Metaphase. Part 9

"Your link is like J.D.'s," Nemo said.64 "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 understancl?"

"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 Satos.h.i.+ 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.

CHAPTER 4.

THE OBSERVERS' CHAMBER WAS A TRANSparent, flattened bubble attached to the side of the explorer s.p.a.cecraft, 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, di- rectly 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.

66 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 a.s.sistant chancellor of Starfarer also acted as the alien contact department's liaison to the stars.h.i.+p. 67."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-s.h.i.+rt 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, embarra.s.sed 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.

Satos.h.i.+ 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.68 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 compa.s.s. 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 partic.i.p.ated 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 s.h.i.+t. Hard 69.

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 s.p.a.ce 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 Earths.p.a.ce 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 s.p.a.ce 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 never70 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 stars.h.i.+p 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 n.o.body 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-s.p.a.cefaring 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 71.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 s.p.a.ce 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 stars.h.i.+p should go home. He was one of the few who had argued for following Earths.p.a.ce 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.