Metaphase. Part 29

Gerald plowed on, a few more strides, then stopped and glared at Satos.h.i.+.

"No, apparently nothing I do does anybody any good."

"That isn't what I meant."

"It is what everybody else means."

"Gerald . . ." Satos.h.i.+ tried to think of something soothing to say, but the truth was that a lot of people found Gerald abrasive. When he supported the proposal to decommission Starfarer, he won himself no friends; when Arachne crashed, he made enemies. Satos.h.i.+ believed him when he said he had nothing to do with it, but other members of the expedition did not.

"What are you trying to do?" Satos.h.i.+ asked. "It's too late to stop the expedition."

"I'm trying to make sure we all survive it!" Gerald exclaimed. He caught his error and looked away. "All the rest of us, I mean, of course." He met Satos.h.i.+'s gaze again. "I'm certain--certain-no one was meant to be killed in the system crash."

"Is that what the chancellor said?"

"I . . . haven't put it to him directly. But I'm certain nonetheless. I very much regret the journalist's death. By all reports he was a talented young man."

"Yes. And a nice guy. He was closest to J.D. and to Stephen Thomas."

Satos.h.i.+ was not about to tell Gerald that Stephen Thomas had buried Feral's body on the wild side.212 "You could probably make them both feel better," Satos.h.i.+ said, "if you told them what you just told me."

"Oh, indeed," Gerald said, disgusted. "And have your partner attempt to knock out all my teeth again. No thank you."

"When you say stuff like that," Satos.h.i.+ said mildly, "I can kind of understand his urge."

"What would you have me do?" Gerald shouted. "I'm responsible for Starfarer, for all of you-"

"Bulls.h.i.+t," Satos.h.i.+ said.

-and I'm completely losing control. . . . I beg your pardon?"

"You're not Sir Francis Drake, for G.o.d's sake. You don't have life and death responsibility and you don't have life and death power. You aren't losing control."

"Perhaps I've maintained that appearance."

"You never had control of the expedition," Satos.h.i.+ said gently. "How could you lose it?"

Gerald opened his mouth, then closed it again. His shoulders stiffened.

"I had to take over the chancellor's duties. I had no choice."

"That isn't the point. You can't control the expedition. There are a couple of people who could, if they wanted."

"Such as who?" Gerald asked belligerently. "Do you mean the spy? I suppose he could, with enough blackmail and extortion."

"Griffith? No."

It surprised Satos.h.i.+ that Gerald confabulated power with force. Satos.h.i.+ had been thinking of ethical power, a quality Griffith lacked almost entirely.

Professor Thanthavong possessed it, and so did Kolya Cherenkov. Either one could take over the expedition in a second. Satos.h.i.+ thought they had that power because they did not want it.

"You're trying to get people to do what you think they should be doing,"

Satos.h.i.+ said. "Then you want us all to do it the way you think it ought to be done. Why's that important to you?" 213."Someone has to be sure the work gets done."

"But the work is getting done."

"It isn't getting done right."

Satos.h.i.+ did not say anything about Gerald's current score at getting work done right; he did not want to rub the a.s.sistant chancellor's nose in what Infinity had just pointed out.

To his credit, Gerald got the idea.

"I'm doing my best," he said, stiff but sincere. "If you have suggestions, I'd be most happy to hear them."

"Okay. People think you're conspiring with Blades. That isn't doing you any good."

"Conspiring!"

"You, and Derjaguin, and even Orazio."

"Just because we're the only ones who'll speak to the man? I still consider him my superior."

"That's not likely to win you any points," Satos.h.i.+ said dryly."And I have the same sympathy I'd have for any other victim of unjust political imprisonment."

"Unjust-!"

"And don't cite your partner's spurious evidence anymore! Ile found it in Arachne, and Arachne was severely damaged. Besides, Stephen Thomas had a motive to find the chancellor guilty."

"Stephen Thomas liked Blades," Satos.h.i.+ said.

"He liked Feral better."

Satos.h.i.+ had to concede that point. "The chancellor's safe, thanks to Infinity."

"Safe? He's in solitary confinement! I have no intention of abandoning him to go mad in that cave."

Nerno's s.h.i.+p continued to pace Starfarer, but Nemo remained silent. The LTMs watched the squidmoth, and J.D. watched the LTM transmissions.

Beneath the mother of pearl chrysalis, the structure of Nerno's body dissolved. Only the single exposed tentacle remained.

Every so often, one of the attendants crawled in, staggering, burrowed into the chrysalis, and disap-214 peared. Luminous white pearl closed the burrows, sealing the attendants inside. Once they touched Nemo's amorphous shape, their forms, too, dissolved.

In the window seat of her house, J.D. sat back from the holographic projection of Nerno's central chamber. Her back twinged and her shoulders ached fiercely. She tried to ma.s.sage her trapezius muscles, but aside from the difficulty of giving oneself a ma.s.sage, her bicepses and tricepses hurt as well.

Zev looked Lip from the book he was reading.

"Is it time to go to Victoria's house?"

"Just about," J.D. said. "If I can get up."

"What's wrong?" He jumped to his feet and came over to her, leaving the book open and face-down on the floor. J.D. was glad she collected books for the words and not their physical value.

"I didn't realize picking oranges was such hard work," J.D. said ruefully. She did not think she could jump to her feet if her life depended on it. She reminded herself that she was more than twice Zev's age. "I thought I was in pretty good condition, but I hurt all over."

"I thought it was fun," Zev said. "Easier than picking mussels."

He urged her forward, knelt behind her, and rubbed her shoulders. She leaned back against his hands with a groan of pleasure and relief.

"That feels so good, Zev."

He moved his hands down her spine, and ma.s.saged low in the small of her back.

"You picked more oranges than I did," he said.

She chuckled.

"I guess I did. But you moved them farther than I did."

"Faster, anyway."

The fragrance of oranges and the faint sick-sweet scent of fermented juice still embraced him. He put his arms around her. J.D. stroked his arms, the softness of his fine pelt, the hardness of his muscles.

"You like Victoria, don't you?" 215."Yes," he said. "This morning was fun."

"It was."

"Almost like being back home."

He bent down to nuzzle her neck, to rub his cheek against her short brown hair, still damp from the shower.

"You like her, too."

"Very much."

"Will she go swimming with us again?"

"I think so. She might even come over and spend the night."

He sat back on his heels away from her.

J.D. turned around. "Wouldn't you like that?"

"I don't know," Zev said slowly, sounding surprised by his own reaction.

"Would she come to stay with you?"

"With both of us."

"I like . . . sleeping just with you. Making love just with you. At first it was strange. All land manners are strange at first. But I like being able to think just about you. About what you want. What you need."

She kissed him. His lips parted over his sharp, dangerous teeth. She wondered if he felt jealous, but dismissed the absurd idea of a jealous diver.

"I like that, too," she said to Zev. "We won't give it up. But we can include Victoria sometimes, too."

"Okay."

He bit her earlobe gently. "I'm hungry!"

She laughed. "Me too."

"But I don't want to eat oranges!"

In the main room of the partners.h.i.+p's house, Stephen Thomas slouched on one chair with his feet up on another. He had thrown a towel over his toes to hide the bruises, the loose nails. The bento box containing his half-eaten dinner sat open on his lap.

Victoria wanted things back to normal. Stephen Thomas could not blame her. Tonight was the normal night for the regular potluck for their grad students.216 Stephen Thomas wished she and Satos.h.i.+ had asked him before they scheduled the dinner. He was trying to make the best of it.

As usual, other people came besides the students. Stephen Thomas had invited Florrie Brown, without considering his motives for doing so. He liked her. Unfortunately, Victoria did not, and the feeling was mutual.

Florrie thought Victoria was stuck up, and Victoria thought Florric was condescending. Both of them were right. Victoria could be stuck up, and Florrie could be condescending. But Stephen Thomas thought they would like each other if they could ever get over their first encounters. That did not look like it would happen tonight.

He shrugged. Give them time.

Nearby, Lehua and Bay bent over a display of the new cells. Mitch, on the other hand, stood in the shadows gazing mournfully at Fox.

Even Fox had come to dinner. Stephen Thomas was glad; it must mean she had no hard feelings because he had turned her down. He was glad she accepted his point of view. She had not talked to him, but that was understandable. She stayed on the opposite side of the room; about all he had seen of her tonight was her back. Sometimes he had the feeling she had just turned away.

Stephen Thomas poked through the remains of his dinner with a pair of chopsticks, searching each small compartment of the bento box for something he felt like eating.

Maybe I ought to try catching a fish and eating it raw, like Zev, he thought.

J.D. had brought him an orange. "The great hunter offers you the spoils of her kill," she said when she handed it to him.

And we thought we'd opted for the intellectual life when we came up here, he thought.

She had not mentioned Gerald's altercation with Infinity, but Stephen Thomas knew about it. Everyone on campus knew about it. Infinity had not come to the potluck. 217.Did we ever invite him? Stephen Thomas asked himself with a shock. To any of them? f.u.c.k, I don't think we did. Stephen Thomas made a note to himself to ask Infinity to the next one.

All that was left of his orange was torn rind. He could get himself another piece of fruit, but his feet hurt.

He hoped the potluck would not last too long. If it did go on forever, that would be partly his fault. He had stayed up talking till all hours with almost every guest here, often after Victoria and Satos.h.i.+ had given up and gone to bed.

It was already getting on toward midnight, and n.o.body showed any sign of leaving. Most of the kids cl.u.s.tered around J.D. and Zev, asking questions about Nemo, like children anxious to hear an old story told again. The room glimmered with multiple copies of the LTM transmissions, floating like bubbles in free-fall, all different sizes.

On the other side of the room, Florrie Brown and Fox sat with their heads together, talking seriously. Stephen Thomas pushed away a twinge of discomfort. He had no reason but egotism to a.s.sume they were talking about him. They spent a lot of time together. Fox had been at Florrie's almost every time Stephen Thomas had stopped by to see if Florrie needed anything.

Fox gave Florrie a quick hug and a grateful smile. She went over to the table and poured a couple of gla.s.ses of beer.

Great, Stephen Thomas thought. With everything else that's happened, now somebody will tell our honorable senators that we're giving drugs to the President's underage niece, and that's what we'll get thrown in jail for when we get home.