Esther finished cleaning the carapace. 'Then you just wash the remains down the waste digester-' She stopped. 'I wish that wasn't what it was called,' she said.
They all laughed, if shakily. J.D. mastered her nausea, took a long breath, let it out, and snapped open the seal on the next AS. Spores puffed up from a drying mass of mold mycelia, another strand of smell added to the tapestry: dry, musty, lingering.
'I'll do my best,' J.D. said. She sneezed.
Esther patted her arm and went away. J.D. picked up the vacuum nozzle and set to work. The vacuum whispered as soft as the mold spores, sucking out the dead tissue.
Stephen Thomas straightened up and stretched his back. The swimming webs on his hands had completed themselves. His skin had darkened past gold to bronze.
'How are you?' she asked. She felt awkward making small talk with him, especially after last night.
'Running on empty,' he said.
'Oh . . . I thought the party broke up right after . . .'
'We got up kind of early,' he said. He hesitated, then continued with the first real excitement she had
heard in his voice since Feral died. 'I found some stuff of Feral's. Some stuff in Arachne, I mean.'
'His stories on the space program?' J.D. said. 'Yes. I read them-' Thinking of Feral made her sad. She had liked him. He had been both sweet-natured and intense. She had not even minded, too much, when he teased her about her attraction to Stephen Thomas. She had not even been jealous when she realized it was Feral's attraction Stephen Thomas would respond to.
Not jealous, but a little envious, she thought wistfully. I have to admit I was envious.
'Not just his stories. He had another project going. He collected a lot of research. J.D.-Feral logged his life.'
'What do you mean?'
'Not like Chandra. He wasn't built for that. But he kept up a running dialogue with the computer web. Notes on what he was doing, his observations, his conversations-'
J.D. remembered some of the things she and Feral had discussed. She felt herself blushing, the heat rising up her cheeks, uncontrollable. Her skin was so fair that when she blushed it was painfully obvious.
If I were turning into a diver, she thought, I wouldn't have this problem anymore.
'What's the matter?' Stephen Thomas asked.
'Nothing!' she said, too quickly. 'I mean . . . Feral and I talked about some personal subjects. I hadn't intended . . . it wouldn't be interesting to anyone else. I'm sure he didn't bother to record that,' she said hopefully.
'He was a journalist,' Stephen Thomas said. 'You should have known he was taking notes on everything.'
'I suppose . . .' She felt embarrassed. Feral's notes could reveal her with naked transparency to Stephen Thomas. Not that her embarrassment would make much difference in the scheme of the world. Stephen Thomas was used to handling people he wasn't interested in. Last night proved that. But she would prefer not to put herself in the same situation as Fox.
'You better know this, too,' Stephen Thomas said. His manner had changed. He sounded cold. 'If I can, I'm going to edit what he collected and publish it for him.'
Both his words and his tone hurt her. She could think of no explanation for his sudden change of attitude. Unless, of course, he had already seen her conversations with Feral and was giving her fair warning, both of his publishing plans and of his lack of interest in her.
'I'm sure he'd like that,' J.D. said, forcing her voice to stay steady. Stephen Thomas replied belligerently. 'But?'
'But nothing. He loved you. He'd trust you to handle his work.'
Stephen Thomas glared at her, inexplicably. He was angry and yet his eyes were full of tears.
He threw down the cleaning tools, left the AS half enervated, and stalked out of the basement without another word to anyone.
It would be pointless to follow him; obviously he did not want to talk to her. And if she begged him not to embarrass her in public, that would be even worse. So what if everybody knew she thought he was the most beautiful human being she had ever met? She had a lot of company in that thought, and she had avoided making a fool of herself to him directly.
I would have thought he'd just laugh, she thought. Say to himself, Oh, fuck, another one. Or even say to me, J.D., what the hell made you think I'd even be interested? And maybe I'd say, I didn't think you'd be interested, that's why I never said anything to you. If you were a gentleman, you never would have said anything to me.
She stamped her foot angrily at herself, pushing away her anxiety.
She hoped Stephen Thomas would cool off; she hoped he would eventually be able to be friends with her again. She hoped he was not so irritated that this would damage her friendship with his whole family, with Victoria.
Stephen Thomas ran home through the hot afternoon. He entered the garden, soaked with sweat, reeking of rotten AS brains. He went straight to the bathroom, stripped, and flung his clothes into the sink. While the sink filled with warm water and soap, he grabbed a clean towel off the shelf and wrapped it around his hips.
Ordinarily he would not bother, but he could not stand to look at himself. When the change was over, delicate thin skin would cover his penis. Not quite a mucous membrane, but skin at least as sensitive as his lips. So far, though, the skin still peeled like sunburn, and his penis and scrotum had begun to withdraw into his body. He felt squeezed.
He did not yet have voluntary control of his genitals. As Zev said, he would have to learn. They were new muscles, or muscles he never knew he had. They ached with tension.
The soft cotton towel rubbed the fine gold hair on his hip, pushing it upward. He pulled off the towel and smoothed his pelt. He slid the towel downward before wrapping it again, so his fur would stay sleek. Now he understood why Zev wore as few clothes as possible.
He washed his T-shirt, swished it around in the sink, squeezed out the water, and held it up.
The stains from the AS bioelectronic guts marred the turquoise silk.
'God dammit!' he shouted. The shirt was ruined. He flung it across the bathroom. It slapped against the glass tiles and lay in a puddle.
It was his favorite shirt. Victoria had brought it back with her on her last trip to Earth. He should have packed it away with his other silk shirts, to save for special occasions. But he could not bear to give it up so soon.
'Dammit, dammit, dammit,' he muttered.
He snatched the shirt from the floor, wrung soap and water out of his shorts, and slapped both pieces of clothing over a towel rack to dry. By the time Starfarer
got back to Earth-if Starfarer got back to Earth-he would probably be grateful for anything to wear. Whether it was stained and ruined or not.
He dropped his towel on the floor and got into the shower.
Admit it, he said to himself as water streamed down his body. You aren't mad about the shirt. Yes, I am, said another part of himself. All right. But what you're really mad about is that J.D. got to sleep with Feral and you didn't.
It was so obvious. When J.D. heard that Feral had recorded their conversations, she had blushed from the curve of her breasts to the roots of her hair. Though she was unusually shy about discussing personal subjects, she was transparent, emotionally and physically.
Stephen Thomas felt completely opaque, even to himself. What difference did it make? Why shouldn't they get together? They had spent the whole trip from Earth to Starfarer on the same transport. Feral was alone and J.D. had thought she might never see Zev again. They had spent a lot of time together, tracking down the system crash. If they had found some pleasure in each othcr, he could only be happy for them both.
Would you regret Feral's death any more, he asked himself, if you and he had made love? Would you regret it less?
He answered himself, in his weird monologous dialogue: If I regretted Feral's death any more, I think I'd go nuts. It doesn't make sense to be mad at J.D., to be jealous of her.
As he had when Feral died, when Merry died, he pulled himself away from his anger and his grief. Both were
