'If you want to know about Amaterasu, or Coyote . . .' Infinity shrugged. 'But not lphigenia.'
'Her father was supposed to sacrifice her to Artemis, for a favorable wind. She escaped. Artemis waited. I escaped. Artemis tired of waiting. She took my young wild friend instead.'
'Everybody feels lousy about what happened to Feral,' Infinity said. 'But if any one of a dozen things had happened differently, he'd be okay.' 'Blades is responsible.' Her eyelids flickered as she cut off her conversation with Infinity to communicate with Arachne.
The faint perception of a small spot of heat told Infinity he, too, had a new message. It was Jenny9s meeting proposal, broadcast through Arachne to everyone on board.
Infinity did not add his second. He thought things would be just fine the way they were. For as long as it took Starfarer to be able to return home. Then the legal system could deal with Chancellor Blades.
On the other hand, it was just as likely that the United States would give the chancellor a medal and arrest everyone else as hijackers and terrorists. Maybe Jenny wanted to be certain of some justice, or revenge. Infinity still did not want Blades prosecuted here. The memory of the mob stayed with him. His friends and acquaintances had put on unrecognizable masks of anger. He did not want to see that again.
He stood up.
'Are you okay? Do you need any help?'
'No,' Jenny said.
'Then goodbye, I guess.'
He left her sitting among the rocks, and continued on to the administration building.
As soon as J.D. ended the discussion group, Nikolai Petrovich Cherenkov slipped away from the clump of people and fled to the nearest access hatch. He had not been able to resist listening to J.D. as long as she would talk about Nemo. But the press of people made him uncomfortable and nervous.
Kolya climbed down the ladder, past ground level, into Starfarer's skin.
He strode along the dim, coolsmelling corridor, toward the nearest elevator.
Until he reached the safety of the elevator cage, he expected at every second to see Griffith behind him, hurrying to catch up. He was sick to death of Griffith's following him around, trying to worship him.
He was rather surprised to have escaped Griffith. He would probably be pleased with himself, if he did not feel so dreadful.
He had not had a cigarette in two days, and he was at the height of nicotine withdrawal.
The elevator slowed and stopped and the floor settled beneath his feet: Kolya perceived gravity as pulling backwards against him, then sliding down to settle in the proper place.
Does anyone ever get used to the sensation of riding an elevator inside a rotating space station? Kolya wondered. I've lived in space longer than anyone, and I never have.
He put on his spacesuit, entered the airlock, and climbed down through the outer shell of Starfarer's campus cylinder. The airlock opened. He climbed down onto the inspection net.
Starfarer loomed over him; the stars spun beneath his feet. The motion of the cylinder took him through darkness, into the hot white light of Sirius, and back into shadow as he plunged into the cleft between the campus cylinder and its twin, the wild side. On the far edge of the valley, he burst into the light reflected by the solar sail. If he looked in just the right place he could see the bright crescent of Nerno's starship, tagging along with Starfarer toward transition.
Kolya eased himself down onto the cables of the inspection web, grateful to be back out in space. He had spent too much time with other people lately, too much energy trying to understand them. They admired him for reasons that had very little to do with him and much more to do with situations in which he had found himself by chance and luck.
Usually bad luck, he said to himself.
It felt good to be alone. He looked forward to reclaiming his hermit status, now that the controversy was over and Starfarer was safe in the hands of people who would use it for its true calling.
Infinity ducked through the hole in the front door of the administration building. The door had not yet been repaired. When Chancellor Blades locked himself inside, the silver slugs, the lithoclasts that dissolved rock, had munched their way through the wood-finished rock foam.
The trail of the slugs led through the wide foyer and up the curving stairs to Blades's office. They had eaten through his door, and herded him through the underground tunnels to his house.
But the ASes and the mobile Als would not be on the upper floors. The only place big enough for them all was the basement.
Infinity went through the building to the back stairs. The halls were cold and deserted.
'Lights on,' he said, and the stairwell brimmed with light.
In the basement, hundreds of small robots hunkered together in a random pattern, motionless and silent, like paralyzed hands and blinded eyes. Infinity blew out his breath in relief. The chancellor could have destroyed all the mobiles while he was locked in with them. They were sturdy, but they were not designed to stand up to deliberate abuse.
But as Infinity moved between several squatty housekeepers, a carrier, and a plumber, he felt like he was walking among dead things. The usual faint electronic sound and electromechanical smell had vanished.
Infinity sat on his heels beside a housekeeper. Out of habit, he tried to touch it through his link to Arachne. He got no response. After a moment of fumbling, he found the power switch. It was off. He turned it on. No one ever turned household robots off. No one noticed household robots enough to think of turning them on and off. The ASes went about their business and plugged themselves in to recharge when they had nothing else to do. They were practically invisible.
This housekeeper had nearly a full charge, yet Infinity could not get it to respond.
When he tried the housekeeper's self-test, nothing happened. Nothing at all. No motion, no signal to Arachne. Not even any error messages.
Infinity stood up.
This was bad.
Griffith paused outside General Cherenkov's front door. He had never been to the cosmonaut's house; he had never been invited. He knocked, and waited.
No answer.
Griffith had been sitting with the general during J.D. Sauvage's discussion. He could not figure out where Nikolai Petrovich could have disappeared to. Griffith was trained to keep an eye on people.
He knocked again. His impatience got the better of his shallow courtesy.
He moved across the balcony that fronted Kolya's house, in the third story of the hillside. He looked through the floor to ceiling windows, cupping his hands around his face to shield his eyes from the reflected glare of the sun tubes.
The front of the house was deserted. The floor plan of Kolya's house was probably the same as Floris
Brown's. Three front rooms with a wall of windows, a back hallway, a bathroom, and storage space. The two houses probably were alike, since Brown's was on the first level of this stepped back triplex arrangement. Like most houses on Starfarer, it was built within a hill. Griffith had been inside Brown's house, during her welcoming party, and he had taken the opportunity to snoop. He had been through a couple of deserted houses, too.
Griffith waited; still, Kolya did not appear.
Griffith returned to the front door, hesitated, and reconsidered. He had been good at his job. Good enough to be wary of a man who had been a guerrilla fighter. Or a terrorist, according to the government that had put a price on his head.
Griffith did not expect Kolya's house to be boobytrapped. Kolya lived in space because he wanted peace. He had told Griffith that he was the only human being who was safer on the deep space expedition than on Earth. The Mideast Sweep was still very much in power in Kolya's homeland, and it had a long memory.
Griffith did not expect to encounter traps. But he did expect Kolya to leave ways of detecting intruders. He did not want to risk his fragile new friendship with the man who had been his hero all his life.
If we are friends, Griffith thought bitterly. Some kind of weird friend. He talks to me. He advises me. He asks for my opinion. Then threatens to kill me because of it. Then he apologizes. And then he disappears.
At least he admitted I was right.
Fuck it, Griffith thought. Why do you keep trying to make friends with these people? Most of them still believe
