The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  He wondered what he could have done, weaponless against Civilization. They said they had no weapons, they said carrying weapons through transition was enough to get a whole world banished. They said they did not make war on each other. But Griffith was not prepared to take everything they said at face value. The alien humans had proven themselves untrustworthy and the quartet struck Griffith as far too good to be true. The Representative of Smallerfarther, on the other hand, Griffith thought he understood.

  He wondered whether a single group had sent the invading spacecraft, or whether they had all conspired.

  Petrovich’s image faded into existence in Griffith’s room. The government agent blew out his breath with relief.

  o0o

  Kolya jerked his attention away from the universe and back to 61 Cygni, to Nautilus. Both Arachne and Griffith poured emergency messages into his link. His helmet projected an image of Griffith in front of his eyes. The effect put Griffith at the edge of a crater, protected from vacuum by nothing more than a sleeveless t-shirt and a pair of baggy sweat pants.

  A glowing red bar hovered above his head: Arachne’s indication that the transmission was scrambled. The Four Worlds people could not listen in.

  Unless, of course, their code-breaking abilities exceeded those of Arachne. But if that were true, they could have gone into Arachne first thing and taken Victoria’s algorithm, instead of asking for it.

  “They’ve started the invasion!” Griffith said. “I’m coming over there —”

  “Calm down,” Kolya said.

  Griffith raked his fingers through his sleep-tangled brown hair, trying ineffectually to comb it.

  “This is a nightmare!”

  “I see the report.” The secondary image, projected between Kolya and Griffith as if the two of them were sitting on opposite sides of it, showed a tiny spaceboat edging away from the Four Worlds ship and accelerating into a curving path that would bring it to Nautilus.

  “I’ll have to take the transport,” Griffith said, half to himself. He glared at the image of the Four Worlds boat. “If I had to, I could ram that sucker. No matter what it’s made of, I’ll do some damage.”

  “You’ll do —” Kolya cut short the brusque command. “Consider your decision carefully, Petrovich.”

  “Dammit, Petrovich, they’re coming for you! I told you —”

  Kolya drew back from the conversation with Griffith and sent a message, uncoded, toward the tiny alien boat.

  “I observe a citizen of the Four Worlds approaching on a visit.”

  Kolya kept his voice neutral, though his heart was pounding. Perhaps Griffith was right all along. Perhaps Civilization could not be trusted.

  The pause lengthened.

  “Petrovich —”

  “Shh!”

  Griffith shut up. He also stormed out of the field of Arachne’s transmissions. The red bar faded away.

  “Call J.D.!” Kolya shouted after him, but he had no way of knowing if Griffith heard him.

  o0o

  J.D.’s link connected with Kolya’s.

  “I see what’s happening,” she said. “I’ll come to Nautilus as fast as I can.”

  “I think that’s wise,” he said.

  A powerful transmission cut off his voice.

  o0o

  Kolya’s suit radio received a transmission so powerful of a voice so heavy that it buzzed painfully in the receiver.

  “My representative sends intriguing reports. I find I have the desire to visit your species in its own environment. Intriguing reports.”

  “Forgive my ignorance, but... who are you?”

  “I am the Representative from Smallerfarther.”

  “We’re flattered.”

  Kolya considered telling the Representative that Nautilus was not the natural environment of human beings. But that might send him to Starfarer, and if he was capable of doing damage...

  Don’t be foolish, old man, Kolya told himself. The Representative has no interest in Starfarer. Civilization knows how to build starships like Starfarer. He wants Nautilus. If he lands, if he goes to the center of Nautilus... he could take it over.

  Kolya flashed a call at Starfarer, toward Gerald, toward Miensaem Thanthavong. He tried not to sound panicky. He aimed a copy toward J.D. down on Largernearer.

  Longestlooker entered the conversation. Her image appeared in Kolya’s field of vision. The Largerfarthing had a smear of dirt on her shoulder, muddy brown against sleek black, from the fossil dig.

  “Representative,” she said, “the planetoid is barren. Come visit the human people’s starship. You will find it much more interesting.”

  “That is impossible, I fear,” the Representative said. “The gravity would damage me. Impossible.”

  “But you’re from Smallerfarther!” Kolya said.

  “Not for many years,” the Representative said. “I am old, and frail.”

  Kolya snorted in skeptical sympathy. He found it hard to believe that the interstellar Civilization suffered from diseases like arthritis.

  “I’m old, too,” he said. “Exercise is good for you.”

  “Speak for yourself,” the Representative said.

  “Representative,” Longestlooker said, “permit me to escort some other humans out to meet you. Then you wouldn’t have to endure the difficulties of travel.”

  “The human people have already paid their respects,” the Representative said, his heavy voice smooth behind the buzz. “It would be arrogant to expect them to come to me twice.”

  Kolya’s spacesuit twiddled the radio settings, but the buzz remained. It gave him a blazing headache.

  Gerald Hemminge joined in. “Representative, I know the perfect compromise. Let us send our transport ship to meet you. It will bring you to the axis of Starfarer, where we can meet in zero g.”

  “I would not fit inside your transport,” the Representative said.

  “Then you may attach your boat to our airlock, as Europa does.”

  The Representative paused.

  Is it possible? Kolya thought. Has Gerald succeeded? Did he push the Representative so far that one more step would be rudeness?

  “Most kind, most kind,” the Representative said, “but I fear my boat is not sufficiently maneuverable. I must land. Most kind.”

  “If you’re in danger —”

  “No, no, you go to far too much trouble over me.”

  Esther loped over the horizon, coming closer fast.

  “We have no structure here that you’d fit inside,” Kolya said.

  “I do not need a structure,” the Representative said. “The gravity of your starship will trouble me somewhat, but I will submit to it in order to greet you.”

  Kolya muttered a low curse.

  Esther’s canter slowed. She came to a stop beside Kolya. He leaned his helmet against hers so he could speak to her without the radio, without anyone else hearing.

  “I am running out of suggestions,” he said.

  “How about, ‘If you land here we’ll rip off your pretty legs and make necklaces out of them’?”

  “Not very diplomatic,” Kolya said. “But an idea to consider.”

  He switched to an outgoing transmission.

  “Representative,” he said politely, “your craft might be damaged by the rough terrain.”

  Esther glanced at Kolya. He shrugged sheepishly at the ridiculous warning.

  “We’ve had no chance,” Petrovich said, “to prepare a proper landing field for space boats.”

  “My craft is very versatile,” the Representative said, his tone condescending.

  “I thought you said it wasn’t very maneuverable,” Esther said.

  The Representative hesitated longer than the transmission lag.

  “My ship,” he said, “is more versatile than human people’s spacecraft, and you have landed safely.”

  “Look,” Esther whispered.

  The image of the space boat sailed into a small tight orbit around the image of Nautilus
.

  Overhead, in reality, the space boat traveled across Nautilus’s sky.

  “We’ve got company,” Esther said.

  They hurried over the horizon and returned to the expedition tent.

  o0o

  Griffith slammed out of the guest house, still buttoning his shirt. He ran along the winding path toward the slope of the main cylinder’s end.

  He had been right all along. The Four Worlds planned to take over Nautilus. Probably they would kill General Cherenkov. If he was lucky they would only keep him hostage and trade him for MacKenzie’s algorithm. Then they would have everything they wanted from Starfarer. They would have no reason to let the EarthSpace ship keep flying.

  Everyone on board except Griffith thought Civilization was peaceful. They believed that Civilization bore no arms because the cosmic string reacted if a ship brought weapons of war through transition.

  The faculty had overlooked a loophole. No one had mentioned any prohibition against owning weapons within a star system.

  If you weren’t allowed to do that, Griffith thought, the string would never have come near Earth in the first place. We have plenty of ordnance back home. The string would have avoided us.

  He raced up the hillside. As he neared the axis the radial acceleration dropped, till he could leap along nearly weightless. This close to the sun tube, the light was bright and hot. Griffith had to be careful to look away from the glare.

  He propelled himself over the border between the rotating cylinder and the stationary axis, into zero g.

  The waiting rooms and control chambers were deserted. No one else was trying to rescue Petrovich. Maybe no one else had the nerve to fly the transport. Griffith figured he and the computer could land it. After that it would be up to Klein to get the thing off Nautilus. Or Sauvage could speed up the rotation of the alien starship. Fling the transport right off it.

  Might not land at all, he thought. Might just ram the Four Worlds boat and be done with it.

  He wondered if the transport would survive the impact, but his curiosity was purely intellectual. If he thought he needed to ram the Four Worlds boat, he would.

  He tapped into Arachne’s message traffic. Useful information: the Representative from Smallerfarther was acting alone.

  Or pretending to.

  Everyone was trying, more or less ineffectually, not to panic. J.D. asked for calm and understanding — and an explanation. Petrovich tried to persuade the alien not to land. Crimson Ng, at the fake archaeological dig, was trying to get some information out of the Representative’s Representative, who had progressed from his usual lethargy to a deep sleep. The quartet from Largerfarther claimed ignorance of the Representative’s motives.

  That’s all real convenient, Griffith said to himself, sarcastically.

  Petrovich spoke. The burble of voice traffic stopped.

  “Representative,” he said politely, “your craft might be damaged by the rough terrain.”

  Griffith hated seeing Petrovich desperate enough to make a fool of himself.

  “We’ve had no chance,” Petrovich said to the Representative, “to prepare a proper landing field for space boats.”

  “My craft is very versatile,” the Representative said, his tone condescending. “Far more versatile than the craft human people have already landed there.”

  Griffith wondered if the deadpan voice was deliberate, or the result of whatever system the Representative used to create his English conversation.

  Griffith opened the transport’s hatch and sealed it behind him. Arachne’s projections followed him through the door. The systems checked the pressure while he checked the position of the alien spaceboat. It orbited Nautilus, spiraling closer. Soon it would prepare to land.

  Griffith reached the glass bubble at the front of the transport and strapped himself into the pilot’s acceleration couch. He could have been in the observation cabin of a fancy sightseeing ship. The chamber contained nothing but several couches and the wide glass wall, now obscured by the bulk of Starfarer.

  He connected to Arachne through his link and requested a departure sequence.

  The lax security of Starfarer struck him all over again. These people trusted that anyone cleared by EarthSpace to join the expedition — or to visit — would be trustworthy. Information flowed freely, and the barriers to change existed for safety, not secrecy. Most of the faculty and staff could not, for example, make changes in the level of light the sun tubes transmitted. But when Infinity Mendez — or Alzena Dadkhah, before she fled — made adjustments, they worked completely in the open.

  Griffith snorted. It would be all too easy to plant a double agent, someone from the Mideast Sweep...

  But... no agent of the Mideast sweep had come on board — not, at any rate, one who had become known. Instead, there were at least two spies from EarthSpace allies or EarthSpace itself, from the people responsible for Starfarer’s security. Griffith was one. Whoever had crashed Arachne was the other. Griffith believed Chancellor Blades was the second spy.

  He wished he knew the truth for certain; he wished he knew if the second spy was his ally or his enemy. He wondered if anyone on board knew for certain. The senators? He dismissed the idea. Orazio would not know, because she supported the deep space expedition. Derjaguin opposed the expedition in particular and EarthSpace in general, but he was far too radical in his politics to be trusted with top secret information.

  “Griffith! Hey!”

  Arachne created an image before him. A voice burst out of the shadowy ghost shape of Infinity Mendez. Griffith tensed, on alert. The image could do nothing to him, but the man behind the image might be able to stop him. Griffith severed the transport’s onboard computer from Arachne’s influence.

  “What are you doing?” Infinity’s image solidified. He floated in front of Griffith: he was in the waiting room of the transport dock.

  “Same as you, probably,” Griffith said. “I’m going to help General Cherenkov.”

  “Then let me in,” Infinity said.

  “Not likely.”

  Infinity’s image vanished. If he had turned his attention toward getting reinforcements, toward gaining control of the transport ship, he was too late.

  I have to do this, Griffith thought. I bound myself to the expedition back home, when I tried to stop the military carrier.

  But Petrovich had stopped him. Griffith had done nothing public that would prove his loyalties had changed.

  Which means I could probably get away with pretending I was an innocent victim of the hijacking. Like the senators, like Gerald Hemminge.

  If I do nothing now.

  If he took the transport, if he defended J.D. Sauvage’s starship from the Four Worlds, he would be declaring his loyalties publicly. The trouble was, he did not know where his loyalties lay. He was confused. Before he had come to Starfarer, he had never been confused in his life.

  If I pretended, I could go back to the way things were. Back to not being confused, to knowing whose orders I should obey.

  That was the trouble. Petrovich would not tell him what to do.

  Griffith had spent his adult life pretending to be something other than what he was. No, not something other. Something less. He was good at pretending, good at being invisible, good at telling lies. He was so good that his superiors need never know he had strayed. When they debriefed him, he could beat the lie detectors.

  It would be a risk, but a risk that might save his career, if not his life.

  And Griffith knew he could not do it. Not even to save himself. Particularly not to save himself. He did not know why he did not want to lie anymore. But he would not pretend he had worked ceaselessly against the expedition.

  With a soft curse, he snapped an order at the onboard computer to free the transport from Starfarer’s dock.

  o0o

  The glass boat streaked through the mouth of the lagoon. J.D. sat against the stern rail, slipping in and out of a communications fugue, anxious to be ready as so
on as the boat reached the Chi, equally anxious to stay in touch with Starfarer and Nautilus. Zev hovered beside her, and Stephen Thomas fidgeted.

  “The tide’s still out,” Victoria said in the background of J.D.’s mind.

  “I know it, I can see it,” Stephen Thomas said. “What is it, two hours till it’s in again?”

  “At least that, till we have enough water to load the boat,” Satoshi said.

  “Can you bring the Chi to us?”

  “We could,” Victoria said, “but I’m worried about fuel. J.D. will want speed...”

  “We’ll leave the damned boat,” Stephen Thomas said. “Come back for it later.”

  “If we can,” Satoshi said.

  Victoria hesitated. “Yes,” she said finally. “That’s a good idea. We’ll be ready to lift off when you get here.”

  Infinity’s presence appeared in her link.

  “Bad news,” J.D. said, anticipating what he was about to say.

  “On all counts. The spaceboat’s fast. Real fast, according to Longestlooker. If you move Nautilus fast enough to get out of his way...”

  “The stress would be hard on Starfarer.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “Maybe it would be worth the risk,” he said desperately. “Esther and Kolya —”

  Esther was listening in. “Lover, it’ll do us no damned good at all if you get us out of range by busting up Starfarer.”

  “I won’t leave you to —”

  “To what? The Representative says he wants to pay us a visit. Maybe that’s really all he wants to do.”

  Infinity snorted with disbelief.

  J.D. appreciated Esther’s bravery, even her bravado.

  “What do you think, Kolya?”

  “When I agreed to stay on Nautilus, I knew something like this might happen. I hope the Four Worlds are listening in, because I want them to know how much contempt I have for duplicity.”

  “There’s something else,” Infinity said. “Griffith is on his way over there.”

  “What!” Esther exclaimed. “What for?”

  “To help,” Infinity said dryly.

  Esther went into a communications fugue and came out a moment later.

  “It never occurred to me to lock up the transport,” she said with disgust. “And even if it had, I wouldn’t have done it. In case something happened to me. In case somebody needed it. Not Griffith.”