The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  Shadows moved in the darkness; the tunnel rippled between the two spacecraft. Light gleamed in the distance. It rolled toward her like a slow storm, carrying a sound of gentle thunder.

  J.D. pushed off into the passageway. The tunnel around her began to glow. A cylinder of light surrounded her and moved with her.

  Several recording devices, little tiny machines from the Chi, followed her into the tunnel. She scooped up one of the little tiny machines and let it cling to her shirt. The LTM would transmit her experiences back to the Chi, and through the Chi to Starfarer. All her colleagues could watch and listen.

  The central darkness shrank swiftly.

  Accompanied by light, a mass of multi-colored, multi-limbed fur floated toward her.

  J.D. touched the warm, wrinkled tunnel wall and frictioned herself to a stop. The tunnel’s light shone between her fingers, outlining her fair skin in pink.

  The multi-colored mass separated and resolved into four individuals.

  Each of the beings had fur of a different color. One was silky black, with black-on-black longitudinal stripes visible only at certain angles. One was appaloosa-spotted, orange on rust-red. Another was parti-colored, a riot of hot fluorescent pink, chartreuse, yellow. The fourth, the upside-down one, had longer, cotton-candy fur of a soft mauve, but its lower legs and the end of its tail and the beard of fur on its chin were all cream-colored.

  They made her want to smile — they made her want to laugh with joy. But she kept her expression neutral. Collapsing in ecstasy would give a poor impression of her to the mainstream of Civilization.

  The representatives’ voices filled the passageway with a low, trilling hum. J.D. wished circumstances had allowed her the time, the opportunity, to study their language.

  The alien people arched their necks. Their small round ears lifted and swiveled toward her. Their faces were long and pointed, like an otter’s, angling sharply up to wide brows over large, limpid eyes.

  Like humans, the representatives were bilaterally symmetrical. They had long, graceful, muscular bodies, powerful, sinuous necks, long-faced heads, long mobile tails.

  Prehensile, J.D. thought, or almost.

  The representatives were as large as lions, as lithe as otters.

  Each being had six limbs. In zero g, the beings flowed along the tunnel, using all six hands and feet to guide and propel them. The mauve one even used its tail: a serpentine movement touched the tail-tip against one side of the corridor, then the other.

  The beings came toward her, each at a different orientation, the mauve one — the one who used its tail — upside down, from J.D.’s point of view. They traveled as if they were enjoying themselves, not only because of the free fall, not only because of the excitement of meeting an alien, but because they were altogether delighted, and delightful.

  Silver threads lay in graceful arcs along the lines of the alien people’s bodies. Small polished stones and beads, vials and shells, bells and rattles, braided and tied in patterns into the beings’ fur, swung and clicked and rang.

  The illumination that moved with J.D. and the illumination that paced the alien people touched and melded. J.D. brushed her hand against the tunnel wall. She stopped.

  The representatives’ similarities to earthly creatures struck her as far stranger than the differences. She would have to remind herself, continually, that these were alien people. She would have to be even more careful than with Nemo about the assumptions that she made.

  “Hello,” J.D. said softly.

  “Hello,” said the mauve being.

  J.D. opened her hands and held them before her.

  “I represent the starship Starfarer, from Earth, and all the people on board. My name is J.D. Sauvage.” Her voice was trembling.

  The mauve being arched its neck gracefully forward. Fur rippled across its neck and shoulders and chest.

  “I help represent the Four Worlds,” it said. “I am Quickercatcher. Welcome.”

  “Thank you.”

  Quickercatcher moved nearer. J.D. caught its scent, a fragrance of raspberry and citron. It reached toward her, open-handed, with its middle limbs.

  J.D. suppressed surprise. Quickercatcher’s arms, rather than being the first set of limbs, were the second. Projecting from a second set of shoulder blades, halfway down the back, Quickercatcher’s arms reached past the front shoulders, dexterous and rather longer than the front legs and the hind legs.

  J.D. placed her palms against Quickercatcher’s hands. Quickercatcher’s two opposable thumbs gently clasped her wrists. J.D. tried to replicate the gesture, first using a normal grasp, then, when that felt awkward, by using her thumb and her little finger as Quickercatcher used two thumbs.

  “I feel your vitality,” Quickercatcher said.

  “And I feel yours.” A vibrating rush surged against J.D.’s fingertips. “And... my hands are shaking. Human beings sometimes tremble when they’re excited and elated.”

  Quickercatcher spoke, a low trill that dropped in pitch, and relaxed the grip on J.D.’s wrists.

  J.D. drew her hands back. “What did you say?” she asked.

  “I said...” Quickercatcher’s mauve fur caught the light, turning silver-gray and rose, as the being raised its chin then ducked its head, and repeated the trill. The silver strands glistened. “It is not a word, but a sound of understanding.”

  J.D. tried to replicate it. To her ears, the noise she made sounded similar.

  All four beings gazed at her with increased intensity, their small round ears aimed stiffly forward.

  “I hope... I didn’t say something offensive,” J.D. said.

  “You were understandable.” Quickercatcher’s purple eyes opened wide, then closed, the lids shutting in a wave from outside to inside. The lower lids and the upper lids each covered half the eye. Then Quickercatcher was looking at her again. “But you spoke with a very heavy accent.”

  “Our brother will introduce us,” the black-on-black being said in a soft, low-pitched voice

  Quickercatcher touched his chin to the back of the head of his black-furred companion and stroked down to the first shoulder blades.

  “This is our sister Longestlooker,” Quickercatcher said.

  Longestlooker was lithe, muscular, powerful. Her sinewy arms stretched forward. J.D. took her hands. Longestlooker’s grip was far stronger and tighter than Quickercatcher’s. Longestlooker extended sharp claws that dimpled J.D.’s skin. When Quickercatcher touched her, she had not even realized the beings possessed claws.

  She gripped Longestlooker firmly but gently, neither retaliating against the strength nor trying to match it. She kept her expression calm. She gazed, straightforward, into Longestlooker’s silver eyes.

  “Welcome,” Longestlooker said. She blinked slowly, from outside to inside corner, the same way Quickercatcher had.

  “Thank you.”

  “You have a starship of the other ones,” Longestlooker said.

  “Yes. It was a gift.”

  J.D. would have told them the story of Nemo, and Nautilus, if they had asked, but they did not. Better to say too little than too much, J.D. had decided long ago.

  “This is our brother Fasterdigger,” Quickercatcher said, touching the Appaloosa-spotted being with the same chin-stroke as before.

  Fasterdigger, the burliest of the four, unclasped his hands; they had been folded, fingers interlaced, on top of his back. J.D. steeled herself for the grip, but Fasterdigger’s touch was as gentle as a caress, as soft as his honey-gold eyes. J.D. noticed more about the beings’ hands: hairless palms, skin the color of the predominant fur, the fur narrowing to delicate tracings along the backs of the fingers.

  “Welcome,” Fasterdigger said, giving the L a sharp, high trill.

  “Thank you.”

  “And this is our sister Sharphearer,” Quickercatcher said, stroking the back of the parti-colored being’s neck. Sharphearer quickly nuzzled Quickercatcher’s throat, and turned to J.D.

  Sharphearer was d
elicate and sharp-boned beneath her raucous fur. She placed her frail hands in J.D.’s palms. She had blue eyes, not sapphire-blue like Stephen Thomas, nor gray-blue like J.D.’s, but a clear pure robin’s-egg blue, very calm and quiet.

  “We will be friends,” Sharphearer said.

  “I hope so,” J.D. said. “That’s my sincere wish.”

  Sharphearer trilled and hummed. “I just said ‘hello and welcome,’” she said.

  J.D. tried to mimic the sound. The quartet nudged each other and blinked their eyes.

  J.D. laughed. “I’m grateful to you for learning one of our languages.”

  “It would have been difficult for you to learn a language of ours,” Quickercatcher said, “since you didn’t know we existed.”

  J.D. smiled. “That’s true. During the plans for the deep space expedition, one of the biggest questions was how to communicate, if — when — we met other people.”

  Quickercatcher made a graceful movement of his head and neck, a shrug and ripple, a figure-eight tracing of his chin.

  “Yes, that’s often hard,” he said. “Sometimes we have to build machines to translate.”

  “I would have difficulties with a person who spoke by taste,” Sharphearer said.

  “So would I.” J.D. provisionally assigned the figure-eight gesture as one of agreement. She wondered if she could do it herself; she could approximate it, but she would need six or eight more vertebrae to replicate it without a heavy accent.

  The quartet all spoke excellent English, as Europa did, idiomatically, with a slight, stiff old-fashionedness. Though English had not even existed when Civilization rescued Europa and Androgeos from the destruction of Crete, the Minoans had observed Earth, from a distance, for a very long time. But they had retreated to Civilization during the past fifty years, when Earth’s technology might detect them.

  “What should I call you?” J.D. asked.

  “You may use our names,” Quickercatcher said.

  “Some people in Civilization use honorifics,” Longestlooker added, hard on the heels of Quickercatcher’s words.

  “But we don’t bother,” Sharphearer said.

  “I mean — a collective name. What do you call your species? For instance, I’m a human being. All the people on board Starfarer are human beings.” More or less, she thought, but did not try to complicate things by explaining further.

  “We call ourselves...” Quickercatcher spoke a humming moan.

  The sound made J.D. shiver. She tried to repeat it.

  Quickercatcher and the others reacted with the slow close of eyes from outer to inner edge.

  Amusement, J.D. thought.

  “Not too good, huh?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “I appreciate your graciousness,” J.D. said. “Does the word for your people translate into English? Or should I think of you as ‘Citizens of the Four Worlds’?”

  “It means... ‘people,’” Quickercatcher said.

  “You will find, in Civilization,” Longestlooker said, “that the word most people use to name themselves is... ‘people.’”

  “Which of you is from which world?” J.D. asked.

  “We aren’t from all the Four Worlds,” Quickercatcher said. “Only from one.”

  “Oh,” J.D. said, taken aback. “When you said you were the representatives, I thought you meant one from each world.”

  They suddenly grabbed each other and clung together, rolling over and around in a riot of color, chattering in quick singing tones. J.D. watched them, bemused, but also wishing she were in the midst of the pack. When finally they separated, they all spoke in quick succession.

  “We’re all from one —”

  “— from one world —”

  “— the Largerfarther —”

  “How’s she to understand ‘largerfarther’?”

  “— The larger of the outer pair of living worlds —”

  “We’re from one world, one family —”

  “— one world, one family, we’re —”

  “— family, we’re identical.”

  “Identical!” J.D. exclaimed.

  They settled down as abruptly as they had burst into activity.

  “Yes, identical,” Quickercatcher said.

  “You don’t look identical!” J.D. said.

  “No, of course not, not now. You wouldn’t want to go through life exactly the way you started out, would you? But when we were born, we were identical.”

  “You’re a clone?”

  “I suppose you could say that,” Fasterdigger said. “We’re identical quadruplets.”

  “Oh, I see.” J.D. thought, Their genetics are different from ours, starting with sex determination.

  “What about you?”

  “I’m a singleton,” J.D. said. “Most humans are.” The quartet did not follow up with more questions, and J.D. thought, Of course not, why should they? They’ve had four thousand years to observe human beings.

  But even the quartet might be surprised by J.D.’s parentage. Most people found the complexity confusing. It had not been confusing to J.D.

  “Are multiple births unusual or common to your people?”

  “Most Largerfarthings are twins.”

  “Many triplets.”

  “A few quadruplets, like us.”

  “And you’re sisters and brothers. You have two genders, like humans, or more?”

  “Two.”

  “And you start out the same, but differentiate later — or choose which to be?”

  “Choose, and change, too,” Quickercatcher said.

  “Changing back and forth is hard,” Fasterdigger said.

  Before J.D. could ask more about the Largerfarthings’ gender choices, a gentle motion on the tunnel wall caught her attention. She glanced — not up; in free fall it did not feel like “up” — toward it.

  The quartet followed her gaze, their limber necks curving and bending, their ears springing alert.

  A being like a giant, double-wide caterpillar crept toward them, flattening itself close to the tunnel surface. Green and gold and brown mottled its undercoat, giving it the look of sun-dappled leaves. Coarse brindled hair, or slender quills, formed a guard coat. As the being moved, clusters of long sharp emerald spines angled up through the fur, then disappeared beneath it.

  “It’s Late!” Quickercatcher exclaimed.

  “Late?” J.D. said. “Should we be somewhere — ?”

  Quickercatcher touched his tail to the tunnel wall and pushed off toward the creature, pressing between Sharphearer and Fasterdigger, who turned and followed.

  J.D. pushed off too, following them toward the new being. She longed to touch it, to brush her fingertips across the dappled hair or the tips of the dangerous spines, even at the risk of injury or poisoning. She held back; Europa had cautioned her not to touch anyone without permission or invitation.

  Whether this was a person or a creature, a pet or a worker or a construct like the silver slugs back on Starfarer, or an entity for which she had no equivalent, she had no idea. She intended to take no chances.

  The creature’s body was almost as long as J.D. was tall, wider than her armspan, and the span of her hand deep. Its feet remained concealed beneath the fringe of hair, but it left a faint glistening trail behind it, so J.D. guessed it used suction and moisture to hold fast.

  Quickercatcher and Longestlooker hovered over it, pressing close but adroitly avoiding its spines.

  “You’re late, Late!” Quickercatcher exclaimed.

  “As usual,” said Longestlooker.

  The creature’s leading edge lifted from the tunnel surface, arching upward, making small sharp snapping sounds. Its underside was covered with glistening black suckers. The spines bristled out, narrowly missing Quickercatcher, who undulated to stay out of their way.

  A warm spot appeared at the back of J.D.’s mind. She opened her link.

  “I serve as I’m able,” a new voice said inside her mind, traveling through her link. “You
might have waited.”

  An opening appeared, a vertical slit beneath the fur and running between the first few rows of feet. Within it lay rows of small sharp emerald teeth, arrayed on a band of flesh. The band flexed; the being flattened itself to the tunnel again, hiding its underside, its feet, its teeth.

  “Is this any way to behave toward our client?” Quickercatcher’s voice echoed in J.D.’s ears and through her link as well.

  “If we’d waited for you,” Fasterdigger said, “J.D. would have had to travel the whole passageway by herself.”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” J.D. said, speaking aloud and sending the same message out over her link. She did not know if the new being could hear her, so she replied in the same medium as it had spoken.

  “It would have been rude,” Quickercatcher said.

  Sharphearer nosed Quickercatcher roughly. “As you are being to our colleague. Leave Late alone.”

  “Would you introduce me?” J.D. asked. “And why do you call me your client?”

  “This is Late, from the Smallerfarther,” Longestlooker said. “A Representative’s representative. Late, this is J.D. Sauvage from Earth.”

  J.D. smiled. The quartet had made several jokes that she was in danger of not recognizing, of taking too seriously. “Late” was the quartet’s name for the dappled being. Late: the English word, the English meaning, not an alien homonym. They teased him about his tardiness; they teased him by calling him a representative’s representative. She hoped he had a good sense of humor.

  “How do you do,” she said, again speaking through her link.

  “I am as well as possible, after so much activity,” Late said. “Kind of you to ask. And you?”

  “Exhilarated,” J.D. said. “The Smallerfarther — that’s the twin of the Largerfarther? You’re all from the outer companion worlds?”

  Quickercatcher’s head traced a figure eight. “Exactly. Largerfarther is ours, Smallerfarther is Late’s.

  “Largernearer and Smallernearer are the inner twin worlds,” Sharphearer said.

  “Their people never leave them,” Longestlooker said. “But they send greetings, and invite you to visit.”