"I wasn't talking about leaving permanently."
"Let's not talk about leaving at all. If we lose our house, we lose our house. If we lose the expedition . . ."
"You're right," he said. "Of course you're right."
"Besides," Victoria said, trying to smile, "if we lose the expedition we can't afford a house anyway."
They hugged each other, then packed the bento boxes into the AS and sent it home to put the food away for dinner. Victoria wondered if anyone would be hungry then, either.
"The meeting tonight is going to be something," she said.
His graduate students had reappeared by the time Stephen Thomas got back to the lab. He wanted to talk to them, but the tension of having to explain things to his father would emotionally distort everything he said to them. He reached his office. When he touched the door, it crashed open without his meaning to slam it. He hesitated, then turned. All three students stared at him, startled.
"Don't anybody go anywhere," he muttered. "I'll be back in a couple of minutes."
In his office, Stephen Thomas asked Arachne to connect him to earth, and his father. The conversation would be awkward, because of the distance of Starfarer from earth and the resulting time delay. His father was no more proficient at holding two simultaneous conversations than was Stephen Thomas.
"Steve? I didn't expect to hear from you."
"How are you, Greg?" Stephen Thomas said. "My partners send their regards."
"Oh- Well. You say hi to Vicky and Satoshi for me."
Stephen Thomas could not help but smile. His father was the only person in the world who called him "Steve"; his father was probably the only person in the world dense enough to keep calling Victoria by a diminutive. He was sure Greg
178 vonda N. Mcintyre
would have shortened Satoshi's name if he could have figured out how to do it.
"Long time," Greg said. "What's the occasion? Have you settled the plans for your visit?"
"That's pan of why I called," Stephen Thomas said. "1
don't think I'm going to be able to get back to earth again."
"What? Why not? You didn't make it over here the last time you were on earth. You said—"
"I thought you understood about the conference. And how hard it is to reschedule transport trips—"
"What's the problem now? Have you—"
"Greg, have you heard any news today?" Stephen Thomas spoke before his father finished his question.
After the two-second delay, his father replied. "I never pay any attention to the news."
"There's a problem with the starship's operating funds," Stephen Thomas said. "Will you be all right if the next deposit is late?"
This time the delay was more than the two-second light-speed lag.
"What's happened? You're overextended?"
"I'm not! It hasn't anything to do with me directly, but it makes a personal trip out of the question. The money's held up in Washington. I don't know when I'll get paid next."
Again he waited, hoping for nonchalance, reassurance.
"This is cutting pretty close to the bone, Steve," Greg said.
"I'm sorry. I don't have any control ... I can't . . ."
While he was still trying to think of how to explain, the lag began and ended.
"Is it all up to you? In my day, when you got married, you didn't just marry your wife, you married her whole family, too."
"We're members of each other's families, Greg," Stephen Thomas said. "And Satoshi's got the same problem. Everybody up here who's from the U.S. has had their funding impounded."
Greg had taken a while to accept Victoria and Satoshi as individuals; accepting them as partners, and lovers, of his son was taking a good bit longer. Stephen Thomas wondered
STARFARERS 17 9
how Satoshi would react to being referred to as a wife, not to mention how Victoria would react.
"If you'd given me a little notice that you intended to cut me off—"
"Greg, that isn't fair!"
"—I'd've tried to make some other plans."
"That isn't fair," Stephen Thomas said again. Something else Stephen Thomas disliked about voice communication over this distance was that it was impossible to interrupt anyone, impossible to head them off from saying something they might regret, impossible to keep from hearing something he would regret. Stephen Thomas could not even react with anger, because he understood Greg's fear. He had hoped for some understanding, some encouragement, even just a little slack; and he knew he should have known better. All he could do was pretend not to be hurt.
"You don't even have any expenses up there," Greg said.
"At least that's what you told me. Haven't you put anything away in all the time since you got out of school?''
"The family's finances are too complicated to explain on long-distance transmission," Stephen Thomas said. "With the impoundment, we aren't going to have much extra."
"It's none of my business, you mean," Greg said.
"That isn't what I said. That isn't even close."
"I'll have to move," Greg said. "It will take me a while to find a cheaper place."
"Don't do that!" Stephen Thomas said. "It will cost you more short-term than you can possibly save, and with any luck this will just be a short-term problem. I wouldn't even have bothered you with it except I thought you should hear about the problem from me. I thought you'd be worried."
"I am worried. There's no way I can keep up the rent on this place. I never should have taken it to begin with. I wouldn't have, if you—"
"If you're set on moving, move to Canada!"
Stephen Thomas stopped. He could not even afford an argument right now. Though his hands were steady, he felt as if he were trembling. The trembling began in his center and spread outward, a reaction not of anger or fear but of disappointment and hurt, guilt that he felt though he did not believe he deserved it, and a wish to make everything all right.
18 0 Vonda N. Mdntyre
"Canada? forget it. I'm not moving to the ass-end of nowhere just to make things easier on you- If that means—"
"Greg, I'll do what I can, but I just can't manage as much as before. For a while. That's the best I can do."
"And I don't have any choice, do I?"
The web signaled that the communications link had been
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Vonda%20N%20McIntyre%20-%20Starfarers.txt broken from the other end.
Stephen Thomas hunched down in his chair. When he started getting an ulcer in grad school, he had studied a number of relaxation techniques, ways to control stress, methods of releasing anger and pain. Today none of them worked. The shaking had reached his hands. His chin quivered as he clenched his teeth and tightened his throat and squeezed his eyes shut. He felt like a forlorn child. He despised himself for his reaction. He clenched his fists and jammed them between his knees. Soundlessly he began to cry. Hot fat tears forced themselves out from beneath his eyelids. His nose began to run.
Stephen Thomas thought of himself as an emotional person, a person with open feelings. But he did not often cry.
He knew it was supposed to make him feel better, to release endorphins or hormones or enzymes or some damned thing-he knew what he could make all those biochemicals do in his experiments; he did not need to know what they did inside him. But crying never did make him feel better. It made him feel sick and slack and stupid, and he hated it. Other people's crying made him neither uncomfortable nor impatient. The partnership had seen a lot of crying over the past year. Stephen Thomas thought it was probably a good thing that after the accident, one member of the partnership grieved inwardly and alone. Victoria and Satoshi had both needed someone they did not have to comfort.
Stephen Thomas still grieved for Merry, the member of the partnership he had always been closest to, the first of the three he had met. When Merit first took him home to meet Victoria and Satoshi, the experience was disturbingly like being taken home to meet a date's parents for the first time. Never mind that Merry was considerably older than Victoria and Satoshi, who were both older than Stephen Thomas.