completely different hypothesis. That's the simplest definition of faith that I know. It's the people who don't have any faith, who can't tell the difference between metaphor and reality, who want to force you to believe one thing only.'
'I can't figure out who you're making fun of,' J.D. said.
'That's the point,' the artist said with perfect seriousness. 'Everybody needs to be made fun of once in a while.'
'Oh, I don't know,' J.D. said. 'I can get along without being made fun of for two or three days at a time without permanent damage.'
Crimson glanced at her quizzically, then picked up one of the artifacts. The long and delicate claw nestled in her hand.
J.D. could imagine an intelligent being with those claws instead of hands, a being as dexterous and precise as any human.
'What happens if everybody forgets you've put these things STARFARERS 105
here,' J.D. said, 'and then somebody comes along and digs them up?'
'My god, that would be wonderful.'
'What will people think?'
'Depends on who they are. And how smart they are. I'm trying to create a consistent prehistory, one that doesn't lead to us. Maybe future archaeologists will figure it out. Maybe they'll realize it's fiction. Maybe they won't. And maybe they'll think it was god playing a joke, and they'll laugh.'
'And then they'll figure out that you made the bones.'
'Oh, I don't think so,' Crimson said. 'I grew them very carefully. You shouldn't be able to tell them from real. And I cooked the isotopes, so the dating will be consistent.' She grinned. 'Got to get back to work.'
She returned to her fossil bed.
J.D. watched her for a few minutes, then continued on beside the stream. She smiled to herself. She wished she could tell Zev and the whales about this. They would, she thought, find it very funny.
Though she was curious how J.D. had liked her first night on the starship, though she was eager to get out to the sailhouse for the first full test of Slarfarer's solar sail, and though she was anxious to get over to the physics department and get back to work, Victoria also wanted to give Satoshi and Stephen Thomas the presents she had brought from earth. But she wanted to do it when they were alone. As she was thinking up a polite way to ask Feral to leave for a while, Stephen
Thomas put one hand on the reporter's shoulder.
'Feral,' he said, smiling, 'thank you for breakfast. Why don't you go look around, and we'll see you in the sailhouse later.'
'Huh? Oh. Okay.' He drained his coffee cup. 'I'd like to visit the alien contact department,' he said to Victoria. 'Would that be all right?'
'Sure. This afternoon.'
'Thanks.' He sauntered cheerfully out of the house.
'How do you get away with that?' Victoria asked.
Stephen Thomas looked at her quizzically. 'Get away with what?'
106 vonda N. Mclntyre
'Never mind.' She picked up the carrying net and opened it flat on the table.
'This is for the household,' she said. She pulled out a package of smoked salmon.
'We should save this for sometime special,' Satoshi said. 'Maybe even after we leave.'
One thing habitat designers had not figured out was a way to grow anadromous fish in a space colony. The salt marshes, so important to the ecosystem, could not support deep-water fish.
Victoria handed Stephen Thomas a rectangular gold box.
He took it carefully and hefted it gently.
'I know what this is,' he said.
'I had my fingers crossed at lift-off,' Victoria said. 'It survived.'
Stephen Thomas grinned, opened the box, and drew out a bottle of French champagne.
'Victoria, this is great, thank you.'
She had known he would like it. And she knew why he liked it. Before Stephen Thomas joined the partnership, she had never drunk good champagne. By now she had tasted it several times. Saying that she had drunk it hardly seemed accurate, for each sip flowed over the tongue and vanished in a tickly barrage of minuscule bubbles.
'Something else for a special occasion,' Stephen Thomas said. He was never stingy with his things. Whenever he managed to get good champagne to Starfarer, he shared it with his partners.
'I bought it in a fit of enlightened self-interest,' Victoria said.
She handed Satoshi one of his presents. 'Not quite on the same scale, but ... '
He smiled, carefully unfolding the tissue paper from the package of chili paste. Victoria and Stephen Thomas always brought back chili paste for him. Victoria could not stand the stuff herself. Sometimes she wondered if, in fifty years, Sa-toshi would confess that forty years before, he had developed a loathing for chili paste, but wanted to spare the feelings of his partners.
'We'll have to get something good to drink with it,' he said.
STARFARERS 107
'Oh, no, not my champagne,' their younger partner said.
'If you're going to blast your taste buds, you can do it with local beer.'
Victoria gave Stephen Thomas his second package. This one was as light as the first had been heavy. He untied the scarf that wrapped it. Victoria never wrapped his presents in paper, because wrapping paper was hard to come by in the starship and he always tore it.
She had brought him two of the loose silk shirts he liked.
The ones he had now he had worn almost to rags. He still wore them. He lifted the new turquoise one, and saw the bright red one beneath it.
'Victoria, these are incredible!' He put on the turquoise shirt. It intensified the clear blue of his eyes. He stroked the smooth fabric. 'How does it look?'
'How do you think?' She put one hand on his shoulder and let her fingers slide down his back. The silk felt soft; his muscles, hard. He met her gaze and reached out, letting his arm match the curve of hers.
'It looks terrific, kid,' Satoshi said. 'Don't wear it into any dark bars—we'll have to wade in and rescue you.'
They all laughed. Victoria wished it were evening; she wished they were sitting around the dinner table getting silly on champagne. She handed Satoshi his second present.
He unfolded the wrapping, smoothed it, set it aside, and opened the plain white box.
He pushed aside the cushioning and lifted out the white bowl. The sunlight touched it and turned the graceful round shape translucent. Satoshi caught his breath.
'It's absolutely beautiful.'
'It rings,' she said.
He tapped it with his fingernail. The porcelain gave off a soft, clear tone. Satoshi looked at her. The smile- lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled.
'Thank you.'
'When I saw it . . .' Victoria said, 'you know. if anyone had told me I'd be moved nearly to tears by a porcelain dish, I'd've told them they were nuts.'
Last she gave him the stones she had picked up on the beach after her first meeting with J.D.
108 Vonda N. Mclntyre
'These . . . they aren't really anything, just something I found. I thought you might like them.'
They were gnarled and smooth, like wind-blasted trees;
some had holes bored straight through them. A few carried holes bored partway through, with the shell of the creature that had made the hole left behind, stuck inside after it bored its way in, and grew. One stone was a mass of holes, till nothing was left but a lacework of edges.
'I kept hoping nobody would pick up my allowance and say, 'What have you got in here, rocks?' If I admitted I
