The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  J.D. sank beside him, immersing herself in the heat. “Are you okay?”

  “Just cold,” he said.

  “Your hands are freezing!” She chafed his chilly fingers, then rose with him to the surface, expelled her breath, and drew in fresh air. She wished she had the artificial lung that had aided her when she lived with the divers. She had left it back in the wilderness. Zev had lent the lung to Chandra, then released it.

  J.D. put her arms around him. He held her tight, his head on her shoulder. They drifted downward again.

  “You rescued me!” Zev said.

  “Nonsense.” She blew a stream of bubbles at him. “You were all of thirty meters from the gulf stream.”

  “I didn’t know it would be so cold,” he said. “Or maybe I wouldn’t have swum all the way around.”

  “It was cold back there, wasn’t it?” J.D. said.

  Zev warmed up quickly.

  “Do you want to rest?” J.D. asked. She felt full of energy, exhilarated with the effort of the swim.

  “No,” he said. He grinned. His eyes were bright. “It’s good to know everything isn’t safe on Starfarer.”

  They surfaced and side-stroked against the warm current, facing each other. J.D. let her fingers caress Zev from collarbone to groin. She kissed him. He had just learned to kiss. She explored his lips and his sharp canine teeth with her warm, soft tongue, then reluctantly drew away.

  “Come on, let’s go meet Victoria.”

  “Do we have to use land manners?” Zev said.

  “No,” J.D. said. “Not here. Not at all.”

  Victoria was a strong but inexperienced swimmer. J.D. had not wanted to criticize her, but she lost a lot of the power of her stroke because she did not know exactly how to place it. She churned valiantly ahead. J.D. was impressed that she had kept swimming through the open water, rather than heading to shore and waiting in the shallows.

  Zev dove. The pressure of the water caressed J.D. as he passed her. He swam close beneath Victoria.

  He startled her: she stopped swimming and trod water, kicking hard. He surfaced. Victoria grinned at him, and then, to J.D.’s surprise, jackknifed and dove beneath them both. Victoria’s back touched J.D.’s knees, her feet. She surfaced, sputtering water. J.D. faced her, astonished, delighted, and Victoria flicked drops of water from her fingertips into J.D.’s face. Zev circled them both, reaching out with quick touches of his long-fingered hand, his sharp-clawed toes.

  J.D.’s body produced energy, heat, adrenaline. She dove, swam between Victoria’s feet, and kicked toward the surface. She slid up behind Victoria, stroking her from her heel up her leg, along her buttocks and her spine. Victoria turned to catch her. Their bodies pressed together.

  They sank beneath the surface. Bubbles escaped from J.D.’s mouth and nose, tickling Victoria’s face.

  Victoria broke away and kicked toward the surface. J.D. and Zev rose beside her.

  “It’s okay,” J.D. said. “We’re right here.”

  “I know,” Victoria said. She was apprehensive, but not panicked. “It’s too deep for me. Let’s go closer to shore.”

  “I wish we had swimming lungs,” J.D. said. But even artificial lungs were not the same as swimming free, like a diver.

  Victoria set out toward a calm, sandy cove, a small sheltered beach, making good speed despite her thrashing swimming stroke. Zev glided up beside her and J.D. swam on her other side, helping draw her along.

  “Swim smooth,” Zev said. He showed her a good surface stroke. “You won’t get tired so fast, and you won’t attract sharks.”

  “Sharks!” She took in a mouthful of water and sputtered it at him. “There aren’t any sharks! The biggest predator is tuna fish.”

  “Maybe you’ll attract tuna fish,” he said.

  J.D. deliberately put some splash into her swimming stroke. “I love tuna fish,” she said. “Is this all I have to do to get one?”

  Exasperated, Zev dove. J.D. felt him swimming below her. Soon she noticed that Victoria was swimming more smoothly.

  The bottom shoaled up beneath them. The water was blue and clear and warm, the bottom bright with coral and fish.

  “It’s so beautiful here,” J.D. said.

  Victoria turned to float face down, her eyes open, gazing into the bright water. J.D. dove beneath her and swam face to face. She reached up. Tentatively, they touched hands. J.D. let herself rise. She kissed Victoria, quick and soft. Zev joined them, brushing his hand up Victoria’s back and down across her small breast, her dark nipple. He dove between them, stroking them both with his body and his hands.

  J.D. spun out and surfaced to breathe. The sea bottom shoaled up again. The coral gave way to soft bright sand.

  They reached a spot where Victoria could stand. The water reached to her shoulders. J.D. came up behind her. The sea buoyed J.D.’s heavy breasts. She put her arms around Victoria. Victoria turned and drew her down to kiss her, deep and long.

  “Is this how divers play?” Victoria whispered, holding her, pressing her body close to J.D.’s.

  “Yes.”

  “Serious play.” She smiled.

  Zev surfaced behind J.D. He slid his hand over J.D.’s shoulder and around to trace the lines of her collarbone. He nibbled the nape of her neck. Victoria placed one hand over his, and slipped her other hand down J.D.’s side, from her waist to her hip and between her thighs. J.D.’s nipples hardened and her heart pounded. The rhythm reached her center, and flowered like a whirlpool, opening.

  o0o

  At her garden gate, Victoria kissed Zev and J.D. Zev’s lips were very warm, J.D.’s cool and soft. Victoria held J.D., letting herself relax for a moment within J.D.’s embrace.

  “See you later, okay?”

  “Soon.”

  She smiled and watched them walk together, hand in hand, along the path to J.D.’s house. Arachne’s holographic image of Nemo’s chamber appeared nearby, and paced them.

  Victoria asked the computer web to show her the alien scene. It had remained static since Nemo’s chrysalis hardened.

  Victoria turned through the opening in the rounded earth wall that bracketed her yard. Carnations covered the slopes, blooming wildly, pink and white and red, filling the air with their spicy fragrance. Crocuses and irises covered the lawn. This was Victoria’s first experience with planting flowers. She felt a surprising sharp shock of pleasure every time she saw them.

  She stepped up on the porch, beneath the roof of shaggy grass that drooped to make the house look like it had eyebrows.

  Victoria felt exhilarated, hungry, and scratchy with dried salt water. It was still very early. She entered her quiet house through the open French doors of her room. Satoshi snored softly in her bed. He had not moved since she left to go swimming. She glanced into Stephen Thomas’s room; it was empty.

  Now she was worried about him. It was not unusual for him to spend all night working in his lab, but no one from the genetics department had seen him since yesterday. Nor was it unusual for him to spend the night with someone else. But it was unusual for him to disappear without a word about where he had gone or who he was with.

  Besides, Feral was the only person Victoria knew of who had attracted his attention recently. Feral’s death had affected him deeply. But he had pulled himself together quickly after Merry’s death. He surely would not fall to pieces now.

  He managed better than I did, when Merry died, she thought. Better than Satoshi did. I don’t know how he did it, but I’m grateful that he could.

  As she headed for the shower, she decided that if he had not come home or left a message by midday, she would ask Arachne where he was. She seldom resorted to having the web chase someone down.

  She walked into the bathroom, slipped in a puddle, and nearly fell. Even as she thought, At least I know Stephen Thomas has been home, she saw the damp towels he had left in a tangle and the muddy clothes he had left in a heap.

  She kicked the dirty laundry aside, annoyed, and glared at the
tracks her younger partner had left on the floor.

  Dammit! she thought. I know you’re upset and distracted and excited and everything else. But that’s no excuse — !

  A line of clayey mud ringed the tub. Now she was mad. She was particularly irritated to have anything spoil this morning.

  And why do I have to scrub the bathroom down twice, she thought, because Stephen Thomas can’t bother to do it once?

  She sprayed out the bottom of the tub so at least she had a clean place to stand.

  She washed her hair and rinsed the salt from her skin. The tub was luxuriously large, with a rim wide enough to sit on, and a heater that would turn the enclosure into a sauna. Victoria wondered if Starfarer would ever have enough cedar trees to allow a few to be used as lumber. Or maybe Crimson’s driftwood technique could grow some cedar boards. A sauna that did not smell like cedar was no sauna at all.

  She had to use the last clean towel; damned if she would try to dry herself off with the cold clammy dirty ones Stephen Thomas had left on the floor. Grumbling, she gathered up all the dirty laundry she could find. Her house had no laundry facilities; the AS housekeeper was supposed to take care of that.

  Satoshi was up now, sitting in the main room with a cup of coffee. He always took a while to get going in the morning. Victoria dumped the laundry by the front door, then turned on the kettle to make a pot of tea. Today the coffee smelled almost good enough to drink. Feral had made good coffee, and he had shown Stephen Thomas and Satoshi how to make it, too.

  “Don’t take a shower,” she said to Satoshi.

  “Huh?” Satoshi sounded sleepy — not surprising, since he had been over at the geography department till two o’clock in the morning. But he was awake enough not to be grumpy.

  “No clean towels.”

  “Again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He promised.”

  “I know.”

  Satoshi sighed. “He promised to give the laundry to the housekeeper. No housekeeper —”

  “I’d split hairs for him, too. Usually. But he did promise. And the tub was filthy.”

  “So much for learning quaint Japanese customs,” Satoshi said. “He forgot the one about showering first and soaking afterwards.” Stephen Thomas was studying the partnership’s ethnic background. Satoshi’s mother was of mostly Japanese ancestry, though that branch of his family had been in Hawaii almost as many generations as Victoria’s family had lived in Canada. The other side of Satoshi’s family, being Hawaiian, had been in Hawaii since people started living there.

  Victoria could not help but chuckle. “He must have skipped that chapter.”

  Satoshi sipped his coffee and Victoria scalded the teapot and filled it with loose tea and boiling water.

  “Let’s try not to fight with him,” Satoshi said. “The last fight was kind of hard on us all.”

  “It was,” Victoria said. “I will try.”

  “You were up early this morning,” Satoshi said.

  “I went swimming with J.D. and Zev,” Victoria said, grateful for the change of subject. “And if I’d known how much fun it’d be, I’d’ve made you get up and come with us.”

  “Swimming at dawn in this season doesn’t sound fun to me. It sounds cold.”

  She brought her teapot over to the table and sat down to wait for the tea to steep.

  “We swam in the gulfstream, and the lagoon. Divers don’t just swim. They play.” She rubbed her foot against his leg, stroking his calf with her instep. “It isn’t quite sex, it’s too quick. But it’s very sexy.”

  “Quick?” he said doubtfully.

  “Quick touches, over a long time.” She touched his shin with her toe, like brushstrokes. He looked at her quizzically. “It’d be fun to go swimming with you and Stephen Thomas and make love in the water.”

  “I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “I tried that once, back home. Wasn’t very successful.”

  “Why not?”

  “Salt water interferes with the natural lubrication. My partner... took exception to continuing.”

  “Worked for me,” she said with a grin.

  He put his foot in her lap. She rubbed it, massaging his sole and stroking her fingertips up the sharp strong tendons. She bent down and nipped his toe gently. Satoshi yelped in surprise.

  “I’m starved!” Victoria said. “Is there anything to eat?”

  “Not much,” Satoshi said. “I made some rice.”

  Victoria had never warmed to the Hawaiian custom of having white rice with practically every meal.

  She jumped up and opened the refrigerator.

  “Don’t —”

  “Wasn’t there a tomato in here someplace?” Victoria said. “I could broil it.”

  She picked it up. It collapsed in her hand.

  She made a sound of disgust.

  All the vegetables were wilted, the leftovers moldy. The housekeeper had kept the kitchen clean, too, and before Feral came to stay with them they had kept very few perishables around. They never had time to cook, and none of them was very good at it. They had ordered most of their meals from the central cafeteria.

  “This is awful,” Victoria said.

  “I know.”

  “Why didn’t you throw it out?”

  “Because I don’t know if the recycler’s coming. There’s a big empty hole in Arachne where the schedule ought to be. I figured the stuff wouldn’t smell too bad if we kept it cold.”

  “Oh,” Victoria said. She put the squishy tomato back in the refrigerator. “We’ve got to do something with it. Do you know how to make a compost heap?”

  “In theory.”

  “Maybe we’d better try it. But I’ve got to have some breakfast. I’m going over to the cafeteria, want to come?”

  “Sure. Shall I get Stephen Thomas?”

  “Do you know where he is? All I’ve seen of him since yesterday is his muddy tracks in the bathtub.”

  Satoshi hesitated. “He’s sleeping in Feral’s room.”

  “In Feral’s room? Is somebody with him? Why didn’t he use his own room?”

  “He’s alone.”

  Victoria stared at him in disbelief.

  She strode down the hallway to the spare room. The guest room. The room that should have been Merry’s, but never was. She could not think of it as Feral’s. He had been a guest, an acquaintance, a passing fancy for Stephen Thomas. Not a member of the family, not even a friend. Not yet.

  I don’t make friends in two weeks, Victoria thought. Even Stephen Thomas doesn’t make friends in two weeks.

  She opened the door without knocking, went to the window and pulled the curtains open, and in the flood of light sat on her heels at the edge of the futon.

  When she saw Stephen Thomas she drew away sharply, lost her balance, and sprawled backward. She caught herself and knelt beside him.

  He lay with one hand over his face, his fingers spread, the translucent webs spread between them. The webs had grown all the way to the second knuckle on each finger. Even his hands had grown. The fine gold pelt surrounded his arm and shoulder like the auras he claimed to see. He had always been so fair: now his skin was deep amber, far darker than his gold hair.

  “Stephen Thomas!”

  He drew his hand down from his face, opened his eyes, and looked at her blankly. Concern overcame her moment’s incoherent, absurd relief that the color of his eyes had not changed. His blank look scared her.

  The changing’s gone wrong, she thought in terror. He’s changed —

  She loved him and she found him exasperating, often both at the same time. If the change were to obliterate his personality...

  He blinked, and he was suddenly Stephen Thomas again.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “What time is it?”

  “It’s about eight.” She answered the answerable question first. A flare of sheer relief heated her irritation. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Trying to sleep,” he said, and spread his strange, ch
anged, webbed hand over his face again.

  “Wake up!” The fear he had given her only made her angrier.

  “All right, I’m awake.”

  Satoshi appeared in the doorway, worried.

  “Why are you sleeping in here? Why not in your room? Why not with us? Where have you been?”

  “Take it easy,” Satoshi said. After a moment Victoria realized he was talking to her, not to Stephen Thomas.

  “I don’t much feel like taking it easy right this second,” she said to Satoshi. “I want to know —”

  “Which question should I answer first?” Stephen Thomas said.

  “I don’t care!”

  “I’m sleeping here because I wanted to. I never did, you know... or maybe you don’t know.”

  “It didn’t make any difference to me if you did or didn’t,” Victoria said, “when Feral was alive. But now...”

  “Where I’ve been is in the wild cylinder. In a thunderstorm —”

  “A thunderstorm!” That was impossible.

  “Digging a grave.”

  “A grave...?” Victoria said. “You can’t mean — You took his body, all by yourself?”

  Victoria’s distress was as strong as her anger. She could not bear to think of Stephen Thomas all alone with his grief, burying his friend, and she wanted to have been there, so she too could say goodbye to Feral.

  “What about the rest of us?” she cried. “What about his friends, what about J.D.?”

  “Gerald said forget about a funeral,” Stephen Thomas said. “He wanted Feral just to lie there forever in the morgue! I couldn’t stand it. Besides, nobody else thought about him.”

  “Stop it, Stephen Thomas, that isn’t fair,” Satoshi said.

  “But nobody did anything. Nobody else had even opened his files to see what Feral wanted, if something happened.”

  He pushed himself up on his elbows. The gold glow covered his chest and belly. His face and his neck remained bare. Victoria wondered where his necklace was; she had seldom seen him without it. At the center of his collarbone, slightly thicker, slightly darker hair formed a thin line that streaked down his body, stopped just above his navel and started against just below it, and disappeared beneath the bedclothes.