The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  For the first time, J.D. felt real fear that the encounter would end in disaster.

  She felt herself being pulled away from the link.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  As she opened her eyes, the bottom of the glass boat scraped gently on the floor of the lagoon. The boat’s twin hulls crushed the flowers beneath them, but left them upright beneath the transparent central deck. A kilometer away across sand bars and tide pools, the Chi waited.

  “We’re here, J.D.” Zev’s voice was urgent, his expression apprehensive. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 10

  Still soaking wet from the dash across the slippery mat of sea flowers and through the fingers of sea between the sand bars, J.D. hurriedly strapped herself into her acceleration couch.

  “Everybody set?”

  “Ready,” Victoria said.

  “Me too,” Satoshi said.

  “Let’s get our asses out of here,” Stephen Thomas said.

  Zev stroked his fingertips from J.D.’s wrist to her fingertips, signaling, Let’s go.

  The Chi powered up. It shuddered beneath them. The noise enclosed them. The little ship rose from the island. Below, in the lagoon, the glass boat floated free of the sand. It would wait for them; it would survive, if they could return for it before the next worldwide storm.

  The Chi rose above the peak of the volcano. The spume of a wave breaking against the waveward cliff spattered the glass of the observers’ chamber.

  Blue sky turned purple, indigo, black. The Chi burst out of the atmosphere into space and headed for Nautilus, in high orbit.

  An image of Orchestra sparked into existence before J.D. — not the whale-eel’s sleek, independent AI, but an image of Orchestra herself, striated with life-forms, trailing seaweed.

  “Goodbye, human people. Goodbye, diver people. Visit me again soon.”

  J.D. was nonplused by Orchestra’s calm.

  “Do you have any advice, when I speak to the Representative? Do you know what he wants?”

  J.D. knew what he wanted. If Orchestra gave her a different explanation, she would find it hard to believe.

  “The Smallerfarthings are willful,” Orchestra said. “They are not known for violence, but they will go... as far as you allow. He wants you to give him your starship, what else? Oh, and the algorithm, of course. You know that... don’t you?”

  J.D. smiled ruefully, appreciating Orchestra’s direct response.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know that. I was hoping his was just a friendly visit.”

  “It is that, too,” Orchestra said. “But the Smallerfarthings like to be rewarded for their friendship. He hopes you will reward him richly. Excuse me, I am going to go listen to Beethoven.”

  Her image faded out.

  Stephen Thomas laughed sharply. “Big fucking help,” he said.

  Orchestra’s AI swam in from space, passing through the glass to enter the observers’ circle. It startled J.D.; she had not seen it since they left Starfarer.

  “May I listen to Beethoven, too?” it asked.

  “I’ll put it on a separate channel for you,” Satoshi said, “because the rest of us have to talk.”

  Through her link, J.D. listened as Satoshi directed Beethoven’s Sixth into the AI’s transmission.

  “This one’s different!” the AI exclaimed with delight. “Do not worry, I will pay!” It fell silent and still, drifting with all its eyes closed.

  J.D. turned down the music channel till she could barely hear it in her head.

  “Now what are we going to do?” she said.

  “Tell the damned thing to fuck off and die,” Stephen Thomas said.

  Victoria glanced at him, annoyed.

  “Orchestra said he’s willful.” Stephen Thomas shrugged. “Let’s be more willful.”

  “Might work,” J.D. said. “Anything’s worth a try.”

  “We’d better decide quick,” Satoshi said. “Look.”

  The Chi approached the complex constellation of Starfarer orbiting Nautilus, the Four Worlds ship orbiting Europa’s starship, the two massive little starships revolving near each other around a common center of gravity. The transport moved from Starfarer toward Nautilus.

  The sixth mass in the equation, the Four Worlds spaceboat, a tiny speck compared to the other bodies, circled ever closer to Nautilus. It prepared to land.

  J.D. shot a transmission through space.

  “Representative,” she said. “My colleagues are anxious to meet you. Please... wait for us to prepare an appropriate welcome. It wouldn’t be proper otherwise.”

  After a moment’s transmission lag, the reply arrived.

  “I never stand on ceremony,” the Representative said airily.

  “Shit,” Stephen Thomas muttered.

  J.D. sighed.

  o0o

  Griffith tried again to communicate with Petrovich, but the cosmonaut would not reply. Petrovich exchanged messages with the Chi — with J.D., Griffith supposed — and with Starfarer, but they were coded and Griffith could not receive them.

  The Representative’s boat curved gently into orbit around Nautilus.

  The transport followed.

  Intent on the boat, Griffith accepted an incoming communication before he realized it was not from Petrovich.

  J.D. Sauvage’s image formed nearby, a red coding streak overhead.

  “Mr. Griffith,” she said, “please don’t...”

  He glared at her, angry and disappointed, and snapped a code onto his own transmission.

  “Don’t do anything stupid?” he snarled, when she did not continue.

  “If you want to put it that way.”

  “What do you plan to do? Let that — thing — take over your starship?”

  “No.” She sounded grim. She was ordinarily so mild that her tone surprised him. “But I hope we can reason with him. I don’t want anyone injured!”

  “Move the damned ship out of his way!” He did not know for sure whether she could control it when she was not on it. Maybe the Four Worlds could scramble her commands. But it was worth a try, and to his mind she should have tried it already.

  “Starfarer’s under enough strain already,” J.D. said. “Infinity’s worried about the stresses. I’d have to move so slowly — it wouldn’t make any difference.”

  “Mendez is a gardener,” Griffith said.

  “Mendez,” J.D. said coldly, “helped build Starfarer.”

  “Somebody’s got to do something! Spin the ship, keep that boat from landing. It’s got to be armed! If you won’t —”

  “Please be patient,” J.D. said. “If I spin Nautilus fast enough to make landing hard for the boat, I’d spin Kolya and Esther right off the surface! There’s not much holding them down. I know you’re concerned about them, about him, but —”

  Taken aback, Griffith cut off J.D.’s message and stopped transmitting his own.

  Am I that obvious? he wondered. He hated the idea that anyone could guess his changed allegiances so accurately.

  He tried once more to communicate with Petrovich, but his message bounced off Nautilus and vanished into space.

  “Petrovich, dammit!” Griffith shouted. “Why won’t you tell me what to do?”

  The Representative’s boat puffed a plasma cloud, a gentle glowing touch that lowered its orbit and sent it downward.

  “Please prepare to receive me,” the Representative said. His powerful transmission carried his heavy commanding voice and the strange buzz behind it.

  Griffith went cold. His attention narrowed to a tunnel with the alien boat at its end.

  I have to do something now, he thought. I have to.

  He slowed the transport, letting it sink toward the surface of Nautilus. J.D. and the Chi were still a half hour away. The transport received another message; he accepted it without acknowledging it or replying. His lifelong habit was to collect as much information as he could and to admit than he knew as little of it as possible.

  “Please, Mr. Gri
ffith,” J.D. said. “Please, we’ve got to try to solve this without any violence.”

  What about Petrovich? Griffith shouted silently.

  o0o

  J.D. strained against the safety straps of her couch, gazing intently at Nautilus, staring at it through the diagram the Chi’s computer projected for her: Nautilus, the Representative’s boat, the transport. Victoria spoke urgently to Jenny Dupre and Infinity Mendez, while Satoshi stayed in contact with Gerald Hemminge, and Stephen Thomas coordinated with Avvaiyar and Miensaem Thanthavong.

  But none of it matters! J.D. cried quietly to itself. Nothing we can do can keep the Representative from landing on Nautilus, not without endangering either Starfarer or Kolya and Esther.

  The only way we can stop him is by letting Griffith loose.

  She enlarged the images of Kolya and Esther.

  “You’re the ones in the most danger —”

  “No,” Kolya replied. “Griffith is in the most danger. He’s willing to throw his life away to stop the Representative.”

  “You’ve got to stop him.”

  “Civilization brags about being peaceful,” Kolya said. “I think we should take them at their word. As a challenge.”

  “I can’t let you endanger yourselves,” she said. “If Griffith really can land the transport —” J.D. glanced a question as Esther.

  “It can land here,” she said. “If you call it landing, to flop down like a big rock. I might be able to lift it off again, but...” She shrugged. “It wasn’t designed to land, anyplace, anytime. It’ll be a mess...”

  o0o

  Crimson Ng squatted on the ledge above the fossil bed. Before her, the Representative’s Representative spread out over the rock, gold and green in the shadows. His coat looked soft and smooth, but his emerald spines thrust out through it, fully extended, fully erect and defensive. He looked like a cross between a crystal garden and a porcupine.

  One of Europa’s meerkats stood on Late’s back, where his shoulder blades would have been, if he had had shoulder blades. Rising on its hind legs, the meerkat gripped two of the spines with its front paws and stared around, keeping watch on the rest of the tribe. The other meerkats pattered and snuffled around the edges of the dig. Every so often Quickercatcher or Sharphearer would shoo them away from the fossil bed so they would not dig in it and disturb the site.

  Crimson wished she had thought of that, and brought in a marmot or an otter from the wild cylinder to mix up the fossils’ strata. More confusion in the provenance would have been a good twist of the plot. Too late now for these fossils, the fossils of the Fighters. And if she ever found the fossils of the other ones, the river would have jumbled them more than enough.

  Sharphearer let one of the meerkats climb onto her back. The meerkat, peering over Sharphearer’s head, was about the only comical thing around right now.

  “Why won’t he wake up?” Crimson asked Longestlooker. “Hey, Late, come on!”

  “Exhaustion,” Longestlooker said.

  “Or embarrassment,” Quickercatcher said, her voice edgy.

  “It isn’t Late’s fault, what the Representative does!” Sharphearer exclaimed. “Be fair.”

  Quickercatcher sat with his tail curved primly around his front paws.

  “He could have warned us what might happen,” he said.

  “How could he know? The Representative hasn’t ever come out of his nest the entire time we’ve known him!”

  “He came out during the Thirteenth Whole Community,” Longestlooker said.

  “When was that?” Crimson asked.

  “We — we Largerfarthings — gather to reaffirm our community. Every five years we gather in small communities, every twenty-five in medium communities. And every hundred- twenty-five we gather in a Whole Community.”

  “Not Earth years, of course,” Quickercatcher said.

  “I mean, how long ago was that?”

  “About...” Longestlooker paused, figuring. “About eight hundred years —”

  “— Everyone was surprised and pleased that the Representative would make such a gesture,” Sharphearer said.

  “She means eight hundred Earth years,” Quickercatcher said.

  “But he only came out of his nest,” Fasterdigger said. “He didn’t come all the way to Largerfarther.”

  “It was the gesture that counted,” Sharphearer said. “The token.”

  “I know that,” Fasterdigger said.

  “And I suppose,” Sharphearer said, “this is an even greater honor. For him to travel to you.”

  “He wants gratitude for his honor.” Androgeos sat on the bank of the river, his elbows on his bare knees, oblivious to the effect of rocks and mud on his pleated silken kilt. “And if you give it to him, you’ll spoil everything.”

  “J.D.,” Crimson said aloud and through her link, “Kolya, Esther, I’m sorry, the Representative’s Representative isn’t talking.”

  o0o

  The Representative’s ship vanished over the horizon.

  “What d’you think he’s planning to do?” Esther said.

  “Maybe just what he claims.”

  “And maybe try to take J.D.’s starship! Where’s Europa, where’s Quickercatcher — can’t they do something?”

  Her eyelids flickered as she linked with Arachne.

  Europa and Quickercatcher appeared so quickly they must have been waiting, watching.

  “Make him stop,” Esther demanded.

  “Esther, my dear, please — don’t panic,” Europa said.

  “I’m not panicked,” Esther said with annoyance. “I’m pissed off!”

  “This is a very unusual event. The Representative honors you with his visit.”

  “There’s nothing we can do,” Quickercatcher said. “We have no way to stop him — even if we wanted to,” the Largerfarthing added quickly.

  “He’s an elder,” said Longestlooker. “His judgment carries great weight.”

  “And what,” Kolya said calmly, “if his judgment says he should possess Nautilus?”

  “Haven’t you learned we’re not violent?” Androgeos’s image appeared in the far curve of the expedition tent.

  “Please, Nikolai Petrovich,” Quickercatcher said. “We’re your hosts, your sponsors. You’re our guests, our clients. It’s to all our benefit to weave a community.”

  As Starfarer rose above Nautilus’s horizon, the transport separated from it, a small spark moving away from the spinning gray cylinder.

  “Will he behave savagely?” Quickercatcher’s voice was quiet, apprehensive.

  “Who knows what Griffith will do?” Esther said. “Griffith doesn’t even know what Griffith will do.”

  “He’ll do what Kolya tells him,” Infinity said. “Kolya — ?”

  “Our guerrilla accountant is not that predictable,” Kolya said, still staring out the window. Another of Arachne’s images appeared nearby: the constellation of Nautilus and Starfarer, the transport, the Four Worlds’ ship, and the Representative’s space boat.

  The space boat’s orbit tightened.

  “The Representative is going to land,” Kolya said.

  o0o

  As the transport separated from Starfarer, Griffith listened to the communications between Starfarer and Nautilus. He expected, at any moment, Petrovich’s image. He expected the cosmonaut to tell him to stay where he was; but he hoped Petrovich would ask for his help. Griffith would do whatever the cosmonaut asked.

  Kolya Cherenkov maintained his silence.

  Griffith, tense, edged the transport into a curve toward Nautilus. As the engines whispered, the Representative’s space boat spiraled in toward the surface of the starship.

  If he poured on the power, recalculated his course, he could catch the boat and ram it before it landed.

  The transport outmassed the boat by a couple of orders of magnitude. Griffith would probably survive the encounter. The Representative probably would not. Whether Griffith would survive the aftermath, he could not know. He
tried to put that consideration aside from his decision.

  But he did not know what Petrovich wanted, and he did not know what was right.

  He had spent his life obeying orders, committed to the structure from which the orders came. Now he was cut off from the structure, and he had lost his faith in it as well. Nikolai Petrovich had made him consider his loyalties.

  I have to do something! he thought.

  He had always believed that for any situation, some action existed that was a proper response.

  For the first time in his life, he considered the possibility that the proper response might be inaction.

  Petrovich would not tell him what to do, and he would not blindly follow J.D. Sauvage’s plea, for she would never accept force as a necessity.

  He only had a few moments to decide. The transport loomed behind and above the Representative’s boat, in perfect position. Griffith engaged the transport’s computer.

  He took the most difficult action he had ever taken in his life.

  Griffith accelerated the transport, pushing it into a higher orbit around Nautilus as the Representative’s boat sank toward the surface.

  In that moment he gave up any chance of interposing himself between the Four Worlds and Petrovich.

  He started to close his connection with the transport’s computer, to shut off the radio. He did not want to know what would happen next.

  Then he changed his mind. He oriented himself toward the glass wall that looked out into space and down toward the planetoid, and he accepted all the transmissions from Nautilus.

  He floated in zero gravity, in silence and confusion and despair, torturing himself by watching everything that happened.

  o0o

  The Four Worlds’ boat settled slowly to the surface of Nautilus, blowing aside the ancient dust, leaving a starburst of dark stone beneath it. The gravity of Nautilus was so low that dust blew off the worldlet entirely, streaking upward, dissipating, spewing sideways and over the horizon.

  Esther jumped when the dust struck the window of the expedition tent. She grabbed for her helmet, ready to seal herself into her suit. When no hiss of escaping air followed the blast, she relaxed.