J.D. closed her eyes and opened herself into her expanded link. The rest of the world disappeared. Within Arachne’s web, Esther acknowledged that she and Kolya were safe within the expedition tent, prepared for Nautilus to move.
J.D. passed beyond Arachne; she touched the knowledge surface of Nautilus.
In response to J.D.’s thought, her starship pressed itself into a new course. Moving it was as easy as walking. Nautilus curved toward Largernearer, gently, gently, so its gravity drew Starfarer with it.
J.D. opened her eyes to blank darkness. Startled, she squeezed her eyes shut, withdrew herself from her link, and looked around again. The world and her body returned.
She stood up, shaky, taking herself back from the dissociation of the link. The knowledge surface exhilarated her, yet saddened her because of Nemo’s absence.
Nemo was gone, but one of Nemo’s offspring remained, clinging to the side of Starfarer’s wild cylinder.
It was past time to pay the young being a visit.
o0o
Senator Ruth Orazio walked beside Sharphearer, who paced easily along despite carrying Representative’s Representative. Senator William Derjaguin, known to his colleagues as Jag, walked uneasily beside Quickercatcher, while Gerald Hemminge shepherded Longestlooker and Fasterdigger.
Sharphearer squinted in the bright light of Starfarer’s sun tube. She opened a tiny pouch tied into her fur and drew out a gauzy, bright yellow scarf that contrasted violently with her multicolored fur. She placed it on top of her head so its edge shielded her eyes. Several of her mutualists twined around the corners of the scarf to hold it in place. Fasterdigger, too, shielded his eyes with a sheer scarf, while Quickercatcher combed his thick fur forward to shade his eyes and Longestlooker laced her fingers together against her forehead.
Europa and Androgeos rejoined them, and the group set off across the meadow at the bottom of the hill. The beads and knick-knacks braided into Sharphearer’s fluorescent fur clicked in rhythm to the Largerfarthing’s steps. Several of Europa’s meerkats scampered out of the bushes to accompany them.
Sharphearer and her siblings were as tall as Ruth, who was of medium height. When they stretched their long necks upward they reached two meters high. When they rose on their hind legs, as they sometimes did, they were much taller than a human being, and quite imposing.
Ruth glanced sideways. She met Sharphearer’s equally sidelong gaze. Behind the flutter of yellow gauze that shading her large, shining eyes, Sharphearer blinked, slowly, in friendly amusement.
Like spray from a cold shower, a shock rushed through the senator.
I’m walking with an alien, she thought. Two aliens. The alien contact department did their job; now it’s my responsibility to forge a relationship between our governments. All the governments.
It was easy to overlook Late, but he was an equal member of the delegation. Ruth had too much experience to offend any participant. She had seen delicate negotiations fail because an arrogant envoy offended an assistant or a secretary, somehow never having noticed that assistants and secretaries ran the world.
Late lay draped over Sharphearer’s back like a horse blanket, his front edge resting just behind Sharphearer’s arms. One of Europa’s meerkats rode with them, perching on Sharphearer’s front shoulders. It balanced itself by clutching at Sharphearer’s neck with its front paws.
Ruth and Sharphearer led the way into Starfarer’s only real forest. The pleasant approach to the American Embassy in Denny Hill wound along cool shade-dappled paths. On the rest of campus, two-meter saplings or tall fast-growing bamboo covered the hillsides. The embassy architect had insisted on landscaping with well-grown trees, imported at some expense from one of the older O’Neill colonies.
The forest ended. The diplomatic group paused at the edge of the glade.
The imposing facade of the embassy, a cliff of natural-looking stone, loomed above them. Above the treetops, the stone gave way to irregular streaks of glass, the outside window walls of the embassy proper. Rimrock capped the embassy design.
Twisted sideways by Starfarer’s spin, a waterfall coursed down the cliff. As the water fell, it picked up speed and weight. At the top, it billowed down in slow rainbow spray and settled like a cloud. It flowed like a silk curtain from the first pool to the second. It spilled out of the second pool and crashed down the cliff. With a sound like kettledrums, water cascaded and splashed into a final deep basin.
Longestlooker arched her neck and flared her nostrils. From beneath the shade of her long hands, she gazed at the waterfall.
“The effect satisfies me,” she said quietly.
“Thank you.” Ruth wondered where on the scale of compliment the comment fell, and wished Gerald had not been so eager to cut the representatives of Civilization loose from the alien contact specialist.
The lowest pool flowed into a stream that passed beneath a rustic bridge of heavy logs. The recent floods had left the logs sodden, but the massive bridge remained steady beneath the footsteps of three pairs of shoes, a pair of sandals, one set of bare human feet, and the catlike pads of the four Largerfarthings. On the other side, the path led to the embassy’s front door.
The group entered the cool foyer. Sharphearer petted and poked her mutualists until they released her sun-shade. The Largerfarthing delicately pushed the gauze back into its tiny pouch. The material folded into almost nothing.
Ruth felt elated and exhausted and vaguely ill. excitement had kept her awake since J.D. met the quartet. Even Jag Derjaguin reacted to meeting the interstellar civilization — worlds with government, culture, trade, not passive observers like the squidmoth Nemo. Jag looked amazed and bemused. Once in a while, an expression of pure disbelief passed over his face. Ruth kept expecting him to pinch himself.
“Here’s the elevator.” Everyone piled inside. Ruth did not feel up to climbing stairs today.
She glanced at her Senate colleague, with whom she had had so many vehement arguments about the space program. Jag grimaced and raised his eyebrows in a self-deprecating, you-were-right expression. Ruth smiled at him, in sympathy rather than triumph. She appreciated his grace. His opposition to the deep space expedition had been proven wrong: completely, intensely wrong.
Ruth found herself pressed against the polished wooden wall by Fasterdigger, the most massive of the Largerfarthings. He gazed at her, direct and friendly and intense, arms stretched forward, elbows resting on front shoulders, hands pillowing chin. Both his thumbs curved beneath his chin, while his three central fingers lay against his cheeks. His nails were orange, the same color as the spots of his fur. Ruth wondered if he painted them, or if they grew that color naturally. The silver mutualists glittered against his brown background fur.
The elevator powered upward. Ruth closed her eyes and clenched her teeth against the strange feeling of a moving elevator inside a spinning cylinder: the perception of gravity slid from beneath her feet to behind her.
The Largerfarthings trilled with delight at the sensation.
“Is this an entertainment?” Sharphearer asked.
“Only a function of vector interaction,” Gerald Hemminge said. “It will stop in a moment.”
Ruth slitted her eyes open. Fasterdigger was still watching her. Mutualists decorated his forearms and his jowl hair. One thread twined through a delicately carved jade bead. Locks of his hair braided and knotted around mysterious pouches and vials.
The sweet spiciness of his scent made Ruth dizzy.
The elevator stopped. Gravity returned to its proper place. Ruth plunged into the wide hallway.
“We’ll put you here in the VIP suite.” She hurried toward the doors and flung them open. She felt better with more space around her. Breathing deeply, she entered the suite and crossed the flagstone floor.
The suite was spacious and bright. Comfortable couches and chairs clustered on thick silk rugs. The central room flowed across several levels. An irregular streak of window glass followed the stepwise pattern. The glass formed the suite’s outside wall and stretched across seaward Denny Hill, facing the length of Starfarer.
The forest undulated over foothills, then gave way to meadows. Overhead, at the axis of the cylinder, the sun tube streaked away in a bright line of light. Streams and lakes decorated a landscape green with spring grass, marked here and there with the muddy wash of the snow-melt flood. To either side the land curved upward, as if Denny Hill lay at the head of a huge, deep valley, a valley whose sides closed together far-overhead. The cylinder stretched to the blue and gray and purple distance of the sea, a ring of water pierced by the sun tube.
The aliens, the alien humans, and Gerald and Jag paused in the wide double doorway of the suite. The meerkats scampered in and rushed around, exploring.
“I’ve not visited your Embassy since it’s been finished,” Gerald said. “It’s very impressive.”
“Please make yourselves at home.” Ruth gestured to mirror-image spiral staircases, one at each end of the wide room. “The suite has four bedrooms upstairs and four on this level. This is the sitting room. We have plenty of office space, if you need it.”
She did not mention that the office space was empty because the United States had recalled its diplomatic staff before Starfarer left the solar system.
“And let us know what we can do to make you comfortable.”
Ruth hesitated, waiting for some sign from the representatives of Civilization that the accommodations were acceptable or out of the question. She had decided to offer each individual from the Four Worlds a separate room. She had no idea how to ask about their sleeping arrangements.
Gerald strode to the window. “A magnificent view — you Yanks always do things on the grand scale.”
“Thank you,” Ruth said, and thought, I’m repeating myself.
The administration building, where Gerald normally spent most of his time, had a similar view. Ruth smiled to herself. She was as uncertain of where Gerald’s comment fell on the compliment scale as she had been of Longestlooker’s.
Maybe I should have angled for some diplomatic time at the Court of St. James, she thought ruefully.
She had always specialized in the space program; she got along fine with scientists and engineers.
The group of Four Worlds representatives entered the big sitting room. When the quartet walked, the decorations and bells and beads in their fur clicked and jingled.
Europa’s sandals squeaked, but Androgeos walked silently, barefoot. He curled his toes against the warm stone tiles.
“Just like home,” he said.
“J.D. mentioned the warmth of your starship’s ground —” Ruth said.
“I meant at Knossos,” he said. “We used to warm the floors at Knossos.”
Sharphearer flopped onto her belly and looked over her shoulder at Late. The Smallerfarthing lifted his anterior edge, suckers extended, quivering. After a silent communication with Sharphearer, Late slid from the Largerfarthing’s back to the floor. He spread himself across the stone. Except for the faint ripple of his breathing, he lay perfectly still and silent.
“What’s he doing?” Ruth asked.
“Appreciating your artwork.” Sharphearer rose gracefully to her feet.
The room held only a few of the paintings it had been designed to display. None of the art glass had been shipped into orbit. Ruth regretted all over again her government’s withdrawing its support for the deep space expedition.
“Which pieces does he like?” Jag asked.
“The floor.”
“Eh — ?”
“He can explain,” Europa said, “if you communicate directly. It’s hard to describe. He can help you perceive what he experiences. Imagine the sun on your skin, tracing patterns — but we humans aren’t physiologically fitted to experience it first-hand.”
“I’ll settle for an inadequate description,” Jag said. He stood in the doorway, apart from the group.
Is he scared? Ruth thought. I’ve never seen him scared, not about anything.
Ruth gingerly opened her link and listened. Europa explained about heat gradients and thermodynamic patterns. Ruth felt in her mind the sensations that Late perceived as art. It did not affect her as art; the faint mental prickles of the heat flow tracings made her edgy and uncomfortable.
Ruth let her link close.
We should have brought the alien contact department with us, she thought. J.D. didn’t deserve a brush-off: “You’ve done your job, now we’ll take over.” She might not understand why the floor is a work of art — or maybe she would — but she’d ask gracefully about sleeping arrangements for two kinds of aliens. I don’t even know whether to put Europa and Andro together.
“Can you cover the windows?” Europa asked.
Ruth touched Arachne. The windows darkened and polarized. The white slash of the sun tube dimmed and blued; colors faded across Starfarer’s hills and lakes and meadows.
“I mean manually,” Europa said pointedly, “as you will not allow us access to your computer.”
“The backup is voice activated,” Ruth said. “I’m sure we can teach it to respond to all of you.”
“This is much better,” Quickercatcher said. He moved sinuously forward into the center of the room.
“We live our lives at dawn and dusk,” Longestlooker said. “Your living space is so bright —”
“And hard.” Sharphearer extended her claws and tapped them on the floor.
Fasterdigger added, “Do you have any nest material?”
“The bedrooms are... er... softer,” Ruth said. “The rooms for sleeping. They have pillows and blankets and —”
Sharphearer and Fasterdigger each swarmed up a spiral of stairs. Sharphearer’s serpentine body curved up the nearer stairs. Fasterdigger, stockier and more muscular, rang the twin staircase with his footfalls.
“Are they tired?” Gerald asked Europa.
“It’s rest time,” Europa said, which did not exactly answer the question.
Pillows rained from one staircase. A moment later, bright blankets tumbled down the other. A white featherbed fell with a soft thump, and two purple sheets fluttered after it. One of the sheets draped onto the railing.
Sharphearer loped headfirst down the stairs, balancing pillows on her back. As she passed the sheet, she grabbed it with her free hand and dragged it after her. On the other staircase, Fasterdigger thundered down the treads, festooned with the upstairs rooms’ blankets.
“The other soft things are too big to move by myself,” he said.
Quickercatcher joined Fasterdigger and helped him carry the blankets and pillows to the center of the room. They pulled cushions off the sofas and piled the bedding on top of the cushions. Longestlooker settled on the carpet to oversee the nest construction. Absently, she freed three glass baubles from her fur, added a silky tuft of scarlet fuzz, and unfastened a tiny earthenware vial.
“The mattresses aren’t meant to be moved,” Ruth said. “They’re to sleep on. While they’re on the bedsteads. Wouldn’t you... like to try that?”
“We’re always willing to try new things.” Longestlooker arranged the miniatures on the corner of the coffee table.
“Oh, no, sister,” Fasterdigger said, “there isn’t room for every person.”
“Not on those little platforms,” Sharphearer said.
“We’ll put a place right,” Quickercatcher said.
“Some other nap, we’ll try your way,” Longestlooker said kindly to Ruth. Without looking at her minute shrine, she opened the vial, poured out a drop of liquid, stoppered the vial again, and tied it back into her fur.
“There’s room if each person sleeps on a different bed,” Ruth said.
The three glass ornaments nestled in a bed of scarlet down. A sharp smoky scent rose from the arrangement. Once it was finished, Longestlooker paid it no more attention.
Quickercatcher smoothed his hands down the sides of his neck, sleeking his soft cotton-candy fur.
“That wouldn’t be very comfortable,” he said. “All spread out?”
“We do want you to be comfortable.” Jag’s tone was dry.
Fasterdigger piled more blankets on top of the pillows and sofa cushions. Late luxuriated in art appreciation.
“This will do,” Longestlooker said. “Though it’s rather sparse.”
“It’ll be fun,” Fasterdigger said.
“Like a camp-out, the way Zev described,” Quickercatcher said.
“In the wild,” said Longestlooker in response to Ruth’s quizzical glance.
“Zev probably had something a little rougher in mind,” Ruth said. “I hope you can swim.”
Quickercatcher snuffled sharply. “I sink,” he said. “My fur is so long. Will we have to swim?”
“That’d be my first thought, if Zev was involved,” Ruth said.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Jag said.
“Good,” Longestlooker said.
“I think,” Gerald said, “that you’d do better to let an adult expedition members show you around. I’ll arrange a tour.”
“We would like to see the fossils,” Longestlooker said.
“Certainly,” Gerald said heartily. “We’ll arrange it with Crimson Ng as soon as possible.”
Sharphearer loped in with more bedding balanced precariously on her back. She tossed it onto the heap, kicked her hind feet like a young horse, and leaped onto the tumble.
“Look here!” Gerald said. “Have you left any beds for Androgeos and Europa?”
Sharphearer poked her nose out of the blankets and gazed at Gerald.
“Can’t they stay with us?” she asked, stricken.
“Of course we’ll stay with you,” Europa said. “The chancellor and the senators aren’t familiar with our customs.”
“They are,” Jag said, “unusual.”
“Perhaps to you,” Europa said. “Where Andro and I come from, the members of my household would sleep with me. It was companionable, and I was responsible for them. What better way to insure their well-being?”
“We have different outlooks,” Jag said easily. “I’d consider the propriety of the situation.”
“We do have different outlooks.” Europa smiled. “In Knossos, the head of the household protected vulnerable members — and promoted good matches for those who wished them.”
Jag coughed to cover his startled, uncomfortable laughter.
Androgeos joined Sharphearer in the pile of bedding; he leaned against the Largerfarthing, one arm over her forward shoulders. They bent their heads together; Sharphearer twisted one of Andro’s thick glossy ringlets around her long pointed finger, then pressed her nose beneath his chin. Andro tickled Sharphearer’s frizzy goatee.
Longestlooker blinked, rose, and joined Sharphearer and Androgeos.
“Travel disarranges one’s rhythms so badly,” she said, curling around a pillow. One of the meerkats pattered over to the nest and burrowed under a blanket.
“I’ll leave you to your rest,” Gerald said.
“You’re welcome to join us,”
“It’s been a long morning, perhaps you’re tired too,” Fasterdigger said.
“No, thank you, I never sleep in the middle of the day, and I have a great deal of work to do,” Gerald said. “Senators, a moment of your time?”
“Certainly,” Jag said.
Ruth smiled. This is irresistible, she thought.
“It has been a long morning,” she said. “Thank you, Longestlooker, I will join you. Mr. Hemminge, I’ll be glad to talk to you later. It isn’t critical?”
“Urgent,” Gerald said. “But... no. Not critical.”
As he and Jag left, Jag glanced back at her. His disbelief shaded into disapproval. Ruth barely kept from laughing.
A little embarrassed, Ruth sat on the edge of the nest. Quickercatcher paused before her.
“May I sleep beside you?” Quickercatcher asked.
“Yes, I’d like that.”
Quickercatcher curled sinuously behind her and settled himself. Ruth cautiously leaned against the Largerfarthing, between his forward shoulders and his central shoulders. His sweet spicy scent no longer struck her with cloying strength. Quickercatcher’s soft fur brushed the back of her neck. The Largerfarthing clasped Ruth’s hand. His inner and outer thumbs circled her palm. The bare bright skin was very warm. Nearby, Europa settled down beside Longestlooker, who laid her head in Europa’s lap and closed her eyes. The alien human unbraided a lock of the Largerfarthing’s hair, unstrung the decorations from it, and gently separated the curled strands.
Outside the resting nest, Fasterdigger tickled Late’s front edge with his sharp-clawed toes.
“Late, Late, wake up, it’s time to go to sleep.”
Late’s back rippled, exposing his poison spines. Fasterdigger snuffled sharply and pivoted away. The Largerfarthing leaped into the nest, landing lightly for such a massive creature. He sprawled between Longestlooker and Sharphearer and rested his head on Androgeos’s muscular thigh.
“What did Late say?” Ruth asked.
“He is appreciating the artwork, and does not care to be disturbed.”
“You shouldn’t have teased him about being asleep,” Sharphearer said.
Longestlooker let out her breath in a long sigh and fell asleep. Her breathing trilled softly, a musical purr.
Quickercatcher laid his head on his neat front feet and closed his eyes. His hand slipped from Ruth’s grasp.
Exhausted but not sleepy, Ruth let herself relax. She entered the same state she used when she had to pull all-nighters back home, when she had to shepherd an important bill or develop a last-minute legislative strategy. With a few minutes’ rest, she could gather herself for a long stretch of work.
Back home, she thought.
A pang of homesickness, loneliness, grabbed her by surprise. Tears filled her eyes and her throat clenched, hot and tight.
Oh, god, I miss Dan, she thought.
She and her partner had a commuter relationship. Ruth went home to Bellingham when she could; he visited her in D.C. When Congress was in session, they saw each other only a couple of times each month.
But they spoke together every day, projecting their images cross-country. They joked that they had perfected making out on the phone. Once in a while they used VR techniques to be together, but usually they did not even need to.
She had not spoken to him since he saw her off at the space plane. She had planned to call him at just about the time that Starfarer, its communications cut by the military carrier’s interference, had plunged into transition.
During their last few minutes alone, risk spiced the sudden burst of desire between them. A minor risk. They had thought.
Everything’s going to be all right, Ruth said fiercely to herself. It’s got to be all right.
The smoky scent of Longestlooker’s shrine hung heavy in the air.
A silver thread probed from Quickercatcher’s soft mauve shoulder.
The mutualist twined across Quickercatcher’s fur. It touched Ruth’s arm. Ruth recoiled. The biter writhed away, snapping its clawed jaws, shaking its eyeless head.
A rush of nausea surged in Ruth’s throat. She lunged out of the nest and ran to the bathroom. She barely made it to the sink before she threw up.
Her stomach finally emptied itself. The taste of bile burned hot and sour. Ruth turned on the faucet and let the water run, rinsing the sink. She washed out her mouth, drinking straight from the tap. She splashed clean cool water on her face. She felt hot and weak.
“Let me help.”
Europa came into the bathroom and closed the door.
Ruth grabbed a towel and wiped her mouth. “I’m all right.”
“Of course you are. That doesn’t mean you don’t need a bit of help.”
Ruth froze.
“I don’t —”
“It’s perfectly obvious.” Europa chuckled. “My dear child.”
“No one’s called me ‘child’ in a good long time,” Ruth said, masking fright with annoyance.
“You’re all children, to me,” Europa said easily. “Even Andro... especially Andro. You’re all my responsibility.”
“I’ll be responsible for myself, thanks all the same.”
“I’m concerned. If you stay in Civilization for long, this could present a serious problem.”
“It’s nobody else’s business.”
“It’s bad manners to reproduce in a star system not your own.”
“Then I’ll be rude!” Ruth snapped.
“It isn’t that easy.”
“Is anything? Is anything easy, or simple, or straightforward — in your Civilization?”
“Very little.”
“What happens?” Ruth asked in a conciliatory tone. “When someone’s rude?”
“That depends.”
“Doesn’t everything?”
Europa smiled. “You’re beginning to understand.”
“This is serious!”
“Yes. I didn’t mean to make light of the situation. The most common reaction to unacceptable behavior is economic sanction.”
Ruth shrugged. “We aren’t exactly anyone’s trading partner.”
“But you are,” Europa said. “Through my efforts. If you have your baby in the Four Worlds system, the people will be shocked and embarrassed. Earth is, after all, their first client.”
“We never asked to be their client!”
“Do you want to join Civilization or don’t you? You cannot, without being someone’s client.”
“Will they do anything beside being shocked and embarrassed?”
“The Largernearlings will boycott Earth’s work. The Largerfarthings will shun you. The Smallerfarthings will fine you. The Smallernearer is indifferent.”
“This is crazy,” Ruth said.
“Without it, the population —”
“Listen to me, Europa! Back on Earth, government coercion and social pressure and ignorance and compulsory pregnancy and forced abortion and even family bullying never worked to balance the population.”
“I know that,” Europa said. “I feared... but you did bring yourselves under control. I’ve wondered how.”
“I’ll tell you what worked. Giving control to individuals worked. Giving us — you, me — the power to decide yes, it’s time for a child, or no, the time isn’t right. Women died to get that power. No one gets pregnant anymore unless she wants to! Nothing the Four Worlds can do will force me to —”
“Dear child, I had no such thought!”
“You said —”
“I meant — Starfarer would have to take you to your own system. Home.” Her expression changed from one of reassurance to one of consternation. “They would do that — would they not?”
“And be stranded?” Ruth said. “I... I don’t know. The people on Starfarer agreed it wasn’t to be a colony ship. They agreed not to have children during the expedition. But I —”
“You weren’t meant to come along.”
“No. I wasn’t meant to be pregnant, either. I wasn’t, when I got to the spaceport. Then —” She blushed furiously. “We’ve been trying for so damned long, we never thought —”
Ruth burst into tears. Europa came to her and enfolded her.
Ruth cried. Europa murmured to her in a strange, melodic language. The embrace of her wiry arms was remarkably comforting.
“Don’t tell,” Ruth said.
“Shh, shh,” the alien human said. “We’ll think of something.”
“It probably won’t matter.” A long dark wave of grief and depression washed over her. “I miscarried —”
“Shh! Shh, don’t think such a thing.” She rocked Ruth back and forth.
Finally Ruth stopped crying. Europa wiped her face with a cool damp towel and led her back into the darkened sitting room. She bedded her down next to Quickercatcher and tucked a blanket around her.
I shouldn’t let her do this, Ruth thought. I don’t need to be pampered, this is pathetic. I should get up and go find out what Gerald Hemminge thought was so important...
Quickercatcher shifted gently in his sleep to make a space for her, and nuzzled her beneath the chin. Europa patted her hand.
“Shh, shh.”
With Quickercatcher’s fur soft and comforting against her, Ruth fell sound asleep.
o0o
Esther Klein entered a hexagonal underground chamber deep beneath the surface of the starship Nautilus. As soon as J.D. settled down to rest with the Four Worlds representatives, Esther had ventured eagerly out of the expedition tent, to explore.
Esther flashed her light around, tracing the rock shapes. Three pointed archways alternated with three round archways. The pointed arches led into large alcoves; the round archways opened into tunnels. She had come in through one of the tunnels. She thought she recognized where she was.
Entering one of the alcoves, she rubbed her glove against the pitted stone of the back wall. The rock crumbled. A chunk fell away. Esther jumped back as steam clouded out from the wall. Water exploded into vapor on exposure to hard vacuum. Most dissipated; some scattered to the floor as ice crystals that glittered for a moment, then sublimated. Water continued to seep from the wall and vaporize, a strange spring. Slowly the surface crusted over.
This is where Satoshi saw Nemo’s air being made, Esther said to herself. I’m sure of it. There’s nothing left of the critters who produced the atmosphere except a few hairs, a few scales. They must have processed the water to make air. Hydrolysis, maybe an enzymatic reaction...
While Nemo was still alive, the silken inner tunnels had held oxygen, nitrogen, traces of hydrocarbons. When the squidmoth died and the tunnels disintegrated, the air escaped. J.D. planned to terraform the planetoid she had named Nautilus. Eventually it would be a tiny world in itself, like Europa’s ship, with lakes and streams, forests and fields. First it would need an atmosphere and water. If Nautilus contained a large deposit of water, that would solve several of J.D.’s problems at once.
Esther sent an LTM out to explore and probe. She put the broken chunk of rock in her sample pouch.
I wonder, Esther thought, if J.D.’s going to need a backup pilot...
She had no idea how to move the starship. But J.D. knew. Maybe she would be willing to teach someone else. Europa and Androgeos knew how to take Nautilus over and put it under controls developed by Civilization. Esther was pretty sure J.D. would never allow that. Why should she put herself in their debt, when she did not need to?
I know J.D. trusts me, Esther thought. After all, it was me and Kolya she asked to come here and keep watch while she went to meet the Four Worlds ship.
Griffith had referred to what they were doing as “maintaining a presence” while he tried to persuade J.D. — to bully her, was the truth — to let him go with Kolya.
For such a mild person, J.D. was awfully hard to bully.
I guess she didn’t want somebody to maintain a presence, Esther said to herself. I guess she wanted somebody to house-sit.
She grinned.
Let’s see, she thought. I spent five years doing space construction. Piloting transports, eight. I’ll never fly another EarthSpace transport. Even if they’d let me work for them — damned if I want to. So... how does mining oxygen or transporting water grab you, Klein?
Esther wished she had a spaceship. But the alien contact department needed the Chi, and Esther’s transport had never been designed to land or lift off, only to dock with other spacecraft.
I could land the transport here, she thought. And get off again. I’m sure. Pretty sure. The gravity’s low enough. But the transport would get pretty beat up if I tried.
She still wished she had a ship.
Esther laughed to herself. You’re on a ship, the neatest starship you’ll ever see.
She climbed toward the surface. Nautilus was dark and cold, stripped of Nemo’s luminous cables and translucent silk. The tunnel opened into a large, deep crater, one of the pits from which Nemo’s offspring had launched their silken balloons.
Esther loped easily up the crater’s side. Her boots barely touched the rock before she pushed off again. In five long leaps she reached the surface of the strange little world. The horizon was so close that she could see its curvature.
She paused to gaze into the black sky, the multicolored stars. The constellations nearly matched the familiar patterns of Earth. In interstellar terms, an infinitesimal distance separated 61 Cygni and the sun. The only difference was the small bright spark of Earth’s sun. Esther gazed at it for a few minutes, wondering when — if — she would return home.
Here, beyond any atmosphere, more visible stars cluttered the ancient patterns. Esther was used to seeing stars from space, to recognizing familiar patterns against the wash of light of the galaxy. Back home she spent half her life in space. On the deep space expedition, she was... what? A fugitive, a stowaway, an inadvertent kidnap victim? Her sympathies were and always had been with the people who would be accused of kidnapping her.
Esther shrugged. She would be in a complicated position when the faculty decided to take Starfarer back to Earth. In the meantime, she would do what she could to help the expedition. The consequences be damned.
o0o
Bright, hard lights made a spoked wheel of J.D.’s shadow. She hurried through the rough tunnel in Starfarer’s thick stone skin. The gravity was higher than on the inner living surface, though still less than one full g.
J.D. glanced at the ceiling, at the harsh artificial glow. Higher above her, deeper inside the starship’s second cylinder, lay Starfarer’s wild side. J.D. had not yet had the chance to explore it, even to visit it. In calmer times, members of the faculty and staff used the uninhabited cylinder as a recreational wilderness, a place to hike and camp and fish. A touch of curiosity to Arachne answered her query: Yes, the ecosystem could support a certain amount of hunting, though no one had yet applied for a permit. Since Starfarer had fled Earth before the ecology department established predators, someone would eventually have to hunt to control the herbivore population. J.D. had caught salmon with the divers, but she had never hunted a mammal... except when she and Stephen Thomas tracked Chancellor Blades through Arachne’s web.
J.D. reached the airlock and put on her spacesuit, comfortable with the equipment but apprehensive about going out onto Starfarer’s skin for the first time since the missile attack. Her helmet sealed. She stepped into the elevator and descended to the outside. The airlock pressure fell to zero; the hatch opened. J.D. looked out.
Stars spun beneath her. Starfarer loomed above her. At her feet, the inspection web fastened to the lower edge of the elevator shaft. The web stretched all the way around Starfarer, a tracery of cables held in place by support struts bristling outward from the cylinder’s surface.
Rotation took her over the immense silver canopy of the stellar sail. The stars reappeared, and then the spin plunged J.D. into the shadowed valley between the campus cylinder and the wild side. The campus cylinder, counter-spinning at the same rate so the distant stone surface paced her, gave her a momentary sensation of stillness. Then she burst out over the starfield again. Multicolored points and streamers of light streaked past.
J.D. fastened her lifeline to a safety link and slid one foot cautiously onto the cable of the inspection web.
“It’s easier if you don’t look down.”
Infinity Mendez was waiting for her. J.D. grinned, though he could not see her expression past her gilded faceplate, as she could not see his.
“That’s easier said than done,” she said.
“True.” He balanced easily on the web’s tightrope.
“Too bad we’re not bats,” J.D. said.
“Bats?”
She stretched up and brushed the outer skin of Starfarer, the looming stone ceiling.
“We could hang by our feet and swing along.”
He chuckled.
“Interesting engineering problem — spacesuit boots for bats.”
J.D. laughed.
Infinity spent a lot of time on the outside of Starfarer’s skin, especially since the missile attack. He was a staff gardener, but he was also one of the few people on board with space construction experience. Before joining the deep space expedition, he had been on the crew that built the starship.
“Over there, the —” Infinity hesitated. “What should I call it?”
“I don’t know,” J.D. said. “I thought of them as eggs. Egg cases.” She reached back to Nautilus and touched Nemo’s knowledge surface, but she could not translate her perception of Nemo’s offspring into ordinary English words. She could not even translate it into something she could hold in her own mind. Trying made her as giddy as looking at the stars beneath her feet. She drew away.
“This egg hasn’t even hatched, but it’s growing already,” Infinity said. “That isn’t any egg I ever ran into.”
“No. We’ll have to talk to a taxonomist... or ask Nemo’s child what it wants to be called.”
“Can you talk to it?” he asked, surprised.
“I don’t know that, either.” She sighed. I wish there was another squidmoth to ask. I know the information is all in Nemo’s knowledge surface, somewhere, but I can’t get it out in a way I can understand it. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know whether to try to be a parent, or...” She shrugged unhappily.
“Let’s ask Nemo’s kid,” Infinity said.
The crossed the strands of the inspection web. Now and then they passed silver slugs, upside-down, flattened to hold themselves fast, performing the constant maintenance that Starfarer required. They often worked in pairs: A lithoclast, its color a smooth solid silver, eating away at weakened adhesive rock foam and preparing cracks to be filled; a lithoblast, patterned with moiré rainbows, spewing out new rock foam to re-anchor the moonrock and fill the cracks.
J.D. picked her way across the inspection web. Her safety line followed in its track. She traversed the curve of the wild cylinder’s flank. The cylinder’s spin pushed her down toward the stars.
61 Cygni shone below, bright and familiar in its similarity to the sun. It fell to Starfarer’s horizon and disappeared. J.D. and Infinity plunged into night, and into the valley between the two cylinders.
Infinity ducked under a cluster of large silver slugs.
“Here,” he said softly.
Beyond the slugs, a gluey pseudopod hugged Starfarer’s side.
It was the color of skim milk, blue-white and translucent, nothing like the iridescent silk that Nemo had produced. J.D. touched it gently.
The gelatinous living plasma cringed away from the contact. The blue-white skin flattened against Starfarer. The skin stuck to the rock, turning dry and papery.
J.D. caught her breath with dismay.
“Touchy critter,” Infinity said.
“I wish I hadn’t done that,” J.D. said. “I thought it would be like Nemo.” Nemo, a solitary creature, had enjoyed the presence of another being, sought out J.D.’s touch, rippled and purred in response to Zev’s petting.
“Maybe when it grows up.”
They followed the pseudopod toward the egg nest’s center. Above them, it widened and joined others. Like the arms of a starfish, the projections led inward to a central bulge. The organism’s appendages spread from it asymmetrically, stretching wide along the circumference of Starfarer, gripping tight against the centrifugal force, extending for a shorter distance parallel to the starship’s axis.
“It’s big,” J.D. said. “Bigger than what you could see of Nemo. Without the structure.”
Beneath the taut surface of the skin, soft swellings pressed out, then receded. Now and again a sharper shape outlined itself, and disappeared again.
J.D. let her helmet project Starfarer’s interior image of Nemo’s offspring. Sensors saturated the hull of the starship; they outlined the extent of the larva’s penetration. It had dug a pit two meters deep for its body; its arms tendrilled deeper.
“It’s living on rock and starlight,” J.D. said. “Is it dangerous? Risky to the cylinder?”
“A breach in the hull is dangerous,” Infinity said. “How big is it going to get?”
“I’m afraid I have no idea.”
Infinity folded his arms and stared up at the squidmoth larva. J.D. was glad she could not see his expression.
He helped build the ship, she thought. It must hurt him to see it damaged like this. But he doesn’t act scared...
That gave her hope.
“It’s using water,” Infinity said. He sent her a magnification of part of the sensor report. Several of the pseudopods twined around one of Starfarer’s water mains. Microscopic tendrils penetrated the pipe.
“When did this happen?”
“Last couple hours.”
“How much is it using?”
“Not enough to make much difference —”
“That’s good,” J.D. said.
“— yet.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t suppose you know how much it will need.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Listen, this is going to spook people. It’s spooking me.”
“Yes,” she said. “I don’t blame you. Maybe... I can persuade it to move.”
She was glad she had left the LTMs behind. She had looked forward to the respite, to spending a few hours out of range of recorders. Now privacy was more than a moment’s indulgence. Maybe the LTMs’ absence would give her time to figure out what to do.
She leaned against a support of the inspection web and gazed up into the center of Nemo’s last offspring.
“I was so glad when I saw that one of Nemo’s egg cases had come along with us through transition,” she said. “But now I wish it had stayed behind at Sirius. Where it’d be safe.”
“Sirius is an empty system now,” Infinity said. “Whatever — whoever — we left behind, they’re stuck there. Who knows for how long?”
J.D. sighed. Nemo’s children were stranded, because of Starfarer.
The cosmic string moved in and out of star systems in obedience to rules that Civilization had learned through experience and observation and error. The cosmic string had receded from Sirius because Starfarer, tainted by the missile blast, had entered the system. The string would return, J.D. hoped, now that Starfarer had left. She had no idea how long the return would take... but squidmoths lived for a million years.
“That crater Nemo lived in,” Infinity said. “If this guy hollows out something that size, it’ll go all the way through the wild side’s skin.”
“I’ll try to find out.”
Infinity’s gilded faceplate obscured his expression, but the language of his body was skeptical.
“Is there an ‘it’ inside there to communicate with?”
“Good question.”
She touched Nemo’s knowledge surface, searching for information on squidmoth ontology. But she skidded off the smooth shiny curves.
“Damn,” she muttered. “I can’t find anything I want to know.”
As soon as she said it, she had to admit it was not true. A great deal remained accessible to her on the knowledge surface, particularly the ability to control Nautilus.
But she wished the surface would tell her how old a squidmoth had to be before it reached the age of reason. A few days? A few centuries? Older than all human civilization?
She wished she knew if it could listen to her, or if it would react to the touch of communication the way it had reacted to the touch of her hand.
Take it easy, J.D. said to herself. The larva is bathed in electromagnetic energy. Heat and light, gamma waves and cosmic rays. It isn’t going to disintegrate at the touch of a new radio frequency.
She extended her attention through her link, speaking to Nemo’s offspring as she had spoken to Nemo. But Nemo had been an ancient, aware being. For all she knew, Nemo’s offspring was mostly a mass of undifferentiated cells.
“Hello,” she said through her link. “Hello, I’m a friend of your adult parent. Can you hear me?”
She waited.
J.D. gazed up at the baby squidmoth till her neck cricked. She backed away a few steps. Leaning against a suspension strut, she rubbed her cramped muscles. A massage through a space suit was completely unsatisfying.
She sat on the inspection web beneath the pulsing mass of Nemo’s egg case. Infinity sat nearby, watching, waiting, interested and patient.
Fifteen minutes passed. The cables of the inspection web pressed uncomfortably against J.D. leg.
If she let her gaze stray from the baby squidmoth, the stars spinning beneath her feet and the change from light to darkness and back made her dizzy. She remembered what it had been like out here during transition, with the strange substance of another universe gathering around her like curious fog.
She sent out another tentative query. Again she found no reply.
Gingerly, she widened her link to its limit.
Her surroundings disappeared and her perception of her body vanished. Even her perception of time faded.
A tendril of curiosity touched her welcoming link. J.D. gasped — but held herself back from snatching at Nemo’s offspring.
The baby squidmoth touched the knowledge surface. It slid along its sharp, multi-dimensional edge, seeking... something.
Is it looking for its parent? J.D. wondered. But that’s impossible, that doesn’t make sense, because when a squidmoth reproduces, it doesn’t live to be a parent.
The baby squidmoth scampered along J.D.’s knowledge surface. J.D. followed it, curious, hoping it might teach her more about Nemo’s strange memory. It possessed all of its parents’ memories, so Nemo’s surface should be familiar to it. Nemo’s offspring sank farther into the surface than J.D. had ever penetrated. She watched, hoping to discover new techniques.
The baby squidmoth slid up one multi-dimensional curve and spun down a slope. Here the edges and surfaces were smooth and clean, polished by long use. In the distance, the jagged new peaks of Victoria’s transition algorithm rose like spires, like minarets, like ice castles.
They were new; they were different from anything the baby squidmoth possessed. Nemo had supplied it with all the knowledge of the squidmoths, but Victoria had given the algorithm to J.D. after Nemo died.
The algorithm’s unfamiliar pinnacles drew the baby squidmoth. It swerved its attention and streaked toward the algorithm.
“Oh, shit!” J.D. exclaimed.
If the baby squidmoth acquired the algorithm, Starfarer would lose Earth’s one advantage over Civilization.
J.D. withdrew her link to Nautilus. The knowledge surface collapsed.
Nemo’s offspring convulsed in protest and confusion. J.D. sent soothing words, words of apology —
“No! No! No!” the squidmoth baby shrieked.
The cry reverberated in J.D.’s brain. Her link dissolved. Her vision returned. Above her, the squidmoth egg case shuddered. Rainbow patterns pinwheeled beneath its skin.
J.D. staggered mentally, jumped to her feet, and stumbled physically. Her legs had fallen asleep.
She slipped. She tumbled off the inspection web, flailing wildly. She missed catching the wire. Her body plunged into space. The stars streaked past her. They whirled. Her safety line caught her with a sharp snap and jerked her to a stop. It pulled her head and body up, and tore the stars out of her sight. Starfarer spun, dragging J.D. along with it.
“It’s okay,” Infinity said. “Just relax, it’s okay, you’re safe.”
J.D. felt like she had been thrown off a moving mountain. She hung beneath the inspection web, her taut lifeline crooked against one of the longitudinal strands. The spin of the cylinder pulled her along. Blood rushed into her feet. Her legs prickled painfully.
At least I’m not head down, J.D. thought.
The line’s attachment oriented her so she could climb back to the web. Infinity knelt above her and gave her a hand.
She grabbed his wrist. With his help, she swung one leg over the web and clambered to safety. Her suit pulled her sweat away and cleared her faceplate. Her metabolic enhancer pounded; her body emitted the scent of effort and alarm.
“You’re okay?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “Embarrassed.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “Everybody falls off at least once, their first few times out.” She could hear the humor behind the gold shadow of his faceplate. “Your very first time — you did better than most.”
She smiled back at him. “Thanks.” Her first time out, she and Kolya had freed the nuclear missile from its crater in the side of Starfarer.
“What happened?”
“It was heading toward Victoria’s algorithm.” J.D. sighed sadly. “I was afraid to let it have the work. I scared it, I think.”
She cautiously opened her link and offered the squidmoth a thought of comfort.
“No! No! No!” the squidmoth baby cried. “Give me, give me, give me!”
J.D. pulled back, her mind echoing.
“Want! Want! Want!”
“The terrible twos,” Infinity said wryly.
“Huh?”
“Kids. You know.”
“I’ve never spent much time around kids,” J.D. said.
“They go through a ‘no’ phase. If you think this is bad, wait till it hits adolescence.”
The egg case writhed, flexing and twisting, bulging downward.
“Let’s get out from under it,” Infinity said.
They backed off apprehensively.
“Nemo was so gentle,” J.D. said.
“Yeah...” Infinity said. “Except the time the LTMs bothered the attendants...”
“That’s true,” J.D. admitted.
“And the pool Stephen Thomas saw, with the critters fighting in it. And everything that happened after Nemo died.”
“Okay,” J.D. said. “I mean, you’re right. But, to me... I just wish I hadn’t scared its offspring.” She gestured upward. “I wish squidmoths had names. It’s hard to think of it as ‘it.’”
Nemo had taken a name, suggested by Zev, for J.D.’s convenience or for its own amusement.
“Too bad Captain Nemo didn’t have any kids,” Infinity said.
J.D. grinned. “That would be a natural, wouldn’t it?”
The pulsing of the egg case continued. It set up a rhythmic wave from one edge to the other. A moment later, a second pulse began, at right angles to the first. The surface of the egg case resonated violently like a wind-whipped sail.
In the back of her mind, J.D. still heard the squidmoth baby’s desperate demands.
“We’d better go,” J.D. said. “It would be alone under normal circumstances. Out in the wild. Maybe I gave it too much stimulation.”
“It’s growing again,” Infinity said.
J.D.’s helmet showed her what Infinity had found. Beneath Starfarer’s skin, the egg-case tendrils probed deeper, dissolving moon rock and rock foam, enlarging into the water conduit. Water drained into it, pushed by the spin to the squidmoth baby. Above J.D. on the surface of the wild cylinder, the edges of the egg case spread.
Silver slugs retreated nervously from the perimeter, obeying their orders not to touch the egg case, fighting the instinct that drove them to repair faults in the cylinder’s surface.
“I don’t know if they’ll hold off indefinitely,” Infinity said. “They —”
“They’ve got to!” J.D. said.
“But if the squidmoth breaches the cylinder —”
“It won’t!” she said.
Infinity hesitated.
He won’t question me anymore, J.D. thought desperately. He doesn’t like arguing, he doesn’t like conflict...
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“No,” J.D. whispered.