Metaphase

by Vonda N. Mcintyre Неизвестный Автор

  Nerno's chrysalis pulsed gently for hours. It shuddered violently. J.D. sat forward, staring intently at the LTM transmission, enlarging it. The chrysalis hardened into a solid shell, an abalone turned inside out, swirled and knotted with iridescent blue and green mother of pearl.

  Nerno's nest grew quiet and still.

  J.D. rested in the window seat of her house, watching the LTM transmission, waiting for Nemo to call her back. The nest drew her. But when she returned, Nemo would die.

  She felt so strange. Ever since inhaling the link en-

  hancer, she had disconnected from her body as if she were drunk. Arachne informed her that the reaction was within the tolerable range of effects. "Tolerable for you," J.D. said aloud. Arachne, of course, did not reply. Starfarer's computer did not engage in rhetorical conversations.

  Getting the metabolic enhancer was so easy, she thought. After a couple of days, a couple of biocontrol sessions, I could already call on more energy. I thought enhancing the link would be the same.

  She shifted her position in the window seat.

  Her head spun. The light felt too bright. The light was too bright, but it had not bothered her so much before.

  A faint breeze drifted through the open windows. It felt good. The weather was too hot.

  Zev crossed the yard, coming from the river, a fish in one hand and J.D.'s string bag in the other. He saw her, grinned, and waved the fish. J.D. waved in return.

  He took the steps to the porch in one stride.

  "Are you hungry?"

  "I am," she said. That was a difference from being drunk. If she were drunk, she would not be interested in food.

  He came into the living room and sat down at the other side of the window seat. He offered her the fish.

  "Zev . . . I'd like to cook it, if you don't mind."

  She tried to get up. She nearly ran into the LTM display.

  Whoops, she thought, bad manners!

  She giggled, blinked the display out of her way and reappeared it at arm's length.

  Her knees shook. A wave of heat passed up her face. She began to sweat. She sat back down.

  Zev watched her with alarm.

  "Maybe I won't cook it," she said.

  "I'll cook it," Zev said.

  "You'll cook it?"

  "Sure. We do, sometimes."

  "You never did when I was with the divers."

  "It was summer."

  "Oh." I guess that explains it, J.D. thought, wishing her head would clear.

  Zev handed her an orange from the bag.

  "Eat that while I cook. There's not very much growing that's ripe yet, it's too early. But there's lots of oranges."

  "You didn't have to forage," J.D. said. "I'm sure the central cafeteria has plenty of supplies."

  "I guess," Zev said doubtfully. "But I went by, and nobody's there to ask. It was easiest to go fishing."

  He took the fish into the kitchen nook. J.D. lay back in the window seat, enjoying the unusual occasion of having someone make lunch for her.

  "That smells terrific, Zev."

  She peeled the orange and ate a section. She pressed the spicules against the roof of her mouth; they burst, and the sweet, tart juice flowed over her tongue.

  To her relief, her head stopped spinning. She did not much like the sensation of being drunk, of having the world whirl around while she stayed still.

  She suddenly groaned.

  "Did I really say that to Stephen Thomas?" she said in distress.

  "Say what to Stephen Thomas?"

  "That his hair was down."

  "You did say that." Zev joined her, carrying two plates of broiled trout. "Oh, no."

  "His hair was down, what's wrong with telling him? You ought to tell him to cut it."

  J.D. touched Zev's pale hair fondly. It was short enough to stay out of his eyes when he swam, long enough to fan out around his head when he was in the water.

  "I think he likes it long," she said.

  Zev rested his head against her hand, then quickly kissed her palm.

  "I think you like him," Zev said. He handed her one of the plates. J.D. gave him part of the orange.

  "Of course I like him. I like Victoria and Satoshi, too."

  She thought she had mastered her reaction to Stephen Thomas. She did not want to talk about it. In her present state, she would say more than she meant to.

  She could say it all to Zev. He would find it perfectly comprehensible and natural. Except for her reluctance to admit how she felt. He would find it so natural that he would probably tell Stephen Thomas. J.D. could see nothing coming from that but embarrassment all around.

  She took a bite of the fish. It was perfectly cooked; the flakes evaporated in her mouth.

  "This is wonderful," she said to Zev. "What did I ever do without you?"

  He grinned. "You were an ordinary human being before you met me," he said. "And I was an ordinary diver."

  Infinity showed Professor Thanthavong what he had found in the administration building. She called the assistant chancellor.

  Gerald Hernminge arrived a few minutes later. He hesitated halfway down the stairs, then strode purposefully the rest of the way to the basement. Infinity explained what had happened. As Gerald listened, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  "How can we remedy this?" Thanthavong asked, her voice sharp. "How could the chancellor do something so stupid, so petty-"

  "Please don't yell at me, professor," Gerald Hemminge said. He looked as unhappy as she did. He glanced across the dark basement, over the heads of the artificials, toward the shadowed corners. "I didn't know Chancellor Blades had done this. I would have stopped him if I could."

  "We may have to get along without them," Thanthavong said. "Regrowing the brains . . . that may take

  resources we can't spare. We'll have to do their work ourselves."

  Gerald made a sound of satisfaction, and a wry grin cut through his distress.

  "It will amuse me to see Stephen Thomas Gregory beating his shirts against a rock in a stream."

  "You and Stephen Thomas should put aside your differences," Thanthavong said. "The expedition can't afford them."

  "I would if he would. It won't hurt him to do his own laundry. He has too high an opinion of himself, and his provocative manner-"

  11 He has a right to his high opinion," Thanthavong said. "He's a talented young man. My observation is that you provoke each other."

  "It isn't just the laundry," Infinity said, feeling provoked himself. Thanthavong and Gerald stopped their back and forth needling. They both looked at Infinity. Gerald had a habit of cocking his head and listening with an expectant, faintly skeptical expression, as if he already knew everything anyone could say to him, as if he were merely waiting to dismiss it.

  "The ASes clean up, sure," Infinity said. "But that's just part of keeping everything working. They repair things. They plant the gardens and weed the vegetables and harvest them and cook them-when's the last time you had a hot meal?"

  "I've been eating crackers and cheese," Gerald said. "On the run. I haven't used the central cafeteria-are you saying nothing can be cooked?" "I'm saying we'll have to do a lot more work than you think if we can't fix the ASes."

  Thanthavong rubbed her chin thoughtfully with one knuckle.

  "Somebody's got to grow the food," Infinity said.

  "Dig in the dirt?" Gerald said.

  "If you want to stay out here longer than the preserved stuff lasts."

  "And how long is that?"

  "I don't know. Arachne doesn't even know exactly what we came away with and what we left behind-"

  "For heaven's sake-"

  "Don't blame Infinity," Thanthavong said sharply to Gerald. "I told you Arachne lost backup information in the crashes. Some of this data the web may never even have had. We'll have to take inventory. We'll have to . .

  ." Her voice trailed off as she considered, then she brought herself back abruptly. "We're lucky someone is l
ooking past the boundaries of their responsibilities," she said to Infinity.

  "I suppose so." Gerald stared at the dead artificials again, but the dark corners drew his gaze. He caught his breath, but covered the reaction with a cough. "Can you repair the artificials? Or must we turn Starfarer into a primitive hunting tribe?" He glanced at Infinity. "No offense."

  "What?" Infinity kept himself from laughing. What could he say? That his mother's people had been agriculturalists for thousands of years? That the hunting tribes had been a lot of things, none of them "primitive"? That he would truly like to see Gerald in the wild cylinder, trying to play pukka sahib with the shy, rare deer?

  They would all be much better off gathering than hunting. A large proportion of the plants growing within Starfarer were edible. He wondered if Gerald had noticed that.

  Infinity settled for a shrug. "I'd prefer hunting and gathering to cultivating rice by hand," he said.

  The other half of Infinity's heritage was legally Brazilian and ethnically Japanese, but Gerald obviously had no idea what Infinity was talking about. He gave Infinity a blank look.

  "Can you repair the artificials?" he said again to Thanthavong. He was sweating.

  He doesn't like it down here, Infinity thought. He doesn't like it down here at all.

  "Theoretically, of course I know how to regrow the brains," Thanthavong said. "But the technical aspects . . . Obviously, Infinity is correct. We shall have to free resources to repair these creatures. If Arachne's memories of their training are whole, the problem may not be too difficult. If the architecture has to be redesigned from scratch . . ." She lifted her hands, palms up, in a gesture of resignation.

  Once more, Gerald glanced around the dark basement. The shadowy artificials surrounded them like a ghostly band of supplicants. Gerald hunched his shoulders.

  "I shall have to research the best way to go about the repair," Gerald said. "If you'll excuse me." He hurried up the stairs and disappeared.

  "We'd be in a pretty mess," Thanthavong said to Infinity, "if you hadn't noticed this."

  "Somebody would have."

  "I wonder. We're so wrapped up in what J.D. experienced. . . . Would we all of a sudden look around and see it was too late?"

  What she had said to him she had meant as a compliment. But she made him wonder if he had badly overstepped his bounds, and she made him wonder if she thought he was uninterested in Nemo and the alien ship-nest.

  He wondered if aristocrats always had that kind of effect. . . .

  "Your mother is Japanese?" she said.

  "My father."

  "How did you come to be named Mendez?"

  "My whole name's Infinity Kenjiro Yanagihara y Mendoza. But Mendez is easier for people to remember, and it's the original spelling. From before my mother emigrated."

  "Why do you use your mother's name?"

  He shrugged. "It's less confusing. I don't look very Japanese. In Brazil it didn't matter, there are a lot of us mongrels around. Most folks knew me as Kenny Yanagihara."

  "Did your father grow rice?"

  "No, ma'am," Infinity said. "He's . . . he's a lot of

  things, but not a farmer. Ronin is more like it. He doesn't grow rice. His family probably never grew rice."

  "My father did," Thanthavong said. "In Cambodia. A hundred years ago. With a water buffalo."

  She brushed her fingertips across the carapace of the artificial, a touch of sorrow or farewell, and walked toward the stairs.

  Infinity followed her out, nonplused by her comment. A hundred years ago? With a water buffalo?

  He was not sure of her age, but he knew she was old. Eighty, maybe.

  Her father could have been a rice farmer, in Cambodia. A hundred years ago. With a water buffalo.

  Carrying the shovel, Stephen Thomas headed home. He had not meant to stay so long, and he wondered how things were going in the genetics department. He checked with Arachne, but found no messages from his students or from his boss.

  Involved with Arachne, he stumbled on the rough trail. He dropped the link and put his attention to negotiating the path. He had forgotten how quickly darkness fell in late autumn on board Starfarer. Back in the campus cylinder, where it was spring, the twilights as well as the days were growing longer.

  He could not get lost: the sun tube reflected starlight at night, and Arachne could always guide him back to the access if the sky clouded over. As it was doing now. The clouds were thicker and darker than any Stephen Thomas had ever seen here. The temperature had fallen rapidly.

  He kept going, following the trail in the darkness as best he could. He touched Arachne now and then to be sure he was headed in the right direction, but he could not stay in constant contact with the computer. He had to keep most of his attention on the trail.

  The rain began, a few scattered drops that patted against the dry leaves of the young trees. A rumble of sound rolled over the land.

  Thunder.

  Stephen Thomas looked along the length of the wild cylinder, amazed to see lightning flicker across the clouds. A break in the sky cover exposed the sun tube, bright with stars, and the far-overhead clouds.

  Lightning spiraled down the length of the wild side.

  As thunder rumbled around him, Stephen Thomas cursed the lightning, the rain, and Arachne. The trail led up a small hill. He stopped, looking for a way around the base. He had no intention of becoming a human lightning rod. He asked for directions to an access hatch, so he could find shelter underground, but received no reply. The storm cut him off from the web, isolating him from any help. The wind rose, whipping fallen leaves past his ankles. The raindrops hit the ground, coated themselves with dust, bounced back and splashed his legs, and turned into mud. His sore feet slid around in his wet sandals.

  The clouds opened. Rain crashed down: the huge, heavy drops fell so fast the air felt like solid water.

  A bolt of lightning blasted the earth nearby. The air reeked of ozone, broken cedar, smoke. The rain sizzled and hissed against flames; the fire died with a stench of wet ashes.

  Rivulets coursed down the hillside and coalesced into a stream. Stephen Thomas followed the rippling water, looking for shelter. He was soaking wet, and cold, his long hair plastered against his face and straggling down his neck. He wiped rainwater from his eyes.

  A lightning flash illuminated the land around him. His eyes and his mind retained a high-contrast picture. The stream was leading him into a gully: he was about to trade being a target of the lightning for being the prey of a wall of water. Even a diver might not survive a flash flood. He dropped the shovel and climbed the rough slope to higher ground, scrabbling up the rock, cursing, scraping his hands on stones.

  Out of the reach of the gathering flood, he hunkered

  under a scraggle of prickly scotch broom. It gave some protection from the wind, but none at all from the rain. The crisp colorful fallen leaves had turned to a slick, sopping brown mat.

  The rain stopped as it had begun: a deluge abruptly changing to a scatter of droplets, then nothing. Stephen Thomas looked up. The clouds had rained themselves away, and the stars bloomed brightly all along the sun-tube.

  Rushing brown water washed through the gully below him.

  When Stephen Thomas stood up, the scotch broom swept him with another shower. He swore at it, looked around to get his bearings, and picked his way along the edge of the gully toward the trail, The electrical interference with his link had disappeared, for all the difference it made now. He did send a general, irritated note to Arachne about the weather. Arachne noted that the fire danger had ended.

  Stephen Thomas hiked through a stand of bushy young trees that showered him with water and dead wet leaves. The trees ended abruptly at the edge of a meadow. The meadow stretched to the steep hill that formed the end of the cylinder. The ferry back to campus waited at the top of the hill, the axis of the cylinder.

  When he reached the edge of the boggy field, Stephen Thomas saw someone halfway up the hill, desce
nding in long strides through the low gravity. Stephen Thomas stopped in the shadows of the trees. The person coming down the hill probably could not see him.

  It was Griffith.

  Griffith unnerved him. Stephen Thomas reminded himself that auras were a figment of his imagination. His perception of Griffith as lacking one meant absolutely nothing. As Victoria had pointed out, Florrie Brown told them all that Griffith was a narc before Stephen Thomas ever thought to look for his aura.

  Griffith made him nervous because Griffith made

  everybody nervous. He had been the first suspect in Arachne's crash. He was innocent of that charge.

  Griffith said he was an accountant for the General Accounting Office. Few believed he worked for the GAO, and nobody believed he was an accountant. Like everyone else, Stephen Thomas believed he had worked against the expedition.

  Stephen Thomas moved deeper into hiding among the trees.

  Griffith crossed the meadow. He carried a makeshift bedroll. Stephen Thomas wondered why he had not taken a tent and sleeping bag from the storeroom.

  It was communal property-but Griffith probably had even less conception of communal property than he had of governing by consensus.

  What do I care if he gets wet on his camp-out? Stephen Thomas said to himself.

  He stood very quiet as Griffith approached. He was only a few paces from the government agent, and he felt a spark of satisfaction in watching the man, unobserved, from so close a distance.

  Griffith stopped.

  "Come out of there." He faced Stephen Thomas.

  Stephen Thomas hesitated, then shrugged and stepped out from beneath the trees. What could Griffith do to him? Arachne knew he was out here. Stephen Thomas made sure the computer knew Griffith was out here,too.

  "You look like hell." Griffith sounded annoyed. "What are you doing in there?"

  "Avoiding you," Stephen Thomas said.

  Griffith's expression froze.

  "What are you doing out here?" Stephen Thomas said.

  "None of your damned business." Griffith started away, his shoulders stiff with anger.

  "Hey," Stephen Thomas said.

  Griffith's pace checked, but he kept going.

  "How'd you know where I was?" Stephen Thomas called after him.