Infinity Mendez joined the rest of the faculty and staff, heading for the amphitheater where all Starfarer’s meetings happened. Ordinary meetings were small. The people who came to the regular meetings tended to be either obsessed with getting their own way about almost everything, or passionately committed to the idea of consensus. Both sorts of people could make a meeting amazingly boring.
None of the meetings since the rebellion had been ordinary or boring. And almost everyone left on campus had come to them.
Today’s meeting was not ordinary. Jenny Dupre had succeeded in convening a meeting about the fate of Chancellor Blades.
Infinity wished desperately that Jenny had left well enough alone. If Blades was content to stay walled up in his house till they returned to Earth, why change anything? What else could they do to him but put him in jail?
Will they kill him? Infinity wondered. There are people on board who’re maybe mad enough. Jenny. Stephen Thomas. And Griffith would probably kill Blades if he even suspected Kolya wanted him dead.
Infinity did not want to believe the faculty and staff could decide on cold-blooded revenge... but he did not want to test them, either. He kept remembering the mob Jenny had created with her anger, when Blades was first discovered.
Arachne was another unknown factor. After observing the evidence J.D. and Stephen Thomas tracked down, Arachne had severed Blades’ computer link and immunized itself against his neural signature. The slugs had dissolved the hard links into his house. Without electronic communication, he was very little danger to the starship.
Without his link, Blades must be just about going crazy from boredom, Infinity thought. His house must be like a cave, with the windows covered over and the electricity off...
To protect Blades, Infinity had given over control of the silver slug guards to Arachne, so no one could pull academic rank or seniority and call them off. He did not know what the computer web would do if the meeting decided to punish the chancellor.
I’ll have to block consensus, Infinity thought. If it comes down to that, I’ll have to block.
Esther sat down hard beside him. He was surprised not to have seen her come in, because, as usual, she was wearing her fluorescent lime-green jacket.
“Is this place a community, or not?”
“Yes,” Infinity said. “Sure. What’s the matter?”
“I put out a call for volunteers. Yesterday! Want to know how many responses I got?”
“Just on a guess... not enough.”
“Nobody!” She made a sound of disgust. “God forbid that any of these famous scientists muck up their hands with rotten AS brains.”
Infinity had never opened an artificial, never had to replace one’s neural tissue, but Esther had described the operation in more detail than he wanted to know.
“You should have...”
“Called you? I suppose you’ve been lying around doing nothing?”
“Uh, not exactly.”
“I didn’t think so. I bet you’ve been outside since breakfast with nobody to help you.”
“Not nobody. A few other folks. And some of the slugs. Kolya, for a while, but I don’t know where he went.”
Kolya sat on the terrace on Esther’s other side.
“Where Kolya went,” Kolya said, “was to throw up.”
“Kolya, you look awful! What’s wrong?” Esther touched his hand. “Your hands are freezing!”
She took off her bright jacket and flung it over his shoulders.
“Stick your arm through here —”
“I had better not, I’ll rip it.” He was slender, and very tall for a cosmonaut, much taller than Esther: she barely came up to his breastbone. The sleeves of her jacket would hit him around the elbows. Kolya hunched himself inside her jacket. “This is better, this makes a difference, thank you.”
“What happened?”
He did look pale. Sweat beaded his upper lip and his forehead, and matted his streaky gray hair. And he smelled strange: sharp and acrid, unpleasant.
“Nothing happened, exactly. But I am trying to quit smoking.”
“Smoking!”
“Smoking! Smoking what?”
“Tobacco, of course,” he said.
Esther wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t think...”
“That anyone did that anymore? Such an old-fashioned drug. Like snake oil.”
The terraces of the outdoor amphitheater were full to halfway up the slope. The meeting would start soon. This time, they could hope that the light would remain constant. The last two meetings, Blades had sent the light level to extremes to try to disrupt the rebellion.
Kolya pulled the edges of Esther’s jacket closer together.
“When I was a cosmonaut, I never smoked. But later...” He shrugged. “I had no reason not to. It can be... quite comforting.” He smiled. His front teeth were slightly crooked. “I never expected to live to such an advanced age, or to reach it in a place where tobacco was so difficult to get.”
Infinity felt uncomfortable, torn between being glad Kolya was trying to quit and wanting to do something to help. Kolya looked unhappy, tired, and sick.
“Did you run out?” Esther asked sympathetically.
“Abruptly. I kept my stores in one of the genetics department freezers.”
“Oh.”
The freezers in the genetics department had been destroyed along with the rest of the building.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” Esther said. “I mean... it really isn’t good for you, and now you’ll have to quit.”
“I suppose I will. The designer of Starfarer’s ecosystem was far too health-conscious to grow tobacco on campus.” He chuckled ruefully. “I went so far as to ask Alzena once. She was horrified.”
“When she had a choice, she picked stuff you can eat or make things out of,” Infinity said, feeling miserable and guilty about Kolya’s distress. “Or flowers.”
“Very sensible,” Kolya said, with resignation.
His hands trembled; the energy that made him seem... not younger, exactly, but vital, had drained away.
“I’ve tried to quit before,” he said. “I never succeeded. I’m one of those unfortunates upon whom nicotine takes a very tight grip.” He squeezed Esther’s hand in gratitude. “I will be all right.”
Conversation ebbed abruptly.
The meeting began.
No one rose to speak. Jenny had not arrived, and Gerald Hemminge was nowhere to be seen.
Motion in one of the dark entry tunnels drew Infinity’s gaze. Neither Jenny, nor Gerald, but Stephen Thomas appeared, late, accompanied by his clutch of grad students. He paused and glanced around to find a good seat, unhurried, aware of the attention he had attracted but nonchalant about it. He moved, footsore, to a place near the top of the amphitheater.
The one other person Infinity did not see that he expected was Griffith. Infinity did not like Griffith, though the government agent no longer scared him. Infinity wondered what Kolya thought of Griffith hanging around him all the time. When he was not making himself blend into the background, Griffith allowed his attitude of arrogant superiority to slip out. But he worshiped Kolya.
“Why’d Jenny call this meeting if she isn’t even going to come to it?” Esther muttered. She shifted nervously. Infinity knew how she felt. Being asked to sit in judgment of someone was bad enough. Being left in the dark about what was going on made it worse.
He linked into Arachne. The computer web acknowledged him. The silver slugs waited to accompany Chancellor Blades to the meeting, to guard him, to guard Arachne while he was free.
But Chancellor Blades refused to accompany the silver slugs.
Infinity let out a quick, sharp, incredulous laugh.
Jenny Dupre and Gerald Hemminge arrived at the amphitheater. Without the chancellor. Jenny looked furious and embarrassed, Gerald, as usual, carefully neutral and controlled.
Jenny did not even find a seat, nor did she state her name, then pause, as meeting etiquette required.
“He won’t come out,” she said angrily. “He’s too cowardly to face his own trial.” She sat down abruptly, sullenly, and folded her arms.
Gerald remained standing.
“Gerald Hemminge,” he said, and waited. The assistant — now acting — chancellor never lost his good manners, even when he was using them to be rude.
No one interrupted or challenged him.
“Chancellor Blades...” Gerald said. “The chancellor denies that you have a right to try or judge him. He... requests... that you return to Earth and hand him over to the authorities.”
“The same authorities who sent him in the first place!” Jenny said bitterly.
Infinity wished she would at least follow meeting rules, especially since she was the person who had called it.
“Ruth Orazio.”
Across the amphitheater, the senator waited longer than the usual couple of seconds, as if she expected someone to object to her speaking.
“I know you all feel betrayed,” she said. “Frankly, I do, too. What’s happened is what always happens when decisions get made in back rooms and secrecy. But the justice system of the United States is public and open. If you do return to Earth, the chancellor will get a fair trial —”
“Will we?” Jenny said.
The senator continued as if she had not been interrupted.
“ — a fair trial, and the powers that controlled him will have to come out in the open and answer for what’s happened.”
Jenny started to speak again.
“Ms. Dupre,” Gerald said.
Annoyed, Jenny rose. “Iphigenie Dupre,” she said. “If I may — ?”
Infinity did not blame her for being bitter and angry. But it hurt to see the change in her. During the first deployment of Starfarer’s solar sail, her creation, she had glowed with joy. Stephen Thomas had broken out a bottle of fancy champagne and let it loose, in the freefall of the sailhouse. Jenny had drunk one of the fizzing globules with a kiss.
“The U.S. constitution says the accused has a right to face the witnesses against him, and the U.S. insisted that we operate under their constitution. Fine. But we’re here. We’re willing to face him. I’m willing to face him. Nothing says he has to face us. But nothing says we can’t make a decision about him even if he isn’t here to listen to it. Or to defend himself. If he could defend himself.”
“He also has a right to legal counsel,” Gerald said. “Is anyone willing to defend him?”
“I assumed you had that job reserved for yourself.”
“Firstly,” Gerald said, “I am not a barrister. Secondly, my defending the chancellor would be an inexcusable conflict of interest.”
“J.D. Sauvage.” J.D. paused, waiting her turn to speak. “I don’t see how we can proceed if Mr. Blades won’t come out. Maybe it’s legal for us to proceed. But should we? I don’t think so.”
Infinity felt very grateful to J.D. for saying something that he, too, believed. He knew he was going to have to speak out later, and no one was going to want to listen to what he had to say.
“Do you think he should be allowed to get off free?” Jenny asked, disbelieving. “I thought Feral was your friend!”
“He was,” J.D. said. “And I’d like to see justice done for him. Justice.”
“Chancellor Blades is innocent,” Gerald said.
Jenny laughed. So did Stephen Thomas, and a few other people, coldly and without joy.
“So much for not defending him,” Jenny said to Gerald.
“I can’t defend him in a court of law,” Gerald said. “Which, by the way, this is not. I didn’t say I wouldn’t speak for him.”
“William Derjaguin.” The senior senator from New Mexico stood up.
Infinity had powerful feelings about Derjaguin. Powerful, and mixed. Disappointment because of Derjaguin’s implacable opposition to the deep space expedition. Admiration, because Derjaguin had been one of the few people to oppose the weapons testing scheme that ended in disaster for the southwest, one of the few to stand up for land others called beautiful and valueless.
No one objected to letting him speak.
“I’ve talked to the chancellor, too,” he said. “Not that it’s easy, with a couple of lithoblasts threatening to dissolve me with acid if I go one step closer.”
He had it wrong. The lithoblasts would block his way. They could physically restrain him. They might even put up a barrier of rock foam if he was persistent enough. But they would not dissolve him with acid. Only lithoclasts could produce acids and solvents. All the lithoclasts were outside working. People always thought of repair as building, but clearing away was at least as important.
Outside is where I ought to be, Infinity thought.
“The chancellor told me he was innocent,” Senator Derjaguin said. “I have a great deal of experience at judging character. I believe him.”
“What a load of bullshit,” Stephen Thomas said.
“He doesn’t believe he can get a fair hearing, on this ship with this crew.”
Infinity hated to hear Starfarer referred to — especially by politicians — as if it were a military vessel and the people on board, its recruits. Starfarer was not a warship, and he was not a soldier.
“If he’s innocent, he ought to be willing to stand up in front of us and say so,” Jenny said.
Both Gerald and the senator reacted with indignation.
“You incited the mob that went after him!” Gerald said. “Who knows what might have occurred, had he not fled — !”
“I had to get him out of the web!” Jenny cried. “Do you blame me? Has anyone ever tried to kill you?”
Derjaguin moved, a quick, repressed reliving of the shock of an assassin’s bullet.
“Yes,” Derjaguin said.
Jenny had no reason to know the personal, even the public, history of a U.S. senator. He surprised her with his reply, but she continued.
“And how do you feel about the person who tried to kill you?”
“That person... is still at large,” Derjaguin said. “I’ve reserved judgment.”
“Noble of you,” Jenny said.
“Jag,” Ruth Orazio said, “you must understand how she feels.”
“I do.” He turned his presence and his considerable charisma back toward Jenny. “And I can understand your desire for revenge. I hope I never have the person who shot me at my mercy. That’s what the justice system is for. To dispense justice. To prevent revenge.”
He must be used to seeing people blossom into eagerness, or wilt into compliance, under the light of his attention. But Jenny was immune. The solar sail designer was at least as renowned as he, and probably richer. She did not fawn over celebrities. They fawned over her.
“I’m not convinced you’ve caught the right entity,” Derjaguin said. “The crash could have been programmed in from the start. A Trojan horse.”
Jenny challenged him.
“Have you looked at the evidence J.D. and Stephen Thomas found? Even looked at it? If you had, you wouldn’t think Arachne crashed because of a horse!”
J.D. rose again.
“Jenny... Infinity’s isolated Blades from Arachne. Isn’t that enough punishment, for now? If Blades doesn’t want to object to his exile, maybe we shouldn’t insist on something worse. The way things are, if he’s guilty we’re all safe. If he’s not, we haven’t done anything irrevocable.”
“How do you know we’re safe from him?”
“He’s cut off from the web —”
“How do you know we’re safe from him?”
J.D. regarded Jenny with sympathy.
“I spend a lot of time in the web. I’m enhancing my link. If there’s danger, I’m vulnerable. I think the risk is small enough to take.”
Jenny stared at J.D. for several seconds; it felt like a very long time. She turned completely around, raking all her colleagues with her gaze. She faced J.D. again, having seen that even the people who had joined her mob — maybe those people in particular — would not side with her now. She could produce no consensus for the chancellor’s guilt, or for his punishment.
“I think you’re wrong,” she said. “And I think you’ll find it out the next time we go into transition. I’m not touching the web. If we miss the insertion point, that’s too damned bad.” She straightened her shoulders and flung her head back; the iridescent beads on the ends of her braids clinked together loudly, decisively.
She strode from the amphitheater.
As people rose to leave, relieved to think the meeting was over, Infinity stood up and spoke his name. No one, except Esther and Kolya, heard him.
He raised his voice. “Infinity Kenjiro Yanagihara y Mendoza.”
Intense meetings drained everyone. His colleagues, realizing he wanted the gathering to continue, sank back in their seats with resignation.
“There’s some other things we have to talk about,” he said.
“Without doubt they can wait,” Gerald asked. “A few days — ? The other side of transition, at least, when we might know more about our situation?”
“I don’t think so,” Infinity said. “We have some problems. The first is the weather.”
“But the weather has been exceptionally fair,” Gerald said.
“It’s too fair,” Infinity said. “It’s too hot for the season. First everything got blasted during the last meeting —”
“But that was an anomaly,” Gerald said. “A malfunction of the web while it was regrowing —”
“Or sabotage,” Stephen Thomas said. “Let Infinity finish.”
Gerald subsided.
“And now this heat wave. Arachne’s trying to fix it. Maybe it’ll even work out for the best. We don’t have the supplies we expected to bring. Maybe this will give us a longer growing season. But... Starfarer wasn’t designed to spend time around a star like Sirius. It was designed to visit sun-type stars.” Infinity glanced over at Victoria. “Next time through transition... where will we end up?”
Uncharacteristically, Victoria hesitated.
“I’m not entirely sure yet,” she said.
“Good lord!” Gerald exclaimed.
The amphitheater reverberated with tension like a bell.
Collecting herself, Victoria rose. “Calm down, eh? It’s not exactly a secret.” Her tone was annoyed. “The algorithm’s working in plain sight. Anybody can look at the results.”
Infinity waited, rather than vanishing into a communications fugue like some of the folks around him.
“We assumed Europa headed for a system that’s full of cosmic string,” Victoria said. “Pretty safe assumption, eh? She wouldn’t want to go somewhere she couldn’t leave again. The algorithm’s first solution proves it. The second solution indicates there’ll be a star nearby.”
“And that’s all you know?” Senator Derjaguin leaned toward her, angrily. “You don’t know where we’re going, how far, how long it will take?”
“The third solution will tell us where,” Victoria said. “How long — that’s always an indefinite number. A range.”
“As for getting back —” Avvaiyar rose at Victoria’s side. “That’s the point of being sure we come out in a full system — a place with more cosmic string.”
“When will we have all the answers?” Gerald asked.
“I don’t know,” Victoria said. “Along about the next millennium?”
Gerald took a moment to realize he was being twitted.
“The answers to your bloody algorithm,” he snarled.
“I have no idea,” Victoria said. “Before we hit transition... I think.”
“So we’re stuck,” Esther said under her breath.
She was right. Infinity saw the situation before Victoria described it. They could pull back and wait for solutions to the current algorithm, to be sure they were heading for a suitable star. They could test other transition points till they found one that would lead them to a sun-type star. But no one could say how long that would take. Arachne was solving the current problem as fast as it could. Giving the computer another could only slow everything down.
“And if we change course,” Victoria said, “not only will we be here longer, inflicting Sirius on our ecosystem, but we’ll lose any chance we might have of catching up to Europa.” She glanced over at Infinity. “I didn’t realize the environment was so delicate,” she said. “I wish you’d —”
“I didn’t know, either!” Infinity said. “It’s Alzena who knows all this stuff.”
“Why in heaven’s name did you let Europa take her?” Gerald said to J.D.
“I was afraid Alzena would kill herself otherwise,” J.D. said.
As much as Infinity wished the starship still had an environmental designer, an ecologist, on board, he had to agree with J.D. Europa had taken Alzena with her to save her life.
“Alzena is gone,” Victoria said, “and I think J.D. was right to let her go. Maybe we can persuade her to come back —”
“But we have to find Europa to find Alzena,” Gerald said sarcastically.
“Yes.”
“How convenient.”
“It’s what we agreed to do anyway!”
“Not I,” Gerald said. “I blocked the decision — and you chose to break your own rules.”
Victoria grabbed her hair with both hands and cried out with frustration.
“Gerald — !”
Professor Thanthavong rose.
The amphitheater fell silent.
“Miensaem Thanthavong.” She waited through the customary pause. “I cede my time to Infinity.”
Surprised, Infinity collected himself and continued.
“The bees are dying,” he said.
A few people laughed. A few understood the problem. Most looked perplexed by his comment.
“They’re important,” he said. “Directly, to the plants. Indirectly, they represent the ecosystem’s health. We’ll probably be okay if we’re headed for a star that’s like the sun,” Infinity said. “If we’re not...” He shrugged unhappily.
“All we can do is wait and see,” Thanthavong said, as if that ended it.
“I’m sorry, that still isn’t all. We’ve got to plan some harvests and some planting. There’s a bunch of stuff ripe. We should salvage the spinach. We could pick some of the oranges.”
“Volunteers?” Thanthavong said.
One of Stephen Thomas’s grad students jumped to her feet and tossed her long straight red-gold hair back over her shoulder.
“I can just see Lehua picking oranges,” Esther said softly. “Probably break a fingernail.”
“There’s never anything in the cafeteria. The ASes are supposed to cook and maintain the gardens. Not to mention do the housework. So — where are they?” Lehua turned toward Gerald, her dark eyes angry. “When are you letting them loose again?”
Esther jumped to her feet. “Esther Klein.” She barely paused. “Doesn’t anybody around here even read their bulletins?”
Infinity sat down, grateful that Esther had the energy to take on the problem of the ASes. Infinity hated speaking in public. He watched his lover with absolute awe. Soon she had faculty members apologizing and embarrassed and anxious to help her fix the artificials, to harvest, even to dig in the dirt that worried Gerald so much. Gerald took on the job — the desk job — of coordination.
“And Lehua’s right about the cafeteria,” Esther said. “The prepared stuff is pretty much gone. Does anybody know how to cook?”
In the front circle, Florrie Brown rose to her feet. “I’ll need help, of course,” she said.
“Florrie, are you sure — ?”
“I told you I used to live in a commune,” she said, as prickly as always.
She also told us it flopped miserably, Infinity thought. But maybe — I hope — not because of the cooking.
o0o
J.D. lugged a bag of oranges to the storage box. The strap cut into her aching shoulders. She eased the bag to the ground, wiped the sweat from her face, and tried to stretch the cramps from the middle of her back. It was hot out in the orchard. The heat intensified the cloying sweetness of the orange blossoms. J.D. had never lived around orange trees before; strange to see a tree with fruit and blossoms in the same season. And the ripe oranges were not orange, but still green. According to Arachne all that was normal, except that everything had happened too soon, too early in the spring, and the trees had produced an abnormal number of flowers.
At a time when the earth should be damp with spring rain, the ground was dry. Too few bees buzzed in the fragrant orange blossoms. Now that Infinity had mentioned the bees, J.D. kept seeing their small striped yellow and black corpses on the ground.
J.D. poured the oranges carefully into the storage box. She allowed herself a brief glance at the transmission from Nemo’s chamber.
Nothing had changed.
Satoshi joined her, watched the transmission with her for a moment, then upended his sling full of oranges into the storage box. J.D. grabbed the sling’s bottom and tipped out the last few pieces of fruit.
“I’m glad to have something to do,” J.D. said. “Something physical. To keep me from worrying.” She gestured toward the display.
“I keep remembering what Stephen Thomas saw,” Satoshi said.
“Yes... I wish we had an LTM down at the pool... I wonder if those creatures are metamorphosing, too?”
“Or if they’re eating each other up.”
They climbed ladders on opposite sides of the same tree. The display shrank to the size of an orange and followed. J.D. moved cautiously, but she felt much better, much steadier, than yesterday. The link was still growing, but her body had accommodated itself to the change.
All in all, though, she thought, I’d rather be swimming with Zev and Victoria...
Her thoughts kept returning to the morning; she found herself staring into space thinking about the flow of Zev’s hair against her hand, the taste of Victoria’s lips.
Enough woolgathering! she told herself sternly.
Leaves tickled J.D.’s face. She stood in the midst of the overpowering, intoxicating orange smell, blossoms and fruit, ripe and overripe and fermented.
The ladder was not designed to be used outdoors. It wobbled. Everything about this harvesting party was makeshift, from ladders borrowed from household tool storage to the bedsheet carrying bags.
For the first hour or so, everyone had regarded the work as an adventure, an entertaining physical break in days — lives — devoted to intellectual pursuits. After two hours, it was no fun anymore.
People used to do this for a living, J.D. thought. All day, every day. She had never considered what that meant. If she had thought about it, she would have imagined the experience wrong without knowing it. Now she knew she would get it wrong; she had only a taste of the work.
On the other side of a heavily laden branch, Satoshi worked steadily. He picked each orange with a sharp snap of his wrist.
“How —” J.D. started to ask about Stephen Thomas, but changed her mind. “How are you doing?”
Satoshi glanced up. His thoughts, too, had been somewhere else.
“Victoria and I decided to have our regular potluck tonight,” he said. “Try to get back to normal for a change.” He laughed, quick and sharp. “Whatever normal is, these days. We haven’t had one since... since before you arrived, I guess. Would you like to come? Zev too, of course.”
“I’d like to,” J.D. said. “What should I bring?”
Satoshi grinned.
“Oranges,” he said. “What else?”
Shouting erupted from the next row of trees. J.D. turned — she grabbed a branch to keep from overbalancing. An argument — ? A fight?
Zev ran past, laughing and shouting, pursued by Chandra. In the gold and green orchard, drenched in white light, they were like fauns. Zev slipped on a rotting orange, caught himself as he fell, turned, scooped up the fermenting pulp and moldy rind, and flung it at Chandra. It caught her full on the chest, spattering her with slimy orange goo.
Chandra stopped short. J.D. had no idea what she would do: she never had any idea what Chandra would do.
Chandra burst out laughing and barreled toward Zev, scooping up another fallen orange and throwing it at him point blank. He was already running; the orange spattered across his back, staining his sleeveless shirt.
In a moment, the harvesting party had exploded into a full-fledged food fight, fallen oranges zinging past and hitting people, trees, the ground, with a liquid sploosh. Everybody joined in, the older adults as well as the younger people, everyone but J.D. J.D. observed it from her perch on the ladder high in the tree.
Zev definitely had the advantage, shoveling up the worst of the squashed oranges in his webbed hands, flinging them through the air as if he were playing jai alai.
He looked up at her, laughing.
“Come down!”
She laughed, too. “Don’t hold your breath!”
He stopped, and thought about that, an idea that never would have occurred to him back home. In the sea, most of the time, he did hold his breath.
“I mean — look out!”
Chandra snuck up behind him and stuffed a handful of slimy orange pulp down the back of his shirt. He yelped and jumped away, spun around and chased after her. She had a good head start.
She almost ran into Gerald Hemminge. He stopped; she stopped; Zev stopped behind her. They looked like a couple of guilty schoolchildren, and Gerald looked like an irritated schoolmarm.
“I thought I could trust you to apply yourselves,” he said. “I’m glad I came out to supervise.”
“For heaven’s sakes, relax,” J.D. said. “Nobody was hurting anything.”
“We hardly have resources to waste!” Gerald said.
Zev hefted a squashed, reeking orange. J.D. flinched, expecting him to fling it at the acting chancellor. Instead, Zev extended his hand.
“I didn’t mean to waste anything,” he said. “I didn’t throw this one — you can have it if you want.”
“How extremely amusing,” Gerald said coldly.
J.D. giggled, and had to grab a tree branch to keep from falling. Satoshi started to laugh. Soon everyone was laughing except Zev. He watched Gerald with a completely straight face. J.D. suspected he got the joke perfectly well, but was still pulling Gerald’s leg.
Gerald got the joke, and did not appreciate it.
“I see,” Gerald said when the laughter finally died down. “It’s terribly funny that the harvest will rot on the trees and we’ll all starve. Terribly funny. I see.” He glared at J.D., having picked her as the ringleader. “I don’t know why I waste my time.”
Infinity Mendez came into the clearing where the storage boxes lay. He glanced into one and frowned slightly. J.D. figured he thought the harvesters were pathetic, taking all afternoon to accomplish so little.
“That’s probably enough,” he said.
“On the contrary,” Gerald said. “I expect the entire orchard to be picked by tomorrow at the latest.”
“Why?” Infinity said.
Gerald stared at Infinity. So did everyone else.
“They store better on the trees.” Infinity hesitated. “You never did this before, did you?”
“Certainly not,” Gerald said.
“You can pick oranges as you need them,” Infinity said. “As long as we aren’t planning another frost.”
“You said they needed to be picked!” Gerald said.
“I said we needed to plan harvests so we’d have something to eat.”
“Thank you for being so articulate,” Gerald said. He turned his back on Infinity and the harvesting crew and stalked away into the trees.
“Oh, dear,” J.D. said.
Satoshi sighed. “I’ll talk to him.”
Satoshi grabbed a branch, swung to the ground, and followed Gerald out of the grove.
J.D. glanced toward Infinity. He looked embarrassed. She had thought Satoshi meant to talk to him, not Gerald.
She climbed down the ladder.
“I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly to Infinity.
“You didn’t do anything,” he muttered.
“I didn’t listen very well, I think. I remember what you said, and it wasn’t ‘Let’s go pick all the oranges.’“
“I put a note in his mailbox,” Infinity said. “Scheduling and stuff... I guess he had too much else to do, I should have talked to him.”
J.D. thought it more likely that Gerald had either ignored Infinity’s message or deliberately discounted it. But she was not about to say so to Infinity.
o0o
Satoshi knew Gerald heard him, but the acting chancellor stalked through the trees, slapping every branch that got in his way.
“Gerald!”
Satoshi caught up to him.
“Come on,” Satoshi said. “This isn’t doing anybody any good.”
Gerald plowed on, a few more strides, then stopped and glared at Satoshi.
“No, apparently nothing I do does anybody any good.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It is what everybody else means.”
“Gerald...” Satoshi tried to think of something soothing to say, but the truth was that a lot of people found Gerald abrasive. When he supported the proposal to decommission Starfarer, he won himself no friends; when Arachne crashed, he made enemies. Satoshi believed him when he said he had nothing to do with it, but other members of the expedition did not.
“What are you trying to do?” Satoshi asked. “It’s too late to stop the expedition.”
“I’m trying to make sure we all survive it!” Gerald exclaimed. He caught his error and looked away. “All the rest of us, I mean, of course.” He met Satoshi gaze again. “I’m certain — certain — no one was meant to be killed in the system crash.”
“Is that what the chancellor said?”
“I... haven’t put it to him directly. But I’m certain nonetheless. I very much regret the journalist’s death. By all reports he was a talented young man.”
“Yes. And a nice guy. He was closest to J.D. and to Stephen Thomas.”
Satoshi was not about to tell Gerald that Stephen Thomas had buried Feral’s body on the wild side.
“You could probably make them both feel better,” Satoshi said, “if you told them what you just told me.”
“Oh, indeed,” Gerald said, disgusted. “And have your partner attempt to knock out all my teeth again. No thank you.”
“When you say stuff like that,” Satoshi said mildly, “I can kind of understand his urge.”
“What would you have me do?” Gerald shouted. “I’m responsible for Starfarer, for all of you —”
“Bullshit,” Satoshi said.
“ — and I’m completely losing control... I beg your pardon?”
“You’re not Sir Francis Drake, for god’s sake. You don’t have life and death responsibility and you don’t have life and death power. You aren’t losing control.”
“Perhaps I’ve maintained that appearance.”
“You never had control of the expedition,” Satoshi said gently. “How could you lose it?”
Gerald opened his mouth, then closed it again. His shoulders stiffened.
“I had to take over the chancellor’s duties. I had no choice.”
“That isn’t the point. You can’t control the expedition. There are a couple of people who could, if they wanted.”
“Such as who?” Gerald asked belligerently. “Do you mean the spy? I suppose he could, with enough blackmail and extortion.”
“Griffith? No.”
It surprised Satoshi that Gerald confabulated power with force. Satoshi had been thinking of ethical power, a quality Griffith lacked almost entirely. Professor Thanthavong possessed it, and so did Kolya Cherenkov. Either one could take over the expedition in a second. Satoshi thought they had that power because they did not want it.
“You’re trying to get people to do what you think they should be doing,” Satoshi said. “Then you want us all to do it the way you think it ought to be done. Why’s that important to you?”
“Someone has to be sure the work gets done.”
“But the work is getting done.”
“It isn’t getting done right.”
Satoshi did not say anything about Gerald’s current score at getting work done right; he did not want to rub the assistant chancellor’s nose in what Infinity had just pointed out.
To his credit, Gerald got the idea.
“I’m doing my best,” he said, stiff but sincere. “If you have suggestions, I’d be most happy to hear them.”
“Okay. People think you’re conspiring with Blades. That isn’t doing you any good.”
“Conspiring!”
“You, and Derjaguin, and even Orazio.”
“Just because we’re the only ones who’ll speak to the man? I still consider him my superior.”
“That’s not likely to win you any points,” Satoshi said dryly.
“And I have the same sympathy I’d have for any other victim of unjust political imprisonment.”
“Unjust — !”
“And don’t cite your partner’s spurious evidence anymore! He found it in Arachne, and Arachne was severely damaged. Besides, Stephen Thomas had a motive to find the chancellor guilty.”
“Stephen Thomas liked Blades,” Satoshi said.
“He liked Feral better.”
Satoshi had to concede that point. “The chancellor’s safe, thanks to Infinity.”
“Safe? He’s in solitary confinement! I have no intention of abandoning him to go mad in that cave.”
o0o
Nemo’s ship continued to pace Starfarer, but Nemo remained silent. The LTMs watched the squidmoth, and J.D. watched the LTM transmissions. Beneath the mother of pearl chrysalis, the structure of Nemo’s body dissolved. Only the single exposed tentacle remained.
Every so often, one of the attendants crawled in, staggering, burrowed into the chrysalis, and disappeared. Luminous white pearl closed the burrows, sealing the attendants inside. Once they touched Nemo’s amorphous shape, their forms, too, dissolved.
In the window seat of her house, J.D. sat back from the holographic projection of Nemo’s central chamber. Her back twinged and her shoulders ached fiercely. She tried to massage her trapezius muscles, but aside from the difficulty of giving oneself a massage, her bicepses and tricepses hurt as well.
Zev looked up from the book he was reading.
“Is it time to go to Victoria’s house?”
“Just about,” J.D. said. “If I can get up.”
“What’s wrong?” He jumped to his feet and came over to her, leaving the book open and face-down on the floor. J.D. was glad she collected books for the words and not their physical value.
“I didn’t realize picking oranges was such hard work,” J.D. said ruefully. She did not think she could jump to her feet if her life depended on it. She reminded herself that she was more than twice Zev’s age. “I thought I was in pretty good condition, but I hurt all over.”
“I thought it was fun,” Zev said. “Easier than picking mussels.”
He urged her forward, knelt behind her, and rubbed her shoulders. She leaned back against his hands with a groan of pleasure and relief.
“That feels so good, Zev.”
He moved his hands down her spine, and massaged low in the small of her back.
“You picked more oranges than I did,” he said.
She chuckled.
“I guess I did. But you moved them farther than I did.”
“Faster, anyway.”
The fragrance of oranges and the faint sick-sweet scent of fermented juice still embraced him. He put his arms around her. J.D. stroked his arms, the softness of his fine pelt, the hardness of his muscles.
“You like Victoria, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. “This morning was fun.”
“It was.”
“Almost like being back home.”
He bent down to nuzzle her neck, to rub his cheek against her short brown hair, still damp from the shower.
“You like her, too.”
“Very much.”
“Will she go swimming with us again?”
“I think so. She might even come over and spend the night.”
He sat back on his heels away from her.
J.D. turned around. “Wouldn’t you like that?”
“I don’t know,” Zev said slowly, sounding surprised by his own reaction. “Would she come to stay with you?”
“With both of us.”
“I like... sleeping just with you. Making love just with you. At first it was strange. All land manners are strange at first. But I like being able to think just about you. About what you want. What you need.”
She kissed him. His lips parted over his sharp, dangerous teeth. She wondered if he felt jealous, but dismissed the absurd idea of a jealous diver.
“I like that, too,” she said to Zev. “We won’t give it up. But we can include Victoria sometimes, too.”
“Okay.”
He bit her earlobe gently. “I’m hungry!”
She laughed. “Me too.”
“But I don’t want to eat oranges!”
o0o
In the main room of the partnership’s house, Stephen Thomas slouched on one chair with his feet up on another. He had thrown a towel over his toes to hide the bruises, the loose nails. The bento box containing his half-eaten dinner sat open on his lap.
Victoria wanted things back to normal. Stephen Thomas could not blame her. Tonight was the normal night for the regular potluck for their grad students.
Stephen Thomas wished she and Satoshi had asked him before they scheduled the dinner. He was trying to make the best of it.
As usual, other people came besides the students. Stephen Thomas had invited Florrie Brown, without considering his motives for doing so. He liked her. Unfortunately, Victoria did not, and the feeling was mutual. Florrie thought Victoria was stuck up, and Victoria thought Florrie was condescending. Both of them were right. Victoria could be stuck up, and Florrie could be condescending. But Stephen Thomas thought they would like each other if they could ever get over their first encounters. That did not look like it would happen tonight.
He shrugged. Give them time.
Nearby, Lehua and Bay bent over a display of the new cells. Mitch, on the other hand, stood in the shadows gazing mournfully at Fox.
Even Fox had come to dinner. Stephen Thomas was glad; it must mean she had no hard feelings because he had turned her down. He was glad she accepted his point of view. She had not talked to him, but that was understandable. She stayed on the opposite side of the room; about all he had seen of her tonight was her back. Sometimes he had the feeling she had just turned away.
Stephen Thomas poked through the remains of his dinner with a pair of chopsticks, searching each small compartment of the bento box for something he felt like eating.
Maybe I ought to try catching a fish and eating it raw, like Zev, he thought.
J.D. had brought him an orange. “The great hunter offers you the spoils of her kill,” she said when she handed it to him.
And we thought we’d opted for the intellectual life when we came up here, he thought.
She had not mentioned Gerald’s altercation with Infinity, but Stephen Thomas knew about it. Everyone on campus knew about it. Infinity had not come to the potluck.
Did we ever invite him? Stephen Thomas asked himself with a shock. To any of them? Fuck, I don’t think we did. Stephen Thomas made a note to himself to ask Infinity to the next one.
All that was left of his orange was torn rind. He could get himself another piece of fruit, but his feet hurt.
He hoped the potluck would not last too long. If it did go on forever, that would be partly his fault. He had stayed up talking till all hours with almost every guest here, often after Victoria and Satoshi had given up and gone to bed.
It was already getting on toward midnight, and nobody showed any sign of leaving. Most of the kids clustered around J.D. and Zev, asking questions about Nemo, like children anxious to hear an old story told again. The room glimmered with multiple copies of the LTM transmissions, floating like bubbles in free-fall, all different sizes.
On the other side of the room, Florrie Brown and Fox sat with their heads together, talking seriously. Stephen Thomas pushed away a twinge of discomfort. He had no reason but egotism to assume they were talking about him. They spent a lot of time together. Fox had been at Florrie’s almost every time Stephen Thomas had stopped by to see if Florrie needed anything.
Fox gave Florrie a quick hug and a grateful smile. She went over to the table and poured a couple of glasses of beer.
Great, Stephen Thomas thought. With everything else that’s happened, now somebody will tell our honorable senators that we’re giving drugs to the President’s underage niece, and that’s what we’ll get thrown in jail for when we get home.
Oh, fuck it, he thought. A little beer won’t hurt her. Didn’t hurt me when I was her age, swilling home brew in the basement of the biology department.
On the porch just outside, Victoria and Satoshi stood face to face, framed by the open French window, talking and laughing softly. Just watching them together shot a ray of happiness through his depression, like light probing a thick curtain that cut Stephen Thomas off from the world. Victoria stroked the back of her hand down Satoshi’s cheek, a gesture so loving, so erotic, that Stephen Thomas’s eyes filled with tears.
His body responded to his sexual impulse with a stab of pain so sharp he nearly fainted. He caught his breath and froze. His left hand clenched. The chopsticks snapped, ramming splinters into the new web between his thumb and forefinger. His right hand gripped the arm of the bamboo chair, his nails bending against the hard wood.
He breathed cautiously and shallowly for several minutes. When he finally chanced a deeper breath, the pain had faded. He sighed shakily, with relief, put the broken chopsticks into the bento box, and released his death grip on the chair arm. As far as he could tell, no one had noticed his distress, no one knew or cared that he felt disoriented and dizzy. He picked chopstick splinters from his hand.
“I’m disappointed in you, Stephen Thomas.”
He looked up.
Florrie Brown glared at him. Her feathery voice had an edge like a paper cut, invisible and shocking.
“Disappointed?”
“I didn’t think you were a tease,” she said.
Oh, fuck, he thought. What did Fox tell her?
He decided to take no chances on his answer.
“Florrie, what are you talking about?”
“I think you know.”
Up till now, he had found her coquettish way of dancing around a subject to be old-fashioned and charming. Up till now.
“No.”
“You make promises, but you never intend to keep them.”
“Promises?” What had Fox told her. “What promises?”
“For one thing, you promised me a tea ceremony.”
Thank god, they weren’t talking about Fox after all.
“Jesus, the tea ceremony? Florrie, that takes a whole day. You can’t just do it, you have to prepare for it. When have I had a whole day free since your welcome party?” Her welcome party seemed like months ago. He had promised her a tea ceremony, and the truth was he had not thought about it since. He still intended to do it, but he still had to finish learning the damned thing. Not that he was about to admit it to Florrie.
She pressed on, insistent. “You shouldn’t make a promise you don’t intend to keep.”
“I do intend to keep it,” he said. “I just haven’t kept it yet. There was this rebellion, remember? And then some aliens — it complicated my schedule.”
“And you flirt with people without any intention of carrying through.”
He laughed. He could not help it. Victoria and Satoshi teased him — even Merry had teased him, and Merry was hardly one to talk — about carrying through all too often.
Florrie brought her hand down fast and slapped his forearm, surprisingly hard.
“Ow — !”
“Don’t you laugh at me!”
“What’d you do that for? And I wasn’t laughing at you, I was just —”
“Don’t change the subject!”
“What is the subject?”
“You toyed with Fox’s affections and then you broke her heart.”
“Now wait a minute —”
“You counseled her —”
“Counseled her! Christ on a couch, I listened to her bitch about her family!”
“And you let her sit in on your seminars —”
Stephen Thomas tried to think of a seminar Fox had sat in on. The impromptu discussion on the hillside? Not that it made any difference.
“I let anybody sit in on my seminars. That’s what seminars are for. You sit in on my seminars.”
“Don’t patronize me!”
She raised her hand.
Stephen Thomas lifted both arms to ward off the blow he expected.
“Don’t hit me again!”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Florrie clenched her fragile fist. “Because you’re too good for anybody to touch you?”
“Because it hurts!”
The rest of the company had tried hard to pretend nothing unpleasant was going on. This was too much; they had to notice. When the hush fell, Victoria glanced inside. A moment later she and Satoshi were hurrying across the room.
“Florrie, stop it!” Satoshi said. He got between her and Stephen Thomas without actually shouldering the old woman aside.
“Aunt Florrie, what are you doing?” Fox was still carrying the two glasses of beer, but her hands shook. Foam dribbled down the sides of the glasses and splatted on the floor.
“I’m giving Mister Stephen Thomas Gregory a piece of my mind, that’s what.”
“You’re making a spectacle of yourself, Ms. Brown.” Victoria’s calm voice held the coolness that meant fury.
“Florrie, how could you?” Fox cried. “I told you what I told you because... because...”
“I thought you wanted my help!”
“I only wanted you to listen. What could you do to help? He already said no!”
“Sometimes...” Florrie’s voice faltered for the first time. “Sometimes people say it and don’t mean it.”
“I don’t say it unless I do mean it,” Stephen Thomas said. “Fox, I thought you understood that you shouldn’t take it personally —”
“Personally? Why should I take it personally? All you did was tell me to fuck off and die!”
“I told you I don’t sleep with graduate students.”
“And now I’m being humiliated in public —”
“Not by me!”
Tears streamed down her face. She looked around, distraught, at her fellow students, and her major professor, and her professor’s partners, one of whom she loved.
Lehua tried to change the subject. “About time to pack this party in,” she said. People began to edge toward the door.
“Don’t anybody leave on my account,” Fox said.
As Fox turned to flee, Florrie snatched at her arm.
“Fox, my dear, let me —”
Fox turned back angrily, trying to speak. The beer sloshed out of the glass in her free hand and splashed down the front of Florrie’s black tunic. Florrie gasped and stepped away. The glass slipped out of Fox’s hand and shattered on the floor, gouging the smooth rock foam. Droplets spattered on Stephen Thomas’s bare calf.
Fox looked at Florrie, looked at the broken glass, looked at the full glass in her other hand. It was as if nothing she could do could possibly make things any worse. Stephen Thomas saw it coming, and did not move.
Fox splashed the second glass of beer in his face, flung the mug on the floor, and fled to the explosion of shattering glass.
“Are just going to let her run out of here?”
Florrie sounded so mad that Stephen Thomas had no idea whether she meant someone should go after Fox to comfort her, or go after her to berate her for bad manners.
Stephen Thomas started to rise, painfully. Cold beer dripped down his front and plastered his silk t-shirt and his running shorts to his body.
“I guess —”
“Don’t, you’re barefoot!” Satoshi said. “There’s glass all over.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go,” Victoria said.
“So you’ll just let the child run all alone into the dark —”
“Ms. Brown,” Victoria said patiently, “there aren’t any wolves out there.”
“This is no time for humor. You’re a very cruel young woman.”
Victoria turned her back on Florrie Brown. “Satoshi?”
Satoshi had already started for the door. “I’ll try to find her. I wish I knew if she’s even speaking to me...”
“I’ll go with you,” J.D. said.
“Thanks.”
Stephen Thomas sagged gratefully back into the squeaky bamboo chair, surrounded by shards of broken glass. What he would have said to Fox, if he found her, he had no idea. He was damned if he would apologize for doing what he thought was right.
o0o
J.D. and Satoshi and Zev crossed the yard. Starfarer’s bright night turned the blossoms in the grass and on the banks to pale shadows on dark shadows.
J.D. hesitated at the break in the garden wall. Satoshi stopped beside her.
“Any idea where she might’ve gone?”
“Home, I guess,” Satoshi said. “I don’t know.” He sounded resigned. “She didn’t exactly tell me her secrets. She kind of gave up on me when I couldn’t get her a waiver to come on the expedition.”
“I didn’t think anybody underage got one.”
“Nobody did.”
“I did,” Zev said.
“Chandra invented you a new name and a new occupation and a new family, and changed your subspecies!” Satoshi said. “If she didn’t add five years to your age, too, she’s not as smart as I thought she was.”
“Oh,” Zev said. “Yes. She probably did that too.”
“Fox’s family’s so wealthy,” J.D. said. “And so powerful... She’s probably used to getting her own way. Except about the expedition.”
“And Stephen Thomas.”
“And Stephen Thomas.” J.D. knew more or less how Fox felt, though she had not compounded her problem by telling Stephen Thomas. Or Florrie Brown.
“We’d better try her house —”
“She’s over there,” Zev said. He pointed.
“Are you sure?”
“I can hear her.”
They went with him down the path.
“She’s crying,” Zev said.
“Fox?” J.D. called softly.
She heard no answer, but a moment later someone came toward them through the darkness.
One of Stephen Thomas’s grad students — J.D. tried in vain to remember his name — appeared from between the small young trees. J.D. had met him at the party, but she had not seen him follow Fox.
“She doesn’t much want to see anybody,” he said apologetically.
“I’m worried about her, Mitch,” Satoshi said.
“Yeah, she’s pretty upset. Embarrassed, mostly.”
Satoshi hesitated. “I’d better talk to her.”
“I’ll stay with her. She’ll be okay, honest. I promise.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Satoshi said, “but I still have to talk to her.”
Satoshi stepped around Mitch and entered the deep shadow of the tree. Fox sat against its spindly roots, her head buried against her folded arms.
“Fox.” Satoshi knelt beside her.
She raised her head. Her face was blotched and tear-streaked.
“You’re not speaking to me,” she said.
“Of course I am. You haven’t made it easy, though, the last few days.”
“I didn’t want her to tell!” Fox exclaimed. “I just wanted to... to tell somebody how I felt.”
“I know.”
“I really do love him.” She stopped, as if she had just realized who she had said that to. “I’m sorry, but I do.”
“I know you do,” he said. “It’s... hard not to.”
She smiled, shakily. “You’re so lucky. You and Victoria.”
Satoshi turned the conversation away from the partnership, back to Fox.
“Please try to understand how he feels about what you offered him. He won’t — he can’t — accept.”
“He told me why, but it doesn’t make sense. He didn’t ask me — and there weren’t any conditions!”
“No. But... things can change.”
Satoshi started to tell her that Stephen Thomas’s decision was for Fox’s own protection; but that would insult her, to have the decision so one-sided, so out of her hands. He almost told her the situation had nothing to do with her directly, and decided she would be even more insulted.
She hid her face against her arms again; her voice was muffled. “It hurts so bad,” she said. Her shoulders shook.
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
He waited till she had stopped crying.
“I think you should go home,” he said, when her breathing eased.
“No! I don’t want to talk to my housemates tonight. I don’t want to talk to anybody.”
“And I don’t want to leave you out here all by yourself.”
She pushed herself back against the tree, glaring at him.
“What could happen?” she shouted. “I want to be outside, okay?”
The tall shadow that was Mitch moved from the reflected starlight into the darkness nearby.
“I couldn’t help hearing what you just said.” Mitch hesitated. “Nothing before, but, when you yelled...” His voice trailed off. “What if I hung around? For company, I mean.”
Fox took a deep breath and let it out slowly, steadying her voice.
“That’d be okay,” she said. “I’d... I’d like that. I’ll be all right, Satoshi. Hey. It isn’t like Stephen Thomas is the first person to ever turn me down. And... I’m glad you’re still talking to me, anyway.”
He suspected that Stephen Thomas was, in fact, the first person to ever turn her down, but he appreciated what she was saying to him.
“Everybody’s talking to you,” he said. “It’s just — Everything will be all right.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Okay. Sure. I don’t want to talk anymore.” She turned away, huddling against the tree. It should have been a thousand-year-old oak, with great gnarly roots reaching out around her.
“Okay,” Satoshi said. He rose. Mitch passed him and hunkered down near Fox.
Stephen Thomas has a high opinion of Mitch, Satoshi thought. He’s a good kid, and he’ll keep Fox company as well as anybody can. Lord knows, better than I can, all things considered.
Mitch glanced up at him and raised one hand in a gesture of acknowledgment and farewell.
Satoshi returned the gesture, and joined J.D. and Zev.
“Is she all right?” J.D. asked.
“I think so,” Satoshi said. “I hope so.”
They returned, in silence, to the partnership’s house.
o0o
Coldly courteous, Victoria mopped the worst of the beer off Florrie’s dress. The antipathy between them had reached a new peak.
Victoria delegated Lehua and Bay to see Florrie home. Finally the main room of the partnership’s house was empty except for Stephen Thomas and Victoria; the garden was deserted.
“That horrible woman,” Victoria said.
Stephen Thomas covered his face with his hands, then pushed his fingers up through his hair.
Victoria tried to grin. “What did her aura look like tonight?”
“I don’t know,” Stephen Thomas said. “There’s no such thing. You were right all along. Auras are bullshit.”
Victoria looked at him curiously, but let the comment pass.
She cleared up the glass; it made a wet, scraping noise when she scooped it into an empty bento box. The house did not even have a broom and dustpan; cleaning the floor was the housekeeper’s job.
When she was done, she sat on her heels beside Stephen Thomas and stroked his arm, moving her fingers along the growth pattern of the fine gold hair. He tensed, at the trickle of pain that crept along his bones. Victoria took her hand away.
“What a fucking nightmare,” Stephen Thomas said.
“I don’t suppose,” Victoria said hesitantly, “that you could have let her down a little easier?”
“Oh, shit, Victoria!” Stephen Thomas exclaimed. “How could I let her down, when I never picked her up? One minute I was telling her that no, Satoshi wasn’t mad at her because the genetics building fell on top of us while we were trying to talk some sense into her —”
“Very convincing,” Victoria said dryly.
“ — and the next she was telling me she was in love with me. And I told her what I always tell grad students —”
“Okay, I’m sorry, never mind,” Victoria said. “Into the shower with you,”
Stephen Thomas levered himself up. The towel slid off his toes. He yelped in pain. His right big toenail had gotten caught in the terrycloth loops. Only the nail of the left big toe remained. He could barely put his feet on the floor.
“I feel like my toe bones are coming out the ends of my feet.”
Victoria grimaced in sympathy tinged with disgust. She slid her arm over her shoulder. His cold wet shirt warmed, where her body pressed against his.
Stephen Thomas laughed suddenly.
“What?” Victoria said.
“My bones sort of are coming out the ends of my toes.”
“Stop,” Victoria said, her tone unsure. “Please stop.”
“All right.” They reached the bathroom. “I’ll be okay now. I just want to slop off the worst of the beer.”
“Will you come to bed?”
“I don’t...”
“I only want to know you’re there!” Victoria took his hand and held it between her own. “It feels like forever since I’ve touched you!”
Stephen Thomas drew his hand away. “This’ll all be over soon,” he said. “Soon. Then everything will be back to normal.”
Victoria let her hands fall to her sides.