The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “I miss Merry,” Stephen Thomas said to his partners, for the first time since their eldest partner died.

  His body shook. The trembling that had overtaken him back on the beach had never stopped, he had only managed to suppress it. It rose and expanded from his core, taking his body out of his control, scaring him breathless. He wrapped his arms around himself, bending forward, struggling for air. He receded from his perceptions: Victoria froze in shock and surprise, then held him and whispered to him, soothing nonsense words. Satoshi drew away and Stephen Thomas groaned, at the edge of panic and despair. Satoshi returned to him, embraced him, completing the partnership’s small broken circle.

  “We’re here,” Satoshi said. “I’m here.”

  Victoria and Satoshi led Stephen Thomas to the couch and sat on either side of him, cuddling him. Their warmth and love soaked into him like sunlight, like cosmic rays, illuminating and warming the chill that shook him, softening and melting the cracked glass wall. Stephen Thomas felt free, and vulnerable, and terrified, and hopeful.

  The terrible shuddering finally eased.

  “I miss Merry,” Stephen Thomas said again. “I miss Merry so much...”

  Stephen Thomas talked about Merry for an hour. He told his partners what he had told J.D., and more, as he had not been able to tell them while they too were grieving. And he talked about Feral. Meeting Feral was the first experience to get through his glass wall since Merry died.

  “Then when Feral died, too...” Stephen Thomas tried to explain the glass wall. He had never told his partners, or anyone else, about the glass wall. “It was like I was closed in all over again, squeezed —”

  The words spilled out of him as if he could not even stop to take a breath. Victoria listened. Sometimes she cried, but when the tears streamed down her face they were in response to his pain instead of drawing her desperately inside herself to face her own. She gripped Stephen Thomas’s left hand. Satoshi, more tentatively, held his right. Stephen Thomas remembered the wonderful times and the terrifying times of his courtship of the family, when he had feared he would never persuade Victoria and Satoshi to consider him.

  “I never was sure,” Stephen Thomas said, “why you finally decided I had more than two neurons to rub together.”

  “We never thought that!” Victoria said.

  “You still think I don’t — ?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He grinned. Victoria smiled back.

  “We were pretty impressed,” Satoshi said, “the first time Professor Thanthavong called you.”

  “Miensaem’s not immune to a pretty face and a beautiful body,” Victoria said. “Not any more than Merry was.”

  “Probably not, but that isn’t how she talked to him.”

  “She’s never made a pass at me,” Stephen Thomas said. “She’s the only boss I’ve ever had who didn’t.”

  “It’s quite a shock, to come home and find a Nobel laureate virtually sitting in your living room. After you introduced us...” Satoshi shrugged. “Pretty shallow of me, but that’s when I started to realize what Merry saw in you.”

  Stephen Thomas gazed at Satoshi for a long moment. “Can you, still? Is there any chance?”

  Satoshi hesitated. “I’ve felt so weird. About the changes in you. If you can give me some time...”

  “I’ll change back,” Stephen Thomas said abruptly.

  “Would you? Do you want to?”

  “Yes. No.” He spread his right hand in Satoshi’s fingers, stretching the swimming webs, pressing them against Satoshi’s skin. “I don’t want to. At first I was afraid to try. Shit, my medical records are squashed to mush.”

  “Miensaem said she could do a reduction comparison. She could just take out the diver genes.”

  “She could get close. But she can’t swear I’d change back exactly! Nobody can, not till we go back to Earth.”

  “I don’t understand why you want to be this way,” Satoshi said.

  “I like it,” Stephen Thomas admitted. “It’s interesting. It’s a challenge.”

  He released his hold on Satoshi. Like Victoria, Satoshi left his hand resting against Stephen Thomas’s fingers.

  “But it isn’t worth losing you,” Stephen Thomas said. “Fuck, yes, I’d change back, I’d risk it. In a hot wet second.”

  “That’s a big step to take before Satoshi’s sure!” Victoria stroked his forearm, the delicate pelt, and reached across him to touch Satoshi’s knee. Her nipples hardened beneath her cotton shirt. Any other time — any time before Stephen Thomas had begun to change — the partnership would already be halfway to one of the bedrooms. If they made it even that far.

  Satoshi stared at the floor, rubbing the ball of his bare foot back and forth against the rock-foam tiles, flexing his toes. Stephen Thomas inadvertently flexed his foot as well, felt his claws extend, relaxed and retracted them just as they tapped the floor, before they scraped against it.

  His pulse quickened, with arousal in the presence of Victoria’s excitement, with fear in the face of Satoshi’s apprehension.

  I’m afraid Satoshi will stand up, bolt — but that isn’t Satoshi’s style, Stephen Thomas thought. That’s more like something I would do.

  This time, he would not bolt.

  “I love you,” he said. “Tell me what you want.”

  Satoshi raised his head. Concern shadowed his dark eyes.

  “Victoria’s right,” he said. “Changing back is too much to ask this soon.” He took a deep breath. “We could try...”

  Eager, apprehensive, Victoria rose and led her partners down the hall, and into the comfortable clutter of Stephen Thomas’s room.

  The faint smell of sandalwood hovered in the air. Victoria let her hand slide through his; she left his side long enough to light a new stick of incense. The heavy scent flowed around them like a cloak.

  Victoria pulled her shirt off, unzipped her jeans, and pushed them down over her hips till they lay in a tangle on the floor with her sandals. Stephen Thomas knew every line of her intense body, every curve and hollow. He was trembling; he wanted to fall on his knees before her and spend the rest of his life giving her pleasure.

  “Now you,” she said, challenging him with her voice, her stance.

  He took off his blue silk t-shirt, as self-conscious, as nervous, as the first time he had made love with all three of the partners together. Merry had been there, Merry had led, and guided, cried out in ecstasy and moaned with effort and joy. Now Stephen Thomas felt alone. He was all too aware of Satoshi, very near but holding back.

  He pulled off his shorts and let his partners see his diver’s body naked, at close range, for the first time.

  “You’re just as beautiful,” Victoria said. “But... it’s like you’re not even naked.”

  Stephen Thomas glanced at Satoshi, who stared at the thick gold hair covering the genital pouch.

  “I’m all there, partner,” Stephen Thomas said. “It just needs... a little coaxing to come out.” He smiled, showing more bravery than he felt. “Talk dirty to me.”

  Victoria went to Satoshi and slid her fingers up his muscular chest, dragging his black t-shirt off over his head. The hem of the shirt ruffled Satoshi’s dark hair. Stephen Thomas joined them. Looking into Satoshi’s eyes, he put one hand on his belly, fingertips beneath the waistband of his pants. Satoshi said nothing. Stephen Thomas thumbed open the top button, and slid his hand downward.

  “Not yet,” Satoshi whispered.

  Stephen Thomas drew his hand away, backed off, but Satoshi grabbed his wrist, drew him closer, and slid his palm up Stephen Thomas’s arm to the back of his neck.

  When he tangled his fingers in Stephen Thomas’s hair, the silver mutualist clenched and wriggled, trying to hold fast to the strands. Satoshi flinched.

  “Are you going to wear that thing?”

  “I’ll take it off to love you,” Stephen Thomas said. His voice was tight. “Wait. You do it. Tickle it.”

  He took Satoshi�
��s left hand, Victoria’s right hand, and showed them how to loosen the mutualist. His hair fell free. He grabbed the silver worm. It twisted; he let it coil itself around the earring rack on his desk.

  Satoshi tangled his hand in Stephen Thomas’s hair and drew his taller partner down to kiss him.

  Stephen Thomas responded, as chastely as he could. His penis throbbed within his genital pouch; it probed for the opening.

  Satoshi’s lips felt cool. Satoshi drew back.

  “Your lips are so warm, your skin...” He kissed Stephen Thomas again, gently, tentatively.

  Stephen Thomas turned to Victoria and kissed her, too. There was nothing chaste about their kiss. She opened her mouth and took his tongue between her lips, between her teeth. She slid her knee up his thigh, to his hip. Then she drew away from him and kissed Satoshi. She opened the lower buttons of his cargo pants, then pushed them down his hips and stripped him. She pulled Stephen Thomas closer into the circle.

  He kissed Satoshi again, gently, carefully.

  “Lips the same,” he said.

  “Almost,” Satoshi said. “Except for the heat.”

  Satoshi stroked Stephen Thomas’s arm, from shoulder to wrist, his back, from shoulder to waist, smoothing his fine gold hair, seeking the familiar lines of his muscles.

  Victoria held Satoshi’s penis. Stephen Thomas cradled Victoria’s breast with one hand, and slid his other hand between Satoshi’s legs. Satoshi liked it when one partner caressed his penis, the other his scrotum.

  “Hands almost the same,” Stephen Thomas said. “A little different.”

  When Satoshi felt the warm amber swimming webs enclosing him, he tensed.

  “Should I — ?”

  “It’s all right,” Satoshi said. “It’s all right.”

  He caressed Victoria, petting her clitoris. He slid his left hand down Stephen Thomas’s stomach, exploring the genital pouch.

  “A lot of difference, there.”

  “Are you...” Satoshi hesitated. “Are you furry?”

  Stephen Thomas laughed. “Not all over.”

  Victoria moved her hand up his inner thigh, pressing her fingers against the opening, slipping inside, seeking the weight of his hidden penis. It pressed outward, the pink tip probing forward, already slick with his excitement.

  Stephen Thomas gasped, and his breath quickened.

  Victoria was right, he thought, it is my first time.

  Chapter 12

  Silence enclosed the house; dawn silvered the world.

  Sitting in the window seat, J.D. relaxed. She was grateful for the solitude, for the quiet, and weary from her center to her skin.

  Zev was still asleep, but J.D. had not slept well. She was too keyed up over the meeting later on this morning.

  We have to accept the invitation, she thought. We have to. What else could we do?

  But she feared that on the brink of triumph, something would obstruct the path the Four Worlds had opened.

  J.D. fidgeted, tired of waiting, anxious to act, to improve Alien Contact’s chances of going to the Farther worlds.

  The baby squidmoth, J.D. thought.

  If it damages the wild cylinder, we might not have any choice but to go home.

  I’ve got to keep that from happening, she thought. It’s three hours till the meeting. If I get up right now, and hurry, I can visit the squidmoth baby before the meeting.

  Another squidmoth tantrum was the last thing she wanted to experience. But it was worth the risk, if she could persuade the being to leave Starfarer willingly. If it would not, she feared the consequences. For Starfarer and for the larval squidmoth. During the meeting, someone was bound to bring up the problem of Nemo’s offspring. J.D. wanted to present a solution.

  In early morning’s rising light, her front yard glowed yellow with daffodils. The spring flowers erupted through mud washed in by the snowmelt. After everything that had happened, J.D. could hardly believe time had not passed to summer, to winter, to another year.

  The flowers and leaves brushed against each other, swaying. The warm breeze carried with it the moist, green scent of spring.

  The breeze ruffled the daffodils like a silk scarf. Here and there a cluster of stiffer tulips formed eddies in the motion of the daffodils.

  J.D. wondered if she would be here when the hard green eggs of the tulip flowers burst into bloom.

  She had to get back to Nautilus. She had to dive into the knowledge surface as if it were the ocean, and stay there until it permeated her like the salt of the primordial sea.

  If she could navigate it, descend into it, she would possess all the knowledge of Nemo and Nemo’s ancestors.

  Right after the meeting, I can go, she thought. Right after.

  She jumped up, left the house, and hurried across her yard, heading for the end of Starfarer’s cylinder and the wild side ferry.

  Over by the river, where the light cast dappled shadows through a grove of young trees, the path moved.

  J.D. stopped short. The path moved?

  The rippling continued.

  At the grove of trees, the Representative’s representative inch-wormed from dappled shade to sunlight.

  “Late!” J.D. exclaimed. “What are you doing? Are you all right?”

  “I am... for now,” he said.

  “You’re unusually active today. Won’t you hurt yourself?”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he said lugubriously.

  “What’s wrong? Why are you so unhappy?”

  “I’ve heard nothing from the Representative.”

  All sorts of possibilities occurred to J.D., about what might be happening to the Representative, cooped up with the Smallerfarthing eldest in the strange little space-boat. Half the possibilities were bawdy and the other half sinister. She kept her speculations to herself.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I... I had hoped... that he gained a reward for his line. But I fear...”

  He fell silent and stretched himself flat against the path.

  “Please forgive my ignorance,” J.D. said, “but why would he expect a reward? If he was trying to possess Nautilus —”

  “He risked himself, J.D.! His risk was brilliant, audacious.”

  Late raised his forward third from the path, revealing shiny suckers, agitated radula. The radula combs appeared, swiped themselves across the sharp teeth, and disappeared again.

  “He deserved...” Late’s fur bristled, and his spines rose from the dapples. “But it has been so long. I fear for us.”

  “What might happen?”

  “If the eldest did not countenance his risk, his line will end.”

  “His line. You’re part of his line. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And — ?”

  “I will have no place. I’ll be cut off from my society...”

  “Banished?”

  “I served well, I acted in the Representative’s place so he did not have to spend himself,” Late said. “I don’t want to die.”

  “Is there something I can do to help?” J.D. said with sympathy. “Were you looking for me?”

  The Representative’s representative shrugged his whole body, bristling out his fur and extending his spines. He fluttered forward. He could move with surprising rapidity, when he chose.

  “I am looking for an adventure,” Late said. “I have never had an adventure, and I might not have much time left. You have adventures, so I came to you.”

  “An adventure? I don’t — I guess I do have adventures. But — I’m awfully sorry, I have to go over to the wild side. Maybe we could think of an adventure after I get back? After the meeting?”

  “The wild side,” Late said. “The wild side, yes, that would be an adventure. I will come with you. To the wild side.”

  o0o

  J.D. moved gingerly across the inspection web toward the squidmoth baby. Her safety line would catch her if she fell again, but the fall a couple of days ago had scared her.

  “Be
careful,” the Representative’s Representative said to her.

  “I’m trying,” she said.

  Late rode her shoulders, overbalancing her and making her feel even less secure on the open web. She regretted bringing him. Here on the outside of Starfarer, he was a heavy burden, and a reluctant adventurer. He had taken an interminable time to enter the Chi, find his spacesuit — J.D. had pulled it from the bundle of spacesuits the Farthings brought with them — and ripple into it. The suit looked like a high-tech plastic shopping bag, translucent and covered with sensors and grippers. He put it on by edging himself inside, one ripple at a time.

  After that, he followed her so slowly that J.D. finally got the hint and offered to carry him, as Sharphearer so often did. He accepted instantly, gratefully eager, and climbed up her back to fasten his forward pincers to the shoulders of J.D.’s pressure suit.

  She had not taken into account that Sharphearer had four legs to her two, or that Sharphearer usually carried Late through zero gravity. The inspection web had the highest gravity on campus.

  Lugging a medium-sized Chinese carpet, plus carpet pad, J.D. walked a tightrope.

  Where are all the silver slugs? she wondered. Maybe I could get one of them to help.

  She put out a query. Arachne asked if her request was essential.

  J.D.’s back hurt and her shoulders ached. She was only halfway to Nemo’s offspring, and she felt as if she had been on a strenuous hike. Replying to Arachne in the affirmative, J.D. stopped to rest.

  “Are we there?” Late asked.

  “No. I can show you an image if you like.”

  “I will... savor the anticipation of viewing squidmoth spawn,” Late said.

  The silver slug humped around the curve of Starfarer’s cylinder. It clutched the ship’s skin, upside-down.

  “Here’s your new ride,” J.D. said.

  “My... ride?”

  “The artificial. The silver slug. Over there.”

  Late clamped against her back, all the pincers scrabbling for a hold on the irregularities of her pressure suit and its support pack.