"Europa's the first human to meet aliens-Look, Gerald, forget Europa, I want to talk about Feral."
"There's nothing we can do here and now."
"I know, but when I come back-"
"When we return to Earth, we'll turn his body over to his family."
""at? That might be years!"
"I sincerely hope not."
"Besides, he hasn't got any family."
"The proper authorities, in that case."
"But-"
"I'm sorry. There's nothing to be done. I haven't any authority to make any arrangements. It will have to wait till we go home."
Stephen Thomas started to object again, but Gerald interrupted.
"And now, if you don't mind, some of us would like to be fresh for the next conversation with Nemo."
He broke the connection.
"Shit," Stephen Thomas muttered to the air where Gerald's image had faded.
J.D. woke, disoriented. Stars and darkness surrounded her.
It was nearly morning. She was still in her couch in the observers' circle, but the couch had been extended flat. A blanket covered her.
Oh, no, she thought. I fell asleep during the conference. I was just going to close my eyes. . . .
Zev curled nearby, on his own couch. He woke and drew in a deep gasp of air. Divers slept like orcas, napping till they needed another breath, waking, breathing, drifting back to sleep. Zev turned toward her, his dark eyes reflecting light like a cat's, his fine fur catching the starlight. He looked like a gilded statue, with eerie emerald eyes.
"Hi, Zev."
In silence, he left his couch and joined her in hers, snuggling close.
His webbed hand slid beneath her shirt and over her full breast. In a moment of embarrassment she started to draw away. But the sensors and the cameras and the microphones were all turned off. No one could watch them through the transparent walls of the circle. The Chi was quiet, Victoria and Satoshi and Stephen Thomas asleep together in their cabin.
J.D. hugged Zev closer, and kissed him. Her tongue touched his sharp, dangerous canine teeth. He nibbled at her lips, at her throat, at her collarbone, unbuttoning her shirt with his free hand. She pressed her hands down his muscular back, beneath his loose silk shorts. His body was hot against her, urgent with his insistent, ingenuous sexuality.
He wriggled out of his shorts. He straddled J.D.'s thighs while he unfastened her pants and pushed them down over her hips, then when she had kicked them to the floor he moved between her legs. Among divers, men as well as women produced a sexual lubricant. As J.D. and Zev played and caressed and teased each other, Zev grew slick just like J.D.
J.D. kissed Zev's shoulder. His fur felt soft and bright against her lips. She gasped as he stroked her inner thigh with his warm webbed fingers.
They moved with each other in the slow, luxurious rhythms of the sea, leading each other on. The rhythm quickened, grew desperate and joyful, and they loved each other beneath the alien stars.
J.D. FELT P14YSICALLY REFRESHED, IF STILL intellectually and emotionally overwhelmed by her time with Nemo. She and Zev had slept for several hours, first in the observers' chamber and then in J.D.'s cabin, holding each other. Zev nuzzled her throat, or kissed the cleft between her breasts, whenever he woke to breathe.
She left him napping in her bed. While she bathed and dressed, she reviewed the proceedings of last night's conference, including the few minutes after she had fallen asleep.
I don't believe I did that, she thought.
She told the onboard computer to
take away that display and show her the recordings of her colleagues' experiences with Nemo.
Nemo had tempted Victoria with the inner workings of a starship, and tantalized Satoshi with more hints of the complexity of the web community. What Nemo had offered Stephen Thomas, J.D. did not understand any better than Stephen Thomas did. The violence of the inner pool shocked her.
We were visiting an alien, she thought. We have to expect encounters that are . . . alien.
And . . . if I were inside my own body, watching blood cells attack pathogens, watching osteoclasts break down bone, I'd be just as surprised, and repelled.
She kept waiting for a message from Nemo. It worried her to have heard nothing.
You're thinking hard and long, Nemo my friend, she said to herself I wonder what that means for us?
The computer put away the displays. J.D. went to the galley to find some breakfast.
Satoshi hunched over a cup of coffee, staring into the steam.
"Good morning," J.D. said, surprised to see him. Satoshi was not known as an early riser.
"Hi," he said shortly.
"I'm sorry about yesterday," she said.
He raised his head; his expression remained blank, distracted.
"Huh?"
"For falling asleep."
"Oh. God, don't apologize. You've been going flat out for days."
J.D. reconstituted some milk-Starfarer did not have any cows, and she had not worked herself up to making hot chocolate with goat's milk-and heated it.
"Satoshi . . . do you think we ought to let Nemo into Arachne?"
He sipped coffee, his strong square hands wrapped around the mug, lifting it slowly, putting it down deliberately.
"Yes," he said. "As a matter of fact, I do."
"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," Satoshi 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!"
Satoshi's outburst startled J.D.
Satoshi 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," Satoshi said sadly, more calmly. "Feral, being a Changeling, misjudging Blades . . . that's all part of it. But not all." He stopped and sat back, embarrassed. "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 Satoshi hurried to the observers' chamber, where Victoria sat with her couch turned to face the curved glass 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
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," Satoshi said. "I have a good start on an analysis. But only a start."