The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  The two ancient flows sandwiched the anomalous, impossible layer of sandstone.

  More information appeared at the edge of the display: Tests, analyses, sonar tracings, potassium-argon dating of the volcanic flows: all evidence that the anomalous layer could not have originated naturally on the moon.

  Crimson slid her rock hammer out of the loop on the leg of her pants. She stuck its claw into a crack and pried gently. A chunk of stone fell away into her hand.

  A dark sharp shape thrust from it, the shape of a tooth, a fang.

  The hologram faded.

  “Very moving,” Carefulspeaker said, “to observe discovery.”

  “Crimson is a talented performer,” J.D. replied. “A talented artist.”

  A buzz of amusement — J.D. chose to perceive the reaction as amusement, and hoped she was right — passed through the crowd.

  “Thank you,” Longestlooker said. “Will it be possible to view the site in person?”

  “I’m sure Crimson would be pleased to have a live audience,” J.D. said.

  One of the Smallerfarthings — Late, J.D. wondered? — magic-carpeted its way to Quickercatcher. J.D. caught part of the transmission with her link, but it was not in English.

  “I will finish the introductions here,” Quickercatcher said to Late, “and then we’ll take J.D. to meet Smallerfarther’s Representative.”

  “But isn’t Late —” J.D. had misunderstood. She had taken the quartet’s description of Late, “a representative’s representative,” as teasing. But they meant it literally.

  Relieved that she had not made a visible misstep, she concentrated on the introductions. She had trouble keeping everyone straight. Yet she began to detect differences in the Smallerfarthings’ brindled pelts. She tried to remember everyone’s name, but as backup she kept the information at the other end of her link. If she needed a reminder she could get it quickly, without going into a noticeable fugue.

  “This is Swiftseer,” Quickercatcher said, introducing J.D. to a Largerfarthing with a silky grey coat. “She’s been interested in human beings for a long time.”

  J.D. clasped hands with Swiftseer. A fringe of beads, threaded into the Largerfarthing’s long grey wrist fur, brushed softly against J.D.’s fingers.

  In the background, the mysterious shape darted forward. It accelerated faster than one could easily swim in air. It must have pushed off from something... except that it was in the middle of the circular room.

  “I’m very happy to meet you — oh!”

  The shape pressed through Swiftseer’s gray-dappled shoulder. Halfway out, it stopped. Swiftseer cocked her head but took no offense at being swum through.

  An image! J.D. thought. Just like something Arachne would project.

  “And here is the representative of Largernearer,” Quickercatcher said, indicating the image.

  “How do you do?” J.D. said. The image had startled her badly, and the sight of it sticking halfway out of another person’s body made her uncomfortable, but no one else reacted to this odd sight.

  I guess it isn’t rude to overlap image and reality, here, the way it is back on Starfarer, J.D. thought. On the other hand, the images Arachne projects usually stay in one place. They’re easier to avoid.

  The being flipped its heavy, sinuous body, came free, and brought itself to the level of J.D.’s nose. It was dark and sleek and striped with four fins that stretched the length of its body. Eyes surrounded its central toothed mouth in an irregular circle.

  The image swelled.

  Its head expanded. Its body moved back and away. The air thickened, darkened; most of the being’s body disappeared into murky depths. J.D. started and caught her breath. The effect was of falling at a terrifying speed till a small, distant shape became a close, enormous one.

  The perception of motion stopped; the being stopped expanding.

  J.D. found herself floating among insubstantial shadows, drifting in the dimness of deep turbid water. Largernearer’s representative loomed before her; the illusion concealed the meeting room and all the other people in it.

  J.D. could not accurately estimate the representative’s size, but it was larger than the one blue whale she had ever met. Its iridescent blue-black body stretched back, turning to shadow the color of the water.

  Unlike a blue whale, a peaceful baleen filter-feeder of plankton and krill, this being possessed a circle of huge shiny black teeth. The being floated before J.D., very still, its mouth expanding, contracting. The teeth unfolded from their closed position, opening like jackknives, like snake fangs, to line the mouth. Each tooth was a sharp spike half J.D.’s height.

  The irregular scattering of eyes focused on J.D.

  J.D. shivered. The illusion of being underwater was so real that she could imagine herself swimming, buoyed against gravity yet aware of “up” and “down.” Far overhead, the surface of the sea rippled and sparkled in the light of 61 Cygni.

  Pull yourself together! J.D. said to herself. It’s an image. It might be any size, in reality, the size of a dolphin rather than a blue whale... or an island. Maybe it’s just trying to impress me — or scare me — rather than showing me its true size.

  J.D. spoke, greeting the representative in true speech, the language she had learned from Zev and his family of orcas and divers.

  The illusion of being underwater shattered: sound in air felt altogether different from sound in water. Whatever the visual image, J.D. was still surrounded by air.

  The huge whale-eel lay before her, still as a coiled spring, eyes wide, its mouth partly open. It sucked in water, tasting the scents around it. Silt and tiny swimming creatures and large many-eyed fishes moved with the water, into the whale-eel’s mouth. The teeth sliced the fishes into pieces. With the next inhalation of water, the fishes disappeared, leaving only shreds of flesh.

  The whale-eel responded to J.D.’s true speech greeting. Its voice surrounded her, reaching through her to her bones.

  “Quickercatcher!” J.D. said.

  Quickercatcher moved closer, at first ghostly in the image of murky water, then clearer. He hovered at J.D.’s side.

  “Tell me what I’m hearing, please,” J.D. said.

  Quickercatcher repeated part of the trill that had surrounded her.

  “That’s a name-sound,” Quickercatcher said. “It means... music with many sources. ‘Orchestra.’ She welcomes you.”

  “Is this her real size?”

  “No. She’s much bigger.”

  “No wonder Orchestra’s people never leave their world. It would need some spaceship, to take them. Please tell her I’m... impressed to meet her.”

  Another song surrounded J.D. She glanced at Quickercatcher, questioning.

  “Orchestra asks if she may communicate with you directly.”

  “Of course.”

  “Welcome, Sauvage Earth,” Orchestra said through J.D.’s link.

  I guess that’s better than Earth Sauvage, J.D. thought.

  “Thank you, Orchestra Largernearer,” she said.

  “We could build a starship, if we wished,” Orchestra said. “We joined Civilization by proving it.”

  “By building it?”

  “By proving we could if we chose.” Orchestra emitted a high, skirling hum. A narrow column of water spun into existence before J.D. The column dragged a swarm of many-eyed guppies into its bottom end, twirled them around, and ejected them from its top. The hum faded; the water-devil dissipated.

  “We have the capacity to manipulate matter,” Orchestra said. “And we have auxiliary animals.”

  “And the hands of friends.” Quickercatcher stretched his hands out and flexed his fingers, his double opposable thumbs. “We came to know Orchestra’s people by the messages they wrote across the surface of their world. Now, they grow antennas and radiotelescopes on their seas. Their astronomy was always far in advance of ours.”

  Several of Orchestra’s huge slate-gray eyes turned completely black for an instant. The gray eyes, wi
th their long horizontal pupil, returned. A blink? J.D. wondered. Orchestra had no eyelids. Her eyes had rolled backwards, vanishing into the eye socket, then forward into view again.

  “We joined Civilization by helping each other,” Orchestra said. “By sharing our knowledge and our abilities. Civilization accepted us all by accepting one of us. Even though my people prefer to remain in the sea.”

  J.D. wished she were really swimming with Orchestra, in Largernearer’s sea.

  She thought: Wait a second! Wait several seconds! Orchestra can’t be talking to me in real time. If she were, there’d be a perceptible delay in her replies.

  “Are you an AI?” J.D. asked the image. “An artificial intelligence?”

  “Yes, of course,” Orchestra said. “I represent the real person, Orchestra, on Largernearer. She reviews our conversation as it reaches her. She will make corrections to my statements, if she sees fit.”

  Several of Orchestra’s eyes — different eyes than before — rolled back, then reappeared.

  “She does not often correct me,” Orchestra said, in a voice J.D. perceived as being tinged with pride.

  “You represent her admirably,” J.D. said.

  “Thank you.”

  Orchestra’s image shrank suddenly. The underwater illusion vanished. J.D. sank back in the air, startled by the abrupt change. Orchestra’s smaller self swam forward till she was nose to nose with J.D. All the Largerfarthings in the meeting room drifted in an open sphere around them, making soft trilling sounds and motions of amusement and agreement; the Smallerfarthings, on the other hand, clung to the walls and moved with unusual agitation, curling their leading edges outward.

  “We’ve been waiting for Earth’s people for a long time,” Orchestra said. “You’ve had a difficult journey. We thank you for persevering, and we welcome you.”

  A dappled Smallerfarthing gradually detached itself from the wall, undulated slowly toward J.D. and Orchestra and Quickercatcher, and came to a stop at J.D.’s elbow.

  “Quickercatcher,” Late said, “the Representative is waking up. We should... hurry.”

  The last word came into J.D.’s mind as a frightened whisper.

  Chapter 2

  An organic tunnel, soft and warm as moleskin, led deeper into the Four Worlds’ ship. Small carvings and sculptures and bangles and growing plants nestled against the rumpled wall. The ornaments gleamed in the diffuse, low light. When J.D. paused to look at them, Quickercatcher urged her along.

  “We shouldn’t tarry,” he said.

  Sharphearer carried Late, whose body flowed like a cape. With each undulation, the stiff emerald spines rose above his dappled coat, then disappeared beneath it.

  Longestlooker glanced over the small procession. Fasterdigger lifted the guest-water flask from where it balanced on his back, behind his head.

  “I have it.”

  “Good,” Longestlooker said.

  “Guest water is purest and sweetest,” Quickercatcher said.

  “It was very pure,” J.D. said agreeably, seeing no need to mention that to human beings, pure water tastes flat.

  “It has to be,” Quickercatcher said. “Otherwise we might lose people, and that would not be a good beginning.” Quickercatcher’s eyes closed slowly from outer to inner corner.

  “True,” J.D. said. “But I ate decorative food with Nemo, and I’m still here.”

  “Who is Nemo?”

  “The friend who willed Nautilus to me — who gave me the starship of the other ones,” J.D. said.

  “A squidmoth! Do they have names?”

  “Not exactly.” She could see, in her memory of the knowledge surface that controlled Nautilus, the multidimensional contour that represented Nemo’s person. Another squidmoth would recognize the shape as one of its own. “But Nemo took a name to make things easier for me.”

  “And you ate its food?”

  “Yes.”

  Quickercatcher’s jaws opened, then snapped shut sharply.

  “It was delicious,” J.D. said.

  “But no one ever knows what a squidmoth might do,” Quickercatcher said. “Are human beings generally foolhardy? Europa isn’t.”

  “We can be,” J.D. said. “We aren’t all as wise as Europa.”

  Quickercatcher considered her comment.

  “I’d like to talk to the squidmoth who lives in your system,” J.D. said. “If there is one. I’d like to ask it some questions. If you wouldn’t consider me too foolhardy.”

  “There is one, but it never welcomes anyone —”

  “It left us, brother,” Sharphearer said. “It departed “It left right after Starfarer got here.”

  “Perhaps it knew you wanted to ask it questions,” Longestlooker said.

  J.D. had hoped for the squidmoth’s help and friendship.

  She said to herself, disappointed, Maybe it was too much to hope for another friendship like Nemo’s.

  “I hope you won’t disappear,” J.D. said, trying to maintain her sense of humor, “when I start asking you questions.”

  Quickercatcher blinked, amethyst eyes narrowing from the outer corners in, then opening wide. His goatee bristled out.

  “We have many answers to give. As well as some questions of our own.”

  J.D. wished she could take the liberty of stroking Quickercatcher’s mauve fur. She wondered if it would be soft or rough, cool or warm.

  “Why does it make me so happy to be near you?” She looked away quickly, startled to have put her thoughts into words. “I mean...”

  “We’re welcoming you, after all,” Quickercatcher said. “That’s some reason for happiness, I hope.”

  “Yes, but it’s more... I was happy meeting Nemo, and we became friends. But this is different.”

  “What about Europa and Androgeos?” Quickercatcher said. “Weren’t you happy meeting them?”

  J.D. hesitated.

  “I was shocked speechless,” she said. “I couldn’t believe aliens could look so much like humans. I’d’ve been less surprised if the grass stood up and started talking to me. Then, when I found out they were humans...”

  “Most new candidates for Civilization are glad to have an escort of their own species.”

  “It isn’t that I wasn’t glad.” Her reactions to Europa had been — and still were — too complex to sum up in a few words. Europa was too complex to sum up in a few words. “It was that I expected... alienness. I’d prepared myself for alienness.”

  “Plenty of time for that,” Quickercatcher said. “We’re alien to you, Late is, Orchestra is. And others... We are not even particularly unusual.”

  “How do you decide that?”

  “Patterns. Some patterns are more common than others. Your pattern, my pattern, are common. Late’s pattern is ubiquitous. Orchestra’s pattern is common, but the achievements of her species are unusual. Underwater beings seldom bother with starship technology. They aim their abilities inward.”

  “What about the people on the fourth world?”

  “Ah,” Quickercatcher said in a respectful tone. “Smallernearer is... unique. We will tell you about Smallernearer when we have time and quiet.”

  J.D. would have pushed, if she had thought Quickercatcher was evading her question. But she found she had no trouble taking the comment, and the promise, at face value. Smallernearer was something to savor, something to discover with time. She left it as a warm spot of anticipation, and willingly changed the subject.

  “How many species are there in Civilization?”

  “That’s impossible —”

  “Sentient species?” Longestlooker asked.

  “Yes,” J.D. said, “sorry, sentient species is what I meant.”

  “That’s also impossible to say,” Fasterdigger said cheerfully.

  “But why — how?” J.D. stumbled over her question, wanting to ask about Civilization’s organization, its size, its age, all at once. “Don’t you keep track?”

  “Your world,” Quickercatcher said. “Your Ear
th. When Civilization withdrew from your star system, it had many political entities. What about now? It’s organized? It has a single government?”

  “It has several,” J.D. said. “They cooperate. Some of them. Sometimes.”

  Fasterdigger and Longestlooker snuffled, then nuzzled each others’ throats as they floated side by side.

  “Is what I said so surprising?” J.D. asked.

  “Star travel usually springs from a world’s cooperation,” Longestlooker said.

  “But not always,” Late said in his usual lugubrious tone. “J.D.’s Earth is nothing unique.”

  “Not in its governments,” Longestlooker agreed. “In Civilization, we cooperate. But we have no empire, no hegemony, not even a republic. Alliances evaporate quickly. The distances are long. Travel is the only means of communication. The cosmic string extends when your time to join Civilization has come, and it withdraws from violence or aggression.”

  “Until now,” Late said. “The cosmic string withdrew from you at Tau Ceti. Now Starfarer has entered our system — yet the cosmic string remains. It’s unique, to gain a pardon so quickly.”

  That answered my next question, J.D. said to herself. Now I know how much Europa told them about Starfarer’s journey. She told them about the nuclear missile that came through transition with us. She told them what happened at the first star system we entered. She told them — if they didn’t already calculate it for themselves — that the cosmic string withdrew from Earth, leaving our solar system empty and cut off. They know Starfarer can enter transition and return to Earth... but it would be a one-way trip, until — unless — the cosmic string comes back to Earth, too.

  “Do you believe we have been pardoned?” J.D. asked.

  “Perhaps,” Longestlooker said. “We’ll know for sure if the string no longer withdraws from you. If it returns to your solar system.”

  “We feared you might have to return to Earth,” Longestlooker said.