Metaphase. Part 12

"Yes," he said. "As a matter of fact, I do."86 "You do!"

"I think the potential's worth the risk."

"That's my reaction, emotionally," J.D. said. "But intellectually I keep telling myself it's a terrible idea."

"I understand Victoria's point of view," Satos.h.i.+ said. "But the trade .

. . a million years of observation, even if it's limited observation-"

"Who knows about that," J.D. said.

"Right."

"What does Stephen Thomas think?"

"I don't know what Stephen Thomas thinks or feels or wants!"

Satos.h.i.+'s outburst startled J.D.

Satos.h.i.+ lifted his mug, but set it down hard instead of drinking.

"He spends all his time alone, in his lab, or-" His hands clenched around it. "He's changed so much."

J.D. sat down across the table.

"Because of Feral? Because of turning into a diver?"

"I don't know," Satos.h.i.+ said sadly, more calmly. "Feral, being a Changeling, misjudging Blades . . . that's all part of it. But not all."

He stopped and sat back, embarra.s.sed. "You don't need to hear this."

"It's all right," J.D. said.

Victoria's voice flowed through the intercom.

"Hey, you guys, anybody up? Come look at this!"

J.D. and Satos.h.i.+ hurried to the observers' chamber, where Victoria sat with her couch turned to face the curved gla.s.s wall.

J.D. saw what Victoria was watching. She whistled softly through her teeth as she slid into the auxiliary couch next to Victoria's and turned it toward the outside.

A protrusion of silk led from the crater, across the rocky surface of the planetoid, nearly to the Chi. It looked like a thick, rumpled carpet. As J.D. watched, it extended itself another handsbreadth. The leading edge roiled and quivered as silk-spinners created it from the inside out.

"it worried me at first," Victoria said, "but Nerno's 87.making no attempt to camouflage it. I tested the silkit's strong, but it wouldn't withstand the Chi's engines if we lifted off. I don't think it's any danger."

"I wish Nemo would answer my transmissions," J.D. said. "I could ask about it. And about what Stephen Thomas saw. I'm worried. . . . I don't know what to think about the silence. Or the way Nemo dismissed us yesterday."

"Nemo hasn't given up on us entirely," Victoria said. "The planetoid is following Starfarer toward Europa's transition point."

"Nerno's coming after us?" J.D. exclaimed, surprised and delighted.

"Mm-hmm. Following, but not closing any distance. That's probably a good thing. Starfarer doesn't need any more gravitation perturbations."

"I'd love another expedition into the web," Satos.h.i.+ said. "I have a good start on an a.n.a.lysis. But only a start."

"We might have more time, if Nemo follows us all the way through transition-"

"Nemo can leave from the same point and come out at the same place on the other side," Victoria said. "But without my algorithm, the route will be different."

"Tracking Europa?"

"Probably. I suppose it's possible Nemo has another algorithm."

"Europa gave me the impression everybody in Civilization uses the same one. The best one they've found yet."

"Yes. Me, too. If that's true, however long it takes her to get wherever we're going, that's how long it'll take Nemo. It will take us less time.

But I don't know how much less time. Whether we'll catch up to the alien humans or not . . ."

"Wait, back up a minute," J.D. said. "You don't know where we're going?"

"Not yet, eh? It's complicated. Arachne hasn't solved it yet."

J.D. looked at her, astonished.88 Victoria smiled, contentedly.

"It's okay, ch? The algorithm shows that wherever we're heading, it's full of cosmic string. So even if we lose Europa, we can keep going."

J.D. stared through the transparent wall. The tube of silk reached the foot of the Chi. There, it paused.

"What will we do, if we lose Europa's trail?"

"I don't know," Victoria said. "I just don't know."

They sat side by side and stared at the projection from Nerno's crater.

The projection began to inflate, like a balloon blowing up.

What is that thing? J.D. thought.

"Do you want me to open Arachne for Nemo?" Victoria asked abruptly.

"Yes," Satos.h.i.+ said.

Victoria gave him a surprised look.

"Could you take your algorithm out first?" J.D. asked.

"No. Not anymore. Arachne's still finding the solutions we'll need. And by now the algorithm's hardwired in. It's part of the computer's thought patterns."

"Then . . . I guess you'd better keep Nemo out for the time being."

"Yeah. That's what I think, too."

Suddenly Nerno's tube reared up like a snake. Satos.h.i.+ leaned closer, fascinated.

Victoria jumped to her feet. Her eyelids fluttered as she touched the Chi's...o...b..ard computer, preparing for emergency liftoff.

"Wait, Victoria!"

Victoria opened her eyes, frowning.

"It's an airlock," J.D. said.

As they watched, the swaying tube draped itself against the Chi's outer hatch. Its puckered end opened, crept outward, and its edge fastened itself around the sea] of the hatch, trembling with the workings of small creatures within its walls.

A spot of heat appeared in the back of J.D.'s mind. She opened herself to the transmission. 89."Nemo? Is it you?"

"J.D., please come to me."

Alone, J.D. hurried through the airlock and into the new tunnel. She did not even stop to put on her s.p.a.cesuit; she simply grabbed a pocketful of LTMs and headed for Nemo's crater.

At the edge, she paused. A frayed bit of silk led downward. It was the same lifeline that she had followed yesterday. No lifeliner waited to spin her a new thread.

She descended, expecting the thread to vanish into a reshaped curtain. Each time she rounded a curve, she expected to see a lifeliner hunkered down waiting for her. But the configuration of the nest had not changed. The corridors were very quiet. J.D. saw none of the spinners and weavers and scavengers that had been so common yesterday. The curtains looked drab and dusty. She tapped into an LTM perception of the ultraviolet. Instead of bursting around her in patterns and colors, it faded into a gray moir6. The s.h.i.+mmering blossoms had faded to blurs.

The larger attendants no longer haunted the s.p.a.ces between the corridors, throwing their shadows against the tunnel walls. The nest felt deserted.

Even the lightlines had faded, as if their optical properties had deteri-orated.

J.D. climbed and slid down a long slope. At the bottom, an attendant with several broken spines tried valiantly to drag away a fallen curtain. The curtain's edges shredded as it moved.

The attendant gave up trying to move the disintegrating fabric. Scrambling over wrinkles and folds, it crawled to the center, and picked and chewed at the material.

J.D. sat on her heels and watched it; in a moment it had eaten a fist-sized hole. She rose quickly and continued deeper into the web.

She reached Nerno's chamber. The squidmoth lay90 motionless, eyelid closed, beside the line of silken pouches. Still another pouch lay nearly completed beneath Nerno's limp tentacles. The spinners wandered around the top, stumbling into each other, creating the lacy edge.

"Nemo?"

The squidmoth's eyelid opened slowly. The long tentacles moved lethargically in a tangle; the short tentacles hung limp. A fine mist of silken strands covered Nerno's lower body, restraining the last couple of pairs of vibration-sending legs.

"Are you all right? Were you asleep?-But you don't sleep."

"In this form, I don't sleep." Nemo extended the long tentacles toward her. She grasped one; the others curved around her body. Their warmth soaked into her.

"I'm glad you're still talking to me," J.D. said. "I was afraid you weren't."

"You've decided not to trade information with me."

Here in Nerno's crater, J.D.'s impulse to give Nemo access to Arachne felt much stronger than her thoughtful decision to protect Starfarer's computer web.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Europa and Androgeos-Androgeos mostly-scared us.

Give us all a little more time with you."

"You're different," Nemo said.

"In what way?" J.D. was afraid Nemo would say, I misjudged you, I don't want to talk to you anymore, go away.

Nemo's proboscises regained their normal activity; the mustache began to ripple.

"It's your scent that's different."

J.D. was not wearing perfume-she seldom didand she had used the same soap as always.

She supposed she smelled strange to Nemo, as Nemo smelled strange to her.

But . . . Nemo had not said strange, or unpleasant. Nemo had said "different."

She started to blush. She did smell different today, even to herself, with a trace of the deep s.e.xy musk that remained after she and Zev made love. 91."I suppose I do," she said. "Human beings smell different depending on what they're doing, or what they've eaten, or the state of their health." She hoped that would do for now. She supposed she should tell Nemo in detail why and how she smelled different from yesterday. She might have been able to do so if they had been alone. But they were not alone. They were under the eyes of the LTMs and everyone on Starfarer.

Why, she thought, is it harder to tell other human beings about intimate actions-actions we share, after all-than it would be to tell someone completely alien? Because an alien would be objective about it? Because if an alien said, "How extremely strange," it would hurt less than if a human said the same thing?

"Does it bother you that I smell different today?" J.D. asked.

"Your new scent makes you a different shape in my mind."

J.D. smiled. She hoped her new shape in Nerno's mind was not quite as undignified as it had been when she was with Zev. At least they had been making love within a gravity field. In zero gravity, s.e.x could be hilari- ous.

"Today you're different, too," J.D. said. "Are you . . . wearing clothes?"

"No," Nemo said.

Nemo reached up to the bank of honey ants and plucked one. Only a few remained. A burst of saliva flooded J.D.'s mouth. She could taste the sweetness and feel the rush. But instead of offering the honey ant to J.D., Nemo stroked the creature till it folded its legs. Nemo slid it into the silken pouch. Disappointed, J.D. watched it vanish.

A spinner emerged from beneath Nerno's vibrationsending legs. It crawled up the side fin and over Nerno's back, trailing a strand of silk. J.D.

tapped into an LTM perception in the ultraviolet. The blanket of silk around Nerno's tail section rippled like water, like sunlight pouring through leafy trees and dappling the ground.92 Several more spinners climbed up Nemo's side, helping create the layered fabric.

"You are so beautiful," J.D. said.

"I'm changing," Nemo said.

"But how? Why?"

"I'm changing myself into an adult, because I'm very old."

"But you said you're just a child."