The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  It was his favorite shirt. Victoria had brought it back with her on her last trip to Earth. He should have packed it away with his other silk shirts, to save for special occasions. But he could not bear to give it up so soon.

  “Dammit, dammit, dammit,” he muttered.

  He snatched the shirt from the floor, wrung soap and water out of his shorts, and slapped both pieces of clothing over a towel rack to dry. By the time Starfarer got back to Earth — if Starfarer got back to Earth — he would probably be grateful for anything to wear. Whether it was stained and ruined or not.

  He dropped his towel on the floor and got into the shower.

  Admit it, he said to himself as water streamed down his body. You aren’t mad about the shirt. Yes, I am, said another part of himself. All right. But what you’re really mad about is that J.D. got to sleep with Feral and you didn’t.

  It was so obvious. When J.D. heard that Feral had recorded their conversations, she had blushed from the curve of her breasts to the roots of her hair. Though she was unusually shy about discussing personal subjects, she was transparent, emotionally and physically.

  Stephen Thomas felt completely opaque, even to himself. What difference did it make? Why shouldn’t they get together? They had spent the whole trip from Earth to Starfarer on the same transport. Feral was alone and J.D. had thought she might never see Zev again. They had spent a lot of time together, tracking down the system crash. If they had found some pleasure in each other, he could only be happy for them both.

  Would you regret Feral’s death any more, he asked himself, if you and he had made love? Would you regret it less?

  He answered himself, in his weird monologous dialogue: If I regretted Feral’s death any more, I think I’d go nuts. It doesn’t make sense to be mad at J.D., to be jealous of her.

  As he had when Feral died, when Merry died, he pulled himself away from his anger and his grief. Both were pointless, and he could not afford to let himself fall apart.

  o0o

  Kolya was miserable. Coffee did nothing to ease nicotine withdrawal; neither did beer. Both made him need to pee more often. So now he was sweating an ill-smelling sweat and having to pee all the time. He had drunk enough beer to disorient himself, to make his balance chancy. He had drunk enough coffee to make him jumpy. He had thrown away the usual easy relaxation and cheer of Gerald Hemminge’s best English stout.

  He lay folded up in the window seat, the curtains pulled aside, a chill breeze blowing through the open windows. He sought the cold so he would have a sensation to concentrate on besides the need to smoke a cigarette.

  Someone knocked on his door. He frowned. He had not heard anyone approach. He was not that drunk...

  Another knock. Kolya stayed silent, stayed still. Soon they would go away.

  The door opened a crack. Kolya tensed.

  This was ridiculous. There were no spies for the Mideast Sweep on board Starfarer. If there were, they would have sought him out months ago. Either he would be dead, a victim of the Sweep’s death sentence, or he would have killed them in self-defense.

  And it would be doubly ridiculous to be stalked by the Sweep during the only time he had been really drunk in the last twenty years.

  “Kolya?”

  Kolya’s body sagged with relief, his reaction magnified by intoxication. Then, angry, he pushed himself to his feet and jerked the door open.

  Griffith started. For an instant he looked as dangerous as he was.

  “I might have known,” Kolya said.

  Griffith was the only person on campus foolish enough and self-confident enough to enter Kolya’s house, or rude enough to enter anyone’s house, uninvited.

  “What is it?” Kolya snarled.

  Taken aback, Griffith hesitated.

  “Do you want something?”

  “I can’t figure you out,” Griffith said.

  “That suits me well,” Kolya said.

  “One time I see you, you’re friendly. The next time you threaten to kill me. Then you apologize. Then you bite my head off.”

  “And you suppose,” Kolya said irritably, “that your actions have nothing to do with my reactions?”

  “I was worried about you. You look like shit, since you ran out of cigarettes.”

  “Thank you, Marion. I’m grateful for your opinion.”

  Griffith glowered at him, as he always did when Kolya used his given name. Kolya sometimes could not resist, though he knew he should have more self-discipline. Today, though, getting a rise out of Griffith gave him no satisfaction.

  Kolya sighed and stepped back from the door.

  “You may as well come in.” He did not particularly want to talk to Griffith. But he had neither the energy to make him leave nor the strength to remain standing.

  He folded himself back into the window seat. He had never gotten around to getting a chair, for he seldom had visitors. Griffith sat crosslegged on the floor without comment or complaint.

  Griffith had changed his clothes. When he came on board he wore the attire of a Government Accountability Office middle manager, slacks and shirt and jacket. Now that he had given up pretending to be a GAO accountant, he wore Starfarer regulation pants, cotton canvas in a rather military green with an EarthSpace logo on the thigh, and a similar sweatshirt. If he was trying to fit in, he had, for once, guessed wrong. No one on campus wore regulation clothes without altering them.

  The strangest thing about Griffith’s clothes was that they were grubby. Griffith looked rumpled, not his usual neat and unnoticeable self. Kolya tried to recall seeing him unkempt before, even after an hour in a survival pouch.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Camping,” Griffith said. “In the wild cylinder. I needed... to get away for a while. To survive on my own.”

  An overnight on the wild side, which — as far as Kolya knew — hosted no large predators and few pests, did not sound very challenging. But, then, Griffith came from the city.

  Kolya’s lips twitched up in an involuntary smile that Griffith saw before Kolya could repress it.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Marion Griffith, guerrilla accountant.”

  Kolya thought he had gone too far, as he often did with Griffith. Sometimes he went too far deliberately; this time, he had spoken without thinking because he was past rational thought. He shivered, and wished again for a cigarette.

  Griffith opened his mouth to retort, then stopped. He shrugged, and his lips quirked in a smile.

  “More or less accurate,” he said.

  He always had maintained that he really was an accountant. But he usually did not admit that he was anything more.

  “Do you want a cup of tea or something?” Griffith said. “When’s the last time you ate?”

  “Who knows? It isn’t tea I want. It’s nicotine.” He shivered, imagining one long drag on a cigarette. Then he could not stop shivering.

  Griffith went to the kitchen nook, heated water, made two cups of strong tea, brought them back, and insisted that Kolya drink some. It did help. He still felt dreadful, but his shivering stopped.

  “What is your father’s name?” Kolya asked.

  “Peter,” Griffith replied. Then his usual suspicion kicked in. “Why?”

  “Your patronymic is Petrovich. The same as mine.”

  “I guess. So?”

  “Your given name doesn’t form a diminutive that you’d like any better than you like Marion. Masha, perhaps.”

  “You’re right. I don’t like it any better.”

  “It’s a custom for friends to call each other by their patronymics. I’m going to call you Petrovich.”

  “What should I call you?”

  “Petrovich.”

  “Uh... okay.”

  No one had called Kolya “Petrovich” in many years. In decades. He had persuaded his colleagues on Starfarer to call him Kolya, or Nikolai Petrovich, instead of General Cherenkov. But he had never before developed a relationship of the right sort, respe
ct and friendship combined, to ask anyone to call him simply Petrovich.

  “And I am all right, Petrovich,” Kolya said. “Thank you for your worry. Every minute, I think, I cannot survive this, and every other minute I remind myself I have no choice.”

  “What if you did?”

  “But I don’t! It’s pointless to speculate.”

  “But what if?”

  Kolya slid down in the window seat till he was lying flat on his back, with his feet up against the wall. His thigh muscles twitched and trembled. He flung one arm over his face. The unpleasant cold sweat soaked into his sleeve.

  “I would probably kill for a bit of tobacco.”

  “You don’t have to. Here.”

  Kolya looked out from beneath his arm. Griffith held a fistful of large crumpled green-brown leaves.

  “What — !”

  “If I remember right, and if Arachne’s refs are right, that’s what this is.”

  Kolya scrambled to his feet. He grabbed the leaves, rudely, crushed them under his nose, breathed deeply. They smelled like tobacco. Green, wet tobacco. The smell of it made his whole body thrill.

  “Alzena said there was no such thing.”

  “Maybe Alzena wasn’t the most reliable witness in the world. Or maybe,” he said quickly, “somebody else planted it. Or maybe I’m wrong and Arachne’s wrong and it isn’t —”

  “It is.”

  Now that Kolya had it, he had no idea what to do with it. He peeled off a shred of the leaf, put it in his mouth, and chewed. The green tobacco released the worst taste he had ever experienced, sour, bitter, potent.

  Saliva spurted from every salivary gland, as if he were about to vomit. His mouth filled with revolting liquid. He gagged. He pushed past Griffith, hurried out onto his porch, and spat violently over the rail. The green blob of chewed tobacco plopped in the dirt.

  He hung over the porch rail, panting and sweating. His mouth tasted vile.

  “God, I’m sorry,” Griffith said.

  “Don’t be,” Kolya said.

  It astonished him, how much better he felt, and how quickly, as if the nicotine had diffused straight into his brain. He fingered the leathery leaf, and pulled off another shred of tobacco.

  o0o

  Victoria entered the physics building gratefully, glad of the cool constant underground temperature. She wiped the sweat off her face with her soaked sleeve. She felt dirty and sticky. Her shoes were muddy from the garden; so were her pants, from the knees down. She flung herself gratefully into the deep, soft chair.

  The maintenance work on Starfarer was important, of course, but she had to get some of her own work done. If she could spend some concentrated time on the algorithm, she knew she could speed it up. Starfarer was less than a day away from transition, and she still could not tell where they were going.

  I keep reassuring people about it, she thought, but I’m nervous, too. What if Europa suspected we might follow, what if she led us somewhere she can survive, but we can’t? Would she do that? Are we such a threat that she’d be willing to wipe us out?

  Starfarer ought to be more resistant than Europa’s ship to difficult conditions. Starfarer enclosed its ecosystem. But Victoria had no way of knowing what hidden abilities Europa’s strange ship might have, and Infinity had brought home to her the essential fragility of Starfarer.

  No, she thought. Fragility’s the wrong word. But resilience has limits.

  She gave herself a moment to appreciate the tight-knit, symmetrical form of the three-dimensional representation of her multi-dimensional algorithm. It hovered, complex and colorful, forming itself in the corner of her office.

  It stopped.

  Victoria jumped up, her sore shoulders and sweaty clothes forgotten. She queried Arachne, expecting to be told No, be patient, it just looks finished, it’s still working, inside where you can’t see.

  Arachne presented her with the algorithm’s solutions.

  Starfarer was about to set out for 61 Cygni.

  Victoria whistled softly. 61 Cygni was a long, long way away: completely on the other side of Earth from Tau Ceti. And yet the transition duration had a lower maximum than the range from Tau Ceti to Sirius.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” she said softly.

  She checked the spectral signature. 61 Cygni A was a K5 star on the main sequence, not too different from the sun. She hoped that would reassure Infinity; she hoped the change toward terrestrial conditions would stabilize Starfarer’s environment. She put a message into Arachne for everyone to see.

  She hurried next door to J.D.’s office and found her colleague curled up in the deep fabric-sculpture chair, writing in her notebook. The holographic image of Nemo’s chamber hovered over her desk.

  “J.D.! The algorithm’s done!”

  “It is? Victoria, that’s wonderful!”

  J.D. tried to jump up out of the chair, but it was so low and so soft that it made her struggle. She made a sound of disgust. J.D. hated her office furnishings. They were left over from her predecessor in the alien contact department, and she had had no opportunity to replace them.

  Victoria hugged J.D., joyful. J.D. embraced her gently, and let her go with regret.

  Arachne presented a star map, and a copy of the algorithm.

  “It’s beautiful,” J.D. said. “Beautiful results. It’s different from the others.”

  “They’re all different,” Victoria said. “But... you’re right. The other solutions had some visual similarities. This one’s completely changed.”

  “61 Cygni,” J.D. said softly. “Will we find our neighbors?”

  “Could be.”

  They knew they had neighbors: Europa had referred to them. Unfortunately, she had not been willing to reveal anything about them, including where they lived or how to make contact with them.

  J.D. sat on the edge of her desk and stared at the solution, the star chart, the time range.

  “What is it?” Victoria asked.

  “Nemo.”

  Victoria sat beside her. “There’s still time. We don’t hit transition till tomorrow afternoon. Nemo knows what we’re doing. If he — she — ?”

  “I don’t think our pronouns fit Nemo,” J.D. said.

  “One wouldn’t have started metamorphosis and invited you back if one knew there wasn’t going to be time.”

  “I hope not. Only what if Nemo didn’t have any choice about when it began? We pretend we know all about our own physiology. But we still can’t predict exactly when somebody will be born... or die.”

  “Nemo will follow us through transition. We can meet on the other side.”

  “If Nemo’s still alive.” J.D. gestured to the time range. “Using Civilization’s algorithm, the trip will take a lot longer.”

  Victoria hesitated. “Do you want me to give...”

  “I... “ J.D. leaned back, gripping the edge of the desk. “You have to make that decision.”

  They sat together in silence. The algorithm was an example of natural beauty, like a waterfall, a mountain view.

  Victoria laid her hand over J.D.’s.

  “Yesterday was fun,” she said softly.

  “Yes.”

  J.D. brought Victoria’s hand to her lips. She kissed her palm, her fingertips.

  “Come stay overnight with me and Zev,” she said. “Would you?”

  “I’d like that,” Victoria said. “Satoshi and Stephen Thomas and I have some things to work out, first. But soon.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  Victoria shrugged, and smiled as well as she could manage. “Changing into a diver is more disorienting than Stephen Thomas expected. Not just for him.”

  o0o

  Stephen Thomas started dinner. He was a lousy cook, but he needed to pretend everything was normal. He boiled water and stirred in the rice. At that point, both his imagination and the household’s supplies failed him.

  He could go over to the central cafeteria and get bento boxes... except if he did, he would have
to face Florrie Brown.

  Outside, Victoria and Satoshi crossed the garden, laughing. Stephen Thomas opened the door.

  “Stephen Thomas! The algorithm’s finished!”

  Victoria fairly glowed with the success of her work. She showed off the algorithm’s new pattern.

  Stephen Thomas was glad to see her happy, after so much stress and despair, after this morning’s fiasco in the ocean. Satoshi acted more content, too, though Stephen Thomas felt an inexplicable distance separating him from his partner.

  Inexplicable? he thought. How would you like it, if Satoshi’s skin started peeling off?

  He could not answer the question. He wanted to think he would take the changes in stride, if they were happening to Satoshi, or if something comparable were happening to Victoria. But he distressed himself, with his battered toes, his raw penis, the swollen flesh redesigning itself to hold his genitals within his body. At the moment he did not want anyone to look at him, much less touch him. How could he be sure he would accept it any better if it were happening to one of his partners?

  Victoria came up behind him, slid her hands around his waist, and leaned her cheek against his shoulder. His body balanced on a narrow line between pleasure and pain. One step farther would take Stephen Thomas wholly into one or the other, but he could not tell which. He wanted to fling himself around and take her in his arms and never let go. But he was afraid. Afraid of the pain, afraid of losing someone else he loved. He put his hands over hers, stilled her.

  “I talked to Zev,” he said. “When the changes are done...” He felt awkward, discussing what had happened. He had never felt awkward discussing sex. He had never hurt anyone during sex, either. Not until today. “I won’t hurt you again,” he said.

  “It didn’t exactly hurt,” Victoria said.

  He laughed, harsh and skeptical.

  “A little,” she admitted. “I was more surprised —”

  “It won’t happen again,” he said, with more intensity than he intended. He pushed her hands away. She stepped back.

  “People weren’t built to screw in the ocean,” Satoshi said.

  “Human people,” Stephen Thomas said, his voice sharp. “It’ll work after —”

  “Maybe for you. Where does that leave me?”