The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  “Hi.”

  Ruth turned. Standing on the dune behind her, Zev looked fondly down at her.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “I’m just fine,” she said. “And how are you?

  She wondered if Zev had kept his promise to her. He was open, guileless; keeping a secret would not be easy for him. He was the only person besides Europa who knew she was pregnant.

  If he talked to her in public in this solicitous tone, no one would be fooled for long. Besides, being spoken to like that nauseated her worse than morning sickness.

  “I’m glad you —”

  “Zev,” she said sternly, “I’d rather not discuss —”

  “We have to. You have to release me from my promise.”

  “No.”

  She was glad she was sitting down; her knees felt shaky. He slid down the dune and sat anxiously beside her.

  “I didn’t think it would matter if I didn’t tell J.D.,” he said in a rush. “I thought I could pretend I didn’t know, I thought it was just a little thing — I thought — I don’t know what I thought. I’m happy for you —”

  “And I’m grateful to you. Don’t spoil it now.”

  “But I can’t keep secrets from J.D. I thought she had kept one from me — she didn’t, but I thought she did, and I felt awful — and if she finds out —” He spread his webbed hands.

  “Zev,” Ruth said gently.

  “— she’ll feel the same way!”

  “Do you tell J.D. everything? Every conversation you have, everything you do?”

  “I would if we were back home,” he said. “But here there isn’t time. Everybody’s so busy...”

  “Then —”

  “But I tell her everything important.”

  “Then consider our conversation unimportant.”

  He looked at the ground, digging his claws into the sand.

  “But it was important. It is important.”

  “Telling her will just make things harder for her. Don’t you think she has enough on her mind?”

  “The more good things you have on your mind, the easier it is.”

  “Everyone on the deep space expedition agreed not to have children during the trip,” she said. “Why get them upset about me?” She was afraid to reveal Civilization’s rules; bad enough that she was breaking Starfarer’s.

  “But you aren’t a member of the expedition,” Zev explained sincerely. “Not officially. It isn’t your fault you’re here.”

  Ruth flopped back in the sand, aggravated, and gazed obliquely past the sun tube, at the far-overhead ocean. Light glittered from the waves.

  “Ruth — ?” Zev said, worried, but relentless. “I have to tell J.D. Please don’t make me break my word to you.”

  She sighed, sat up, and rose. The dry soft sand squeaked beneath her feet.

  “Come on,” she said. “We’ll talk to J.D. together.”

  o0o

  J.D. reached the amphitheater while it was still deserted.

  The terraced bowl opened out before her. Still shaken by the adolescent squidmoth’s tantrum, she was grateful for the silence and the open space. She had spent too much time beneath the looming presence of the egg nest. Needing light and air, she had thrown off her space suit and fled the airlock, leaving the Representative’s Representative still releasing his seals.

  How strange, she thought, to feel claustrophobic when all of space lay beneath my feet.

  She walked down the path; she liked to sit midway down the hillside. The grass of the terraced seats was bright green and slightly damp, new blades thickly covering desiccated brown wisps. The grass had recovered from the heat wave and from the snowstorm.

  So far we’ve muddled through, J.D. thought. We reached consensus to leave the solar system. We defied it, when Gerald blocked, to leave Tau Ceti and go to Sirius.

  So far, almost all of us have agreed. Maybe we will again.

  Gold and mahogany in the sun, Zev strode through the entryway. Senator Orazio accompanied him.

  Zev hugged J.D. and sat down beside her, uncharacteristically solemn. Ruth Orazio sat next to him.

  “I have something to tell you,” Zev said.

  When he, and the senator, had finished, J.D. bent forward and hid her face in her hands.

  “J.D. —” Ruth said.

  “I’m happy for you,” J.D. said, her voice muffled. “I am. Honestly.”

  “What will you do?”

  J.D. took her hands from her face. “Why did you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to keep secrets from you,” Zev said.

  “Oh, Zev — !” she said, appreciating his motives but, for once, wishing his candor were not so complete. “I won’t do anything,” she said to Ruth. “I hope you’ll do the same.”

  “Within reason,” Ruth said.

  They smiled at each other, sealing a fragile agreement.

  The rest of Starfarer’s people began to gather around them. Ruth patted J.D.’s hand in reassurance and went to sit a few terraces away.

  J.D. sighed.

  “I knew what was right back home,” Zev said. “I wasn’t so sure about here.”

  “You did right,” J.D. said. Now she understood better why he had been so upset. She squeezed his hand.

  Victoria and Stephen Thomas and Satoshi arrived together. Whatever Stephen Thomas had said to them when he got home, it had worked. J.D. smiled to see them. They looked happier than they had since Stephen Thomas started to change. Victoria glowed with transcendent joy. Satoshi, content and bemused, touched Stephen Thomas’s back, letting his hand linger on the blue silk of his loose shirt. Stephen Thomas’s exuberant arrogance amused and delighted J.D. Even the pang she felt at having let him go when she could have had him stood apart from her pleasure in the reconciliation of her friends.

  “They’re going to be okay now, aren’t they?” Zev said softly.

  “Yes,” J.D. said. “I think they are. Maybe it won’t be easy. But I think they are.”

  She grinned at Zev. He leaned forward and gave her a quick, hot-tongued kiss. J.D. wondered, with a flash of anticipatory pleasure radiating from her center, if Stephen Thomas was anywhere near as good a lover as Zev. Being a male diver conferred benefits that had nothing to do with being concealed from sharks.

  Midway up the opposite slope of the amphitheater, next to Fox, Gerald Hemminge stood up to speak.

  His colleagues settled into silence.

  Damn! J.D. thought. I let myself get distracted, now Gerald will get in the first word...

  “Gerald Hemminge.” Following tradition, Gerald spoke his name and paused. No one challenged his right to speak.

  “Our guests,” he said, “our sponsors from the Four Worlds, have honored us. Before we accept their invitation, we should ask them to make it clear how joining Civilization will benefit us. So far, they’ve given us little and asked for a great deal: Victoria’s algorithm and Crimson’s fossils.”

  “But I want them to have the fossils,” Crimson said, breaking the rules of the meeting with cross-talk. “The whole point of excavating them is to study them.”

  “They want our coffee and our chocolate, too.” Florrie Brown sat with Infinity and Esther, who looked rested and energetic.

  Though it was rude to interrupt whoever was standing to speak, a ripple of laughter passed across the amphitheater. J.D. wondered if Florrie had made a deliberate joke, or if she was thinking, as J.D. was, of the times on earth when delicacies or drugs created flash-points for war.

  “Indeed they do,” Gerald said, his words polite, his tone sharp. “And they claim rights in the alien starship.”

  J.D. noticed, as she was sure she was meant to, that Gerald did not refer to Nautilus as belonging to her.

  “I believe,” Gerald said, “that we should return to Earth.”

  J.D. held back her protest, but she perched on the edge of the grassy terrace, ready to leap to her feet the instant Gerald gave her an opening.

  He noticed he
r agitation and smiled at her with a hint of condescension. He spread his hands, taking in the amphitheater. “It’s because of J.D. that we can go home now. We have the alien spaceship. We have an alien! It may not grow into sentience during our lifetimes. It may not hatch during our lifetimes! But it is alien life. By definition, the deep space expedition has succeeded.”

  He paused, glanced around the amphitheater, turned to include the people behind him.

  “Back on Earth, they think of us as fools and fantasists. Or families fear we’re dead! Don’t you think we should go home and validate ourselves?”

  J.D. leaped to her feet before Gerald could take another breath to continue.

  “J.D. Sauvage,” she said, and barely paused. “If we go home now we’ll be stranded!”

  “I was not quite finished, J.D.,” Gerald said mildly.

  “I’m —” J.D. collected herself, took a lesson from Stephen Thomas, and did not apologize. “I thought you were, Gerald. Please, tell us your solutions.”

  “The cosmic string isn’t predictable any more. It left our system, yes — and it could come back as abruptly.”

  Victoria made a skeptical sound. She glanced over at Avvaiyar Prakesh, the astronomer, who grimaced with equal doubt.

  “On the other hand, we could wait out here for several lifetimes — for five hundred years of banishment — and the string still might not return!” Gerald said. “Is anyone here prepared to risk that?”

  “Sure,” Stephen Thomas said.

  “Yes,” J.D. said.

  Gerald replied to Stephen Thomas. “I’m not at all surprised. You’ll no doubt be arrested the moment you land.”

  In the United States, changing into a diver was illegal.

  J.D. protested. “No court —”

  “I did not say he would be convicted, I said he would be arrested.”

  “Along with everybody else on campus,” Stephen Thomas said.

  That earned him a rueful laugh. They were all likely to be prosecuted for stealing the starship.

  Senator Derjaguin rose out of turn, but Gerald ceded time to him with a welcoming gesture.

  “I have influence back on Earth,” he said. “If you return, I’ll use it as best I can to support you.”

  “Like the United States,” Stephen Thomas said sarcastically, “supported the deep space expedition?”

  “The longer you delay,” the senator said, “the harder it will be.”

  “I’d rather take my chances out here,” J.D. said. “I think we should —”

  “Why do you people adopt meeting rules you’re not willing to follow?” Gerald said indignantly. “I still have not finished.”

  “Why not?” Stephen Thomas asked, ignoring Gerald’s complaint. “Give J.D. a turn.”

  “In a minute,” J.D. said. “Gerald, what do you plan to do about the supercharged bacteria?”

  “Pretend our young genius never discovered them.”

  “Fuck, no!” Stephen Thomas said.

  “I absolutely reject that suggestion!” Professor Thanthavong said. “I’ll have no part in transmitting these bacteria in secret. However beneficial — however essential! — they might be.”

  “Professor Thanthavong,” Gerald said with careful courtesy, “can you cure our entire ecosystem?”

  “No,” she admitted. “Not without destroying it.”

  “Then we have no choice,” Gerald said. “If Stephen Thomas weren’t so accomplished, we wouldn’t know about it.”

  “But we do know about it,” Thanthavong said.

  “Earth can’t join Civilization without the protection of the bacteria. We might as well —”

  “Take them to Earth? In secret?”

  “Yes.”

  “What you’re suggesting is profoundly immoral.”

  “And it’s the way Civilization has always proceeded! What’s the alternative?”

  “Tell. Tell everything.”

  “Professor, forgive me, we’d be shot out of the sky.”

  “I disagree.”

  “At the very least, we’d never be allowed home.”

  “No one will be trapped on Starfarer. We can cure individuals. The cure isn’t enjoyable, but it isn’t difficult, either.”

  “The public outcry against letting us back home — even cured — will be worse.”

  “You may do as you like,” Thanthavong said coldly. “Lie about the bacteria, as you’ve chosen to lie about Crimson’s performance. Whoever you persuade — I won’t participate.”

  Shock, embarrassment, and fascination combined into a heavy silence.

  J.D. rose. Her motion broke the tension between Gerald and Professor Thanthavong. Gerald reluctantly sat down.

  “Gerald has proved my point,” J.D. said. “The Four Worlds are taking a tremendous risk by welcoming us.”

  She looked around the amphitheater, trying to gauge the response. Victoria gave her a small smile of confidence, a supportive nod; Satoshi gave her a thumbs-up. But Gerald looked bored. Senator Derjaguin shifted irritably. Senator Orazio frowned and stared at her feet. Will she keep our bargain? J.D. wondered. J.D. disliked secrets, but she feared what might happen if Ruth’s became common knowledge.

  “The Four Worlds are offering us confidence that we haven’t necessarily earned,” J.D. said. “They’re giving us another chance. How can’t we take it?”

  “Why?” Ruth Orazio asked.

  J.D. looked at her sharply. Ruth gazed back calmly, as if they shared no secrets.

  “As a guest, I may be speaking out of turn,” Ruth said, “but you did ask a question. Why are they offering their confidence to a bunch of violent barbarians? Are they taking a risk for risk’s sake?”

  She is trusting me, J.D. thought. It’s a good question, one I wish I could answer. Ruth would have said the same thing even if we hadn’t talked, even if she weren’t pregnant. Maybe even if she was a member of the expedition.

  “They’re taking a risk because J.D. proved to them that we aren’t violent barbarians,” Stephen Thomas said.

  A deep blush, as much of pleasure as of embarrassment, heated J.D.’s face.

  “The senator’s correct to ask the question!” Gerald said. “I believe they’d do anything to keep us here. They want the algorithm. They want the source of the fossils.”

  “The sculptures,” J.D. said automatically. She brushed her short hair back from her forehead, a nervous gesture. “But you’re right,” she said. “I agree with you.”

  “Remarkable,” Gerald said cheerfully. “Then you agree that we should protect the algorithm — use it solely for Earth’s benefit. It will give us quite an advantage.”

  “No,” J.D. said, troubled by the comment, but unwilling to be distracted from her point again. “And it isn’t me you should be asking about the algorithm, it’s Victoria. I do agree with Ruth that the Four Worlds have their own reasons. Which probably have nothing to do with me, flattered as I am by what Stephen Thomas said.”

  Victoria had reacted to Gerald’s remark, too. Distracted, she stared at nothing. A representation of her algorithm, swirls and wisps of color, drifted into half-intensity before her. She started, pulling her attention back to the meeting. The holographic image faded.

  “It doesn’t matter what the Four Worlds’ reasons are!” J.D. said. “Look at what happens if we go home now. Starfarer pops into existence in the solar system. Everybody says, Hey, where have you guys been? And what do we say?”

  She glanced around the amphitheater again, letting her colleagues imagine answers.

  Professor Thanthavong chuckled ruefully.

  J.D. grinned at her. “Right. We say, We met five different kinds of alien people! Six if you count the Minoans. But none of them could come back with us. Except, of course, this infant alien that we abducted.”

  “And,” Victoria said, “we saved Victoria’s algorithm for Earth’s use... except, of course, we can’t use it because the cosmic string has withdrawn from the solar system.”

  �
��And Earth got an invitation to join Civilization.” Satoshi extended the imaginary dialog. “But we turned it down and came home instead, but, of course, maybe they’ll invite us again in five hundred years.”

  “Oh, and by the way,” Stephen Thomas said, “the aliens infected us with a new bacterium, and it’s fucking tough to eradicate — but of course you won’t mind if we bring it back to Earth, will you?”

  “You sound like the Largerfarthings,” Gerald said caustically. “Next you’ll all be braiding feathers in your hair.”

  “It’s a perfectly good fashion!” Florrie Brown said. She flicked her braids forward over her shoulders; some of Sharphearer’s polished beads decorated them.

  “I agree,” Ruth Orazio said, brushing her fingertips against the bit of scarlet fluff tied into her hair.

  Gerald ignored the rustle of laughter. “And we never abducted the squidmoth. Rather it was left in our nest like a cuckoo’s egg!”

  “We’ve come this far,” J.D. said. “If we go home now, we’ve got nothing. If we go home as members of Civilization, we have a chance. I urge us to accept the invitation and visit the Farther worlds.”

  She sat down. Her armpits were clammily wet; a drop of nervous sweat rolled down her spine. She leaned back against the riser of the next terrace, feigning calm.

  The whisper and buzz of earnest conversation crept through the quiet. For a long time no one rose to speak.

  Professor Thanthavong stood up.

  “I think J.D. is right,” she said. “I urge all my colleagues to stand with her.”

  J.D. sprang up, Zev beside her. The partnership rose as one.

  Griffith, projecting his presence from Nautilus to his usual spot alone on the top terrace, stood up almost as quickly. He had to be physically present to join consensus, that was one of Starfarer’s rules. But J.D. appreciated his virtual support nevertheless.

  Soon the members of the physics department and the genetics department, astronomy and biochem, the staff, the art department, Starfarer’s only resident member of Grandparents in Space, and the people who had no official place, like Zev, like Esther, and Kolya in projected image, all joined the decision.

  Sitting beside Gerald, Fox hesitated, fidgeted, and finally jumped to her feet.