Metaphase. Part 26

"Maybe I should have gone home after all."

Stephen Thomas let his irritation out in one quick snarl.

"Oh, f.u.c.k!"

He returned at last to his work, pus.h.i.+ng away the 191.anger from his past and the guilt Fox had just tried to hand him. She should have gone home, or tried to. If he had anything to do with her staying, it was not by design. And then he thought: she grew up around politicians. She knows how to turn coincidence to her own advantage.

Mitch hurried in, his long gangly limbs all angles.

"Is Fox okay? What did she want? She didn't even say hi."

Mitch had been trying to get Fox to say hi to him, even to remember his name, since the first week she came on board Starfarer. So far he had had no luck.

Mitch was gawky and shy. Not a bad-looking kid, dark brown hair and eyes, pale intense face, heavy eyebrows over well-defined features, sharp mind and good ideas.

Stephen Thomas, who thought Mitch spent too much time in the lab and not enough with other people, was grateful beyond imagining that Mitch had not heard what Fox had just been saying. If he had, the kid might draw completely into a sh.e.l.l. Bad enough that he could not get Fox to see him.

Far worse if he knew she was looking for someone, but the someone was not Mitch.

"She wanted to ask me something about Satos.h.i.+," Stephen Thomas said. He finished the 'scope slide, projected the image, and forgot about Fox instantly.

Mitch whistled softly.

Lehua came into the lab, knuckling her eyes, combing her long straight red-gold hair with her fingers. As usual she was dressed better than the grungy-casual popular on campus; her crisp s.h.i.+rt and slacks somehow did not look like they had been slept in. Visitors to the genetics department sometimes mistook her for the professor and Stephen Thomas for a technician. His third student, Bay, followed Lehua in.

Lehua's display of Nerno's chamber drifted in after them, touched the identical display Stephen Thomas had set hovering, and melded with it.

"How come the Biochem couch is so much more192 comfortable than the one in Genetics wasT' Lehua asked. She yawned.

"Come look at this," Stephen Thomas said.

Lehua and Bay joined Stephen Thomas and Mitch. Together, they looked at the holographic projection of the 'scope field.

"What is it? Is it what I think it is?"

"It could be a lot of things. But what I'm guessing is 3-D genetic information. Dendritic molecules."

"Dendritic genes?" Bay said with disbelief. He leaned toward the display, squinting in concentration; his crinkly, s.h.i.+ny black hair swung forward along his smooth chestnut skin, the ends tracing the straight line of his jaw. "How would they work? I can't figure . . ."

Stephen Thomas let his eyelids flicker; he connected with Arachne and sent a message to Professor Thanthavong.

He watched the enormous spherical molecules vibrate.

Grief and anger, pain and confusion, had blanketed his life since Feral died. For the first time since then, a flicker of joy broke through.

"I can't figure it out either, Bay," Stephen Thomas said. He knew his expression was a silly smile, and he did not care. "Isn't it great?"

CHAPTER 9.

INFINITY MENDEZ JOINED THE REST OF THE faculty and staff, heading for the amphitheater where all Starfarer's meetings happened. Ordinary meetings were small. The people who came to the regular meetings tended to be either obsessed with getting their own way about almost everything, or pa.s.sionately committed to the idea of consensus. Both sorts of people could make a meeting amazingly boring.

None of the meetings since the rebellion had been ordinary or boring. And almost everyone left on campus had come to them.

Today's meeting was not ordinary.194 Jenny Dupre had succeeded in convening a meeting about the fate of Chancellor Blades.

Infinity wished desperately that Jenny had left well enough alone. If Blades was content to stay walled up in his house till they returned to Earth, why change anything? What else could they do to him but put him in jail?

Will they kill him? Infinity wondered. There are people on board who're maybe mad enough. Jenny. Stephen Thomas. And Griffith would probably kill Blades if he even suspected Kolya wanted him dead.

Infinity did not want to believe the faculty and staff could decide on cold-blooded revenge . . . but he did not want to test them, either. He kept remembering the mob Jenny had created with her anger, when Blades was first discovered.

Arachne was another unknown factor. After observing the evidence J.D. and Stephen Thomas tracked down, Arachne had severed Blades's computer link and immunized itself against his neural signature. The slugs had dissolved the hard links into his house. Without electronic communication, he was very little danger to the stars.h.i.+p.

Without his link, Blades must be just about going crazy from boredom, Infinity thought. His house must be like a cave, with the windows covered over and the electricity off. . . .

I To protect Blades, Infinity had given over control of the silver slug guards to Arachne, so no one could pull academic rank or seniority and call them off. He did not know what the computer web would do if the meeting decided to punish the chancellor.

I'll have to block consensus, Infinity thought. If it comes down to that, I'll have to block.

Esther sat down hard beside him. He was surprised not to have seen her come in, because, as usual, she was wearing her fluorescent lime-green jacket.

"Is this place a community, or not?"

"Yes," Infinity said. "Sure. What's the matter?" 195."I put out a call for volunteers. Yesterday! Want to know how many responses I got?"

"Just on a guess . . . not enough."

"n.o.body!" She made a sound of disgust. "G.o.d forbid that any of these famous scientists muck up their hands with rotten AS brains."

Infinity had never opened an artificial, never had to replace one's neural tissue, but Esther had described the operation in more detail than he wanted to know.

"You should have . . ."

"Called you? I suppose you've been lying around doing nothing?"

"Uh, noi exactly."

"I didn't think so. I bet you've been outside since breakfast with n.o.body to help you."

"Not n.o.body. A few other folks. And some of the slugs. Kolya, for a while, but I don't know where he went."

Kolya sat on the terrace on Esther's other side.

"Where Kolya went," Kolya said, "was to throw up."

"Kolya, you look awful! What's wrong?" Esther touched his hand. "Your hands are freezingill She took off her bright jacket and flung it over his shoulders.

"Stick your arm through here-"

"I had better not, I'll rip it." He was slender, and very tall for a cosmonaut, much taller than Esther: she barely came up to his breastbone.

The sleeves of her jacket would hit him around the elbows. Kolya hunched himself inside her jacket. "This is better, this makes a difference, thank you."

"What happened?"

He did look pale. Sweat beaded his upper lip and his forehead, and matted his streaky gray hair. And he smelled strange: sharp and acrid, unpleasant.

"Nothing happened, exactly. But I am trying to quit smoking."

"Smoking!"

"Smoking! Smoking what?"

"Tobacco, of course," he said.196 Esther wrinkled her nose. "I didn't think "That anyone did that anymore? Such an old-fas.h.i.+oned drug. Like snake oil."

The terraces of the outdoor amphitheater were full to halfway up the slope. The meeting would start soon. This time, they could hope that the light would remain constant. The last two meetings, Blades had sent the light level to extremes to try to disrupt the rebellion.

Kolya pulled the edges of Esther's jacket closer together.

"When I was a cosmonaut, I never smoked. But later . . ." He shrugged.

"I had no reason not to. It can be . . . quite comforting." He smiled.

His front teeth were slightly crooked. "I never expected to live to such an advanced age, or to reach it in a place where tobacco was so difficult to get."

Infinity felt uncomfortable, torn between being glad Kolya was trying to quit and wanting to do something to help. Kolya looked unhappy, tired, and sick.

"Did you run out?" Esther asked sympathetically.

"Abruptly. I kept my stores in one of the genetics department freezers."

"Oh."

The freezers in the genetics department had been destroyed along with the rest of the building.

"Maybe it's for the best," Esther said. "I mean . . . it really isn't good for you, and now you'll have to quit."

"I suppose I will. The designer of Starfarer's ecosystem was far too health-conscious to grow tobacco on campus." He chuckled ruefully. "I went so far as to ask Alzena once. She was horrified."

"When she had a choice, she picked stuff you can eat or make things out of," Infinity said, feeling miserable and guilty about Kolya's distress.

"Or flowers."

"Very sensible," Kolya said, with resignation.

His hands trembled; the energy that made him seem . . . not younger, exactly, but vital, had drained away.

"I've tried to quit before," he said. "I never succeeded. I'm one of those unfortunates upon whom nico- 197.tine takes a very tight grip." He squeezed Esther's hand in grat.i.tude. "I will be all right."

Conversation ebbed abruptly.

The meeting began.

No one rose to speak. Jenny had not arrived, and Gerald Hemminge was nowhere to be seen.

Motion in one of the dark entry tunnels drew Infinity's gaze. Neither Jenny, nor Gerald, but Stephen Thomas appeared, late, accompanied by his clutch of grad students. He paused and glanced around to find a good seat, unhurried, aware of the attention he had attracted but nonchalant about it.

He moved, footsore, to a place near the top of the amphitheater.

The one other person Infinity did not see that he expected was Griffith.

Infinity did not like Griffith, though the government agent no longer scared him. Infinity wondered what Kolya thought of Griffith hanging around him all the time. When he was not making himself blend into the background, Griffith allowed his att.i.tude of arrogant superiority to slip out. But he wors.h.i.+ped Kolya.

"Why'd Jenny call this meeting if she isn't even going to come to it?"

Esther muttered. She s.h.i.+fted nervously. Infinity knew how she felt. Being asked to sit in judgment of someone was bad enough. Being left in the dark about what was going on made it worse.

He linked into Arachne. The computer web acknowledged him. The silver slugs waited to accompany Chancellor Blades to the meeting, to guard him, to guard Arachne while he was free.

But Chancellor Blades refused to accompany the silver slugs.

Infinity let out a quick, sharp, incredulous laugh.

Jenny Dupre and Gerald Hemminge arrived at the amphitheater. Without the chancellor. Jenny looked furious and embarra.s.sed, Gerald, as usual, carefully neutral and controlled.

Jenny did not even find a seat, nor did she state her name, then pause, as meeting etiquette required.

"He won't come out," she said angrily. "He's too198 cowardly to face his own trial." She sat down abruptly, sullenly, and folded her arms.

Gerald remained standing.

"Gerald Hemminge," he said, and waited. The a.s.sistant-now acting- chancellor never lost his kood manners, even when he was using them to be rude.

No one interrupted or challenged him.

"Chancellor Blades . . ." Gerald said. "The chancellor denies that you have a right to try or judge him. He . . . requests . . . that you return to Earth and hand him over to the authorities."

"The same authorities who sent him in the first place!" Jenny said bitterly.

Infinity wished she would at least follow meeting rules, especially since she was the person who had called it.

,,Ruth Orazio."