and red ankle boots over them, a long fringed black tunic, and black eye makeup.
The alien contact team approached her. J.D. turned aside to put the awkward handful of presents people had given her in a neat stack in the corner.
Victoria handed Florrie the carnations.
'I hope you're getting settled in,' she said. 'I hope you like Starfarer.'
'Yes . . .' Florrie said. 'I'm sorry, I don't know your name—?'
'Victoria—from the transport?'
'Oh ... of course.' Florrie bent down to sniff the carnations.
Looking puzzled, Victoria stepped back.
Satoshi handed her the mat.
'It's not the same as having a rug,' he said apologetically. 'The mats last for quite a while, though.'
'Thank you. You made this yourself?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
Stephen Thomas knelt formally at her feet. Bowing slightly, he offered her a scroll that he held in both hands.
She untied the ribbon, unrolled the paper, and read it. Perplexed, she looked up at him. 'A tea ceremony? I don't think
I ...'
'I'm trying to add the cultural roots of my family to my own personal landscape,' he said- 'Tea ceremony is an an-
STARFARERS 14 9
cient Japanese custom. I'm learning it, and I'd like to do it for you sometime.'
'Are you . . . Japanese?'
'No, but that's part of Satoshi's background. I keep trying to get him to study it, too, but he doesn't want to.'
'My family is pretty well Americanized,' Satoshi said.
'And I'm trying to trace Victoria's family so I know what to study from Africa.'
'Dream on,' Victoria said, in a tone that sounded to Infinity just a shade bitter. 'It would make more sense to study some Canadian customs, eh?'
'I would,' Stephen Thomas said, 'but I don't like beer.' Victoria and Satoshi laughed.
'You are all three in the same family?' Florrie asked.
'Right, a family partnership.'
Infinity thought the family partnership was a fairiy weird arrangement. No necessity existed anymore to promise sexual fidelity to one person or to a group. He wondered if J.D. Sauvage had to join the partnership in order to become a member of the alien contact team.
Florrie smiled, accepting the old-fashioned system.
'Goodness,' she said, 'I had no idea young people did that anymore. I was born in a commune. Sit here near me.
I'm sorry I don't have any chairs.'
Stephen Thomas continued to kneel at her feet, like the hero of a martial-arts interactive, attending the dowager empress of Japan. Stephen Thomas looked pretty good, sitting seiw. Infinity thought, though he ducked his head loo far when he bowed.
Satoshi sat on the floor cross-legged, shirting uncomfortably now and then. At a little distance, Victoria drew her knees up under her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. J.D. sat beside her, arms folded on her chest, her legs
outstretched and crossed at the ankles.
Infinity listened contentedly as Florrie recounted her parents' story, in which a group of people tried to form their own rural tribe, despite being culturally maladapted to communal living and inexperienced at subsisting off the land. Of course it ended badly, when Florrie was very young, but Infinity had a high aesthetic appreciation for well-meaning tragedies.
150 Vonda N. Mdntyre
Suddenly the atmosphere changed. Infinity felt it as surely as a change in temperature or a sudden wind. Stephen Thomas turned. Infinity looked toward the door. Kolya entered, carrying a small package.
Griffith paused in shadows, right behind him.
Infinity moved to one side of the room, farther from Griffith, trying to act natural rather than surreptitious about his desire to get as far away from the other man as possible. Without meaning to he glanced back, and found Griffith gazing after him, the complete, deliberate neutrality of his expression more frightening than any degree of emotion. Anger, or hatred, or contempt. Infinity might have confronted. The neutrality could not even be commented upon, though Infinity knew, and Griffith knew, that it meant: I notice you. I'll watch you, if it pleases me.
Someone toward the front of the room noticed Kolya. Flor-rie continued to tell her story, but people were distracted by the unexpected appearance of the cosmonaut. They began nudging each other, glancing back, exclaiming softly in surprise.
As far as Infinity could tell, no one else paid the least attention to Griffith.
Kolya acted as if he never noticed that anyone had noticed him. He hunkered down in a clear space and listened. Infinity wondered if Kolya found it amusing to hear Home's tale of a failed fling with communism in the mid-twentielh-cenlury United States. If he did, he was too well mannered to laugh in any of the wrong places.
When FIorrie finished, her audience applauded and Kolya unfolded to his feet. People made way for him- He stopped beside Stephen Thomas, who still knelt in front of FIorrie.
'*! brought you both small gifts of welcome,' he said to FIorrie and to J.D. He handed FIorrie the package. 'It is rather delicate.'
As she opened it, her fingers trembled. Infinity was afraid she would slip and drop it, whatever it was, but the wrapping unfolded and floated to the floor, leaving a delicate, intricately painted eggshell in her hands.
'A souvenir,' Kolya said. 'I believe that they do not make them in my country anymore. Or, if they do, they do not export them.'
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Vonda%20N%20McIntyre%20-%20Starfarers.txt STARPARERS 151
'Why, thank you, Mr. Cherenkov,' FIorrie said.
Kolya handed J.D. a slip of paper. J.D. unfolded it, read it, and looked up.
'Thank you,'* she said softly, and buttoned the slip of paper into her shirt pocket.
FIorrie held the eggshell up and looked at it against the light. Infinity wondered if she understood what giving gifts meant here. Gifts were, more often than not, nonphysical:
oners of help or time or the gift of a skill. The kind of thing Kolya, apparently, had offered to J.D. People did not have many things to give, up here. Kolya probably had fewer than most. He had not, as far as Infinity knew, been back to earth in two decades. Other people returned to earth on leave and came home with full allowances; Kolya lacked this luxury.
Perhaps he had brought the egg into space with him on an eariy trip, or the last one.
FIorrie looked around. 'I don't know where to put this,' she said. 'If I were back home I'd put it on the mantelpiece, but I have none here.'
'There is a thread strung through it, to make it easy to hang up.'
'In the window, then.'
'Oh—' Kolya stopped. He looked uncomfortable, unhappy, but he said nothing more. Infinity had no idea what troubled him.
FIorrie rose and turned toward the window, looking for a place to hang the egg. Before she found one, Griffith appeared. Infinity had not even noticed him move. Griffith took the egg from her hand.
FIorrie reacted to Griffith even more negatively, more noticeably, than Infinity had. She drew back; the egg would have fallen and shattered if Griffith had not taken it carefully from her hand. He was more concerned about the eggshell than he was about FIorrie, for he showed no reaction to her fright.
'Sunlight will fade it,' Griffith said. He took the eggshell to the corner farthest from the window, stretched up,
