Metaphase

by Vonda N. Mcintyre Неизвестный Автор

  Nemo did not reply.

  "Bad question?" Zev asked.

  Nerno's long tentacles writhed and coiled slowly around the half-formed bag; their sound was of waves caressing dry sand.

  "No question is bad," Nemo replied.

  "But you didn't answer."

  "I come from here," Nemo said.

  "From Sirius, you mean?"

  "Yes."

  "It's lonely here," Zev said. "No other people. No life on the planets." "My people didn't evolve here," Nemo said.

  "Then where?"

  Nerno's tentacles twined, quivered, relaxed.

  "I can't tell you."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't know how."

  J.D. saw in her mind the glimmer of a star map. Zev brought it from the Chi's onboard computer and sent it through his link. The sun was a point of light in the center; its near neighbors spread out around it. J.D. closed her eyes and looked at the map in her mind.

  "Can you see this all right?" Zev asked.

  "Make it bigger."

  The scale changed. The dark space containing a few sparks changed into a crowded field of stars.

  "How's that?"

  "Make it bigger."

  Zev scaled it all the way up to the Milky Way and its neighboring galaxies, bright multicolored spirals and ellipses, dark dusty clouds. "Big enough?"

  "Not that big," Nemo said.

  "Can you travel between galaxies?" J.D. asked.

  "We are not so advanced."

  Zev showed Nemo a representation of the Milky Way.

  "On the other side," Nemo said.

  The galaxy rotated. But its other side was dark and empty, for no human being knew what lay beyond the crowded stars and dust clouds of the galaxy's center.

  "We don't have that information," J.D. said.

  "I could show you. . . " Nemo said, then, "No, I cannot, because of your link."

  Zev let the map fade. J.D. sighed, and opened her eyes, more determined to enhance her link as soon as she could.

  "You've come a long way," Zev said.

  "My people have."

  A lifeliner scuttled into the chamber, trailing silk. Right behind it, Victoria swung around the edge of the curtain. Ecstatic, she strode toward Nemo.

  "Nemo, your center-I want to know all about it! Is it neutronium? How did you build it? How does it make you move?" She switched from using her link to speaking aloud. "J.D., are you okay?" She dropped to her knees next to J.D. and put her arm around J.D.'s shoulders. J.D. leaned against her gratefully.

  "Just tired," she said.

  "My center's difficult to explain," Nemo said.

  "Try me.11

  J.D. could hear the dryness in Victoria's tone; she wondered if Nemo could.

  "I mean difficult physically."

  "How so?"

  "Your link is like J.D.'s," Nemo said.

  "It's too narrow," J.D. said. "None of us can take in everything Nemo could show us."

  "Arachne and I could exchange information," Nemo said, "about my center, about the galaxy."

  J.D. glanced at Nemo, then quickly at Victoria.

  "No," Victoria said. "No, I'm sorry, I don't think that's possible." "Talking is enjoyable, but slow, and imprecise, and insufficient," Nemo said.

  "Maybe . . . limited access to Arachne?" J.D. said softly.

  Victoria twitc~,~d her head sideways, a quick, definite negative. Full access to Arachne meant access to Victoria's algorithm. Limited access .

  . . who could tell how deeply Nemo might delve? The algorithm was the only thing Starfarer had, the only thing Earth had, that Civilization had shown the least interest in. Once Civilization possessed it, human beings had nothing left to bargain with.

  "I'm sorry, Nemo," Victoria said. "That isn't a decision I can make myself. I'll have to discuss it with my colleagues. Do you understand?"

  "No," Nerno said.

  How could Nemo underst~ind' J.D. thought. All alone here, with the power to go anywhere, and do anything . . .

  "Human beings and divers talk about what they do," Zev said. "And about what they did and about what they plan. Sometimes it's boring, but it's very serious."

  Nemo touched Zev's forehead, then J.D.'s cheek, with one soft tentacle. The other two tentacles continued to guide the spinners around and around and around the edge of another pouch.

  "I must think, and you must all talk together."

  "Yes," J.D. said. "As soon as Satoshi and Stephen Thomas get back-"

  "They'll meet you at the airlock."

  It was the first time Nemo had interrupted her. J.D.'s gaze met Victoria's. Victoria looked thoughtful. J.D. felt stricken. She had been dismissed.

  THE OBSERVERS' CHAMBER WAS A TRANSparent, flattened bubble attached to the side of the explorer spacecraft, with a clear view in every direction except immediately back toward the Chi. It was J.D.'s favorite place in the explorer. She sometimes sat out here all alone when they were traveling, just to watch the stars.

  She took her place in the circle of couches. Her couch faced outward, directly toward Nerno's crater. Several hundred meters distant, above the crater rim, the variegated silken surface caught the brilliant light of Sirius and flung it outward.

  J.D. felt too tired to talk, too tired even to think. But her colleagues back on Starfarer had been waiting for hours for this conference. It was not fair to ask them to wait any longer.

  Zev and Victoria were already there, waiting for her. With her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her jeans, Victoria stood outside the circle, gazing toward Nemo's crater.

  Zev lounged in the auxiliary couch to the left of JDA seat. He grinned at J.D.

  "Nemo reminds me of home," Zev said.

  J.D. stroked the young diver's arm fondly. His fur, so delicate it was nearly invisible against his mahogany skin, felt warm and soft.

  "Nerno's not like anything back in Puget Sound," J.D. said. "Not anything like."

  "I know. But he reminds me anyway. He doesn't look like he's been swimming in a long time."

  "Nemo can't go swimming," J.D. said, a little impatiently. Imagine a being the size of Nemo, the size of the planetoid, swimming anywhere.

  "Not now, " Zev said. "But critters like Nemo don't always look the same." Zev was right. Nemo could have gone through more than one form. Maybe that was why Europa called Nemo a squidmoth. J.D. added Zev's observation to the list of subjects she wanted to discuss with the alien being.

  Through her link, J.D. reached out tentatively to Nemo.

  "Nemo?" she asked. "I'm going to talk to everybody back on board Starfarer. You can join in, if you like."

  She waited. She received no reply.

  I know how Nemo feels, J.D. said to herself. I'd like to sit quietly all alone for a while and think about everything that's just happened. No.

  First I'd like to get some sleep.

  The image of Gerald Hemminge appeared nearby. The assistant chancellor of Starfarer also acted as the alien contact department's liaison to the starship.

  "Are you ready?" he asked. "Everyone's anxious to start."

  "In a minute, Gerald, thank you," J.D. said. "We're still getting ourselves together."

  "Very well." As he turned, he faded out.

  Stephen Thomas entered and crossed the transparent floor of the circle.

  He had changed to a Starfarer T-shirt and a clean pair of long pants with the Starfarer logo on the thigh, unusually subdued clothes for Stephen Thomas. But he no longer looked as bedraggled as when he came out of Nerno's crater.

  He stopped beside Victoria, but he did not speak and he did not touch her. He stared out the transparent side of the observers' circle, his gaze on Nerno's spiky curtains of silk. The severity of his hair, pulled tight and tied at the back of his neck, made him cold, and aloof.

  J.D. wondered what he was thinking about. The alien museum, on a harsh little airless world not too different from this one, fusing and destroying itself as he watched? The collapse of the genetics
department around him? The changing virus turning him into a diver? No . . . none of those, of course. He was thinking about Feral, wondering how the enthusiastic young journalist would have reacted to Nemo. He was mourning the delight Feral would never feel. Mourning Feral.

  Then Victoria briefly touched her younger partner's hand, and they turned to join the circle. Stephen Thomas looked straight at J.D., completely expressionless, and she had no idea what he was thinking.

  She glanced away, embarrassed to be staring at him, and blinked fast to clear her eyes of tears.

  Victoria took her place in the seat across from J.D. Stephen Thomas sat at J.D.'s right.

  Satoshi came in a moment later. He always moved so smoothly, so athletically: he nonchalantly carried two brimful mugs of tea. He handed one to J.D.

  "Careful. It's hot."

  "Thanks," she said. Trying not to move the cup, she leaned forward and took a sip so she would not spill it.

  It was hot. She had to slurp it so she would not burn her tongue.

  "You looked like you could use it," he said. He sat in his couch one place to Zev's left.

  Now the members of the alien contact department were all in their places, quartering the observers' circle like the cardinal points of a compass. Zev broke the pattern, but J.D. was glad beyond words that he had joined the expedition, and grateful that Victoria had not objected when he accompanied her on board the Chi.

  Zev enfolded her hand with his long webbed fingers. In the sea, he would have touched her more closely. He was leaming land manners. J.D. was leaming that on land, land manners were not always preferable. Even when they were more appropriate.

  He cared more about her than about her success with Nemo, she thought. His curiosity had brought him to the expedition-that, and missing her. Maybe missing her had been the most important factor. He participated with delight in the expedition, but the most significant part of life, for divers, was the connection among friends, family, and lovers. J.D. and Zev were all three to each other.

  She squeezed his hand gratefully, sipped her tea, and collected herself for the conference. She felt like she had crashed from the high of an intense long-distance swim. Besides the physical effort, the emotional exertion had taken its toll.

  In principle, she supported the idea that her colleagues should be able to accompany her vicariously. She welcomed the ability to call on their knowledge and ideas and questions. In practice, she hated every minute she spent in front of cameras and recorders.

  "Did you have a chance to look at my LTM recording?" Stephen Thomas asked. "No," J.D. said. "I'm sorry." They had only been back on board the Chi for a few minutes. She had not had a chance to look at what any of her colleagues had seen on their excursions into Nemo.

  "I think you should. It was weirder than shit. Hard to figure out what it meant, or what Nemo intended to tell me."

  "I'll look at it as soon as I can. And we can ask about it, as soon as Nemo starts communicating again."

  "Okay."

  J.D. folded her hands around the tea mug. A comforting warmth seeped through its insulation.

  "I guess I'm ready. Shall we start?"

  "Okay." Victoria's eyelids flickered and she went into a brief communications fugue to notify Gerald. "We're on."

  All their colleagues from Starfarer could now see and hear and speak to everyone on the Chi.

  "J.D.," Victoria said suddenly, "Nemo will probably listen to everything we say."

  "Of course," J.D. said. "Yes. I hope so. Listen, and maybe join the conversation."

  "We shall all bear that in mind," Gerald Hernminge said. "We'll start the questions with Senator Orazio. Senator?"

  Victoria sat forward-about to object, J.D. thought, because the two United States senators were not members of the deep space expedition.

  They were unwilling guests. They had been on a fact-finding tour of Starfarer when it plunged out of the solar system, fulfilling its charter, but disobeying the orders of EarthSpace and the U.S. military. Instead of speaking, Victoria sat stiffly back. J.D. glanced at her with a sympathetic expression.

  The holographic image of Ruth Orazio, junior senator from Washington State, appeared before J.D.

  "J.D., you must try again to persuade Nemo to return to Earth with us." "Senator . . . my question to Nemo was hypothetical. We aren't on our way back to Earth."

  Orazio had always supported the deep space expedition, and against all probability, she still did. How long her support would last was another question entirely. J.D. would not blame her when it waned; she had never

  agreed to leaving her family, her profession, her home world.

  "We have to go home," Orazio said. "You came away unprepared, undersupplied, and understaffed, with an undependable computer web. It's dangerous to go on this way."

  "And more dangerous to go back," Stephen Thomas said.

  "The expedition members have already decided that question." Victoria did not soften her cold tone with the Canadian speech habit of raising the inflection of a sentence at the end, turning it into a question, inviting the listener to agree. "It isn't appropriate to argue it again now."

  "Dr. MacKenzie, we all know you'll never agree to any plan that furthers the interests of the United States." William Derjaguin, the senior senator from New Mexico, spoke out of turn. "At least let us discuss the subject!" Derjaguin had always opposed the expedition bitterly. Being kidnapped on a hijacked starship did nothing for his temper.

  "We discussed it at length," Victoria said.

  J.D. broke in. "It wasn't fair of me to ask Nemo to go to Earth in the first place," she said. "The cosmic string has receded from the solar system. We can still go home. But we can't leave again until the cosmic string returns."

  "Unless it returns," Victoria said.

  "Europa said squid-Nerno's people just orbited stars and listened and watched," Orazio said. "And Europa said nobody even did that once we could detect them."

  The interstellar community had paid Earth very little attention at all, Europa claimed. Civilization never involved itself in the affairs of non-spacefaring worlds. Europa had found the idea of UFO reports quite amusing, which was an interesting reaction considering that she herself had been abducted by a UFO. But Civilization limited itself to the secret rescue of a few doomed individuals, including Europa and Androgeos. It saved them from natural disasters in order to train them to greet the first expedition of starfarers from their own home world.

  Other than that courtesy-a courtesy J.D. thought not only questionable but condescending-the interstellar community ignored new intelligences until they proved they were interesting enough, advanced enough, to bother talking to. So far, human beings did not qualify.

  ,,They've had to avoid us for two generations," Ruth said. "What better star to orbit now than ours?"

  "What better star to avoid," Stephen Thomas said, "than the home of warlike barbarians?"

  J.D. chuckled ruefully. "Good point."

  Ruth smiled. "But who could resist trying to convert a bunch of barbarians? Victoria, I'm not letting you off the hook about going home. If we can persuade Nemo to go with us, then the deep space expedition will have accomplished the aim of its charter. You'll be able to prove an interstellar community exists."

  "The senator makes an incontrovertible point," Gerald said. "Under those circumstances, we'd have no other ethical choice than to go home. Whether we could leave again would be completely immaterial."

  Gerald Hernminge was one of the few expedition members who thought the starship should go home. He was one of the few who had argued for following EarthSpace orders, for converting the campus to an orbiting spy platform.

  But what he said was true.

  "Nerno's already said no," J.D. said.

  "But people sometimes change their minds," Ruth said. "I intend to try to persuade Nemo to go home with us, if I get the chance."

  J.D. smiled back. She had admired Senator Orazio before she ever met her; having met her, she
liked her.

  "When we do go home," J.D. said, "whenever it is, nothing would make me happier than to have Nemo come along with us."

  "I have a question," Gerald said, in the round, highclass British tones that always managed to sound more or less disapproving, "if I may step out of my liaison position for a moment."

  "Go ahead," J.D. said.

  "I was rather surprised . . . that you ate a live animal."

  J.D. grinned mischievously. "It was good, Gerald. Essence of' fresh shrimp, with honey-orange sauce. Quite a rush, too. It wasn't any stranger than eating an oyster."

  "If you say so," Gerald said. "There is a question from the astronomy department. Awaiyar?"

  The tall, elegant astronomer appeared in the circle. She gestured, her hands as graceful as a dancer's, and the image of the Milky Way also appeared. It turned, revealing the unmapped area beyond its core.

  "We have a matter of policy to decide," she said. "Can we afford to turn down Nerno's offer to exchange information?"

  "Can we afford to accept it?" Stephen Thomas said, sounding grim. J.D. wished she had had a chance to see what he had encountered in Nerno's crater. She could not spare the attention, now, to look at it, but it had spooked him badly. Her impression was that Stephen Thomas Gregory did not spook easily.

  "What do you think, J.D.T' Victoria asked.

  "I . . ." She took a deep breath. "I want to say yes. I trust Nemo-"

  "That fact is self-evident," Gerald said dryly.

  "But we aren't just talking about me. I think . . . I think we still have time to think about it and decide."

  "We have only a few days till we enter transition," Avvaiyar said.

  "I know." J.D. reached out briefly through her link toward Nemo. This is your chance to persuade my colleagues, she thought.

  But Nerno did not reply.

  "I think it's too dangerous to give Nemo access to Arachne," Victoria said.

  "You're suggesting that we give up a great deal in order to protect your new transition algorithm," Gerald said.

  "That's right," Victoria said.

  "In other words, you feel your work may be the only thing human beings will ever have to trade that the interstellar community will want." "What's your point, Gerald?" Stephen Thomas carried his voice with an edge.