The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

“How do you know we’re safe from him?”

  J.D. regarded Jenny with sympathy.

  “I spend a lot of time in the web. I’m enhancing my link. If there’s danger, I’m vulnerable. I think the risk is small enough to take.”

  Jenny stared at J.D. for several seconds; it felt like a very long time. She turned completely around, raking all her colleagues with her gaze. She faced J.D. again, having seen that even the people who had joined her mob — maybe those people in particular — would not side with her now. She could produce no consensus for the chancellor’s guilt, or for his punishment.

  “I think you’re wrong,” she said. “And I think you’ll find it out the next time we go into transition. I’m not touching the web. If we miss the insertion point, that’s too damned bad.” She straightened her shoulders and flung her head back; the iridescent beads on the ends of her braids clinked together loudly, decisively.

  She strode from the amphitheater.

  As people rose to leave, relieved to think the meeting was over, Infinity stood up and spoke his name. No one, except Esther and Kolya, heard him.

  He raised his voice. “Infinity Kenjiro Yanagihara y Mendoza.”

  Intense meetings drained everyone. His colleagues, realizing he wanted the gathering to continue, sank back in their seats with resignation.

  “There’s some other things we have to talk about,” he said.

  “Without doubt they can wait,” Gerald asked. “A few days — ? The other side of transition, at least, when we might know more about our situation?”

  “I don’t think so,” Infinity said. “We have some problems. The first is the weather.”

  “But the weather has been exceptionally fair,” Gerald said.

  “It’s too fair,” Infinity said. “It’s too hot for the season. First everything got blasted during the last meeting —”

  “But that was an anomaly,” Gerald said. “A malfunction of the web while it was regrowing —”

  “Or sabotage,” Stephen Thomas said. “Let Infinity finish.”

  Gerald subsided.

  “And now this heat wave. Arachne’s trying to fix it. Maybe it’ll even work out for the best. We don’t have the supplies we expected to bring. Maybe this will give us a longer growing season. But... Starfarer wasn’t designed to spend time around a star like Sirius. It was designed to visit sun-type stars.” Infinity glanced over at Victoria. “Next time through transition... where will we end up?”

  Uncharacteristically, Victoria hesitated.

  “I’m not entirely sure yet,” she said.

  “Good lord!” Gerald exclaimed.

  The amphitheater reverberated with tension like a bell.

  Collecting herself, Victoria rose. “Calm down, eh? It’s not exactly a secret.” Her tone was annoyed. “The algorithm’s working in plain sight. Anybody can look at the results.”

  Infinity waited, rather than vanishing into a communications fugue like some of the folks around him.

  “We assumed Europa headed for a system that’s full of cosmic string,” Victoria said. “Pretty safe assumption, eh? She wouldn’t want to go somewhere she couldn’t leave again. The algorithm’s first solution proves it. The second solution indicates there’ll be a star nearby.”

  “And that’s all you know?” Senator Derjaguin leaned toward her, angrily. “You don’t know where we’re going, how far, how long it will take?”

  “The third solution will tell us where,” Victoria said. “How long — that’s always an indefinite number. A range.”

  “As for getting back —” Avvaiyar rose at Victoria’s side. “That’s the point of being sure we come out in a full system — a place with more cosmic string.”

  “When will we have all the answers?” Gerald asked.

  “I don’t know,” Victoria said. “Along about the next millennium?”

  Gerald took a moment to realize he was being twitted.

  “The answers to your bloody algorithm,” he snarled.

  “I have no idea,” Victoria said. “Before we hit transition... I think.”

  “So we’re stuck,” Esther said under her breath.

  She was right. Infinity saw the situation before Victoria described it. They could pull back and wait for solutions to the current algorithm, to be sure they were heading for a suitable star. They could test other transition points till they found one that would lead them to a sun-type star. But no one could say how long that would take. Arachne was solving the current problem as fast as it could. Giving the computer another could only slow everything down.

  “And if we change course,” Victoria said, “not only will we be here longer, inflicting Sirius on our ecosystem, but we’ll lose any chance we might have of catching up to Europa.” She glanced over at Infinity. “I didn’t realize the environment was so delicate,” she said. “I wish you’d —”

  “I didn’t know, either!” Infinity said. “It’s Alzena who knows all this stuff.”

  “Why in heaven’s name did you let Europa take her?” Gerald said to J.D.

  “I was afraid Alzena would kill herself otherwise,” J.D. said.

  As much as Infinity wished the starship still had an environmental designer, an ecologist, on board, he had to agree with J.D. Europa had taken Alzena with her to save her life.

  “Alzena is gone,” Victoria said, “and I think J.D. was right to let her go. Maybe we can persuade her to come back —”

  “But we have to find Europa to find Alzena,” Gerald said sarcastically.

  “Yes.”

  “How convenient.”

  “It’s what we agreed to do anyway!”

  “Not I,” Gerald said. “I blocked the decision — and you chose to break your own rules.”

  Victoria grabbed her hair with both hands and cried out with frustration.

  “Gerald — !”

  Professor Thanthavong rose.

  The amphitheater fell silent.

  “Miensaem Thanthavong.” She waited through the customary pause. “I cede my time to Infinity.”

  Surprised, Infinity collected himself and continued.

  “The bees are dying,” he said.

  A few people laughed. A few understood the problem. Most looked perplexed by his comment.

  “They’re important,” he said. “Directly, to the plants. Indirectly, they represent the ecosystem’s health. We’ll probably be okay if we’re headed for a star that’s like the sun,” Infinity said. “If we’re not...” He shrugged unhappily.

  “All we can do is wait and see,” Thanthavong said, as if that ended it.

  “I’m sorry, that still isn’t all. We’ve got to plan some harvests and some planting. There’s a bunch of stuff ripe. We should salvage the spinach. We could pick some of the oranges.”

  “Volunteers?” Thanthavong said.

  One of Stephen Thomas’s grad students jumped to her feet and tossed her long straight red-gold hair back over her shoulder.

  “I can just see Lehua picking oranges,” Esther said softly. “Probably break a fingernail.”

  “There’s never anything in the cafeteria. The ASes are supposed to cook and maintain the gardens. Not to mention do the housework. So — where are they?” Lehua turned toward Gerald, her dark eyes angry. “When are you letting them loose again?”

  Esther jumped to her feet. “Esther Klein.” She barely paused. “Doesn’t anybody around here even read their bulletins?”

  Infinity sat down, grateful that Esther had the energy to take on the problem of the ASes. Infinity hated speaking in public. He watched his lover with absolute awe. Soon she had faculty members apologizing and embarrassed and anxious to help her fix the artificials, to harvest, even to dig in the dirt that worried Gerald so much. Gerald took on the job — the desk job — of coordination.

  “And Lehua’s right about the cafeteria,” Esther said. “The prepared stuff is pretty much gone. Does anybody know how to cook?”

  In the front circle, Florrie Brown rose to her f
eet. “I’ll need help, of course,” she said.

  “Florrie, are you sure — ?”

  “I told you I used to live in a commune,” she said, as prickly as always.

  She also told us it flopped miserably, Infinity thought. But maybe — I hope — not because of the cooking.

  o0o

  J.D. lugged a bag of oranges to the storage box. The strap cut into her aching shoulders. She eased the bag to the ground, wiped the sweat from her face, and tried to stretch the cramps from the middle of her back. It was hot out in the orchard. The heat intensified the cloying sweetness of the orange blossoms. J.D. had never lived around orange trees before; strange to see a tree with fruit and blossoms in the same season. And the ripe oranges were not orange, but still green. According to Arachne all that was normal, except that everything had happened too soon, too early in the spring, and the trees had produced an abnormal number of flowers.

  At a time when the earth should be damp with spring rain, the ground was dry. Too few bees buzzed in the fragrant orange blossoms. Now that Infinity had mentioned the bees, J.D. kept seeing their small striped yellow and black corpses on the ground.

  J.D. poured the oranges carefully into the storage box. She allowed herself a brief glance at the transmission from Nemo’s chamber.

  Nothing had changed.

  Satoshi joined her, watched the transmission with her for a moment, then upended his sling full of oranges into the storage box. J.D. grabbed the sling’s bottom and tipped out the last few pieces of fruit.

  “I’m glad to have something to do,” J.D. said. “Something physical. To keep me from worrying.” She gestured toward the display.

  “I keep remembering what Stephen Thomas saw,” Satoshi said.

  “Yes... I wish we had an LTM down at the pool... I wonder if those creatures are metamorphosing, too?”

  “Or if they’re eating each other up.”

  They climbed ladders on opposite sides of the same tree. The display shrank to the size of an orange and followed. J.D. moved cautiously, but she felt much better, much steadier, than yesterday. The link was still growing, but her body had accommodated itself to the change.

  All in all, though, she thought, I’d rather be swimming with Zev and Victoria...

  Her thoughts kept returning to the morning; she found herself staring into space thinking about the flow of Zev’s hair against her hand, the taste of Victoria’s lips.

  Enough woolgathering! she told herself sternly.

  Leaves tickled J.D.’s face. She stood in the midst of the overpowering, intoxicating orange smell, blossoms and fruit, ripe and overripe and fermented.

  The ladder was not designed to be used outdoors. It wobbled. Everything about this harvesting party was makeshift, from ladders borrowed from household tool storage to the bedsheet carrying bags.

  For the first hour or so, everyone had regarded the work as an adventure, an entertaining physical break in days — lives — devoted to intellectual pursuits. After two hours, it was no fun anymore.

  People used to do this for a living, J.D. thought. All day, every day. She had never considered what that meant. If she had thought about it, she would have imagined the experience wrong without knowing it. Now she knew she would get it wrong; she had only a taste of the work.

  On the other side of a heavily laden branch, Satoshi worked steadily. He picked each orange with a sharp snap of his wrist.

  “How —” J.D. started to ask about Stephen Thomas, but changed her mind. “How are you doing?”

  Satoshi glanced up. His thoughts, too, had been somewhere else.

  “Victoria and I decided to have our regular potluck tonight,” he said. “Try to get back to normal for a change.” He laughed, quick and sharp. “Whatever normal is, these days. We haven’t had one since... since before you arrived, I guess. Would you like to come? Zev too, of course.”

  “I’d like to,” J.D. said. “What should I bring?”

  Satoshi grinned.

  “Oranges,” he said. “What else?”

  Shouting erupted from the next row of trees. J.D. turned — she grabbed a branch to keep from overbalancing. An argument — ? A fight?

  Zev ran past, laughing and shouting, pursued by Chandra. In the gold and green orchard, drenched in white light, they were like fauns. Zev slipped on a rotting orange, caught himself as he fell, turned, scooped up the fermenting pulp and moldy rind, and flung it at Chandra. It caught her full on the chest, spattering her with slimy orange goo.

  Chandra stopped short. J.D. had no idea what she would do: she never had any idea what Chandra would do.

  Chandra burst out laughing and barreled toward Zev, scooping up another fallen orange and throwing it at him point blank. He was already running; the orange spattered across his back, staining his sleeveless shirt.

  In a moment, the harvesting party had exploded into a full-fledged food fight, fallen oranges zinging past and hitting people, trees, the ground, with a liquid sploosh. Everybody joined in, the older adults as well as the younger people, everyone but J.D. J.D. observed it from her perch on the ladder high in the tree.

  Zev definitely had the advantage, shoveling up the worst of the squashed oranges in his webbed hands, flinging them through the air as if he were playing jai alai.

  He looked up at her, laughing.

  “Come down!”

  She laughed, too. “Don’t hold your breath!”

  He stopped, and thought about that, an idea that never would have occurred to him back home. In the sea, most of the time, he did hold his breath.

  “I mean — look out!”

  Chandra snuck up behind him and stuffed a handful of slimy orange pulp down the back of his shirt. He yelped and jumped away, spun around and chased after her. She had a good head start.

  She almost ran into Gerald Hemminge. He stopped; she stopped; Zev stopped behind her. They looked like a couple of guilty schoolchildren, and Gerald looked like an irritated schoolmarm.

  “I thought I could trust you to apply yourselves,” he said. “I’m glad I came out to supervise.”

  “For heaven’s sakes, relax,” J.D. said. “Nobody was hurting anything.”

  “We hardly have resources to waste!” Gerald said.

  Zev hefted a squashed, reeking orange. J.D. flinched, expecting him to fling it at the acting chancellor. Instead, Zev extended his hand.

  “I didn’t mean to waste anything,” he said. “I didn’t throw this one — you can have it if you want.”

  “How extremely amusing,” Gerald said coldly.

  J.D. giggled, and had to grab a tree branch to keep from falling. Satoshi started to laugh. Soon everyone was laughing except Zev. He watched Gerald with a completely straight face. J.D. suspected he got the joke perfectly well, but was still pulling Gerald’s leg.

  Gerald got the joke, and did not appreciate it.

  “I see,” Gerald said when the laughter finally died down. “It’s terribly funny that the harvest will rot on the trees and we’ll all starve. Terribly funny. I see.” He glared at J.D., having picked her as the ringleader. “I don’t know why I waste my time.”

  Infinity Mendez came into the clearing where the storage boxes lay. He glanced into one and frowned slightly. J.D. figured he thought the harvesters were pathetic, taking all afternoon to accomplish so little.

  “That’s probably enough,” he said.

  “On the contrary,” Gerald said. “I expect the entire orchard to be picked by tomorrow at the latest.”

  “Why?” Infinity said.

  Gerald stared at Infinity. So did everyone else.

  “They store better on the trees.” Infinity hesitated. “You never did this before, did you?”

  “Certainly not,” Gerald said.

  “You can pick oranges as you need them,” Infinity said. “As long as we aren’t planning another frost.”

  “You said they needed to be picked!” Gerald said.

  “I said we needed to plan harvests so we’d have
something to eat.”

  “Thank you for being so articulate,” Gerald said. He turned his back on Infinity and the harvesting crew and stalked away into the trees.

  “Oh, dear,” J.D. said.

  Satoshi sighed. “I’ll talk to him.”

  Satoshi grabbed a branch, swung to the ground, and followed Gerald out of the grove.

  J.D. glanced toward Infinity. He looked embarrassed. She had thought Satoshi meant to talk to him, not Gerald.

  She climbed down the ladder.

  “I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly to Infinity.

  “You didn’t do anything,” he muttered.

  “I didn’t listen very well, I think. I remember what you said, and it wasn’t ‘Let’s go pick all the oranges.’“

  “I put a note in his mailbox,” Infinity said. “Scheduling and stuff... I guess he had too much else to do, I should have talked to him.”

  J.D. thought it more likely that Gerald had either ignored Infinity’s message or deliberately discounted it. But she was not about to say so to Infinity.

  o0o

  Satoshi knew Gerald heard him, but the acting chancellor stalked through the trees, slapping every branch that got in his way.

  “Gerald!”

  Satoshi caught up to him.

  “Come on,” Satoshi said. “This isn’t doing anybody any good.”

  Gerald plowed on, a few more strides, then stopped and glared at Satoshi.

  “No, apparently nothing I do does anybody any good.”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  “It is what everybody else means.”

  “Gerald...” Satoshi tried to think of something soothing to say, but the truth was that a lot of people found Gerald abrasive. When he supported the proposal to decommission Starfarer, he won himself no friends; when Arachne crashed, he made enemies. Satoshi believed him when he said he had nothing to do with it, but other members of the expedition did not.

  “What are you trying to do?” Satoshi asked. “It’s too late to stop the expedition.”

  “I’m trying to make sure we all survive it!” Gerald exclaimed. He caught his error and looked away. “All the rest of us, I mean, of course.” He met Satoshi gaze again. “I’m certain — certain — no one was meant to be killed in the system crash.”