The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “You may help,” Nemo said again.

  J.D. hurried to the pile of satchels and brought another. Again, Nemo engulfed it. The wings stretched, pulsed, and resumed their flowing, steady beat, pumping the sac on its long traverse.

  J.D. fetched another egg case.

  “Not yet, not yet,” Nemo said.

  She stopped.

  Maybe it’s a reflex, engulfing the egg sac, J.D. thought. Maybe that’s why the tentacle is so slow. Maybe the timing is critical.

  Another bulge began to form beneath Nemo’s posterior full wings. By the time the second sac reached it, it had stopped growing. Again the bulges merged, again the sowbugs pressed the egg bulge out of sight.

  Time passed.

  J.D. continued to bring the egg sacs to Nemo’s mouth, leaving the tentacle to conserve its strength for the engulfing. Nemo remained silent, eyes closed, body and wings pulsing with exertion.

  J.D. was in awe of the effort Nemo expended. Of course the squidmoth could not talk to her now. But the silence of J.D.’s enhanced link felt huge and empty. She wondered if the change had been futile, just enough to give her a glimpse of Nemo’s complete communication.

  With each egg sac, the traverse through Nemo’s body occurred more slowly. The secondary bulge, the egg, took longer to form.

  J.D. helped, and waited, for several hours. Her friends back home would be worried by her silence.

  After the fifth egg sac, Nemo’s wings drooped. J.D. stroked the heavy, chitinous head. Nemo’s tentacle curled; the wings rose, and stretched.

  J.D. picked up another egg sac and brought it to the tentacle.

  I must be getting tired, too, she thought. These things are beginning to feel heavier and heavier.

  Nemo’s tentacle wrapped around the egg case, dragging it weakly in. J.D. stood anxiously by while Nemo’s mouth worked around it. The iridescent wings sagged nearly to the floor, and their colors had begun to dull. Right after the metamorphosis, Nemo’s body had looked sleek and well-fed. Now it had begun to shrivel. Nemo’s sunken flanks defined the egg case in more detail. The long wings labored to continue their beat. Even the attendants moved slowly, tentatively.

  The egg case merged with the egg bulge, and disappeared, and the giant sowbugs tumbled away from each other in response to the renewed throbbing of the wings.

  The tentacle sagged out of Nemo’s mouth, twitching and searching. J.D. hurried to bring the seventh sac. Nemo engulfed it, and the first set of wings moved it with agonizing slowness.

  Six more egg cases remained in the pile. J.D. felt frightened, because Nemo could never ingest them all before Starfarer hit transition. She should give herself at least an hour to get back.

  Nemo quivered, exhausted. J.D. stroked Nemo’s tentacle, the pulsing flanks.

  Nemo’s wings swept down, trembled against the floor, and lifted themselves slowly, painfully.

  The passage is going to take at least an hour, J.D. thought. If I’m quick —

  She touched her link to Nemo. “I’ll be right back.” She gently squeezed the furred tip of Nemo’s tentacle. Hoping the squidmoth could hear her, could still understand her, she rushed back to the Chi.

  o0o

  On board Starfarer, the sun tubes brightened with morning. The temperature rose slowly. All over campus, the snow began to melt. Icy drips collected at the ends of branches and splashed to the ground; rivulets rushed down hillsides, formed tiny new streams, flowed into the rivers.

  Infinity’s boots squished in mud and crunched the ice crystals that remained beneath the surface.

  He reached the dripping orange grove, stopped, and looked around.

  The emergency measures had saved most of the trees. The fruit was another story. About half the ripe oranges had fallen, and the blossoms for the next crop had wilted and died.

  Infinity sighed.

  Guessed real wrong on this one, he thought.

  His inside coat pocket scrabbled against his chest.

  He opened the coat and slid his hand into the pocket.

  “Ow!” He jerked back his hand and inspected his nipped finger.

  “Is that the thanks I get for saving you from freezing?” Infinity said aloud.

  The meerkat burrowed deeper, her claws catching on the material of his coat.

  “What is it you want?” He had tried to let the meerkat loose near her burrow, but she would not go.

  I bet this critter is Europa’s house pet, Infinity thought. And I’ll bet she wants to live in a nice warm house.

  Especially since she’s about to have kittens.

  Someone squelched through the deep mud toward him. Infinity caught a glimpse of Gerald Hemminge on the other side of the orange grove.

  Listening to Gerald say “I told you so” was the last thing Infinity needed. The last thing, except maybe having Gerald find out about the meerkat.

  o0o

  J.D. rushed back to the Chi. The Chi’s transmission to Starfarer had not troubled Nemo, so J.D. could safely opend the link.

  Zev’s image popped into being before her.

  “J.D.! We thought — I was afraid —”

  “I’m fine, Zev. How much got through before I pulled the plug?”

  J.D. grabbed sandwich makings out of the cupboard and started some coffee.

  Victoria’s image appeared near Zev.

  “Just enough to scare us. We’ve been so worried about you!” Victoria floated in the sailhouse, helping Jenny position Starfarer for transition. Jenny still did not, could not, trust Arachne. That left Victoria to buffer her, in the same position Feral was in when he died.

  “You’re worried about me?” J.D. asked. She slapped a sandwich together and wolfed down a bite.

  “At least everybody knows where I am.” Victoria smiled wryly.

  “I’m right here,” J.D. said. “I’m going back inside in a minute.”

  Satoshi appeared, surrounded by the complex equipment of the observatory. “How mad is Nemo?”

  J.D. swallowed another bite of sandwich.

  “Nemo’s not mad at all, as far as I can tell.” She glanced at the image Arachne created of Nemo’s planetoid. Several of the craters bulged with distended silk.

  “You aren’t in any danger?”

  “I’m sure not.”

  Esther Klein’s image appeared. “I can bring help with the transport. It’s ready.”

  “Thanks, Esther. But it isn’t necessary. Really. I better get back.”

  “How much longer?” Victoria asked.

  “I just can’t say.”

  “You’re cutting it awfully close!”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “But what are you doing?” Zev asked.

  “I guess... I’m acting as midwife. I have to go, Zev, I love you. Keep an eye on those other craters. I think...” She smiled. “I don’t know for sure. But I think you should watch them.”

  She rushed back through the tortuous silken path. The curtains continued to deteriorate. J.D. followed a trail of her own footprints, bruises in the silk, back to Nemo’s chamber.

  o0o

  Infinity patted the nest of towels on the floor of the closet. In the corner, the meerkat stood in sentry position, her paws crossed on her rounded belly. She fixed him with a suspicious gaze through her mask of black fur.

  “Oh, my god,” Esther said behind him.

  “Don’t scare her,” Infinity said.

  “I can’t believe Europa left her behind! What a rotten thing to do.” She knelt beside Infinity and tried to pet the meerkat. The meerkat snapped at her. Esther snatched back her hand.

  “I think we better leave her alone.”

  Infinity sat back on his heels. The meerkat walked a few steps on her hind feet, then dropped to all fours and jumped into the center of the towels.

  Someone knocked on the front door. “Are you ready?” Kolya asked.

  Infinity quickly slid the closet door most of the way shut, hiding the meerkat.

  “We’re ready.
”

  He and Esther joined Kolya on the front porch.

  “This is getting to be a tradition,” Esther said, “watching transition from outside —” She cut herself off when she saw Griffith. “Oh... are you coming?”

  “I’m checked out on the suits,” Griffith said, defensive.

  “I invited him to come with us,” Kolya said. “He’s allied himself with the expedition. We should accept that.”

  Infinity shrugged. “Whatever you want.”

  “Do you feel better today?” Esther said to Kolya. “You look better.” She hugged him, then drew back, startled.

  Kolya reeked with the smell of tobacco. Not the sour smell of his sweat, when the nicotine fits had hit him, but the fresh sharp smell of smoke.

  “You said you ran out of cigarettes,” Infinity said.

  “I did,” Kolya said, embarrassed. “But... I found another source. Tobacco grows wild. My friend Petrovich discovered it.” He gestured toward Griffith.

  “But you’d almost quit!” Infinity glared at Griffith. “Some great friend you are!”

  “Mind your own damn business,” Griffith said.

  “It is my —”

  “No, it isn’t,” Kolya said gently. “I appreciate your concern, my friend. And you’re right, I’d be better off if I’d quit. But I was miserable and sick, and now I’m not miserable and sick. Let’s leave it at that.”

  He set off across Infinity’s garden, heading for the access hatch on the other side of the field. Griffith followed him, hurrying to keep up.

  Infinity glared after them. Esther took his hand. “Come on,” she said. “He’s right. It isn’t any of our business.”

  Without replying, Infinity walked with her through the garden. They avoided the corner where his cactus grew. He was afraid the floods had drowned it.

  The path was full of water. A nearby stream had escaped its banks and turned the meadow around it into a pond. The access hatch was underwater. Kolya and Griffith hesitated at the pond’s edge.

  “We’ll have to find a hatch on higher ground,” Kolya said.

  “Can’t you make the water level go down?” Griffith said to Infinity.

  “No.”

  “But —”

  “I can’t,” Infinity said. “There was too much snow. It melted too fast. There’s no place else for the water to go. It’s flooded the rivers, too.”

  “You should evacuate some of the water into space.”

  “We already lost some when your damned missile hit!”

  “It wasn’t my missile!”

  “Starfarer’s a closed ecosystem. If we lose much water, it’ll turn into a desert.”

  “Okay, but doesn’t this place have reservoirs? Can’t you fill them? Or let the ocean get deeper?”

  “All of that’s happening,” Infinity gave up trying to keep the note of irritation from his voice. “What do you want me to do, bail?”

  “Petrovich,” Kolya said to Griffith, “the rivers drain into reservoirs and the ocean. As you can see, they’re working as fast as they can.”

  Griffith shrugged. “Lousy planning, then.”

  “I’m going over to the wild side,” Infinity said. “The rest of you can do what you want.”

  He walked away with his hands shoved into his pockets, his shoulders hunched. After a moment, Esther caught up to him.

  “That Griffith can be a pain,” she said.

  Infinity did not reply.

  “Okay, what’s wrong?” She splashed through a puddle. “It is Kolya’s business whether he smokes.”

  “I planted it,” Infinity said.

  “Huh?”

  “I planted the tobacco!”

  He stopped. Esther stopped, astonished.

  “I planted it. There’s not that much. I never thought anybody’d use it — I never thought anybody’d find it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because... it ought to be there. It belonged in the ecosystem, and it wasn’t there. And it was part of the tradition — I know this doesn’t make any sense...”

  Esther slipped her arm around his waist and hugged him.

  “Sure it does,” she said.

  o0o

  When J.D. reached Nemo’s chamber, the squidmoth was wrestling weakly with another egg case, drawing it slowly inward. J.D. hurried to Nemo’s side and helped position the egg case for its journey through Nemo’s body.

  With each new egg case, Nemo’s deterioration continued. The edges of the wings shredded iridescent scales throughout the chamber. They swirled like the snow back on Starfarer, but in drifts of color. Nemo’s tentacle twitched spasmodically. The squidmoth’s whole body was shrinking in on itself, collapsing in folds of skin and scales. The articulation of the wings, where they joined the body, stood out in sharp relief.

  J.D. picked up the last egg case. She took it to Nemo, but hesitated before setting it down.

  “Enough, Nemo,” she whispered, not using her link. “Isn’t it enough?”

  She drew a deep breath and knelt down to present the egg case.

  Nemo did not respond.

  “Nemo — !” she cried, afraid Nemo had died without saying goodbye.

  “It is done,” the squidmoth said. “The last must go to waste. I have nothing left to give it.”

  Weak with relief, J.D. looked blankly at the egg case. She was exhausted, too, not from work but from worry. Her mind moved, slowly understanding what Nemo had said.

  She put the egg case out of reach of the tentacle, and returned to Nemo’s side. The squidmoth’s eyes opened and blinked. Instead of their usual faceted glitter, they were dull and dry.

  “What happens now?” J.D. said.

  “Your help has left us time to talk.”

  If I leave here this instant, J.D. thought, I can still get back before Starfarer enters transition.

  If I go back...

  As soon as she realized she would have to decide, she knew she had already made the decision. Nemo had asked her to stay; she would stay.

  She sat on the ragged silken floor.

  She wondered how long she would be here all alone.

  Nemo’s wings folded in on themselves, a controlled collapse of the long articulations. The membranes covered Nemo’s wrinkled, shriveled body like a shroud.

  “I enhanced my link,” J.D. said. “Maybe I can communicate the way you do, now. Will you try again? Can you?”

  “I can,” Nemo said.

  Faint patterns appeared in J.D.’s mind.

  Nemo poured information into her brain.

  The world disappeared.

  J.D. gasped. She knew she had not shut her eyes — but she could not see, and she could not feel whether her eyes were open or closed. She could not smell the caustic air of Nemo’s nest, and she could not hear the glide and scratch of Nemo’s attendants. She was blind, and deaf, and her senses of smell and taste and touch and proprioception vanished.

  Before she could panic, a point appeared. The simplest geometric shape. She rotated around it.

  It turned into a line. She had been looking at it from its end, no, from within it, an infinite line made of infinite points, each one discrete. A fractal line of fractional dimension, neither the dimensionless shape of a pure point nor the one-dimensional unity of a perfect line.

  She rotated around the line, and the shape metamorphosed again. It twisted and moved, all in the same plane, filling up more and more space despite having no width, existing in the conceptual realm between a one-dimensional line and a two-dimensional plane.

  Nemo rotated her around the plane. She found herself in a landscape of jagged peaks and valleys as the plane torsioned itself into three dimensions, no longer two dimensional, not yet a solid, but somewhere in between.

  Space rotated again. J.D. caught her breath with delight and anticipation. She plunged toward the shape Nemo had created.

  Now she knew how her mathematician friend had rotated a sphere around a plane.

  It was easy. Nemo led her through
the dimensions in imperceptible steps. Sometimes she could not see the differences, but could hear or smell or feel them. Nemo gave her a shape that tasted of citrus in a snowstorm beside a crashing sea.

  J.D. lost count of the dimensions, the sensations. She needed more senses than a human being possessed. She disappeared into the maze of the squidmoth’s communication.

  She disappeared, but she did not feel lost. The mazes of Europa and Androgeos had confused her. In Nemo’s maze, she found herself: the place that represented her in Nemo’s universe. She found Nemo. She found the bright new edges — she wondered if a shape of infinite dimension had edges — that represented Nemo’s highest art form, the extension of knowledge and understanding.

  As it had appeared, the communication faded with inexorable serenity. Her sight and sound returned; her body came back to her.

  Nemo lay before J.D., trembling wings bound in a cocoon of dappled silk. A few attendants fell in a scatter around the motionless body, their gill-legs contracted against their undersides, each trailing a loose silk thread.

  “Nemo — ?”

  She received no answer. She reached out, carefully, tentatively — the world disappeared again — through her link and through her memory of Nemo’s communication, but the squidmoth remained silent, draped in the new cocoon.

  J.D. felt as if her brain had been taken out through her ears, whirled around her head a few times, and reinserted. She waited for the dizziness to subside. As it faded, she expected her new ability to think multidimensionally to fade as well.

  To her astonishment, the memories remained clear.

  “I wish to give you a gift,” Nemo said.

  “A gift — !”

  She almost demurred; she almost told Nemo that the gift of knowledge exceeded any physical gift the squidmoth might offer.

  And then she thought, J.D., are you nuts?

  She stroked Nemo’s long tentacle. The wings’ quivering eased.

  “I’ll accept your gift with great pleasure,” she said.

  “You aren’t curious about the nature of my gift.”