himself, emphasizing each word.

  “What kind of a question is that?” Victoria cried.

  Satoshi did not answer her. He glanced down, then stared at Stephen Thomas, into his eyes. Stephen Thomas wondered if he could get out the door before Satoshi said anything else.

  Satoshi kept his expression neutral.

  “Are you going to tell us...”

  He stopped. The careful, neutral tone caught in his throat. When he spoke again, his voice shook.

  “Are you leaving us? If you are, do you plan to tell us?”

  Hurt by Satoshi’s unfairness, shocked into anger, Stephen Thomas replied without thinking.

  “I don’t know.”

  He fled.

  Chapter 11

  Stephen Thomas plunged down the dark curved stripe of path, through the pale glow of flowers and the carnation-spiced air. He stopped at the garden gate, his breathing hard and shaky.

  He had nowhere to go. He did not want to spend the night in the lab. He was too tired to get any work done. He was damned if he would sleep on the couch in the student lounge, in public; he had no idea how his body would betray him next. His makeshift office was too small to sleep in.

  He should turn around, go back inside, and tell Victoria and Satoshi he wanted to go to bed and go to sleep alone. But nothing would be that easy, not after what he and Satoshi had said to each other. Satoshi’s question had struck painfully at what Stephen Thomas feared might be the truth.

  Is he right? Stephen Thomas wondered. He leaned against the steep bank that formed the garden wall. It was cool and damp. Ivy crinkled against his hands.

  What would it be like to live apart from Victoria and Satoshi? A couple of weeks ago the idea would have been unimaginable. Now, strain showed between them all. Stephen Thomas had said things to Victoria that he regretted; and he had felt so disconnected from Satoshi since the changes began that he hardly felt like they were living together at all.

  He glanced back at the house. In the main room, Victoria and Satoshi held each other. Stephen Thomas felt excluded and exhausted, unable to face talking to his partners, or anyone else, tonight.

  Lots of people on campus would give him a place to sleep. Some of them would not even ask why he needed somewhere to stay. But Starfarer had many of the attributes, positive and negative, of a small town. One of the negative attributes was the gossip.

  What about the guest house? Stephen Thomas thought.

  It was where Feral had been planning to stay, till Stephen Thomas invited him to use Merry’s room. As far as Stephen Thomas knew, no one was staying there at all. A solitary retreat where he could get his bearings was exactly what he needed.

  o0o

  A vile smell rolled out of Kolya’s oven. Not the odor of tobacco smoke, but the poisonous scent of crushed nightshade leaves: Nicotine, nicotinic acid, tobacco boiled and abused into a useless mush.

  Griffith recoiled and hurried to open the front door.

  “Don’t do that!” Kolya said.

  “But —”

  “Someone might smell it.”

  Griffith bolted outside and slammed the door behind him.

  Kolya glanced regretfully into the dish. One of the tobacco leaves lay steaming in its own juice.

  “This is not a success,” Kolya said.

  He joined Griffith on the front porch.

  “Petrovich, you look positively green.”

  “I feel negatively green.”

  Kolya chuckled.

  “I tried smoking once,” Griffith said. “I didn’t like it.”

  “The leaves need preparation. That green tobacco was not tasty.”

  “I know,” Griffith said.

  Kolya gave him a questioning glance. Griffith shrugged.

  “I’ve tried a lot of things... at least once. I didn’t like chewing tobacco any more than I liked smoking.”

  “It smells better when it’s cured,” Kolya said.

  “You need to dry the stuff. And ferment it.”

  “Ferment it? Like beer?”

  Griffith shrugged. “The refs say you ferment it. They don’t say how.”

  “I was trying to dry it, I thought that would be adequate.”

  “You don’t cook much, do you?” Griffith asked.

  “Rarely. Why? Do you?”

  “Yeah. Some. A little. I don’t think microwaving is a good way to dry something out.”

  “Why didn’t you say so before?”

  “I didn’t want... I don’t know.”

  Kolya smiled wryly. “I’m not always right,” he said. “Haven’t you learned that yet, Petrovich?”

  “I guess not.”

  “What would you suggest we try?”

  Griffith glanced toward Kolya’s front door, and his color grayed. “What do you mean, ‘we’?”

  “You shouldn’t have —” Kolya stopped. If he embarrassed Griffith about finding the tobacco for him, Griffith would likely decline to get more when Kolya ran out.

  “Maybe toasting it would work,” Griffith said. “Toasting it gently.”

  o0o

  Stephen Thomas entered the lobby of the guest house.

  None of the people in charge of it remained on board Starfarer. With the cleaning ASes out of commission as well, dust had begun to collect in corners and on the windowpanes.

  Stephen Thomas climbed to the second floor. Since he was the only guest, he supposed he could have any of its dozen rooms.

  He opened the door to the room Feral had been planning to use.

  Stephen Thomas had shown Feral to the guest house...

  Feral had just arrived on the same transport that brought J.D. to Starfarer and returned Victoria from her trip to British Columbia. Stephen Thomas and Feral had barely met. But Stephen Thomas liked him from the start.

  He and Feral had stood in the doorway. The room was comfortable and attractive. It had better furniture than Merry’s room, the unused room, back at the partnership’s house. But Stephen Thomas did not want to leave Feral here all alone.

  “You don’t have to stay here,” Stephen Thomas said. “Come home with me. We have a spare room.”

  “That would be great.” Feral smiled. He had a great smile. “It’s tough to get involved in a community when you’re staying in a hotel. Thanks.”

  Stephen Thomas still wondered if, somehow, Feral’s association with the alien contact department — or with Stephen Thomas and his family — had contributed to his death.

  Someone had used the room since Stephen Thomas was here last. The bed had not been slept in, but scraps of paper lay on the desk in the bay window. Arachne maintained a small display nearby. Bright sunlight washed out the display’s colors; Stephen Thomas could not decipher it from here.

  He crossed to the window, sat at the desk, and glanced up at the display. It contained a copy of the alien maze that had — they thought — been humanity’s welcome into the interstellar civilization.

  Stephen Thomas smiled sadly. Lots of people had kept a copy of that maze around, trying to decipher it. Until Starfarer encountered Europa and Androgeos, and discovered that their welcome had been withdrawn. The maze was just a maze.

  Arachne informed Stephen Thomas that Feral had set the maze image in the window.

  Feral used this room as an office, Stephen Thomas thought.

  That made sense; all the members of the partnership had offices outside the house.
A separate office made it easier to concentrate on work, and to get away from work at home.

  Stephen Thomas wished he had known about this place. He had no particular reason to know; Feral had no particular reason to tell him or not to tell him. He just wished he had known.

  Stephen Thomas picked up the scraps of paper. They contained a couple of handwritten scribbles.

  “Family.”

  “Maze.”

  Passwords, Stephen Thomas thought. Feral wrote down passwords till he was sure he had memorized them.

  He asked Arachne for Feral’s locked files.

  He tried the word “Maze” as a password.

  It was a public key. Not the key itself, of course, which was too long to remember, but a vector to the key.

  Arachne responded with a message from Feral.

  Please record your observations about the deep space expedition. I’ll use your replies in the book I’m writing. I hope everyone will choose to sign their comments, but you can remain anonymous

  ...but if you want to remain anonymous...

  ...but if you insist on...

  Stephen Thomas frowned. This was getting him nowhere. He could send a message, but it would go one-way into Feral’s file, encrypted through the public key, and only Feral would be able to get it out. He wondered why he had not known about it.

  You don’t know about it because it isn’t finished! he thought. What else could those last lines be? Feral was tinkering with his announcement, trying to balance his preference for signed contributions with his willingness to respect privacy. He never had a chance to release his project. He set it up, but he never polished it, never told anyone that it existed, never released the public key.

  “Shit,” Stephen Thomas muttered. “Oh, shit, what a goddamned waste...”

  A public key implied a private key. Stephen Thomas fingered the second scrap of paper. “Family.”

  He was afraid to try it. “Maze” had given him a tantalizing glimpse. “Family” might give him Feral’s private key. Or it might give him nothing.

  Stephen Thomas turned the soft ragged scrap of paper over and over in his fingers, afraid to speak the word to Arachne, afraid to encounter the same bleak emptiness that had surrounded him when he first learned of Feral’s death.

  He rubbed his eyes; he spread his fingers across his face and looked at the world distorted by his amber swimming webs.

  Closing his eyes again, he spoke to Arachne.

  “‘Family’ is the private key,” he said.

  Arachne opened a hidden room to him, a room filled with Feral’s log files.

  Stephen Thomas stretched out on the bed, and went exploring.

  Feral kept lists. A list of places he had been. A list of his articles, of course. A list of the pieces he wanted to write, the places he wanted to go, the people he wanted to interview.

  A collection of references he planned to look up: Technical reports on Starfarer, on Arachne. The thesis Stephen Thomas had defended in order to earn his Ph.D.

  Stephen Thomas smiled sadly. No wonder it was on the “to be read” list. It was technical and specialized, tough going for a member of the field, much less a lay person.

  We’re even, Stephen Thomas thought. I haven’t read much of his stuff and he hadn’t read any of mine.

  He moved on through the reference list.

  Professor Thanthavong’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for medicine, for creating viral depolymerase. That one was an important, touching historical document, written years before Feral was born. Before Stephen Thomas was born. It was a shame Feral had never gotten to it. Maybe he had heard it, on one of the documentaries made about the professor. He had known a lot about her; he had admired and respected her.

  J.D.’s first novel. Stephen Thomas felt an embarrassing flash of satisfaction that Feral had not read it. It was neither dry nor technical, but it was hard going: obscure and unbalancing, disturbing. As hard to read in its own way as the Ph.D. thesis. When Stephen Thomas had tackled it, he had given up halfway through.

  He left the list of work Feral would never see, and glanced into the file of work that Feral had read. It extended back to Feral’s early teens. It ranged far and wide over subjects and technical level. Right at the top, most recent, was a book on braiding hair. That struck Stephen Thomas as strange. Feral’s chestnut hair had been medium length and curly. Not as curly as Victoria’s, but tight enough to keep it out of his face.

  He left that file and explored farther, deeper.

  He could hear Feral’s voice in every sentence. Stephen Thomas forced himself to listen, to stay calm. He could not manage to remain unmoved.

  Fantasies made him ache with regret and physical pain; observations made him laugh, and wince, in the darkness. He saw himself through Feral’s eyes.

  Arrogant and charming, physically compelling, his sexuality insistent and innocent...

  Stephen Thomas resisted “innocent.” Insistent, maybe, though he hoped he was civilized about his affairs. He thought he was. He was capable of backing off, of taking no for an answer, though hardly anyone ever said no to him.

  Stephen Thomas is vulnerable...

  Vulnerable? Stephen Thomas thought. What the fuck did I ever say to Feral, to anybody, that made him think I was vulnerable? Vulnerable about what? Bullshit.

  He saw a couple of files that referred to J.D. He skipped them. He could not bear to look at them right now.

  And then he came upon a picture of himself, a picture altered by Arachne to show his long hair loosely French braided, the light, sun-bleached strands on top crossing the darker blond hair underneath.

  He leaned forward in the dark, staring at the picture of himself. In his imagination, Feral separated strands of his hair, smoothed them, plaited them. Stephen Thomas tried to comb his hair with his fingers, tried to loop the strands together the way they were in the picture, but his hair slipped from his grasp when he held it loosely, or cut against the swimming webs when he held it tight.

  He felt in danger of breaking down. He let his hair fall; he buried his face against his knees and crossed his arms around his head and curled himself up tight.

  o0o

  J.D. cuddled with Zev, gazing out across the open field. The river in whose banks Crimson buried her fossils rushed and gurgled in the quiet night.

  Zev sighed and nestled closer. He had begun to breathe constantly while sleeping on land, instead of intermittently as he did in the water. He had begun to sleep soundly instead of napping like an aquatic mammal.

  J.D. wished she could sleep so soundly. But Nemo’s long silence troubled her. If Starfarer entered transition before Nemo called her, would she ever see the squidmoth again? If Starfarer left Nemo behind in the star system of Sirius, J.D. would not have to witness Nemo’s death. But Nemo would die alone.

  She touched Arachne, looking for messages. Silly; unnecessary. When Nemo called, J.D. would know.

  A breeze sprang up. It flowed past the open French windows, bringing the scent of spring flowers, new grass, even a hint of the sea. Strange: shouldn’t the breeze flow toward the sea, this time of night?

  The night grew darker as clouds collected. The breeze, gusting faster, chilled the air.

  J.D. snuggled deeper in the comforter. Zev made a questioning sound in his sleep, and rubbed his cheek against her breast. She stroked his fine pale hair. His body felt hot against her.

  Outside, the breeze evolved into a wind; it rushed across the field and into the house, rattling the windows. It touched her face with icy fingers, ruffling her hair and Zev’s.

  I should get up and close the windows, she thought. But she did not want to disturb Zev, and the cold had not yet penetrated the comforter. There was no hint of rain, only the insistent wind. It whistled and hummed; it rattled in a nearby stand of bamboo.

  J.D. thought the first white flakes were flower petals, whipped and scattered from a cherry tree. Some of them landed on the comforter at her feet. They disappeared, leaving a da
rk, wet patch.

  Snow.

  The snow surprised her, but a quick touch to Arachne assured her that it did, on occasion, snow on board Starfarer.

  Within a few minutes the snow was falling fast and hard, huge wet flakes driven horizontal by the wind. J.D. slid from beneath Zev’s warm arm and went to the windows. The wintry air exhilarated her, roused her, almost as much as diving into the sea. Before she started to shiver, her metabolic enhancer kicked in.

  Zev joined her by the window, sliding his arm around her waist. She hugged his shoulders. They stood together, in silence, watching the late spring blizzard, thinking how beautiful it was.

  A spot of warmth blossomed at the back of J.D.’s mind.

  With a start of excitement, J.D. closed her eyes and accepted the message.

  “J.D.,” Nemo said, “it is time to come and witness my metamorphosis.”

  “I’ll get my colleagues,” J.D. replied. “We’ll be there in —”

  “Come in your ship alone,” Nemo said.

  “Alone?”

  She did not think of danger, but of disappointment. Victoria and Satoshi and Stephen Thomas — how could she tell them they could not come? And Zev — ? He stood beside her, watching her expectantly, made aware by her physical reaction that something was happening.

  “Nemo, please — they’ll be so sad...”

  “You are frightened.”

  “No!”

  “I will transmit instead. You need not come.”

  She was sure she heard regret in Nemo’s voice, and she knew she had to go. By herself. How could she let Nemo change and die, all alone?

  “I will,” J.D. replied. “I’ll be there soon.”

  o0o

  Stephen Thomas fell into an exhausted sleep. Maybe the sleep did him some good. Near dawn he woke, moved as cautiously as an old man, stretched, and discovered that he no longer itched and ached. Tentatively, he slid his hand between his legs.

  He bolted up, snatching away the bedclothes and dragging down his shorts.