Victoria woke when the sun tube spilled light through the open wall of Stephen Thomas's bedroom. Stephen Thomas lay on the far side of the bed, stretched on his side, his hair curling down across his neck and shoulder, one hand draped across Satoshi's back. Satoshi sprawled in the middle of the bed, facedown, arms and legs flung every which way, his hair kinked in a wing from being slept on wet. Victoria watched her partners sleeping, wishing they could stay in bed all morning, in the midst of the comfortable clutter. The scent of sandalwood lingered.
Stephen Thomas yawned and turned over, stretching. He rubbed his eyes and blinked and yawned again, propped himself on his elbow, and looked at her across Satoshi. 'Satoshi snored softly.
"Good morning," Stephen Thomas whispered.
"Good morning." Victoria, too. kept her voice soft. "Is that how weasels screw?"
He laughed.
"Shh, you'll wake Satoshi."
They got up, creeping quietly away so Satoshi could wake up at his own pace. Stephen Thomas grabbed some clean clothes from the pile in the corner. Victoria had no idea how he always managed to look so good. When she referred to his room as a midden heap, she was only half joking.
After a shower, Victoria smoothed the new clothes in her closet but resisted the urge to wear them. They were party
99
100 Vonda N. Mclntyre
clothes, inappropriate for work. She put on her usual jeans and shirt and sandals, reflecting that back on earth, on almost any other campus, what she had on would be considered inappropriate for a professor.
Victoria smelled something burning. Something burning?
Stephen Thomas's incense—? She hurried into the hallway.
She stopped short. The smell of food, cooking, filled the apartment.
None of the three surviving members of the partnership was much of a cook. Merit had known how to cook. These days Victoria and Satoshi and Stephen Thomas ordered meals from the central kitchen when they had time to eat together.
Victoria drew a deep breath. Getting upset because someone had decided to make breakfast was silly. It was just that
the homey smell brought back memories.
Satoshi was the best cook among them, but Victoria knew from long acquaintance that Satoshi was not cooking breakfast. If he was even out of bed she would be surprised. That left Stephen Thomas.
"He can bum water" had always been a metaphorical phrase to Victoria, until Stephen Thomas once put water on for coffee, forgot about it, and melted a kettle all over the heating element.
The breakfast smelled much better than burning water or melting kettles. Stephen Thomas was always trying new things; maybe cooking lessons were his newest enthusiasm.
Victoria headed to the main room. At the stove. Feral Korzybski glanced over his shoulder.
"Morning," he said. "I wanted to make myself useful."
He gestured to the set table, the skillet. "You folks sure don't have much equipment."
"We don't cook here very much," she said. "No time."
"It's a hobby of mine," he said. "I think this wilt be edible." He poked the edges of the big omelet, letting the uncooked egg run underneath to sizzle against the hot pan.
"Are you ready for tea?"
"Sure."
He poured boiling water into her teapot.
"I talked to the database—"
"Arachne," Victoria said.
STARFARERS 101
"Right, thanks. I talked to Arachne about what was available for people to cook. Strange selection."
"Not if you consider how and where it's produced. We're beginning to grow things ourselves. But a lot of fresh stuff, and most everything that's processed, is from one of the colonies."
Stephen Thomas sauntered barefoot into the main room.
He wore orange satin running shorts and a yellow silk lank top. Victoria tried to imagine the combination on anyone else, and failed.
"What's for breakfast?" he said.
Feral dumped the filling into the omelet and folded it expertly. "Let me see if I can remember everything I put in it.
The eggs were fresh—that surprised me."
"We grow those here."
"With or without chickens?"
"With." Victoria laughed. "We aren't that high-tech."
"The mushrooms are reconstituted but the green onions and the tomatoes were fresh. I was hoping I could get micro-grav vegetables, but Arachne didn't offer them. I've seen them in magazines—perfectly round tomatoes, and spherical carrots, and beans in corkscrews—but I don't know anyone who can afford to cook with them."
"We don't get any of those out here. The colonies export them all to earth. There are problems with growing plants in quantity in micrograv, so whatever you get is labor-intensive. Especially those corkscrew beans."
"I can see where they would be. That's it—except for the cheese. The package said, 'Tillamook Heights.' "
"That's from a colony. The people who run one of the dairies there emigrated from someplace called Tillamook—"
"It's on the West Coast of the United States," Stephen Thomas said to Victoria. "A few hundred kilometers south of Vancouver." He liked to tease her about her Canadian chauvinism, about the way she sometimes pretended to know less about the United States than she really did. He could get away with it.
"—and they wanted to name the dairy after their original place. But 'Tillamook East' or 'Tillamook South' didn't sound right, so: Tillamook Heights."
"I like it." Feral rubbed his upper lip and gazed blankly 102 vonda N. Mcintyre
at the omelet, filing the information away, thinking of how to use it in a story.
"Your omelet's about to bum," Victoria said.
He snatched the pan off the single-burner stove.
"Damn!" He lifted the edge of the omelet. "Just in time. Where's Satoshi?"
"Still asleep, probably."
"Damn," he said again. "I thought you were all up. This is no good cold. I'll go get him."
"Don't, if you value your life," Stephen Thomas said.
"Trust me, he'd much rather eat your omelet cold than have you wake him up. You would, too."
"All right," Feral said, doubtful and disappointed.
The omelet tasted wonderful.
"The coffee's great," Stephen Thomas said. "What did you do to it?"
Victoria took his cup and tried a sip. It was much stronger than she was used to, but tasted less bitter, almost the way coffee smelled.
"I'll show you. It's not hard, but if you boil it you might as well throw it out and start over. That's what I did with what you had in the pot."
Feral ate part of his omelet, occasionally glancing with some irritation at the warmer where he had left Satoshi's share.
"It isn't the same warmed over," he said. He got up, poured coffee from the thermos into a mug, and disappeared down the corridor.
Victoria and Stephen Thomas looked at each other. Stephen Thomas shrugged.
"It's his hide," he said.
Feral returned unscathed. He got the last quarter of the omelet out of the warmer and put it at Satoshi's place. A minute later Satoshi himself appeared, wearing Victoria's hapi coat, carrying the coffee cup, and apparently wide awake. He joined them at the table.
"Nice morning, isn't it?" He sipped his coffee. "That's very good," he said. He put it down and started eating his omelet.
Victoria watched him, amazed.
STARFARERS 103
"Do you want a job?" Stephen Thomas said to Feral.
"No, thanks. I'm self-employed."
J.D. woke very early in the morning, too early, she thought, to call the other members of the alien contact team. Feeling restless, she went for a walk. She suspected that on board Starfarer she would have trouble getting enough exercise, here where she would have neither opportunity nor time to swim several hours each day.