spiral wider: the sail
*' plus the effect of traveling past the earth and the moon would
* soon drive the ship toward a mysterious remnant of the cre-
* - alion of the universe, a strand of cosmic string that would
* provide Starfarer with superluminal transition energy.
Starfarer prepared for lunar passage. Afterward, it would
be well and truly on its way. i /•
* Grangrana was making breakfast. Victoria could smell bis-y cuits, eggs, a rice curry. Coffee.
ll. Coffee? In Grangrana's house?
•Jk Victoria woke from the dream. She was on board Starfarer,
M, 163
164 Vonda N. Mcintyre
Grangrana remained on earth. The straight up-and-down sunlight of morning, noon, and evening reflected from the porch. Nevertheless, she smelled breakfast.
Satoshi, beside her, half opened his eyes.
'Is that coffee?'
'Uh-huh.'
'Your friend Feral can stay if he wants,' Satoshi said, and went back to sleep.
Victoria smiled, kissed the curve of his shoulder, tucked the blanket around him, and slid out of his bed.
In cutoffs and one of Satoshi's sleeveless shirts, Victoria went out to the main room. Stephen Thomas was up and dressed, in flowered cotton Bermuda shorts and a purple silk shirt. Victoria remembered rising partway out of sleep in the middle of the night when he left Satoshi's room and returned to his own.
Victoria dodged around Stephen Thomas's still.
'Good morning.'
'Hi.' The circles beneath his eyes had faded. He looked better this morning, not as shaken as after the party. But if he had thought of what to do about Griffith, he made no mention of his plans.
'Morning.' Feral set a pot of tea in front of Victoria as she sat down.
'This is a real treat for us, Feral,' Victoria said. 'But you don't have to make breakfast every morning.' The pleasure of having breakfast cooked and waiting gave her mixed emotions- She missed having a family manager, but it seemed disloyal to enjoy it when someone else did the tasks Merit had always smoothly, almost invisibly, taken care of.
'I know. I like to cook.' He grinned. He had mobile, expressive lips that exposed his even white teeth when he smiled. 'And everything I made this morning will reheat. Satoshi can sleep in if he wants to.'
'Speak of the devil,' Stephen Thomas said.
Satoshi arrived wrapped in his threadbare bathrobe, his wet hair dripping down his neck.
'Stephen Thomas, there's no clean laundry,' he said in a neutral tone. 'And you used the last towel.'
'Uh-oh,' Stephen Thomas said.
STARFARERS 16 5
'You might at least have hung it up so I could use it.'
'It was wet,' Stephen Thomas said.
'Yeah, welt, so am I.' Satoshi accepted a cup of coffee. 'Thanks, Feral.'
Victoria sometimes wished Satoshi would simply blow his stack. He hardly ever did.
Stephen Thomas sighed. 'I'll do some laundry. Today. A little later. Okay?'
Satoshi did not answer him.
'Want some curry?' Feral said.
'Sure.' Satoshi wiped the sides of his face and his neck where water had dripped from his hair. His elbow stuck through a hole in the blue terry cloth. He had gotten away with bringing the robe to Starfarer by using it as packing material when they first moved here. He needed a new one, but terry cloth was far too heavy and bulky for an ordinary allowance.
Satoshi dug around in the cupboard among his collection of condiments. There was a hole in the back of the robe, too, just below his left hip. His tawny skin showed through it. Victoria was glad he hated sewing and would probably never darn the battered fabric.
Feral brought breakfast to the table. Satoshi opened the new hot chili paste.
'I'm looking forward to trying this stuff.'
Feral laughed. 'Don't tell me they import that here.'
'Victoria brought it up in her allowance. What's life without red chili paste?'
'Quieter,' Victoria said, and Satoshi smiled.
'This is pretty hot already.' Feral offered Satoshi the curry.
'Good.'
Feral passed the food around and sat across from Satoshi.
As she watched Satoshi put chili sauce on his curry and on his eggs, Victoria hoped he and Feral would not get into a competition of who could eat the hottest food- Despite long acquaintance with Satoshi, Victoria had never understood the lure of the more violent forms of Cajun, Chinese, or Mexican cooking. Even from a distance, the volatile oils were enough to make her eyes water.
166 vonda N. Mdntyre
Feral tasted the curry. 'You're right, it isn't hot enough. Steve, would you pass the chili sauce?'
'Please don't call me Steve,' Stephen Thomas said.
Feral looked up, surprised by the sudden change in tone of Stephen Thomas's voice.
'Stephen Thomas has this phobia about nicknames,' Satoshi said.
Stephen Thomas scowled at Satoshi. 'Do I have to let everybody call me anything they want? Maybe I should make up a nickname for Feral? In the North American style. Perrie.
Or the Japanese style, Feral-chan. Maybe the Russian style, Ferushkababushka.''
'Dammit, Stephen Thomas!'
Feral started to laugh. 'It's okay, Satoshi,' he said. 'I can do without the Russian style, but I kind of like 'Feral-chan.' Stephen Thomas, I apologize. I won't try to change your name again. After all, if you've got three first names, it only makes sense to use at least two of them.'
Stephen Thomas scowled, unwilling to be placated. 'I don't have any first names,' he said. 'They're all last names.'
'Will you accept my apology anyway? And pass the chili sauce?'
Stephen Thomas tossed the jar across the table. Saloshi winced and grabbed for it, but Feral caught it easily.
'You're really acting like an adolescent.' Satoshi said to
Stephen Thomas. 'And I wish you'd quit.'
'I thought I was performing a public service.' Stephen Thomas said. 'That's one of the problems with this cam-pus—no kids live here.'
Victoria went straight to her office. She had some more ideas about the cosmic string problem. Four different displays, each working on a separate manipulation, hovered in the corner. She glanced at them, though it was too soon to expect results.
One had stopped.
'I'll be damned!' Victoria said.
Her 'a-hah!' equation had produced a solution. Already.
The quickest one yet, by several orders of magnitude. If it was correct- She looked it over. She felt like a bottle of Ste-
STARFARERS 16 7
phen Thomas's champagne, with the strange invigorated lightness that the joy of discovery always gave her. The solution felt right, as the problem had fell right when she chose it to work on.
'I'll be damned,' she said again. And then she thought. if I hadn't had to go back to earth. I would have finished the algorithm a couple of weeks ago. We would have had plenty of time for Iphigenie to recalculate the orbit for the cosmic string encounter. We could have substituted this approach to the string for the first one we
