Stephen Thomas finished dressing just when she did. They returned to the main room together. J.D. had already arrived.
"You all look wonderful!" she said. She looked as if she had tried to dress up, but did not quite know how.
Stephen Thomas wore his turquoise shirt for the first time. Instead of his usual plain gold stud, he wore an earring Satoshi had given him on his last birthday. It twisted up behind his ear and drooped forward again, dangling small emerald crystals all the way to his shoulder. A second loop of crystals branched off from the back and draped across his long blond hair and over his other shoulder.
Satoshi handed Victoria the newly potted carnation, and they set out for the party.
Victoria walked with Stephen Thomas, J.D. with Satoshi.
J.D. evened out the group and made walking on the narrow pathways less awkward, though of course not the same as before, walking with Merit. It surprised Victoria to find herself thinking of before with only a dull ache, instead of a deep hard pain. Maybe she was beginning to heal. Finally.
She shook herself out of that train of thought, knowing how fast the depression could hit her.
Satoshi and J.D. chatted as they walked ahead. J.D. was beginning to relax with her new teammates. Victoria enjoyed talking with her. If someone had told her that discussing the plots of old short stories would be fun, she would not have believed them.
The discussion brought the team members as well as the members of her partnership into closer contact. Victoria had never known of Satoshi's summer herding cattle.
Victoria shifted the flowerpot from one hand to the other.
She stroked the gray-green leaves and separated the blossoms. The scent of carnations rose around her and she smiled. She hoped Sfarfarer's first grandparent in space would like her gift.
Stephen Thomas reached out and took her hand in a companionable way.
"You're pretty excited," he said.
"More mind reading?"
STARFARERS 14 3
"Hardly necessary."
"I think I worked out something qualitatively different this afternoon," Victoria said. "A real 'a-hah!' experience. I'm ready for a party! I'm so glad Ms. Brown is here—It isn't the same as if Grangrana had agreed to come. But I'm glad she's on board all the same."
"I don't understand why they picked her," Stephen Thomas said. "She's not a colleague. Even if she wasn't past retirement, she was never a scientist. She doesn't have a proper vita. I don't even know what to call her."
"By her name, probably."
"You don't need to be sarcastic. I'm just saying I have some doubts about the grandparents program." Stephen Thomas grimaced.
"I thought you were neutral on the subject of age-mix. 1 didn't realize you were opposed."
"I can't help it if my personal landscape is different on that subject than yours. And, look, if we get into a bad spot. we'll have to worry about her."
"Why? How will worrying help? She knows the risks as well as any of us. And she's just as capable of making an informed decision."
"There's no more excuse for bringing elders up here than for bringing kids."
"No excuse—! I never heard you talk about Thanthavong or Cherenkov like this, by the way."
"They're different."
"Not in terms of their ability to decide whether to Join the expedition."
"That isn't what I meant. I meant they both have reasons to be up here. They have things to do."
"Stephen Thomas, next you're going to try to tell me that Nikolai Cherenkov was a hero of the Soviet Union for making scientific discoveries."
Stephen Thomas blushed.
"I admire him, too," Victoria said. "But let's face it. holding the time-in-space record doesn't mean much nowadays.
There must be a couple of hundred people who can measure their experience in decades."
"Okay, I'll grant that Cherenkov is here because he wants to be and because a lot of us admire him. And maybe because
144 vonda N. Mcintyre
he's the only person in existence who'll be safer on the expedition than they would be anywhere in the solar system.
That doesn't change anything. I still don't see any reason to bring a grandmother up here just because she's a grandmother. Besides, if she's such a great grandmother, why isn't she grandmothering her own grandchildren?''
"Maybe for the same reason we aren't parenting any children," Victoria said.
"That isn't fair!"
"Sure it is. We chose to put off having children so we could join the expedition. Maybe her grandchildren are grown up. Maybe she decided we needed her more than they did. Maybe she didn't feel needed back on earth at all. Maybe she has a spirit of adventure."
"What's going to happen if we do meet aliens—"
"When," Victoria said.
"Whatever, and they see her and say, 'Why in the world did you bring her along?' "
"What would happen when we meet aliens if they didn't see her and they said, 'Where are your elders? How can we talk to people who cut themselves off from their wisest individuals?' Stephen Thomas, your argument has been used against every minority in history. 'You can't represent us, because you'd be talking to people who think you're less than human. For the sake of getting along, we're going to pretend to agree.' "
"I didn't mean it that way."
"Then don't suggest we deform our society to try to please some other culture. They're going to have to take us as we come."
**If you take that argument as far as it can go, we ought to bring kids along."
"There's a case to be made for that suggestion," Victoria said. "Maybe you should bring it up at the next meeting."
"Maybe this is a dumb argument. The age-mix decision's made now, we have one grandparent in space and maybe more to come. That's that."
"You're awfully passionate about it, now that it's too late. Why didn't you say anything at the committee meeting when we talked about age-mix in the first place?"
"Native shyness."
STARFARERS 14 5
Victoria laughed.
Stephen Thomas gave a small and self-deprecating shrug. "Everybody sounded so enthusiastic. I didn't want to break consensus."
"If you weren't concerned enough about the subject to talk about it at the meetings, I don't think you should second-guess it now.''
"I'm not going to embarrass you at the party, if that's what you mean."
"You haven't had good experiences with grandparents. Give Floris Brown a chance before you convince yourself she's going to be more of the same."
"I wish you wouldn't psychoanalyze me."
"And I wish you wouldn't read my aura, but that doesn't stop you."
Quite a way ahead, Satoshi turned back and beckoned to them.
"Come on, we're going to be late!"
He and J.D. waited till Victoria and Stephen Thomas caught up. Various tributaries had brought other people to the path. They passed the fossil bed, which was much farther along than the last time Victoria had seen it. She wondered if Crimson Ng intended to leave even a bit of bone showing, to indicate the bed's presence, or if hiding it completely was pan of its aesthetics.
The party was going great. Infinity had never run a big party before. Small ones, a few friends and strangers, sure, but nothing on the scale of an open invitation to everyone left on campus. If Florrie and J.D. Sauvage had arrived a few transports before, it would have been much larger, but as far as Infinity was concerned it was plenty big enough. Guests crowded the main room, listening to Florrie tell stories in her feathery voice; other folks had spilled out into the garden. Professor Thanthavong, the geneticist, and Alzena Dadkhah, the head ecologist, stood in the garden drinking fruit juice and chatting. Even the new chancellor had made an appearance, though he had already left. Infinity had hoped Kolya Cherenkov might come, but maybe that was too much to ask.