The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  Griffith hesitated.

  “It is that, or nothing,” Kolya said.

  “All right,” Griffith said. “Deal.”

  o0o

  Victoria returned to campus feeling a little drunk, more from excitement than from champagne.

  “That was something, wasn’t it?” She giggled.

  “It was,” J.D. said. “It was. I guess... we’re really on our way.”

  “We are.” Victoria turned down the path toward Physics Hill. “Come on, I want to show you your office.”

  “I don’t really need an office,” J.D. said. “I’ve never had one — I won’t know what to do with it.”

  “First rule of academic life,” Victoria said. “Never turn down the perks.”

  They reached a long low barrow with strips of windows that squinted out along the bushy slopes. The hallway behind the offices was cool and dank, a tunnel lined with gray rock foam. On the left, doors opened into offices. Someone had made an attempt to brighten the hallway with photos of particle interactions, abstract art of lines and curves and collisions, and fractal movies.

  “Nobody needs offices anymore,” Victoria said. “But if we did all our communicating through Arachne, we’d never get out of bed. Here’s my office.” She opened a door. Few of the doors in the main cylinder of Starfarer opened automatically. The simpler things were, the less there would be to fix, light-years out in interstellar space.

  “We’re old-fashioned here in Physics Hill,” she said. “We even have a conference room, down at the end of the hall. I know lots of people who claim they can do conferences by link, but I like being face-to-face.”

  J.D. followed Victoria into her office. The entire exterior wall was a window, open from waist height to ceiling. The hillside dropped away steeply, ten meters to the ground below. Victoria’s desk was an extruded slab of rock foam; the chair was bamboo and rattan.

  A display hovered in the corner. Victoria glanced at it. Numbers and symbols crept across it, a new one every few seconds.

  “Still working,” Victoria said.

  “What is it?”

  “Cosmic string calculations. For navigating, once we reach transition energy. It’s ferociously complicated to figure out where you’re going once you grab a piece of cosmic string, and even harder to figure out a reasonable way back.”

  “But those calculations are already done. Aren’t they?”

  “The set for our first trip, sure. But I’ve been spending a lot of time working out better methods of doing the calculations.”

  “How long before it’s finished?”

  “Don’t know. No way to tell. This is a new symbolic manipulation routine. Solving cylindrical stress-energy tensors is tough. This one’s been running for two weeks already, but that’s nothing. The shortest solution so far took fifty-three days.”

  She watched the display for a few seconds, then blew out her breath and turned away. “I never let Arachne send this stuff straight into my head. It’s hypnotic.”

  Suddenly she stared at the display again. “Except...” She fell silent for so long that J.D. grew concerned.

  “Victoria?” she said softly.

  “What? Oh, sorry.” She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. “I have an idea. I think it might speed things up some more. Solve the problem more elegantly...”

  “Go ahead and work on it. The office can wait.”

  She was tempted. “No, it’s okay — your office will only take a minute.”

  Victoria led J.D. to her office, two doors down, and tried to open it. It remained closed.

  “It’s supposed to have been cleared by now,” she said.

  “Maybe it’s fixed on me. Open my office, please, Arachne,” J.D. said. She echoed the request over her link. Nothing happened. Then she remembered it was a simple mechanical door. She tried the door handle. Nothing happened.

  “I’ll be damned,” Victoria said. She described a query path to J.D., who followed it into Arachne’s web.

  The bursar had not yet assigned her any office space. Nor had the chancellor accepted her appointment as alien contact specialist.

  “This is outrageous,” Victoria said. “It’s my decision to invite you onto the team. Accepting your appointment is nothing but a formality!”

  “The rules must have changed,” J.D. said.

  “A lot of things are changing around here.”

  “This is scary, Victoria.”

  “It’s ridiculous, that’s what it is. Damn! Come on, you can use Nakamura’s office till we get things straightened out. I know I have access to it.”

  “I don’t know... I’d hate to invade his privacy.”

  “He didn’t leave anything behind to invade. He’s not coming back. He quit.”

  “For good? Are you sure? Why did he quit?”

  “I’m not sure I can tell you.”

  “Is it a secret?”

  “No. It’s just that it’s hard to explain why someone quits when they’re brought up to be infinitely polite and never mention when something is wrong or tell you what it is. I don’t even know that anything was wrong. Except it must have been, or why would he have quit? He wasn’t recalled. Maybe he decided we don’t have a chance to get out of orbit. He might have decided to cut his losses.”

  “Maybe he read the article about the selection process. Maybe he felt humiliated.”

  “That article was all speculation,” Victoria said.

  “Was it?”

  Victoria hesitated. The article had claimed that the selection of Starfarer’s personnel depended more on political considerations than academic qualifications.

  “I don’t like to think so,” Victoria said. “I like to think my family’s application blew all the other possibilities out of contention. But I’ll never know if a bunch of politicians got together and looked at the candidates and said, Say, we need more Canadians to make Ottawa happy, and never mind the qualifications. I decided to stop worrying about it.”

  J.D. followed Victoria uncertainly to another office.

  It, too, refused to open.

  “This is embarrassing,” Victoria said. “I am angry.”

  “Victoria, please don’t go to any trouble for me. I have more than enough room in my house, and that’s where all my books are. I’ll see you later, okay? What should I wear to the party?”

  “The party? Oh, anything you like. It’s informal, and you dress better than most of us.”

  J.D. smiled. “It will take a while before I fit in with the Starfarer look,” she said. “Most everything I brought with me is new.” She shrugged. “Oh well. I never was in the height of fashion.”

  “Don’t worry. I usually don’t dress up, but I might tonight because I haven’t had a chance to wear my new clothes. Stephen Thomas always dresses up, and Satoshi never dresses up.”

  “You have an interesting family.”

  “That’s sure true,” Victoria said. “What’s your family like? Do you have any sisters and brothers?”

  J.D. giggled.

  “Wrong question?”

  “No, not at all,” J.D. said. “But it’s complicated.”

  “Tell me,” Victoria said, intrigued.

  “Okay, you asked for it. My mom was fifty, past childbearing, when she and my dad got together. I have a half-brother and a half-sister from her previous biological family. Her partner in an intermediate relational family brought along his daughter. He and mom didn’t have any children with each other, but his daughter is also my half-sister.”

  “You lost me there,” Victoria said.

  J.D. grinned. “That’s where I lose everybody. What happened was, my dad didn’t want to father children. Chemical toxin exposure. He worried about gene defects.”

  “Couldn’t he get them fixed?”

  “That was expensive and chancy. It was another few years before the technology was perfected. Anyway, when my folks decided they did want to raise a kid together, my dad’s full sister donated an ovum and my mom’
s previous partner donated the sperm.”

  “So your dad is your half-father and your mother isn’t genetically related to you.”

  “No, it’s more complicated than that. My mom is my nuclear mother — induced meiosis and nuclear body transplant into my aunt’s ovum.”

  “And you’re related to your father through mitochondrial inheritance.”

  “Right, even though I got the mitochondrial DNA from his sister. But those are maternally inherited so dad’s and his sister’s are identical.”

  Victoria whistled. “That’s as complicated a personal pedigree as I ever heard. You have four biological parents?”

  “Five, since they needed a surrogate.”

  “Truly impressive. Family reunions must be interesting.”

  “We’ve never had one,” J.D. said. “We get along all right, but we aren’t particularly close. Cool but cordial.”

  “What did they say when you joined the expedition?”

  “‘Congratulations, dear. Have a good time.’“

  “Hm.” Victoria contrasted that reaction with the reactions she and her partners had received. Grangrana was quietly and fiercely proud, Stephen Thomas’s father disbelieving, and Satoshi’s folks ecstatic for him and for them all. Practically the whole range, Victoria thought.

  o0o

  After J.D. left, Victoria hurried back to her own office, sat at her desk, and composed herself outwardly. She cooled her anger, persuading herself that the mixup about J.D.’s office must be just that, a mix-up. Reacting uncivilly would not help. It might even slow up a correction.

  The research display kept catching at the corner of her vision. All she really wanted to do right now was work on her new approach. Instead, she put in a call to the chancellor’s office.

  J.D.’s remarkably calm about this, Victoria thought. She hasn’t spent enough time in the academic world.

  The office was only part of the problem. Until all J.D.’s paperwork went through processing, the bursar would not activate her salary. Victoria had been handling the partnership’s accounts since Merry’s death. She suspected life could quickly become difficult in the face of a financial setback.

  Chancellor Blades had arrived on the transport incoming that Victoria had taken, outgoing, back to Earth. She had never spoken to him or met him and she knew very little about him. She wanted to be fair to him. But he was from the U.S., so she found it hard not to suspect that he was purely a political appointment.

  She supposed he would be at the welcome party tonight. The rest of the faculty and staff would use the opportunity to welcome him, since he had pled the press of work and declined to have a party of his own. Perhaps it would have been better to wait till then to talk to him...

  “Chancellor Blades’s office.” Chancellor Blades’s AI answered the call. It possessed a deliberate, soothing voice, a display pattern of pastel colors.

  “Victoria Fraser MacKenzie. Director Blades, please.”

  “The director cannot speak in person at this time,” the AI said. “Would you leave a message, please?”

  “Yes. Chancellor, there’s been an unfortunate oversight. J.D. Sauvage’s appointment hasn’t been formally accepted. Her office is locked. This is awkward. And I’m concerned that her salary not be delayed.”

  “The message has been placed on his register,” the AI said. “Thank you.”

  The voice and the pattern faded.

  Victoria swore softly.

  Trying to think of some other way of solving J.D.’s problem, Victoria glanced at the research display. Its moving background figures took her in. Soon another display formed before her. Her thoughts began to manipulate its space. She forgot everything else.

  o0o

  Victoria hurried through the courtyard and into the house.

  “I’m late,” she said to Satoshi, “I know it, sorry, but I had to get that new manipulation up and running. I think it’s a real breakthrough! I’ll be dressed in a minute — damn!”

  “Victoria, relax. What’s wrong?”

  “I want to take Ms. Brown some carnations. It won’t take long to dig them — ” She opened the storage cupboard and rummaged around for the rock foam pot she knew was in there somewhere.

  Satoshi came up behind her and put his arms around her.

  “I’m all ready. I’ll dig them for you.” He was wearing his usual cargo pants and tank top.

  “Would you? That would be great.”

  “You’ve got plenty of time. Stephen Thomas just got home, too.”

  Victoria took a quick shower and stood in front of her closet for a minute, deciding what to wear. Finally she chose her suede pants and the new lace shirt. She liked the way the lace felt, softly scratchy against her skin.

  Stephen Thomas finished dressing just when she did. They returned to the main room together. J.D. had already arrived.

  “You all look wonderful!” she said. She looked as if she had tried to dress up, but did not quite know how.

  Stephen Thomas wore his turquoise shirt for the first time. Instead of his usual plain gold stud, he wore an earring Satoshi had given him on his last birthday. It twisted up behind his ear and drooped forward again, dangling small emerald crystals all the way to his shoulder. A second loop of crystals branched off from the back and draped across his long blond hair and over his other shoulder.

  Satoshi handed Victoria the newly-potted carnation, and they set out for the party.

  Victoria walked with Stephen Thomas, J.D. with Satoshi. J.D. evened out the group and made walking on the narrow pathways less awkward, though of course not the same as before, walking with Merit. It surprised Victoria to find herself thinking of before with only a dull ache, instead of a deep hard pain. Maybe she was beginning to heal. Finally. She shook herself out of that train of thought, knowing how fast the depression could hit her.

  Satoshi and J.D. chatted as they walked ahead. J.D. was beginning to relax with her new teammates. Victoria enjoyed talking with her. If someone had told her that discussing the plots of old short stories would be fun, she would not have believed them.

  The discussion not only brought the team members into closer contact, but the members of her partnership as well. Victoria had never known of Satoshi’s summer herding cattle.

  Victoria shifted the flowerpot from one hand to the other. She stroked the gray-green leaves and separated the blossoms. The scent of carnations rose around her and she smiled. She hoped Starfarer’s first grandparent in space would like her gift.

  Stephen Thomas reached out and took her hand in a companionable way.

  “You’re pretty excited,” he said.

  “More mind-reading?”

  “Hardly necessary.”

  “I think I worked out something qualitatively different this afternoon,” Victoria said. “A real ‘a-hah!’ experience. I’m ready for a party! I’m so glad Ms. Brown is here — It isn’t the same as if Grangrana had agreed to come. But I’m glad she’s on board all the same.”

  “I don’t understand why they picked her,” Stephen Thomas said. “She’s not a colleague. Even if she wasn’t past retirement, she was never a scientist. She doesn’t have a proper vita. I don’t even know what to call her.”

  “By her name, probably.”

  “You don’t need to be sarcastic. I’m just saying I have some doubts about the grandparents program.” Stephen Thomas grimaced.

  “I thought you were neutral on the subject of age-mix. I didn’t realize you were opposed.”

  “I can’t help it if my personal landscape is different on that subject than yours. And, look, if we get into a bad spot, we’ll have to worry about her.”

  “Why? How will worrying help? She knows the risks as well as any of us. And she’s just as capable of making an informed decision.”

  “There’s no more excuse for bringing elders up here than for bringing kids.”

  “No excuse — ! I never heard you talk about Thanthavong or Cherenkov like this, by the way.”

>   “They’re different.”

  “Not in terms of their ability to decide whether to join the expedition.”

  “That isn’t what I meant. I meant they both have reasons to be up here. They have things to do.”

  “Stephen Thomas, next you’re going to try to tell me that Nikolai Cherenkov was a hero of the Soviet Union for making scientific discoveries.”

  Stephen Thomas blushed.

  “I admire him, too,” Victoria said. “But let’s face it, holding the time-in-space record doesn’t mean much nowadays. There must be a couple of hundred people who can measure their experience in decades.”

  “Okay, I’ll grant that Cherenkov is here because he wants to be and because a lot of us admire him. And maybe because he’s the only person in existence who’ll be safer on the expedition than they would be anywhere in the solar system. That doesn’t change anything. I still don’t see any reason to bring a grandmother up here just because she’s a grandmother. Besides, if she’s such a great grandmother, why isn’t she grandmothering her own grandchildren?”

  “Maybe for the same reason we aren’t parenting any children,” Victoria said.

  “That isn’t fair!”

  “Sure it is. We chose to put off having children so we could join the expedition. Maybe her grandchildren are grown up. Maybe she decided we needed her more than they did. Maybe she didn’t feel needed back on Earth at all. Maybe she has a spirit of adventure.”

  “What’s going to happen if we do meet aliens — ”

  “When,” Victoria said.

  “Whatever, and they see her and say, ‘Why in the world did you bring her along?’“

  “What would happen when we meet aliens if they didn’t see her and they said, ‘Where are your elders? How can we talk to people who cut themselves off from their wisest individuals?’ Stephen Thomas, your argument has been used against every minority in history. ‘You can’t represent us, because you’d be talking to people who think you’re less than human. For the sake of getting along, we’re going to pretend to agree.’“

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”