Victoria frowned. "I hoped you were on our side."
"I'm not on anybody's side! It's my job to ask questions."
"All right. People want the expedition to promise to go out and find easy, quick solutions. We can't."
"Promise it, or do it?"
"Either- We already know how to solve a lot of our problems. Take food. I don't know the exact numbers—my partner Satoshi could tell you—but if we stopped the expansion of a couple of deserts for one year, we'd gain more arable land than ten Starfarers. If the U.S. hadn't opposed family planning in the 1990s—"
"There's not much we can do about that," Feral said.
"After all."
"But don't you see? We act in stupid and shortsighted ways and then we behave as if we didn't have any responsibility for those actions. Somehow that justifies our continuing to behave in the same shortsighted ways. Instead of trying to change, we hope it works better this time."
"Do you see the expedition as a change?"
"Yes. I hope it is."
"You use the word 'hope' a lot," Feral said.
"I guess I do."
"What do you hope for the expedition?"
"I'm the head of the alien contact department," Victoria said. "That should give you an idea of what I hope for."
Nearby, a nondescript passenger listened to the unguarded conversation. Griffith, of the General Accounting Office, had hidden himself so deeply within his objectivity that he would not permit the comments of Victoria MacKenzie to anger him. He filed them away, along with the opinions of the journalist, for future reference and use.
He wished he had the observation room to himself, so he could look at the stars in silence and solitude. He envied the early space explorers, who had put their lives on the line. He wished he had been one of the Apollo astronauts. Not the ones who landed on the lunar surface: the one who remained in the capsule, orbiting all alone, completely cut off from every other human being, from every other life form, out of contact even by radio during the transit behind the moon.
But those times were long over. Nowadays, traveling into space meant a few minutes of discomforting acceleration and a few hours or days of weightlessness. He had already heard several people complaining about the trip: complaining of boredom' The journey from low earth orbit to Starfarer's li-bration point took too much time for them; they were bored and restless and a few even complained about the lack of gravity.
They've seen too many mo"ies, Griffith thought. They don't understand anything about the way things work. Why did they come up here? If they wanted earth-normal gravity, they should have stayed on earth. These are the people who think
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they know how to use space. Researchers. An old woman. A writer. An alien contact specialist, for God's sake!
In disgust, he left the observation room and floated through the cramped corridors of the transport. If he had anything to say about it, this would be the last transport taking civilian personnel to Starfarer.
He wished he had pulled some rank and seniority in order to demand a larger private compartment. But that would have been as suspicious as getting into an argument with MacKenzie and the journalist about the proper function of Star-farer. Griffith of the General Accounting Office could reasonably expect only the same sleeping closet as any regular passenger.
He made another circuit of the transport's corridors.
Though he tried returning to the observation room, all the conversations he heard angered him with the self-centered shortsightedness of their participants.
Having failed to tire himself, he sought out his cubicle,
wrapped himself in the restraint blanket, and made himself fall immediately asleep. He would keep himself asleep until the transport reached the starship.
J.D. sailed slowly through the corridor, trying to keep herself an even distance from alt four walls. In some ways free-fall was easier than diving; in some ways more difficult. Everything happened faster, so her reactions needed some retraining.
She passed one of the other passengers, going the other direction.
"Hello," she said.
He passed her without speaking, without acknowledging
her presence- The second time they passed, she respected his
privacy. After that, he disappeared.
J.D. had begun to reaccustom herself to what she thought of as the real world. She felt both more crowded and lonelier. Since returning from the wilderness, she had touched no one more closely than a handshake. Several times she had to remind herself not to hug someone, or stroke their arm, or pat their shoulder. In this world such behavior was unacceptable. With the divers it was expected. Perhaps it was necessary.
STARFARERS 4 3
The wilderness had begun to feel like a dream, yet a dream of such intensity that she could bring it back in vivid memory.
Three orcas breached, one after the other, bursting free, turning, splashing hard and disappearing beneath the slate-blue water. A moment later they leaped again, heading the opposite direction. The white spring sunlight glazed their black flanks and the stark white patches on their sides.
Walking down the path to her cabin, J.D. watched the beautiful, elegant creatures, and wondered how she could even consider leaving them.
The three half-grown orcas swam to the mouth of the harbor, cutting the choppy surface with their sharp dorsal fins. They joined a larger group of whales. Without her binoculars, J.D. could no longer tell which three had leaped and played.
The whole pod swam toward shore. Five or six divers, sleek in the water, swam with them.
J.D. expected Zev to clamber out and greet her, but orcas and divers alike swam to where the beach shelved off into deeper water. There, they stopped. One of the divers—she thought it might be Zev—waved and gestured to her.
She sent a signal to her metabolic enhancer and scrambled down the bank. A rush of heat radiated from beneath the small scar on her side. The enhancer kicked her metabolism into high gear. Stripping off her clothes, she left them in a pile on the rocks and waded into the frigid water. She gasped when the water reached the level of her nipples. She hesitated, shivering, then plunged underwater.
When she surfaced, Zev bobbed in front of her. A wave
slapped her face, reminding her that she was in an alien element. She sputtered and moved past Zev so she could turn her back to the swells.
"We came to talk to you," he said. "Will you come?"
"Of course," she said. "But I have to get my lung."
He swam with her to the anchored platform. The orcas and the other divers accompanied them. The dorsal fins all around reminded her of the trunks of the trees in the center of the forest, primordial and eternal, multiple yet individual. The water transmitted the pressure of the orcas1 passing, and the vibrations of the first level of their speech. She could hear them with her body as well as her ears.
At the platform she put on her swim fins and let the arti-44 Vonda N. Mdntyre
ficial lung slide onto her back. Warm, a little slimy, it spread itself across her shoulders. She slipped her mask on. By the time she had cleared it. it had connected with the lung. She breathed in the musky, warm, highly oxygenated air.
J.D. sank beneath the choppy waves. The peacefulness of the sea enfolded her, and the atienness and fear vanished.
Here she was at home.
She wondered if space would have surrounded her with the same experience. She supposed she would never find out. She had decided to choose the ocean over space, the divers over
the starship.
Zev dove with her. His sleek body and pale hair collected light and bounced it back. Even under the gray surface, he
glowed.
J.D. swam farther from shore, till the surf rolling onto the beach faded to a sound like the wind in new spring leaves.