The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “You’re asking us to become lawbreakers,” said a senior member of the geology department. “Renegades.”

  “We did that just by coming into the amphitheater tonight,” Satoshi said drily.

  “I’m suggesting that we change the schedule,” Victoria said. “We’ve always left the possibility open.”

  “Don’t downplay the seriousness of what you suggest,” Thanthavong said sharply. “If we adopt your plan, we’ll be going against powerful forces — ”

  “I thought you agreed with me!”

  “I do. But we cannot go into this light-hearted or light-headed. Everyone who chooses to go should know the consequences. Everyone who isn’t sure should leave the expedition.”

  “Wait a minute,” Crimson said. “You’re talking as if we’ve already agreed to this — we haven’t! And it sounds like if we do... we can never come home.”

  “We’d have to face the consequences when we did come back,” Victoria said.

  “You’re asking us to give up our families, our friends...”

  “Crimson, those risks aren’t new. They have nothing to do with the question we have to decide right now.”

  “Hey,” Stephen Thomas said, “if we come back at all, we’ll bring enough with us for the politicians to overlook our misbehavior.”

  “Victoria herself said we might not find anything!”

  “What do I have to do to live that down?” Victoria said, an edge in her voice. “I wasn’t trying to predict the future, I was trying to explain what science is about and how you conduct it! But I wouldn’t be here if I thought the expedition was for nothing, and nor would you.”

  Alzena spoke. “I cannot agree to risk ecological stability by leaving our support systems prematurely. It could mean disaster.”

  Infinity spoke again. “I tell you that if this starship is held back from its journey for one year, for three years, it will never recover. It will never leave orbit. It won’t have an ecosystem.”

  They had all seen films of the central plaza of Santa Fe, blasted into rubble, poisoned, destroyed.

  No one disputed what Infinity said. But Alzena’s warning could not be shrugged off.

  “Despite the dangers, I propose that we accelerate the mission’s departure to Tau Ceti,” Thanthavong said, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. “I propose that we take advantage of Victoria’s new transition solution.” She rose to her feet.

  Victoria waited.

  By ones, by twos, by small groups, the members of the deep space expedition rose to signify their agreement.

  o0o

  On the way home, Victoria felt simultaneously elated, frightened, and drained. She walked with Stephen Thomas; J.D. and Satoshi followed close behind.

  “Say, Victoria...” J.D. said.

  “Victoria, you did it!” Stephen Thomas said at the same time.

  “No thanks to you,” Victoria said.

  “Now you’re mad at me. Shit, I couldn’t resist the line. And after all, it’s true.”

  “It is not, and even if you had to say it, you should have realized what lousy timing it was.”

  “Come on, now,” Satoshi said mildly. “It turned out all right.”

  “Maybe. We still have a long way to go.”

  Victoria fell silent, knowing that the argument embarrassed Satoshi, especially since J.D. was with them. She wished she could get into a straight-ahead fight with Stephen Thomas. It seemed as if ever since she got home, every other conversation she had with him deteriorated into bickering. She could not understand why. Maybe they just needed to clear the air.

  “J.D., what were you going to say a minute ago?”

  “I... this is hard — ”

  They heard footsteps approaching at a run.

  “Hey, wait for me!”

  Feral rushed up, panting.

  “Somebody said you had the meeting! Why didn’t you tell me? What happened? Damn!”

  “You should have been there,” Stephen Thomas said. “You missed the creation of — ”

  “Stephen Thomas!” Victoria said sharply.

  “What?”

  “I think we have to start being careful what we discuss in front of Feral.”

  “He was in my office while we were ‘conspiring,’ for god’s sake,” Stephen Thomas said. “You didn’t object then.”

  “I didn’t think of it then. So shoot me.”

  “Don’t you trust me to tell your story straight?” Feral exclaimed.

  “Your interests can’t always coincide with ours.”

  “Maybe we could tell him what happened, off the record,” J.D. said hesitantly.

  “This is bullshit,” Stephen Thomas said. “We made the decision in a goddamned public meeting. It’s to our advantage if Feral tells our side. Otherwise it’ll all come from the chancellor — or the GAO. Feral, Victoria’s research produced a second transition solution. Faster, shorter, better. And sooner. At the meeting we agreed to move the schedule up.”

  “And I missed it — ? Damn! I obviously haven’t cultivated my sources properly.”

  “It’s been a tough day,” Satoshi said. “We didn’t exclude you on purpose — ”

  “Never mind the apologies. Tell me everything that happened. How soon — ?”

  Victoria walked ahead, angry at Stephen Thomas more because he was right than because he was telling Feral everything. J.D. hurried to keep up with her.

  “Victoria, I have to go back to Earth.”

  Completely shocked, Victoria stopped short and faced J.D.

  “What?”

  “It’s Zev. The diver. He’s disappeared. This is hard to explain, but I have to help him — ”

  “Help him! What about us? My god, J.D., this expedition exists to support you! You can’t leave it now.”

  “I have to. I have responsibilities — ”

  “What about your responsibility to us? You let us put ourselves on the line without telling us what you’d decided, you stood with us for the change — how could you do this?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, unable to meet Victoria’s gaze, staring at her feet like an embarrassed child. “I tried, but... The expedition isn’t only for me, that’s silly — ”

  “If you think it’s silly, then maybe you’d better leave.”

  “But — ”

  They reached the turnoff to J.D.’s house. J.D. stopped; Victoria continued, into the darkness.

  “Um, maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?” J.D. said.

  Victoria could not trust herself to speak. Satoshi, Stephen Thomas, and Feral, unaware of what J.D. had decided, paused long enough to say goodnight to her; their voices, the words indistinct, faded behind Victoria.

  “Victoria, wait!”

  She broke into a run.

  The courtyard surrounded her with a soft carnation scent. The lights glowed on in the main room of the house, responding to her approach. At the open French windows, Victoria kicked off her shoes and stepped inside, onto the cool, rustling reed mats. Their texture usually pleased her. Her vision blurred. Stephen Thomas’s complicated distillation equipment hunkered on the floor like some misbegotten creature in a cheap special effects movie.

  Opening the door, Stephen Thomas came in and stood beside her, just gazing at her.

  Victoria walked across the reed mats, passing the still.

  “I wish you’d move that thing,” she said. “Goodnight.”

  Stephen Thomas watched as she vanished into the back corridor. Satoshi and Feral came in behind him.

  “Is she all right?”

  Stephen Thomas shrugged, mystified and upset.

  “Maybe I’d better go stay at the visitor’s house,” Feral said. “I’ve really thrown a monkey wrench into this...”

  “No,” Satoshi said. “You’re our guest. Victoria and Stephen Thomas and I obviously have some misunderstandings to clear up between us, but we shouldn’t inflict them on you.”

  “Come sit down,” Stephen Thomas said. “I want to tell
you about the meeting.”

  Feral hesitated, tempted.

  “Go ahead,” Satoshi said. “I’ll talk to Victoria.”

  o0o

  In her bed, Victoria curled around her pillow and thought about going back into the main room, behaving the way Stephen Thomas always did, acting as though she had said nothing for which she needed to apologize. But she did need to apologize. And she could not quite face it tonight.

  “Victoria?”

  Satoshi tapped lightly on her door. Victoria remained silent. He slid the door a handsbreadth open. He knew she was awake; she never went to sleep this fast, even when she was exhausted. Especially when she was exhausted.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Yes.”

  He slid into bed beside her, kissed her on the forehead, and held her till she fell asleep.

  o0o

  J.D. lay in bed in the darkness, unable to relax.

  I might as well have stayed with the divers and never even come to Starfarer, she thought. Damn! Why is this happening?

  Staying with the expedition tempted her with such force that she had to stop thinking about the possibility, the good reasons, the rationalizations. She would return to Earth with the reputation of being a troublemaker. She might be barred from her adopted profession. She might fail to find Zev; she might be arrested and put in jail as soon as she touched down. If she stayed here, she would be an alien contact specialist. And Victoria would not be angry with her...

  She put aside the tempting thoughts and tried to sleep.

  When she left, everyone would think she was running away, afraid to continue on the expedition. But for once in her life she was not running away.

  Trying to sleep was hopeless. She took her notebook and pen into bed with her, and tried and failed to work on her novel.

  At least I won’t have to get used to writing electronically, she thought. Now I will be able to just go out and buy another notebook.

  The thought gave her no comfort.

  o0o

  As he often did, Infinity went into the garden to sleep. Carrying his blanket past the rose bush, he smelled the smoke of a cigarette near the battered lunar rock where Kolya liked to sit. The cosmonaut was nowhere to be seen; his footprints led away across dewy grass.

  Infinity went farther around the edge of the garden, beyond the lingering cigarette smoke. He spread his blanket between some juniper bushes, where the smell was clean and pungent. He wrapped himself up in the peace of the garden.

  He did not mind the chill. Dewdrops formed on his blanket, glowing silver on the black leaves of the rose bush, which had hardly wilted despite being transplanted when it was wide awake. Though it would have been better to wait till Starfarer’s mild winter, during the bush’s dormant season, Infinity had decided to risk the rose rather than risking Florrie’s age. He had wanted her to have her roses.

  But of course she would leave the expedition now — she would have to. She had nothing to do with Infinity and the other renegades, and she would not want to remain on board Starfarer now that everything had changed.

  Though the meeting had chosen the path he desired, he still felt uncomfortable with his part in it. He was not used to speaking up, using the force of his past to influence events. The expedition had to make the change. Without it, they were lost.

  But if they failed in their attempt...

  Hearing footsteps, he rolled onto his chest. The silence of the garden amplified the stealthy sound.

  Griffith walked into the garden and stood in the starlight, looking up at the hill. Looking for Kolya. But the cosmonaut had walked away in the other direction.

  You don’t need to worry about Kolya, Infinity thought. Even if Griffith stops us, he can’t have Kolya Cherenkov taken off Starfarer.

  Or can he?

  For anyone else up here, the plan’s failure would mean the loss of job and ambitions and hope. It might even mean prison. But if Kolya went back to Earth, it would mean his life.

  Infinity lay without moving for an hour, watching Griffith watch and wait, wondering what he could do, how he could guard against the danger his outburst had caused.

  After Griffith cursed softly to the night and walked away, Infinity lay thinking and worrying for a long time.

  o0o

  Victoria woke alone. She lay in bed, trying to enjoy the sunlight streaming through her open, uncurtained window.

  For someone who achieved the impossible last night, she said to herself, you are surely in a terrible mood.

  She had to apologize to Stephen Thomas for snapping at him. Maybe she should also apologize to J.D., but that was harder. She understood prior commitments and responsibilities... it would be difficult to tell Grangrana that she might have to leave the house, and Greg was sure to grind Stephen Thomas through another emotional wringer. But the expedition members were putting their commitment to Starfarer first.

  Victoria did not feel up to talking to J.D. Sauvage just now. Every way she imagined the conversation, she ended up angrier than before, and J.D. ended up hurt and confused.

  She burrowed deep under the covers and tried to go back to sleep.

  Arachne’s signal chilled her fully awake. She sat up and let the web display Starfarer’s new orders.

  When she finished reading the display she gasped. She had been holding her breath with disbelief. She threw off her blankets and ran into the main room.

  Stephen Thomas lounged in the sunlight like a cat. He rose abruptly when Victoria stormed in.

  “Victoria, good lord, if you’re still mad — !”

  “Look at this.” She formed a display so they could look at it together.

  Stephen Thomas read the message, frowning. “Jesus H. Christ.”

  Satoshi wandered in, blinking, blank with sleep. “If you’ve got to fight, why don’t you fight quietly?”

  “We aren’t fighting. Look at this.”

  He, too, read the message.

  It woke him up even better than coffee.

  o0o

  Griffith sat on the balcony of his room in the empty guest house. Small puffy clouds drifted between him and the sun tubes. He was as oblivious to the shadows they cast over him as he had been to the bright sunlight shining on him a few minutes before. He had not slept, he had not eaten. All he had done, all he could do, was think about Nikolai Petrovich Cherenkov, and the Mideast Sweep, and the plans he himself had so carefully brought into being.

  “Marion.”

  Griffith froze. He would not have believed anyone could come up behind him without his knowledge. He was fast and he was well trained, but he knew Cherenkov would be more than ready for anything he tried.

  Maybe he deserved whatever Cherenkov chose for him.

  “Are you responsible for the new order?”

  “It was perfect,” Griffith said. “It would alienate the EarthSpace associates and convert the ship to military purposes, all at the same time.”

  “You are such a fool.”

  Griffith turned, carefully, slowly. Cherenkov faced him, empty-handed.

  “All I ever wanted was to be like you,” Griffith said. “As good as you — ”

  “You prove me right,” Cherenkov said. “As good as me? My country was destroyed! I had no little part in its enslavement. Is that what you want for yourself?”

  “That isn’t what I meant. I didn’t know... I didn’t think...”

  “No. Of course not. We old men send you young men out to do our dirty work, and we teach you not to think. Start thinking now! Is there any way to turn the weapons carrier back? Any way to stop this abomination?”

  Griffith shook his head. The interaction dizzied him. He flinched down, cursing, and closed his eyes till his balance steadied.

  “No,” he said. “It’s out of my control. If I were back on Earth they might listen to me. Probably not, though. This is what they want to do. I just helped find a way to do it. If I changed my mind, they’d think you’d found a way to force me.”

 
“And here I believed,” Cherenkov said wryly, “that you were not permitted any weaknesses we might make use of.”

  “I’m not a robot!” Griffith glared at him. “I’m getting married next month! But when I’m... working... I don’t let myself think...”

  “Yes. That is the problem, isn’t it?”

  “That isn’t what I meant, either, and you know it! What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry? I am, for all the good it will do!”

  Cherenkov’s expression was mild. “I didn’t think you could surprise me, Marion, but you have.” He sat on the wall of the balcony and let himself lean back over the ten-meter drop. “Several times over.”

  “Don’t do that,” Griffith said.

  After a few moments, Cherenkov pushed himself forward again. He sat slumped, his hands hanging limp. His heavy, streaky hair shadowed his face.

  “Have you any idea,” he said, “how the leaders of the Sweep will react to Starfarer looming over them, after you have supplied it with nuclear missiles?”

  o0o

  Infinity entered his dim front room and brushed his fingertips through the cornmeal in the small pot by the door. He tossed his blanket toward a chair.

  “Oh!”

  “Florrie!” Infinity hurried forward to take the blanket from her lap where it had fallen. “I didn’t see you, I’m sorry. What are you doing here? What’s the matter?”

  She wore her multilayered black clothes and the shells and beads in the long patches of her hair. Her gray eyes looked very pale within their circles of dark kohl. Infinity wondered if the administrators had really thought they could bully her into wearing regulation clothing.

  “I’ve been trying and trying to get you,” she said.

  “Why didn’t you call me on the direct web? You could have said it was urgent.”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t want to, I thought you might be asleep.”

  He guessed that all her contradictions meant that she, like a lot of others, felt uncomfortable using the direct link.

  “Okay, I’m here now. What’s wrong?” He had seen her a couple of times since the party; she always had people with her, come to talk with her or help her, eat with her or cook for her. Her presence was a tremendous success. At least one thing had been going right, among so much else going wrong.