The Chi reached Starfarer and settled into its dock. The alien humans’ tiny short-distance craft, following in the Chi’s wake, moved up next to it.
“I want to watch this,” Victoria said.
Androgeos had the irritating habit of replying to questions with variations of “Don’t worry about that,” shrugging off detailed explanation. The team was not to worry about interchange of disease, the problem had been solved millennia before. They were not to be curious about other alien beings. The alien humans’ ship moved; Victoria must not be concerned with its mechanics. The questions of how and where their craft would dock must not trouble the alien contact team.
J.D. wondered if Europa might be more forthcoming if she were alone. It seemed to J.D. that she had to work awfully hard to present a united front with Androgeos. On the other hand, she might simply prefer to let her younger colleague supply the negatives.
The short-range craft hovered over a nearby access hatch.
The ship changed.
Its skin quivered and reformed, extending, projecting, then everting to form a tunnel. It reminded J.D. of the ASes that crawled around the surface of Starfarer, but it was much more changeable, more mobile, more versatile. The craft regenerated itself into a new form and a new function.
“We are ready,” Androgeos said, speaking through the Chi’s audio system. “Whenever you are prepared to invite us in.”
o0o
J.D. propelled herself out of the Chi, following Victoria into the waiting room. Zev and Satoshi and Stephen Thomas were right behind her.
The faculty and staff of Starfarer filled the waiting room. It looked to J.D. as if everyone on board had come to see and meet the alien humans, and perhaps everyone had. Gerald Hemminge drifted at the front of the crowd, but he looked terrible, with bags under his eyes and his face still irritated from shaving.
No one spoke.
I never thought I’d see my colleagues awed to silence, J.D. thought.
She was glad to be back among them. She glanced around, finding strength in the somber faces.
Maybe, she thought, somehow, together, we can persuade the alien humans to help us fight exile.
J.D. noticed the presence of most of her colleagues, and the absence of a few. Alzena had not come; that distressed J.D. without surprising her. Iphigenie was nowhere to be seen; perhaps the sail needed her attention. To her astonishment, J.D. could not find Kolya anywhere.
She glanced around again, then closed her eyes for a second. She had been looking for Feral, missing him in particular, seeking him out, expecting him to be in the midst of everything.
Victoria floated to the auxiliary airlock.
“Victoria —” Gerald said.
The door hissed, equalizing the last few millimeters of pressure.
“Yes, Gerald?”
Kolya Cherenkov floated into the waiting room. J.D. smiled at him, glad to see him, not so glad to see Griffith, who as usual tagged along.
“Victoria, wait,” Gerald said. “I must tell you —”
The airlock door opened.
Europa and Androgeos entered the starship. Their commune of meerkats paddled through the air between them.
The alien humans moved confidently, though their clothing was not quite appropriate in zero g. The knife-pleated skirt Androgeos wore hiked high above his knees. J.D. could not help but notice — though she pretended not to — that his body was the same rich cinnamon-brown all over.
Absently, he pushed his kilt to cover himself.
“Europa, Androgeos,” Victoria said, “I’d like to introduce Gerald Hemminge, our —”
“Acting chancellor,” Gerald said. “It is a great honor.”
Acting chancellor? J.D. thought. Did Blades resign? Did they have the meeting about him already? What happened, while we were gone?
She glanced toward Professor Thanthavong, hoping for a word of explanation. Thanthavong pressed her lips together. J.D. got the hint to wait.
Victoria looked rather startled, Satoshi bemused, and Stephen Thomas...
Stephen Thomas was nowhere to be seen.
Gerald introduced the alien humans to the people in the waiting room. Everyone wanted to meet, if not exactly alien beings, people who had themselves met alien beings.
Europa accepted the courtesies with grace, Androgeos impatiently, now and then pushing down his skirt. The fabric of Europa’s skirt remained in place despite the effects of zero g. The metallic silver strands in her hair moved in weightlessness, writhing lifelike of their own accord.
Two young meerkats, curious but shy, hid behind Europa’s vest, peering out occasionally, then disappearing. A third clung to Androgeos’s bare ankle and occasionally emitted a sharp squeal. The others paddled around. Zev was right. They looked not at all like otters. They maintained their pacing gait in zero g, kicking first with the feet on one side, then with the feet on the other. One meerkat hovered alone in a corner, watching, supine, trying to keep its weightless paws crossed over its belly.
Androgeos turned to Victoria. “Now show us —”
“ — Your ship, if that is allowed.” Europa interrupted her younger colleague, in a tone meant to take the sting out of his peremptory demand.
“Certainly,” Gerald Hemminge replied.
Gerald gracefully extricated Europa from the charge of the alien contact team. Androgeos hung back, but Europa gestured to him. He followed her; Gerald led them toward the exit.
Victoria hovered next to J.D.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” she said.
“None.”
“‘Acting’ chancellor?” Satoshi said.
Avvaiyar and Thanthavong joined them.
“You look confused, my friends,” Thanthavong said.
She told them what had happened while they were gone.
“Good lord,” Victoria said. “Couldn’t you have given us a word of warning?”
“I’m sorry. Gerald objected to broadcasting our troubles to the whole system. To the alien humans. For once, I agreed with him.”
“Androgeos has an opinion of us that’s about as low as it can go. As for Europa...” She shrugged. “Who knows? But a little matter of a lynch mob probably wouldn’t make any difference.”
“It wasn’t a lynch mob!” Avvaiyar said. “Anyway, no one got hurt.”
“And Blades is locked out of the web by any route,” Thanthavong said. “Stephen Thomas will be glad to hear that... Where is he?”
Victoria looked around. “I have no idea,” she said. “He must have followed Gerald.”
“An excellent idea,” Thanthavong said. “I believe I will do the same.”
For the next hour, J.D. and Zev and Victoria and Satoshi and most of the other members of the expedition trailed Gerald Hemminge as he showed the starship to the alien humans. He took very well to being acting chancellor.
Zev trudged beside J.D. He was barefoot, and he was not used to walking long distances. He started to limp.
This is silly, J.D. thought. We can’t see Europa and Androgeos. We can’t even hear what they’re saying except through the web link.
J.D. felt herself fading into the crowd.
Is this what happens to explorers? she wondered. After we’ve done our exploring, are we supposed to stay out of the way and not mind what happens next?
Infinity and Esther were walking together a little way ahead. J.D. caught up to them.
“Infinity — ?”
He acknowledged her. “Hi.”
“Feral Korzybski was a friend of mine,” J.D. said. “Thank you. For stopping Blades. For...”
Infinity looked into her eyes, then away.
“Yeah,” he said. “I liked Feral, too.”
J.D. could think of nothing else to say.
The meerkats scurried past them, going the opposite direction, sniffing and climbing, now and then stopping to dig furiously and send small fountains of dirt spraying out behind them.
Infinity grimaced. “Alzena wouldn’t like to see those critters on board. She’d think weasels were worse than dogs and cats combined.”
“Maybe we should tell her,” J.D. said. Telling Alzena that someone had smuggled predators on board might even draw her from her depression.
“It couldn’t make things any worse for her,” Infinity said.
J.D. fell back to rejoin Zev. Footsore, he slowed down.
Gerald wore an LTM, recording and broadcasting everything. Most people, J.D. included, found it awkward to receive a direct audiovisual transmission from Arachne and simultaneously function in the real world. It would make more sense to sit down on a pleasant hillside, in the weird, intense light from Sirius A, and let Arachne create an image of what was happening up ahead.
J.D. was about to do exactly that when Victoria joined her.
“Is this how it was supposed to work?” J.D. asked.
“We had in mind that first meetings would be... a bit more formal,” Victoria said. “And stranger.”
J.D. chuckled wryly.
“J.D., I’ve just had an odd report from Arachne. Would you take a look at something for me?”
They stepped off the side of the path with Satoshi and Zev. Arachne reproduced Victoria’s findings. At first they looked unexceptional: a lifeless, cratered asteroid. Unusually spherical for a rock its size... J.D. let her eyelids flutter, went into a communications fugue, and took in the asteroid’s physical measurements. Astonished, she opened her eyes again. Victoria was smiling.
“What is it? Who are they?”
“Another alien ship,” Satoshi said. “An artificial construction. The same anomalously high gravity.”
“But no ecosphere. No atmosphere.”
“Not on the surface,” Satoshi said. “But a lot of outgassing. Something’s there. Underground.”
The planetoid Victoria had discovered, circling Sirius A not far distant, looked to the eye like an ordinary bit of leftover planet, nothing astounding. No free-flowing water. No obvious life.
To other methods than the eye, though, it had enough unusual states to attract Arachne’s attention. Its gravity, its interior structure, its odd orbit, its solitude.
“The question now,” Victoria said, “is whether we should ask our guests about it. They must know it’s there — did they think we wouldn’t find it?”
“They might have thought we were preoccupied with them.” J.D. hesitated before she replied to Victoria’s question. “A couple of days ago, I’d have said, Yes, ask them. Don’t keep secrets, assume they aren’t keeping any secrets. But today...”
“You don’t think we should ask them?”
“I do think we should ask them. Because we haven’t got anything to lose.”
o0o
Stephen Thomas left the explorer, left the gathering, left the axis of Starfarer behind. He had no interest at all in spending more time with Europa and Androgeos. Someone else could show them around Starfarer; someone else could smile and be polite. They wanted to stop the deep space expedition as short and as dead as if the nuclear missile had detonated when it hit. They were out for whatever they could get. He wanted no more part of them.
Returning to gravity, he trudged down the hill. Always before, he had welcomed the return of the pull of the Earth, the sensation of his body moving with the force, against it, conquering it.
Now it did not matter. Gravity, zero g, it was all the same to Stephen Thomas.
He strode across Starfarer, stopping at the edge of the garden of Chancellor Blades’ house.
Three silver slugs lay on the grass, crushing the hyacinths scattered through it. The house looked like a giant wasps’ next, thrown to the ground and broken. Irregular layers of rock foam, ragged and unplanned and overlapping, covered all but one of its openings, and much of the hillside as well. Underground, the slugs were surrounding the house with a layer of foam. When they finished, Blades would be completely and finally cut off. The secret passages out of the administration building were being filled in; the tough rock foam would prevent Blades’s digging out into the open access tunnels.
A rain cloud passed near-overhead, thick and dark. The downpour caught Stephen Thomas, drenching him. The air turned cold and electric. Chill rain dripped down his face, trickled through his hair, and soaked his shirt. He shivered.
He expected to be furious, thoughtless, driven by rage. But he found himself watching himself as if from a distance, doing what he was doing because he had decided, a long time ago, that it should be done.
But Professor Thanthavong was right. This was a task that should be done coldly. Stephen Thomas felt cold physically, intellectually, emotionally. Even revenge was chilled out of him. He could perform this task, or not. It made no difference. He kept going.
He reached out to Arachne, testing the strands. They quivered, sending vibrations to a point that no longer existed. The vibrations of his message passed completely through the location of Blades’s disintegrating neural node, and returned to him unchanged and unacknowledged. Arachne had observed the proof Stephen Thomas recorded, and made its decision, and created immunities against the chancellor. Without a long course of desensitization, the system would always recognize him, and never again let him pass.
That relieved Stephen Thomas, but did not satisfy him. He crossed the sodden lawn. The soft cool grass, the bright flowers, sprinkled droplets of water over his feet.
As he moved closer, the silver slugs stirred. Their blind, sensitive bodies clenched and rippled, flexing, reorienting. Stephen Thomas spoke to Arachne. Though the system ignored his orders to the slugs, he paid them no more attention. They were slow, and not very bright.
One of the slugs blocked his path. He tried to get around it, but it moved to stop him. He was faster than they were, but they were so big, and so close to the open doorway, that they could blockade it with their bulk. Frustrated, Stephen Thomas retreated.
“I want to talk to you!” he shouted.
Blades did not reply.
The slugs clustered before the door, relaxing from their defense, sprawling over the grass. They obscured the bottom half of the open doorway, but the room beyond was as dark and silent as if it were deserted.
Stephen Thomas prowled across the lawn, back and forth, wondering if it were all a sham, if Blades had escaped, and the slugs guarded the empty shell of a house; or if they had quietly and efficiently killed him already, and walled his body up in rock foam or dissolved it into slime. Everyone claimed the artificials could not contravene their programming and deliberately injure a person, but what proof did anyone have of that?
He strained to see beyond the silver slugs and into the cavern of the ruined house.
A shadow moved: a shadow against shadows. Wraithlike, Blades paused in the half-light.
Stephen Thomas sprinted toward the doorway.
He ran across the lawn and leaped up the side of the leading slug. He moved so fast it could not rise up to stop him.
Its body clenched.
His feet slid on its slick silver-moiré sides. He scrabbled and clutched and scrambled to a precarious balance.
As he jumped toward the empty doorway, the silver slug twitched its skin, stealing his balance and adding momentum to his leap.
The slug threw Stephen Thomas to the ground. He hit hard. The fall knocked the breath from his body.
Shit, the damn thing’s malfunctioning, Stephen Thomas thought.
Stephen Thomas struggled for air, trying to rise. One of the slugs loomed over him, and a more sinister possibility occurred to him.
Blades planned a secret route into Arachne, he thought. Just like he planned a secret route out of the administration building. He’s sent the slug to kill me!
The silver slug arched its great body and curled down on top of him. He shouted for help with his voice and through Arachne, but too late. Calmly, but inexorably, the slug enveloped him. It pinned him to the ground. It cut off his web link, the daylight, and the air.
o0o
Androgeos and Europa submitted to the tour of Starfarer with magnanimity, or condescension.
“A very pretty arrangement,” Europa said, standing on a hilltop from which both ends of the cylinder could be seen. The wetlands lay beneath a soft light fog, and the sea was silver gray.
The meerkats suddenly rose and stared, poised, ready to disappear. Halfway down the hillside, the herd of miniature horses grazed in a luxurious patch of grass. The appaloosa stallion flung up his head, snorted, squealed, and bullied the mares and foals into a gallop down the slope. The meerkats dropped to all fours and vanished behind a rock.
“How charming,” Europa said.
“There’s quite a range of animal life in the wild cylinder,” Gerald said. “Would you like to visit it? We could be there in an hour or so.”
J.D. had not yet had time to visit it herself, since she had been on board such a short time and so much had happened.
I’d much rather have that hour with Europa, she thought, alone, sitting and talking over coffee.
“Would you like to see it?” Gerald said again.
“No,” Europa said. “Thank you, but no. I think we had better finish here.”
“Very well,” Gerald said stiffly. “The path follows the river.”
Europa and Androgeos were preparing to depart. They were bored, or they were so dismayed by their own kind that they could not bear to spend a few hours, out of their infinite life spans, with ordinary human beings. Or... since Starfarer’s presence would cause the cosmic string to withdraw, they were afraid of being stranded here in the Sirius system, where no one had, so thoughtfully, seeded and tended a sterile world until it bloomed.
J.D. had no more ideas on how to persuade them to remain, and perhaps she should not even try. She followed the tour.
When she passed her own house, she had an inspiration. Whether it was a good inspiration or a foolish one she could not quite decide. She ran inside and rummaged through a net bag of belongings that she had not yet had time to put away.
When she rejoined Zev on the path, she carried a couple of small packages.
Zev trudged on, his head down, sweat plastering his fine gold hair to his body.
“I’m tired, J.D.,” he said.
“I know,” J.D. said. “We’ll stop soon, I think.”
The path plunged down into the canyon cut for the river. Zev left the trail, waded into the water, and splashed forward, floating.
One of the meerkats clambered up the striped bank and began digging. Bits of dirt skittered out behind it.
Europa stopped.
“What is this?” She left the path. At the canyon wall, she pushed the meerkat gently aside, then brushed her fingertips across a band of artificial sedimentary rock and exposed the tip of a bone.
Gerald chuckled. “It’s an art project. One of our artists has... a bizarre sense of the unique.”
Crimson Ng slid through the crowd. “It’s a fossil bed,” she said, serious and straight-faced. “We found it in the moon rock we made Starfarer out of. I’m a paleontologist. I’m excavating it.”
“For heaven’s sake — !” Gerald turned toward Europa and spread his hands in dismay. “She has a bizarre sense of humor, too.”
The fossils Crimson had made were of strange, nightmarish alien beings. She had created a perfect illusion, exactly as if a paleontologist were halfway begun with the site. Europa knelt before exposed fossils, gazing at them, fascinated.
Stupid of Gerald to laugh at Crimson, to make fun of her work. She was small; she appeared fragile, delicate, and very young. She was none of those, and she had a powerful temper, close to the surface. Instead of releasing her irritation, she was using it to drive the deception, to exasperate Gerald.
The assistant — acting — chancellor should have laughed at himself; he should have apologized.
“This isn’t worth any more of our time.” He spoke abruptly; his smile was artificial. He offered his hand to Europa, and ushered her and Androgeos along the path. Crimson glared after them.
J.D. thought she saw Androgeos slip a fossil into his pocket. But she was not sure, so she said nothing. For one thing, Crimson would be delighted if the alien humans took one of her fossils and puzzled over them. She claimed the bones to be indistinguishable from real fossils, except that they came from no creature that ever evolved on Earth.
Besides, J.D. could not figure out where Androgeos would fit a pocket in the knife-pleated elegance of his garment.
J.D. caught up to Crimson and gave her arm a comforting squeeze.
“Gerald is such a jerk,” Crimson said.
Up ahead, Europa stopped.
“You are correct,” she said to Gerald.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You are correct about time. Ours is spent.”
“Come with me a little farther,” Gerald said urgently. “The river leads into the wetlands. It’s spring... the Canada geese will be hatching their goslings —”
Europa listened in silence. Androgeos shrugged, sullen, uninterested.
“We might even see the eagle...” Gerald hesitated when Europa showed no reaction. “We have so much to tell each other...”
Despite herself, J.D. felt touched by his desperation. For all his contrariness, he wanted success. If the expedition could not succeed magnificently, he wanted it to succeed in some small way. He thought he had taken control of it, and now he held it in his hands as it collapsed, withering in the cold gaze of Androgeos. No one controlled it any longer.
His voice trailed off.
Nothing he could say would make a difference. J.D. knew it was too late. It had been too late since the missile exploded.
“I haven’t seen an eagle in many years.” Europa smiled, not unkindly. “I’d like to see one again. Someday. But Andro and I have indulged ourselves long enough. It’s been good, spending time with our own people.”
Our own people, J.D. thought. Could she mean, could she possibly mean she and Andro are the only human beings in civilization? How isolated they must feel!
o0o
Stephen Thomas thought he would suffocate. He thought his body was being crushed. The weight above him pressed him against the flattened grass. The cool green smell, sweetened with the fragrance of hyacinths and tinged with a metallic sheen, permeated the darkness. After a few minutes the sickly sweetness nauseated him. He started to gag. He fought to control the reaction. He knew that if he threw up, he would suffocate.
A trickle of warm air caressed his face. He gasped at it. He tried to breathe without moving: impossible. The weight of the slug took advantage of each exhalation, never pushing air from him, but forcing each inhalation to be shallower and more difficult.
Stephen Thomas panicked. Clamped flat against the dank grass, he fought against the slug. His struggle was motionless, and futile.
He fought again, this time to win detachment. He lay very still, trying only to survive as long as he could.
A ripple passed through the body of the slug. It squeezed him tighter to the ground, moving over his feet, up his legs and body, across his face. He would have cried out, but even that was impossible.
This is it, he thought. Blades figured out how to break the programming. I’ve had it.
Daylight and cool air burst over him. The silver slug reared up, exposing Stephen Thomas’s face, his shoulders, his chest.
Stephen Thomas gasped at the air, sure it would be his last breath.
Instead of crushing him, the slug lurched off him and crawled away. Its body slid across his legs, leaving him free. The silver slug returned to its guard post, joining the others as they lay across the doorway like faithful dogs, like three-bodied, headless Cerberus guarding the gates of hell.
As soon as the slug released him, the interference on his web link vanished. He clutched for the web, hung on tight, then, gradually, released his grasp. Now that he was free, he had nothing to say to anyone.
He tried to get up.
“Stephen Thomas, what in the world are you doing here?”
His legs were asleep, his arms full of pins and needles. His joints ached fiercely and his hands itched.
Professor Thanthavong helped him to sit.
The air smelled clean and cool, after the metallic scent of the slug, the crushed grass, the bruised flowers. His fingernails were packed with dirt.
“The damned thing tried to kill me!” he said. “If you hadn’t come along—”
“The damned thing called me,” Thanthavong said. “They’re keeping the chancellor in. And everybody else out. What were you doing?”
With her support, he was able to stand. He was still damp from the rainstorm, chilled from lying on the wet ground. He shivered. His legs trembled.
“God, it hurts,” he said. His feet felt like sacks of rocks.
“You should have let me give you the depolymerase.”
“Great. I’d be throwing up instead of aching.” He shuddered: he would be dead instead of in pain. “No thanks.”
He stumbled when he tried to walk. The blood rushed, fiery, to his toes. Leaning on Professor Thanthavong’s shoulder, he limped to the stone outcropping and sank onto the warm rock.
“You wanted revenge,” Thanthavong said sadly.
Stephen Thomas looked at the ugly wreckage of the chancellor’s residence. He thought he saw the shadow again, the human-shaped shadow in the dark doorway. Thanthavong laid her hand on his shoulder, restraining him, but Stephen Thomas did not move.
“I thought I did,” he said, more to himself than to her. “I should have.”
“Stephen Thomas, get hold of yourself!”
“I’m not allowed to love anyone,” he said. “First Merry, then Feral...”
“What nonsense.”
He leaned forward, breathing deep and hard. He could not explain.
“Come along,” she said. “Don’t make Feral’s death more of a tragedy by behaving like a fool.”
Her tone allowed no argument. Stephen Thomas made himself watch what was happening from a distance, from inside the glass box where nothing could touch him.
o0o
The path led toward the steep hill that formed the end of Starfarer’s campus cylinder. Europa and Androgeos walked with Gerald at the front of the straggling group of expedition members.
J.D. lengthened her stride till she was walking beside Europa.
“Let us show you some hospitality,” J.D. said. “At least stay long enough to eat with us.”
Europa took so long to reply that J.D. thought she would not answer at all.
“It would be improper,” she said.
The words gave J.D. a deep, quick shiver. The symbolism of eating together, breaking bread, remained powerful. In civilization — in Europa’s part of humanity’s civilization — one did not eat the food of someone not a friend.
“I’m sorry,” J.D. said softly.
“I, too,” Europa said. “Please believe me. I am sorry, too.”
“Will you accept a gift from us, at least?”
Europa hesitated. “I suppose I could do that.”
J.D. handed Europa the packages.
“I didn’t have time to wrap them, I’m afraid.” Or anything to wrap them in. Purely frivolous items like wrapping paper were in short supply on the starship, passed around and reused till they dissolved in tatters.
“What is this?” Europa asked.
“Chocolate, and coffee.”
“Indeed!”
“Psychoactive substances,” Androgeos said, disapproving.
“I suppose so, technically,” J.D. said. “But fairly mild, as drugs of choice go.”
“Thank you very much, J.D.,” Europa said. “I’ve heard of these, but of course we’ve never tasted them.”
“I thought you wouldn’t have seen chocolate. I wasn’t sure about coffee. Do you know how to prepare it?”
“You will have to tell me.”
“Grind the beans up fine, boil water, let the water cool for a minute or two —” J.D. suddenly choked up. It was Feral who had told her about never letting coffee boil. She managed to finish giving Europa the instructions, but her voice shook and her vision blurred, from holding back the tears.
“All that’s happened is a great disappointment to you,” Europa said. “I know it. I’m sorry to be the cause of it. Thank you for the gifts.”
J.D. turned away, embarrassed, and scrubbed her eyes one her sleeve.
At the foot of the hill, Europa stopped and extended her free hand to Gerald, who clasped it gingerly.
“Thank you for showing us your home,” Europa said. “We’ll take our leave of you now. I think it would be best if the same people who first met us bid us farewell.”
For once in his life, Gerald Hemminge had no heart to argue.
o0o
Europa and Androgeos hovered by the airlock. Victoria and J.D., Satoshi and Zev floated nearby. J.D. felt as if she were in shock with disbelief, that the first meeting with alien beings could begin and end so quickly.
“Finish your business with Victoria, Andro,” Europa said. “Then we must leave.”
“What business?” Victoria said.
“You promised to show me your algorithm,” Androgeos said. “That’s why we came over here, after all.”
“Who cares about the algorithm!” Victoria exclaimed. “There’s got to be a way for us to talk to the people in charge. The people who control —”
“I’ve explained all that to you.” Europa’s tone was cold and final. “You broke the rules of civilization. The reasons don’t matter. In a few decades —”
“Why should we believe you?” Victoria was angry. “You tell us nothing, you won’t answer our questions, you conceal things from us —”
“What things?” Androgeos challenged Victoria. “We never concealed anything you could comprehend!”
Satoshi’s sharp laugh cut itself short. “You wouldn’t let Stephen Thomas cut one damned grass blade to look at!”
“Oh, that. I told you, it’s only ordinary grass. That doesn’t count.”
“It counted to Stephen Thomas!”
“Victoria, your algorithm sounded very pretty. Won’t you show it to me before I go?” Androgeos tried to charm her, but managed only to sound ingratiating. Victoria ignored his request.
The image of a barren, cratered sphere, slowly turning, formed nearby.
“What’s this,” Victoria asked, “if not something you concealed?”
Androgeos glanced at the image of the bleak alien ship. At first he looked startled, then amused.
“Did you know they were here?” he asked Europa.
“Yes. Of course. But they always are.”
“Who are they?” J.D. asked.
“Just the squidmoths.” Europa dismissed the second alien ship with a graceful flick of her long fingers. “There were probably some back at Tau Ceti. I didn’t look.”
“The... squidmoths?” The strangest thing about Europa’s behavior was that she did not consider it strange at all, that she expected J.D. to accept her disinterest and to share it.
“They’re everywhere,” Europa said. “Whatever system you visit, there’s likely to be one of their ships. They’re like... like rats.”
J.D. laughed in disbelief. “Europa... if you leave us behind, we’ll talk to them. You may think we’re hopelessly prejudiced, but we’re not. Civilization may think we’re only capable of dealing with people of our own species. But we’re not.”
“You may not be,” Androgeos said, self-satisfied, still amused. “But they are.”
“I’m sure this seems an opportunity to you, J.D.,” Europa said. “I assure you, it isn’t. They won’t talk to you. They seldom talk to anyone. They... I don’t know what they do. They listen to the starlight. They exist.”
“I see,” J.D. said. Squidmoths?
“I see you don’t believe me.” Europa sighed. “When I was an Earthling, we believed what our betters told us.”
“Your betters?” Satoshi asked. “Who was better than the descendants of the Pharaohs?”
“No one,” Androgeos said, smooth as silk. “Europa speaks metaphorically. As children believe parents, you should believe us.”
“Who were your parents?” Satoshi asked. “Kings and gods? Pharaohs?”
Androgeos glared at him.
“Or more ordinary folks?” Satoshi asked.
“What if they were?” Androgeos exclaimed angrily. “What does it matter?”
“It doesn’t, to me,” Satoshi said. “But you keep bringing it up.”
“You can remain here and waste your time trying to talk to the squidmoths,” Europa said, ignoring the exchange between Androgeos and Satoshi. “But I warn you, don’t waste too much time. If you do, you’ll find yourself severed not only from civilization, but from Earth.” She touched the wall, propelling herself slowly toward the hatch. “Victoria, show Androgeos your algorithm. We must go.”
Victoria took a long, deep breath, a sigh of sadness and loss. Her eyelids flickered, and the edges of a second image began to form beside the desolate planetoid.
“Victoria,” J.D. said, abruptly understanding what Androgeos planned. “Victoria, don’t.”
Victoria opened her eyes. The algorithm graphic flickered.
“What?”
“I want to see it!” Androgeos shouted, ugly and desperate.
“They want to take it, Victoria!” J.D. said. “They want it badly.”
The algorithm faded to invisibility as Victoria realized what J.D. meant.
“Your ship appeared behind us,” Victoria said to Europa. “That’s why Androgeos asked how we followed you so quickly. We entered transition a long time after you did... but we got here much sooner.”
Outrage disturbed even Satoshi’s equanimity.
“This is what you’re always looking for, isn’t it?” he said. “Something new, something unique. Victoria’s work, but you’d take it, for yourselves, without a second thought.”
“It isn’t like that,” Europa said.
“Let us take it with us,” Androgeos said. “It might make a difference. It might help you be banned for a short time instead of a long one.”
“How short?” Satoshi said.
“You can talk to the — to the ‘ancient astronauts’!” J.D. said. “Or are they just a tall tale?”
“They aren’t. We can’t talk to them. We don’t know how. But they know... somehow they know it, when civilization changes.”
“Why didn’t you tell us all this in the first place?” Victoria said.
“I didn’t think you’d believe us, I didn’t think you’d trust us.”
“I walked out onto your planet unprotected.” J.D. whispered her words; she could not speak louder, or she would sob. “I trusted you with my life, but you didn’t trust me at all.”
“I’m sorry,” Androgeos said. “I’m sorry! I made a mistake. I thought you’d exploded a bomb! If you trust me now —”
“How short a time?” Satoshi said again.
“I can’t promise,” Androgeos said. “But maybe only a hundred more years.”
“Good lord,” Satoshi said. “Androgeos, you’ve been living with your labyrinth too long. Your brain is tangled.”
“A hundred years?” Victoria exclaimed. “Forget it.”
“Keeping the algorithm won’t do you any good,” Androgeos cried.
“No?” Victoria said. “If civilization wants it, they’ll have it. But they’ll have it from me.”
Victoria had made her decision. Even Androgeos recognized it.
“Fine,” he said sullenly. “You can wander around until you find someone to give it to.”
“I intend to!”
“In five hundred years.”
Androgeos opened the door to the airlock and entered without another word. A little troop of meerkats followed him.
Europa hesitated in the entrance, balancing herself on its edge, half in the ship, half out.
“I’m sorry things happened this way,” she said. “I —”
Alzena Dadkhah plunged into the waiting room. Her head-cloth had come loose, and her beautiful long hair flew wild. This was much more the way J.D. expected to see her, not trapped in the conventions of her heritage.
But then J.D. saw her gaunt face, her staring eyes, her desperate expression.
“Take me with you.” Alzena’s voice cracked. She tried to wet her lips with her tongue. “Please.”
“We can’t,” Europa said. “You must...”
Alzena stopped, awkwardly hitting the wall, too distracted for grace. Her fingernails scratched on the rock foam as she pulled herself toward Europa.
She wrapped one arm around Europa’s knees and reached up and touched her cheek, suppliant, pleading.
Europa shivered back, then steadied herself.
“I don’t have power over your life,” she said.
“You do,” Alzena said.
“Will you die if you stay here?”
“Yes.”
“Then, come,” Europa said abruptly, and drew her into the airlock. The door sealed shut.
“Alzena!”
J.D. touched Satoshi’s arm, not holding him back, but stopping him anyway.
“Let her go,” J.D. said. “She meant what she said.”
As the alien human’s strange little craft rearranged itself for flight, Miensaem Thanthavong propelled herself into the waiting room. Stephen Thomas, damp, grass-stained, and bedraggled, followed close behind.
“Alzena!”
“She’s gone,” J.D. said.
“How could you let her?” Thanthavong said. “How could you?”
“How could we stop her?”
Thanthavong started to retort. Instead, she hesitated.
“I was too late,” she said. “Perhaps it’s... No. I was too late. We’ll leave it at that.”
Stephen Thomas let himself drift to Victoria’s side.
“Where were you?” Victoria exclaimed. She noticed his muddy clothes and unkempt hair. “Stephen Thomas, what happened?”
“That... would take a while to explain,” he said.
“You should have been here,” Satoshi said.
“I know.” He looked disconsolate. His breathing was ragged. “I know. No excuses.”
Zev moved close to J.D. “I don’t understand anything, I think,” he said. “What are we going to do now?”
J.D. had no answer. She hugged him instead.
As the alien human’s craft accelerated away from Starfarer, the rest of the members of the deep space expedition joined the alien contact team in the zero-g waiting room. Gerald, Senator Orazio, even Senator Derjaguin; Nikolai Petrovich, Chandra, Crimson Ng, Griffith and Florrie Brown and Fox and Avvaiyar and Iphigenie, Infinity Mendez and Esther Klein, the faculty and staff and students. Everyone but Blades. And Feral.
“That’s a good question, Zev,” Victoria said. She faced their colleagues. “What are we going to do now?”
o0o
Starfarer’s great sail turned, catching the bright strong light of Sirius A. The starship began a slow, steady acceleration.
The alien humans’ ship fled toward a nearby coil of cosmic string. Starfarer could not catch the worldlet, not in the normal dimensions of space-time. But the starship could track the alien humans; it could follow them into transition. Once there... who could tell? Perhaps they would reach the destination before their quarry, perhaps after. Perhaps the alien humans were traveling to civilization, to report on the actions of the expedition; perhaps they were traveling to the galaxy’s version of a desert. It did not matter. Starfarer would keep moving, keep searching. It would — everyone hoped — remain one step ahead, one transition ahead, of the powers trying to isolate it.
o0o
J.D. strapped herself into her couch in the observer’s circle. As the Chi departed from Starfarer, heading starward, Zev took J.D.’s hand. His swimming webs surrounded her fingers like warm satin.
Starfarer would not reach its new transition point for several weeks. In the meantime, the alien contact team planned to explore in the system of Sirius A.
The ship of the squidmoths was a tiny point of reflected light ahead; it was an image, detailed yet mysterious, in the center of the observer’s circle.
The Chi accelerated toward it, carrying the alien contact team. Five members, instead of four, Zev’s tacit acceptance confirmed. J.D. wished for a sixth member of the department.
Feral was right, she thought. We should have brought a journalist along.
Stephen Thomas, in his usual place, remained withdrawn from them all. He rubbed the skin between the thumb and forefinger of one hand with the fingertips of the other, massaging the itchy new swimming webs. His skin had just begun to take on the darker hue of a diver; he glowed with a pale gold tan. All his injuries had healed. His physical injuries, at least.
Victoria and Satoshi bent over the image of the squidmoth’s ship, extracting esoteric information from its shape, from the imperceptible veil of molecules escaping from its interior, from the light reflecting off its surface. Victoria’s concentration had intensified; Satoshi’s cheerful self-possession had sobered.
J.D. found her own anticipation tempered with prudence, not with joy.
“A waste of time!” J.D. repeated Europa’s words, still amazed by them. “A waste of time!”
Victoria grinned at her. “A challenge, J.D., eh? To talk to beings who don’t talk to anybody?”
“Maybe nobody ever talks to them,” J.D. said. “I wonder if Europa considered that?”
“At least if they don’t talk to us,” Satoshi said, “we won’t have done worse than anyone else.”
J.D. chuckled wryly. She looked through the edge of the observer’s circle, seeking out the luminous silver-gray pinpoint of the second alien ship.
Here I am again, winging it, she thought. I wish I didn’t have to; I wish I knew more about where we were going.
In spite of everything that had happened, J.D. felt more intrigued than apprehensive.
She thought: Squidmoths?
The End