The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  J.D. found a bare spot that she believed was Orchestra’s skin. She placed her hand flat on the smooth hot surface.

  “Hello, Orchestra Largernearer,” she said.

  “Hello, Sauvage Earth,” Orchestra replied. “And welcome.”

  J.D. pushed her mask to the top of her head and scrambled up the living gully. A school of scuttling creatures fled beneath slick leaves. She avoided a row of sharp-edged rocky lumps like split geodes. In the hollows of the geodes, whiskery fibers waved slowly, catching the mother-of-pearl light of Smallernearer.

  She glanced over her shoulder.

  Zev sidestroked past Orchestra’s eye, fascinated by the whale-eel, reluctant to leave the sea after so many days away from deep and mysterious water. Starfarer’s sea was no more than a pond to him.

  The huge eye tracked him.

  Stephen Thomas ploughed forward, following J.D. He pushed himself ashore on Orchestra. Phosphorescent water cascaded from his body, drops splashing away like sparks. His pelt captured the light. Sometime between diving off the boat and reaching Orchestra, he had taken off his shorts.

  J.D. looked quickly away from him and continued climbing.

  As the slope of Orchestra’s side eased, the rocky growths petered out. The whale-eel’s skin was soft and very warm beneath J.D.’s feet. The small flowers on Orchestra’s snout gave way, on her forehead, to blossoms the size of J.D.’s opened hands. The alien bitterness of Largernearer added a strange tang to their sweet fragrance. J.D. wondered how many components of the fragrance evaded her sense of smell. She made sure the LTMs were taking samples of the air.

  Zev appeared beside J.D. He slipped his warm webbed hand into hers. They climbed together to Orchestra’s crest, and J.D. felt grateful all over again to have him with her. He had left his home, and everything he knew, to join her on board Starfarer.

  The crest-flowers brushed J.D.’s knees. Orchestra’s heat rose around the delicate roots and stems, warming J.D.’s bare feet. On the other side of the low hill of Orchestra’s head, fog covered a quiet pond. Water and mist filled the hollow on Orchestra’s dorsal surface and blanketed the flowers. Orchestra sank further into the sea. Beyond the rubbery protective ridges of her fins, the ocean climbed her long, underwater flank and pressed itself into a wave. The wave crashed, and spray exploded overhead. A rain of salt water spattered into the quiet flower-filled pond. Rivulets tumbled and splashed down the ridges, forming creeks that fed the flower pool.

  If Orchestra submerged, she would draw them all underwater with the whirlpool of her disappearance. Zev could extract oxygen directly from the water, in emergencies, enough to sustain his life if he did not have to exert himself. J.D. had her artificial lung, but it could be torn loose. J.D. wondered if Stephen Thomas had yet developed the ability to breathe underwater.

  As J.D. was about to warn their host of their frailties, the being steadied. J.D. waded into the warm pond, pushing through the heavy mat of flowers. Their colors had turned deep black and shining white in the darkness. Heat rose up around J.D., and the warm water steamed. A humid, foggy cloud swirled before her.

  “Swim a bit farther,” Orchestra said. “Then the water will be deep enough and warm enough to let you rest.”

  “It isn’t quite deep enough to swim,” J.D. said. “We’ll walk.”

  The whale-eel’s huge body shuddered. J.D. staggered, thrown off-balance. The water in the pond rippled and splashed. Loose flower petals spiraled to the surface.

  Zev gripped J.D.’s hand. He stood spraddle-legged, joyful and excited.

  “Shit!” Stephen Thomas said. “What’s going on?”

  The shudder subsided. The loose petals sank forlornly, disappearing beneath the blossoms or catching in the cups of the flowers.

  “Orchestra? Are you all right?” J.D. spoke hesitantly, ready for another shudder. She trembled with the effects of surprise and fear and an intoxicating surge of energy and adrenaline.

  “You startled me,” the whale-eel said.

  “What? How?”

  “Walking.” Orchestra trembled again. “It’s hard to understand. It’s hard to think about! You put your body on dry land, you risk yourself to the air.”

  “It’s natural to us.”

  “But alien to me.” The whale-eel quivered, creating only a gentle earthquake. “Frightening, like few other ideas.” Her voice carried a tone of pleasurable apprehension.

  “Alien horror stories,” Stephen Thomas muttered. “‘A Walk on the Beach.’”

  “I understand how you feel,” Zev said. “My cousins the orcas never go on land, unless one is in despair and decides to die.”

  “A painful way to die! Your cousins must be courageous — or desperate. I myself plan to die in my flowers, in the deepest water on Largernearer — but not for a long, long time.”

  “A person after my own heart,” Stephen Thomas said.

  “I’m sorry if I frightened you,” J.D. said.

  “A stimulating experience.”

  For us, too, J.D. thought.

  “Please rest now,” Orchestra said. “I want to show you something. But I must swim, to clear away the mist. Can your boat follow?”

  “It can follow.”

  J.D. sank into the warm pool, lying on soft, sweet flowers. Fragrant steam beaded on her hair and trickled down her face.

  At first nothing happened.

  Zev splashed down beside J.D. Stephen Thomas lowered himself into the water nearby and back-floated. His toes stuck up: he flexed them, gazing at the sharp claws that extended and retracted.

  Distracted for a moment, J.D. tried not to stare. She knew what a male diver looked like naked. But until today she had not known what Stephen Thomas looked like naked, either before or after the change.

  She felt like a curious and ignorant adolescent, pretending she was not looking at him, pretending she was not even interested in the shape of his body, the muscles of his chest and shoulders, his long blond hair held back from his face, curling wildly around his shoulders in the heat, the pelt of fine white-gold fur nearly invisible against his dark skin, the delicate fur growing together in a darker line down the center of his chest, breaking at his navel, continuing down his belly, spreading into a soft mat of hair over the pouch concealing his genitals. Not concealing, exactly, but covering and softly outlining them.

  J.D. made a short sharp sound and shook her head in frustration. This was no time to be distracted by anything, especially by Stephen Thomas.

  “We’ve been waiting for you for so long,” Orchestra said. “The Four Worlds anticipated our first clients’ entrance into Civilization. You were so slow! Europa despaired, I think.”

  “We did our best,” J.D. said. No thanks, she thought, to Civilization.

  “You were under such limitations,” Orchestra said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Can’t you guess?” Stephen Thomas said out loud, not feeding the words through his link. “I can think of plenty of human limitations.”

  “Of course I can guess,” J.D. said to him in the same manner, carefully keeping the annoyance out of her voice. “So what? I want to know what Orchestra thinks.”

  Stephen Thomas did not reply.

  “It’s easier to demonstrate than to tell you why we had an advantage while you gave yourselves calamities,” Orchestra said. “I will show you.”

  Orchestra’s constant, slow pulsing quickened and intensified.

  J.D. wished, irritably, that Stephen Thomas would remember her job: to ask the obvious questions. She was tired of telling him the obvious questions might not have obvious answers. He was so smart in some ways and so damned oblivious in others.

  If only Feral hadn’t taken notes on everything, she thought. And if only Stephen Thomas hadn’t read Feral’s journal after Feral died. If I’d known Feral was taking notes, I never would have admitted to him how attractive Stephen Thomas is to me. I think he’s almost as attractive as Feral thought he was.

  Feral teased h
er gently when she told him she would not pursue the attraction. Feral, on the other hand, had planned on pursuing Stephen Thomas as soon as possible. He had never had the chance.

  Stephen Thomas was right, J.D. thought. I knew Feral was a journalist. I shouldn’t have told him anything I didn’t want to see in print. Still, I wish he’d warned me.

  The only thing I don’t understand is why Stephen Thomas was so angry when he found out...

  He had not said anything directly, which was also unusual for Stephen Thomas. All too often he said exactly what he thought without filtering it first. But he had told her, snapping, that he planned to publish Feral’s journals. He had, in effect, warned her that the journals would make her look pathetic and ridiculous.

  J.D. sighed. Amusement I would have understood, she thought. Or bored resignation to something that must happen all the time.

  Why do I care how I look to Stephen Thomas?

  Orchestra gathered herself to swim. Her sides expanded as she took in a great gulp of water and pulsed it through her body. She set the island of her body into motion, and the mist coiled into eddies.

  The breeze freshened as Orchestra’s speed increased. The mist drifted backwards in long streamers.

  Orchestra pulsed beneath them, taking in water and spewing it out, surging forward through the sea. Her mouth and snout parted a way for her; the ridge of her head protected the dorsal pool from the rushing wake. The wind of her speed cleared the fog and revealed the crystalline black sky.

  J.D. thought the boat into motion behind them; it followed silently.

  “Rest,” Orchestra said. “Rest, and look upward.”

  J.D. did as the whale-eel asked, floating in the warm pond among the flowers. The cool breeze touched her face and her throat above her bathing suit. Her nipples hardened, goosefleshed. She let her body sink beneath the surface.

  I can’t stand it, she thought. I don’t care if everybody on Starfarer is watching me, I particularly don’t care if I knock off the LTMs. She took off her mask, eased the artificial lung from her back, and let it sink to the bottom of the pool beside her. Then she grabbed the straps of her bathing suit and stripped the suit off underwater. She wadded it up and balanced it on the lung.

  The LTMs clambered to the top of the pile, perched on the material, and settled.

  Warm alien water covered J.D.’s body, tingling and caressing.

  Suddenly, nearby, the water bubbled and gushed. Startled, J.D. pushed herself upright. Even nearer the geyser, Stephen Thomas plunged backward through the flowers.

  “What the hell!”

  Zev watched, laughing with delight.

  In a splashing fountain of spray, one of Orchestra’s eyes bulged through the flowers. Like the head of a sea serpent, the socket scanned one way, then the other. The eyeball appeared, rotating forward. It looked dull and dry. The eye blinked, once, twice, disappearing backwards. Each time it appeared it was wetter and shinier. Flakes of skin or dry mucous or caked salt sifted onto the water, dissolving or sinking. The actions reminded J.D. of waking up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

  When she realized what was happening, she relaxed back into the pond. Zev had barely moved, even when the eye eruption splashed him. He had placed his trust in Orchestra, and Zev’s trust was unbreakable. Embarrassed, Stephen Thomas breast-stroked forward. A broken flower hung over his shoulder. Angrily, he flicked it away.

  “I thought we’d discovered Nessie,” J.D. said sympathetically to him, out loud. He grimaced.

  “I haven’t used this eye for a while,” Orchestra said. “I forgot where I put it at first. But now I can see you.”

  Zev swam over, breast-stroking through the flowers like a lithe gilt frog. He reached Orchestra’s eye and looked straight into the vertical pupil.

  “Hello, young Zev,” Orchestra said.

  “Hello, old Orchestra,” Zev said. “Can you move your eyes around?”

  “Yes, though that is rather slow. It’s easier to resorb one and grow another.” The eye socket tilted. “It’s good to be able to see straight up.” Down the length of Orchestra’s back, as far as J.D. could see, random bulges of the whale-eel’s eyes stretched upward. Bemused, J.D. followed Orchestra’s gaze into the sky.

  Smallernearer loomed overhead, a dull silver-gray disk surrounded by stars. Its inhabitant so far had remained silent. J.D. would never meet it face to face. It would never meet anyone, face to face, unless someone figured out how to fall like gossamer through an airless sky, how to hover without blasting exhaust and fire into the aerogel.

  Just for a moment, too tempted to resist, J.D. touched Nautilus with her link. Its control surface sought her, welcomed her. She moved along one curving face, trying out one path, another, like a gymnast imagining an airborne twist and turn. She asked her question by imagining Nautilus on course for Smallernearer. The knowledge surface showed her the answer: Yes, Nemo’s starship could approach Smallernearer, if she asked it to. But the gravitational stresses would be violent and destructive if she brought the singularity that provided its mass so near another world.

  While her link was diverted, she sent a private message to Esther and Kolya, a few words of appreciation and concern.

  “We’re fine, boss,” Esther replied directly to her mind. “Want your car keys back?” Esther’s matter of fact humor came through the link plainly.

  “Not yet,” J.D. said. “You can drive it Saturday night.”

  Esther chuckled.

  J.D. shut down the distant link and returned to Largernearer. She had to think herself back into her body; the enhanced link cut her off from all other sensations when she opened it fully to touch the knowledge surface.

  Her vision returned. A wave of light passed across Smallernearer’s surface. J.D. gasped in surprise.

  “Holy shit!” Stephen Thomas said.

  “What was that?” J.D. said through her link.

  “Light was our introduction to another intelligence.”

  “What — ?” Stephen Thomas said aloud.

  “Shh!” J.D. recognized a symbolic statement, a metaphor, the beginning of a tribal tale, a myth. Nearby, Zev settled in the pool and prepared to listen. Flowers popped up around him, between his body and his arms, between his bent knees. Watching him, J.D. smiled. She might lust silently after Stephen Thomas, but she loved Zev.

  “We evolved beneath this sky,” Orchestra said. “Look farther.”

  Guided by Orchestra’s gaze and by the link to her mind, J.D. looked deeper into space.

  A huge star shone steadily. A binary star, its double bulge visible to the naked eye. But it could not be a star. It shone too clearly, it was too close and too distinct. And if it were a binary star, it would be as easily visible from Earth as from 61 Cygni.

  “These are the Farther worlds,” Orchestra said. “For all of time, my people could see them circling each other, as we see Smallernearer rotating above us and revolving around Largernearer.”

  J.D. wondered how Smallernearer had avoided becoming tidally locked, with one face always to Largernearer, like Earth’s moon. She thought, The being who lives there is a construct. Artificially created. Maybe the planet’s motion is, too.

  “We always knew of worlds beyond ours. Our cosmology required no fictional explanations. Our music of the spheres was the song of Smallernearer. Millennia ago, our neighbor tried to explain to itself the dynamic equilibrium that existed on our world. It imagined the organic chemicals and made them come together in its mind. When they reached a certain complexity, it understood that intelligence might be the result.

  “Smallernearer conceived the idea of organic life, life that could exist in this inhospitable atmosphere, this wild water. Its imagination leaped. Could another intelligent being exist somehow?

  “Five thousand years ago, it signaled to us.

  “It thought a single being covered Largernearer. It still thinks of us that way. And why not think of the elements of an ecosystem as a single organism? It’s a matter of p
oint of view.”

  J.D. had always found the Gaia hypothesis aesthetically pleasing, though some people back home took it too far. They tried to force a hypothesis about the activities of life into explaining the origin of life. They tried to think of Earth itself as sentient.

  “Smallernearer was persistent. At first my people had no way of signaling back. As the years passed, we tamed the phosphorescent plankton, we strengthened it...”

  Orchestra’s pulsing slackened to her normal breathing rate. She slowed, stopped, and settled. Waves splashed against her seaward side, over her dorsal fins. Cold water flowed over her snout into the warm pool, and the flowers on her forehead folded into buds.

  “Look,” Orchestra said.

  J.D. looked out over Orchestra’s head, across the ocean.

  The surface glowed with bands and spots of violent blue-green light. The brightness intensified. Overhead, puffy clouds lit up with reflections, like a lightning storm without the thunder. A strange odor scented the air, a mixture like ozone and chlorophyll, new-cut grass during a lightning storm, a fragrance that rose from the glowing plankton.

  Overhead, Smallernearer replied with a wash of light across its pearl-gray surface.

  J.D. gasped.

  “We learned to converse, and we turned our attention to worlds beyond our own.

  “That is the end of the story, and the beginning of the Four Worlds.”

  Orchestra fell silent.

  “It’s a beautiful story,” J.D. said. “Thank you for telling it to us.”

  “You’re welcome. I have enjoyed Europa’s tales for many years. Your cosmologies are so imaginative!” The whale-eel added, with humor, “Earth’s account has increased from the sum of the royalties I’ve offered.”

  An interstellar audience, J.D. thought, every writer’s wildest fantasy. Wonder what they’d think of my novels...

  She brought herself back to the conversation.

  “It took more effort and ingenuity to begin communicating with the Farther worlds,” Orchestra said. “We can only see their lights when one Farther world casts its shadow across the other. But their eclipses are frequent. Once we established contact, it was easy.”