The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  Stephen Thomas thought, this does not sound like unrequited love anymore. I wonder...?

  “Listen, Mitch —” Stephen Thomas said. “Yesterday. When Fox was here. It all came right out of thin air.”

  “I know. She told me. And at your house last night, she just wanted to talk to somebody. She sure picked the wrong person.” Mitch chuckled. “Boy, is she mad at Florrie.”

  “That’s probably the only thing Fox and I agree on right now,” Stephen Thomas said. It hurt that Florrie had junked the connection they had made — that he thought they had made — so readily.

  “She’s pretty embarrassed, too. I think she’s afraid everybody will take your side.”

  “There aren’t any sides! Shit, people aren’t taking sides! Are they?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe a little bit.”

  “Thank you for your incisive analysis. Is Fox okay? Are you?”

  “Yeah. She was upset last night, but...” He shrugged, and grinned, awkward, pleased with himself. “I just sort of patted her till she fell asleep. I sat up with her all night. It was kind of...”

  “Romantic?”

  Mitch started to answer. He stopped. He laughed with a high, delighted, nasal bark.

  “It was cold, is what it was, and along around dawn it got kind of damp. How come it’s so cold at night and so hot during the day? I kept thinking I should wake her up and get her home. And then I wondered how come she could sleep and I couldn’t.”

  “Maybe you should’ve waked her up long enough to ask to share her jacket.” Stephen Thomas thought, It’s still unrequited, but at least this is a little more promising for Mitch than it was before.

  “I just hope...” Mitch’s voice trailed off.

  “That you won’t get pneumonia?”

  Mitch laughed again. “That from now on, she won’t forget my name every time she sees me.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about that anymore,” Stephen Thomas said.

  o0o

  Victoria jammed her shovel deep in the heavy, clayey dirt. Starfarer had not been in existence long enough to develop much good topsoil. Spring rain saturated the ground, and the abnormal heat of the day super-saturated the air with humidity. She turned over a spade full of dirt and broke it up into clumps.

  She had promised to spend the morning working in one of the garden plots. Esther could give no estimate of how long it would take the field tiller to regrow its brain. For the last half hour, Gerald and Avvaiyar had been arguing the possibility of building a plow.

  “There’s nothing simpler than building a plow,” Gerald said. “Then the only difficulty is figuring out how to hitch it to one of the silver slugs.”

  Victoria leaned on her shovel. “Infinity said we should quit calling them in for anything that wasn’t an emergency.”

  “I see,” Gerald said. “Perhaps I should turn over coordination to our Mr. Mendez.”

  Victoria thought that might be a good idea, but Gerald was in such a foul mood, and so obviously irritated at Infinity, that she decided not to say so.

  “I think we should catch some of the horses and get them to earn their keep for a change,” Avvaiyar said.

  “They’re pets,” Victoria said. “Could they even pull a plow?”

  “Why not? We could hitch them up in series like a dog team.”

  “I think you’d have better luck with a dog team.”

  “If we had any dogs.”

  “Clearly the silver slugs are the best choice,” Gerald said. “Unless we propose to pull the plow ourselves.”

  “Forget it!” Victoria snapped. She jammed the shovel into the ground.

  I’ll dig up every square meter of Starfarer with a shovel, Victoria thought angrily. I’ll catch fish to put in with the corn seeds. I’ll stand up to my knees in water to set out rice plants. But I will not pull a plow!

  o0o

  Infinity headed for an access tunnel to the surface of Starfarer. He needed to get outside for a while. At least out in space he would be safe from more of Gerald Hemminge’s cold messages, like the one Arachne handed over this morning:

  “Do not ever contradict my orders again.”

  So much for government by consensus.

  The nearest hatch lay beyond a patch of temperate forest. The shade of the fast-growing trees and the green-gold coolness made Infinity happy.

  A small creature squawked in terror. It struggled and fluttered, pummeling the ground.

  Infinity sprinted toward the sound. Last year’s fallen leaves deadened the thud of his boots.

  He stopped.

  A bird lay on the ground, a sparrow, its brown feathers blending in against the forest colors. Infinity knelt and touched it. The heat of its body radiated through its soft ruffled feathers, but it was dead. He turned it over. Its blood dripped to the ground, bright red, wet.

  Whatever had killed it had disappeared. It left no footprints, only disturbed ground.

  Infinity picked up the bird and took it off the path. He left it where Starfarer’s scavengers would find it.

  But what had killed it? Falcons and a pair of eagles lived on the wild side, but Alzena had not, as far as he knew, introduced predators into Starfarer’s campus cylinder.

  Maybe Alzena had let loose some small carnivore. She might even have reported it in the daily news. If she had, Arachne’s crash had lost it.

  Curious, Infinity followed the scuffed-up leaves. He wondered if he was seeing a real trail, or a path his eyes and mind were making up. The dead leaves glistened, black from winter, damp and rotting into the soil. Here and there the leaves rumpled, like a carpet pushed into folds by a scampering child.

  Each step released the fertile, musty smell of leaf mould. The young forest basked in the hot spring sun, green and gold, the new leaves nearly full. A life cycle began above Infinity’s head and circled beneath his feet.

  Alzena had planned the ecosystem carefully. First she had prepared the soil and the free-living microbes. Then she had established the plants and the pollinating insects, the invertebrates, the scavengers. Then she added the smaller herbivores, the songbirds, the bats. When each branch of the environmental network made its connections, she added to its complexity.

  She might have released a mammalian predator, a badger, a ferret, a fox. The time was right. Otherwise the forest’s life cycle would overbalance. Had she had time to complete the network? Infinity did not know.

  He reached the edge of the forest. The trees gave way to a meadow. Infinity blinked in the sudden brightness of hot sun. The stream’s reflection dazzled him; water brushed past him with a musical sigh.

  A piercing whistle cut the air.

  Infinity barely caught the quick motion at the top of a tumble of stones. The black tail of a small furry animal vanished behind the rocks.

  Infinity sprinted for the bank. He clambered up the slope, pebbles sliding beneath his feet.

  When he reached the top, only the stream’s humming disturbed the silence. A dragonfly hovered, vibrated the air, vanished, and reappeared five meters away as if it had teleported.

  Infinity sank down, lying flat on the slope. The stones pressed the heat through his jeans and into his skin. He was glad of his leather vest.

  For a long time, nothing moved.

  Whatever it was, I lost it, Infinity thought. It ran off into the bushes, or along the stream bank out of sight... And maybe it didn’t have anything to do with the dead bird. Maybe it was just minding its own business when I jumped out and scared it. But what was it? The tail as wrong for a squirrel or a chipmunk, but it wasn’t naked enough for a rat. I hope. We’re in trouble if the campus has rats.

  The rocks beneath him had not had time to weather. They were sharp and raw.

  Enough of this great native hunter business, he thought. I’ll get Arachne to keep watch on the spot...

  Just before he moved, a creature scampered to the highest point of the bank. It moved with a smooth canny pacing gait. It ros
e on its hind legs, its back to him, counterbalanced by its tail. It gazed upward, watching for predators. Paws crossed on its belly, it turned to survey the land.

  It saw Infinity. They stared at each other for a split second, each as surprised as the other, the creature peering with shiny black eyes through a black mask of fur.

  It cried out in warning; it dropped to all fours and fled, pacing quick-footed down the slope and between some rocks.

  It was one of Europa’s meerkats.

  “Damn!” Infinity said softly. He rose from the sharp-edged stones, no longer trying to hide.

  He supposed he should trap it, or even shoot it. It had no business here. It did not fit this environment. It was a creature of heat and deserts.

  Why’d Europa leave it here? he wondered. Or did she leave it? Maybe she just forgot how many she brought with her. Maybe this one got lost.

  The arrival and departure of the alien humans had been abrupt and confused enough for the disappearance of one small critter to attract no notice.

  I wish we had noticed, Infinity thought. If Alzena knew a weasel was running lose in her ecosystem, I bet she’d have snapped out of her funk. I bet she’d’ve stayed.

  In response to Infinity’s request, Arachne set a watch on the mouth of the den, and began a simulation of what effect the meerkat could have. Infinity decided not to do anything until the simulation produced results, not even to tell anyone he had seen the creature. Someone might panic and come out hunting it. Infinity felt sorry for the meerkat, stranded in an inhospitable environment, a communal being left all alone.

  o0o

  J.D. descended into the basement of the administration building. Her hands and her hair reeked with fragrant citrus oil. She had spent the morning helping sort and store yesterday’s oversupply of oranges. Ordinarily J.D. liked the smell of oranges. After two days of it, though, it was the last thing she wanted to smell.

  That was what she thought until she entered the basement.

  She nearly gagged. The stench of rotting AS brains filled the cavernous room, intensified rather than attenuated by the flow of air pushing past her. Esther must have turned the ventilation up to maximum, and still the sick-sweet odor overwhelmed everything. Including the scent of oranges.

  A few ASes stood on one side of the room, hooked up to nutrient feeders. A larger group stood in ranks, carapaces open but empty. The majority of the mobile artificials remained in a large ragged crowd that stretched into the darkness.

  Esther glanced up from an open AS.

  “Hi, J.D. What’s up?”

  “Can I help?” She took a long breath through her mouth.

  Esther smiled wryly. “It is pretty awful, isn’t it? We’re trying to get the bad part done before it gets worse. Still game?”

  “I guess so.”

  Esther took her to the clump of ASes where her volunteers were working.

  “It’s not that complicated,” she said. “Just nasty.”

  Stephen Thomas looked up from the AS that had spattered him with grayish slime.

  “And if you need advice,” he said, “I consider myself an expert. Hours of technical experience.”

  Esther chuckled. She opened the carapace of the housekeeper in front of them and cleaned out the broken brain. J.D. watched, fighting nausea.

  “This is disgusting,” J.D. said. “And I have a strong stomach. It doesn’t bother me to eat raw clams. It didn’t even bother me to eat sea urchins or bechedemer.”

  “Not to mention those things with the legs,” Esther said.

  “Those were pretty good, honestly,” J.D. said. “I don’t know about this, though.”

  Stephen Thomas shuddered theatrically. “Eating doesn’t come into the equation,” he said.

  J.D. grimaced. “Sorry. I should have thought how that would sound.”

  Esther finished cleaning the carapace. “Then you just wash the remains down the waste digester —” She stopped. “I wish that wasn’t what it was called,” she said.

  They all laughed, if shakily. J.D. mastered her nausea, took a long breath, let it out, and snapped open the seal on the next AS. Spores puffed up from a drying mass of mold mycelia, another strand of smell added to the tapestry: dry, musty, lingering.

  “I’ll do my best,” J.D. said. She sneezed.

  Esther patted her arm and went away. J.D. picked up the vacuum nozzle and set to work. The vacuum whispered as soft as the mold spores, sucking out the dead tissue.

  Stephen Thomas straightened up and stretched his back. The swimming webs on his hands had completed themselves. His skin had darkened past gold to bronze.

  “How are you?” she asked. She felt awkward making small talk with him, especially after last night.

  “Running on empty,” he said.

  “Oh... I thought the party broke up right after...”

  “We got up kind of early,” he said. He hesitated, then continued with the first real excitement she had heard in his voice since Feral died. “I found some stuff of Feral’s. Some stuff in Arachne, I mean.”

  “His stories on the space program?” J.D. said. “Yes. I read them —” Thinking of Feral made her sad. She had liked him. He had been both sweet-natured and intense. She had not even minded, too much, when he teased her about her attraction to Stephen Thomas. She had not even been jealous when she realized it was Feral’s attraction Stephen Thomas would respond to.

  Not jealous, but a little envious, she thought wistfully. I have to admit I was envious.

  “Not just his stories. He had another project going. He collected a lot of research. J.D. — Feral logged his life.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not like Chandra. He wasn’t built for that. But he kept up a running dialogue with the computer web. Notes on what he was doing, his observations, his conversations —”

  J.D. remembered some of the things she and Feral had discussed. She felt herself blushing, the heat rising up her cheeks, uncontrollable. Her skin was so fair that when she blushed it was painfully obvious.

  If I were turning into a diver, she thought, I wouldn’t have this problem anymore.

  “What’s the matter?” Stephen Thomas asked.

  “Nothing!” she said, too quickly. “I mean... Feral and I talked about some personal subjects. I hadn’t intended... it wouldn’t be interesting to anyone else. I’m sure he didn’t bother to record that,” she said hopefully.

  “He was a journalist,” Stephen Thomas said. “You should have known he was taking notes on everything.”

  “I suppose...” She felt embarrassed. Feral’s notes could reveal her with naked transparency to Stephen Thomas. Not that her embarrassment would make much difference in the scheme of the world. Stephen Thomas was used to handling people he wasn’t interested in. Last night proved that. But she would prefer not to put herself in the same situation as Fox.

  “You better know this, too,” Stephen Thomas said. His manner had changed. He sounded cold. “If I can, I’m going to edit what he collected and publish it for him.”

  Both his words and his tone hurt her. She could think of no explanation for his sudden change of attitude. Unless, of course, he had already seen her conversations with Feral and was giving her fair warning, both of his publishing plans and of his lack of interest in her.

  “I’m sure he’d like that,” J.D. said, forcing her voice to stay steady.

  Stephen Thomas replied belligerently. “But?”

  “But nothing. He loved you. He’d trust you to handle his work.”

  Stephen Thomas glared at her, inexplicably. He was angry and yet his eyes were full of tears.

  He threw down the cleaning tools, left the AS half enervated, and stalked out of the basement without another word to anyone.

  It would be pointless to follow him; obviously he did not want to talk to her. And if she begged him not to embarrass her in public, that would be even worse. So what if everybody knew she thought he was the most beautiful human being she had ever met?
She was had a lot of company in that thought, and she had avoided making a fool of herself to him directly.

  I would have thought he’d just laugh, she thought. Say to himself, Oh, fuck, another one. Or even say to me, J.D., what the hell made you think I’d even be interested? And maybe I’d say, I didn’t think you’d be interested, that’s why I never said anything to you. If you were a gentleman, you never would have said anything to me.

  She stamped her foot angrily at herself, pushing away her anxiety.

  She hoped Stephen Thomas would cool off; she hoped he would eventually be able to be friends with her again. She hoped he was not so irritated that this would damage her friendship with his whole family, with Victoria.

  o0o

  Stephen Thomas ran home through the hot afternoon.

  He entered the garden, soaked with sweat, reeking of rotten AS brains. He went straight to the bathroom, stripped, and flung his clothes into the sink. While the sink filled with warm water and soap, he grabbed a clean towel off the shelf and wrapped it around his hips.

  Ordinarily he would not bother, but he could not stand to look at himself. When the change was over, delicate thin skin would cover his penis. Not quite a mucous membrane, but skin at least as sensitive as his lips. So far, though, the skin still peeled like sunburn, and his penis and scrotum had begun to withdraw into his body. He felt squeezed.

  He did not yet have voluntary control of his genitals. As Zev said, he would have to learn. They were new muscles, or muscles he never knew he had. They ached with tension.

  The soft cotton towel rubbed the fine gold hair on his hip, pushing it upward. He pulled off the towel and smoothed his pelt. He slid the towel downward before wrapping it again, so his fur would stay sleek. Now he understood why Zev wore as few clothes as possible.

  He washed his t-shirt, swished it around in the sink, squeezed out the water, and held it up.

  The stains from the AS bioelectronic guts marred the turquoise silk.

  “God dammit!” he shouted. The shirt was ruined. He flung it across the bathroom. It slapped against the glass tiles and lay in a puddle.