She chuckled ruefully. If she had let Victoria give Androgeos the new transition algorithm, no doubt Nemo would have snagged the information, too.
"Outsmarted yourself this time, didn't you?" she said softly, trying not to feel how scared she was.
She wished she had sent a better, more comforting farewell to her friends. "Goodbye"? That told them nothing; it might even frighten them. They had no idea how long it would take her to traverse the space between Sirius and 61 Cygni, either. Only that it would take her longer than it took Starfarer.
Leaving Nerno's symbionts to explore the hard edges of their new homes,
J.D. headed for the observers' circle.
She caught her breath in surprise and apprehension.
The sinuous, beautiful shape of Victoria's algorithm twisted itself into being in the center of the circle.
J.D. took her place in the circle. The transition algorithm hovered at the focus, Victoria's final message, her final gift.
Nerno's shell plunged toward transition point. J.D. had only a few minutes to decide what to do.
With apprehension, she closed her eyes and opened her link completely, sliding onto the knowledge surface, stretching to connect it with the Chi's onboard computer. The real world vanished as J.D. approached the chasm in the knowledge surface and compared it to the algorithm.
They do match, she thought. Not a perfect fit . . .
She asked herself a question: What happens if the fit isn't good enough?
Do I end up on the other side of the galaxy?
Gently she moved the algorithm, rotated it, and translated it into the chasm.
The algorithm joined the knowledge surface, rough,
raw beauty touching elegance refined and polished by time. The algorithm was a crystalline chunk of ice on the cracked surface of an ancient, flowing glacier. The crystal's edges melted; it sank in; the points of attachment melded. The surface and the algorithm remained distinct.
If Nemo were still alive, the fit would have been precise. So much detail was lost when Nerno's personality slipped away. J.D. withdrew from the surface. Now all she could do was wait.
When her senses returned to her, she gazed through the wall of the observers' circle, toward Nerno's crater. The flattened access tunnel lay between the Chi and the nest, like a shed and discarded snakeskin.
The wings and sails of Nerno's nest shuddered.
Nerno's convoluted tapestry collapsed, like ice cliffs avalanching. One side tore free of the rock. Limp and silent, it flopped inward. It dragged the access tunnel from the Chi's hatch, to the crater, and over the edge.
The nest vanished into the crater's depths.
Nerno's shell slipped from space into transition. J.D. perceived the change, a change in angle down the knowledge surface, from an oblique traverse to a headlong plunge.
She had to choose now: To travel with the ancient glacier along the smooth, long ice slope, or to plunge into the choppy, dangerous terrain of the new algorithm.
She guided Nerno's shell into new territory.
J.D. felt like a chambered nautilus, shelled and tentacled, extending herself far beyond her own body, exquisitely sensitive. The shell found the pathway she sought and fitted itself to the jagged curve.
J.D. felt exhilarated, yet frightened. She believed she was following Starfarer's path . . . but she could not be absolutely certain.
As she thought of the starship, she thought'she saw it--or heard it, or felt it, with a sense Nemo had possessed but humans lacked. An anomaly appeared in the part of the knowledge surface that represented transition. The anomaly vanished, then appeared again, like a train chugging down the track into a valley and out of it again.
The anomaly distracted her. She wanted to catch up to it, to be sure it was Starfarer and to be sure she kept following it. She knew she could make Nemo's shell catch up to the anomaly. That surprised her. Starfarer had never tried to change its vectors from the time it achieved transition energy to the time it re-entered normal space.
J.D. restrained herself. One experiment was enough for any trip.
She drew her attention back toward herself, back within Nemo's shell. She was trembling with excitement. She breathed deeply of air tinged with the hydrocarbondrenched odor of Nemo's ship. She sneezed.
I'll have to do something about the atmosphere, she thought. Nemo isn't creating it anymore. Will I be able to terraform the shell, like Europa's ship? Again she wondered how Europa had acquired her starship, and how she had configured it to her liking. Surely starships were a booming business within Civilization.
Sally's Used Starships, J.D. said to herself. Gort's Starship Redecoration. J.D. laughed. She laughed, and then she cried for a while.
She extended her attention to the edge of Nemo's shell, and stretched beyond-
She discovered that Nemo's last two egg cases had detached and vanished, leaping off into transition while her thoughts were elsewhere.
Frantically J.D. cast her new senses around her, but caught no glimpse of the egg cases, no hint of them anywhere in transition's many dimensions.
The anomaly of Starfarer glimmered in the distance, but nothing else marred the knowledge surface.
"Nemo, I'm so sorry. . . ."
She had failed. She should somehow have held on to the two cases until she reached the new star system and normal space,
But now they were gone.
Despite being able to look straight into transition, Victoria felt blind. The environment flung Starfarer's radar back only a few meters from the surface of the cylinder. They might as well have been traveling through murky water without sonar. Starfarer had no sonar capabilities, of course, though Victoria would have tried it if it were available.
I can just imagine what Senator Derjaguin would have said if we'd outfitted a spaceship with sonar, she said to herself.
Starfarer was taking samples of the transitional medium, but Victoria did not think the samples would reveal a material medium, an ether, that would respond to sonar.
The source of the light storm was another mystery entirely.
Jenny hovered nearby. She had returned to the sailhouse a few minutes ago, looking refreshed, looking better than she had since Starfarer left the solar system. A few other people had come out to the sailhouse to watch what was happening. Victoria wished Satoshi and Stephen Thomas were with her. But Satoshi was in the observatory waiting for a first glimpse of the new system, and Stephen Thomas . . . Victoria had no idea where Stephen Thomas was. That was true more often than not these days.
As abruptly as a blink, Starfarer fell out of transition.
Victoria whooped with triumph and relief. She dove into Arachne's perceptions. Starfarer remained in danger: Europa's ship might be anywhere. Last time through transition, it had come out immediately on Starfarer's tail. The sail gave the starship some mobility, but no description of Starfarer would call it agile. It was Europa's ship that had dodged, turning aside from Starfarer just as the two spacecraft were about to collide.
Arachne pinpointed a nearby anomaly: a sphere, blue and green and hazed with atmosphere, far too massive for its size, an asteroid biologically and geologically sculpted to house humans comfortably.
Arachne expanded the anomaly: Europa's starship, only a short distance ahead.
We made up a lot of time, Victoria thought. A lot.
Starfarer's sail deployed. The metallic film untwisted, then unfolded, then opened into a great sheet of silver.
Jenny was nowhere near the hard link. Her eyelids fluttered open and she glanced at Victoria, and grinned, and shrugged self-deprecatingly, as if to say, "I couldn't resist Arachne anymore," and withdrew again into a communications fugue.
Satoshi's image appeared.
"Can you look at the astronomy report?" His voice radiated excitement. "Sure." She let Arachne send her the first information from 61 Cygni A and its planets.
The system crackled with electronic communication. When Victoria glanced at the p
lanetary information, she gasped.
61 Cygni A possessed no fewer than four planets within the limits for carbon-based life: two sets of twin worlds, one set at the sunward side of the region, the other just within the farthest, coldest limits.
All four worlds possessed the unmistakable signs of living systems. More than that, all four worlds cradled civilizations.
Victoria's elation and her apprehension fought each other to a draw. "Wow," she said.
"Don't get carried away with excitement," Awaiyar said dryly.
Satoshi laughed. "That's pretty excited, for a Canadian."
They grinned at each other. Then Satoshi sobered.
"We can't stay here, you know."
Victoria stared at the system map, wishing she could argue with him, but knowing he was right. If they stayed,
the cosmic string would withdraw. Starfarer would cause 61 Cygni-and all its inhabitants-to be cut off from the interstellar community. How could they sentence other civilizations to the punishment they were trying to avoid?
"But Starfarer's ecosystem She stopped.
"You're right. I know you're right."
She reluctantly set Arachne to work on a new solution to her transition algorithm.
"We're going to have to change the name of the ship," Satoshi said.
"To Murphy's Law, " Victoria said, repeating a wisecrack Stephen Thomas had made.
"I was thinking, Flying Dutchman.
"Oh, god. Goddamn! Europa must have known the risk! Why did she lead us here?"
"To take advantage of our good natures, so we'd give up and leave?"
"That makes . . . a certain amount of perverted sense." She laughed bitterly. "Does Europa believe we have good natures?"
"Maybe she wanted some help driving us away," Jenny said, floating beside her.
That, too, was a possibility, one that sounded rather more like the alien human's style.
Infinity stood on the inspection net below a fissure in the rocky outer surface of Starfarer's wild side. Nearby, clinging to the cylinder-hanging upside down, from Infinity's point of view-a silver slug probed the fissure, touched the strange iridescent mass, and withdrew again. The slug moved back and forth, confused, uncertain.
The stars spun past behind and below Infinity; the surface of the cylinder loomed overhead, marred by the weird growth.
"What do you think?" he asked Esther.
Still bewildered and awestruck by the voyage through transition, Esther stared upward in silence.
Infinity sent his image, and an image of the growth, to Victoria in the sailhouse.
"We picked up something kind of strange, in transition," he said.
There was a long silence.
"It wasn't there before," Infinity said.
"Are you sure?" Victoria asked.
"You can look at the scans if you don't believe me!" he snapped.
Esther glanced at him, startled. Infinity looked away, embarrassed by his own outburst.
"I didn't mean Victoria said. "I'm just sur
prised."
"Yeah. Join the club."
"Maybe it's interstellar trash," Esther said. "You know . . . Civilization's landfill?"
It was Infinity's turn to give Esther a skeptical glance. She shrugged and grinned.
"Just-a suggestion," she said.
She stretched up and laid her gloved hand on the bulging surface.
"Be careful!" Infinity said.
"It's kind of hot," Esther said. "And it's moving."
"It's one of Nerno's egg cases!" Zev's voice appeared out of nowhere, followed by his image.
"Oh, nonsense," Victoria said.
441t is.,,
"How could it be, Zev? It resembles one, but Nerno's egg cases are back in the Sirius system."
Griffith's image appeared. He and Kolya perched precariously on the inspection web of Starfarer's campus cylinder.
"I think we should get rid of it," Griffith said. "I'll go over and pry it loose-"
"No!" Victoria said. "Don't do anything. Do you hear me? Kolya, tell hirn-!"
"It might destroy the ship!" Griffith exclaimed. "It's a risk I-" "Petrovich, Victoria's right." "if it's one of the egg cases," Zev said, "J.D. will hate us if we kill it."
"We aren't killing anything," Victoria said. "Whatever it is, I think we should watch it for a while before we decide what to do. I wish J.D. .
. ~ " She stopped speaking for a moment. "Infinity, would you set Arachne to watch it? To keep an eye on it? Please don't you and Esther put yourselves in danger!"
"We'll be careful," Infinity said.
Starfarer disappeared from J.D.'s perception.
She gasped, first frightened, then hopeful. Starfarer must already have reached normal space on the other side of its flight path.
She waited impatiently to follow it across the border at the edge of transition.
Instead of fleeing, the alien starship decelerated. Soon Starfarer was gaining on it. The details of its surface grew clearer. Arachne displayed the pattern of its islands and lakes, confirming Victoria's judgment of its identity.
Unless, Victoria thought dryly, the interstellar community only makes its starships in a few models. . . .
Arachne's warm touch notified her of an emergency message. She accepted it.
The maze of the alien humans formed itself, twisting and complex, as fascinating and beautiful as ever. And as uncommunicative.
I hate that maze, Victoria thought, startling herself with her vehemence. The maze faded; Europa's image appeared in its place. The Minoan was exquisitely beautiful, her cinnamon-colored skin clear and perfect despite her age, the brightness and blackness of her eyes enhanced by narrow lines stroked onto her eyelids, her graying hair in perfect ringlets, dressed with strands of silver so artfully crafted that they moved like living things.
"It's beginning to look a little crowded in here," Jenny said.
The alien human, survivor of the Minoan civilization, smoothed her homespun skirt and smiled at Victoria as if she were a beloved, errant child.
"Hello, Victoria," Europa said. "I'm very glad to see you.
"Hello, Europa," Victoria said, astonished. "I didn't expect such a warm welcome."
"We have things to talk about."
Androgeos appeared beside her. He was as beautiful as Europa, though he maintained himself at a much younger apparent age. They were both small, about Victoria's height, narrow-waisted, and muscular, especially in the thighs. Victoria always wondered if they practiced bull-leaping.
"Is Alzena all right?" Victoria asked.
"Alzena is no concern of yours anymore," Androgeos said. His tone was nowhere near as friendly as Europa's. "Alzena is gone to you."
"Is she all right?"
"She wants her privacy," Androgeos said. "Can't you understand that?" "Certainly I can. Thank you for answering my question."
"Now answer mine," Androgeos said. "Do you intend to turn the Four Worlds into an empty system, the same as you've done to Sirius? There are people here, not just squidmoths."
Zev arrowed into the sailhouse, missed Jenny by a handsbreadth, passed rudely through the holographic images of the alien humans, touched off from the transparent wall, and came to a graceful, perfect stop beside Victoria. "What about-" Zev exclaimed.
"Shh!" Victoria said.
Zev grabbed her hand, panicked. Maintaining a calm expression took all Victoria's strength. She squeezed his fingers, trying to comfort him, but she was worried about J.D., too. If what Androgeos said was
true, if J.D. had not entered transition before the final withdrawal of the cosmic string, then she was stranded. Without the support of a living ecosystem, without supplies . . . she would die.
"If you're so worried about the Four Worlds," Satoshi asked, "why'd you lead us to them?"
"I'll explain that when I see you," Europa said. "May I visit? I'd like to talk to you face to face."
The terraformed, anomalously massive asteroid approached, c
hanging its course without apparent effort, moving to draw Starfarer into orbit around it. Jenny turned the sail edge-on to the star, so the light pressure would not interfere with the gravitational attraction.
"A few days ago you couldn't wait to see the last of us. Why do you want to visit us now?"
"If you plan to chase Andro and me to the end of the universe, we have to come to some arrangement."
"Does anyone have any objections?" Victoria asked. Almost everyone on board would be listening to and watching the conversation.
The silence stretched out.
"I believe," Gerald Hemminge said, "that another conversation would be . . . an excellent idea."
"All right, then." Victoria did not, however, intend to let Gerald take over this encounter the way he had the last one. "Europa, you may bring your boat to Starfarer. "
Stephen Thomas struggled from his communications fugue. His brain felt bruised. He withdrew from Feral's temporary guest account, into the safety of his own permanent neural node.
Now he knew for certain that Feral's murder had been deliberate.
He was not certain he could prove it, not without subjecting someone else to the experience he had just been through. But he was certain it had happened.
Stephen Thomas was lucky. If he had matched Feral's profile better, if Arachne's unconscious memory of the search and destroy routine had echoed stronger, he would be dead. Expecting pain, constriction, nausea, Stephen Thomas took a deep breath, hesitated, and pushed himself to his feet.
His body responded. The aches had faded. His new claws itched with potential. The sharp stab to his pelvis had subsided and the awkward, embarrassing constrictions eased. He felt reborn: comfortable, powerful, exuberant.
Gingerly, apprehensively, he unfastened his pants and let them slide down his hips.
He no longer looked like an ordinary man. Nor did he look like a woman. His body had formed a neat pouch enclosing his genitals. He looked like he was wearing string bathing trunks, without the string. The line of dark gold hair below his navel widened into a sleek patch of thicker fur that tapered between his legs.
The new muscles responded to his thought. His penis, pink-gold and sensitive, probed beyond the opening and slipped through the soft fur.
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