Several of Nemo's attendants whispered past her on tiny invisible feet, and clustered around the gossamer thread that had led her in. When they passed over it, it parted. They hunkered down over the pieces, drawing in the threads.
"May I have a piece of your silk?" J.D. asked Nemo, gesturing to one of the threads.
"Tell me what you'd do with it."
"I'd give it to one of my colleagues to analyze. He studies genetics." "You may have it."
J.D. pulled the sampling kit from the thigh pocket of her spacesuit and used the sterile tongs to pick up a thread. One of the attendants lunged, arching upward to snap with shiny jaws. Startled, J.D. snatched the sample away.
"It doesn't want me to take it," she said to Nemo.
"It doesn't have much tolerance for change."
The attendant flopped back to the floor, forgot about J.D., and headed for another loose bit of silk.
J.D. put her prize in a sample bag and sealed it.
"Thank you, Nemo," she said. "I'll come back as soon as I can."
"I will wait."
"Shall I leave my lifeline here? Then I could follow it in when I come back."
"One of my attendants will spin you to me," Nemo said.
"But that's so much trouble for you, when I could just follow the line." "The line is essential to you," Nemo said.
"No, not really. It's for safety, for backup."
"J.D.," Nemo said, and J.D. thought she heard a hesitation in the squidmoth's voice, "the line is uncomfortable."
"It-what?"
She thought about the line, snaking back and forth through Nemo's body, pressing against, even cutting into, Nerno's tissues and organs.
"I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed. "Nemo, why didn't you say something before?" She blushed, mortified at having thoughtlessly caused Nemo pain. "I want you to feel welcome," Nemo said.
J.D. grasped the end of Nerno's tentacle gently. "I'm so sorry," she said again. "I won't bring the line when I come back."
"Thank you," Nemo said.
As she left the bright sphere of light in the center of Nerno's nest, the long tentacles slithered after her, touching her heels. She paused at the opening between two inner curtains, glanced back, and waved. Nerno's mustache vibrated.
"Good-bye for now," she said.
"J.D."
She glanced back. "Yes, Nemo?"
"Tell me the questions you seek."
J.D. smiled. "We won't know what those are," she said, "till we find them."
Reeling in her lifeline, J.D. left Nerno's chamber and entered the labyrinth. At the first switchback turn, the line had pressed against the edge of the curtain. When she released it, a dark welt formed. She touched it gently, sorry for the pain she had caused.
Motion fluttered against her fingers. She started and drew back her hand. Several palm-sized flat creatures, the same color as the curtain and camouflaged against it, had snugged up against the place where the cable had lain. Now, as J.D. watched, they flowed over the welt, covered it, and settled against the fabric. The welt vanished beneath a rough line of scar tissue.
J.D. left the labyrinth and hurried through the cathedral corridors, climbing toward the edge of the crater. Now she noticed more of the creatures who maintained the intricate environment that was Nemo. They crept up every wall, spinning, weaving, unweaving; they peered at her with eyespots or antennae from luxurious folds of drapery; they scuttled away before her so all she knew of them was the sound they made when they fled. And always she was aware of the larger creatures beyond the sides of the tunnels, shapes and shadows, the touch of a powerful limb tenting the wall or the ceiling.
Maybe I should think of Nemo as an ecosystem, she thought. Or maybe I need a whole new term.
She passed through the double sphincter that formed Nerno's airlock, no longer frightened by the monster-organisms that closed in to change the shape of the tunnel.
She started up the long steep hammocks that led to the surface.
The closer she got to the outside, the more deeply the lifeline had cut into Nerno's fabric. In places, she had to pull it-as gently as she could-from beneath the healing creatures.
At the last place where the lifeline had sunk in, just before J.D. emerged from the crater, a healing creature
had fastened itself firmly to both sides of the welt. J.D. pulled on the lifeline, but not gently enough. The creature's body ripped open. Pale fluid dripped out. The creature's edges had melded into the wall.
The lifeline fell free.
J.D. stared at the dripping tissue. The dripping slowed, and the fluid solidified. Soon the edges had healed, the walls began to absorb the two halves of the creature, and more healers came fo finish covering the welt. J.D. let the lifeline reel in, glad she had reached the last steep slope.
Victoria was waiting for her at the edge of the crater, her slender, compact body radiating energy and excitement. She gave J.D. a hand up the last long step, squeezing her fingers. Behind the gilt surface of her faceplate, she looked amazed, exhilarated, relieved.
A deluge of questions and comments and exclamations poured through J.D.'s earphones. It was as if everyone had waited as long as they possibly could, till she stepped out of the alien being's home, and then could hold their curiosity no more. J.D. felt a surge of panic. Victoria must have seen it, because she squeezed JDA hand again and opened a voice channel back to Starfarer.
"Come on, folks. J.D.'s had a long afternoon. You saw everything she did."
The cacophony eased. Someone muttered, "Sorry," and someone else said, "But it isn't the same." That sounded like Chandra, the sensory artist. "Nevertheless," Victoria said. "I'm closing down the PA for a while. We can all talk to J.D. when she's had a chance to collect her thoughts."
The monitor signals vanished, leaving J.D. in peace and silence.
"Thanks," J.D. said. "You could have said, 'Till J.D.'s had a chance to pee,' but I'm glad you didn't."
Victoria chuckled.
"You were fantastic, J.D." she said. "I wouldn't have had the nerve to do all that you just did."
J.D. smiled, exhausted but elated. No matter what
happened now, she had begun to make friends with Nemo, with an alien being. Too many things on the deep space expedition had gone badly up till now.
She needed a success. They all did.
"Let's go in," Victoria said.
"Okay.,,
They retraced their footprints through the dust of the planetoid's rough surface, returning to the ungainly explorer craft, the Chi.
J.D. unplugged the end of her lifeline from the flank of the Chi and let it snap back into the reel. She unhooked the reel from her suit, and handed it to Victoria.
"From now on," she said, "I'm working without a net."
Outside the spacesuit locker, Zev and Satoshi waited for Victoria and J.D. "You have a hell of a lot of guts," Satoshi said.
J.D. knew he meant to offer her a compliment, but she also heard the note of caution in his voice.
"More guts than brains?" she said.
"Maybe," he said. "But maybe . . . that's what the alien contact specialist needs." He grinned at her, and she smiled back.
"Thanks."
Satoshi was the most restrained of the three members of the family partnership. Unlike Stephen Thomas, who said whatever he thought, Satoshi more often than not kept his opinions to himself. J.D. valued his rare comments, and rarer compliments.
Satoshi went to Victoria and brushed his fingertips against his partner's very curly short black hair, smoothing it where her helmet had pressed against it.
J.D. rotated her shoulders and stretched. Zev came to her and hugged her tight. She stroked his fine pale hair, and laid her hand against his cheek. The diver's smooth mahogany skin radiated heat. Zev wore only light shorts and a sleeveless shirt, both
too big for him, both borrowed from Stephen Thomas, who was nearly thirty centimeters taller than Zev. Zev owned almost no clothing, only a heavy wool suit, part of his disguise for boarding Starfarer. He would have abandoned clothing as quickly as he had abandoned his fraudulent identity, if J.D. had not told him it would be socially unacceptable. He never wore clothes back in Puget Sound.