I wish we had noticed, Infinity thought. If Alzena knew a weasel was running lose in her ecosystem, I bet she'd have snapped out of her funk.
I bet she'dve stayed.
In response to Infinity's request, Arachne set a watch on the mouth of the den, and began a simulation
of what effect the meerkat could have. Infinity decided not to do anything until the simulation produced results, not even to tell anyone he had seen the creature. Someone might panic and come out hunting it. Infinity felt sorry for the meerkat, stranded in an inhospitable environment, a communal being left all alone.
J.D. descended into the basement of the administration building. Her hands and her hair reeked with fragrant citrus oil. She had spent the morning helping sort and store yesterday's oversupply of oranges. Ordinarily J.D. liked the smell of oranges. After two days of it, though, it was the last thing she wanted to smell.
That was what she thought until she entered the basement.
She nearly gagged. The stench of rotting AS brains filled the cavernous room, intensified rather than attenuated by the flow of air pushing past her. Esther must have turned the ventilation up to maximum, and still the sick-sweet odor overwhelmed everything. Including the scent of oranges.
A few ASes stood on one side of the room, hooked up to nutrient feeders.
A larger group stood in ranks, carapaces open but empty. The majority of the mobile artificials remained in a large ragged crowd that stretched into the darkness.
Esther glanced up from an open AS.
"Hi, J.D. What's up?"
"Can I help?" She took a long breath through her mouth.
Esther smiled wryly. "It is pretty awful, isn't it? We're trying to get the bad part done before it gets worse. Still game?"
"I guess SO."
Esther took her to the clump of ASes where her volunteers were working. "It's not that complicated," she said. "Just nasty."
Stephen Thomas looked up from the AS that had spattered him with grayish slime.
"And if you need advice," he said, "I consider myself an expert. Hours of technical experience."
Esther chuckled. She opened the carapace of the housekeeper in front of them and cleaned out the broken brain. J.D. watched, fighting nausea. "This is disgusting," J.D. said. "And I have a strong stomach. It doesn't bother me to eat raw clams. It didn't even bother me to eat sea urchins or beche de mer."
"Not to mention those things with the legs," Esther said.
"Those were pretty good, honestly," J.D. said. "I don't know about this, though."
Stephen Thomas shuddered theatrically. "Eating doesn't come into the equation," he said.
J.D. grimaced. "Sorry. I should have thought how that would sound."
Esther finished cleaning the carapace. "Then you just wash the remains down the waste digester-" She stopped. "I wish that wasn't what it was called," she said.
They all laughed, if shakily. J.D. mastered her nausea, took a long breath, let it out, and snapped open the seal on the next AS. Spores puffed up from a drying mass of mold mycelia, another strand of smell added to the tapestry: dry, musty, lingering.
"I'll do my best," J.D. said. She sneezed.
Esther patted her arm and went away. J.D. picked up the vacuum nozzle and set to work. The vacuum whispered as soft as the mold spores, sucking out the dead tissue.
Stephen Thomas straightened up and stretched his back. The swimming webs on his hands had completed themselves. His skin had darkened past gold to bronze.
"How are you?" she asked. She felt awkward making small talk with him, especially after last night.
"Running on empty," he said.
"Oh . . . I thought the party broke up right after . . ."
"We got up kind of early," he said. He hesitated, then continued with the first real excitement she had
heard in his voice since Feral died. "I found some stuff of Feral's. Some stuff in Arachne, I mean."
"His stories on the space program?" J.D. said. "Yes. I read them-" Thinking of Feral made her sad. She had liked him. He had been both sweet-natured and intense. She had not even minded, too much, when he teased her about her attraction to Stephen Thomas. She had not even been jealous when she realized it was Feral's attraction Stephen Thomas would respond to.
Not jealous, but a little envious, she thought wistfully. I have to admit I was envious.
"Not just his stories. He had another project going. He collected a lot of research. J.D.-Feral logged his life."
"What do you mean?"
"Not like Chandra. He wasn't built for that. But he kept up a running dialogue with the computer web. Notes on what he was doing, his observations, his conversations-"
J.D. remembered some of the things she and Feral had discussed. She felt herself blushing, the heat rising up her cheeks, uncontrollable. Her skin was so fair that when she blushed it was painfully obvious.
If I were turning into a diver, she thought, I wouldn't have this problem anymore.
"What's the matter?" Stephen Thomas asked.
"Nothing!" she said, too quickly. "I mean . . . Feral and I talked about some personal subjects. I hadn't intended . . . it wouldn't be interesting to anyone else. I'm sure he didn't bother to record that," she said hopefully.
"He was a journalist," Stephen Thomas said. "You should have known he was taking notes on everything."
"I suppose . . ." She felt embarrassed. Feral's notes could reveal her with naked transparency to Stephen Thomas. Not that her embarrassment would make much difference in the scheme of the world. Stephen Thomas was used to handling people he wasn't interested in. Last night proved that. But she would prefer not to put herself in the same situation as Fox.
"You better know this, too," Stephen Thomas said. His manner had changed. He sounded cold. "If I can, I'm going to edit what he collected and publish it for him."
Both his words and his tone hurt her. She could think of no explanation for his sudden change of attitude. Unless, of course, he had already seen her conversations with Feral and was giving her fair warning, both of his publishing plans and of his lack of interest in her.
"I'm sure he'd like that," J.D. said, forcing her voice to stay steady. Stephen Thomas replied belligerently. "But?"
"But nothing. He loved you. He'd trust you to handle his work."
Stephen Thomas glared at her, inexplicably. He was angry and yet his eyes were full of tears.
He threw down the cleaning tools, left the AS half enervated, and stalked out of the basement without another word to anyone.
It would be pointless to follow him; obviously he did not want to talk to her. And if she begged him not to embarrass her in public, that would be even worse. So what if everybody knew she thought he was the most beautiful human being she had ever met? She had a lot of company in that thought, and she had avoided making a fool of herself to him directly.
I would have thought he'd just laugh, she thought. Say to himself, Oh, fuck, another one. Or even say to me, J.D., what the hell made you think I'd even be interested? And maybe I'd say, I didn't think you'd be interested, that's why I never said anything to you. If you were a gentleman, you never would have said anything to me.
She stamped her foot angrily at herself, pushing away her anxiety.
She hoped Stephen Thomas would cool off; she hoped he would eventually be able to be friends with her again. She hoped he was not so irritated that this would damage her friendship with his whole family, with Victoria.
Stephen Thomas ran home through the hot afternoon. He entered the garden, soaked with sweat, reeking of rotten AS brains. He went straight to the bathroom, stripped, and flung his clothes into the sink. While the sink filled with warm water and soap, he grabbed a clean towel off the shelf and wrapped it around his hips.