The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  His genitals had pulled themselves nearly inside him.

  Though he knew what to expect, he still felt shocked and scared and sick. He tried to control the new muscles, the changed muscles, to extend or retract. Nothing happened. He was stuck three quarters of the way between ordinary human and diver. Stephen Thomas shifted uncomfortably. He felt no pain, only a tense discomfort. But he sure looked weird.

  What the hell am I going to do, Stephen Thomas thought, if I can’t learn the control?

  The skin of his penis was soft and new and very sensitive, so sensitive that touching it brought back the threat of pain.

  “Fuck it,” he muttered. “Or don’t.” He lay down and flung himself over, twisting himself in the blankets.

  When Arachne signaled an urgent message, he wanted to ignore it, he wanted to refuse it. Instead, he struggled up again and accepted it.

  “What?”

  J.D.’s image appeared in his room.

  “Victoria, Satoshi, Stephen Thomas,” she said. Was it only his imagination, or had she hesitated before saying his name?

  As she spoke, holograms of Victoria and Satoshi appeared nearby. Arachne oriented their images as if they were all in the observer’s circle. Stephen Thomas could project his image and join them. He remained invisible.

  “Nemo’s called me.”

  “We’ll be right there!” Victoria said, excited.

  “There’s something else,” J.D. said.

  “What is it?” Satoshi asked.

  “Nemo asked me... to come alone. Alone on the Chi, I mean.”

  Stephen Thomas flopped back on the bed in disbelief.

  “I’m sorry,” J.D. said. “I tried to... I’m sorry.”

  Zev’s image appeared, too, in his usual place to J.D.’s left.

  “I can’t go, either,” he said sadly. “Nemo won’t let me.”

  “How can it stop us?” Stephen Thomas asked angrily.

  J.D. glanced toward the place Stephen Thomas would be if he were sending his image. From her point of view, his voice would emanate from an empty spot in the air. From his point of view, she looked straight at him.

  “I don’t know,” she said mildly. “But I also don’t know that I want to find out.”

  Victoria, too, glanced toward Stephen Thomas’s invisible presence.

  “It isn’t something we’re going to test,” she said. “It would be... bad manners.”

  “What the hell difference does it make?” Stephen Thomas said. “No matter what we do, we don’t measure up to what Civilization expects of us. We might as well behave badly and get some benefit out of their shitty opinion.”

  “No.” Victoria turned away from him. “And if you insist on being invisible, you can be invisible.” She spoke to J.D. “Get ready. We’ll be over to see you off. To help if we can.”

  “Oh, Victoria,” J.D. said. “Why come all that way in this weather?”

  “Nonsense. We’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  “All right.” J.D. smiled, gratefully. “Thanks.”

  Her image faded out, and so did Victoria’s.

  What weather? Stephen Thomas wondered. A storm, like wild side’s, on campus? Was I sleeping so hard I didn’t even hear it? What the hell is going on?

  Stephen Thomas went to the balcony door and cupped his hands around his face to look outside. The night was bright with a layer of shining snow, and flakes drifted from the sky. He cracked the door open. Cold air washed over him. It felt alive, it felt like the bubbles in champagne. The snowflakes landed with a faint, musical, crinkling sound.

  “Stephen Thomas?”

  Stephen Thomas turned quickly. Satoshi’s image remained in the middle of the room. Satoshi gazed into thin air like a blind man.

  “Are you still there? Are you all right? Where are you?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Will you project, dammit?”

  “I don’t have any clothes on.”

  Satoshi hesitated. “I don’t care. I want to see you.”

  “What are you so mad about?” Stephen Thomas asked.

  “Mad? Why should I be mad? You withdraw, you disappear —”

  “You can find me if you want me!”

  “I started to. But you acted like you wanted time alone. I can’t read your mind, I —”

  He stopped, upset and confused.

  “I can’t read yours, either, Satoshi,” Stephen Thomas said quietly.

  “No,” Satoshi said. “I know you can’t. Look, I’m sorry about — We have to talk. I’m afraid you —” He glanced away, to reply to Victoria, outside the area of his image. “Be right there,” he said over his shoulder. “Will you meet us at the dock?” he asked Stephen Thomas.

  Stephen Thomas had no idea how he would react when he saw J.D. again. One temper tantrum was plenty for any twenty-four hour stretch.

  It’s not her fault, he told himself. None of this is her fault. Or Victoria’s, or Satoshi’s.

  “Come on,” Satoshi said, his tone uncharacteristically edgy. “The weather’s not that bad.”

  “Okay,” Stephen Thomas said quickly. “I’m on my way.”

  o0o

  J.D. asked Arachne to notify the rest of the faculty and staff of Nemo’s message, but she put no emergency flag on her communication. There was no point to rousing people out of their warm beds, just to sit around waiting till she reached the planetoid. In an hour or two they would wake up, admire the snow, drink their morning coffee, and watch whatever she was able to send back.

  J.D. waded through the drifts. Zev leaped along beside her. She smiled. She loved to watch him. He scooped up a loose handful of snow and threw it, the way he had flung the oranges. It scattered into J.D.’s hair. She decided not to show him how to make a snowball. She was sure he would figure it out for himself soon enough.

  “It snowed once when I was a kid,” he said. “But not very much.”

  He was wearing his suit and his shoes. Divers enjoyed cold water, but Zev was neither acclimated nor adapted to arctic conditions. The snow caught in the cuffs of his pants, forming icy pellets.

  J.D. looked up, hoping for a break in the clouds, a glimpse of the other side of Starfarer. All she could see was snow falling from the luminous grayness of the night sky.

  Arachne guided J.D. to an access hatch. Knee-deep snow covered it, pressing it down so it could not open automatically. J.D. kicked the snow away. The hatch buzzed and groaned, trying to rise.

  “Help me, Zev.” She groped for the emergency handle, grasped it, and pulled. Zev hunkered down, grabbed the edge, and pushed.

  The hatch popped open. Wet clumps of snow avalanched into the entrance. J.D. and Zev climbed into the warm service tunnels of the starship, the veins in its skin that led to its underground organs, and all the way to the outside. More snow fell in with them and around them and on top of them. J.D. brushed it from her shoulders and hair, and did the same for Zev. She stamped her feet, leaving a patch of slush on the rock-foam floor.

  J.D. continued toward the docking end of campus. She squelched along in snow-soaked shoes that grew wetter, but no less cold, as the snow melted. She hurried, anxious to reach Nemo before the squidmoth emerged from the chrysalis.

  We should have stayed, she thought. If we’d stayed, the whole alien contact department would be there. Not just me.

  She and Zev met no one. Hardly anyone ever had the need to come down here. Infinity did, J.D. knew, and Kolya, when they went out on the skin. Even if people did often use the access tunnels, anyone with any sense would be asleep. She hoped everyone would wake up in time to see the snow, because it was beautiful. She also hoped it would be melted by the time she returned.

  “You can tell me what Starfarer looks like,” she said to Zev, “when the clouds have snowed themselves out, but before the snow melts. It will be pretty, with everything covered in white.”

  “I’d rather come with you.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Squids never d
o what you tell them,” Zev said.

  “They don’t?”

  “No. They make terrible pets.” He considered for a moment. “I guess it’s because they’re always afraid you’ll eat them.”

  o0o

  When J.D. and Zev floated into the waiting room at the Chi’s dock, Victoria and Satoshi had already arrived. There was no sign of Stephen Thomas. J.D. wondered if he was still trying to avoid her.

  Victoria kicked off from the handhold, brushed against J.D., and hugged her. As they spun slowly across the waiting room, J.D. held Victoria, bending to rest her head on her shoulder. When she finally drew back from their embrace, she kissed Victoria’s cheek, her lips. Victoria laid her hand along the side of J.D.’s face and looked into her eyes.

  “Good luck,” she said. “I hope... I don’t know. Just good luck.”

  “I want you all with me,” J.D. said. “I don’t understand...”

  “I wouldn’t want a lot of people hanging around staring at me if I were changing my shape,” Satoshi said, just as Stephen Thomas arrowed in through the doorway.

  “I don’t know,” Stephen Thomas said, his tone careful, brittle, and offhand, his sapphire eyes shocking and intense against the new bronze of his skin. “As a life experience, it’s got its points.”

  “I didn’t mean —” Satoshi said, flustered. “I was talking about Nemo.”

  Stephen Thomas shrugged and touched the far wall, bringing himself to a stop. His thin damp clothes clung to his body. He ran his hands along the sides of his head, slicking the curling tendrils of his wet hair. He separated two thick strands from the temples and twisted them at the nape of his neck to hold back the rest of his hair.

  “You must be freezing!” Victoria said.

  Stephen Thomas glanced at Satoshi. “What do you mean, the weather isn’t that bad? How bad does it have to get?”

  “If you dressed in something more than underwear —”

  “You used to like my clothes.”

  “J.D.,” Nemo said in J.D.’s mind.

  Nemo’s voice slid smoothly along J.D.’s enhanced link, following the surface of a four-dimensional melody onto a fifth dimension.

  “It is time.”

  “I have to go.” Still caught in Nemo’s melody, J.D. could barely whisper. “I’m sorry...”

  “How long will you be gone?” Victoria asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “We’re going into transition in a few hours! You’ve got to come back before then.”

  “But...” Her voice trailed off. She glanced around, from Victoria, to Satoshi, to Stephen Thomas and quickly away, finally to Zev. “I have to...”

  “Nemo must understand the problem,” Stephen Thomas said. “Maybe it’ll hurry up —”

  J.D. glared at him angrily. “Hurry up and die?”

  He shut up. J.D. wished she had overlooked his careless comment; surely he had not meant to sound so inconsiderate.

  “I’m sorry —” J.D. said.

  “Never mind.” His voice was hard; he sounded the way he had yesterday, just before he stalked away from the AS repair. “You’re right. Of course.”

  “I’m going,” J.D. said. “I only wish you were all coming with me. You know that, I hope.”

  “Of course we do,” Victoria said, worried. She kicked off gently toward her and embraced her again. They parted reluctantly. Satoshi’s hug was friendly, Stephen Thomas’s brief and cool. Zev hugged her and kissed her cheek, her lips, the base of her throat.

  And then the hatch was closing behind her and she was alone in the Chi.

  J.D. hurried to the observation circle and strapped herself into her couch.

  The hatch access retracted with a loud, mechanical clang. Arachne finished the launching check and gave over control to the onboard computer, an expert system that would ferry her to Nemo’s ship, and back, without her intervention. She had not given it a second thought when she was on board the Chi with her colleagues; now, alone, she was worried.

  How silly, she thought. No one in alien contact is a pilot. If the computer failed we’d all have been in trouble.

  As far as she knew, Esther Klein was the only person on Starfarer who knew how to fly spaceships. Every time someone proposed to save money by eliminating human pilots from the transport runs, the proposal failed. Now J.D. understood why.

  The edge of the dock slid past the transparent surface of the explorer’s circle.

  J.D. was free in space.

  Starfarer loomed, first a rock face, turning, beyond its support structure, then resolving into a pair of huge rock cylinders that faced her end-on, one spinning clockwise, the other counter-clockwise. Off to one side, the stellar sail gleamed in the sunlight. The sail powered Starfarer’s headlong flight from Sirius, toward the cosmic string, toward its plunge into transition.

  The Chi’s engines vibrated. Their subsonic moan surrounded her. The acceleration pressed her gently toward the straps of her couch. The Chi spun so the observer’s circle faced forward, away from Starfarer. The effect was of the acceleration moving around her, pushing her first from the back, then from the side, finally settling her into the cushions. The couch folded at her hips and knees, moving halfway to its chair configuration.

  Starfarer fell behind her.

  She could not yet pick Nemo’s dark little planetoid from the starfield. She felt alone, and isolated.

  During her two previous trips on the explorer, she had often come to the circle and sat alone in the transparent chamber to watch the stars. The darkness and the beauty had been soothing. Now, riding the deserted ship away from Starfarer and her colleagues, she felt alone and apprehensive. Her veneer of confidence dissolved, revealing the bravado behind it.

  She could feel the presence of her colleagues, watching her, as the public access transmitted her image back to the starship. Instructing the computer to focus the exterior camera on Nemo’s ship, J.D. transferred the image to the public access transmission. Once she herself no longer occupied the center of public attention, she felt easier.

  The PA channel reproduced Nemo’s planetoid in the center of the observer’s circle. Stark white light gleamed from the silk-filled craters and threw the rocky surface into deep relief.

  Victoria’s image appeared before J.D. The Milky Way shone faintly through the translucent image. The effect intensified J.D.’s impression that she was riding in a ghost ship.

  “Want some company?” Victoria said.

  “Yes.”

  “About Stephen Thomas...” Victoria said. “I’m sorry. There’s no excuse for his behavior.”

  J.D. could think of lots of excuses, or at least of reasons, and it surprised her that Victoria apologized for him instead of defending him. But, of course, Victoria did not even know the real reason. J.D. supposed she should tell her, but she could not bring herself to do so.

  “He’s under a lot of stress.” Trying to be tactful, J.D. ended up feeling evasive.

  Victoria laughed. “But he thrives on stress. If he doesn’t have enough in his life, he does something to stir more up.”

  J.D. smiled. “A useful trait, thriving on stress. I wish I had a touch of it myself.”

  “Everything will be all right,” Victoria said. “I trust your instincts about Nemo. You were right about Europa and Androgeos.”

  “I guess I was,” J.D. said. “I wish I’d been wrong.”

  J.D. was the one who had realized how desperately Europa wanted Victoria’s transition algorithm: so desperately that she was willing, in effect, to steal it.

  “Would you do me a favor?” J.D. asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Ask Zev to stay with you while I’m gone? Divers don’t spend much time away from their families.”

  She remembered how desperately lonely she had been on Starfarer at first, before Zev arrived, before Victoria first kissed her. She had felt like she was starving to death through her skin.

  “As good as done,” Victoria said.

 
“Thanks.”

  “J.D....” Victoria said.

  “Hmm?”

  “Please come back before Starfarer goes into transition.”

  “I will if I can.”

  “You have to! It’s too risky otherwise. Something might go wrong. You might end up anywhere.”

  “Victoria, you’re scaring me. I’ll do my best. I promise.”

  “I know you will.”

  Victoria looked like she was about to burst into tears. The change was so sudden and so unexpected that J.D. involuntarily reached toward her. Toward her image. Feeling foolish, J.D. pulled back. It would not have surprised J.D. to be having this conversation with Zev; it did surprise her to be having it with Victoria.

  Victoria wiped her eyes. Her chin stopped quivering.

  “Sorry,” she said, trying to smile. “I didn’t mean to do that. I miss you already. I can’t imagine...” She stopped.

  “Then don’t,” J.D. said, chiding her gently. “Imagine me coming home.”

  o0o

  Infinity opened the access tunnel, expecting night, and emerged into a white-out.

  Thick sloppy clumps of snow slid though the opening onto his face. He was so surprised that he ducked back into the tunnel and let the hatch thunk shut over him.

  Snow? It was far too late in the year for snow on Starfarer. When it did snow, it frosted the ground with a light sugar-coating of small, dry, sparkling flakes that sublimated at the first touch of the sun.

  Infinity brushed away the clusters of heavy wet snow melting on his shoulders. He touched Arachne, asking for a way to change the weather, demanding an explanation.

  What a mess, he thought, when he saw the reply. Arachne tried to cool things down — but now the weather’s oscillating between extremes. We’re in trouble. If we don’t get to 61 Cygni soon, and stay there for a while... we’re dead.

  Arachne could open the sun tubes early and pour heat into campus. The snow would stop... and a monsoon would start. Rain and melting snow would saturate the land. The result would be floods, erosion, mudslides.

  He could tell Arachne to shut off all heat transfer into the ship, to starve the weather of energy. Then they would get a hard freeze. Probably an ice storm. That would be disastrous for the vegetation and the animals.