The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “I want to watch this,” Victoria said.

  Androgeos had the irritating habit of replying to questions with variations of “Don’t worry about that,” shrugging off detailed explanation. The team was not to worry about interchange of disease, the problem had been solved millennia before. They were not to be curious about other alien beings. The alien humans’ ship moved; Victoria must not be concerned with its mechanics. The questions of how and where their craft would dock must not trouble the alien contact team.

  J.D. wondered if Europa might be more forthcoming if she were alone. It seemed to J.D. that she had to work awfully hard to present a united front with Androgeos. On the other hand, she might simply prefer to let her younger colleague supply the negatives.

  The short-range craft hovered over a nearby access hatch.

  The ship changed.

  Its skin quivered and reformed, extending, projecting, then everting to form a tunnel. It reminded J.D. of the ASes that crawled around the surface of Starfarer, but it was much more changeable, more mobile, more versatile. The craft regenerated itself into a new form and a new function.

  “We are ready,” Androgeos said, speaking through the Chi’s audio system. “Whenever you are prepared to invite us in.”

  o0o

  J.D. propelled herself out of the Chi, following Victoria into the waiting room. Zev and Satoshi and Stephen Thomas were right behind her.

  The faculty and staff of Starfarer filled the waiting room. It looked to J.D. as if everyone on board had come to see and meet the alien humans, and perhaps everyone had. Gerald Hemminge drifted at the front of the crowd, but he looked terrible, with bags under his eyes and his face still irritated from shaving.

  No one spoke.

  I never thought I’d see my colleagues awed to silence, J.D. thought.

  She was glad to be back among them. She glanced around, finding strength in the somber faces.

  Maybe, she thought, somehow, together, we can persuade the alien humans to help us fight exile.

  J.D. noticed the presence of most of her colleagues, and the absence of a few. Alzena had not come; that distressed J.D. without surprising her. Iphigenie was nowhere to be seen; perhaps the sail needed her attention. To her astonishment, J.D. could not find Kolya anywhere.

  She glanced around again, then closed her eyes for a second. She had been looking for Feral, missing him in particular, seeking him out, expecting him to be in the midst of everything.

  Victoria floated to the auxiliary airlock.

  “Victoria —” Gerald said.

  The door hissed, equalizing the last few millimeters of pressure.

  “Yes, Gerald?”

  Kolya Cherenkov floated into the waiting room. J.D. smiled at him, glad to see him, not so glad to see Griffith, who as usual tagged along.

  “Victoria, wait,” Gerald said. “I must tell you —”

  The airlock door opened.

  Europa and Androgeos entered the starship. Their commune of meerkats paddled through the air between them.

  The alien humans moved confidently, though their clothing was not quite appropriate in zero g. The knife-pleated skirt Androgeos wore hiked high above his knees. J.D. could not help but notice — though she pretended not to — that his body was the same rich cinnamon-brown all over.

  Absently, he pushed his kilt to cover himself.

  “Europa, Androgeos,” Victoria said, “I’d like to introduce Gerald Hemminge, our —”

  “Acting chancellor,” Gerald said. “It is a great honor.”

  Acting chancellor? J.D. thought. Did Blades resign? Did they have the meeting about him already? What happened, while we were gone?

  She glanced toward Professor Thanthavong, hoping for a word of explanation. Thanthavong pressed her lips together. J.D. got the hint to wait.

  Victoria looked rather startled, Satoshi bemused, and Stephen Thomas...

  Stephen Thomas was nowhere to be seen.

  Gerald introduced the alien humans to the people in the waiting room. Everyone wanted to meet, if not exactly alien beings, people who had themselves met alien beings.

  Europa accepted the courtesies with grace, Androgeos impatiently, now and then pushing down his skirt. The fabric of Europa’s skirt remained in place despite the effects of zero g. The metallic silver strands in her hair moved in weightlessness, writhing lifelike of their own accord.

  Two young meerkats, curious but shy, hid behind Europa’s vest, peering out occasionally, then disappearing. A third clung to Androgeos’s bare ankle and occasionally emitted a sharp squeal. The others paddled around. Zev was right. They looked not at all like otters. They maintained their pacing gait in zero g, kicking first with the feet on one side, then with the feet on the other. One meerkat hovered alone in a corner, watching, supine, trying to keep its weightless paws crossed over its belly.

  Androgeos turned to Victoria. “Now show us —”

  “ — Your ship, if that is allowed.” Europa interrupted her younger colleague, in a tone meant to take the sting out of his peremptory demand.

  “Certainly,” Gerald Hemminge replied.

  Gerald gracefully extricated Europa from the charge of the alien contact team. Androgeos hung back, but Europa gestured to him. He followed her; Gerald led them toward the exit.

  Victoria hovered next to J.D.

  “Do you have any idea what’s going on?” she said.

  “None.”

  “‘Acting’ chancellor?” Satoshi said.

  Avvaiyar and Thanthavong joined them.

  “You look confused, my friends,” Thanthavong said.

  She told them what had happened while they were gone.

  “Good lord,” Victoria said. “Couldn’t you have given us a word of warning?”

  “I’m sorry. Gerald objected to broadcasting our troubles to the whole system. To the alien humans. For once, I agreed with him.”

  “Androgeos has an opinion of us that’s about as low as it can go. As for Europa...” She shrugged. “Who knows? But a little matter of a lynch mob probably wouldn’t make any difference.”

  “It wasn’t a lynch mob!” Avvaiyar said. “Anyway, no one got hurt.”

  “And Blades is locked out of the web by any route,” Thanthavong said. “Stephen Thomas will be glad to hear that... Where is he?”

  Victoria looked around. “I have no idea,” she said. “He must have followed Gerald.”

  “An excellent idea,” Thanthavong said. “I believe I will do the same.”

  For the next hour, J.D. and Zev and Victoria and Satoshi and most of the other members of the expedition trailed Gerald Hemminge as he showed the starship to the alien humans. He took very well to being acting chancellor.

  Zev trudged beside J.D. He was barefoot, and he was not used to walking long distances. He started to limp.

  This is silly, J.D. thought. We can’t see Europa and Androgeos. We can’t even hear what they’re saying except through the web link.

  J.D. felt herself fading into the crowd.

  Is this what happens to explorers? she wondered. After we’ve done our exploring, are we supposed to stay out of the way and not mind what happens next?

  Infinity and Esther were walking together a little way ahead. J.D. caught up to them.

  “Infinity — ?”

  He acknowledged her. “Hi.”

  “Feral Korzybski was a friend of mine,” J.D. said. “Thank you. For stopping Blades. For...”

  Infinity looked into her eyes, then away.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I liked Feral, too.”

  J.D. could think of nothing else to say.

  The meerkats scurried past them, going the opposite direction, sniffing and climbing, now and then stopping to dig furiously and send small fountains of dirt spraying out behind them.

  Infinity grimaced. “Alzena wouldn’t like to see those critters on board. She’d think weasels were worse than dogs and cats combined.”

  “Maybe we should tell her,” J.D. sa
id. Telling Alzena that someone had smuggled predators on board might even draw her from her depression.

  “It couldn’t make things any worse for her,” Infinity said.

  J.D. fell back to rejoin Zev. Footsore, he slowed down.

  Gerald wore an LTM, recording and broadcasting everything. Most people, J.D. included, found it awkward to receive a direct audiovisual transmission from Arachne and simultaneously function in the real world. It would make more sense to sit down on a pleasant hillside, in the weird, intense light from Sirius A, and let Arachne create an image of what was happening up ahead.

  J.D. was about to do exactly that when Victoria joined her.

  “Is this how it was supposed to work?” J.D. asked.

  “We had in mind that first meetings would be... a bit more formal,” Victoria said. “And stranger.”

  J.D. chuckled wryly.

  “J.D., I’ve just had an odd report from Arachne. Would you take a look at something for me?”

  They stepped off the side of the path with Satoshi and Zev. Arachne reproduced Victoria’s findings. At first they looked unexceptional: a lifeless, cratered asteroid. Unusually spherical for a rock its size... J.D. let her eyelids flutter, went into a communications fugue, and took in the asteroid’s physical measurements. Astonished, she opened her eyes again. Victoria was smiling.

  “What is it? Who are they?”

  “Another alien ship,” Satoshi said. “An artificial construction. The same anomalously high gravity.”

  “But no ecosphere. No atmosphere.”

  “Not on the surface,” Satoshi said. “But a lot of outgassing. Something’s there. Underground.”

  The planetoid Victoria had discovered, circling Sirius A not far distant, looked to the eye like an ordinary bit of leftover planet, nothing astounding. No free-flowing water. No obvious life.

  To other methods than the eye, though, it had enough unusual states to attract Arachne’s attention. Its gravity, its interior structure, its odd orbit, its solitude.

  “The question now,” Victoria said, “is whether we should ask our guests about it. They must know it’s there — did they think we wouldn’t find it?”

  “They might have thought we were preoccupied with them.” J.D. hesitated before she replied to Victoria’s question. “A couple of days ago, I’d have said, Yes, ask them. Don’t keep secrets, assume they aren’t keeping any secrets. But today...”

  “You don’t think we should ask them?”

  “I do think we should ask them. Because we haven’t got anything to lose.”

  o0o

  Stephen Thomas left the explorer, left the gathering, left the axis of Starfarer behind. He had no interest at all in spending more time with Europa and Androgeos. Someone else could show them around Starfarer; someone else could smile and be polite. They wanted to stop the deep space expedition as short and as dead as if the nuclear missile had detonated when it hit. They were out for whatever they could get. He wanted no more part of them.

  Returning to gravity, he trudged down the hill. Always before, he had welcomed the return of the pull of the Earth, the sensation of his body moving with the force, against it, conquering it.

  Now it did not matter. Gravity, zero g, it was all the same to Stephen Thomas.

  He strode across Starfarer, stopping at the edge of the garden of Chancellor Blades’ house.

  Three silver slugs lay on the grass, crushing the hyacinths scattered through it. The house looked like a giant wasps’ next, thrown to the ground and broken. Irregular layers of rock foam, ragged and unplanned and overlapping, covered all but one of its openings, and much of the hillside as well. Underground, the slugs were surrounding the house with a layer of foam. When they finished, Blades would be completely and finally cut off. The secret passages out of the administration building were being filled in; the tough rock foam would prevent Blades’s digging out into the open access tunnels.

  A rain cloud passed near-overhead, thick and dark. The downpour caught Stephen Thomas, drenching him. The air turned cold and electric. Chill rain dripped down his face, trickled through his hair, and soaked his shirt. He shivered.

  He expected to be furious, thoughtless, driven by rage. But he found himself watching himself as if from a distance, doing what he was doing because he had decided, a long time ago, that it should be done.

  But Professor Thanthavong was right. This was a task that should be done coldly. Stephen Thomas felt cold physically, intellectually, emotionally. Even revenge was chilled out of him. He could perform this task, or not. It made no difference. He kept going.

  He reached out to Arachne, testing the strands. They quivered, sending vibrations to a point that no longer existed. The vibrations of his message passed completely through the location of Blades’s disintegrating neural node, and returned to him unchanged and unacknowledged. Arachne had observed the proof Stephen Thomas recorded, and made its decision, and created immunities against the chancellor. Without a long course of desensitization, the system would always recognize him, and never again let him pass.

  That relieved Stephen Thomas, but did not satisfy him. He crossed the sodden lawn. The soft cool grass, the bright flowers, sprinkled droplets of water over his feet.

  As he moved closer, the silver slugs stirred. Their blind, sensitive bodies clenched and rippled, flexing, reorienting. Stephen Thomas spoke to Arachne. Though the system ignored his orders to the slugs, he paid them no more attention. They were slow, and not very bright.

  One of the slugs blocked his path. He tried to get around it, but it moved to stop him. He was faster than they were, but they were so big, and so close to the open doorway, that they could blockade it with their bulk. Frustrated, Stephen Thomas retreated.

  “I want to talk to you!” he shouted.

  Blades did not reply.

  The slugs clustered before the door, relaxing from their defense, sprawling over the grass. They obscured the bottom half of the open doorway, but the room beyond was as dark and silent as if it were deserted.

  Stephen Thomas prowled across the lawn, back and forth, wondering if it were all a sham, if Blades had escaped, and the slugs guarded the empty shell of a house; or if they had quietly and efficiently killed him already, and walled his body up in rock foam or dissolved it into slime. Everyone claimed the artificials could not contravene their programming and deliberately injure a person, but what proof did anyone have of that?

  He strained to see beyond the silver slugs and into the cavern of the ruined house.

  A shadow moved: a shadow against shadows. Wraithlike, Blades paused in the half-light.

  Stephen Thomas sprinted toward the doorway.

  He ran across the lawn and leaped up the side of the leading slug. He moved so fast it could not rise up to stop him.

  Its body clenched.

  His feet slid on its slick silver-moiré sides. He scrabbled and clutched and scrambled to a precarious balance.

  As he jumped toward the empty doorway, the silver slug twitched its skin, stealing his balance and adding momentum to his leap.

  The slug threw Stephen Thomas to the ground. He hit hard. The fall knocked the breath from his body.

  Shit, the damn thing’s malfunctioning, Stephen Thomas thought.

  Stephen Thomas struggled for air, trying to rise. One of the slugs loomed over him, and a more sinister possibility occurred to him.

  Blades planned a secret route into Arachne, he thought. Just like he planned a secret route out of the administration building. He’s sent the slug to kill me!

  The silver slug arched its great body and curled down on top of him. He shouted for help with his voice and through Arachne, but too late. Calmly, but inexorably, the slug enveloped him. It pinned him to the ground. It cut off his web link, the daylight, and the air.

  o0o

  Androgeos and Europa submitted to the tour of Starfarer with magnanimity, or condescension.

  “A very pretty arrangement,” Europa said, standing on a
hilltop from which both ends of the cylinder could be seen. The wetlands lay beneath a soft light fog, and the sea was silver gray.

  The meerkats suddenly rose and stared, poised, ready to disappear. Halfway down the hillside, the herd of miniature horses grazed in a luxurious patch of grass. The appaloosa stallion flung up his head, snorted, squealed, and bullied the mares and foals into a gallop down the slope. The meerkats dropped to all fours and vanished behind a rock.

  “How charming,” Europa said.

  “There’s quite a range of animal life in the wild cylinder,” Gerald said. “Would you like to visit it? We could be there in an hour or so.”

  J.D. had not yet had time to visit it herself, since she had been on board such a short time and so much had happened.

  I’d much rather have that hour with Europa, she thought, alone, sitting and talking over coffee.

  “Would you like to see it?” Gerald said again.

  “No,” Europa said. “Thank you, but no. I think we had better finish here.”

  “Very well,” Gerald said stiffly. “The path follows the river.”

  Europa and Androgeos were preparing to depart. They were bored, or they were so dismayed by their own kind that they could not bear to spend a few hours, out of their infinite life spans, with ordinary human beings. Or... since Starfarer’s presence would cause the cosmic string to withdraw, they were afraid of being stranded here in the Sirius system, where no one had, so thoughtfully, seeded and tended a sterile world until it bloomed.

  J.D. had no more ideas on how to persuade them to remain, and perhaps she should not even try. She followed the tour.

  When she passed her own house, she had an inspiration. Whether it was a good inspiration or a foolish one she could not quite decide. She ran inside and rummaged through a net bag of belongings that she had not yet had time to put away.

  When she rejoined Zev on the path, she carried a couple of small packages.

  Zev trudged on, his head down, sweat plastering his fine gold hair to his body.

  “I’m tired, J.D.,” he said.

  “I know,” J.D. said. “We’ll stop soon, I think.”

  The path plunged down into the canyon cut for the river. Zev left the trail, waded into the water, and splashed forward, floating.