The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “Sneak around! I don’t know —” Her anger dissolved in an abrupt, embarrassing blush. “Oh, no, Stephen Thomas, I thought you knew about... about me and Zev and Victoria. It was...” She stopped. She had been about to say it was not serious, it was all in fun, for play.

  But for her it was serious, and she longed to spend time with Victoria again.

  “I’m sorry!” she said. “We didn’t keep it from you on purpose. And it’s still no excuse for you to lie about me!”

  He left her completely confused. He had seen her and Victoria embrace, he could not be so oblivious —

  Stephen Thomas stared at her, his pale eyebrows drawn together, his eyes narrowed.

  “I did know, what does that have to do with anything? And what the fuck do you mean, I lied about you?”

  “You told Zev that Feral and I slept together!”

  “Why not? You want everybody to tell the truth —”

  “It isn’t true.”

  “But I — you —”

  “I didn’t sleep with Feral.”

  “Oh.” Stephen Thomas sounded uncertain. “I thought you did.”

  “Why?” she asked, astonished.

  “Because you were so embarrassed when I found his notes. What other reason — Why were you so embarrassed?” He let his eyelids flicker.

  “Come back!” J.D. said. “Don’t go wandering off into Arachne now! Didn’t you read his notes?” Relief surged over her.

  She would be sorry if Feral’s work was lost, locked irretrievably in Arachne. But she was glad at the same time, glad Stephen Thomas could not read Feral’s description of her schoolgirl crush.

  “Sure I did,” Stephen Thomas said. “Most of them. When you acted so embarrassed, I didn’t —” His webbed hands clenched, and his toes dug into the tree root, claws shredding bits of wood. “I couldn’t face reading the file about you. About you and him. I thought. I...” Downcast, he leaned forward, wrapped his arms around his legs, and hid his face against his knees. “Shit, J.D.... I’m sorry. I am so sorry.” His voice was muffled.

  J.D. tried to remember any other time when he had looked uncertain, when he had admitted he was wrong — or when he had been wrong. Or when he had apologized.

  “Even so,” J.D. whispered. “Why did you try to hurt Zev?”

  “Because I thought you got to love Feral and I never had the chance. I couldn’t stand — I wanted...” His voice fell to a whisper. “Oh, god, I wanted somebody else to be as unhappy as I am, and Zev was in the way...”

  Angry and humiliated, she could barely hear him. Her eyes stung. She wiped away tears with the heel of her hand.

  “It was you Feral loved,” she said softly. “It was you he wanted.”

  He raised his head and looked at her. The mistrust in his expression broke her heart.

  “Read what he wrote,” she said dully. “I think it’s important for you to read that file.”

  As he lowered his head again, his eyelids flickered. The taut muscles across his shoulders relaxed and he went into a communications fugue.

  J.D. rose, brushed the sand off her skin, and climbed into her clothes. Her worn cotton shirt lay soft against her skin, but the new canvas pants from Starfarer’s stores were still stiff and scratchy.

  She walked to the water’s edge, folded her arms across her breasts, and stared out across the starship’s small ocean. On the slope of the seaward end cap, fog rolled down the side of the glacier that helped power the weather systems. Tiny waves, artificially generated, stroked her toes. Her feet pressed into the hard wet sand. Full of life and potential, the sand vibrated against her soles.

  A larger wave washed in, swirling around her ankles, soaking her pants cuffs. The wind freshened. J.D. shivered and let the metabolic enhancer cut in.

  I wonder what Feral wrote, J.D. thought. I wonder... what he said about me.

  Feral had a sweet nature, but he did not soft-pedal what he wrote. He would not go out of his way to make fun of her, of anyone, but if someone made a fool of herself, he would not hesitate to describe the incident.

  Feral had teased her, when they talked about Stephen Thomas. It was gentle teasing, teasing without malice.

  I could just as well have teased him back, J.D. thought. Why didn’t I?

  She answered her own question: Because he wasn’t embarrassed about being attracted to Stephen Thomas, and I was. Feral went along with what he felt, and I... I didn’t want to admit to being so predictable. I didn’t want Stephen Thomas to think I was just like everybody else, overwhelmed by his beauty and blind to any other quality he has.

  Stephen Thomas had been silent for ten or fifteen minutes, surely enough time to read Feral’s last file.

  She walked up the beach, crossing cold wet sand to the high water mark, then scuffing her feet in the hot dry sand. She was glad of the warmth.

  Stephen Thomas remained as she had left him, sitting on the cedar root, leaning forward, staring at the sand. But now his eyes were open. His long dark fingers moved, delicately picking out tiny shells, placing them in a precise pattern, the outline of a maze. His hair had dried in stiff salty curls. The silver worm adjusted, tightened, kinked around the tangled strands.

  Stephen Thomas dashed the pattern away, scooping up the shells in the amber webs and flinging them into the roots of the downed cedar. They clicked against the wood, rattled as they fell, caught in cracks and rootlets, and scattered on the sand.

  J.D. sat on her heels beside him. He raised his head. She steeled herself. Now he knew how she felt about him. She would have to go through all the embarrassment, all over again.

  But his expression held no amusement, no pity, not even the resignation of an attractive person faced with turning away one more unwelcome advance.

  Sadness filled his face.

  “I’ve fucked up so bad. I didn’t take time for Feral, I thought we’d always have time. I embarrassed you, I hurt Zev, Dr. Thanthavong’s scared to let me in the lab, and Victoria and Satoshi...” He did not even try to explain what was going on among the partners. “God, J.D., I must be nuts.” He scrubbed his hands across his face. “I miss Merry so much...”

  “Tell me,” she said. “About Merry.”

  He glanced at her with a mix of grief and confusion. “Merry? Merry wanted me as a partner — not just a lover, a partner — before we ever met. Without knowing... what I look like.” Stephen Thomas smiled, and his grief lifted for a moment as he remembered. “That never happened to me before. Merry was interested in everything. Not many people read genetics journals, and fewer people outside the field write you about them. We corresponded. Real letters. Merry used an antique fountain pen, isn’t that weird? Then I was up in the northwest, for a seminar, and Merry asked me out, and we met...”

  His voice shook. He paused, gathering himself again. He whistled softly through his teeth.

  “I never felt like that about anybody before. Or since, till Feral. We rode around on that fucking motorcycle — have you ever ridden a motorcycle?”

  “No.”

  “It’s fun. Jesus, it’s exhilarating. It’s dangerous, but, god, you think it’s worth it. Until it catches up with you...” He stared at nothing, at something invisible, his gaze unfocused, then squeezed his eyes shut and returned from wherever he had been. “We rode around till dawn, we stopped at Merry’s favorite view spots. We looked at the city and the mountains and the sound. Every time we stopped, we made out.”

  He shifted his body, quickly, jerkily, as if to throw off energy and feelings he was not prepared to face. As he crossed his legs, the pink tip of his penis appeared from within his genital pouch, and vanished again. J.D. pretended not to notice.

  “In the morning, we went home, and I met Victoria and Satoshi.”

  J.D. smiled fondly, recalling the affection among them before their current — and, she thought, she hoped, temporary — differences and difficulties.

  “I bet you fit right in,” she said. “When I first saw the three of you —�
�

  He laughed, the first time J.D. had heard him laugh with real humor since Feral died.

  “Fit in!” He laughed so hard he gasped on the words.

  “I guess not?”

  He wiped the tears of laughter away with the back of his hand. His eyes were bright, the pupils dilated.

  “Victoria and Satoshi thought I was... a one-shot. One of Merry’s fancies, we used to call them. Merry had a taste for a beautiful body or a pretty face. Preferably both in the same package. Not necessarily much up here.” He tapped his temple with his forefinger. “So I was kind of unusual. I mean, I didn’t know this at first, but the reason Merry wrote to me was because I fit the plan for the partnership. The fireworks were a surprise.” He grinned. “To both of us.”

  “What about Victoria and Satoshi?”

  “I wanted to join the partnership. I wanted to be in Merry’s life, permanently. And I liked Victoria and Satoshi. So I had to...” He opened his hands, palm up, and spread his fingers wide. Light poured between them. The capillaries formed a delicate tracing. “I had to seduce them, if you want to know the truth.” He added, wondering, “It was fucking hard work.”

  J.D. held back the urge to suggest he intended the pun, but she had to smile. She wondered if Stephen Thomas had ever had to go out of his way to seduce anyone else in his life.

  “And I fell in love with both of them,” he said sadly. “But now I’ve fucked things up so good, I doubt they even want to talk to me, much less let me try to seduce them again.”

  “Maybe you should let them seduce you,” J.D. said.

  “After what happened, they’d wouldn’t want to.”

  “Did you fight?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. It all started when I mentioned Merry, and Victoria started to cry, and I... It’s like there was somebody else inside my skin. I panicked.” He raked his hands through his hair, making the tangles tighter rather than unsnarling them, and knocking loose the silver worm. It curled around the end of his thumb, just above the edge of the swimming web. “All she needed was for me to hold her, and I ran out like...”

  At a loss, he shrugged. He slipped the silver worm off his thumb and straightened it out before it could curl up into a tight spring. He held its ends delicately between his fingertips. Light sparkled off the worm’s silver segments as it twisted and writhed. Stephen Thomas put it in his hair. It struggled, trying to find its proper place, coiling into the unkempt strands.

  “Maybe if you talked to her, if you apologized —”

  “I’ve tried to talk to her! Dammit, give me some credit. I behaved like an idiot, but I tried to work out... whatever it is that’s wrong. Every time we try again things get worse!”

  “What about Satoshi?”

  “We haven’t fought, not exactly. But... I don’t think he can stand to touch me anymore.”

  “Oh — !” J.D. made a sound of protest and disbelief.

  Stephen Thomas ran his hand down his thigh, smoothing his short pelt, letting his fingers rest just above his knee.

  “The last time he touched me... he froze.”

  “And — ?”

  “And nothing. I felt like shit anyway. I said I wanted to sleep alone and he went away and...” He shrugged, and said again, “And nothing. That was back at Tau Ceti.”

  “Maybe he was just surprised. You’ve gone through a lot of changes. Maybe he needs some time to get used to them. Not to mention,” J.D. said dryly, “the opportunity.”

  “Maybe...” A hopeful note crept into his voice.

  “Why don’t you go home —”

  “They might not even want me home.”

  “I can’t believe that’s true!” Her annoyance and frustration snapped out. “I think they aren’t sure you want to come back!”

  Without making a physical move, Stephen Thomas abruptly withdrew from the subject.

  “It isn’t your problem.” His tone was so offhand and careless that J.D. sat back, startled and confused. “I don’t know why I’m dumping it on you. And Zev. I’ll apologize to Zev.” His eyelids flickered briefly. “There. I sent him a message, I’ll talk to him as soon as — and Victoria and Satoshi and I — we’ll work things out.”

  He smiled at her.

  Any other time, J.D. would probably have fallen for his charm. She probably would have agreed that everything was all right, everything was going to be all right.

  That’s how he uses his charm, she thought. That’s how he’s developed it. For smoothing things over, for making them come out right. And usually it works.

  His attempt to dismiss a difficult conversation offended her. She knew, though, that if she snapped at him again he would withdraw even farther.

  “You told me because I asked,” she said. “And because I didn’t just ask to hear you say, `Things are fine, J.D., everything will work out fine.’ You hardly ever talk about your other partner —”

  “It’s been a year! I should be over Merry’s death by now!” he said angrily. “Why’d you ask me, anyway, why didn’t you mind your own business?”

  “Because you said, ‘I miss Merry so much.’”

  “I did not.”

  “I’m sorry, Stephen Thomas, you did. We were talking about Feral, and you said —”

  “Oh, god.” His voice was a groan. “I did.” The look in his eyes was that of a fighter punched in the head. “Victoria thinks I don’t even care that Merry died,” Stephen Thomas whispered. “She thinks I cared more about Feral. I did care about Feral, but —”

  Stephen Thomas collapsed. He fell forward on his knees, his head down, his hands clenched on his thighs so his fingernails dug into his skin. He shuddered, violently, silently.

  J.D. flung her arms around him and held him. He folded in on himself as if he had to hold his heart inside. His breath came in ragged gulps.

  After a long time, the shuddering exhausted him. His body quieted. Every few minutes, without a sound, he quivered in her arms like a wounded animal, like a racehorse with a shattered leg.

  Slowly, gradually, he relaxed. He put his arms around her and rested his head on her shoulder. She stroked the back of his neck. She teased the silver worm till it wrapped around her finger. She smoothed his tangled hair, then let the worm curl back into place.

  Stephen Thomas leaned against her, his body hot against hers.

  He buried his face in the curve between her neck and shoulder.

  At this moment, she could have him. She knew he felt as she had felt before Zev came on board Starfarer: as if he were starving to death through his skin. But his desperate hunger and loneliness had nothing to do with her, and she was too proud and too stubborn to respond to it. To take him.

  Too proud and too stubborn, she thought. And too dumb.

  “Stephen Thomas,” she said softly. “Stephen Thomas, let’s go home. I’m sure Victoria and Satoshi want to see you.”

  He sat back, letting her go. She dropped her arms to her sides. Her shirt stayed warm from his body.

  “I can’t fix it anymore,” he whispered. “I can’t.”

  “Of course you can’t!” she said, without thinking, her response purely visceral.

  “But I did,” he said. “I always did before. When Merry died... I could help. I listened, I held them when they cried —” His voice rose and his eyes burned blue in his dark face.

  “I believe you,” J.D. said. “You got your partners through a tragedy. Victoria told me she never would have made it without you. But... who helped you?”

  “I don’t need —”

  “You kept your partnership from collapsing!” J.D. said angrily. “Are you going to wreck it now because you don’t need? My god, no wonder Victoria thinks you didn’t care!”

  He opened his mouth to retort, then closed it.

  A moment later he said shakily, “I don’t know what to do.”

  “I can’t tell you,” J.D. said. “But I think going home would be a good start.”

  o0o

  J.D. waited at the g
ateway of the partnership’s garden until the arched door of the house closed behind Stephen Thomas. She picked a fragrant carnation and carried it with her.

  As she approached home, Zev hurried onto the porch. The front door banged. Uncertain, Zev stopped.

  “I heard from Stephen Thomas. He said he’s sorry, he wants to talk.”

  “He didn’t mean to lie to you,” J.D. said. “He misunderstood something.”

  J.D. walked straight to Zev and put her arms around him.

  “I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too.” He hugged her. “I don’t understand the way I felt. Stephen Thomas said I was jealous, but I don’t think —” He drew back to look in her eyes.

  “It doesn’t matter,” J.D. said. “It’s all right now.”

  o0o

  Stephen Thomas stopped just inside the door.

  Victoria and Satoshi sat at the kitchen table. Neither had eaten much, though dinner was a rice and tuna and vegetable casserole that Victoria made, not for special occasions — it was too plain, she said, so plain that people teased her about the mythical blandness of Canadians — but for family times. It was plain, but it never had any leftovers.

  Victoria and Satoshi had set a place for Stephen Thomas at the table.

  “Stefan-Tomas.” Satoshi was the only person ever to make up a pet name that Stephen Thomas liked.

  He suddenly felt hopeful, and even more scared. He felt the beginning of the terrifying shudder that had taken over his body back on the beach.

  Victoria hurried to his side. “What’s wrong?” She took his hand and drew him toward a chair. “Come sit down, eh? Then you’ll be all right, you’ll feel better —”

  He tightened his hand around hers.

  “No!” he said fiercely. “I’m not all right. Don’t tell me what I feel, Victoria, not any more. I love you. I believe you love me, if I haven’t screwed that up —”

  “No!” she said, as fiercely as he. “You haven’t, of course you haven’t —”

  “— but you don’t know how I feel!”

  “Neither of us does,” Satoshi said. “You have to tell us.”

  Stephen Thomas loosened his death-grip on Victoria’s hand. He must have hurt her, yet she left her hand in his, still and trusting. Satoshi put his hand on Stephen Thomas’s arm, slid his fingertips down the soft pelt, and entwined his fingers tentatively in Stephen Thomas’s webbed hand.