depending on whether she nodded or shook or tilted her head, and depending on her relative orientation to Starfarer's spin. For the moment she had no wish to experiment with it.
Victoria let go of her elbow. 'The light's filtered, so it's safer than looking at the sun, but it can damage your eyes.
Vonda N. Mdntyre
You have to be more careful in the wild cylinder, if you cross over fora visit. The light's even less filtered there.'
'I'll remember.' J.D. looked around, her gaze oblique to the sun tubes. 'I know Starfarer is big—I knew exactly how big it is before I came up here. But I didn't realize how big it would feel.''
At the foot of the hill, the ground curved upward to her left and to her right. Far overhead, hazed by distance, the sides of the cylinder curved toward each other. The sun tubes obscured the side of the cylinder directly opposite, but the
rest lay spread above and around her like a map.
'Almost everybody has that reaction, their first time here.'
'Come on, you guys'' Stephen Thomas shouted from halfway down the cylinder's end-hill. Below, the interior of the starship stretched out into the distance. Feral and Satoshi waited, ten meters down the slope. J.D. and Victoria joined them.
Feral squinted past the sun tubes toward the cylinder's far side. 'Amazing how the people up there can keep their balance, walking upside down and all.'
Victoria glanced sideways at him.
He grinned. 'You've heard that one before, huh?'
'It's about the first oldest joke.'
'I love your accent,' Feral said.
'What accent?' Victoria said.
'You say 'oot' and *aboot' instead of 'out' and 'about.' '
'I don't have an accent,' she said. 'It's all you Americans who talk funny. Parlez.-vous franfais?'
'Huh?' Feral said.
'Un pen, ' J.D. said.
'You do?' Victoria said to J.D., surprised. 'I don't remember it from your vita—'
'It isn't academic French,' J.D. said. 'I picked it up the last few months. Most of the divers speak it.'
They reached the bottom of the hill, and joined Stephen Thomas. On solid ground he was at ease. and he moved with grace and certainty. As Victoria and Satoshi came off the hill, Stephen Thomas kissed Victoria intensely, and drew Satoshi into the embrace. J.D. envied them a bit, and she felt glad for them, and a tittle embarrassed.
'I'll see you all tomorrow,' she said. She started away. STARFARERS 75
'J.D.,' Victoria said, 'do you know where you're going?'
'Um, no, but I'm sure Arachne will get me to where I'm supposed to stay.''
'Don't be silly. We'll show you, and get you settled.'
Victoria and Satoshi went with J.D., while Stephen Thomas set off with Feral to show him to the guesthouse.
Thick, weedy grass and flowers covered much of the land
of the campus. At first J.D- could not figure out why it looked
so familiar to her, until she realized that the ecosystem of
Starfarer, planned as a natural succession, reproduced the first growth in a forest after a big fire. Of course the campus lacked the black tumble of half-burned trees, snags, uprooted trunks.
They followed a small stream. J.D- tried to trace its course along the inside of the cylinder, but soon lost it among hedgerows. Above, on the other side of the cylinder, a network of silver streams patterned the raw ground and sprouting grass.
The interior radius of one end of Starfarer's cylinder was slightly shorter than that of the other end. The resulting slope formed a gentle gradient of artificial gravity that caused the streams to flow from this end of the cylinder to the other.
They erupted at the base of the hill and flowed in spirals around the interior of the campus. Every so often a stream spread out into a clear lake, or a bog or swamp thick with water hyacinths and other cleansing plants. At the far end of the cylinder lay a salt marsh, the main buffer of the ecosystem, Evaporation and transpiration and rain recycled some of the water, and some flowed underground through pumps and desalinizers, back to its starting point.
At first Victoria and Satoshi followed a resilient rock-foam path, but after a few hundred meters Victoria turned down a dirt trail that had been worn into the grass.
'Do you have deer on campus?' J.D. asked.
'Not in this cylinder. These are people trails. If one gets awfully popular, we foam it.'
J.D. looked around curiously. Along the length of the cylinder she could see clearly only a few hundred meters, because windbreaks of saplings or bushes separated the fields.
She stopped short. 'What's that?'
Several dog-sized animals bobbed toward her through the 76 vonda N. Mcintyre
high grass of the next field. Back on the island, a pack of half-wild dogs ran free, far more dangerous than any wolf pack or coyote band.
'That's the horse herd,' Satoshi said.
'Horse herd''
Their tiny hooves tattooed the damp ground, the thick grass. Five miniature horses skidded to a stop in front of J.D., whinnying in high-pitched voices, snorting at each other. A pinto no taller than J.D-'s knee squealed and kicked out at a bay that crowded too close. They whuffled expectantly around her feet.
Victoria reached down and scratched one behind the ears.
'I'm fresh out of carrots,' she said. 'Satoshi, have you got anything for them?'
He dug around in the side cargo pocket of his pants, underneath a crumpled map printout, and found a few peanuts.
He opened them, rubbing the shells to powder between his fingers before letting them fall to the ground. The miniature horses crowded closer. Satoshi gave J.D. the peanuts. The horses lipped them softly from her hands. They nuzzled the backs of her knees, her ankles, and her shoes.
** I didn't know horses liked peanuts,' J.D. said.
'They might prefer apples,' Satoshi said, 'but the trees aren't established yet. Next year we may get some fruit.
Sugar's still fairly expensive up here, since we haven't started processing it. Lots of carrots, but peanuts are easier to carry. Drier.'
Victoria chuckled. 'He left a carrot in his pocket once, for I don't know how long. The laundry sent it back.'
'It wasn't that bad,' Satoshi said to J.D. He shrugged.
'It was more or less fossilized before anybody found it.'
'Why are they here?'
'The minis, you mean, not the carrots?'
'People do better with pets around,' Victoria said. 'And they keep the grass from getting completely overgrown.'
'I see,' J.D. said. 'The mini-horses are easier to keep track of than cats or dogs or hamsters—and easier on the ecosystem, too, I suppose.' She sat on her heels and rubbed the soft muzzle of a seven-hand Appaloosa.
'Right. Alzena—Alzena Dadkhah, she's the chief ecolo-gist—is trying to get some birds established. A lot of people
STARFARERS 77
would like to have dogs or cats—I'd like to have my cat. But I can see her point about predators. And domestic rodents are too adaptable. According to Alzena, once you've got them, you've got them everywhere. So far we haven't had any rats, but it could happen. Then there's the waste problem.'
