The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  As far as Infinity could tell, letting the snow fall till the clouds exhausted themselves would cause the least damage.

  He was glad the planting had only just started, that the seeds had not had time to germinate. Some of the crops would survive.

  They’ll survive if this doesn’t happen again later in the spring, he thought. Arachne’s got to get a chance to stabilize the weather.

  He climbed out of the hatch into the snow.

  The oranges, Infinity thought. The damned oranges... If they freeze, Gerald will love saying “I told you so.”

  The snow fell hard and fast. Infinity was only twenty meters from his front door, but he would have been lost without Arachne to guide him home.

  He stumbled into his house and closed the door quickly. Esther slept, her snoring a soft buzz.The lights rose.

  “Dim!” he whispered.

  Esther sat up in bed, blinking in the twilight.

  “Hi,” she said sleepily. “What happened? You’re all wet.”

  “It’s snowing.”

  He started to shiver. Esther jumped up and hurried to him, pulling the blankets with her. She took off his sodden shirt. He fumbled at the buttons of his jeans. The cold had numbed his fingers, though he had been outside only a few minutes. Esther pushed his hands away, helped him finish undressing, and wrapped the blanket around them both.

  “You’re so cold!” She rubbed his back, and warmed his hands between his body and her own. “Come to bed and get warm.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “We need to call out everybody, and call in all the slugs —”

  He paused long enough to tell Arachne to sound the alarm.

  “We have to go around and knock the snow off the plants. It’s too heavy, it’ll break the branches. The citrus trees... if we open the access tunnels, and force warm air out around them, maybe we can keep them from freezing.”

  Esther slumped against him, resting her forehead against his chest. She had spent another whole day in the basement of the administration building.

  “Open all the access tunnels,” she said. “What about the sun tubes? Spotlight the orange grove.”

  “I wish,” he said.

  He showed her Arachne’s report. Esther took in the risk at one glance and whistled softly. Warming a single spot with the sun tubes in this weather would not start a monsoon. It would start a tornado.

  “Damn.” She sighed. “I’ve been lying in bed for the last hour, I kept falling asleep and waking up and thinking how cold it was and how nice it would be when you got home and got in beside me.”

  His hands felt warm, now, nestled against her belly. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. His long hair, still wet, swung forward and touched her cheek. A drop of icy water flicked from the end of one lock and dripped on her face.

  “When this is done, we can stay in bed all day.”

  Esther giggled.

  “What?”

  “I was griping this afternoon that I had to work inside.” She quoted an aphorism favored by transport pilots: “Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.”

  A few minutes later, dressed in dry clothes — the warmest he had; Esther wearing one of his flannel shirts under her jacket — they hurried out into the deepening snow. Arachne guided them to the access tunnel. The snow formed a curtain, as featureless and impenetrable as full darkness. The flakes turned sharp and hard and dry. If they froze, it might be better to risk rain and floods.

  Infinity just did not know.

  As they passed through his garden, he wondered, briefly, if his cactus would survive.

  o0o

  Infinity’s message spread through Starfarer’s night, asking people for help and alerting them to the danger of the snow’s beauty.

  Stephen Thomas followed a medium-sized silver slug into a young apple orchard. The trees bent beneath the snow. Infinity had recommended knocking away the snow if the tree leaned over, if it looked like it might break.

  The slug burrowed through to the ground and pushed itself forward, ploughing the heavy wet snow to either side. Stephen Thomas walked in the cleared path, grateful that he did not have to break trail. He was wearing his warmest clothes, but his warmest clothes did not amount to much.

  At least the snow had stopped falling.

  Following the slug at a respectful distance, Stephen Thomas used its trail to get to the saplings. If he pulled the outer branches gently, he could knock off the snow without standing beneath an avalanche. He could not tell if the apple blossom buds were damaged.

  Being so near the silver slug made Stephen Thomas wary. He knew, intellectually, that this one had no reason to turn on him. The ones who had pinned him down had been protecting Chancellor Blades. But if — if — the slug did attack, Professor Thanthavong might not come along this time to release him.

  In the distance, a tree branch snapped with a violent crack. Its covering of snow cascaded down to land with a feathery thud.

  As Stephen Thomas worked in the orchard, he let his attention drift back into Feral’s files. He still avoided the notes on J.D. Stephen Thomas liked J.D.; he did not want to spoil his affection for her by feeding his stupid jealousy.

  Feral would still be alive if any one of half a dozen events had occurred only a little differently. If he had been involved in the web more shallowly. If he had heard J.D.’s warning, or Victoria’s. If Stephen Thomas had not so easily restored Feral’s canceled guest access to Arachne.

  Feral had logged the incident in which he had been thrown from the web. It was such an unusual thing to happen that Stephen Thomas set it aside for later, when he could give it his full attention.

  The slug crawled through the orchard and headed across a meadow. Stephen Thomas was tempted to call it back, to get it to break a trail through the drooping pear trees a few fields over. Surely Infinity had enough slugs to uncover the access hatches among the orange trees?

  Stephen Thomas stamped his cold feet. Infinity had recommended that no one stay out in the snow too long. Stephen Thomas decided to go inside for a while and get warm. When he came back out, maybe he could borrow another silver slug.

  The whole world was black and white, silver and gray, motionless. Stephen Thomas stretched. The clouds had snowed themselves out; the sky had cleared except for an icy cloud blanket around the sun tube.

  Obliquely overhead, on the far side of Starfarer’s interior, black streams meandered through the white landscape. A pinprick of darkness appeared where someone knocked the snowy cover from a sapling.

  o0o

  Zev slogged from one buried sapling to another. J.D.’s transmission of Nemo’s planetoid followed him.

  Back home, when his family returned from their migration, the sea water was cold with winter. Summer would not touch the sea for a month yet. But he had never felt so cold in the sea as he did now. He was wearing his suit, and a sweater of J.D.’s, but still he shivered.

  At the moment, Zev envied Victoria, even though he knew she was risking her life. She had gone out to the sailhouse to help Jenny Dupre align Starfarer for transition, doing the same task Feral had been doing when he died. Zev understood that Victoria was in danger. Risk was always more exciting and more fun than discomfort.

  His hands were nearly numb. He had no gloves. He had wrapped his hands in clothing, and he carried a bundle of bamboo with which to knock the dense, heavy covering of snow from the collapsing branches. But if he unwrapped his fingers, his swimming webs would be gray with cold.

  He banged the bamboo against a drooping, bending evergreen shrub. The sticks hit with a quiet crinkle of wood on ice. The wet snow beneath the new ice let loose with a soft, sliding thud. The straining evergreen shrub exploded upward. Zev did not move fast enough when the boughs sprang free. Snow and ice erupted like a geyser, showering his chest and face and hair.

  He brushed away the melting clumps and the frozen shards. His wet hair slicked down cold around his ears; ice water dribbled down the back of his neck and un
der his collar.

  Zev found himself staring at a hummock of snow, not only wondering if it was bending or leaning or merely, safely, crouching, but wondering if it were a plant. He was so cold, and none of this was any fun. But almost everyone was outdoors tramping through the snow, making sure the animals had shelter, trying to save young trees from breaking beneath their freezing shrouds.

  He worked his way toward Satoshi, on the other side of a line of trees. The snow collapsed and slid, avalanching as Satoshi knocked it free.

  Zev joined him and worked alongside him.

  “I’m very cold, Satoshi. You look cold too.”

  “I’m all right,” Satoshi said, but his teeth chattered.

  “I think we should go inside and warm up.”

  “In a while,” Satoshi said stubbornly. “You go ahead. I want to do a little more.”

  Zev followed, unwilling to leave Satoshi out alone in the snow. He wondered if hypothermia was less serious on land than in the sea. He doubted it, and he thought Satoshi was right on the edge.

  They walked through a stand of young lilac bushes, knocking away the icy blanket to release the bright green leaves, the heavy purple and white blossoms, and the disorienting fragrance of lilacs in the snow.

  “Infinity said not to stay out too long.” Zev did not like to argue with someone older than himself. Among the divers, it was very bad manners. But this was different. Hypothermia caused confusion in the wisest, most experienced person.

  “We haven’t been out that long,” Satoshi said.

  “You’re shivering.”

  “Do you want all the plants to die?” Satoshi spoke more sharply than Zev had ever heard him.

  “No, but I don’t want you to die either.”

  “I’m not going to die.”

  “Do you hear something?” Zev stopped. Before Satoshi could answer, Zev plunged between two bushes that showered him with snow and wilted lilac flowerets.

  In a clearing in the middle of the lilac grove, Chandra stood naked, arms spread wide, gazing up into the clouded sky. The chattering of her teeth had attracted Zev’s attention. Her clothes lay in a sodden pile, ice crystals forming on the folds.

  “Chandra!”

  She lowered her head and looked at him with her strange, blank-gray eyes, but she did not answer him. Her fingers were blue with cold. Swollen nerve clusters twisted and bulged all over her body and her face and her hands.

  “How long have you been out here?”

  Satoshi followed Zev into the clearing.

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  Chandra tried to reply to Zev, but her teeth chattered so hard she could not speak.

  “I think she’s collecting an experience,” Zev said. “But I think we should get her inside.”

  “What about the trees?” Satoshi looked around at all the lilacs bent over and crushed in the snow. “I feel sorry for the little trees.”

  o0o

  Stephen Thomas heard the flutter and snort of horsy breath, and the muffled beat of hooves. The herd of miniature horses broke from the edge of the forest. They plunged through the meadow, spraying snow, lithe animal shapes, brown and chestnut and gold against the stark landscape.

  Squealing, they galloped and plunged through snow up to their chests, toward a person standing uncertainly in the meadow.

  It was Florrie Brown. Florrie was the last person Stephen Thomas wanted to see, this side of Fox.

  Stephen Thomas wished he could vanish into the orchard, but he was taller than most of the young trees.

  The herd exploded past Florrie, wheeled around, and galloped toward her again. She never moved, but wrapped her arms around herself, hugging her fringed black poncho tight. She flinched when the horses crowded her.

  Stephen Thomas wondered why she was so frightened. She often sat on her front porch, feeding tidbits to the miniature horses. Sometimes they climbed up on the porch beside her.

  He crossed the field, kicking away the snow. It caked on the legs of his pants.

  “Go on, shoo!” he shouted.

  The appaloosa stud flung up his head, nostrils flaring. Stephen Thomas’s scent spooked him. He squealed and kicked and plunged away, and the whole herd vanished into the evergreens.

  Florrie stood shaking among the hoofprints.

  “Did you have to scare them?” she said. “I thought they’d knock me over.”

  He stopped.

  “I thought you wanted them gone,” he said.

  She looked back across the field, toward her house fifty meters distant.

  “It’s so slippery out here, I was afraid I’d fall.”

  “Why’d you come out, then?”

  “I’m going to work, of course. To the cafeteria. People still have to eat.” She squinted at him, peering up into his face. “Are you Stephen Thomas?”

  “Of course I am,” he said, startled.

  “You look so different. I didn’t recognize you.”

  “I don’t look that different,” he said. Not where she could see him. “Do you need some help, or do you want me to disappear again?”

  “I’m afraid to fall,” she said.

  Stephen Thomas took this as one of her roundabout ways of getting something without coming right out and asking for it. He could hardly leave her out here in the field. He offered her his arm.

  “I’ll walk over with you,” he said.

  She hesitated, then grasped his elbow with both hands. They walked in silence for a while.

  “You shouldn’t have teased us,” she said. “Me and Fox.”

  “Teased you!”

  “Flirted with us. Without meaning anything.”

  “I never flirt unless I mean it. I never flirted with Fox at all. Did she say I did?”

  “She said... she fell in love with you. But you hurt her feelings, and I thought you planned to hurt mine.”

  “Thanks a lot.” He glanced down at her. “So you decided I’m a malicious shithead.”

  “What was I supposed to decide?”

  “I’m glad to know the depths of our friendship,” Stephen Thomas said bitterly.

  “I thought you liked me!” Florrie said.

  “I thought the feeling was mutual,” Stephen Thomas said. “Why did you change your mind?”

  “I told you. I thought you didn’t mean any of it.”

  “Why didn’t you ask me, instead of lighting into me like that?”

  “Because I was angry. For Fox. But now you’re mad at me. And so is she.”

  Stephen Thomas sighed.

  They approached the cafeteria. The silver slugs had partially cleared the path, but had not got all the way down to the rock foam. The beaten snow had turned to ice, with a treacherous texture of frozen ripples. Someone should have scraped the path, but there was probably not a snow shovel to be had on board Starfarer.

  Stephen Thomas walked carefully. Florrie grabbed tight to his arm. If he slipped and went down, she would fall, too.

  “Aren’t you?” she said. “Mad at me.”

  “I wish you’d had enough regard for my friendship to get my side of what happened,” he said.

  They reached the porch of the cafeteria. Stephen Thomas helped her up the ramp, over the threshold. Here the floor was merely wet and slick, not icy. Warmth and the aroma of herbs and hot pepper, cooking food, surrounded him. His stomach growled. He was famished. He could hardly remember when he had eaten last, and he could not think when he had been so hungry. He could even imagine diving into the lake and coming up with a fish to eat raw, as Zev had done the other day.

  Cold as he was, the idea of diving into a chilly lake gave him a thrill of pleasure.

  “So that’s all it was,” Florrie said, her voice cutting and sarcastic. “Just friendship. How very flattering.”

  Stephen Thomas glanced at her, surprised and confused. Friendship was an important word to him, one he did not take lightly or offer easily. He had had fewer close friends than lovers in his life.

  “It
could have been friendship,” he said.

  Florrie drew herself up angrily. “Then you never were serious.”

  When she took on that imperious tone, Stephen Thomas found it even easier than usual to see beyond the changes of age and the papery delicacy of her skin, even past the character time had given her. The stunning beauty of her youth overwhelmed all that. No wonder she expected people to throw themselves at her feet, and no wonder they did. She attracted people, and they wanted to please her.

  She glared at him.

  “I thought as much.”

  She let go of his arm and left him, making her way toward her helpers, who greeted her and waved and hurried over to help her out of her layers of dramatic black wraps.

  I told her how I felt, and she didn’t believe me, he thought. Damned if I’ll tell her again. Give her another blade, when she’s already proved she’d use it to cut out my guts? Fuck it.

  His feet were so cold he could barely feel them. It was time to take Infinity’s cautions seriously and get warm. Not here, though. The smell of boiled coffee made him feel sick.

  He grabbed a couple of hot lunches from the holding table and plunged back out into the cold, heading home.

  Maybe Satoshi would be home for a little while, too, and they could eat together and talk while they got warm.

  Satoshi was right. They needed to talk.

  o0o

  “Over here!” Zev shouted.

  The crunch, crunch, crunch of footsteps on icy snow came closer. Infinity Mendez appeared at the edge of the clearing.

  “How are you guys —” He saw Chandra.

  “Satoshi doesn’t want to go inside,” Zev said. “Either does Chandra, I think.”

  “The trees —” Satoshi said.

  “I’m not done.” Chandra’s shivering made her words nearly unintelligible. “Am I saving anything? My brain is cold.”

  “I told everybody — !” Infinity cut off his outburst and continued, more quietly. “Come on, Chandra, you’ve been outside too long. You, too, Satoshi.”

  He took off his outer coat, started to put it around Chandra’s shoulders, but suddenly changed his mind and gave her his heavy inner shirt instead. When he put his coat back on he felt the inside pocket as if he was afraid he had lost something.