The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus
Page 138
“We don’t know our way around yet,” Quickercatcher said softly, “but that does not look right.”
“Stephen Thomas is in trouble,” J.D. said. She lunged forward and grabbed one of the twisting tentacles of the carcinoma. It slashed at her fingers. A rush of pain jolted up her arm. She held on desperately. Victoria plunged down beside her and thrust both hands deep into the grotesque mass.
She gasped. Satoshi was right beside her, pushing into the entrapping medusa. Zev jumped in, letting the medusa grab him, then kicking at it with his clawed feet, using its own strength against it.
Quickercatcher bounded forward, snapping at the medusa with sharp teeth, stabbing with his clawed front feet. His siblings leaped into the fray, teasing and misdirecting the attention of the medusa. J.D. ripped tendrils away from Stephen Thomas’s arms. Victoria dragged desperately at one that encircled his chest and squeezed the air from his lungs. Satoshi wrestled with twisted whips of fiber, yanking them away from his partner’s throat. Stephen Thomas gasped for breath; he struggled to escape tendrils that tried to penetrate his flesh.
Longestlooker snapped one free, and Fasterdigger crunched one between sharp teeth. Sharphearer dove to the center of the medusa and bit at a bright bit of light. J.D. followed, and ripped the connecting nerve free.
The medusa contracted, protecting itself, pumping energy to repair its damage. It shrieked with rage, trying to frighten them away.
It relinquished its hold on Stephen Thomas and scuttled toward J.D., toward Quickercatcher, seeking escape.
“We’ve got to stop it,” J.D. said. “Otherwise it’ll spread —”
“Do what Infinity did with the chancellor’s house,” Zev said. “Only prettier. Turn it into a pearl.”
Infinity’s slugs had laid rock foam over the house in which Chancellor Blades had taken refuge.
J.D. set Arachne to covering over the medusa and its blueprint, enclosing them before they could disassemble into harmless, invisible parts. In her mind, J.D. imagined a layer like mother of pearl covering the malignancy, encapsulating it, another layer — not outside, but inside — putting more pressure on it, squeezing its life.
The medusa moaned.
“That is very clever,” Quickercatcher said.
“Very pretty,” said Sharphearer.
“It is more fun,” Fasterdigger said, his usual diffidence replaced by bright excitement, “to rip it into tiny pieces.”
“They’d all grow into new ones.”
“Oh, good!” Sharphearer said.
“There’s not much interesting prey,” Longestlooker explained, “on board the Four Worlds’ ship.”
The surface of the pearl increased in depth, intensified in luster, as Arachne created layer after layer, moving inward.
Arachne squeezed the tumor to nothingness.
In the sailhouse, Stephen Thomas shuddered and gasped for breath, opened his eyes, and clutched at Victoria and Satoshi.
“Jesus,” he whispered when he could speak again, “Jesus god, I’ve never been so scared in my life. Are you all right, did you —”
“We’re fine,” Satoshi said. “You’re okay. It’s going to be okay.”
Exhausted, J.D. embraced Zev, embraced the quartet. Within Arachne, she could hug all five people at the same time.
J.D. twined her link with Zev’s.
“Even better than a shark,” Zev said.
J.D. laughed shakily.
Back in the expedition tent, J.D. trembled with exhaustion. She pushed herself to her feet. Even in the low gravity her knees felt weak. She touched the knowledge surface, comforted by its solidity.
At that moment, the swarm of squidmoths fell out of transition.
The mass roiled and quaked as larval squidmoths like leeches with long spindly legs, and juvenile squidmoths like hermit crabs dragged from their shells, their abdomens naked and ugly, crawled over and under each other, each seeking to reach the center.
Victoria’s transition algorithm reflected through the mass, the only thing of beauty about it.
“Human people have helped us,” the squidmoths said.
The squidmoths’ collective voice reminded J.D. of Nemo. Her perception of their ugliness receded.
J.D. drew a deep breath. “How did we help you?”
The composite being displayed a map of the Milky Way. No dust clouds obscured any part of the beautiful, massive spiral.
“We have explored for a long time,” the being said, “watching and learning and knowing until the time approached for us to return home. But we had come too far. We did not have enough time to span the distance.”
“You needed Victoria’s algorithm,” J.D. said.
“It had to exist,” the metasquidmoth said, “but it was necessary for us to wait for someone to imagine it.”
“Welcome to our solar system,” J.D. said. “I’m sorry you’ll have to wait so long before you can continue on your journey — but maybe a hundred years — even five hundred — isn’t very long for you.” The squidmoths were so old, and they had been effectively exiled too; perhaps they would not mind waiting for the string to return.
“It’s time, now, for us to return home, to evolve once more.”
“Damn!” Stephen Thomas said in triumph. “I was right, you don’t evolve — unless you choose to!”
“We choose to evolve,” the metasquidmoth agreed.
“Why did you follow us?” Victoria asked. “You’re stranded now!”
“We were stranded before — before you — on this side of the galaxy. Thanks to human people, thanks to you, we are free.”
A transition spectrum, a brilliant, powerful rainbow flux, illuminated the knowledge surface, flared from the solar mirrors of Starfarer, scintillated through the wavery plastic window of the expedition tent.
A single being fell out of transition, glowing with light and energy; the new squidmoth plunged into the swarm and disappeared, drawing with it a great tangled skein of cosmic string.
Quivering within the knots of string, poised on the edge of transition, the metasquidmoth turned its attention to J.D.
“Will you come with us?”
Nemo’s friendship echoed in its voice.
“I... How far are you going? How long is your journey?”
“We must travel... perhaps a thousand years, perhaps ten thousand. A short trip.”
J.D. laughed. A short trip — only in relation to a million millennia!
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t, I don’t live that long, thank you, but I couldn’t leave my friends for that long.”
“Goodbye.”
The metasquidmoth vanished.
Speechless, J.D. stared into the transition rainbow.
The cosmic string remained.
The solar system, J.D. thought, is full of cosmic string!
“J.D.!” Quickercatcher exclaimed. The quartet trilled with surprise and happiness.
“Fuck it, we’re free!” Stephen Thomas shouted.
The exile’s lifted, J.D. thought. Or... is it? Was there any exile, or did the squidmoths — the other ones — plan it all this way?
“Now what?” Victoria said, a little shaky.
“We have a lot to face,” Satoshi said, “now that we’ve come home.”
Victoria chuckled wryly.
“A lot of things I don’t want to face,” J.D. said.
Like giving up Nautilus to EarthSpace, she thought.
She thought back to the gathering of squidmoths, each leaving a starship behind to spin off into transition, like jewels washing out of a riverbank.
She wondered if she could find the starships again.
“Now we know where the other ones leave their starships,” J.D. said.
She spoke to Zev, to Victoria and Stephen Thomas and Satoshi; she included Esther and Infinity and Kolya.
“What would you say to a prospecting expedition?”
The end
Dedication
To the GWNN
The Starfarers Quartet
Starfarers
Transition
Metaphase
Nautilus
Acknowledgments
John Chalmers
Suzy McKee Charnas
Howard Davidson
Jane E. Hawkins
Andy Hooper
Nancy Horn
T. Jackson King
Ursula K. Le Guin
Debbie Notkin
Kate Schaefer
Carol Severance
Janna Silverstein
Amy Thomson
and
Gerard K. O’Neill and the Space Studies Institute,
on whose work the campus of Starfarer is based.
Publication Information
Nautilus
First published by Bantam Spectra 1994
Copyright © 1994 Vonda N. McIntyre
Book View Café eBook 2009
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“Vortex Variation”
Cover art by Robert Brandt
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