She worked for a while on her new novel. She tried to write a little every day, even when she was busy with other projects. Writing helped her to imagine what it could be like if . . . when, she told herself ... the expedition met other in-
telligent beings.
Her first novel had enjoyed less than magnificent success. Critics complained that it made them feel off balance and confused. Only a few had realized that it was supposed to make them feel off balance and confused; of those, all but one had objected to the experience. That one reviewer had done her the courtesy of assuming she had achieved exactly what she intended, and she valued the comments.
She knew that nothing she could imagine could approach the strangeness of the expedition's first contact with nonTerrestrial beings. She could not predict what would happen.
It was the sense of immersing herself in strangeness that she sought, knowing she would have to meet the reality with equanimity, and wing it from there.
Her library contained a number of novels and stories about first meetings of humanity and alien beings. Those she reread most, her favorites, embodied that sense of strangeness. But it troubled her considerably to find so many fictions ending in misjudgment, incomprehension, intolerance; in violence and disaster.
J.D.'s stories never ended like that.
She put the novel away, got up, and opened the floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside lay a long, narrow terrace, bright green with a mixture of new grass and wildflowers-
Victoria had said she could do whatever she liked with the terrace—whatever she could find the time to do. J.D. recognized some of the meadow flowers from the wilderness, but she had never done any gardening. She had no idea where to start. She liked the big rock over at one edge. Barefoot, she walked across the delicate new grass and sat on the heat-polished stone. It had been blasted to slag sometime during
96 Vonda N. Mclntyre
the creation of Starfarer. The melted curves sank gently into the earth. The rock was warm from the heat of the day, but J.D. imagined it remained hot from the blast that had shattered it from its lunar matrix. She imagined heat continuing to radiate from it for eons.
The starship had no sunsets, only a long twilight. Darkness fell, softened by starlight shining on the overhead mirrors. Rectangles of light, other people's uncurtained windows and open doorways, lay scattered across the hillsides. The air quickly cooled, but J.D. remained in her garden, thinking about so suddenly finding herself a member of the alien contact department.
J.D. liked Victoria. She fell grateful that the expedition's original rejection of her application, and her brief rejection of their subsequent invitation, had not destroyed the possibility of friendship. Satoshi and Stephen Thomas she did not know well enough to assess.
J.D. shivered. She thought about kicking in the metabolic enhancer, but decided against it. The rush would remind her
of the sea and the whales, and the divers, and Zev.
She might as weil let the artificial gland atrophy. She would probably never need it again.
She rose and went inside.
The interior of her house was as cool as the terrace. She had not yet told Arachne her preferences for temperature and humidity and light level and background sounds. If she took off the outer doors and the curtains, as Victoria suggested, to open her house to the artificial outdoors, most of that programming would be superfluous. J.D. thought she would leave the doors and the curtains as they were. After the damp, cold mornings of the cabin, the idea of stepping out of bed onto a warm floor appealed to her.
Flicking her eyelids closed, she scanned the web for mail. Nothing important, nothing personal.
Nothing from Zev.
She could send him a message. But it would be easier for both of them if she left him alone. Best for all concerned if she and Zev never talked again. Her eyes bumed. She blinked hard.
She took off her clothes, crawled into bed, ordered the STARFARERS 97
lights off, ordered the curtains open, and lay on her futon gazing into the darkness.
A quick blink of light startled her. She thought it was a flaw in her vision until it happened again, and again. Short, cool, yellow flashes the size of a match head decorated her terrace.
They were fireflies. She had not seen one for a long time.
They did not exist on the West Coast. They were even becoming rare in the East, in their home territories, because of the size and effects of the enormous coastal cities. Here they must be part of the ecosystem.
The ecosystem fascinated her. If it contained fireflies, lightning bugs, did it contain other insects? She would like bees—bees must be essential. But what about ladybugs?
Surely one could not import ladybugs without importing aphids as well. No one in their right mind would introduce aphids into a closed environment intended to be agriculturally self-sufficient. If no noxious insects existed, but the ecologists were trying to establish songbirds, what did the songbirds eat? Did anything eat the songbirds?
J.D. drifted off into complexity, and sleep.
Victoria tapped lightly on Stephen Thomas's door.
"Come in."
The scent of sandalwood surrounded her. Stephen Thomas often brought incense to campus in his allowance. The in-
cense stick glowed, a speck of pink light moving downward through the darkness. The sliding doors stood open to the courtyard, letting in the breeze and mixing the sandalwood with the spice of carnation. The pale white wash of reflected starlight silvered Stephen Thomas's gold hair and his face in quarter profile. He turned toward her.
"Your hair sparkles," he said.
"And yours glows." She let her kimono fall from her shoulders and slid into bed beside him. He wore nothing but the crystal at his throat, as black as obsidian. He rolled onto his side. The crystal slipped along the line of his collarbone, glinting in scarlet and azure.
"Where's Satoshi?" Stephen Thomas asked. "You guys aren't mad at me, are you? Feral looked so downcast when he saw he'd be practically alone in the guesthouse ... "
98 vonda N. Mclntyre
Victoria felt Stephen Thomas shrug in the darkness, beneath her hands.
"Satoshi's in the shower," she said. "He'll be here in a minute. I'm not mad at you, exactly, but, god, Stephen Thomas, your timing is lousy."
She brushed her fingertips down his side and stroked the hard muscles of his thigh and wished Satoshi would hurry up.
Stephen Thomas drew her closer. His soft breath tickled her shoulder.
"I think it's damned nice of us," Victoria said, "to use your room tonight so we don't keep Feral Korzybski awake till morning!"
"What's the matter with my room?" Stephen Thomas said plaintively. His room was a joke among the partnership. He collected stuff the way a magnet collects steel shavings- Victoria's room was almost as Spartan as the fourth bedroom, and Satoshi's works in progress were always organized. Stephen Thomas kept a desk full of bits of equipment and printouts, a comer full of potted plants, and he never picked up his clothes until just before he did his laundry.
"Nothing," Victoria said. "I enjoy sleeping in a midden heap. But my room is right next to our guest, and we've never tested the soundproofing."
Satoshi came in, toweling his hair. He launched himself across the room and came down flat on the bed beside Victoria. He smelled of fresh water and mint soap. A few droplets nicked off the ends of his hair and fell across Victoria's face. His skin was cool and just barely damp from the shower.
He leaned over her and kissed her. The cool droplets of water disappeared in the warmth of his lips and his tongue. Satoshi reached past her and took Stephen Thomas's hand. Their fingers intertwined, gold and silver in the dim light. Victoria reached up and joined her hand to theirs, adding ebony to the pattern. She hooked her leg over Satoshi's thighs, and as she turned toward him drew Stephen Thomas with her, closer against her back and side. His breath quickened and his long silky hair slipped across her shoulder. Mint and carnation and sandalwood and arousal surrounded them with a dizzying mix. Victoria and Satoshi and Stephen Thomas surrendered themselves to it, and to each other.