Nothing had changed.
The image overlapped the boxes that remained stacked in random piles in the main room. J.D. had not been here long enough to unpack all her belongings.
Victoria felt comfortable with J.D., and fond of her. It surprised her to remember how brief a time the alien contact specialist had been on board the starship.
J.D. sat in the windowseat, leaning against the side so she could look out the window or at Nerno's image. She had arranged a few things around her: some of her books, a reading light limpeted to the wall, the woven mat Satoshi had given her at her welcoming party. The light was off; J.D.'s attention was on the image of Nemo.
Zev joined her, sitting right-angled to her in the center of the cushioned seat.
Victoria smiled. 'You look comfy.'
'I feel so strange,' J.D. said. 'Like I've had too much to drink. I was saying silly things to everybody I saw. I thought I'd better hide out till I felt like myself again.'
'Your system's taking a bit of a shock,' Victoria said. 'I got so involved in analysis-I should have come by to see you earlier.'
'I'm okay. Come sit down.'
Victoria perched on the other side of the windowseat, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. Zev's body radiated heat.
Stephen Thomas will be like that, soon, Victoria thought.
Zev curled his feet over JDA; his claws gently dimpled her skin above the instep.
'I know the prep is working,' J.D. said. 'But I don't feel any change in my link.'
'Arachne's not set up to dump more information to a person than the regular link can handle,' Victoria said. 'Not . . . not under normal circumstances.'
The safeguards had not worked for Feral. It should have been impossible, but somehow Arachne had overloaded him. His blood pressure had soared, so fast and hard that it blasted open his arteries, his capillaries. The bleeding had simultaneously crushed his brain, and starved it.
J.D. was attempting something very risky.
'Please tell Nemo to be careful when you try this,' Victoria said. She knew better than to ask J.D. to reconsider.
'I will. Don't worry.' Her gaze drifted to the image of the chrysalis. 'It's so quiet,' she said. 'I got used to the attendants always fluttering around. Did you notice, you could always hear them even if you couldn't see them?'
'No,' Victoria said. 'I guess I wasn't in the nest long enough.'
They talked for a while about Victoria's analysis of Nerno's center. Zev sat between them. Despite his youth, his exuberance, he was content to listen and watch in silence and without trying to draw their attention to himself. He impressed Victoria more and more, the longer she knew him. 'Is it what you thought?' J.D. asked. 'Neutronium?' Something had to give the planetoid its mass. normal asteroid its size would have negligible gravity.
person would be able to leap off its surface and orbit it before coming down again.
'I don't think so,' Victoria said. 'I think the gravity source . . . the power source . . . is even more dense.'
'A black hole?' J.D. exclaimed.
'Economy quantum sized.'
'Pick one up in any hardware store,' J.D. said dryly.
'Right. Plus a nice iron shell for it to eat, a drip charge, and an electrostatic field generator. . . . But what the hell do you do to it to make it carry you around the galaxy?'
'A mere trifle,' J.D. said.
They fell silent. A pleasurable tension rose between them; the affection and possibility Victoria always felt around J.D. increased. She extended her hand to J.D. J.D. gazed at her, then enclosed Victoria's long dark fingers in her strong square hand.
'Is everything all right?' J.D. said. 'I mean She gestured with her free hand, encompassing all of Starfarer.
'I wanted it all to be perfect,' Victoria said softly. 'We'd take off with a fanfare, and explore, and come back with . . . I didn't know what, but some treasure.
Not a material treasure, an intellectual one.' She rested her forehead against her knees. 'Some fanfare. Some treasure.' She looked up again; if she did not hide her face maybe she could keep from crying. 'And I'm worried about my family back home, my great-grandmother especially. I wish you'd gotten to meet her. I wish she'd come on the expedition.'
'She'll be all right,' J.D. said, her voice reassuring. 'They won't blame our families for what we've done. Surely.'
'Grangrana has no way of knowing if we're still alive,' Victoria said. 'She'll be so worried. . . . And Satoshi's parents. They're wonderful. They'll stand up for us. But they'll be scared for us, too.'
'What about Stephen Thomas? Doesn't he have family back home, too?'
'Just his dad. I mean, I guess he could find his mom if he really wanted to, but he never has. And Greg is . . . kind of self-centered. He knows all the right buttons to push.' She sighed. 'I try to like him, I really do.
But it's hard to get worked up over worrying about him.'
J.D. squeezed Victoria's hand.
'And I miss my cat!' Victoria said suddenly. 'No matter what I said to Alzena, I couldn't persuade her to let me bring Halley along.' Sometimes she dreamed of petting the sleek black cat; she would wake remembering the soft vibration of Halley's silent purr. Victoria laughed. 'Isn't that ridiculous? Everything that's happened, and I think about missing my cat!' 'It's all right,' J.D. said. 'It's understandable.'
'You don't need to hear all this!' Victoria said. 'I meant to come and see how you're feeling, not to whine all over you.' She let go of J.D.'s hand and pulled herself back, hugging her knees. In a moment she would leave.
She would leave J.D. and Zev alone.
'J.D. and I are going swimming in the morning,' Zev said. 'In the ocean.' Victoria glanced up again. At first she thought Zev's comment was a complete non sequitur. But J.D. and
Zev were looking at each other with understanding, with happiness.
'Would you like to come with us?' J.D. said.
'I'd love to,' Victoria said, surprised and pleased by the invitation. 'We'll stop by for you. Five a.m.'
'Five!' Victoria said.
J.D. grinned. 'Second thoughts?'
'Not at all. If you're sure you want company-T'
'I'm sure,' J.D. said.
Alone in the dark basement of the administration building, Esther Klein put a box of probes and regenerators on the floor and tossed her lime-green baseball jacket beside it. The hot afternoon had even penetrated to the basement. Repair supplies and the dead artificials surrounded her. Over the dank scent of the basement lay the hint of mycelial growth, and ozone, and decay.
'I'm going to kill Infinity,' she muttered. 'I'm going to kill him.' Esther could have-should have-been out on the surface of the cylinders, in space, checking damage and making sure the silver slugs were properly maintaining the starship. Instead, she was stuck down here nursing sick artificials. It was all Infinity's fault. He was the only person on board who knew she had worked as an artificials tech.
But somebody had to do it, and she was the only person here with any experience. How the administration could let all the techs get recalled and not replace them . . . Esther supposed that was part of Blades's plan. It was convenient for him to let the techs go unreplaced. If they had remained on Starfarer, he would have chosen some other subsystem to disable. Esther remained with the expedition only because she had been piloting the transport that was trapped in the dock when Staty~rer plunged into transition.
Fixing the artificials is the least I can do, I guess, she thought. Considering how much trouble I made by following orders. Following orders! I'm lucky Gerald or one of the senators hasn't punched me out for dragging them along on the expedition.
On the other hand, if I had undocked, I wouldn't be along on this trip, and I'd probably be in jail.
She rubbed her hands down the seat of her pants, rummaged for a probe in her toolbox, and set to work on the first artificial stupid.
