off her shoes. When she glanced back, the tender new blades had sprung back from his tread, but she had left marks on the grass and on the ground.
He had already crossed half the field. She gave up trying to match his speed; it was impossible. Instead, she walked at her own pace. She wondered if the people on board Starfarer would be able to accept her limitations.
Her limitations were one of the reasons for her being here:
to help people remember the variety of human beings.
Infinity turned and watched her from a distance.
'What's the matter?'
'Nothing,' she said.
'Then why are you going so slow?'
'This is as fast as I can go.'
'Oh.'
She hoped he would come back and help her, but he simply waited, watching with puzzlement rather than impatience.
When she reached him, she wrapped her thin fingers around his elbow before he could stride off and outdistance her.
Though his forehead furrowed when she took his arm, he tolerated the touch.
Floris found it astonishing to walk inside a starship in the same way she would walk through a meadow. She tried to
STARFARERS 8 7
remember the last time she had walked through a meadow.
She had been living in the city for many years.
The starship seemed empty. Occasionally she would see someone at a distance, but Infinity took her to the next meadow, a rougher, wilder one, and after that she saw no other people.
Floris kept up as long as she could. When she was young she loved to take long walks. She hated to admit that even in low gravity she no longer could do it. Finally she let go of Infinity's arm and sank down on a boulder with a sound of distress and exhaustion.
'I'm going to get you a cart.'
Floris remained silent until her heartbeat steadied. 'You said it wasn't very far. But we're in wilderness! Where are the people?' Above, on the other side of the starship, there were tracks and paths, streams and buildings, and the move-
ment of small spots that she took to be human beings.
'There's lots of open space, but plenty of people live around here. Some of them have, you know, left, but they'll be back. We're almost there.'
She pushed herself to her feet.
They walked through a wide, shallow valley that cut diagonally across the cylinder floor. A creek ran through its center, bubbling over jagged cracked stones to a confluence with a larger stream. Bushes grew in ragged scatters. Straight bare vertical branches crowded together along the creek bank.
'Pretty, huh?' Infinity said.
'It's half-finished. Like everything else I've seen.'
He nodded. 'Yeah. That's true. You should've seen it before the ground cover sprouted. Mud. What a mess. When the lilacs grow some more, it'll be solid green over there. They've already got buds. And look at the willows. See the pink and red and yellow at the tips? That's where they're growing.'
Floris tried to find comfort in the faint haze of color that tipped the bare willow twigs, but the ragged landscape depressed her.
'How do you know so much?' She did not mean her tone to be so sharp.
'I planted most of it,' Infinity said mildly. 'There's not much call for station builders anymore, but I didn't want to
88 vonda N. Mclneyre
go back to the O'NeiHs. I like working outdoors. So I transferred to gardening.'
She barely heard him. The far curve of the cylinder loomed overhead, and the bright reflected sunlight dazzled her. She wanted to get inside, beneath a roof. She wanted to rest.
'Do you even have roofs here?' she said. Her voice was faint.
'Sure,' Infinity said. 'How else would we keep t,he rain off?' He stopped. 'And here's your roof itself.'
Fforis stared, appalled. 'They promised me a house,' she said. She felt near tears.
It looked like pictures she had seen of ancient pueblos, abandoned for centuries. This one had been abandoned so long that even the climate had changed, and the clean dry rock was covered over with dirt and moss and growing things.
It was full of windows and doors and pathways and stairs.
She knew she would have trouble getting around in it.
'Here you are,' he said. He opened a sliding window and led her inside.
'I don't want to live in a cave,' she said. 'They promised me a house.'
'This is a house. What's wrong with it? It's as good as anybody's got, and better than most. The chancellor lives down the path a way.'
He led her across a treacherous carpeting of slippery woven grass mats to a stone window seat. She sat, gratefully.
'All these mats are gifts,' Infinity said. 'People on campus made them for you. There's a welcome party for you tomorrow night.'
The underground apartment felt dank and cold. Floris shivered.
Hearing footsteps, she glanced up. A tall figure strode past her outer doorway and vanished.
Infinity stared out the window.
'You know who that was?' Awe took his low voice down another half octave.
'I have no idea,' Floris said.
'It was Nikolai Petrovich Cherenkov. He lives here, but I've only seen him a couple of times. You know, the Russian—'
'I remember.'
STARFARERS 8 9
Nikolai Petrovich Cherenkov had defected when the Mideast Sweep recalled the Russian cosmonauts. Now tie lived permanently in space. He was nearly FIoris's age, and very famous. He could not return to earth because the Sweep had convicted him of treason, in absentia, and sentenced him to death.
'He lives here? In my house?'
'No, sure not. The way it works, it's easier to put together a bunch of houses at a time, then put a hill over top of them. You're in kind of a triplex arrangement, and Cherenkov has the one highest up.'
'Who lives in the third part of the triplex?'
'Thanthavong. The geneticist.'
Floris frowned. The strange name sounded familiar, but she could not place it.
'They say she came up here because she couldn't gel any work done back on earth. She was too famous, and the publicity just kept going on year after year.'
'Publicity about what?'
'The anti-virus. She invented it- Before I was even bom, but don't you remember?'
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Vonda%20N%20McIntyre%20-%20Starfarers.txt 'Oh. Yes.'
'Ms. Brown—'
'Floris. Florrie.'
'—I'm sure they won't bother you. I've been planting here for weeks and this is the first time I've seen Cherenkov. Than-thavong leaves for her lab at dawn and hardly ever comes back before dark. I bet you won't see Thanthavong any more than you see Cherenkov. '
'But I want to se6 people! That's why I came up here! Do you think I want to be all alone? *'
