The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “There’s got to be something.” Stephen Thomas lay back and stared at the ceiling with his arms crossed over his chest, as if he intended to try to think of something right now, and stay where he was until he succeeded.

  Chapter 8

  The solar sail drew Starfarer beyond the orbit of the moon.

  During its construction, the starship held steady in the libration point leading the moon. With the sail deployed, Starfarer accelerated out of its placid orbit. Each imperceptible increment of velocity widened and altered its path.

  Because the starship took longer to circle the Earth in its wider orbit, the moon began to catch up to it. Soon it would pass beneath Starfarer, and the ship would use the lunar passage to tilt its course into a new plane.

  As the orbit increased in complexity, the logistics of transport to Starfarer would become more difficult and more expensive.

  In the middle of Starfarer’s night, Iphigenie DuPre set in motion the interactions of gravity and magnetic field and solar wind to tilt the starship out of the plane of the lunar orbit.

  The angle would grow steeper and the spiral wider: the sail plus the effect of traveling past the Earth and the moon would soon drive the ship toward a mysterious remnant of the creation of the universe, a strand of cosmic string that would provide Starfarer with superluminal transition energy.

  Starfarer prepared for lunar passage. Afterward, it would be well and truly on its way.

  o0o

  Grangrana was making breakfast. Victoria could smell biscuits, eggs, a rice curry. Coffee.

  Coffee? In Grangrana’s house?

  Victoria woke from the dream. She was on board Starfarer; Grangrana remained on Earth. The straight up-and-down sunlight of morning, noon, and evening reflected from the porch. Nevertheless, she smelled breakfast.

  Satoshi, beside her, half opened his eyes.

  “Is that coffee?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Your friend Feral can stay if he wants,” Satoshi said, and went back to sleep.

  Victoria smiled, kissed the curve of his shoulder, tucked the blanket around him, and slid out of his bed.

  In cutoffs and one of Satoshi’s sleeveless shirts, Victoria went out to the main room. Stephen Thomas was up and dressed, in flowered cotton Bermuda shorts and a purple silk shirt. Victoria remembered rising partway out of sleep in the middle of the night when he left Satoshi’s room and returned to his own.

  Victoria dodged around Stephen Thomas’s still.

  “Good morning.”

  “Hi.” The circles beneath his eyes had faded. He looked better this morning, not as shaken as after the party. But if he had thought of what to do about Griffith, he made no mention of his plans.

  “Morning.” Feral set a pot of tea in front of Victoria as she sat down.

  “This is a real treat for us, Feral,” Victoria said. “But you don’t have to make breakfast every morning.” The pleasure of having breakfast cooked and waiting gave her mixed emotions. She missed having a family manager, but it seemed disloyal to enjoy it when someone else did the tasks Merit had always smoothly, almost invisibly, taken care of.

  “I know. I like to cook.” He grinned. He had mobile, expressive lips that exposed his even white teeth when he smiled. “And everything I made this morning will reheat. Satoshi can sleep in if he wants to.”

  “Speak of the devil,” Stephen Thomas said.

  Satoshi arrived wrapped in his threadbare bathrobe, his wet hair dripping down his neck.

  “Stephen Thomas, there’s no clean laundry,” he said in a neutral tone. “And you used the last towel.”

  “Uh-oh,” Stephen Thomas said.

  “You might at least have hung it up so I could use it.”

  “It was wet,” Stephen Thomas said.

  “Yeah, well, so am I.” Satoshi accepted a cup of coffee. “Thanks, Feral.”

  Victoria sometimes wished Satoshi would simply blow his stack. He hardly ever did.

  Stephen Thomas sighed. “I’ll do some laundry. Today. A little later. Okay?”

  Satoshi did not answer him.

  “Want some curry?” Feral said.

  “Sure.” Satoshi wiped the sides of his face and his neck where water had dripped from his hair. His elbow stuck through a hole in the blue terrycloth. He had gotten away with bringing the robe to Starfarer by using it as packing material when they first moved here. He needed a new one, but terrycloth was far too heavy and bulky for an ordinary allowance.

  Satoshi dug around in the cupboard among his collection of condiments. There was a hole in the back of the robe, too, just below his left hip. His tawny skin showed through it. Victoria was glad he hated sewing and would probably never darn the battered fabric.

  Feral brought breakfast to the table. Satoshi opened the new hot chili paste.

  “I’m looking forward to trying this stuff.”

  Feral laughed. “Don’t tell me they import that here.”

  “Victoria brought it up in her allowance. What’s life without red chili paste?”

  “Quieter,” Victoria said, and Satoshi smiled.

  “This is pretty hot already.” Feral offered Satoshi the curry.

  “Good.”

  Feral passed the food around and sat across from Satoshi. As she watched Satoshi put chili sauce on his curry and on his eggs, Victoria hoped he and Feral would not get into a competition of who could eat the hottest food. Despite long acquaintance with Satoshi, Victoria had never understood the lure of the more violent forms of Cajun, Chinese, or Mexican cooking. Even from a distance, the volatile oils of the chili sauce were enough to make her eyes water.

  Feral tasted the curry. “You’re right, it isn’t hot enough. Steve, would you pass the chili sauce?”

  “Please don’t call me Steve,” Stephen Thomas said.

  Feral looked up, surprised by the sudden change in tone of Stephen Thomas’s voice.

  “Stephen Thomas has this phobia about nicknames,” Satoshi said.

  Stephen Thomas scowled at Satoshi. “Do I have to let everybody call me anything they want? Maybe I should make up a nickname for Feral? In the North American style, Ferrie. Or the Japanese style, Feral-chan. Maybe the Russian style, Ferushkababushka.”

  “Dammit, Stephen Thomas!”

  Feral started to laugh. “It’s okay, Satoshi,” he said. “I can do without the Russian style, but I kind of like ‘Feral-chan.’ Stephen Thomas, I apologize. I won’t try to change your name again. After all, if you’ve got three first names, it only makes sense to use at least two of them.”

  Stephen Thomas scowled, unwilling to be placated. “I don’t have any first names,” he said. “They’re all last names.”

  “Will you accept my apology anyway? And pass the chili sauce?”

  Stephen Thomas tossed the jar across the table. Satoshi winced and grabbed for it, but Feral caught it easily.

  “You’re really acting like an adolescent,” Satoshi said to Stephen Thomas. “And I wish you’d quit.”

  “I thought I was performing a public service,” Stephen Thomas said. “That’s one of the problems with this campus — no kids live here.”

  o0o

  Victoria went straight to her office. She had some more ideas about the cosmic string problem. Four different displays, each working on a separate manipulation, hovered in the corner. She glanced at them, though it was too soon to expect results.

  One had stopped.

  “I’ll be damned!” Victoria said.

  Her “a-hah!” equation had produced a solution. Already. The quickest one yet, by several orders of magnitude. If it was correct. She looked it over. She felt like a bottle of Stephen Thomas’s champagne, with the strange invigorated lightness that the joy of discovery always gave her. The solution felt right, as the problem had felt right when she chose it to work on.

  “I’ll be damned,” she said again. And then she thought, if I hadn’t had to go back to Earth, I would have finished the algorithm a couple of weeks ag
o. We would have had plenty of time for Iphigenie to recalculate the orbit for the cosmic string encounter. We could have substituted this approach to the string for the first one we chose.

  The approach promised a faster, more direct route to their destination. And it hinted at a safer and more usable way home from Tau Ceti, but Victoria could not yet prove that. Nevertheless, she was outrageously pleased with her success. Victoria collected the arrival coordinates and set the return calculations going. At the same time she packaged up the string solution.

  As she was about to tell Arachne to send the information to EarthSpace for archiving, she thought better of it.

  Then she did something that abashed her. But she did it anyway.

  She made a hard copy of the solution and slipped the crystalline module into the pocket of her cutoffs and took the results out of the web altogether.

  o0o

  Stephen Thomas sat sipping his coffee until Feral and Victoria and Satoshi had left the house. He hated it when Satoshi got so annoyed about trivial things like laundry, and then would not even admit he was mad.

  All three members of the family had begun to deal with the grief of losing their eldest partner, but that did not resolve the problem of being without a manager. The strain was showing as plainly as the holes in Satoshi’s robe. Stephen Thomas knew what needed to be done, but he did not know how to make Satoshi and Victoria admit that they needed a manager. He had even tried to figure out how to make the family finances stretch to hiring someone. It might have been possible back on Earth; it might even have been possible on Starfarer if they were not buying the house. As things stood, that solution was out of the question.

  Maybe Victoria, having finally begun to accept Merit’s death, was also beginning to accept the need for other changes. She had, after all, started the connection with Feral. She made no objection when Stephen Thomas invited him to stay. Stephen Thomas found Feral attractive, and he believed Victoria did, too, though he could not be certain she had admitted it to herself. And then there was the interesting fact that for a houseguest, Feral was making himself spectacularly useful.

  I probably shouldn’t have snapped at him about calling me “Steve,” Stephen Thomas thought.

  He finished his coffee. In no hurry, he left his bike on the porch and walked on over to the genetics department. He enjoyed watching the changes in the landscape he passed every day. When he first arrived, the naked earth-colored hillocks sent off rivulets of eroded mud with every rain shower. Puddles on the path turned red or yellow or blue with clay or white with sand: stark pure colors unleavened by organic content. Slowly the grasses and succulents, the bushes and bamboo sprouted into pale green lace covering the new land. The erosion slowed; now it had nearly stopped, and the vegetation covered the ground as if it had always been here. In many spots the gardeners had planted sapling trees, species either naturally fast-maturing or genetically altered to grow at enhanced speed. The primary colors of the soil had begun to dull into fertile shades of brown as the plants and the bacteria and the earthworms worked them.

  According to Infinity Mendez, most of the wild cylinder would be permitted to grow and change by normal processes of succession, until in a hundred or five hundred years it would contain mature climax forests of several climates. The plan presented difficulties — never mind that no one expected Starfarer’s first expedition to last more than a few years; the starship itself should be essentially immortal. But many types of forest required periodic fires to maintain their health, and that of course could not be permitted within the confines, however large, of a starship. Other methods, mechanical and bacterial and labor-intensive human work, would have to substitute. Some of them had only been tried briefly and experimentally. This both troubled Stephen Thomas and excited his appreciation of the unknown.

  He strolled through the stand of smoke bamboo growing above the genetics department and walked down the outdoor ramp to the main level. As he headed for his lab, he brought his current project to the front of his perceptions and immersed himself in it.

  He passed the conference room, the first door after the entrance, so engrossed in his thoughts that he was five paces past it before he noticed the yelling. He stopped and went back.

  “Wretched fucking government plots — ” Anger and profanity sounded particularly odd in the beautiful faint accent Professor Thanthavong retained from her childhood in Southeast Asia.

  Gerald Hemminge replied in a cool voice. “I came all the way across campus to give you this news in person. I didn’t expect to be abused for my courtesy.”

  “But it’s outrageous!” Thanthavong exclaimed, unrelenting. “How did you expect me to react?”

  “Oh, come now, it’s simply your congress on one of its toots. They haven’t passed their budget, or appropriations bill, or somesuch. Then all you Americans rush about pretending that the government is packing up and going home. American congressional shenanigans give the rest of us enormous entertainment.”

  Stephen Thomas had never been able to tell if Gerald patronized his colleagues deliberately, or if it was just the effect of his upper-class British background and accent. Stephen Thomas ignored academic hierarchies on principle, but even he thought it was not a survival characteristic for an assistant chancellor to patronize a Nobel laureate. Beyond that, he felt an enormous respect for Dr. Thanthavong, and he felt himself fortunate to work with her. Gerald’s attitude annoyed him.

  “I think I can tell the difference between a normal governmental screw-up and a conspiracy!” Thanthavong exclaimed.

  “I’m always astonished when you criticize your adopted country with such severity,” Gerald said.

  “It’s bad enough when other Americans expect blind loyalty, but — ”

  “What’s the matter?” Stephen Thomas said, before Thanthavong could finish. Having found a topic that could ruffle Thanthavong’s usual restraint, Gerald managed to bring it into conversation whenever possible.

  Stephen Thomas joined them. Thanthavong glared at Gerald for another moment, then broke away and turned toward Stephen Thomas. The tension eased just perceptibly.

  “You haven’t heard.” Thanthavong blew out her breath in annoyance. “No, I suppose not. Gerald came over to be sure I got the news in person, as he’s been so kind to point out.”

  “All I’ve heard this morning is that the moon’s going to pass without crashing into us.”

  “Distler has impounded the United States’ share of Starfarer’s operating funds.”

  “Maybe it was the only way your president could think of to get your attention,” Gerald said.

  Stephen Thomas looked at him with disbelief. When the expedition first came together, Gerald had been as enthusiastic as anyone, as convinced of Starfarer’s necessity. His attitude had changed recently, with the arrival of the new chancellor. He had not quite said out loud that he agreed with the idea of sending Starfarer into lower orbit, or even dismantling the ship. Stephen Thomas had given up arguing with him, because the arguments never went anywhere. Since Gerald never acknowledged anyone else’s points, discussions began and ended in the same place. Besides, Stephen Thomas had finally realized that Gerald liked to argue, and would do it for fun. Arguing was not Stephen Thomas’s idea of a good time.

  “How can you be surprised?” Thanthavong asked Stephen Thomas. “Didn’t you see it coming?”

  “No. I didn’t. The idea never crossed my mind.”

  “Something like this,” Thanthavong said. “It had to happen.”

  “This isn’t ‘congressional shenanigans,’ Gerald,” Stephen Thomas said. “This is a serious attack.”

  “Yes, in the most vulnerable American area — the pocketbook.”

  Stephen Thomas let the jab fly past.

  “It would be easier to prepare the expedition without any money than to continue without half our personnel,” Thanthavong said.

  Stephen Thomas frowned, trying to put a hopeful spin on the news. “Maybe it’s not as bad as it look
s. We’re supposed to be self-sufficient eventually...”

  “He’s suspended the salaries of all U.S. citizens,” Thanthavong said. “They’ll send out enough transports to pick people up, but they won’t send supplies beyond what are already in preparation.”

  “That isn’t quite true,” Gerald said. “We can have anything we want, as long as we pay for it ourselves.”

  “Does he think he can starve us out?” Stephen Thomas said. “How long can it take to grow, I don’t know, potatoes?”

  “Somehow,” Gerald said, “I cannot see you holding out for long on a diet of potatoes. You’re looking at the situation from a far too personal point of view. Our civilization is faced with problems much bigger than ours — ”

  “And the problems of one starship don’t amount to a hill of beans,” Stephen Thomas said.

  “This isn’t funny, Stephen Thomas,” Thanthavong said.

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Putting off the expedition for two or three years,” Gerald said, “might make the difference between survival and destruction.”

  “Starfarer cannot fill the new role the president suggests,” Thanthavong said. “If the ship moves to a lower orbit, it will never leave the solar system. And I believe you know it.”

  She left the conference room.

  “The same thing could happen to Europe and Britain as happened to half of Asia and Africa,” Gerald said. “Perhaps it can’t happen in North America — note that I place emphasis on ‘perhaps.’ I don’t expect any native-born Americans to have a conception of what that means, but surely a naturalized citizen — ”

  Stephen Thomas remembered some of the stories Victoria’s great-grandmother told about her friends and the Mideast Sweep. He felt distressed and off-balance, unable to counter Gerald’s arguments.

  “Gerald,” Stephen Thomas said, though it was hardly a survival characteristic for a professor to antagonize an assistant chancellor, “shut up.” He followed Thanthavong out of the main room and went to his lab.

  “Stephen Thomas!” His two grad students and his post-doc converged on him.