She had no vital tasks. Nemo's shell was headed for Europa's transition point. J.D. could control the shell, but she feared interfering with Nerno's navigation till she had caught up to Starfarer. She wondered how long that would take.
Claws scuttled on metal.
J.D. bolted upright.
Several of Nemo's symbionts scuttled across the floor, scrabbling at the hatch with clawed, feathery legs.
J.D. gazed at them fondly.
Rising to her knees, she gathered up the creatures in the scrap of soft frail webbing.
Flecks of iridescence covered J.D.'s hands. The tiny scales from Nemo's wings gilded her, and when she rose, a scatter of the glitter shimmered to the floor.
Transition surrounded Starfarer.
Arachne continued, strong and steady, indifferent to the border Starfarer had crossed, leaving normal space behind. Victoria let out her breath and unclenched her teeth.
"The web's intact," she said.
Jenny stared out into transition. Tears pooled in her eyes, collected at her upper and lower eyelids, and drifted into the air in droplets when she blinked.
"It's over," she said softly. "It's finally done. We're safe."
"I hope so," Victoria said.
And then they smiled at each other, and Jenny laughed, her laughter warring with her tears. She sniffled and coughed and pulled a handkerchief out of her
pocket and waved it over the floating teardrops to catch them, and blew her nose.
"Safe!" Jenny said. "Halfway through transition and going where we've been told not to. For all we know they'll blast us out of the sky when we get there."
"That's not allowed," Victoria said. "Their only weapon is coercion." "Unless they get desperate enough to break the rules to stop us. I think Civilization works by peer pressure."
"You don't mean that as a compliment, do you?"
"I do not. There's nothing more brutal. People will do anything to get other people to do what they think is allowed. Or right. Or holy. Especially holy. The end always justifies the means."
Victoria said nothing. She did not want to think about ends justifying the means; the charge hit too close to her own doubts and fears.
This wits the third time Starfarer had crossed into transition, the first time Arachne had been able to record, and the first time Victoria had been able to watch. On the journey from Earth to Tau Ceti, she had been helping Satoshi drag Stephen Thomas out of the genetics building. On the journey from Tau Ceti to Sirius, she had been trying, and failing, to save Feral's life.
The recordings did not do transition justice. They showed nothing but a formless gray fog. Transition was much more than that.
Victoria wondered if she would be able to describe it afterward. She wondered if Arachne would be able to reproduce a view of it.
The sailhouse hung suspended and isolated in a silver flurry of sparks. Now and then a streak of color or a shape coalesced from the storm, then disappeared. Victoria could not tell whether she was seeing something real, or if her mind was creating pictures from random intersections of the matrix around her.
"It's like the maze," she said. "We kept thinking we saw a pattern in it, but there wasn't any. Just a maze."
She felt isolated, alone out here with Jenny. They could not even see Starfarer's main cylinder through the silver storm.
The isolation J.D. must be feeling struck Victoria hard.
"Goodbye," J.D. had said, and nothing else, in that last second before Starfarer disappeared.
It sounded so final.
In the Chi's small bio lab, J.D. placed the creatures in sample cases, one to an aquarium so they would not eat each other. She divided the shred of webbing among them.
They probably would not survive. They had not evolved to survive Nemo's death for long; they were part of the body that was dying. Maybe Stephen Thomas or Professor Thanthavong could figure out how to keep them alive. If she could save the symbionts until she caught up to Starfarer.
I wonder how long that will be? J.D. wondered. How long will I be here alone?
Nemo must have been able to calculate transition duration-or would the time even matter to someone who lived for millennia, who lived a life almost entirely of the mind?
J.D. reached for the knowledge surface of Nemo's shell. She found it-and again her expanded link took over all her senses, disorienting her, leaving her suspended in nothingness-and cast around for the answer she needed.
It overwhelmed her. She skittered along the surface, unable to penetrate its depths, distracted on every side by hints and shadows of Nemo's experience.
She came back to herself, still with no idea how long it would take her to reach the 61 Cygni system. Worse, she had no idea how to find the information in the maze of the knowledge surface.
Maybe Nemo didn't care how long it took, she thought. Besides . . . is it an answer I want to know?
The Chi was well-stocked, but its stores were finite.
If transition duration lasted weeks, or months, she could find herself in a lot of trouble. The Chi possessed a few organic systems, but it had never been designed to support a human being during a long separation from Starfarer.
She chuckled ruefully. If she had let Victoria give Androgeos the new transition algorithm, no doubt Nemo would have snagged the information, too.
"Outsmarted yourself this time, didn't you?" she said softly, trying not to feel how scared she was.
She wished she had sent a better, more comforting farewell to her friends. "Goodbye"? That told them nothing; it might even frighten them. They had no idea how long it would take her to traverse the space between Sirius and 61 Cygni, either. Only that it would take her longer than it took Starfarer.
Leaving Nerno's symbionts to explore the hard edges of their new homes,
J.D. headed for the observers' circle.
She caught her breath in surprise and apprehension.
The sinuous, beautiful shape of Victoria's algorithm twisted itself into being in the center of the circle.
J.D. took her place in the circle. The transition algorithm hovered at the focus, Victoria's final message, her final gift.
Nerno's shell plunged toward transition point. J.D. had only a few minutes to decide what to do.
With apprehension, she closed her eyes and opened her link completely, sliding onto the knowledge surface, stretching to connect it with the Chi's onboard computer. The real world vanished as J.D. approached the chasm in the knowledge surface and compared it to the algorithm.
They do match, she thought. Not a perfect fit . . .
She asked herself a question: What happens if the fit isn't good enough?
Do I end up on the other side of the galaxy?
Gently she moved the algorithm, rotated it, and translated it into the chasm.
The algorithm joined the knowledge surface, rough,
raw beauty touching elegance refined and polished by time. The algorithm was a crystalline chunk of ice on the cracked surface of an ancient, flowing glacier. The crystal's edges melted; it sank in; the points of attachment melded. The surface and the algorithm remained distinct.
If Nemo were still alive, the fit would have been precise. So much detail was lost when Nerno's personality slipped away. J.D. withdrew from the surface. Now all she could do was wait.
When her senses returned to her, she gazed through the wall of the observers' circle, toward Nerno's crater. The flattened access tunnel lay between the Chi and the nest, like a shed and discarded snakeskin.
The wings and sails of Nerno's nest shuddered.
Nerno's convoluted tapestry collapsed, like ice cliffs avalanching. One side tore free of the rock. Limp and silent, it flopped inward. It dragged the access tunnel from the Chi's hatch, to the crater, and over the edge.
The nest vanished into the crater's depths.
Nerno's shell slipped from space into transition. J.D. perceived the change, a change in angle down the knowledge surface, from an oblique traverse to a headlong plunge.