Her expression brightened. "Can IT'
"No.,,
"Oh."
"Don't you have some geography to do?"
"Yeah," she said. She stepped back into the hall and he thought she had left.
He went back to work, forgetting, after a moment, that she had ever been there. He pressed his hands into the manipulator gloves that gave him access to the isolation chamber and his new preparation.
"I could wash some glassware-"
"Jesus!" Stephen Thomas exclaimed.
,,-or something," Fox whispered.
"I nearly dropped this," Stephen Thomas said. "Don't sneak up on people like that."
"I didn't mean to."
"There's nothing you can do here. We don't wash the glassware, we recycle it. Easier to get rid of contaminants. Anyway, you wouldn't want to spend all day up to your elbows in cell guts."
"I wouldn't mind."
"There's still nothing you can do."
"I can't go back to geography."
"I keep telling you, Satoshi isn't mad."
"Did you ask him?"
"The subject never came up. But if he were mad, he'd mention it. Fox: Satoshi doesn't get mad. He'll talk to you. It sounds to me like you need to talk to him.
"He ought to be mad. So should you."
Watching the holographic image from the safety chamber, Stephen Thomas put the prep carefully back on its stand and disengaged his hands from the manipulator gloves. The swimming webs itched slightly; the gloves had pressed the webs back between his fingers farther than they would ordinarily go.
He crossed his arms and faced Fox, leaning back against the lab table.
"I don't blame you for what happened to me. But if you really want to know, I think you made more trouble for yourself and for us than any of us need. You should have been on the transport."
"A lot of difference that would have made! I'd still be here!"
"It'll make a lot of difference. The folks who were on it will be legally tree and clear. Maybe even entitled to reparations. Gerald and the senators and Esther Klein . . . hm, I'm not sure about Esther. Doesn't matter. You and Zev, though-you're in as much trouble as the rest of us. Maybe more."
"I don't care."
"And the president might not be able to-"
"I wouldn't ask him to!"
"You wouldn't have to."
"Stephen Thomas, I just want to be part of the expedition. I just want to help." Her smile strained as she fought tears.
"You are part of it," Stephen Thomas said gently. "And the way to prove you deserved to come with us is to work your ass off. In your own department." "Are you sure-"
"I don't-" He stopped. There was no reason to involve Fox in the partnership's problems. No reason, and no excuse. What good would it do to tell her that he had
not talked to Satoshi about her, or about much of anything else either, for the past several days?
"Satoshi is the most reasonable and sympathetic human being alive. He lives with me, after all." He smiled at her, reassuring. "Okay?"
"Yeah," she said. She smiled back. "Thanks."
"Good. I've got to get back to work."
He unfolded his arms and turned back to the manipulator gloves, spreading his fingers, stretching the webs. He heard Fox's quick intake of breath. Probably she had just realized how much about him had changed, and the changes spooked her. He must look pretty fucking weird from outside, with the webs and the fine gold pelt covering his darkening skin, and his battered toes sticking out of the straps of his sandals.
"I love you," Fox said.
Oh, god, no, not again, Stephen Thomas thought.
For the third time, he faced her. He could not pretend not to have heard or not to understand.
"That's too bad," he said.
She did pretend not to hear or not to understand.
"When Satoshi asked us all over to dinner, the first time I saw you-"
"Fox. No."
"Won't you even consider me? I know you're not monogamous-"
Flabbergasted by the comment, Stephen Thomas laughed.
Fox blushed. "You know what I mean. Whatever the term is when you've got two legal partners and you still get involved with other people. What is it you don't like about me?"
"Nothing to take personally."
She laughed as sharply as he had a moment before. "That's kind of hard."
"I don't get involved with grad students."
"I'm not your grad student."
"Five minute ago you were standing here trying to be.,,
"I changed my mind, okay?"
"I don't get involved with any grad students."
"Why not?" she asked, honestly perplexed. She grinned. "We're people, too-don't you think? So why not?"
"Why not . . . T' Stephen Thomas sighed. "Why not is because in school, every instructor I ever had hit on me." Miensaern Thanthavong was the first superior he had ever had who had never tried to take him to bed.
"How could they resist?" she said softly.
"They should have."
"But this is different."
"No, it's not."
"Sure it is. I'm not your student and you're not my instructor."
He could see this deteriorating into "Is not!" "Is so!" He made himself keep a straight face.
"It doesn't matter whether it's the same or not. The answer's no."
"But-"
"Please take the answer gracefully."
She did not take it gracefully, but she neither erupted into anger nor burst into tears. He never knew what to do when either happened in this particular situation. Anger was easier to defuse than tears. When it was someone crying over unrequited love for someone else, it helped to give them a friendly hug, a shoulder to cry on. Touching Fox now would only make things worse. Stephen Thomas found it very difficult not to respond to another person's grief.
"Okay," she said finally. "If you change your mind-"
"That just isn't going to happen."
She went away, then, but as she disappeared down the hallway he heard what she was saying, as if to herself but in truth to Stephen Thomas.
"Maybe I should have gone home after all."
Stephen Thomas let his irritation out in one quick snarl.
"Oh, fuck!"
He returned at last to his work, pushing away the
anger from his past and the guilt Fox had just tried to hand him. She should have gone home, or tried to. If he had anything to do with her staying, it was not by design. And then he thought: she grew up around politicians. She knows how to turn coincidence to her own advantage.
Mitch hurried in, his long gangly limbs all angles.
"Is Fox okay? What did she want? She didn't even say hi."
Mitch had been trying to get Fox to say hi to him, even to remember his name, since the first week she came on board Starfarer. So far he had had no luck.
Mitch was gawky and shy. Not a bad-looking kid, dark brown hair and eyes, pale intense face, heavy eyebrows over well-defined features, sharp mind and good ideas.
Stephen Thomas, who thought Mitch spent too much time in the lab and not enough with other people, was grateful beyond imagining that Mitch had not heard what Fox had just been saying. If he had, the kid might draw completely into a shell. Bad enough that he could not get Fox to see him. Far worse if he knew she was looking for someone, but the someone was not Mitch.
"She wanted to ask me something about Satoshi," Stephen Thomas said. He finished the 'scope slide, projected the image, and forgot about Fox instantly.
Mitch whistled softly.
Lehua came into the lab, knuckling her eyes, combing her long straight red-gold hair with her fingers. As usual she was dressed better than the grungy-casual popular on campus; her crisp shirt and slacks somehow did not look like they had been slept in. Visitors to the genetics department sometimes mistook her for the professor and Stephen Thomas for a technician. His third student, Bay, followed Lehua in.
Lehua's display of Nerno's chamber drifted in after them, touched the identical display Stephen Thomas had set hovering, and melded with it.