do they reconcile their differences?'
The bursts of thread caught together and tangled. As the creature.s danced, Nemo urged them easily around the pouch. Their motions formed the silk into a fluted rim.
'They make peace, or the cosmic string withdraws.'
'That's simple,' J.D. said dryly. 'A little Draconian, but simple.'
When the silk worm and the starfish returned to their starting point,
Nemo flicked them both off the edge and into the pouch.
'Tell me what you're looking for,' Nemo said.
'We're looking for answers,' J.D. said. 'Answers . . . and more questions.'
'Tell me what answers you're looking for.'
'We already found one-a big one. You. We built Slarfarer to find out whether other civilizations exist. Or whether we were alone. Now we know that answer.'
'The answer to your question is self-evident,' Nemo said.
'Not to everyone. At least not to a lot of human beings. Their philosophy depends on their being alone in the universe.'
'Earth has passed through a decline,' Nemo said.
'I-what do you mean?'
'Europa and Androgeos knew of other beings.'
'After they were rescued, after they left Earth and joined Civilization-' 'When they lived on Earth, they spoke to others.'
'They had myths. They believed in gods and demigods and fantasy creatures. That doesn't count as knowing about spacefaring beings.'
'Yet their myths were more accurate than Earth's current myths of solitude.'
'There are lots of different myths on Earth right now. But . . . you're right. Europa and Androgeos came from a sophisticated culture. That's probably why they fit in so well with Civilization.'
Nerno's feet drummed softly on the floor, a complicated rhythm. Seven against five? J.D. could not quite tell.
'If we do go back to Earth-I'm not saying we'll accept the exile, but if we do-there are lots of people who won't believe we've met alien beings.' 'You'll tell them you met alien beings,' Nemo said.
Several attendants scuttled and swooped nearer. Nemo rounded them up and herded them into the pouch.
'I'll tell them, but they won't believe me. They'll say we faked the records. They'll say it's all a monstrous hoax.'
'You wouldn't fake information.'
J.D. thought she heard shock in Nemo's voice.
'But they'd say we did. So we could claim we succeeded. So we could claim they shouldn't put us in jail because we were right all along. They'll want proof that we're right.'
She waited, but instead of replying, Nemo lifted the delicate pouch and placed its fluted edge against a silkdraped wall, where it stuck.
'You could prove we were right, Nemo,' J.D. said.
'If they saw me, they'd believe you'd met alien people.
'They sure would.'
'If they saw me, they wouldn't put us in jail.'
J.D. laughed. 'They wouldn't put you in jail, that's
for sure.' She stretched out her hands to Nemo. 'It's a lot to ask, I know, but five hundred years isn't long to people like you and Europa. Wouldn't you at least think of visiting the solar system? You could learn everything there is to know about human beings.'
'Your invitation's tempting,' Nerno said.
'You'll do it?' J.D. exclaimed, astonished.
'I'm sorry, I have another commitment.'
'I understand.' The thrill J.D. had felt dropped abruptly into disappointment, with sad amusement that people gave the same excuses everywhere. 'Five hundred years is too long.'
'This time it is, I am sorry.'
J.D. rose and stretched.
'I've been here for hours,' she said. 'I have to go back to the Chi for a while.'
'You are leaving.'
'I have to rest, and eat-' She shrugged. 'Things that are easier back on the Chi.'
'I can offer you food,' Nemo said.
Nemo snaked out one long tentacle to the far side of the chamber. The curtain there was a mass of iridescent bubbles of silk. Nemo's tentacle quivered across the surface.
It moved. The bubbles fluttered and bobbed and separated, the whole mass expanding, opening like a flower.
Each sphere was a living creature, depending from the curtain by three long slender limbs. The creatures had no heads, no other appendages, only a circular ring of spots.
Eyespots, J.D. thought, knowing she was making another assumption without much evidence.
Nemo chose one at the edge of the mass and stroked it. It released its hold on the silk and wrapped its legs around Nerno's tentacle.
Nemo extended the creature toward her.
'A decorative food,' Nemo said.
J.D.'s helmet radio emitted a noise, not Nerno's voice, but Victoria's, a quick sound of protest more
quickly cut off. J.D.'s friends worried when they thought she was in danger, but they were beginning to understand that facing the danger was her responsibility. They were beginning to understand that they had to let her do her job. Stephen Thomas had once offered to take her place, but he had only offered once: her reaction assured that. The other members of alien contact thought of her as mild-tempered, even meek, and she was. But when Stephen Thomas suggested that he go out instead of her, she lost her temper. 'The food will not hurt you.'
J.D. accepted Nemo's offer.
It touched her lips. The jointed legs fluttered against her tongue; the abdomen disappeared like sea foam or cotton candy, bursting with a flood of strange flavor: sweet and gingery, spicy-hot enough to make her draw a startled breath. The air passing over her tongue dissolved the spicy taste into a cool musky flavor like perfume. She crunched the delicate legs, but when she swallowed even the legs had evanesced.
The evanescence dissolved straight into J.D.'s blood, straight to her brain.
J.D. broke out into a sweat, she flushed from collarbone to forehead, and her heart began to pound. As J.D. gasped for breath-and coughed violently in reaction to the air-Victoria's voice rumbled from J.D.'s suit helmet, rising in pitch. A spot of heat appeared in the back of JDA mind, a signal from Victoria. J.D. let it in.
'J.D., I'm coming after you!' Victoria said directly into her mind.
'Nemo, what's happening?' J.D. said.
Trying not to sound panicked, she sent a message back to Victoria and the Chi. 'No, don't, not yet. I'm all right. . . . I think I'm all right.'
'It's the effect of decorative food,' Nemo said.
Nemo's long tentacle manipulated another creature from the wall and carried it beneath Nemo's mustache of shorter tentacles. The creature disappeared, with a faint crunch.
Veins in the gauzy fins over Nemo's legs darkened,
and the fins rippled rapidly. The long tentacles twined around each other, leaving the silk-spinners to their own direction. The tips of Nerno's legs pattered erratically against the floor. Nemo's eyelid opened completely, then closed, then opened again in J.D.'s direction.
J.D.'s flush passed, and her heartbeat steadied. Only a quiver of sexual excitement remained, pleasurable and comforting and startling.
'Some effect,' J.D. said.
